LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up." Rocky Balboa

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

OK, this is the final quote and thought from Sylvester Stallone. Next month I want to talk about IMPACT and I'll share some great quotes that will get you thinking.

Today though we'll finish with this final thought from "Rocky Balboa", and it circles back to the core of the Rocky franchise: Never Give Up!

I think that's the message that I first experienced when I watched Rocky, it's the idea of Rocky doing something that everyone else said was impossible, and he just refused to believe that, instead, he kept working towards the impossible until he was able to achieve it. He just wanted to go the distance.

"Yo Adrian, I did it!"

That's the cry of success.

This quote reminds us that we will never have a chance of succeeding if we don't try.

I remember the day I decided to "run for office" to be the Student Body President my senior year of high school. I had always wondered what that would be like, to go through a campaign, an election, and then serve as a representative.

I signed up on a whim, told my parents about it, forgot to mention it to my friends, and off I went, creating a campaign based on some promise I can't even remember.

I don't remember the other 2 people I was running against, but I don't remember being afraid of losing. If I had lost, I would have just found something else to do, so it wasn't fear that kept me from jumping in, it was the honest belief that I could make a difference.

I jumped into the campaign, and I won.

And honestly, I learned a lot about leadership that year from those in office with me and from our staff advisor, Randy. It was a great experience and I felt that we did some good, so I ran again in college and again, had a great experience.

Watching the election campaign process here in the U.S. right now is crazy, and I often wonder what would compel someone to dive into a public race and have it thrown all over the world to see. I hope it's that same idea that they can make a difference someplace!

I'm glad I took the risk and ran for office. I'm sure there are other opportunities that I missed along the way for a variety of reasons.

What's something you jumped in to do, maybe against some great odds? How did that turn out for you?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Success is usually the culmination of controlling failures."Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I shared about his book I just read, The Steps, and I shared about how at the age of 12 years old, this movie had a profound impact on my life. It's been fun to revisit it a little bit and I look forward to Stallone's new movie coming out in November, "I Play Rocky", which is his story.

You can read my past few posts on Rocky HERE.

Thanks for letting dive into this for a few weeks. It's been fun and inspirational to camp here a little bit.

The quote above really summarizes Stallone's perspective on life, and it's really a story of resilience. In his book, he talks a lot about his failure. He talks about ideas he had, opportunities he messed up, dreams that died, risks he took in life and in reading his book, I realized that his journey was not a jump to success quickly. What we saw and heard was a long-shot movie idea that caught the attention of the world and won an Oscar. What we didn't see was the journey it took for him to get there, to write that screenplay, to pitch the idea, to fight for it, to have it almost thrown away over and over again.

He talks about his failure.

I'm not sure we talk about that enough. I know for me, I want to "manage the narrative" around my failure so that it doesn't sound so bad or so that I can spin it into the positive.

Here's the reality: Failure is Hard.

I used to say to leaders, "If you fail, then....." I'd give them some canned advice or some inspirational quote.

Some years ago, I switched to, "When you fail, then....".

WE ALL FAIL. We don't all get it right all the time. We make mistakes, we say the wrong thing, we make the wrong move, a decision backfires, we hurt peoples feelings, we invest in the wrong person or the wrong company, we miss the communication and we do this over and over again.

I like these 2 words from Stallone's quote:

First he says CULMINATION. I think what he's saying is that success or victory usually comes at the end of a long series of events. Very seldom does something just work great the first time. It's usually the result of a lot of hard work, many failures and pivots, and then as we gain perspective, we find our way, which might lead to a win. It's a process.

The second word he uses is CONTROLLING. I think he's telling us that how we respond to these failures, how we navigate through them, around them and beyond them is really important. We can't avoid failure, but we can control how we respond and react to failure. This is true for our own failure and that of those on our teams.

If you have experienced failure, WELCOME! You are not Alone! Now what are you going to do with what you've learned?

Are you able to talk about your failure freely or are you embarrassed by it?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind, furious optimism." Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I finished his book The Steps this past week. It's his early story of growing up, and it ends with him winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 1977 for Rocky. The journey to get there was long, somewhat dark, but a true story of perseverance!

