Episode 146 - Al Argo - Leaders on Leadership

As a leader, you have to be equipped with different skills to communicate and deal with things correctly. In addition, you have to be focused on overcoming adversity, making tough decisions, and staying committed to growth. Join your host, Dr. Tracey Jones, as she interviews Al Argo about all of these things and his unique perspective in leadership. Al Argo is a motivational speaker and author. He also speaks on overcoming adversity, gratitude in life and business influence, positive impact leadership, and missions. What price must you pay to be an effective leader? Al provides a deep dive into some of the components you have to deal with as a leader, including loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. How will you overcome these? Tune in!

---

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Al Argo - Leaders on Leadership

I'm so excited because my guest is the one, the only, the tremendous, Al Argo. Let me tell you a little bit about Al. Al is a skydiving accident survivor, a motivational speaker, an eight-time author and speaks on overcoming adversity, gratitude in life and business, influence, positive impact, leadership and missions, and helping you create ARGO, which stands for A Really Great Organization. Al is an expert in helping professionals achieve more, relate better, grow faster, and overcome obstacles. In addition to all that, he has been a dear friend of many years of my mother and father and myself as well. Al, thank you so much for being on our show.

Thank you, Dr. Tracey. What an honor to be with you and all of our readers.

Tell a little bit about the intersection of you and my father. I like to set the context of how long we've known people. I had a gentleman on who we connected on LinkedIn. Before I even knew about coming back to Tremendous Leadership, you were a part of Tremendous Leadership.

Your dad was always proud of you and his whole family. I first met Charles "Tremendous" Jones back in the early 1990s. I sold books for two summers with a company out of Nashville, Tennessee. That's how he and I connected. We stayed in touch. Toward the late '90s, I ended up transitioning over into Asia, began to work with John Maxwell training leaders overseas, and still work with a nonprofit organization that I've been with ever since then.

Your dad was coming over and visiting us, and then your mom came over and visited us different times, not once, but several times. He and I would speak not only to Christian Ministry groups like Haggai Institute, but we'd also speak for Corporate Asia. I remember doing events with the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He was so proud of you and thankful for all of his readers and listeners, not only in America but in Australia. I still run into fans of Charles from Australia. Several years ago, I did an author publishing masterclass down in Perth and came across fans. Even though he's been in heaven quite some time, his legacy, the influence and impact of Charles "Tremendous" Jones lives on.

He loved Australia, and we still get orders every now and then. They're effervesced and efficacious as he was. He loved them. I interviewed Nikita Koloff.  Al was one of the gentlemen in our monthly Godly Guys and Gals group, our little mini-mastermind, where we get together. We're all speakers, authors, and Christians who share with one another because that's what we're meant to do. Al brought me into this a few years ago. I was so honored. I'm like, "Do you want me to be with you guys?" It's been such a tremendous help.

I'm so thankful, not only for you but for Nikita and our whole group. It's a small group but very powerful and influential group. We're like your dad. Until his last breath, he was always learning. I tell people, "My name is Al. It's an acronym for a lot of things, but one of those things is Always Learning." I don't know if it was your dad or someone else, but they taught me always to have a book you're reading and writing. Those two things were huge in books. When I was a young boy, I didn't have a TV. All I had was a library. When I was 14, 15, my dad said, "If you want a TV, you can buy it." I bought and watched it for a little bit, but I never lost my love for books.

He took our TVs out of the house. We were in high school and didn't watch that much. This was in the early '70s. He's like, "You don't need that," and we didn't need it. We wrote book reports. I'm thankful for that. Let's get right into the topic of leadership. My father loved leadership, but he was very pragmatic about it. He did not shy away from the tougher side of it and had a speech called The Price of Leadership where he said that there are four components that if you truly are going to be a leader, there's a price that you're going to have to pay.

It's worth it, but you're going to have to pay for it. The first one he talked about was loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Could you unpack what loneliness means to you as a seasoned leader? Maybe share a time when you were in that season. Maybe a tool for our readers if they are walking in a time of loneliness.

I heard your dad speak to a lot of different audiences from the time I was in college to the time I was in ministry and Corporate Asia. All of us, whether we're brand-new leaders or seasoned leaders, can go through a season of loneliness, whether that's a short or extended period of time. For me, when I was selling books, that was hard because you're out there by yourself. I didn't know how to sell.

I began to learn how to sell when I was 14, 15, and then the company kept doing sales training. Continuous education and ongoing education are important. That's why you and I train in Corporate America, Asia, and different places. Loneliness is different than being alone. Leaders, by nature, oftentimes are alone. It doesn't have to impact us negatively. It's what I'm saying. We've served in Asia for twenty years, the first ten years in Singapore, and the last ten years, we've moved over into the Philippines. We travel a lot. The whole concept of loneliness is about making decisions that are tough and giving up the good for the great.

This goes into these criticisms that are tough. The next thing he talked about was weariness. If it's tough, it wears on you mentally, physically, spiritually, all that good stuff. How do you combat weariness so you can continue to go through those tougher seasons and still stay robust and strong enough to move forward?

Overcoming Adversity: The whole concept of loneliness is really about just making decisions that are tough and giving up the good for the great.

I'm a big believer that you give each day all you've got. I start the morning with journaling. I wish I'd begun to do this when I was in my early 20s or late teens, but I've honestly begun to do it in the last few years. I've not missed a day doing this consistently since I've started. I talked about yesterday and today, but I could talk about 4 or 5 years down the road in my journal. I'm not doing it by hand. I'm doing it right here on my laptop, and that way, I'll always have it with me. It's also searchable.

I write my to-do list in my journal, which is important, but I also write my goals. I even write a small prayer and a gratitude list. These are the things that I'm doing every day. As far as weariness, in particular, I also make sure that I rest well. I've written a book about morning habits called Wake Up and Shine, but I've often thought about writing a book on rest and the importance of sleep. How we combat weariness is we honor the Sabbath. It's okay to be tired, but we don't want to be too tired.

Someone passed away, and he left notes on his desk. This was an older preacher, a gentleman from North Carolina. Found on his desk was, "At the first sign of fatigue, I'm going to rest." I thought that's pretty interesting because I've not followed that. I work hard. I worked through my fatigue oftentimes, but this older preacher in North Carolina had a different view. That's interesting because we work hard, but we also want to rest as well. We honor the Sabbath and rest well at night.

How I've combated weariness is, one of the first things that I do in the morning is I drink lots of water. I've learned that from the Japanese. They drink water. While weariness comes, we don't want it to linger. It is part of the price that we or others have to pay. I've got an acronym toward the end when you asked me as we get through the next one because we've talked about loneliness, weariness and there are two more.

That glass of water thing is huge. When I reclaimed my health, that's the first thing I do in the morning. Go get and drink an eight-ounce glass of water. That's amazing what you do, but I love that you talk about you're being very intentional with writing down in the gratitude. Sometimes weariness comes from a lack of focus. You've pulled so many ways in, and you're tired. You're like, "I didn't get anything done," and then you feel more tired. How can you be tired if you are unproductive?

That lack of focus drains you, and that's getting to our next topic. You need to do a book on rest and the Sabbath because that is critical. We're still flesh and blood and the temple. We need to take care of that. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment. Abandonment typically has a negative connotation, the fear of abandonment. In his world, abandonment was abandoning what you like and want to think about in favor of what you want and what you need. It was a real focus. I'm like, "How'd you get so successful?" He's like, "I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than I do my success." He would get spun off on other things. How do you abandon stuff and stay truly focused?

When a lot of people think about abandonment, it might have a negative connotation, but it doesn't have to be because it's us abandoning what? It might be good, but it's not God's will. It might be good, but it's not great. TV in and of itself, it might be good, but it's not great. I'm not preaching against TV. Back in the '70s and '80s, a lot of people preach against TV. One of the reasons why we grew up without TV is because someone preached against it, and my dad threw it away. Your dad probably did the same. When we talk about abandonment, it's about us giving up the mediocre for the incredible.

