Podcast

At the end of a long hard day, you have been running full tilt.

Are you still energized, running on top of the world?

Or do you need to crawl into bed – done, spent, and nothing left to give?

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Leadership Tools to Unlock Your Potential

These three tools can Unlock Your Potential. Use the links to kick off your growth.

These are the tools you need to lead in the digital world!

Full Episode 6 Transcript

Busy or exhausted.

At the end of a long, hard day, you have been cranking and running full tilt.

• Are you still energized and feel like you’re floating in the clouds, running on high and on the top of the world?
• Or you exhausted? You need to crawl into bed at the end of the day. You are done, you are spent and you have nothing left to give busy or exhausted.

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.

This is a big question, a big question to ask and reflect on, and in today’s quick tools this week on the New Generation Leader, we want to give you three tools, three filters lenses to look at, give clarity as you look at yourself in the mirror and say,

where am I am I busy or am I exhausted and how can I fix this?

If you think about being busy or being exhausted, those are two very different places, two very different realities that shape ultimately the productivity of the outcomes that you are bringing. If you are busy, your outcomes are going to reflect high capacity, high growth opportunities.

But if you are exhausted, you are going to feel like you’re spinning your wheels, you are running full tilt and yet you don’t feel like you’re moving anywhere.

That’s a hard reality to find yourself in. But it’s an important one for us to think about to reflect on and make sure we are bringing our best each and every day that we are healthy and in balance so that when we get started, when we shift into high gear, we are making things happen and getting things done.

So I want to give you three tools, three filters, three lenses to look at to understand our and give yourself a solid answer. Are you busy or you exhausted? And it will help you to understand not only are you, but what can you do about it if you are in fact exhausted?

The first one is the 70:30 and we’ll link these three tools in the show notes. But the 70:30 is vitally important because it’s a quick snapshot and it helps us to know are we in balance at our optimal setting? We are working out of our gifts, out of our strengths 70% of the time. And we’re working out of our growing edges, our conscious competencies, the things that we recognize we’re good at, but we have to think about. We have to expend a little energy in these areas. Were working in those areas 30% of the time.

We can’t be 100%-0%. It’s kind of like weight training or resistance training. You’ve got to put in a little effort sometimes. And so we shift back and forth from the things that we are naturally gifted at, to the things that we have to work a little bit at.

We are energized by the things we’re gifted at so that we have the energy to sustain the things where we are not gifted and when our tank is empty, we shift back into our 70%, our giftedness and keep running full tilt. If we get out of alignment, it’s a quick snapshot to help us understand: are we out of balance? Are we at a 50%-50%? Maybe a 30%-70%?

The second question is key. Which way are you trending? Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Is this potentially getting better or is it not?

The second tool complements this perfectly. These two go together like hand and glove. And it is the Peace Index. The Peace Index helps us look at five key areas to understand is one of these areas out of alignment.

1. The people in relationships around you. How’s your piece rank that 1-100.
2. Your purpose? Do you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it? Rank it 1-100.
3. The place where you are, the physical location where you live, where you work, where you play, How would you rank that? How is your sense of peace about this area then?
4. Your provisions? Do you have what you need to put a roof over your head to provide uh dinner every night, to have lunch breakfast. What you feel like you need to live life the way you want to live. It is your provisions, caring for you, your family, those closest around you.
5. Last but not least: personal health. How is your health? Is there something going on that’s affecting trickling over into every other area of your life?

So put these two together, the Peace Pndex and the 70-30 and it’s a quick snapshot to help you understand, to diagnose and my busy or am I exhausted? And if you are exhausted to identify and understand where is this coming from? Where is the challenge that I am experiencing and how can I fix this?

Well, the one other tool that I want to introduce for you here helps us to know our balance between being productive and being present. When we get to that place of being exhausted, chances are we’re spending too much time trying to be productive and we aren’t spending enough time being present with those around us or recharging our batteries.

The 5 Gears looks like this:

5th gear shut the door, high productivity, we are going to crank out a project that is focused energy.

It’s different from 4th Gear, which is where some of our business and sometimes our exhaustion can come in because we go through these motions in 4th gear, we’re checking the boxes, were checking things off, we are answering emails, answering phone calls, slack messages, somebody’s popping in our office. If we are working in an office with people around, it’s kind of that whack a mole. Sometimes there’s just tasks and things that we have to do.

3rd Gear is what I call the great pivot, the pivot between productivity and presence. And sometimes in 3rd gear we are spending some relational time checking in with our team before we shift up into being productive and having a productive, beneficial meeting or if we are with family or friends, those in our inner circle. Our 3rd gear time is preparing to shift into a more intentional focused relationship and conversation. It can go both ways and 3rd gear is that space where we can shift out of some relational catch-up into productive work.

Or we can shift down into more intentional focus relationships with those who are closest to us who mean the most to us, then that is B, that 1-to-1 focused, deeper relationship time where we are spending time undistracted. This is the great marker where we can say, we can flash up the deuce peace, sign to our, our family, our friends, our young adult kids, teenagers that are in your house and say, hey, this is too time, let’s let’s put the devices away be undistracted. And I do. I have a conversation connect relations with those who mean the most to you.

