What is leadership? Pt.5

Welcome, and thank you for tuning in to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Bailey. In today's episode, we'll cover topics such as changing directions, the power of changing yourself, the expected response and performance versus relationship currency. Enjoy the show.

Right. And here's the thing, man. Again, when you find those places, of these some of these topics we're gonna go back over and over again. When you find a place of agreement with someone, right, it will allow you to move that agenda forward. And here's the thing, other people will see you dealing with that difficult person.

Yes. Yes.

You see what I'm saying? You your good deeds are not going to be untold. Because here's the thing, you're not the only one that knows that this person is the way they are.

Oh yeah.

But when you're not in that room, someone can say, man I saw how they dealt with that person. Man, you would have thought that it didn't bother them at all.

Right. They only knew.

You know what I'm saying? So Yeah. Man, I'm telling you, lock in to who you are. Know, lock into your interest, lock into your passion, right? Because then that is going to fuel your motivation to move forward and to better operate.

Ralph. Again, we can be mad at the game and be stuck or we can win at the game and prosper.

Prosper. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day, that's that's what it all comes down to. I don't think anybody just wants to be in a situation where they just completely frustrated and unhappy for the rest of their career.

Right? And the sooner you decide to, you know what, It's time for me to just stop being mad at this. It's time for me to start understanding it so that I can unlearn the ways that's gonna help to, prosper me. All all that takes is a change in direction and you can do that right now. Right?

You may not get it all. Yeah. You may not get it all right now. You may not get all the way to that destination, but you could change your direction at at a split second. Right?

Just by making up your mind, you know what? I'm not gonna I'm not gonna continue to just be upset about this. I'm gonna take a step back. I'm gonna start digging into this personal development. I'm gonna start, you know, checking out those books that Terry and Ralph are recommending.

I'm a start asking questions. I'm gonna go find me a mentor. I'm gonna go find a sponsor. I'm gonna start putting these things in place so that I can start to play the game differently. Because again, the rules apply to you whether you understand them or not.

I heard somebody say change your mind, change your situation.

That's it. That's it. That's I mean, we've learned so many lessons about this stuff, man, where it's like, yes, you can't you can't. I can't make a person change what they do, but I can change the outcome by changing me. That goes so many layers deep, man.

Okay, so I can't, if a person decides that they wanna treat me wrong on the job and they wanna favor this other person, I can't make them stop doing that. But what I can do is I can change me and then that in inherently changes them. I mean, this is the game. This is the game. This is the game.

They are treating you the way that they are based on the expected result that they know they're gonna get from you. Right? When they treat you bad, you know, they know you're gonna have an attitude or you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that. What happens if you just come in and and do the exact opposite? You're nice.

Wait. Wait some cookies. Bring just making some cookies, man. Kill hey. I was thinking about you.

I was thinking about you and you know what? So so we're in Houston. Right? We you know, you mentioned donuts. They like Shipley.

Bring you some Shipley's. Some donuts and say, man, I was thinking about you.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I I did it. I did it one time.

And that person throwing ditches, cleaning the trash. They couldn't understand why I wasn't going off and going left field. Like, what? I ain't eating that. He probably poisoned that.

That's lot of But it's okay. It is alright. Because you gotta understand that their action that they plan to do is based on a predetermined reaction that they plan to get from you. When you don't give them the action the reaction that they're looking for, you completely you completely confuse them. It's like, okay.

Okay. What are they doing? What are they doing? This is why the power and the control is really in your hands, not theirs. Because now you get to the terminate

Dig into that, Ralph. Get to that.

You get to the you get to the only thing you can control in this situation is how you respond. Okay? They already expect a certain response from you. So when you don't give them that and you come in with a great attitude and even though they may say, you know, their little snide words or whatever the case may be, you just let them roll off you and you just show up and you become better and you become better and you become better. They don't it's it's it's it's almost like this.

If you let's just take it back to sports. And you have, you know, two football teams. The offense that a football team is going to play against the defense is based on the defensive, playbook or whatever the defensive strategy that they think they're going up against. Mhmm. You change the defensive strategy, now the offense has to change.

You you see what I'm saying? So let's say you're the defense in this. Okay? The offense is coming to play you based on the defense that they expect you to present on the field. But when you change that, it has to make them change their offense.