God promised us life and life more abundant. AL is an acronym for a lot of things, but it's also an acronym for Abundant Life. That's God's promise for you and me if we not only know about him but if we know him. God wants us to do four things. He wants us to know him and have freedom in him. Just because you know Him, it doesn't mean you have freedom. He wants us to know Him and have freedom. He wants us also to understand our purpose, whether that's Corporate America, Corporate Asia, or even ministry. Your dad loved the ministry. He often told me, like, "Why couldn't the Lord call me into the ministry?" I don't know if he ever told you that.

He did all the time.

I've been able to walk that fine line of ministry and marketplace. I love it. I'm so thankful for being able to work with the bankers in Nepal, tourism departments in very interesting countries across Asia. I'm very grateful for your dad and other mentors. This whole concept of abandonment is we give up the mediocre for the best for that day. I do write every morning. I don't do one thing every night, but as we're going to talk more, I do this often, is I review the day. I ask myself what went well and what I could've done better. I'm being transparent.

My morning routine is very solid as far as exercising, water, and getting my morning started. Those seven habits are outlined in the book, Wake Up and Shine. We're talking about the price of leadership. We've talked about loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. There's one more, which these three leads to vision, which is very important. Do you have any other comments on weariness?

No, weariness in your abandonment. I love that you are always looking at abandoning every day, and it's a daily thing. We were on point, but it's like your car. You constantly have to be tweaking, preventative maintenance, and rest. It's like you dust your house, and a day later, there's dust. It's a constant tending to getting out the weeds, the non-value-added, and staying on point. You never, ever can sit there, and maybe for ten seconds you can, and then stuff starts happening again. That was beautiful talking about abandonment.

Overcoming Adversity: How we combat weariness is how we honor the Sabbath. So it's okay to be tired. But we really don't want to be too tired.

We're talking about abandonment, and then I circled back to loneliness and weariness. If we rearrange those three things, I like acronyms and alliteration. I do this all the time, even with my last name, when I teach sales. Our sales professionals, if we give a great offer, that's what we want to do. As far as consulting organizations, we want to give ARGO and help build ARGO, which is A Really Great Organization.

If you rearrange those first three things, loneliness, weariness, and abandonment, it's LAW, Loneliness, Abandonment, and Weariness, and that's the law. A lot of our readers love the Lord and have a real relationship with Christ like you and I do. Some may not, and that's okay because we love everybody. We welcome everybody to your leadership broadcast. I love what you're doing, the people that you've interviewed since you've begun this.

I can't wait for the future, but we're not living under the law. We're living under grace. For me, have I dealt with loneliness? Yeah, we've dealt with it. Has it been a big issue? Not so much because I'm never alone. We have to abandon the mediocre to achieve God's best, but that's okay. We give up so we can go up. We grow weary. Sometimes we get tired, but it's not a big issue because we pay the price, but he paid the ultimate price.

I want to bring that out because it's close to Christmas. When he visited us over in Singapore, your dad told me these stories about keeping up the Christmas tree all year long. You can maybe give us more insight because I never got to come up to the house. To this day, I've never been up to where you grew up. Even when your dad passed away, I was overseas. It was very challenging for me to get back. I wanted to. In my spirit, I was there, but he told me these stories about keeping the Christmas tree up all year long.

We're coming into the Christmas season. As I prepared for this interview, I realized Loneliness, Abandonment, and Weariness are an acronym for LAW, but we have a vision. The law leads into vision. God gives vision. We know that verse where there is no vision, the people perish. Vision is also the price that we pay for leadership.

How do you hone your vision? Dad was pragmatic, down-to-earth, not fancy talk at all because he was real. He would say, "Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it." How do you incorporate this into your leadership?

I'm a big believer in goal setting, but I also take action toward those goals. The Bible says, "Faith without works is dead." I shared that verse with a corporate audience in Asia. Some of these young people had never even heard that. We have a lot of faith in different things. I have faith in the chair that I'm sitting in. I have faith in the car that we drove up to speak at an engagement in North Carolina. If I'm flying to Asia, I certainly have faith in that airplane and the pilot.

Even with that pilot in that plane, that plane naturally will tend to get off course, and vision is the act of pulling it back on the course to make sure it gets to the right destination. Even before we were born, God knew all of our days. He understands our purpose and the plan that he has for life. Many people never discover that purpose. No wonder a lot of people aren't happy and don't have real peace.

Whether your purpose is working at the post office or driving a truck, or selling insurance, I met with a guy who's been in the insurance for several years. I told him about your dad. I was like, "You got to read some of these books." Every one of us has a purpose and a vision. If we get it, we'll understand that the desires in our hearts were probably put there by God.

I love that you tied it back to freedom. I heard a quote and tried to find who did it, but they said, "For the center, this world is the closest to heaven they're going to get. For the saint, this world is the closest to how they're ever going to get." Even in our most lonely, tired, messed-up days, we have that freedom. I love that you brought that because that gets the wind back in your sails. We don't just do it on our own.

Those of us that have the faith paradigm know may be alone, but never all alone. When we are weak, he is strong, and abandonment is constantly, as Paul said, "Dying to self," and then we get into another biblical principle of vision where there is no vision that people perish. I thank you for that, Al, and those insights and how you're weaving that into all aspects of your life.

I believe that the best for you and me is yet to come. We have to keep learning and also apply what we're learning.

Overcoming Adversity: We just have to keep learning and also applying while we're learning.

Somebody told me this, "Embrace, but then you have to integrate. Faith without works is dead." We're still learning, but our minds, all the leadership stuff says, cognitively, if you keep your mind active, you can stave off senility, all that stuff. Retirement is not a biblical principle. We're meant to keep going and growing. That's why I love our tremendous fan base because these are seasoned people that already have 1, 2, 3, 4 great successful careers. They're always still like, "There's more." That's what true leaders do, always growing and sowing.

Somebody at lunch asked me where I plan to retire, and I'm like, "Retirement is not even in my mind." I'm barely half a century. I'm so grateful that I've known your dad and family for many years. I declare that for me and my future and the ministry, the marketplace, everything that our hands, the consulting or the books. I love Asia. We've invested two decades. The legacy, the generation that will come as the Lord tarries.

They asked me, "Where do you want to retire?" I'm like, "I want to live forever in Asia." The truth is I go back and forth. I'm at home in America, even though the weather's getting cold. This will be my first Thanksgiving in America since 2015. I'm very thankful to have a Thanksgiving birthday and Christmas in the US in 2021. It's interesting but cold.

Come up to Pennsylvania, where it's even colder, and we'll give you some beautiful winter.

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet?

No, after Thanksgiving. I like to add, "Keep a tree up all year round," because that reminded him every day about the birth of Jesus. When you look at that every day, it helps keep you focused. Every day, there's my reminder that this price was paid for me, and I can live as a free, liberated child and claim my inheritance. I love the tree.

I don't keep a tree up all year round, but maybe we should.

I changed mine out every month. It's a seasonal tree, but it still is the joy of the seasons, the remembrances. It all hearkens back to the birth of Christ. We have Easter for the resurrection, all those data points, and everything in between. We've covered the four points. Share with our readers, too, how you do walk in the ministry and the marketplace? I want you to share a little bit about your ministry and what you're doing with that?

Our purpose in Asia and even in America is to teach. I tell people that it's all about the team. I like acronyms. We're all about Teaching, Equipping, Activating, and Mobilizing. That's an acronym for TEAM. Specifically, we want to help the Asian church move forward and become all that God wants them to be in the ministry. In the marketplace, we want companies to make sure that they hire the right people. I'm teaming with a group of high-level industrial psychologists who've developed software to help HR departments hire the right people. We're not talking about small companies, but these are companies that are 500, 1,000, 1,500, 5,000 employees or more, whether it's Asia or America.

In the ministry, for many years, whether it's a relief in Indonesia after the tsunami, we'd help train a team of locals and were mobilized immediately to go in after the Christmas tsunami back in 2004. It killed 144,000 people in 15 minutes. It's a hard area to get into, but the US government under the USAID got in. We got in as a religious nonprofit. They're still effective ministries in that area there in Indonesia. We work with Bible schools across Southeast Asia. We do relief, whether it's the tsunami. We've done volcano and typhoon reliefs. It's very sad, some of the craziness.