In this quote, he focuses on three words, and I think there's something there for us. "Blind - Furious - Optimism". This is what this says to me:

BLIND:

Stallone says over and over, "don't let the odds stop you", even when things look bleak, don't focus on your chance of failure, don't be "blind" to the opportunities around you, don't be careless. Stallone worked for years and years writing, re-writing, learning and failing before he wrote the screenplay for Rocky in just 3 days. He worked hard to get to this point, especially as everyone around him told him he'd never succeed.

FURIOUS:

This idea from Stallone is about intensity. He would say you have to bring an aggressive effort to everything you do, willing to work hard, willing to fight for what you believe in. This isn't a passive hope that things will work out, but a relentless pursuit of something you believe in.

OPTIMISM:

Stallone defines this as "believing in the outcome before there's evidence for it." Belief comes first, the results follow.

I don't know about you, but these three words are really challenging to me today. I'm doing a little self-audit to see how these words are currently playing out in my life and I'm challenged, but I'm also inspired.

Stallone's personal story and journey describe what these words meant to him, and I guess I need to determine what they mean to me.

It seems at times that I am OK simply rolling through life, through work, through relationships, through challenges with a lack of intensity, a lack of focus and I can easily get lulled to just "cruise" by the steady state of the calendar that just keeps moving forward, one project, one event at a time.

That's not what I want or how I want to live.

What would my life reflect if I was a little more BLIND to the obstacles facing me, and I saw a vision of what could be?

What would my next project look like if I applied some FURIOUS energy to it, putting all my effort into it instead of just a little bit?

How would I lead if instead of a general toxic sense of OPTIMISM, I truly believed in the vision and purpose before it actually became a reaility?

Cue the Rocky theme HERE.

Do you find yourself drifting to sleep at a time when you should be fully engaged, completely focused and excited about what you're doing and who your called to be?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We just finished a month long look at The Five Dysfunctions of a Team that you can read on the blog. I hope that during these weeks, it's triggered some things in you and your leadership. Again, one of my all-time favorite books.

I'm going to make a slight turn here, well, maybe a radical turn.

In 1976 a movie came out that my dad took me to. It was Rocky.

I had never seen a movie like that before but I remember it like it was yesterday. The movie was dark, it was about boxing (which I know nothing about), but it was inspiring! So inspiring that the morning after seeing that film as a 12 year-old, I ate my 5 raw eggs and committed to doing one-handed pushups every day. Of course that lasted about 2 days, but the impact was real.

Before I go on, some of you might be wondering why my dad would take a 12-year old to see that movie? Well, my dad and I are both easily inspired by sports dramas, we love the fight for survival, and we love a story that seems impossible but always turns out in the end. We suckers for that emotional ride, and I was hooked.

Rocky was a story of determination and someone overcoming impossible obstacles.

The reason this has come to mind is because Sylvester Stallone just published an autobiography called The Steps. It's basically his story of growing up and it leads up to his writing and pitching his film, Rocky. I started reading the book last week, then I switched to the AUDIBLE version because I wanted to hear his voice tell his story.

It's a rough story, but I'm learning that what was shared on the screen in his film Rocky was based on the challenges and hardships he faced growing up and trying to make it in the film business.

I'm not eating raw eggs again, but I'd love to spend some time talking about how determination is so important to our leadership. Yes, there are some prompts from the Rocky story, but what engaging with this story does for me is simply to remind me of why determination is so important to my leadership, to anyones leadership!

Back in 2001, my dad and I wrote a little book called The ABC's of Global Leadership. It's a simple curriculum going through 26 Qualities of a Leader using the ABC's. We've shared it in the Leader Mundial Communities and it's been translated into 9 different languages.

When we wrote this, we chose DETERMINED as a quality that every leader needs to have and continue to develop. We wrote these words...

"When we're not determined, we wonder.

When we're not determined, we get distracted.

When we're not determined, we don't finish well.

When we're not determined, we tire easily.

When we're not determined, we can't see clearly.

When we're not determined, we forget."

I believe these words are still true for us all.

