12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders
What is your personal vision? More importantly, what are your team members’ personal visions? The most engaged and productive members of any team tend to have this one thing in common: They have a personal vision that aligns with their role and responsibilities. As a leader, one of your most important jobs is to help them discover theirs.
This week, Rob Shallenberger of the acclaimed Becoming Your Best Global Leadership is sharing one of the 12 HVAC leadership principles that’s shared by most successful leaders and companies. As he’ll tell you, your person vision doesn’t need to change the world; it needs to change your world.
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Audio Transcription (in beta, please be wary of typos)
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On today’s show, learn the 12 principles of highly successful leaders.
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Now, today we have some very special content from Mr. Rob Shallenberger of becoming your best global leadership. We are partnered up with them to release a new course titled 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders, and it’s now live on the EGIA member portal. If you’re a member, you can log in and view the full course right now.
00:00:27:18 – 00:00:43:22
If you’re not a member. Go to my contract university.com/join to get a free ten day trial and watch this course. Absolutely free. So let’s dive in to a sample from this course right now.
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And this is a starting point. And you’re about to do what less than 2% of people have done. And once you do this, you’ll feel the power that comes into your life from this. And you know, if you’re like me and like so many others, you’ve probably heard the term vision tossed around quite a bit. Find your purpose.
00:01:02:01 – 00:01:19:14
Find your way. You know. Find your vision. Well, the reality is, for as much as it’s been talked about, it’s rarely being done. And so right now this is one of those parts will be a life changing part of the course is to get clear on what our vision looks like. Now what is a vision? We like to call it our internal compass.
00:01:19:17 – 00:01:37:14
It serves as a guide for us. It’s our North star. Or maybe since I was a former fighter pilot, you could use this analogy. You could say it’s like your destination. And if a fighter pilot is ever going to go fly a mission, they always have a destination in mind first, right? And then you can develop the plan on how to get to the destination.
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So your personal vision is like identifying your destination, your North Star or that purpose that we hear about. In other words, it’s creating the mental reality prior to creating the physical reality and the difference between a vision and a goal is this a vision is like that destination. It’s where we’re going. It’s the very best version of you and I, as we’ll explain in our different roles.
00:02:00:20 – 00:02:20:24
The goals become specific milestones on how to make that vision a reality. And it’s important in the vision, which we’ll get into shortly, to use empowering words that create that mental reality as if we were already there. Now, from a team and an organization perspective, why is this so important to have team members who have a personal vision?
00:02:20:26 – 00:02:50:22
Well, remember, earlier on in our research, we found that only 30% of employees are engaged. That means two out of three are not. And one of the most important things that we can do as leaders is to empower our team members to identify their vision. And the most engaged, most productive team members will almost always be those who has a personal vision that is aligned with their role and what they’re doing, and hopefully that’s aligned with what the company is doing, because if not, most likely that person will be a disengaged person anyway.
00:02:50:24 – 00:03:12:26
And so, as a leader, can you imagine the impact of having a team full of people who have a written personal vision in their different roles and what their very best looks like? Powerful is such a great way to start. Let me give you an example of this. There’s a senior director at American Express who went through this training, and it was interesting because he wrote us afterwards and he said, you know, here was my life.
00:03:12:26 – 00:03:30:00
I felt like I was pretty in control. Things have been great. I was a rising star in my company. You know, really things were going pretty well. And then once he was promoted to this new role, he felt like there was so many different competing demands on his time that he was losing track of what matters most. I think a lot of people can relate to that, right?
00:03:30:02 – 00:03:45:18
It was just there was so much coming at him from different angles. He wasn’t used to that level, and a lot of different things in his life started to suffer as a result. He said, you know, I was no longer working out. I felt the weight starting to increase, but more than the weight, he said. I started to feel my mind get foggy.
00:03:45:21 – 00:04:06:13
You know, I wasn’t making the clear decisions that I had made previously, and that was having its toll on his leadership and his personal life. He had a special needs daughter, and he felt like he wasn’t giving her the time and attention that she needed. And so you can see how all of these ripple. And isn’t it true that oftentimes our professional lives get blurred with our personal lives?
