Difficult Leadership. Pt5

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty the Podcast. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens. Today we'll discuss building a support system, how fruit will help you build that support system, the value of recognizing when you need help and evaluating your circle of influence. Enjoy the show. So let's let's move on to the next section here, which I think this is an extremely important section, which is building a support system.

The first topic we have here are the first headline under that basically a bullet point is seeking support from colleagues or it could be anyone, friends, family, but we got to have a support system.

Yeah, think it's important to note that whoever you choose on that support system probably needs to have some fruit on the tree. Right? You don't want the person who's been fired from five different jobs because they have an anger problem. That's not the person you want to be talking to when you're dealing with a difficult situation. You want a person who has some fruit on the tree, who has successfully navigated through situations like this, to be able to talk to, to get some perspective.

Yeah, I took a note here saying, you know, you're being professional in all your encounters, take these situations to your mentors for review because they can give you a different context by which you look at the situation that you would have never even thought of. That's happened to me so, so, so many times. Right? I've taken situations that I'm dealing with to a mentor that I have in my life. One of my personal board of directors, someone who has results on the tree, who's gone through these kinds of things.

And one five minute conversation can wipe out a whole week of struggling with something. All because they just gave me a different perspective to look at it by. So it's critical to have that support system.

Yeah. So what I hear Ralph when you say that is that, talk to someone who's been in the game. Yeah. Right. Right.

And so one of the things that I tend to talk to my kids about in terms of sports is we always talk about their levels to this thing. And so being able to talk to someone who's been at different levels, different outcomes, different scenarios, maybe been through those things themselves. And also too, man, it's important that we can get out of our own heads. On a situation because you're in it every day, you have to face it every single day. And sometimes man, you're thinking may get in a rut and it's good to get an alternative view on what it is you think is going on.

So no, I think that is great feedback.

You know what, just touch on that a little bit. I think it's really good to think that way. Meaning you have to get to a point to where you are humble enough to say to yourself, I know I don't know everything. So let me be open to someone who can speak into my life, right, to help me. I see so many people who are so stuck on not being wrong.

And that to me, there's a trick of the enemy. I've seen people go down with the ship. I'm not going to be wrong even though the ship is sinking. Right? Just so no one can say that I was wrong.

Not so I can save the whole ship and save everybody on it. But no, I'm not. I'm sticking right here. Right? I'm playing my flag.

Yeah, I've heard it said, I'm gonna take this to the relationship realm. You can be right or you can be happy. You're right, but you sure ain't happy.

And you know what, so one other point too is, and this just comes with maturity. You have to get to a place where you're selective in who you're talking to about what topic. Yes. So your mama may be your best friend, your biggest cheerleader, loves you with everything that they have, but your mama ain't never has never worked in this situation before.

So, bro, so I got a book. I got a book. It's something a book that Shamika and I read years ago and it it helped us, man, because this this here, honestly God, this here has changed my life. The name of the book is called Safe People. And one of the concepts that we gathered out of that book is because we were in a point in life where we were recalibrated.

Sometimes you got to do that. Is left and what is right? What is up and what is down? You get there sometimes in life and we were going through a place to your point where we were rationalizing our relationships. So those who understand that from an application standpoint, when you rationalize applications, you're like, is there value to this application?

Should we still be using this application? What's the cost of this application? What's the renewal? How many people are using it? You start getting all of the information.

So we were doing that with our relationships. What's the value of this relationship? How much is it costing us to be in this relationship? Are we just giving? Is there anything coming back?

It's good.

I mean, and we we went through this and so I don't know how we found this book. Oh, yes, I do know. It was a reference from, Grace Humble when we were, I visited there and it's the name of the book is called Safe People. I need to find it so I can get the authors. Maybe I'll look it up while we're on here, but it's called Safe People.

And one of the techniques or one of the ideas that came out of that book was don't trust people in their area of weakness.

That's powerful.

So Ralph, it changed our life because you know what that afforded us? We didn't have to drop so many

people. We

just determined I'm not gonna trust them in that area because it's a place that they struggle. So it's on Amazon man for $12.07 Let me see, the author, great book though. Christian Principle book as well. Doctor. Henry Cloud and Doctor.