When you talk about loneliness, abandonment, and weariness, when you see some of that without the grace of God, you can tend to go that way. Thank God for vision and provision. The ministry may be a relief, or education, whether that's elementary education or reading programs. One of the reasons why I do the books is to promote literacy and encourage children and parents to read to children. Our readers can find the kids' books on Amazon. We promote literacy, do relief, leadership training for the church and corporate. I get bored easily. Someone told me not long ago, "You might have ADHD." I'm like, "I've never been diagnosed with that." They went on to say, "If you do, you manage it well."

It's like loneliness and weariness. It can be a good thing.

I don't want my hand in too much. Whatever I do to be done with excellence, and I want it to be fruitful. We've talked about vision, but we also need people to pray for us and support us, but we need people you and I can delegate work to. John Maxwell always teaches that you inspect what you expect. That's so important. There are other aspects of leadership, including numbers. I may not be a natural numbers guy, but I understand that numbers tell a story. At the end of the day, if I know the numbers that matter, I can see how my day went. Whether that's a Sunday in church or a Monday through Friday in corporate, the numbers always tell a story.

Overcoming Adversity: We need people not only to pray for us and support us, but we need people to help, that you and I can delegate work to.

Al, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Anyone who might want to donate to the ministry can receive a tax deduction if they're given in America. I have a URL, a short link that would go right to the ministry site. It's www.Bit.do/AsiaMissions. If they want to look at the books, they can search Al Argo on Amazon or Al Argo on Audible. If they want to get in touch with me as far as consulting or some of the HR work we've been doing, or to ask a personal question, they can connect with me on LinkedIn and message me.

There's only one Al Argo on LinkedIn. That's a skydiving accident survivor, author, and consultant. There is a couple more Al Argos out there on LinkedIn, but they don't have any pictures. I'm not sure who they are, or even if it's a fake profile, but my LinkedIn profile has a picture and it is very clear which one it would be.

Touch on some of your children's books because the readers need to know you've got some kids' books, too.

Thank you. When I was down in Australia, my event organizer named Chris, he’s a pastor, a corporate guy, and an all-around good guy. He's my good friend. I've known him for years. We've attended events together in Canada and America. He was coming up to Singapore and the Philippines to see us. He invited me down to do not only speak at a leadership event, but we also did an author training masterclass. On the night before I was leaving Australia, he took us out for ice cream. In that ice cream shop, he got the hiccups. In the Deep South where I'm from, if you get the hiccups, you're going to get scared.

I looked over at him and scared him. He never had that happen. He had a fit. The whole ice cream shop got silent. We all bust out laughing because his hiccups were gone. I made a comment. I said, "Don't worry. I've written the book on hiccups." I was joking, but the next morning at the airport, I wrote this cute, almost like a Dr. Seuss type rhyme. It all rhymes.

At the end of the book, I wrote about 5 to 7 true hiccup facts. This is a book for early readers. It rhymes like Dr. Seuss. All the artworks are hand-drawn. All the parents and the little kids love. That was the first book. I wrote a book about hiccups, and it's based in Australia. A couple of days later, I wrote one about doing number two, which all kids have questions about. I didn't realize a lot of parents would go to that book when their kids had questions about potty training, but that's pretty interesting.

I wrote one about hiccups and then sneezing. Those are the four books in the kid's series called The Adventures of Chris. Chris is a real person. All the books are educational, and our goal is to give away 1 million books in Asia. What we do is whenever someone buys a book on Amazon or they buy a book at one of our events, we immediately donate a book in Asia as well. It's a neat little giving model that we have.

Al, thank you so much for what you meant to my family, the blessing you continue to be to me and for sharing your wisdom with our leaders out there and our Tremendous Tribe.

What a tremendous opportunity to be with you. We have the opportunity to be together every month via our speaker and author mastermind. Thank you for being a part of that. Thank you for being a friend to our family and ministry. We appreciate your prayer and support and friendship. It means a lot to us, and we love you. I love your mom and your dad. They're great people.

You as well, Al. Thank you so much. To our tremendous readers out there, thank you so much for taking the time to read. If you haven't done so yet, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss another episode. If you do us, the honor of a five-star review, we’d be so thankful. Drop us a note, we'd go ahead, and I forward anything you say to Al, and we answer all of our responses.

Please, make sure you go over to TremendousLeadership.com, sign up for our email letter, where you automatically receive two free weeks of eBooks in addition to making sure you don't miss another episode. To our tremendous leaders out there, you keep on paying the price of leadership. We're right there with you. We're so thankful for you.

Important Links:

• Al Argo

• Wake Up and Shine

• www.Bit.do/AsiaMissions

• Al Argo - Amazon

• Al Argo - Audible

• The Adventures of Chris

About Al Argo

Al is a Skydiving Accident Survivor, Motivational Speaker, 8x-Author, Speaks on Overcoming Adversity, Gratitude in Life & Business, Influence, Positive Impact Leadership & Missions. Helping you create ARGO (A Really Great Organization!)

Episode 140 - Dr. Don Hamilton - Leaders On Leadership

You can set yourself up for success. Be the leader you're meant to be. Join your host, Dr. Tracey Jones, as she interviews Dr. Don Mark Hamilton about leadership even in the most challenging times. Dr. Don Mark pastored the large and healthy Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, PA, for thirty-eight years until his retirement in 2020. Don is now a blogger, author, and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired! He shares how to deal with loneliness, weariness, and abandonment and still bring out the best version of yourself. You have to choose to deal with the changes because they may affect different aspects of your life. Tune into this episode for growth and success secrets!

---

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Dr. Don Hamilton - Leaders On Leadership

I am honored and blessed to introduce to you, Dr. Don Mark Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton or Don is the blessed father of 4 beautiful daughters with soon-to-be 3 sons-in-law and 7 awesome grandchildren. Don was married to Gail Hamilton for 38 years until her passing in 2018 of pancreatic cancer. Don pastored the large Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania for 38 years until his retirement in 2020. Don is a blogger, author and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired. Don's articles and resources can be found on DonMarkHamilton.com. He is working on three books to be published in 2022. Don, it is tremendous to have you on the show.

Thanks very much, Tracey. I'm honored to be here early in.

You're welcome. For those readers that know this show, Kristin is Don's daughter. I have the joy of getting to work with Kristin. I get the second generation tremendousness. You knew my father, Don.

I knew your dad very well. He was one of my mentors. I met him at a conference somewhere initially. I had a good buddy who was an executive in one of the local companies and he said, “I have to take you over to Charlie's place to meet him.” I did and that started it. He gave me that old big trademark hug of his and that started a friendship. He taught me a lot about leadership and more importantly, about life.

Thank you so much for sharing that. The reason we are here is to talk about one of his most famous speeches, and that is the Price of Leadership. You knew my father and a lot of our readers did. He was very motivated but he was also incredibly pragmatic. He was very much like, “Leadership is going to be joyful but you're going to have to pay a price. It's going to be tough but it's worth it.” What we are going to unpack in the Price of Leadership is the four points he talked about.

The first one my father talked about was that if you're going to be a leader and not just a leader in name only, you're going to encounter times of loneliness. Could you unpack that for us? You have spent decades running a church and dealt with loneliness in your life. What would you say to our readers out there, perhaps if they are in a season of loneliness and what it means for you?

For me, there are a lot of times, especially if you're the sole leader of an organization. In any level of leadership, you realize that the buck does stop there. With that, it leaves you feeling alone sometimes and even a little abandoned in certain circumstances. For me, it was always a matter of having mentors like Charlie and people that I could unload that stuff on, had already been there, done that, walked that path and that I could go whine to. I'm good at whining. When you feel lonely, you usually feel whiny. You go sit in the corner and whine. I did that.