1st Gear is when you unplug, you unwind. However it is that you do this, the driving range, maybe it’s a walk around the neighborhood, a bike ride, a run a visit to the gym, Maybe you go and have a particular activity. Maybe you unplug. As Jonathan, one of my business partners mentioned yesterday on his show that he’s heard it recommended that you should take once a quarter and have a weekend where you have a day that’s just you to unplug unwind and recharge your batteries.

Even for an extrovert, it’s important for us to have individual time to recharge our batteries. There is one more gear and that is reverse to clean up our messes, to ask for forgiveness to apologize when we’ve misstepped whether it’s in relation to time and space and productivity and presence or if it’s something else that we’ve said or done.

Put these three tools together — the 70:30, the Peace Index and the 5 Gears and it can help you understand am I busy or am I exhausted? And if I am exhausted, how do I get back to a place of business that’s productive and in getting back to being productive?

How do I use the five gears to safeguard my time to put those constructs and guidelines in place so that I can continue being productive, increasing my performance and unlocking my true potential. That’s what the new generation Leader is all about is giving you the tools that you need to become the kind of leader. The digital world needs you to be to unlock your potential and unlock the potential of those around you.

For more information on these three tools, go to our show notes at NewGenerationLeader.com/6. This is Episode 6 of the New Generation Leader podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you back next time.

Developing leaders could make or break your business. Bringing on interns is a great way to build your talent pipeline, but make the wrong choice, and the walls come crashing down.

The same things goes with a new hire or a new promotion.

How do you prepare the leaders in your organization before you need to promote them? This is at the core of the New Generation Leader framework, and we’re diving in today on the show.

Interested in learning more about our 2021 Intern Bootcamp? Leave us your name and email, and we will reach out to learn more about your interns!

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The Emotional Intelligence of Google CEO Sundar Pichai – Inc Magazine

This is so key, because to get the most out of your team, you need all the voices–including the quiet, introverted ones–especially those that offer an alternative perspective or contrarian view. Feedback like that should push teams to at least consider going in another direction. And even when the decision is to remain on the current path, those voices can help the team refine its work and clarify its messaging.

How Much Should You Spend on Talent Development? The Best Firms Spend More Than You Think – Inc Magazine

If you invest in tools and resources, shouldn’t you invest in talent development?

The very best companies understand this. To be in the top quartile of talent developing companies, you actually need to spend 2 percent of your revenue on talent development.

3 Stages to Developing Leaders

The three key stages, whether investing in next-level leaders or interns, builds a solid foundation of health in order to multiply core leadership behaviors. Out of a place of deep self-awareness, rising leaders become adept at making strong decisions at a moment’s notice, replicating key leadership behaviors.

Full Episode 5 Transcript

Developing leaders could make or break your business. Bringing on interns is a great way to build your talent pipeline, but make the wrong choice. And the walls come crashing down. The same thing goes with a new hire or a new promotion. How do you prepare the leaders in your organization before you need to promote them? This is at the core of the new generation leader framework. And today we’re diving into this and more on the show.

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.

Thanks for tuning into today’s show. This morning, I was having a conversation with a friend who said, you know, I’ve got a whole line of interns ready to come work for our business this summer. They want to learn the ins and outs of what we do in our line of work. And you know what? I have hired a lot of these interns to join our business team, but I’ve also had a few go very wrong. And I said, do you know what we need to talk about this? We need to find a way while you are building those, I cue skills related to the task at hand in your business. I want to come alongside your interns and build the pie and the EEI, the personal intelligence, the emotional intelligence, learning more about themselves and how to lead themselves as they interact with each other.

There’s so much that collides for me all at once on this subject. And I just ran across an article in Inc magazine. It’s actually a commentary piece from Justin barista, the columnist at Inc magazine. He just interviewed Sundar Pichai about Google’s new certification program and Sundar after their long conversation, Justin started ask him about leadership, what it’s like to lead Google. How really, how in the world do you lead at Google? And Justin’s been a follower of Google’s work on psychological safety. If you know their work on project Aristotle, we’ll link to this in the show notes. This is some really great research that helps us understand a little bit more about what it means to be a good leader, to be a good manager. And if you haven’t seen this research, you should take a look. It’s really insightful, helps us to understand more about those key building blocks of what it means to be an effective manager.

The psychological safety is the number one building black team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. And we’ll come to this in a minute, but dependability team members get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar for excellence. Number three, structure and clarity team members have clear roles, plans and goals. Number four, meaning work is personally important to team members. You know, we want team members to do more than just the bare minimum. We want them to move from half to, to want to, and meaning helps do that as does. Number five impact team members think their work matters and creates change. So Justin burrito has followed this work from Google and project Aristotle and all of their great research on management. So naturally you’ve got the CEO of Google. You’ve sat down for a conversation and you start to explore, how does this actually look in real life?

