The Leader in the Mirror
Do we want to copy-paste and become just like someone else? Or do we want to understand our unique perspective and bring our true potential to the table?
As soon as any of us think we’ve got it all together and all figured out, we’ve probably reached the end of our effectiveness in this season.
In Episode 9, we sit down with Jonathan Kennedy, founder and CEO of Endeavor Capital, LLC, and the Endeavor Companies on his show, Leadership for Your Journey. Take a seat and join our conversation on Episode 9, The Leader in the Mirror.
Download the show notes at newgenerationleader.com/9
Episode 9 Full Transcript
When we are in a leadership position, when we’re looking at the 30,000 ft view, we need to have a personal advisory board, a board of directors. People we can go to and trust that are going to bring a different perspective about the situation that we’re in so that we can trust them. When they say, hey, I’m, I’m waving the red flag or another one. Might be waving a white flag paste and become just like someone else. Or do we want to understand our unique perspective and bring our true potential to the table?
As soon as any of us think we’ve got it all together and all figured out we’ve probably reached the end of our effectiveness in this season. An episode nine, we sit down with Jonathan, Kennedy founder and CEO of Endeavor Capital LLC and the endeavor companies on his show leadership for your journey. Take a seat and join our conversation on episode nine. The Leader in the Mirror, Welcome to the New Generation Leader. We’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world, ready to reach your true potential.
Let’s get started. Welcome to the New Generation Leader podcast. Yeah. Yeah. You were there with Todd Moyer from TK permissions with us. And one of the things that he said that really kind of re triggered me to our conversation was he was talking about self awareness and in particular the mentality of do this for that reason and be this for that reason versus being to pull yourself out of that uh mentality and seeing things for what they really are. Part of being a CEO is to be able to have a 30,000 ft view but based on certain issues, be able to get granular and bring the right person in there.
You really can’t do both unless you’re very self aware of what your weaknesses are. So that you know, when to call a time out and bring in the three point shooter, extraordinary to win the game right? So can we talk a little bit about the software this process and maybe some tools and techniques that people could use to start implementing that? And I think obviously you mentioned last time it begins with looking in the mirror and being really honest with yourself about what you see and don’t see.
Yeah, there’s so many components to this that I do see. And I’ll start with this. That self awareness, I say is the one school that we never graduated from. You’re going to graduate with a college degree. You can get a license, a certification in a different industry. You can go to graduate school, a certificate program, you can continue your education and conferences, workshops, seminars, and all of them give you a degree of finality, a certificate diploma. But at the end of the day, you’re still learning more about yourself each and every day, day in and day out.
And so we use the symbol in our coaching business of the infinity loop. We are always learning based off the reality of what we see in front of us. We’re looking at that through the lens of, okay, what did I bring to this situation? What was the influence that my perspective had on what I did? Because all of those behaviors lead us down certain predictable paths. We do the same thing day in and day out unless we make a choice to do something different and all of those choices, all of those decisions have a consequence which can be positive or negative, that shapes our reality and leads us back into a reflection about that reality.
So when we constantly think about this loop and working through this reflection, we get to a place where we have a better sense, a better understanding of who we are, who’s around us, all of the influences that have played into who we are, how we see the world, how we respond and interact to the world and we continue to learn and grow. But as soon as any of us think that we’ve got it all together that we’ve got it all figured out, we’ve probably reached the end of our effectiveness at this season.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ve noticed my himself over the years whenever I’m feeling overly confident about something I stopped and I retool what I’m doing in order to not be confident because if if I’m, you know, I’m not completely, but to the point where you’re dependent on the people around you, your teammates, um, you know, the interactions that you need, whether it’s the coach that I’m working with or maybe depending on the situation if it’s in business or at home, but making sure that we create a moment that is not allowing us to become complacent, so to speak because that’s part of this journey, is making sure that we stay on task, um, and understand all the pieces that go in.
So what is a good, uh, what is a good tool to use for identifying? Kind of, hey, I need to take a step back because sometimes we may override that, that kind of feeling, that urging, whether it’s in our heart or head or gut that’s telling us, hey, you need to slow down a little bit. I think one of those, it, this, this issue of self awareness and knowing our pace and what’s going on around us. We’ve got to see that in ourselves, but we also have to have the people we can trust to tell us that.
And so both of those come back to the tool that we use called the Five Voices helps us understand what we are innately gifted at, but also helps us understand what we are not innately gifted at not so that we can default to uh fall into a trap of, well, this is me and this is all I do. So let me just do that. But understanding the collaborative nature of working together and so in that advisory board, a board of directors, people we can go to and trust that are going to bring a different perspective about the situation that we’re in so that we can trust them when they say, hey, I’m I’m waving the red flag or another one might be waving a white flag and we’ve got to recognize that they have a voice that’s valuable, that we need to hear and understand, and that we need to be attuned to that perspective that they bring to the table that they bring to our lives to our work, that they ground us out and they make us complete none of us, the more we learn, the more we think we know, but we don’t know everything, We’re not going to know everything.
And so we’ve got to get to the place where we can hear from other people and no where my unique skill set and my superpower stopped and somebody else’s start so that we can collaborate and I can get a better, more, well rounded picture of truly what’s going on. Because as soon as I start having that conversation in my mind and reflecting myself, I’m I’m missing the big picture, right? Well, and that’s that’s important, right? Because um and I like this advisory board. I did that. When I first got into business in the financial planning world, I went to a bunch of older men who I respected and I asked him to be my advisory board As one off.
And that was something that was really eye opening to me because it really helped shape get me into not just who I wanted to be, but who I was and where I was lacking in order to get to where I wanted to be.
Um and that that was important. I really, I wanted to emulate a lot of these men. They were not in my business, right? But I respect them in the community. I grew up with their kids, they had had different successes and that really made me desire to have their input. Um and I think that’s important is choosing who that advisory board is. You’re going to get advice from somebody right? Um I will go back to the Five Voices. Um you if you’re using that with your team, it’s also good to use at home because then when it comes to those interactions, you have a common starting place and that person really understands you even better than maybe they did before, regardless of how long you’ve been married. I know that’s helped me and my wife when I asked her questions about our business and what to do with it.
Um so I think that makes a lot of sense. I also think, you know, being shooting your thoughts. It would be good also to have some type of coaching, one on one to right to ask the right questions of the ceo to make sure that they’re even seeing the right answers, that they need to get the desired outcome that they’re looking for. Yeah, you look at different coaches and their process, their methodology. And on the one hand you have what’s called pure coaching that you possess the answer.
I’m gonna ask you questions to draw that out of you. On the other end of the spectrum is the coach has all the answers and a lot of times business coaches will work to copy and paste their approach in another setting and our process is a hybrid that’s a bit unique. We’re not giving you the answers of how to do this in your business, but we’re going to give you a tool a mirror to hold up and reflect how does this apply in your situation? Because we want to jump start the conversation.
If I just wait for you in a sense of self discovery to come up with the answers, we’re gonna have a slower process, right? We don’t have time here in the 21st century to wait for the answers. So I’m going to ask you a very direct pointed question, how does this apply to your situation? And we worked through that and I think what you just described, we have a personal board of advisors, we have family, close friends who speak into us. Sometimes we have mentors, we have a coach when you put all that together, that is your full and complete personal advisory board, they’re not necessarily all gonna be friends. All gonna be coaches. All gonna be peers or mentors in the business world, but you’re going to put these people together and have what I call your inner circle.
Thanks for joining Jonathan and I here in Episode 9. For links, show notes and a whole lot more visit newgenerationleader.com/9. We’ll see you next time on the New Generation Leader Podcast. Yeah.
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