For me, I'm a person of faith and with my relationship with God, I knew he was always there. Sometimes he felt distant in those situations and yet as you read through the record that he gave us from the Scriptures all the way down through history, another thing that was so encouraging to me was to see that he's so honest about the leaders in the Bible. I cannot imagine. I would think to myself, “Moses must have felt terribly lonely working with these stiff-neck people.” He did it a lot better than I could ever do it.

In Joshua's final charge, “You're going to have to be strong and courageous.” He tells him that 3 or 4 times because he knew there were going to be some lonely moments. Also, I was blessed in that somebody, at one point, challenged me to learn about solitude. I've learned about solitude, journaling and journaling my prayers. After I had done that for so long, it was like going to a well. You're thirsty, you go to that well on a regular basis and you're comfortable with yourself, your God and where you are. If you're in the middle of one of those lonely times and it's because some bad things have happened, you're always, “This too shall pass.” It does.

Those are some of the ways that I have always worked through my times of loneliness. The other thing is I developed deep friendships through the years. I'm not sure what motivated me to do that but I have deep friendships with a group of fellow leaders and we grew up together. We are all across the country and the world. We get together and chat. When 1 of us is down, the other 3 or 4 of us would pull them up. We meet together with some regularity down through the years. That was helpful because I know some leaders tend to isolate themselves. To me, that is a prescription for disaster. There are too many things that you cannot handle by yourself.

I love that you hit on a nuance that leaders can feel lonely. You touched on that sometimes they feel even abandoned. We are going to talk about abandonment as the third point but in a slightly different thing. That is very transparent of you because we have to watch that bitterness. You will be abandoned as a leader. Jesus was. Even Jesus had his Judas.

I tell people, “I don't care how great you think you are. There is somebody out there in your camp who is not all in.” It's going to leave you feeling abandoned and it's okay. It's par for the course. I love that you talked about having a group of people. I started watching The Chosen. Thanks to your connection. Every day and every episode, Jesus says, “I'm off on my own.” He says, “Where are you going?” Jesus says, “I need to be alone.” It reminds me that we do need to go and be in solitude. There's beautiful loneliness and there's the other part of it that you're going to feel too.

It's very helpful to have a larger picture in mind and to never lose the larger picture of life in general. As a leader, you're going to get to me too undeserved. You're going to get undeserved glory. Something has gone well and you may have initiated it and put some of it together. You know very well you are not responsible for what happened but you get the glory because you're the person at the top. The second undeserved to me is you get undeserved criticism. No matter what way you choose, the old saying, “Damn if you do, damned if you don't,” is true. If you've got a bigger picture of the whole thing, the undeserved glory and criticism don't go to your head. It pulls you through that lonely feeling of being there.

When we are not yanked around by our feelings but just no knowledge of, “This too shall pass,” that there is a bigger picture. We are never walking through this alone. A valley has a bottom and then you start uphill again. I appreciate that because that's going to help our readers go, “This is the season and it's okay.” It keeps you from doing something, walking off a job, firing off an email, falling on your sword, that we all like to do when we're suffering. Thank you for that. I've been there.

Leadership Success: Leadership leaves you feeling alone sometimes, even a little abandoned in certain circumstances. But it was always a matter of having mentors to guide you along the way.

I always did love that saying, “They don't grow crops on mountain tops. They grow them in the valley.”

I have never heard that. I thought I heard everything so I'm getting a lot. Thank you for sharing the feeling of loneliness. You gave our readers some applicable tools and resources to go ahead and be prepared for that. Don't get caught unaware. Whenever I catch a leader saying, “I feel so alone.” It's like, “No kidding. You got to prepare for that.” The next thing my father talked about was weariness. I always think of the parable of the olive tree. You grow something and there is a lot of good and bad that lands in there. How do you stay at the top of your game when a lot of people are depending on you and your vision, touch, prayers and everything?

I would go back to that solitude or quiet. It's developing a good rhythm when times are very demanding and you're on big projects, especially projects that are lengthy. I remember we built a very large playground. Our church had a 53-acre campus. It was a community park and we built a large special needs playground. We were doing it in 2008 during the Recession trying to raise $800,000. Everybody said, “You couldn't do that.” The Lord came through and we built that.

I remember it took us a year to get the whole thing going and then we built it. It was a community built in seven days. At the end of it, a special needs playground has to have a poured rubber floor. That's very expensive and we didn't have the money for that. We had this playground sitting out there that nobody could use, which is the worst possible thing. I got this far and can't close the loop. We were tired by then. We had already been working on it for over a year and had a long way to go.

I had a group of 4 or 5 people. Some were leaders in my church and some were staff members. We would play off of each other. Laurie Cartmell was one person that led me through that. One day, I would be over there whining to her in her office, “I am so tired. I am sick of this crap and I'm done.” She's like, “We are not.” Three days later, she would be in my office doing the same thing. We kept at it.

Right before Christmas at the end of that year, we got a gift of $120,000 that was totally unexpected. It put us over the hump. As soon as spring got there, we could pour the floor and things could go forward. A two-year process on a large project was tiring. It wears you out. Also, on the subject of weariness, something I have learned from Nehemiah is there was a time when Nehemiah was rebuilding those walls. He was perceptive enough to know that you're going to face opposition and it's going to wear not only you out but also the people who are doing the labor.

You've got to plan for that in any project. It seems to me that if it lasts very long at all, you're going to have the initial excitement. Everybody is going to be on board and ready to rock and roll. People came out, 1,400 of them worked for that week and then they went back home and sat down. You're not done. You've got this long project, have opposition during that and then come all the way to the very end of it.

What does charge you up? What helps you to get through this weariness? I always had an illustration that I used. I saw it somewhere back through the years of the three buckets. As a leader, you have things that fill and empty your bucket and your bucket is going to be leaky no matter what. You’ve got to keep your bucket full enough because you're pouring into other people's lives constantly.

Sometimes, in the midst of constantly doing and working at things, you get to a point where you don't realize your bucket is getting emptier. At some point, it can become dangerously empty and you have not given attention. Sometimes people don't even know what does fill your bucket because you're going to need that or what that is in those times. That is what gets you through the weariness of it.

Another thing, especially in the business world but even in the church world is there is the biblical concept of the Sabbath. As leaders and I did this for years, you feel like you can go 24/7, 365 and you can't. Your bucket gets empty. You get worn out. You finally come up against a project that you don't have the personal resources to do. You get tired and weary.

It's a rhythm on a daily basis then weekly and then yearly where you have to have the self-discipline. Develop that to pull away and say, “I need one day this month where I'm not doing anything.” Whatever it is for you, like hiking or longer periods of time as you're out of place. I don't think the human body and certainly the human mind, God did not design us to go 24/7, 365. He made a serious point that, “You take a day of rest and I mean business about it.”

That is serious business. You look at what is going on in the world and see the effects of this and of running even if you're not a believer. We are not coded for this and meant to do this.

It's easy as a leader to get an inflated view of your worth. The last four years of my ministry were the hardest of the entire 38 years. By that time you think, “I'm going to slide those last few years.” It didn't turn out that way. Our church was growing tremendously. We went through a name change and structural changes. The people in my older board, there were 9 of us, 7 of us had serious cancer illnesses in the family.

One of our elders died suddenly in a car crash. My wife got pancreatic cancer and that was a 22-month ordeal. A guy who is my son-in-law was my campus pastor at the time. His wife at the time was 34 years old, a young woman. He went downstairs one day, came back up and she was gone. She had died. It went on and on. At the same time, I was trying to do a capital campaign. We were designing a new building and it was a lot.

Leadership Success: If you're in the middle of one of those lonely times, always say, “This too shall pass,” and it will.

By the time I got to the end of it, I realized, “You are worn out a lot more than what you ever thought you were and you need to figure it out.” Number one, at my particular juncture at the time, I was like, “You need a new season. It's time for you to turn a chapter.” That was hard to do but God said, “Over a period of months, I'm taking you somewhere else. I want you to prepare your organization as best you know how and I'll help you for the future.” We did a two-year succession plan and that turned out well. People around me realized but I didn't realize I was utterly worn out.

