Difficult Leadership. Pt. 7

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty the podcast. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens. Today we'll discuss the topics relationship based branding and the power of its influence, belief in self and how to deal with doubt and fear. The two buckets that leaders use to frame employees and techniques in offering solutions. Enjoy the show.

Ultimately, if we show value in that way, here's what starts to happen, right? Your reputation out in the wild, right? Can supersede whatever this potential negative feedback may be. Because if you continue to produce, you continue to meet with your stakeholders. There are all these things that we've been talking about.

And Ralph, we've talked about this. So now your success is talking in rooms that you're not in.

That's right. And I gotta mention this and I put it down for us to talk a little bit later on and I'll hit it back again but I think it's a good place to plant this. So this came from Carla Harris, this didn't come from me. She said, where is it? Man, it was so good too.

Oh, there it is.

Take your time. Take your time. She

said performance creates opportunity to move up. So you perform well, that creates opportunity to move up in the role or the tower that you report into now. She says, but it's relationships that drive your mobility throughout the organization. So mobility means be able to move from tower to tower. To get here or to get there, get to this organization, to get to that organization.

Performance only allows you to go one way. Relationships allows you to go laterally. Right? And what she meant by that is there are all kinds of opportunities created in an organization that are never publicized. Never publicized.

You only find out about that through your relationships that you build. And you know what, we were thinking about opening up this role, I think you'd be a good fit for it. It was never posted. But you never find that out if you're not spending time building those relationships. So just want to plant that seed there.

Oh no, that's great. I love that. I love that. So we've hit on a couple of these other topics already offering solutions, not just problems. Let's just real quick on that note.

Everyone who's listening to this, the fact that you're listening lets us know that you are a problem solver. Because you're out trying to get information. That's any problem is solved. I just want to encourage everyone that's listening and believe in yourself. None of these anecdotal things work without the captain of the ship believing that they can steer the ship.

This

is your ship now, I know we sing the the song. What is it? Though the storms keep on raging. But look, and we want you to be anchored. But you know what?

You got to move. You got the sale. You gotta look, God has given you everything you need to be successful.

You

got it. You it's in you. And the reason I'm saying this is that sometimes when difficulty comes, man, I'm gonna be super transparent here. It's like super transparent. So I'm talking to my oldest son and, you know, he plays one of the it could be the most competitive sport in America.

Could be. If you do it like how many available spots versus how many people who are trying to get those spots. And it's basketball. It's five people on the court. Typically, most teams, high school teams about 15.

College, you get a little few more because they make sure they got enough coming in and going out. You may get 22, 23. Man, but it's millions. It's millions of kids, man. So many AAU teams, so many basketball teams.

So he asked me, he said, Deb, we're talking about confidence and talk about doubt and fear. And I said, So let me share something with you. I said, Do you believe? Do you think that I have doubts and fears? He was like, You dad, no.

I said, Son, let me explain something to you. I'm no different than you. Things happen. Yeah, I may have a thought of a doubt or I said, but here's the thing, what I've honed over the years. This is just my technique.

Whenever that doubt or fear, thought or feeling comes in, I've trained myself to run at it.

That's good.

And I told him, I said, I'm gonna tell you something as simple as this, your sister's cat. I try to bring him in the house sometimes he gets to picking up and clawing and fear of like, I don't want to get scratched because he don't want to go in. But you know what I say? You going in this house and I'm picking you up because I'm not going to let the thought of the fear of that. And I told him, said, that's a very small thing.

No one I could just edge him into the house, do whatever. But no, I practice not allowing that apprehension to be the driving force. Man. So the reason I'm telling that story is that it is doubt, uncertainty. It happens to everybody.

That's right.

The question becomes is how have you condition yourself to respond to it? Because sometimes you're going to face things that you've never faced before. But that's when getting good counsel and whatever. Right. But I do something to run towards it and not allow it to cause me to recess right to go back, be strategic and going forward.

But man, look, everything that you need to be successful is in you. The people that are designed to help you through it. Look, they are around you. God's gonna allow those people to cross your path at the right time at the right place. We just have to be open and receptive and seeking that advice.

So I don't know, Ralph, what do you think about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I echo the sentiment of everything that you said. You have to be open those people around you, to be able to speak into your life, the things that you need to hear in those moments, right? So that you can make really good decisions. So yeah, absolutely 100%.

Yeah, don't hey man, don't retreat. Don't retreat, run towards it.

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to touch one more thing on offering solutions and not just problems. So every leader has issues that they have to deal with. That's what they hired for to manage. So they typically will put people that they work within one or two buckets.

Someone who is creating a problem or someone who's creating a solution. You never wanna be viewed as the person just creating a problem. So what do I mean by that? You could have your team is meeting to solve a problem and you have three people in this meeting with you. And two of those people are just complaining about how bad everything is, but not offering any kind of solution.

In that leader's mind, okay, these are my two problem people because all they do, all they want to do is come bring junk on my table and then leave it for me to clean up. But then you come in and you say, you know what? Yes, I'm acknowledging the problem, But I think here are some potential opportunities and solutions to fix that. Now that leader puts you in this position in their mind is okay, this is a problem solver. They're going to help with the issues.

They're not just going to come dump more trash onto the issue. Right? And you have to be very careful about who you want to be viewed as. Because everybody's going to get put in one of those categories. You always want to walk away being viewed as part of the solution and not the problem.

Very, very important.

Totally agree 100%. I had a conversation with someone about that a few weeks ago. I'm like, hey, are you conscious that And I just pointed out once I said, I'm not going to keep going back to that. But again, it's one of those habitual things. You may not even understand you doing it.

How do you ask yourself, sit down, get a piece of paper and ask yourself, all right, let's do this. Present yourself with a problem and then write down the first three things that you would normally say.

Yeah, that's right. Right. And some people find value in themselves by being able to identify a problem. They think that that's what value is because they can identify a problem. A five year old can identify a problem, bring a solution to the table.

If you only are identifying problems, you're going to become the boy who cried wolf. Here they come again, every time they come, all they want to do is just talk about how bad everything is. They never bring a solution to the table. Leaders bring solutions to the table.

All the time.

All the time. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging what the problem is, but just don't stay there. Bring some options and don't be personally tied to the options. Give a couple of different options. And if they don't want to go with that, what you, suggested be flexible and keep moving until you find what the right solution is.

Right? Because you well, told them this and I told them that and they didn't want to listen to me. That's okay. As long as you were contributing to the solution, then you're not part of the problem. And that's what you have to really see when you walk out of a meeting how did they view me?

Did they view me as part of the problem or did they view me as part of the solution?

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for leadership sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.