00:04:06:16 – 00:04:26:12
And that’s exactly what was happening with him. And he developed a vision for each one of his roles, which we’ll get into. He said it was like this spark ignited a he really then was able to articulate and identify what mattered most. And it was starting with his vision, this habit that helped him articulate what matters most by role and what that looked like.
00:04:26:14 – 00:04:44:08
And then he said, then it was my job to get my life in alignment with that. Within about 3 to 4 weeks. He said that his VP walked in and said, you know, I’ve never seen you. So on top of things, as you are right now, what are you doing? And it’s like there is this new energy. And everybody around him recognized it.
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He showed up as a leader in ways he hadn’t. He started showing up for himself, his daughter with special needs, his spouse. So you can start to see the common theme here. When someone applies these habits, it impacts every area of our lives. Now, if you look on the screen, you’re going to see a few different pictures here.
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Different people, random people, none of them perfect. But if you look at them carefully, you’re going to notice one of the common denominators amongst every one of them. And that is they had a vision that was compelling and meaningful to them. Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream. We’re all familiar with that one. Well, how about Gandhi?
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To liberate a nation peacefully? Or let’s take Nelson Mandela to end apartheid. Each one of these is a vision that literally transformed a nation. So we’re going to take that same concept to our personal life. And as you look at some of these people, you may think to yourself, like I have in some cases, you know, my vision is not going to change the world like that.
00:05:41:07 – 00:06:05:09
Well, here’s the thing. Your personal vision doesn’t need to change the world. It just needs to change your world. And that’s the power in having a personal vision which only 2% of people have done. And it’s my opinion that your personal vision will become the seed of your legacy. And think about that. What happens when we plant a seed in fertile soil?
00:06:05:11 – 00:06:34:16
Well, we give it a chance to grow, right? It doesn’t mean it’s going to grow automatically. It takes nurturing and it takes some assistance and support and working on it. But planting the seed is the first step. And so in the next video we’re going to focus on the specifics of how to how do you specifically develop a written personal vision.
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And.
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In the previous section, we just focused on why having a personal vision is so important and so powerful. Now we’re going to switch gears into the how to. This is the actual skill set of how to do what only 2% of people have done. And you’ll feel the power as you go through this and actually do it. You know, so, for example, what comes to mind is a friend of ours who’s a regional sales manager out in the Pacific Northwest, and she has a team of 17 people.
00:07:06:16 – 00:07:34:19
When she asked them about their vision, not a single one could articulate what their vision was in their role of sales rep. So what impact do you think that had on their performance and their productivity? So she started with all of her team members on this habit right now. She went through these steps after she empowered her team members to focus on their vision, and her team led the company over the subsequent three quarters in sales, smashing company records.
00:07:34:22 – 00:07:56:13
What was the difference? That was a leader who stepped up and led. She empowered her team to do something they had never done before. The three steps are number one to fire up your imagination. In other words, we’re talking about your vision. You know, this is exciting. You really want to fire up your imagination of what’s possible. We’ll get into how to do that.
00:07:56:15 – 00:08:13:15
Number two is to identify your different roles. In other words, what hats do you wear? Again, we’ll get into that as well. And then number three is to develop your vision for each role. So let’s jump into step number one and step number one. The idea here is how do we get those creative juices in the mind going.
00:08:13:18 – 00:08:35:27
We’re talking about what matters most to you right. This is your internal compass. It’s your vision. It’s creating that mental reality prior to the physical reality. So what really matters? And that’s what this step is all about. There are four questions that you can answer that will help fire up your imagination. So let’s start with question number one.
00:08:35:29 – 00:08:59:12
Question number one. What are some things that you want to do and have accomplished in your life? Question number two is to think of a mentor or someone who’s had a positive influence in your life. What are the characteristics? The traits the qualities that you admire about that person? And it can be a person who’s alive, or maybe it’s even a figure from history who you never knew personally.