We never see it. We think we're keeping it together. When the trauma has passed, I have had people say to me, “I'm glad that was over because you became something different.” I'm like, “What?” It has to. I also appreciate you sharing with leaders that there is this thing that we think, “I'm going to get it all dialed in like a finely tuned fighter jet.” God can call you.

I love that your ending was the hardest part of the race because you might think once you got things cooking and the team is there, you can sit on the beach and drink non-alcoholic Mai Tais all day long. That is not possibly God's calling. I love that you brought that up at the end because sometimes when finishing the race, you may even think, “Am I going to even make it across it?” It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It is what it is. It's how God orchestrates it all.

It's back to that original point of it's easy to get an inflated view of you're important to the organization. Somewhere along the line somebody said, “They will have forgotten your name in six weeks.” It's the nature of it. I have a very close friend of mine who is a leadership trainer in a Fortune 500 company. Concerning my successor, he says, “They always say they all want your advice but I don't want your advice. They could care less what you’ve got to say.” It turned out that way and it's not bad. It's the nature of things. The organization will go on without you and do quite well. When you get that in your mind, it's much easier to move on.

I'm glad you said that because a lot of other people that we have interviewed have said it was shocking because when they were done, they were done. It's time. People have to continue to move on. You have made your mark and hope you will stay in touch with a couple of people. That is the nature of what it is. People are too concerned. In other words, don't keep drawing it out. You always want to leave strong and not all the things you should have checked out a couple of years ago.

When you have been in an organization for a long time that is harder to realize than if you're in a short-term situation. You're so used to it. It's your life. When you walk in my situation as a “pastor of a church,” that becomes your identity whether you consciously do that or not. You subconsciously assume that, “This is always going to be my dead-end.” In fact, it's not. I'm not a pastor, at least in the same way. It's a very different way and I'm enjoying it.

We did loneliness and weariness. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment and you had hit on that. His point of abandonment was that we need to stop thinking about what we like and want to think about in favor of what we ought and need to think about. It was very much focused. You've said the discipline word many times throughout this. How do you stay abandoned? You've got your flock and a million things, three books, blogs, this and that. How do you stay abandoned every moment to what you need to focus on?

I know I keep coming back to this but for me, at least, people that do that well slowly over time usually develop a rhythm that is productive. It helps you to say, “I'm not going to spend four hours in front of the TV tonight. I'm going to spend an hour and a half.” For the other ones, “I'm going to go work out, read, write, spend time with my family and do the things that should be up high on the priority list.” You can get this entitlement mentality even that, “I have worked ten hours. I deserve to sit in front of the TV with a very large bowl of popcorn.” What you end up doing is developing that as a pattern like Pavlov's dog and that pattern is counterproductive. It's the same thing for me in the morning. I like to get the morning started right.

One of my favorite books is Make Your Bed. It's that little book. I can't remember if the guy was an Admiral McRaven but he wrote the book. He makes a point that in the military, the first thing you do is make your bed. It equates to a win and a pattern that you're developing on a daily basis that brings out your best self and abilities. That's the first thing I do. I make my bed. I've got my little routine and all that. I've got a chair in my living room that I have sat in for years. I'm on the second one wearing it out. I'm going to read, write and journal.

Leadership a lot is about what you say no to and those two little ladders are so powerful. Everybody's got to learn, if you're a leader especially, what you are going to say no to. There are always bazillion things to occupy your time and even more than your time, your mental energy. Leadership is so much about mental and emotional energy.

In the rhythm you talked about, you don't write the whole opus. It's one beat at a time. I love the fact when you talked about making your bed equates to a win. What my dad would say with abandonment is, “Tracey, when you get down billable hours at the end of the day, how many things you did contribute to your success and failure?” When you look at it, you can go, “This is why it's not happening for me.”

Incrementally, little thing. I'm not saying you have to throw all the TVs out of the house like he did when we were growing up. If you have to do it, you have to do it. Discipline and that rhythm, even if it's for an hour a day as you did before and then incrementally, is how you get a lot more clarity. You can deflect them a lot easier because you're so dialed in.

There are a couple of books on the power of habits. One is Atomic Habits. A guy named Duhigg wrote one called The Power of Habit. The whole point is that very minimal changes make a big difference. What those changes are that you choose to make also are so important because some changes have a domino effect. This good thing that I'm developing is going to have a domino effect in my leadership and life, whereas I might make another choice that might even be a good choice but it's not one that's necessarily going to have a domino effect on other areas of my life.

Either way, the point is very small and incremental changes make such a huge difference. That is about abandoning some stuff that I want to do or that is impulsive. I'm an impulsive guy. I go to the store, see something and I’m like, “I need that. Do you have to lure the disc? I don't think you do need that, Hamilton.” You can live that way, impulsively and it doesn't add up to strong leadership.

Sometimes, it's that one little thing like a ball falling when you're playing pool that may make it over. There's loneliness, weariness, abandonment and lastly, vision. My father would say that vision is not some esoteric, mythical thing that the greats, the Zuckerbergs, the Oprah Winfreys or the brilliant people see. Vision is seeing what needs to be done. You're doing it and executing it because if you don't execute it, it's this thing floating around. How do you get vision clarity? You went through this big transition where you got the calling or the pivot point. Unpack for our readers what they should be looking for if there are vision blockers or how you're honing this next stage of your life.

What people always told me is, “Your strongest thing is you're a visionary and you, secondly, are able to inspire people towards that vision. You're very good at that. You're a strategic planner.” You're taking the history that you developed based on this abandonment and the other points of leadership and developing a process whereby you can visualize and see.

Vision is what I call a picture of a preferred future. You've developed the knack and the ability to learn how to pursue something when you do see it. To me, it's like when you went to high school and college and everybody always complains that there are all these classes that, “I don't need to learn that. Why would I want to learn about psychology? I'm going to be an accountant.” All of us complained about that stuff but the bigger principle of education is you got to teach yourself how to be educated because the ultimate goal is for you to educate yourself.

It's like in Christianity. To me, if you have been a Christian for fifteen years and you still have to be spoonfed by a pastor or a church something is not right. Adult people feed themselves and they do that because they have learned how to do that. The best discipline in life is learning. Solomon says, “Where do you get wisdom? Where do you learn to fear God?” You'll get it and see it coming into your life or get an understanding of that thing. I've been writing a little bit about this in Nehemiah. Leaders do tend to see things that sometimes other people don't see or they see the same things that another person sees but the distinguishing characteristic is exactly what you're saying. They want to do something about it.

I have a good friend that ran an Upward Basketball program for years. It was a great program. About 220 people were kids in our church and from the community play. He would always go to the parents. I know if you've had kids in sports, parents are notorious for being jerks. “You ought to be doing this, that and so on.” He would get them all together. At the beginning of the year, he would have his speech. He'd say, “I'm going to do things that are not the best here. I'm sure I will do things that could be done better and so forth. You're going to see some of those things.”

Leadership Success: As a leader, you have things that fill and empty your bucket, and your bucket is going to be leaky no matter what. You got to keep your bucket full enough because you're pouring into other people's lives constantly.

He says, “I'm glad for you to come to me with, ‘We ought to be doing this way.’” Then he would always tell him the second step, “You come to me with the thing that you see wrong, with a solution and with the willingness to be part of the solution. If you don't, don't come to me.” That often is the difference. You have to develop an aptitude towards, I'm a doer rather than a listener of whatever it is I'm pursuing.”

For me, writing is a very different discipline than leading a large organization, preaching and so forth. There are so many different aspects to that whereas writing is very focused. I tended to like to do everything. If you're a leader like me, I had trouble saying no because I liked everything about the church and loved everything about leadership. I love public speaking and liked cleaning the church. I would clean the church and you get to a point where, “Don, you don't need to be spending 2 or 3 hours cleaning the church at this particular stage.”