Can you remember a time that sheer determination helped you get through a difficult time or season? What was that like to go through?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"The ultimate dysfunction is inattention to results. Great teams put the success of the whole above individual recognition." Patrick Lencioni

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We're looking at the each of the dysfunctions that Lencioni describes in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

We looked at TRUST the first week, then we looked at the FEAR OF CONFLICT then COMMITMENT. Last week we looked at ACCOUNTABILITY and today we'll finish be talking about RESULTS.

We've done a quick walk through The Five Dysfunctions of a Team from Patrick Lencioni and I hope this has pushed you to dig deeper into the book.

His approach to results really made sense to me but I wish I had learned that years earlier!

My first job as a Youth Pastor back in the 80's was at a large church in Los Angeles. I was 21 years old, I hadn't been trained in youth ministry, but somehow I landed this job and was in way over my head.

I was invited to attend the Deacon & Elder Meeting and was encouraged to simply observe and learn how church leadership functioned.

I remember at that first meeting, no one mentioned the youth ministry of the church. They talked about everything else, but nothing was said about the Youth Group. I then set out to make myself known to the leadership of the church.

I became louder, I wanted to share my opinions about everything, I felt that I needed to defend everything that I was doing, and I got more and more frustrated because no one seemed to care.

Finally one of the Deacons pulled me aside and asked me why I was so frustrated, and I shared that it felt that no one cared about the youth group. No one was asking me questions, no one seemed interested, and no one seemed to value what I was spending my time and energy doing.

He looked at me and said this: "Russ, we're not talking about it because it seems to be going really well. The Deacons and Elders are working on things that affect the whole church and they're not concerned about the Youth Ministry because they believe in you and trust you."

Again, had I understood Lencioni's definition of results at the time it would have helped me understand this.

I was focused on MY AREA, MY ISSUES, MY JOB. I didn't understand that I also had a role with the whole church. My role was to see the church impact peoples lives, and the Youth Ministry was just one small part of that.

I began to understand this, but I'm sure I kept rolling my eyes at the meetings, I kept trying to be seen and I was always promoting what I was doing, but over time I learned to let the results speak for themselves and it wasn't my job to prove my worth to everyone.

Later in life I became much less selfish and looked at the big picture, not just my part of that.

This is what Lencioni is talking about with RESULTS.

The reasons people don't embrace the shared goals and results they're all working for is because as leaders, we're trying to:

• Protect our Status. We want to look good and we want to be recognized for what we do.

• Promote our Area. We want to operate in our own silo, ensuring that our area is getting attention first, then we'll look at the bigger goals.

We spend so much time taking care of ourselves that we forget that we're a part of something much bigger.

Oh to go back in time, but I'm so thankful to that leader for speaking truth to me. What I wish he would of said is "Russ, it's not about you!" It took some more years for me to finally learn that.

Think of a time that you were focused on protecting yourself so much that you forgot about the larger vision, the bigger picture. How do you feel about that today?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness." Patrick Lencioni

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We're looking at the each of the dysfunctions that Lencioni describes in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

We looked at TRUST the first week, then we looked at the FEAR OF CONFLICT. Last week we talked about COMMITMENT. We're working through all five dysfunctions this month and identifying some areas we might need to pay special attention.

Today we're talking about ACCOUNTABILITY and we have one more dysfunction to look at next week.

I remember a lesson on accountability very clearly. I was a church custodian as a 14-year old and my father was the Pastor. I assumed the job would be fairly easy in that my dad was my boss, and it really didn't take much to clean the church.

I would clean every Saturday Morning, then I would show up early on Sunday to dust and make sure everything was good.

A few weeks into my working career my dad showed up early on Sunday and he walked around the church with me and identified some areas that I had failed to clean. I had missed some spots with the vacuum, I hadn't dusted the piano very well, and there was trash blown in from the street on the patio. These are all things he had asked me to do, but either I just didn't do them, or I didn't do them well.

Remember, I assumed the job would be easy and thought I could just get it done quickly. What I learned was that there were some really clear expectations of me in order to earn that 100 Sucre (yes, a fortune at that time in Ecuador) paycheck. Not only was I given the expectations, but I was held to that standard.