And how has the pandemic shifted some of this? But here’s what was really interesting. There were two things, one mostly unrelated, but Sundar said, you know what? One of my business mentors said, your role in leadership is to break ties when there is a conflict, when there’s a lack of understanding when we’re not quite sure what decision to make, but we’re sitting there as a team instead of letting things go on and on and on. Sometimes it’s time for the leader to break the tie, to stop wasting time, to stop letting the meeting go on and on and on. Let’s just make a decision act decisively and move forward. You know, I’ve, I’ve heard before. Let’s just make a decision. We make a decision now based on the best information we have. And if we need to make a different decision later, we can make a different decision later, but let’s make a decision and start moving.

So here’s the second piece that I think was really insightful. Sundar says meetings, virtual meetings at Google have become a little more difficult because in a room when you’re physically with everyone, you can see the people who are engaged and unengaged, and it’s a little bit easier in a virtual meeting. I found myself in the same, same place when I physically, this is me, Aaron, when I physically lean back away from the table, I’m less engaged in the meeting. So I have to physically lean forward, lean towards the screen, get closer to the camera and the screen to feel like an active participant. And Sundar said, it’s really important to highlight this and to re-engage the people who are disconnected, but he said, here’s, what’s really going on here. This is so key. This is a quote, because to get the most out of your team, you need all the voices, including the quiet, introverted ones, especially those that offer an alternative perspective or contrarian view feedback like that should push teams to at least consider going in another direction.

And even when the decision is to remain on the current path, those voices can help the team refine its work and clarify its messaging. How do we build that within team members? How do we help them develop and cultivate the skill, the passion and the confidence to speak up, to even know that it’s worth listening to other team members. We talk about this as a hallmark. Sundar said, you need all the voices. I say, I preach. You want to make sure every voice is truly heard, valued, and appreciated around your team. There are so many different voices with so many different perspectives on a situation. And if we can elevate every voice, we will make more confident, more informed decisions. I had a conversation with a leader recently, who said one of her young team members is simply unaware, is simply unaware of the dynamics of what’s going on around him. And he’s jumping to conclusions and making rash decisions. And in its raw pure sense, he’s doing exactly what he should be doing.

He’s just reaching a fork in the road and he’s choosing the wrong fork of how to let that perspective come to life. So in its raw purest sense, how do you elevate the true potential of everyone on your team? How do you make sure that everyone on your team has an opportunity to be heard, feels valued and is able to contribute that idea of psychological safety? How do you set the stage so everyone can bring their best? Well, one of the ways is to invest in talent development, another Inc magazine article. And I find it interesting that two Inc magazines articles came across my screen in the last 24 hours. This other one is talking about talent development and how Patrick Lencioni and the advantage says the only real competitive advantage that any organization has is its ability to learn. And again, back to the idea of skills self-awareness and emotional intelligence, we tend to invest on the skill side. We invest on the structure side and as this Inc story points out and we’ll drop the link to this one on talent development in the show notes as well,

You would

Not bat an eye to invest a significant amount of money in a tool, in

A machine

In software that would help your business get to the next level. You wouldn’t hesitate,

But

How much money are you spending on your people and how much are you investing in them? How much are you spending on benefits and everything in a compensation package and how much of that is truly an investment in helping them get better? Yes, you are giving them great resources, great pay, great benefits. You are making this a desirable place to work, but on the skills and self-awareness and emotional intelligence side, how much are you investing in them? And I think of a plant. And if you got a plant, you would not hide it under the deck. You go to the local nursery, we’ve got one just up the street here, you’d go. You pick out something that you want to plant in your yard or have around your house. You’re not going to bring it home and hide it away. You’re going to do everything you can to see that flourish, to see it grow, to see it, come to life.

Hold that

Thought about the plant. We’re going to come back to that in a second,

How

Much you invest in talent development is going to reap benefits for your business down the road. So this article says the highest performing organizations, the best companies in the top quarter of talent development are spending 2% of their revenue on talent development writer, a CEO himself, Jim Schleckser, he’s been a CEO. He said he could only ever spend up to about one and a quarter percent. And you don’t have to spend up to 2%. I don’t believe anymore because there are ways to leverage technology and virtual platforms to make this come to life and trim your expenses to do it more efficiently without limiting the benefit.

But what are you at investing in talent development today? And if we think about how we make, how we build a successful internship program or how we build the next level of successful leaders in our organizations, this is part of developing talent. If we develop the talent in-house, if we help them to grow into top-notch leaders right here under our own roof and keep investing, we might reap some of the benefits ourselves. We might keep these leaders close to home when they’re ready to step up to the next level, we might lose some of them. We might, and maybe we want to lose some others. But for right now, let’s think about the process of what it takes to run our interns and next level leaders through a process that builds them into what we need them to be. And there’s three steps to this process. Number one is a healthy foundation. You go back to that example of the plan. When you get a new plant, what do you do? Fertile soil, the right pot. Maybe you transplant it into the ground. You’re going to make sure all of the environmental factors are just right for your leaders in developing your interns and next level leaders into who they will become. You have an opportunity to build them up

Based on a solid foundation. You need to make sure that what you are building on what you are replicating is a strong foundation. Are they at peace with their work with you? Are they at peace and ready to build simple, sticky, repeatable skills to implement in their lives? We’ve got to start from a solid foundation. We got to get our base camp in order, before we start to climb the mountain of leadership. So we spend some time in building that healthy foundation. We established the skills, give them the tools that they need. We’re not giving them nails and wallpaper and shingles and siding. We’re giving them hammers and drills that they can use over and over and over again, to keep building their leadership capacity in life, in every circle of their influence in their internship and in their leadership, in your business, in their work, within their families and the community, the organizations they connect with, all of these are places where they will use these skills.