In becoming a writer, I have this vision of, “I want to start to write.” One thing my nephew, who has written a couple of very successful books says, “I'll tell you one thing, Uncle Don. Writers have to write.” A lot of writers are supposedly writers but they are just talking about it. I've read a number of books since I have been trying to pursue this and talked to you some. It all comes down to this, “You set your rear end down in that chair and start writing and do it every day. You will slowly but surely become a writer.” Any vision is like that. It ends up being, “I need to do something about this.”

I love that you brought on the obvious and the non-obvious because my focus is followership. Where leaders can avoid burnout is by bringing the followers that can see the obvious. You don't need to tell them, “This is not Mother May I? You do it.” In the military, you do it if you see something wrong. That is good for leaders. You need to focus on seeing the vision that is not obvious. You're going to get the call, not because you're smarter than everybody but for whatever reason God chose to give it to you.

It's like in The Chosen when Peter was like, “Why did you pick me? Andrew, why do you think he picked you?” He says, “I don't know. He just did.” It's a mystery for leaders to dial into people. That will help you with the other things too like the weariness and loneliness. You want followers that don't have to sit there and wait for permission to do what needs to be done. I tell them 80% of business is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. You can say, “That is no vision.” It is vision, discipline, seeing what needs to be done and doing it.

It's that residual momentum that keeps the day-to-day tactical stuff going. The strategy is more of a creative aspect. I liked that you separated the two. You want people that, going back to Moses, aren't always coming to you saying, “Do you think this is going to work? I don't think this is going to work.” If you're not in with the vision, go to another tribe.

Going back to the point of abandonment, the other things I would say on a much deeper and on a bigger scale would have been you must abandon your pride if you want to be a good leader. Humility, to me is the linchpin of leadership. You have to abandon your insecurity because if you don't, you won't be able to get the vision. An insecure leader will not allow people to make decisions on their own. An insecure leader won't delegate. They are afraid that they are not going to get their due. It doesn't work that way. To me, you get the big picture and figure it out. Most of us are good at 1, 2 and 3 things. That's it. You're probably good at about one thing. You need to figure out what is your one thing and do it. There are very few projects that involve just one thing.

You better find people around you, the better you can find and then let them run with it. I go back to Nehemiah. Nehemiah was not going to build a wall around Jerusalem not even remotely by himself. That is ludicrous. He was going to have to enlist the entire community to get this thing done, especially the leadership in the community. In order to do that, he had to be a humble guy. John Doe comes out of his house every day. There is the sheep gate. The sheep gate is barred. You can't even walk through the crazy thing. It's all torn apart. That guy has got to stare at that gate every day.

A leader comes along and says, “You don't have to stare at that gate being broken down. I'll bet you can fix it.” He says, “I can't fix it. I have been working in the King's court my whole life. I don't know anything about fixing doors but you and your neighbors do so I will get you the resources.” To me, that is another thing that sometimes leaders don't recognize. You can even get good people around you but 1) If you won't let them do their job, and then 2) If you don't resource them properly, you will end up losing your best.

The people didn't have the wherewithal to build that. They didn't have the wood, the hinges and so forth but Nehemiah knew where he could get that. He brought it with him and said, “You got it. Here it is.” They will do the work. To me, it's not just a vision of a wall that was completed. It's, “What resources do these people need that they cannot provide for themselves?” A leader has access usually or knows how to go about getting resources that many times that’s not the role of the followers.

Once you provide those resources then they are going to be able to pursue that vision. The leader is tasked to keep. You got to paint that vision over and over and paint it in fifteen different ways and times. When you're the one hammering the nails, you forget, “Why am I doing this again?” He said, “You are doing this for your kids, Jerusalem and the city.”

I'm sure you've heard about this famous old illustration. I've been reading a book about the great cathedrals of Europe. The story of God that comes up where he sees these three different Masons working on this cathedral. The Masons were a generational thing because cathedrals usually took hundreds of years to build. He walks up to the first guy and says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I'm laying bricks.” He was pretty blunt about it.

He walked up to the next guy. He says, “What are you doing? He says, “I'm building a big, beautiful wall here.” He says, “That's good.” He walks up to the third guy he finds and says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I am building a structure to the almighty god of the universe.” That third guy somewhere had a different vision than what that first guy had. To me, the responsibility of the leader is to get all of them to be the third guy. “We are not just putting bricks on bricks and building a wall here. We are building something great.” That can be a program, a project or the overarching theme of whatever organization it is.

Leadership Success: A leader usually has access or knows how to go about getting resources. 

It's hard for people to stay fired up if they lose their vision and lose track of, “What is my part in the play? How does it contribute to the whole?” That is a harder thing to do. A leader needs to address that on a frequent basis because when you're sitting there on the computer and filling out forms, it's pretty easy to lose sight of, “What are these forms? It's for somebody's healthcare. This is important.” Somebody has got to remind everybody of that. It falls with the leadership.

I have heard that cathedral story before. That is so profound. It's how everybody does the same thing and shows up at the same job but some people go and think it's the worst thing in the world. Other people are like, “This is the most brilliant thing.” We have covered quite a lot and you have shared with our readers a ton of great resources, real-world stories and your wisdom, Don. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers about leadership? How about some of these books that you're working on? Would you like to share a little bit about that?

I have mentioned Nehemiah several times. That is where my world is. You and I have had the chance to talk about this. Many years ago, I found an interest and I don't know if it was a class or something in Nehemiah. It was one of the greatest leadership books that have ever been written. You have to perceive that and look at it from a leader's bird's-eye view.

I'm writing a shorter book on Nehemiah and then a longer one. It's based on this study I did years ago that I called The Six E’s of Success that you Examine, Evaluate, Envision, Encourage, Equip and Enjoy. This is going to play out a little bit differently than that. I'm writing a short one and then I'm writing a longer book, which is going to be a 40-day leadership devotional with 40 lessons from Nehemiah. I'm working on that. I'm working on another book called Just Go on Anyway.

I had this saying throughout my life that served me well. There are those times where you're weary and you've done it but you failed. It is that you just did. Sometimes, it was your own fault and sometimes it was the circumstances beyond your control. A lot of people failed in business and there wasn't anything they could do about it. Nobody's buying.

There are a number of times in your life. Your wife gets sick and passes. You got to look at yourself in the mirror every once in a while and say, “I'm going to go on anyway.” It's not a stoic thing. It's, “I am going to go on anyway.” I'm writing a book called Just Go on Anyway and it covers a number of like, “Just go on anyway when your business went under, when the divorce papers were signed and when you got outsourced.” There is a myriad of subjects that we all go through. I'm picking out 40 or 50 of those. I'm thinking of doing a series of books on, “Just go on anyway.” I have been working on that as well. I do my weekly blog, which is usually around 1,000 words or so and a 6 to 7-minute read. I'm enjoying it.

Where can people find you? Where can they read this tremendous blog of yours? How can they connect with you? I know a lot of our readers are going to want to reach out to you.

DonMarkHamilton.com is my website. There is some other information that I will continue to place on there and some other resources. As a matter of fact, there is that article. I titled it Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It? It is a study of the Book of Nehemiah. You can download that for free. You'll see the blog button there. You can click on the blog and subscribe to that. You'll get a weekly email with that and once in a while some other things. I'll keep everybody up through that on where I'm at with the books or other projects.

I'm doing some speaking. I've done some development for some nonprofit groups and their leadership teams. I'll do that and I'm available to do those things. I did one for My Cerebral Palsy, a group down in Baltimore as well. I'm doing and enjoying doing that. You can get a hold of me at DonMarkHamilton@Gmail.com. If you approach me on the website, you can put contact and it will be a different email address from my website. Either one of those is fine.

Don, thank you for pouring out your wisdom to us. For our readers out there, please make sure and reach out to Don. He is a tremendous resource and has seen a thing or two as you have heard. He is a very seasoned, connected and grounded leader. That's who we need to surround ourselves with so take advantage of this. Don, thank you for being a part of this and for the joy you are.

You're more than welcome. Thank you, Tracey. I'm honored to get to chat with you.