I'm not sure I was ever a great custodian (ask my mother about my bedroom), but I learned how to do what was expected of me. I learned a lesson in accountability and learned how to ensure that my Dad, the Pastor, wouldn't find my work unfinished or not done well.

Accountability is simply my willingness to accept responsibility to do what I say I'll do or what I agree to do.

In the case of my church job, accountability happened when my "boss" checked to see that I was doing what I had agreed to do to the standard that was expected.

When did the word ACCOUNTABILITY become a negative term? Why do we so often push against it?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in." Patrick Lencioni

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We're looking at the each of the dysfunctions that Lencioni describes in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

We looked at TRUST the first week, then last week looked at the FEAR OF CONFLICT We're working through all five dysfunctions this month and identifying some areas we might need to pay special attention.

I'm assuming this is a refresh, but I'm still surprised by the number of people I run into who have never walked through Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions Model. If you're one of them, stop reading my summaries and read his book. It's worth the read!

I love this quote on commitment because it's so simple, yet as a leader, I can't count the number of times I asked people to COMMIT without having the clarity around the project defined and without giving people the opportunity to BUY-IN.

LACK OF COMMITMENT is Lencioni's third dysfunction.

Years ago a good friend invited me to serve on his Board. I responded quickly by saying yes, then I asked some questions about expectations and what value he thought I could bring to the Board. His reply was simply to come and engage and then we'd work that all out.

I attended my very first Board Meeting, and we were all challenged to do some things for the organization that surprised me. They wanted me to donate financially a specific amount, they wanted me to commit to raise funds, and they wanted me to take a specific role in a capital campaign.

I was surprised at the expectations, and at the first break of the meeting, I pulled my friend aside, who was the President, and asked him why he hadn't shared these expectations with me earlier. He simply replied, "If I had shared these with you earlier, you wouldn't have joined the Board."

My response: I resigned at the end of that first day of meeting, and I'm sure I was the shortest serving Board Member in that organizations history. My reason for resigning was that I wasn't given the opportunity to AGREE to what was happening, but had been expected to just follow along.

Lessons learned:

• If someone asks me to serve, I ask many more questions today than I did before, even when the request comes from a friend.

• While I can't know everything, due diligence is really important so that I can make an informed decision.

• After asking questions, doing the due diligence, I'm then able to commit and buy-in to what I've been invited into.

• If there's any questions or concerns, I don't just move forward, but I address those head-on and work towards clarity first, then I respond.

Do you have any stories like mine where you made a decision without having all the needed information? What was the result of that?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer." Patrick Lencioni

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We're looking at the each of the dysfunctions that Lencioni describes in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Last week I started where Lencioni starts... TRUST. His entire model is built with trust at the foundation, and he says again and again, "if you have trust, then you can...."

He challenges us over and over again to build that solid foundation of trust, which we described last week as being connected to vulnerability.

You'll need that solid foundation, because the next dysfunction he looks at is FEAR OF CONFLICT.

In the book, Lencioni describes different kinds of conflict and explains different ways people approach it. I think the most valuable thing he does is he breaks the common belief that "conflict is bad".

If I ask a room full of leaders how many are comfortable with conflict vs. how many avoid it, it always lands in the 80-20 ratio. Most people avoid it, but there are some who are comfortable with it.

Lencioni, the quote above, describes conflict as "the pursuit of truth". He goes on to say that a meeting without conflict is an unnecessary meeting.

He describes ways in which conflict helps us find truth, helps us argue and disagree rationally, and talks about the value that comes when people passionately share their views and opinions.

In another book he says that "meetings without conflict is boring".

I don't know about that.

I'm not afraid of conflict, but I don't always welcome it. I've learned a lot over the years of what my tolerance is and how to allow the right amount.

There's a tipping point when conflict can move quickly from a "healthy conflict" into a "mean-spirited personal attack". I've seen this happen, and this does damage to the team, to the organization and to the leader.

Years ago, while engaged in a deep conflict, I learned the lesson that you can disagree, you can discuss passionately, and you can call someone out for their behavior, but then you can continue in your relationship and move on.... IF YOU HAVE A FOUNDATION OF TRUST!

What's your personal tolerance for conflict? Think about how you approach this at work, at home, at church, in your community?