So you are investing in them. That’s our first step. Then our second step is to know yourself. You have to understand these three dynamics, nature, how you are hardwired, how you see the world and what is uniquely. You there’s potential in this. There’s also challenged in this, but the better we understand ourselves, the better we realize what unique perspective each of us are bringing to the table so that we can continue to elevate those. Remember, as Sundar said, we want to elevate every voice around the table. How do we elevate? Well, we have to recognize the unique contribution that each of us bring from our perspective. So you add on to nature that hard wiring with nurture everything that you’ve been taught or trained to do. You ought to do this. You should do this. Whether from your family ethnic or racial communities and cultures that have helped form and shape you, geographic communities, the type of education you had even down to your own unique family unit and the influence that that nurture had on who you became, what habits and rhythms did you put in place to become the grown mature version of you.

And then last but not least is our choices. What unique choices are we making each and every day as we respond to the situations around us, we’re going to make many of those choices based on our hard wiring and the odds and sheds. Those are going to heavily influence us, but the better able we are to hold up a mirror and see a clear picture of who we are, the better able we are to make healthier, more responsible choices, to build towards a stronger team

Tomorrow.

So when you know yourself, then you know your tendencies, you know what you are likely to do. You can catch yourself before you do something wrong and go off the deep end, but you can also pick up and push more fully into the true potential of those strengths that you bring to the team. So on a healthy foundation, we know who we are. Now we can lead ourselves. We put these tools that simple in the heat of the moment, a stressful situation, we can immediately bring a simple tool to mind, run through a quick diagnosis in our heads and make healthier wiser choices to build for a stronger business, a stronger team, and a stronger tomorrow. If we give you tools for every decision, we’re not giving you an answer, but we’re giving you a repeatable framework so you can make good decisions. And isn’t that one, what you want as a leader, you want your team to make similar decisions. You want them to make decisions like you would make in the heat of the moment.

And when they have to make a decision on a dime, how simple have you made this process so that they can make a decision. And that’s our three steps, a healthy foundation know yourself, lead yourself. And as we work through those three phases, we build stronger, more confident interns, ready to take on their job, their role, and the challenges that are coming their way. We’re able better able to raise the next generation, a new generation of leaders to step into positions of leadership, to bring their best and to help your organization when you need it. Most know, most teams function at less than 60% of their true potential. How much does this cost your business every year for every team within your business, it’s at least $200,000 in lost revenue. How do you solve this challenge with invincible teams? You can measuring the five key building blocks of high performing teams. We immediately know where to start to take your team to its true potential. Start your free assessment [email protected]

So this is our process. And today I am really excited for us to officially announce the 2021 intern bootcamp. This 96 hour experience is going to put your summer interns into the harshest physical realities, known to humankind hosted by one of Virginia’s finest Millis, military installations. Your interns will be pushed to their breaking point. We want to break the interns before they break your business. Eating MRAs, hiking deep into the wilderness foraging for meals and surviving against the wild animals on the brink of starvation. We’re going to host the live leadership development workshops around every turn to make sure we train them up before we release them. And at the end of 96 hours, they will be yours for the summer. And they’ll be prepared to take on anything you throw at them four straight days to change your summer. Sign up your interns [email protected] slash intern bootcamp.

Well, we’re really excited about this new intern bootcamp, and I hope you will sign up your interns. I hope you also will take a look at the publishing date of today’s episode, but here’s what I want you to know. The 2021 intern bootcamp is for real, none of the details of what I just described are for real, but we are going to take the three steps, the three pivotal steps of developing leaders. And over the course of your interns, being with you this summer, we want to build them up and develop them. So while you are giving them the skills, they need to be successful in your line of work, we’re going to come alongside you and bring your interns into a community with other interns. So they not only learn from our experience and the tools that we’re bringing to the table, but they’re learning in a collaborative environment with each other.

It’s a really great opportunity to learn. And if you think like, I think back to earlier in my career, there are specific skills and tools that I wish I had learned. Self-Awareness I wish I had learned five, 10, 20 years earlier than I actually did. It’s an incredible opportunity to grow while they work in your business. Because as my friend highlighted this morning, many times the interns that you bring in turn out to be great potential employees. So if you can build them up, if you can give them the tools that they need this summer to take their own personal leadership to the next level, to take their capacity and productivity to the next level, to achieve incredible results this summer in just a short term internship, how much more can they contribute to your business going forward? So this summer long experience we are going to build in a few key components, one, an intensive kickoff that establishes that healthy foundation so that we can jumpstart our growth process in giving them the tools that they need.