You are so welcome. For our readers out there, if you liked what you read, please be sure and subscribe. Give us a like. The joy and blessing of a five-star rating would be so appreciated. Wherever you listen to this podcast, we are everywhere across all the different platforms. Leave us a comment. We answer all the different ones that we get from people. We would love to know what you're reading and what thoughts you were inspired by on your leadership journey. To all our tremendous leaders out there, you keep on paying the price of leadership. We are so thankful for you. Be sure and go over to TremendousLeadership.com and sign up for your two free eBooks to get you on your tremendous journey. Keep it up, Tremendous Tribe. We love you. We're thankful for you.

Important Links:

• Dr. Don Mark Hamilton

• Live Inspired

• Make Your Bed

• Atomic Habits

• The Power of Habit

• My Cerebral Palsy

• DonMarkHamilton@Gmail.com

• https://www.Facebook.com/DonMHamilton

• https://www.Facebook.com/DonMarkHamilton

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/Don-Mark-Hamilton-23954a7/

• https://www.Instagram.com/Don.Mark.Hamilton/

About Dr. Don Hamilton

Dr. Don Mark Hamilton is the blessed father of four beautiful daughters, soon-to-be three sons-in-law, and seven awesome grandchildren. Don was married to Gail Hamilton for thirty-eight years until her passing in 2018 from Pancreatic Cancer. Don pastored the large and healthy Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, Pa for thirty-eight years until his retirement in 2020. Don is now a blogger, author, and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired! Don's articles and resources can be found on DonMarkHamilton.com. He is presently working on three books to be published in the coming year.

Episode 139 - Lisa Marie Platske - Leaders On Leadership

The price of leadership can be steep. Every leader has to be ready to pay that price if they want to be great. In this episode, Dr. Tracey Jones gets coach and entrepreneur Lisa Marie Platske to discuss the principles of leadership. Lisa and Tracey discuss the how-tos of leadership and the price of leadership as seen from Lisa’s point of view. Lisa also shares her pillars of leadership and how these lead into a leader’s wellbeing. Tune in and learn more on the principles of leadership from Lisa and Tracey.

—-

Listen to the podcast here:

Lisa Marie Platske - Leaders On Leadership

I am excited because we have our guest, Lisa Marie Platske. She is an award-winning leadership expert in human behavior and has received accolades from the United States Small Business Administration and The International Alliance for Women. She's also recognized as one of the top 100 women making a difference in the world. She left her Federal law enforcement career after 9/11 to build Upside Thinking, Inc. She's a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and has trained or coached over 100,000 leaders around the globe. Lisa, I'm excited to have you on the show.

I'm excited to be here, Dr. Tracey. This has been something I've been looking forward to spending some time with you.

Thank you. For our readers out there, you want to get your notepads out because Lisa has talked to hundreds of thousands of leaders, as well as her own journey. I am excited to know what you think about The Price of Leadership.

I have been a raving fan of Tremendous' work for what has been decades. Speaking about The Price of Leadership, I did not realize that leadership had a cost. When I first took my journey, I thought that being the leader, you get to the top. It's where you want to be and you get to be number one. I did not recognize all of the things that come with that journey that gets packed in your backpack.

That's a beautiful way to put it. Thank you. A lot of times, our readers want to know the context of how Lisa found the Tremendous universe. She was telling me before we started that her grandparents knew our Founder, my father, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. She's a PA girl too. That's exciting. With that intro, I want to unpack the four tenets or the four costs, as you beautifully put that leadership has a cost.

My dad talked about that in one of the speeches that he gave, and that is probably the speech he gave the most. That was called The Price of Leadership. His premise is that if you're going to be doing true leadership, there are going to be three things that you're going to have to pay the price of. The first one is loneliness and we've heard it. I'm sure you've coached many leaders. It's lonely at the top. “Why am I the only one out there thinking this?” Can you unpack what loneliness in leadership looks like? Maybe share a time when you went through for our readers out there.

My background is in Federal law enforcement. There was its own loneliness in that journey as I rose through the ranks in supervision because of being a woman in law enforcement. I thought that especially being in law enforcement where guys have your back, you're in uniform, and you're working together, that there would be this camaraderie that happened when you rose through the ranks.

There wasn't. There was a bit more of, “What did you get that I didn't get? How did you get that? It must've been because you slept with somebody. It must have been because you did something that we didn't see.” That was incredible. You'd think that when I opened my business, I would have remembered some of those things. However, I didn't.

I thought, “I'm going to be my own boss. I get to call the shots.” The reality is opening a business left me feeling many times that I was on this island someplace with this great idea and God-given purpose to make a difference in the world. Yet, I had to do it by myself. I had a lot more surprises. The word loneliness is not something I would have used. It's more surprises on the journey.

How long did that last? I appreciate your authenticity because many of our readers out there are like me and you. We're entrepreneurs, maybe they're solopreneurs. We know God put us and what we're supposed to be doing but it's like, “Where's my part in this? Where are the resources?” How long did it take you before you started to jell? I know it's all in God's timing. I get it but can you unpack how long that took? Maybe somebody is out there dealing with this now.

It's been waves. I've been in business for many years and there are still waves of loneliness. I have a huge circle of friends, colleagues, peers, mastermind groups, and coaches that I could call. There are times when I'm in my office and I could call my assistant or other coaches on my team and yet I'm going, “I can feel the weight of responsibility.” It'll move me to tears because the why feels so big. I sometimes feel like I'm traveling alone.

Principles Of Leadership: You get to the top and it's where you want to be and you get to be number one. And you do not recognize all of the things that come with that journey that get packed in your backpack.  

I appreciate your authenticity because there is this thing that after 10,000 hours, you ought to have this dialed in. No, it isn't. My dad would always say that there's the pendulum. You're going to have to walk alone sometimes. You're going to be alone because you make mistakes. It's par for the course. I appreciate you sharing that. I would echo that too. Loneliness ebbs and flows but you said it. It's the weight of responsibility. Although you have a great team, there are only two shoulders that that fall on. We have to remember as leaders, that heavy is the head that wears the crown.

That's the part where I don't know that I truly understood that. I don't know that I got that. It was just, “I'm going to go do what it is that I'm called to do. We're going to have fun.” It was like, “It's resting on my shoulders. I'm the one that received the scrolls.”

Along with loneliness is weariness. My dad was very pragmatic, snarky, and funny because he had worked with people. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade so he was very real. Whenever people would be talking about, “Everybody's great. Let him be great and then they will be great.” He's like, “How many people do you work with?”

He was always like, “Weariness. You're going to have people that do more than their fair share and you're going to have a huge swath of people that do less than their fair share. You'd have 80/20. Eighty percent of the work is done by 20% of the people. It's draining for us as leaders. How do you stay refreshed and replenished? Do you celebrate Shabbat? How do you stay on point and strong spiritually, mentally and physically?

I have seven areas of wellbeing that I examine and look at every single day. Those seven areas of wellbeing are ones where I look to see if there's anything out of balance. From physical wellbeing, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, financial, relational, and in my work it's, “What do I need? What's missing?” There's a SNAP technique that I use over and over again during the day. SNAP means stop, notice, ask questions, and then pause, pivot, pray. This is not something I do once a day. It's not something that I do two times a day. It's understanding when something is off.

Sometimes, I'm working on a project. I am committed to it, and something's not right. It could be that I need water or I need to be quiet and say a prayer. It could be that there's something that is nudging me in the back of my head around a relationship with a client, friend or loved one. Whatever that is, it's going to pull you from whatever you're to do because there is such responsibility. Those are my two, ensuring that I stay within those seven areas of wellbeing, and then also using the SNAP technique.

What a great little mental hack. I love that your soul will let you know if something's not right. You know when it is well with your soul. You know when your little spiritual radar or something doesn't compute. SNAP is a great thing, stop, notice, ask, pause, pray and pivot.

Pivot if you need to. Maybe you need to do something else.

There's loneliness, weariness and abandonment. Abandonment typically gets a negative rap. There's a fear of abandonment. I'm in pet rescue so that has a bad term. My dad looked at abandonment as a good thing. We need to focus on what we need and ought to think about and not what we'd like to want to think about.

