Transcription
Hi, it's Robin Sharma, author of The Leader Who Had No Title, founder of The Titan Academy, and welcome to this mastery session, which I know you're going to love. Why? Because it's all about leadership.
I've spent so much of the past 20 years of my life evangelizing a message that leadership is not about a title. Leadership is not about the size of your office. Leadership is not about having formal authority. Leadership is a mindset. Leadership is a way of operating through your days. Leadership is a heart set. Leadership is a way of being.
And I think, you know, we're now in Leadership 2.0. The old model of leadership said you need to have a lot of money, or you need to be a prime minister or president, you need to be a CEO or a managing director in order to be a leader. Leadership 2.0 is fundamentally different. Leadership 2.0 simply says, if you can breathe, if you are alive, you not only have the opportunity, you have the responsibility to show leadership, not only in your work, not only in your creativity, not only in your impact, not only in your influence, but even in your personal life.
And so, what I want to do in this mastery session, I'm thrilled that you're here with me today. I want to walk you through a number of key protocols or thinking tools that will really help you become a leader without a title. So let's get right to the first tactic for you to be an even better leader: install the "lead without a title" mindset. And again, that's just a way of thinking, it's an approach.
So, what I'm really suggesting is, no matter what you do, no matter what your station in life is, start thinking like a leader because you really have a choice. When you go in the world every day, you can be a victim or you can be a leader, but you can't do both. And so, the more you practice showing leadership in your work, showing leadership with your family, showing leadership in your community, showing leadership in your private self, practice drives performance. And the more you practice it, the more you start to step into the mindset of a leader without a title.
Number two: the best leaders on the planet grow other leaders. So, if you're not growing leaders faster than your peers, you're not leading, you're following. I'm going to repeat that again: the job of the leader is to grow more leaders. So, yes, do your work. Yes, become more creative. Yes, innovate. Yes, optimize your personal life. And yet, at the same time, make the time to develop leaders around you.
What that might look like at the office: celebrating a teammate at the office. That might look like modeling mastery at the office. It might look like collaborating with someone who needs some collaboration. At home, what does growing leaders look like? Well, it might be mentoring your children, exposing them to art, giving them great books. It might mean being a positive force in your home life. So, the job of the leader is to grow more leaders.
Number three: I call it the Three "I" Practice. If you want to be a better leader, understand and then practice these three "I"s.
Number one: Inspiration. The job of a leader, really, is to inspire other people. If you look at Steve Jobs, you look at Elon Musk, you look at Nelson Mandela, you look at Sergey Brin of Google, you look at a Rembrandt or or a Picasso, these people were incredibly inspired. They were not only incredibly inspired, they were inspirational to other people. I mean, there's that incredible story of Steve Jobs. And a lot of people say Steve Jobs wasn't a nice person. And yet, if you were to pull the former employees of Apple, they would say, "My years at Apple, working with Steve Jobs, were the single best years of my entire career." And you say, "Why?" And they say, "Because he was inspirational."
I mean, when Steve Jobs was a young man or a young kid, you know, his father said, "Go out and paint the fence outside of their house." And Steve Jobs said, "No problem." He went out and he started painting the outside of the fence. A few hours later, his father comes out and says, "Steve, did you paint the fence?" Steve says, "I did." Steve Jobs' father inspects the fence and he says, "Steve, you did a great job painting the outside of the fence, but you didn't paint the inside of the fence." And Steve Jobs looked up at his father and says, "But Dad, no one's gonna see the inside of the fence." And his father looks at him and says, "But son, we will."
Now, it's many decades later, and Steve Jobs is running Apple, and they're ready to launch, or ready to develop, rather, the first Apple Macintosh. And he looked at his design team and he said, "Here's your deliverable. I want the outside of the computer to look so simple and so elegant, like a piece of art. But here's the real mission: make the inside so beautiful that it'll bring tears to our eyes." And his design team looked at him and said, "But Steve, no one's going to see the inside of the Apple Macintosh." Steve Jobs looked at his team and said, "But we will." That's inspiration.