But establishing from the outset, a strong, healthy foundation. Then after this intensive foundation at the beginning of the summer, or we spend an extended time together, then we’re going to spend time together each week in a core group, not alone, but together in community, learning from each other’s experiences to quick start this process to get to results much more efficiently and together. We’re also going to provide them with weekly leadership content that they can do on their own time at their own pace, but in very small bite-sized pieces, maybe 15, 20 minutes tops each week, but something for them to learn, to put into action and to bring to life in their day to day interactions with your team and their fellow interns in your workplace. And last but not least, our coaches are going to be available to them for live processing. They come across a challenge. We can connect by chat by text, by a quick phone or zoom call. We can hop in and help them problem solve as they go throughout each day. And each week of their intern. Our hope is that a stronger, healthier intern gives you a better opportunity to help them see who they can become and help you see the potential that’s untapped and how they could potentially become part of your team in the long haul.

That’s what we’re kicking off today. We’re excited about the 2021 intern bootcamp and all that. It will entail, but know this, no matter what level a leader is at, we want to help you invest in them to help you take your leaders to the next level. There’s nothing worse than promoting a leader. You’ve identified them. You promote them. They jump in with both feet, dive into the deep end of the pool, and they have no preparation for what they’re doing. We want to help you equip your leaders before you need them to jump into the deep end. That’s the whole new generation leader framework. That’s why we do what we do here at the new generation leader, because we want to raise up a new generation of leaders. We know we all need them in a variety of organizations at a variety of levels. So how can we prepare our leaders, our new leaders before we need them to be leaders. Let’s give them the tools that they need to step up to the plate so they can step up confidently and boldly and build a brighter future. Thanks for tuning into today’s episode. I’m so glad you joined us. Really do visit newgenerationleader.com/internbootcamp.

Sign up your interns, let them be part of this growth journey throughout this summer. And newgenerationleader.com/5 for all the show notes from today’s episode. Thanks for tuning in to the intern bootcamp.

Every Voice has a Superpower: do you know yours?

When we hit a crisis, we need our team functioning at full capacity. If we tap into our collective Superpowers, we can push through the barriers, hurdles, and gaps to build a bright future.

Ready to Discover Your Voice? Take the FREE assessment:

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Episode 4 – Full Transcript

Not just superheroes have superpowers.

You have a superpower too, but how do you tap into that true potential? How do you tap into the superpower that is within you when your team needs it most? When your family, when your inner circle, the people that you live life with, whether it’s at work at home or at play, when the people around you need your superpower, do you know what your superpower is? And are you ready to use it?

This has been such an incredible year. Highs and lows, as we’ve talked about on the past few episodes of the podcast, there’s a lot going on in our world, but how do we tap into our potential? When we tap into that true potential, we can become the best possible version of ourselves and bring our best to those around us. We get to a healthy place and we start multiplying that out into the people around us.

One of the tools that I use with teams is the 5 Voices. And it’s a powerful way, a powerful lens to help us understand, not to put us in a box, not to stifle our creativity or creative thinking. I had somebody last week say, well, once you identify your voice, is this kind of a predictable pattern?

Are we putting ourselves into a box, a self-fulfilling prophecy? And I said, no, no, not at all. This helps us understand where our mind comes, where we go. As we are brainstorming, responding to stress and challenge, it understands the lens that we use to look out at the world. And when we have a clear lens, it’s like putting on clear glasses.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, and they did two different eye exams, you know, the normal eye chart. And then they had one that they held closer to my face and they measured a certain distance off my shoulder with a measuring tape. And they held the card out there. And I did the same exercise and truth be told my vision is not as good as it used to be friends and family used to call me “Eagle eyes,” but I don’t have that viewpoint anymore.

My eyes aren’t working that well, I’m wearing glasses right now as we’re recording this, but we all need that kind of lens. We need a clearer picture of how we show up in the world, how we see the world, how we process what’s going on on a day to day basis.

There is a way for you to find out your voice. If you want to jumpstart that process, go on over to NewGenerationLeader.com/5voices. You can take the assessment for free. If you are, un-distracted put all your distractions aside, you’re in a quiet place where you can focus and concentrate. I say it should take you about 12 minutes and you’ll get that result and begin the journey of learning more about yourself. So do that.

Here are the five superpowers. Each voice has a superpower, and I want to spend some time talking about the superpowers today, because I think if we can tap into our superpower, we can push past roadblocks. And this truly helps us build collaborative teams, collaborative environments, where we are all bringing our best.

Normally we start with the quieter voices, but we’re going to start with me today. This is my voice, the Pioneer. My superpower is strategic vision. When we’re in a crisis situation, when we’re in a roadblock, the superpower that I bring, when I’m healthy when I’m ready to be effective, when I’m prepared, I’m not stressed. I can see and align the pieces of the picture together, the resources, the people, the opportunities, and say, all right, well, let’s clear the table, sketch out a plan. Here’s where we need to go. And here’s how we’re going to get there.

When you’re stuck at a roadblock, whether it’s a barrier that’s immovable right in front of you, a hurdle that you’ve got to jump over or move around, or a gap that you need to jump on that strategic vision can help clear the haze and help you and your team, your organization move forward.

That’s a really great trait. And only 7% of people, people have this superpower. So this is one of the most powerful things about the five voices. Is it not only helps us understand ourselves, but it truly helps us understand that the superpower we bring, I look at that strategic vision and I think, well, that’s not a big deal. Everybody does that, right? But not everybody does that. And that’s truly the power of the superpowers and the voices is that we can understand something new about ourselves and something that is unique to us and what we bring.