For him, abandonment was hyper-focused so you can stay singularly focused on everything else. I'm sure you get that as an entrepreneur, all the new things. A hundred new ideas come to us a day. All these people are calling us to do these partnerships and let's do this. How do you stay on point and focused?

Just like I have seven areas of wellbeing, my business is built on seven pillars of leadership. In those seven pillars of leadership, pillar number six is the one that I use all the time. It's to evaluate your progress. Sometimes people go, “In my company, we do an annual review.” Some people say, “I do a quarterly review or even weekly.” I say, “I evaluate every single day, whether or not it's efficient or effective.”

Principles Of Leadership: Staying hyper-focused on what matters most means you have to say no to some things, even if they seem like great ideas, because they are distractions and pull you from what it is that you're called to do.  

Is this a task that's I'm just looking to get checked off? Is this a task that allows me to be a force for good on the planet? Is this something that's actually effective and moving me towards what it is that I want and what I'm called to do on the planet? Is this the thing that somebody told me that needs to get done? What is it and which bucket does it fall in? With 24 hours a day, staying that hyper-focused on what matters most means some things I've got to say no to, even if they seem like great ideas because they still are distractions and pull me from what it is that I'm called to do.

That's good for your team. Working for somebody like us, I know when I worked for my dad it can be a little maddening because there's so much going on, and if you're a more linear thinker, you need a little bit more, “Bring it all down.” You clearly outline your roles and responsibilities but I'm all about the results. Everybody's telling me, “We should be doing this and this will do this.” I'm like, “What are the results?” We're supposed to be good stewards of our time and resources. You do that every day. Is it at the end of the day?

Every single day I look in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. Where is it?

Readers, how freeing would that be if you decluttered, pruned, and cut off the non-value-added stuff? I'm telling you whenever my soul feels awry, stressed or I'm spinning, it's because I have not put up boundaries. I love Henry Cloud's book Boundaries. It's because I have let something weasel in or scope creep. They're all good things but I'm supposed to be focused on this and not that. I appreciate you talking about that this is a daily struggle.

I appreciate you using the term scope creep. I did a board retreat for an organization and they had seventeen things that they wanted to accomplish for the end of the year. I said, “This is great. However, you've got to pick two,” and they couldn't do it. By the end of the retreat, they said, “We're going to keep all seventeen.” At the end of the year, they ended up doing none. What you said is also that you have this idea and it's so easy to think that you can get more done or let something creep. I think that this one is really important if you're going to make an impact on the planet.

This is the one thing that people struggle with the most. Number one, getting the clarity as to what is that one great purpose. Number two, staying focused because it takes time to work your purpose out. You're going to be, “I'm looking over here. I should be doing this or that,” but the leadership literature even says one thing at a time. I know we like to think, “If you're Elon Musk, you can probably think one thing at a time.”

Prioritize it. Pick the big things and knock them out. I appreciate you bringing that up. When I came back to run the business, they're like, “What do you want to focus on?” I'm like, “All of it. I love all of it. I want to do it all." They're like, “You're so young and naive.” I'm like, “What?” They were right. You need to hone it down.

There's loneliness, weariness and abandonment. The last term my dad talked about was vision. For him, vision was seeing what needs to be done, which everybody can. Number two is doing it, which very few people do. There are the executors, integrators and pontificators. He said, “If you're not able to execute or draw the right people, you can't call it a vision. You can call it an idea or hope, but that's no strategy for growing a business.” How do you keep your vision going, getting honed, moving forward and cast?

Vision is one of my three elements of courageous leadership. I agree so much with your dad. You don't have a vision, you live a vision. It's action-oriented. It's not something you write down on a piece of paper. It's having that courage to do that. I believe that the practical part of this, I'm going to bring in my law enforcement, is that you're a detective. That's how you get to live your vision. It’s to be a detective. I ask questions about the who, what, where, when, how and why of a situation. Whatever it is that I want and that allows me to stay.

This is my vision. My vision is to be somebody who makes everyone feel valued, appreciated and loved when I'm around. I'm moving towards creating a world where everyone wins. All of my actions have got to be taken in order for that vision. Who is it that I'm seeking to do that with? Where, when, how and why for everything that comes my way on my desk. Whether it's being here with you on this show, choosing to get up and go for a walk, whatever I put in my body, everything is about me becoming that vision. Not me only speaking about it. It's truly the embodiment of it. It's about who you are, not what you do.

A world where everyone wins. You should have a book with that title. You embody that. I can tell that. That's difficult because a lot of people are like, “Yeah,” because we're self-oriented. There's that element of you're not here for yourself. You're here to bring out the other things and create for other people or lead in other ways.

I find that I want to be a bridge-builder and not a divider. Just because you have an idea and it's very different from mine doesn't mean that you can't win and I can't win at the same time.

Principles Of Leadership: The world needs your brilliance and it needs all of you, not a part of you, not a segment of you, not a part that somebody told you is acceptable – all of you.

A Bridgett, a bridger. Not a burner, a Burnett. That was my latest book. Burnett or Bridgett. Do you want to burn or bridge it? We need bridgers and you were that. What else would you share with our readers? As you've coached all these people in leadership, what are the pearls of wisdom would you share with them?

The world is hurting for great leadership. You're here on this planet for a reason. The world needs you, your brilliance, and all of you. Not a part of you, not a segment of you, not a part that somebody told you is acceptable, but all of you. If every single person did that, stepped up and fully allowed themselves to be seen and to do whatever they're called to do, the world would be a very different place. It would be so purposeful and so much lighter. My call-to-action is the world needs you and your brilliance now more than ever. Go shine your light and go do whatever it is you're called to do to be a force for good on the planet.

Amen, sister. I think you are my sister.

I think so too.

There's so much congruence here. How can people get ahold of you?

My website is UpsideThinking.com. That's the best way to find me. I have an annual event that is Upside Summit, which is my Design Your Destiny Live event every January. I host that. You'll get some information on the website about that and my blueprint as well.

You were talking about working with coaches. Do you train coaches or do you work with leaders who need a coach? What's your area of focus?

I work with leaders, influencers and world-changers. They're people who understand they've got something big burning inside of them and they aren't sure how they're going to live it out and position themselves. For some people, it's internally companies. They'll come to me and say, “I want to start a business.” I'm like, “You're actually called to be in this company.” For some people, it's for them to have businesses. For some people, it's to sell their business. It's leaders, influencers and world-changers.

For our readers out there, make sure and check out Lisa's website. Lisa, thank you so much. You fueled my spirit, and I know our readers out there. Thank you for your transparency and the difference you're making in the world. You're offering so much and it's so needed. For readers out there, don't waste any more time wandering in the desert. Hook up with somebody like Lisa who can help you. The big burn. You got it. No more grousing. Get that big burn and turn it into a beautiful flame that lights the world. Thank you, Lisa.

Thanks so much, Dr. Tracey. I appreciate being here. It's an honor.

You're welcome and welcome back to Pennsylvania. I hope to see you soon at the summit. I would love that. I'm going to check that out. To our guests out there, we couldn't do this without our Tremendous tribe. If you like what you read, please be sure to hit the subscribe button. Do us the honor of a five-star review. Also, thank you so much. Leave us a comment. We answer all our comments. Share this with somebody else that you think may need a little bit of uplifting or tremendousness in their life. Remember to never stop paying the price of leadership. We're so thankful for you. There are many leaders out there in name only but you're the real deal. Thanks so much.

Important Links:

• https://www.Facebook.com/UpsideThinking/

• https://www.Facebook.com/lisa.marie.platske

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/lisamarieplatske

• Upside Thinking, Inc.

• Boundaries

• Burnett or Bridgett

• The Price of Leadership

About Lisa Marie Platske

An award-winning leadership expert in human behavior, Lisa Marie Platske has received accolades from the United States Small Business Administration, and The International Alliance for Women, recognized as one of the top 100 women making a difference in the world. She left her Federal law enforcement career after 9/11 to build Upside Thinking, Inc. A member of the Forbes Coaches Council, she has trained or coached over 100,000 leaders around the globe.