I think the only title that really matters is CIO: Chief Inspirational Officer. So, no matter what you do, whether you're a teacher, a firefighter, an astronaut, or an entrepreneur, maybe you're a managing director, maybe your mother or a father, be the CIO, the Chief Inspirational Officer.
If all you do, the second "I", if the Three "I" Practice to make you an amazing leader, is Influence. Influence. You want to be so good at what you do that you influence other people. You want to use the words and the language of leadership versus victim speak. You want to influence people by your mindset, by your heart set. You want to influence people by your thinking patterns. You want to influence people by your productivity. So, you want to influence people, and that's the job of a leader.
And then the third "I" of the Three "I" Practice: Impact. Less talk, more do. No matter what your title is, you know you're leading, you know you're winning when you are creating impact. You know, a lot of people in the world, and victims love to do this, they talk about what they're going to do. "Here's the project I'm going to launch. Here's the marathon I'm going to run. Here's the life I'm going to craft." But they don't execute. Impact is about translating your ideas to execution.
Okay, let me wrap up with two final things for you to become an amazing leader. The fourth thing to really focus on is the quality of your craft. Okay? So, regardless of what you do, see yourself as a craftsperson. Be so great at your work that when we watch you work, tears fill our eyes, like tears fill our eyes when we look at Michelangelo's masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
And this is an incredible opportunity because I think there's two economies out there. There's the global economy that everyone talks about, but there's also something that I teach at the Titan Summit, for example, which is your personal economy. And if you start thinking about your personal economy, the craft that you birth into the world, the value that you deliver to your organization, your customers, and all stakeholders, and you say to yourself, "I will not release any work until it's nothing less than world-class," you develop a personal economy where the entire world, or maybe it's your entire industry, starts to view you as legendary. And then, while the rest of the global economy is in acute disruption, people are losing their jobs, people are being laid off, the world beats a path to your door because the world always wants the best. The marketplace pays for mastery.
And then the final thing that amazing leaders do, and again, you don't have to have a title. So don't give away your power and say, "Well, I'm going to just resign myself to mediocrity because I'm not the boss around here." You know, you can be in a front-line, so-called employee, and be so great at what you do that your behavior and your performance goes viral across the organization, and it goes viral across the marketplace because you're a merchant of wow. And that's actually the right thing to do. It'll allow you to go to sleep every night with a clear conscience. You'll feel so great about yourself. And of course, the organization is just going to watch you fly.
So, the final way to be an amazing leader is to build relationships. And I'll leave you with this brain tattoo: focus on the relationships, and the money will take care of itself. Or I'll put it to you this way: take care of the relationships and the human connections, and the income will take care of itself.
We live in a world where there's almost been a commoditization of humanity. You know, I was in a store yesterday, and it was just a human interaction where I picked up something, I walked up to the counter, and the manager of the store, and I knew he was the manager of the store because, unbelievably, he had a picture of himself with a frame and his name underneath it. Okay, a little bit of ego there, but I'm not judging, I'm just reporting. And, you know, here are two human beings interacting. And I believe that every interaction is a moment of truth. You get to live your values and model mastery when you meet that other human being, or you don't.
And I'm just sharing with you, he didn't look me in the eye, he didn't say hello, he didn't say, "Welcome to the store." He literally took what I bought, processed my credit card. Another person came to the counter at the same time, and he pretty much just like handed me the the receipt for my credit card without any acknowledgement, and he didn't even say thank you. Now, that was an opportunity to lead. That was an opportunity to wow. He could have made me laugh. He could have connected. He could have made the world a little bit better by me, while making his store even better, and then I would have come back every time because he, he would have solidified that human connection. Because we do, we do business with people we like.
And that was a moment not only to show mastery, it was not only a moment to show ingenuity, it was not only a moment to have a human connection, it was not only a moment to grow his business by building a relationship, it was a moment to show a tiny act of love. And I'll leave you with this: the world needs more love. The world needs more leadership. Please do not resign yourself to any form of mediocrity by saying, "Robin, I can't lead." You're alive. You have power. You might not know it. Go lead. Thanks so much.
Hi, it's Robin. I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and definitely go over to RobinSharma.com for more information, tools, and resources on mastery, elite performance, and living a world-class life.
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