Let’s jump into the Connector. Only 11% of people are Connectors and the Connector superpower is their relational network. Connectors know everyone across departments, across divisions. I use the example last week, we were sitting in an office park and I said, you know what?

If you go across the parking lot to the other side of this office park, there’s another building. Another company in a completely different industry than your team is in. But the natural-born Connectors are going to know somebody in that building. Why I’m not really sure how they do this, but they tap into this superpower all the time. And so when you get to the barriers that hurdles and gaps when your team is stressed, you’re in a crisis mode, you’re responding to something.

The Connectors can tap into those relational networks. They know someone who can help get things done. They know somebody who can join you and collaborate with you and move that strategic vision forward. They can see who needs to be at the table and they know them already. They’ve already built that relationship. And so now they phone a friend. If you will going back to that, who wants to be a millionaire, a lifeline phone, a friend, tap into that network and call somebody who can help you and your team take things to the next level.

Let’s jump over to the Guardian. The Guardian’s superpower is due diligence. And what I’ve realized here lately is the tenacity of a Guardian — detail-oriented and process-driven. They want to make sure the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. They will make sure that everything is buttoned up. They’re going to make sure in a moment of crisis, we don’t move too fast. We don’t move too swiftly, but we move forward. Confidently.

When I was working in emergency management, one of the mantras that we often said was we want to be safe after a disaster. We preached safety to our staff, to our volunteers, to everyone we worked with because we didn’t want to heap disaster on top of disaster. When you’re in a crisis, the last thing you want is to make the crisis worse.

And that’s the superpower the Guardian brings to the table. They want to make sure that you’re not wasting time. You’re not going to jump off after something. That’s a shiny object. They’re going to make sure that you are moving constantly forward and ready to tackle this.

And along the way, the Creative voice lends their perspective. And they help the team both on an innovation side and an integrity side. There is an ideal that we could reach. There is a far-off vision of what we could pursue and the Creative will speak up and make sure that we are raising the bar, that we are pushing the boundaries, that we are looking out to the horizon at everything that could be, are we getting after it? Are we seeing all of these things, are we lifting up our eyes from being locked into the crisis that’s right around us?

What we see right in front of us, these Creatives have an incredible ability to help us lift our eyes to the future and the possibilities to scan the horizon for opportunities and threats and make sure we are ready to move confidently and boldly out into the future. They’re going to give us ideas. The Pioneers will translate those ideas into concrete, strategic vision, but the Creative is going to give us the idea they’re going to help us see and be able to know what we could do, what we could be, who we could be. It’s a really powerful perspective.

Last but not least: the Nurturers. Nurtures make up 43% of our world. And they’re so others-focused. They’re so people-centric, they love to build a team and be collaborative. Their superpower is relational harmony. They want to make sure at the end of the day, we’re all getting together. Still. We’re getting along. We’re friends. We are collaborating effectively. They’re going to function like that. Relational oil inside the team.

They’re going to help us tap into what’s going to make this work better. What’s going to make this flow more efficiently. Do we need a meal? Do we need a break? Are you okay? Do you need some affirmation, some encouragement. They have that relational capacity to tap into what makes us tick. What makes us work? What makes us effective?

When you look at the whole big picture of all five superpowers, and you see what the intersection of those can do, when you see the possibilities from the Creative, they help you expand your vision. The Pioneer then strategizes that while the Connector pulls together, connections and resources, while the Guardian helps us stick to the plan, do our due diligence and the Nurturer makes sure the team is still collaborating and working together.

This is the power of team. This is the power we get. When we tap into who we truly are, who we have around the team and how we can be more efficient and more effective. When you hit your roadblock, tap into your superpowers. If your team hasn’t explored your five voices yet do that today at NewGenerationLeader.com/5voices. There’s a team 5 Voices Bootcamp that we would love to walk your team through to learn something, gain some insights into who you have around your team, so that when you hit your next crisis, you are ready to go.

In this episode, we tackle a difficult conversation, but an important one.

As we look back on the last year and what COVID has dealt us, what our world has been like now for just a little over one year, as we look back and reflect on our own experiences at home, in our workplace, with our friends in every circle of influence, it’s important for us to take a deeper look at not only where we’ve been, but how are we now?

What impact has this had on who we are? We’re asking two questions:

• how are you?
• how can you rediscover a sense of peace?

Don’t Give Up

My friend, Andrew, a consultant out in Eugene, Oregon highlighted the @dontgiveupsigns Instagram account for the Don’t Give Up Movement .

There’s a great story behind their movement. They sell signs and stickers to share the message in your community, and a great Instagram account to remind us:

you are enough.

Download the Peace Index Tool

Give yourself a ranking 1-100 on each of these 5 areas:

1. People
2. Purpose
3. Place
4. Provision
5. Personal Health

Listen in at 10:38 on the episode to get the full description.