So you you basically get them to change not because you made them, but because you changed yourself. And that is the most powerful tool you have, is your ability to change yourself because it forces the other person to have to change themselves. It's deep, man. Until you see it, when you see it, the first time you see it, you like, woah, woah, wait a minute. That just worked.

Right? Because they they expect you to respond and to behave a certain way. And when you come back and you do things like what Terry said, you start agreeing with them. Not agree with everything that they say and be a doormat, but find somewhere that you do agree on. Agree on that, and now you have unity, and it's hard for a person to fight against someone that's agreeing with it.

Right? That's just a step forward. That's just a step forward. Right? But there's so many little things that you can do along the way, but they all 100% involve you changing you and not trying to change them.

When you focus on yourself and changing yourself and the way that you can bring to the table, your playbook or your your defense, it causes the offense to have to change the way that they play against you. Right? But there's so many great strategies. I I wanna kinda go back to one thing that, miss Harris said because I thought it was so powerful. Wanted to tell you about this.

She said I was looking at my notes. She said there are two types of currency in this, corporate America environment. There's performance currency and there's relationship currency. I'll tell you, you're love this. She said she said, performance currency is worth about a dollar 50.

She says, it it it it is it's great in the moment when you when you achieve something, but it has a diminishing value to it.

Yes. I we were just talking about it.

She said it has a diminishing value to it. So, you know, as you know, let's say you did this one thing on January 1 and you're a rock star and everybody, you know, loves what you do. January 1, they they can barely remember what you did. So it has a diminishing return to it. She says relationship currency is about $2.25.

It's worth about $2.25. She said, it it just continues to compound upon itself. I said,

oh lord. So here's the thing. So what let me make sure I'm getting this. Performance basically is the it's kinda like buying a car.

Okay.

The moment you drive it off the parking lot

Yes. Starts to diminish.

Will never be able to get to the level in terms of value.

That's it. That's it. But that that but that relationship currency. Right? So that performance currency is you doing such a great job on on the job that they give you a pat on the back and attaboy and, you know, you get recognized for employee of the month.

Okay. That relationship currency is the time that you spend, getting to know how the business works and going to you have these one on ones with all these different business leaders and solving all their problems so that when they get in the room and they start to talk about who they wanna get promotions to, you got all of these people talking on your behalf and you're not there to say anything about yourself. $2.25 with interest. It just compounds.

That's good right there. You giving me something to think about. Hey. Hey. I'm changing my I got some meetings.

I'm gonna be setting up here soon. Hey. Hey. I got I got about five of them that just popped into my mind right now. I'll be like, yeah, I just I just need you fifteen or twenty minutes on your calendar.

Can I Hey,

how can I help? That's all of

Come on. Come on. The words you say. What do you need?

How can help?

How can I help? And next thing you know, you solving their problems. And again, somebody's gonna get in the room with them and give their opinion of you. And that person's gonna be like, no. Uh-uh.

When I needed them, they came through for me. I think that they're the right person for the job. Think that we need and then somebody else will say, you know what? Yeah. Terry did.

He did that for me too. Right? Now you have this overwhelming majority who's speaking for you in those rooms that you cannot get in because your promotion in the career trajectory of your life is gonna be made in conversations that you can't get in.

So so one of the things that just that just kinda resonated with me as I'm listening to you say that Ralph in term in terms of, you know, the, you know, relationships versus the equity there. And I believe that most people who are doing, you know, the dollar 25 work, right? They're mainly auto takers.

Oh yeah.

So I would say one of the big pieces of advice is move from being an auto taker, right? Meaning that there is a widget that needs to be turned or lever that needs to be pulled and all you wanna do is turn the lever, pull the knob, right? But start having conversations that have to do with influencing how it's gonna work. Meaning that okay, instead of just talking about pulling the lever or turning the knob, go and have a conversation about the results of pulling the lever and turning the knob. And should we put two levers on it now?

And do we need three knobs? Right? Start talking about and we talk about this all the time. What are the business outcomes related to the levers and the knobs? Yes.

Right? Right? We can document once we get that documented and that process is documented, man, we got people who can do that all day long. But who's looking at the outcomes that are the result of those levers and knobs being turned and pulled. Right?

And you get in front of the business, and Ralph, this is what you did such a wonderful job at, we're still trying to capture that, to be honest with you. Start showing the benefit of the levers and the knobs being pulled.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.