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Think of someone who’s inspired you. And question number three is what would you like to improve in your current job, in your home, and in your community? And finally, question number four is in 50 years from today, whether alive or not doesn’t even matter. How do you hope others will look back and describe you? So when they say, you know, April was or Jim was, what do you hope they’ll say about you?
00:09:25:05 – 00:09:42:06
And just pause right now and take as much time as you need to go through these questions. And for some people, maybe that’s 3 or 4 minutes. For others, maybe that’s an hour and a half or even two hours. For example, I’ve seen the power of this in my own life. I was flying back several years ago on a plane from Seattle to Salt Lake.
00:09:42:07 – 00:10:01:11
It was about an hour and a half flight. And I realized that I hadn’t asked myself these questions. And probably 2 or 3 years. And so on that flight, I decided to go through each one of these four questions. And it was such a powerful experience. I remember touching down in Salt Lake, and I’d already had my personal vision.
00:10:01:11 – 00:10:23:14
I’d had it for several years written out, memorized, and I was on fire. I walked off that plane with a renewed excitement and energy because these questions do exactly that. They fire up our imagination and help us think about the right things that will then go into our vision. You know, thinking about those questions is a powerful approach to getting the imagination going.
00:10:23:16 – 00:10:45:15
The next step now is to identify the 5 to 7 roles that matter most to you. Now, when I say roles, what we’re talking about is each one of us wears different hats throughout the day, right? So whatever your job title is, for example, that would be a role. So it could be a manager, you know, it could be a sales rep, it could be executive VP, whatever your current role is in the company.
00:10:45:19 – 00:11:04:29
That’s one of your 5 to 7 roles. Well, we have some other roles outside of that though, right? For some people, your spouse for others, it’s a role a friend. Well, if you’re a parent, then certainly that’s one of your roles. And the most important role is personal or self. In other words, it’s us taking care of ourselves.
00:11:04:29 – 00:11:23:26
Because if we’re going to show up in those other roles in a transformational way, we first need to show up for ourselves. And that’s why that personal role becomes so important. It’s kind of like passing a candle. We’ve all seen this right at a birthday party where a candle is lit and you light the other candles. That’s what we’re talking about.
00:11:23:26 – 00:11:49:22
So we want to show up for ourselves first. And then what does our very best look like in these different roles? So at this point, we fired up the imagination. We’ve identified our 5 to 7 roles. And now comes the real part, which is to develop your personal vision by role. And what we’re talking about here is to use empowering words such as I am not to be or someday those put it all out there in the future.
00:11:49:23 – 00:12:13:02
Remember, we’re talking about creating the mental reality prior to the physical reality. So what I’m suggesting is that you describe the very best version of you in each role. What does that look like? And that then becomes that internal compass that later will serve for our roles and goals. And preplanning. First the destination. The why. Second, the how to get there.
00:12:13:03 – 00:12:29:24
So my whole point is that this will be a work in progress. It may take you a few days, you know, and invite collaboration if you need it. If you have a spouse or a partner or coworkers, hey, what is the very best leader look like to you asking that question? And then maybe that becomes a part of your vision.
00:12:29:26 – 00:12:53:12
The whole idea here is that this will take probably a few days. And once you have it, here’s your ultimate litmus test. And that is is it meaningful and does it give you direction? If it’s meaningful to you and it gives you direction, then you’ve got a vision. You’ve got the start that you need. So people have talked about vision boards, bucket lists, all of those can tie back into your vision.
00:12:53:14 – 00:13:10:17
And the idea here is that you have something that you can reference every week as part of your pre-planning that serves as your internal compass. It’s not going to do that if it sits in a drawer somewhere. So print it out. Put it in a place where you’ll see it often. And then for those who want to take it up a notch higher, memorize it.
00:13:10:20 – 00:13:38:24
Let it become a part of your soul, and then it becomes ultra powerful. So again, congratulations. Congratulations on at least starting on your personal vision. Only 2% of people have done this. And remember, your personal vision is a seat of your legacy. And it doesn’t have to change the world. It just has to change your world.
00:13:38:27 – 00:13:42:13
Well, that’s it for today’s show, folks. We’ll see you next week. Until then, bye bye for now.