Tracking Sleep in COVID

“Coronasomnia started off as an acute problem because of its situational nature [at the onset of the pandemic],” says Dr. Daniel Barone, a neurologist and sleep medicine expert at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.“However, more than a year has passed, and coronasomnia has become a chronic issue now.”

Dealing with Coronasomnia

Relationships after Disaster

• Relationships Under Stress: Does adversity strengthen, heal, or destroy relationships? [Psychology Today]
  The study of relationships after disasters shows a distinction between the “wake up call” of watching a crisis unfold and the ongoing trauma that brings stress. The first helps us reexamine our key relationships while the second strains our relationships.
• Will Sandy bring a Baby Boom or a Baby Bust? [Slate]
  Comparing the data from Hurricane Huge, 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, the article explores assumptions around why relationships boom or falter after a crisis.

The impact on relationships is felt everywhere, even law firms are weighing in on this conversation.

Episode 3 – Full Transcript

How are you, what’s going on in your world?

On today’s episode of the New Generation Leader, we are going to tackle a more difficult conversation, but it’s an important one. And as we look back on the last year and what COVID has dealt us, what our world has been like now for just a little over one year, as we look back and reflect on our own experiences at home, in our workplace, with our friends in every circle of influence, it’s important for us to take a deeper look at not only where we’ve been, but how are we now? What impact has this had on who we are? So that’s why we’re talking about how are you and how can we rediscover peace? My last full-time position before I moved into consulting was in emergency management. We responded to disasters and it was interesting to have an up-close seat to communities devastated by tornadoes, by floods, by fires, by hurricanes.

In my time in that role, it was only natural disasters. We didn’t have man-made disasters, but each community had a similar response. There was an immediate rush, an outpouring of support. Then the long haul set in it was a long road to recovery. You have an immediate event of crisis and people respond. Then the days turn into weeks, turn into months. And in many of these communities, we were spending upwards of two years. It takes a long time to rebuild a community, to put homes back together, to clean up and to help people get back home, not back to normal, but back to a new normal, what is normal now on the other side of this, and one of the things we discovered, and one of the things researchers have looked at, we’ll drop a couple of links in the show notes, two examples of this from all sorts of different researchers after hurricane Hugo, hurricane, hurricane Sandy, all of those events triggered researchers to look at the long-term effects on relationships. And in those crisis situations where a, an entire community, an entire family, many families were turned on their heads, Yes, begins to take its toll. Relationships are fractured because over time, under extreme stress,

We aren’t our normal selves. We aren’t our usual selves. We aren’t bringing our best.

Crisis Care in Disasters

So in our experience with this tornado, there were actually two tornadoes we helped clean up that happened the same day — this tornado and another tornado. In those communities, we watched as families experienced heartache after hardship, after challenge in their quest to rebuild, they were trying to put it all back together, but it was a long road. And so as we watched these relationships struggle, we turned the conversation and said, okay, we came into these community communities to help rebuild. What can we do to help rebuild the people, to help rebuild relationships, to help support and encourage and equip and resource them when they need it most in those crisis moments, we’re not just going to take care of the tactical, the practical, the hands-on of rebuilding homes and cleaning up the messes left behind by mother nature. We’re going to support and encourage. We’re going to create a team.

And we created a team that followed the constructs. The systems, the process is set up. It’s, what’s known as emotional and spiritual care. This discipline was created after the federal building bombing in Oklahoma city. And back in the nineties, chaplains responded and helped communities helped that community in Oklahoma city and have helped probably hundreds of communities since then through disaster, not in a way that exploits the crisis that they’re in, but provides them what they need in that moment. And we created this hypothetical story. We created a story, a narrative, a reason behind why we were launching this new initiative for us.

And that narrative was when everyone is in crisis, someone needs to come in and provide care, provide a listening ear, provide that support and encouragement and walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder through the journey. And it’s one of my favorite threads of relaunching this initiative was the very first time we sent this team out. After Hurricane Harvey in Texas, one of our volunteers sat down with a resident in a storm shelter. And after their long conversation where he shared his story, his perspective. And he said, “thank you for listening to me. Thank you for hearing my story. I know everybody else in this shelter has their own story, and I didn’t want to burden anyone else because they’re all carrying their own stories.”

Crisis After COVID-19

But here we are a year after COVID shut down our world, led us into crisis mode and there’s no escaping it. There is no corner at least of our country where you’ve been able to escape it. Perhaps if you live in a very remote community or remote Island, perhaps across the globe, there are places where life is fairly close to what normal was before COVID. But for many of us, our rhythms have changed. Our community has changed our habits and our weekly and monthly events have changed. Holidays have changed. Relationships have changed. And for many, the added layers of crisis have affected jobs, have affected income, have affected work and provision for your family. And it’s something that has affected all of us. We’re all walking through this at the same time, we’re all experiencing high levels of stress.

Jeremie Kubicek (JeremieKubicek.com), the co-founder of GiANT and co-author of The 100X Leader (Amazon link), uses the example of a tsunami. And we often think of a tsunami, we picture in our minds a single, large wave. But a tsunami is not simply one wave, it is a series of waves. And as Jeremie notes, we have experienced a series of waves. We had a pandemic, but in the midst of a pandemic, we also had a building political transition set to come in our country the entire election process, all that was coming in that election season. We also had a budding racial crisis in our country and it was building.