John Townsend. Isn't Townsend, I think he's on that other book we were

talking about. I think so.

So great book, man, it's not a long read at all. But again, so let's just bring that into this scenario. There are going to be certain people at work that you just can't share your struggles things that you're going through at work. Certain things you got to maintain behind the veil. And keep that only on a professional, only on a really just being transparent here, a transactional level as it pertains to business.

Because here's what you have to understand about being in the corporate environment. It is a transactional environment. 100% transactional. I'm gonna go into some things here. We use those terms.

We are a team. This is a family. Team is okay because all we're trying to do is get to an outcome. But when folks try use the family terms and those kind of things, I'm like, man, if you treat your family that way, I do not want to be family with you.

That's good.

As we've seen people do some things and we're like, is going on here? So keep it at that professional level, keep it at that transactional level really, which is the exchange of value. Right. So don't make it sound so bad exchange value. You're delivering something, you're getting something back.

They're delivering something, they're getting something back. Right. And it goes back to Ralph's earlier point When you have clear lines on what that exchange of value is, it's much easier to operate inside of it. And here's the other thing I'm going to share. I've experienced this and I've seen people go through this.

When you're going through an issue, it seems like that's the first thing that comes out of your mouth. You to understand that pressure will want that stuff to come out and you want to relieve the pressure of it. You just talk about it. That's one of the reasons why we are proposing journal about it. Because now you've gotten it out.

You don't have to worry about it just coming out a normal conversation. I was in a scenario where I'd met someone and they were new into a new scenario situation, life situation. And man, I've known this person for two minutes. They started sharing their whole life story with me and you know what I recognized? Okay, this person is in a major transition and there's some trauma here because all mean, you had known me very well too.

So because of the level of information that was being shared, I'm like, I'm calling my wife, babe, I need you to I need some help. Because this is too much information for me. I'm the wrong person to be hearing this. But that's what happens. Want to help all of us understand when we're in a pressure situation, something that we feel that's overwhelming.

We want to talk about it. There's nothing wrong with talking about it but we wanna talk about it with the right people, in the right place, in the right timing. Those who have our best interests in mind, those who basically who love us. So Raph, what do you think about that?

I would just take it just one step further. So be kind to the person that you are asking for help from. And what do I mean by that? Don't put a person in a position where you're trying to share something that you know that they have no idea about the concept of. And then out of their love for you, they try to give you some advice and they can't really give you good advice on because they don't have any results in that area.

Don't put them in that position. Understand what saying?

That's what I'm saying.

Mama may be your best friend and you can talk about everything. But if you're having a technical issue on the job, don't take that technical issues to your mom because your mom is number one gonna try to help you the best she can. Right? But it may not be something that's fruitful for you. Right?

The only people who can give you fruitful response are people who have fruit on the tree. And that's

In that area. In that area. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So you have to have somebody that you could talk to in those areas who can give you impactful information. Right? It's gonna save you time. Right? Because because I can easily see, you know, let's say you just talk to your best friend about a situation that they've never been through before.

Because they love you, they're gonna give you some advice that they think is good. You follow that advice and it just completely blows up in your face. You it will be hard for you to not have a certain emotion about, I ain't listening to you no more. Asked for your advice and you gave me this. No, you put that person in that situation knowing that they didn't have any fruit in that tree on that tree.

Right? Get people in your corner, in your circle, who can who basically have some experience in the area that you're talking to and have fruit on the tree. Meaning that they've been through it, they've handled it successfully, and then they've, you know, moved on. Those are the people that you want to kind of have in those corners that you can talk to.

I think that's great advice. And man, I mean, man, be kind to the person.

Yeah, because it's not being kind to put a person in a position where they can't be successful. You're trying to squeeze something out of a person that they don't have to give. And then when they don't give it, then you may have an issue with that person. That's not on them, that's on you. Be kind to that person.

Don't put them in that situation. That's like trying to talk to your kids about relationship issues from an adult perspective. They haven't lived long enough to be able to give you some fruitful response.

What are you thinking I should do? Who is the parent? You or them? 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.