And we were about to reach a critical juncture in both of those events. When all of a sudden a pandemic takes root and it affects all of us across the country, across the world, it reaches every corner of our world. The crisis of the pandemic, wasn’t the end of the pandemic. There were even further waves. There was the initial reaction. Businesses shut down. Many had to cut employee ranks, cut the staff back. Then some hired more people or in a second wave. As things started to settle, they shifted again, rehired some furloughed, others, and then a third wave. As it continued to extend throughout the rest of 2020, there have been multiple waves of reaction to the pandemic itself. While the racial experience here in the United States, the tensions, the understanding that we needed to have those conversations came to a head as did the election.

The Peace Index

So all of this is going on around us. How are you, how are you doing? How are you really doing? Don’t give me fine. I want to ask you this in a deeper way that helps us get past fine. Let’s look at these five components of peace and what I want you to do. As you were thinking about each of these five areas, as I describe them, give yourself a score on a scale of one to a hundred rank each one.

• People: So we start with people, the people around you in every circle of influence your friends, your family, those you cohabitate with your neighbors, the people physically around you, even now. And those you work with those you interact with beyond your home and your neighborhood. How are your relationships? How strong are those relationships? How much are you at peace with the relationships and the people around you?
• Purpose: Then we have our sense of purpose, our personal call and mission in the world. How is your sense of purpose? Are you at peace with where you are with what you’re doing and how you are called to serve and lead those around you? If your sense of purpose, a number on a scale of one to a hundred
• Place: then there’s place. Your place may have changed for. You may not have the balance of home and work because now all of a sudden work and home and recreation and exercise and church and learning and all of these places where we would physically go somewhere else, have all happened under our roof for the last year. So how has your sense of peace about the place where you live, work, play? You can think about the physical place. You can think about the geography of the place. You can think about the dynamics in your neighborhood and community. How much is that bringing you peace?
• Provision: Then we look at provision. Do you feel that you have what you need, what you want to put a roof over your head, have a place to sleep at night to provide for yourself and your family. Those needs, wants, and desires. How is your sense of peace about your provision? Do you have what you need.
• Personal Health: last, but not least, personal health. You can think about this in terms of diet, of exercise, of every component of your personal health. How are your sleep rhythms? NewYork-Presbyterian Health Coronasomnia is a new dynamic that researchers are studying because we aren’t sleeping as well. You put all of these five together and you start to get an understanding of where our peace might be a little bit off. Where are we? Not as peaceful. What’s weighing us down.

And instead of answering, how are you fine? We can say, at least to ourselves, how are you? I, physical health is really weighing me down. I haven’t been able to get out and move around. I’m working a whole lot closer to my refrigerator. And so snack time is grazing time all day long, where your physical place is, is your sense of peace. There is lower because you haven’t been able to move around. You haven’t been able to go out the kids, your significant other, your roommates, everybody is around all of a sudden, and now your coworkers are the same people you’re cohabitating with, but they’re not the same people you’re actually doing work with. These dynamics have been completely thrown off kilter.

Maybe your sense of purpose has shifted or adjusted as you’ve changed jobs or taken a deeper look and gotten a clearer understanding of your own sense of purpose. Races tends to do that to us. It forces us to take a good hard look at the world around us and reconsider our purpose and reconsider the people. What I want you to be mindful of is that the stress can push us to make decisions that are based out of unhealth, out of stress and not out of a healthy peace filled perspective.

So if any of these numbers are below 70, that’s something to work on. If it’s below 50, I need someone to have the conversation with, to talk through this, to reflect on why is so low and what steps you can take to recover, what steps you can take to look forward. There are people around you. There is a community right in front of us, and now is the time more than ever for us to lean in for us to listen to each other and truly hear not to try to prove a point, but to be for the people around us, to give 110% of our listening ear, to make sure that we are truly hearing, we don’t get an answer of how are you fine, but really an answer of how are you. I’m struggling in this area. This is a problem for me. I’m having trouble overcoming this obstacle, this challenge of this COVID year, plus that we’re in now. And it’s a roadblock. It’s a hurdle that I have to get through and I need some support. I need some encouragement. I need some help. Just like that crisis care team we formed. Let’s be a crisis care team for each other last week. 

My friend, Andrew, a consultant out in Eugene, Oregon highlighted the @dontgiveupsigns Instagram account for the Don’t Give Up Movement .

There’s a great story behind their movement, but they have signs and stickers and a great Instagram account to remind us,

you are enough.

You got this, you matter one day at a time, your mistakes don’t define you. All of these are encouragements for you to take with you today. So as you reflect on your peace, you put all of those five numbers together and average out your overall peace.

If your peace is the low, find somebody to have a conversation with about that. Reach out to me, somebody on our team, reach out to a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, somebody in your inner circle, who you believe can be a trusted confidant to have those conversations.

If your peace is low, don’t go it alone. You got this, we’re in this, we’ve made it a year and it’s been really hard. There are great things ahead and what we learn and how we grow will give us all an opportunity to be stronger, to respond to the crises in front of us, make a difference in our world for years and years to come.