Start With A Win - Six Keys to Effective Leadership with Adam Contos, Part 2

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

In this episode of Start With A Win, Adam discusses the next three traits of high-performing leaders. The first is being coachable. Are you willing to get better, to accept advice, and to listen and make changes to unlock your true potential? A coach is typically someone that you pay to help you with a specific aspect of your personal or professional life, and you give them the ability to speak into your life and hold you accountable. Be willing to invest 10% of your income into personal development, and coaching should be a big part of this investment. If you are not in a place where you would listen to a coach without being defensive, then you aren’t truly a leader.Second, high-performing leaders have a strategic mindset or chessboard thinking. Just like chess, life and business contain multiple dimensions, variables, and possibilities that could necessitate any number of strategies and tactics. You have to consistently evaluate where you are, where you want to be, how you are going to get there, what obstacles you are going to face, and how you are going to stay motivated. This means setting short-term and long-term goals that are all focused on the end result and not losing focus along the way.And finally, consistency. Leaders can take a page out of the books of professional athletes who spend their time training doing the same things over and over again. They find success through repetition and making small adjustments over time, rather than trying to abruptly make a change. Patience is a requirement for slow achievements. Be alright with monotony and boredom in exchange for all of the benefits of consistency as a leader.Links:“Trillion Dollar Coach” book: https://www.amazon.com/Trillion-Dollar-Coach-Leadership-Playbook/dp/0062839268Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

And we're back, two-part series on the six traits of high-performing leaders. This is part two. If you missed part one, go back one episode and listen to part one, and then come back here and listen to part two. Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, Adam Conto, CEO of Remax. We are not top of the 12th floor

because it's under construction right now. So I'm in my podcast studio and producer Mark coming to you from the brand Viva Studios. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing so good. I love it. I like it. You got your start with a wind flat brim going there. Yeah. Yeah. I love this hat. It's great. Fancy white glasses you're always wearing. It's, you know, it's all about that personal brand. That's it. Whoa. I all about that personal brand. That's it. Whoa. I've heard that before somewhere. That's right. Today, we're not talking about personal brands.

We're talking about the six traits of successful leaders. High-performing leaders. High-performing leaders. And not traits one through three. No, no, no. Today, we're talking about four through six. Well, how about we do a quick review of one through three? I think that's good that's right because if someone didn't heed my warning at the beginning of this episode

and they're already like knee deep into this episode what what did they miss well they're gonna miss they missed a lot so i'm gonna give them just enough where they're like oh i better go figure that one out okay so listen to the like the next couple of minutes and then listen to the next couple of minutes and then listen to the last podcast version. Whatever. I mean, it's on video somewhere, I'm sure. YouTube. Yeah. So here's part one, Mindset Matters. So this is about attitude and values. Part two, emotional intelligence. And part three is emotional maturity. So you ready for part four, my friend? Yes. All right. I love this one.

I love this one because frankly, I've had one of these for years. I believe that you as a leader need to have a coach. So part four is coaching. Two parts to this. One, can you coach? And two, are you coachable? Both of these are important because as a leader, you need to be coachable. If you're not coachable, you're not willing to

get better. And when you say coachable, I mean, are we saying like someone who can obviously listen to instruction, not get defensive and put what you were taught or coached to do into action? I mean, is that a good summary of being coachable? That's a great question. I'm going to get into that. Let's hit it. All right. Let's get into coaching. I wish I had like a whistle and a clipboard. Not that kind of coaching. So basically how a leader has a free-flowing developmental mindset is what coaching is about. So both for yourself as well as for those you lead. So essentially you're trying to find somebody who's coachable, but you have to be coachable as well because you have to have the development mindset also. And there's a great book about this.

It's called The Trillion Dollar Coach. It's the story of Bill Campbell, and he was the coach of some top leaders in Silicon Valley. So during his time before passing in 2016, he has the credit of helping to create over a trillion dollars of market capitalization for many of these well-known companies. So you know all the big companies. You see them all over the place. They all have multiple trillion dollar valuations, and you know who their leaders are. And that's basically at his funeral what the front row

looked like. All of these massive tech and corporate leaders were sitting there because this guy coached them. So Bill would always ask somebody before he hired him, are you coachable? Or before he even started coaching him, because really a leader can go hire a coach, but ultimately if they're not willing to listen and make change, they're not coachable. Mark, you said, what does coachable mean? Realistically, coaching, coachable, coach, it means different things to different people. And there are many different definitions out there, but here is, here's the best answer that I can give you. Coaches unlock true potential. So it's really deep because if you being coachable, you asked me, you know, how do you know, how do you know if a leader is coachable? Are they vulnerable? Are they vulnerable to let somebody into those deep, dark spaces in your head and your heart to say,

Mark, you've got more in there than you're giving. So how do we unlock that potential and get you to maximize your value delivery and continue to grow because your ability to deliver value is very elastic. If you're willing to continue to add to it, it's willing to continue to give back. If you're willing to continue to add to it, it's willing to continue to give back. So it's an ebb and flow, but as soon as you stop giving to it, chances are you're going to stop giving it back. And a coach helps you unlock that potential to continue to see new things. How do they do that? Is there a way to learn everything? Well, sure, there's a way to learn like a formula or a speech or whatever, but the reality is we always gain new experiences with new people. And a coach helps you understand those experiences so you can deploy that response and that experience to grow. So in relationships, business, athletics, physical capabilities,

whatever it is, how do you find more than you know you have? And ultimately, you don't know what your true potential is until someone on the outside of your skin helps you discover it. It's almost like the chicken and the egg. It's like in order for you to become a good coach, you need to be coachable. Right. You need someone to coach you into being a good coach. Yeah. right you need someone to coach you into being a good coach yeah it's it is it is a just a virtuous process that continues to build upon itself but it's also one that if you get stuck in the mud with it and you're you know all right i i got this i'm good i'm an expert you know people who claim to be experts or gurus, sometimes you put the brakes on.

You can't put the brakes on. The better you get, the more you press on the gas. It's counterintuitive. Yeah. I believe in the three concepts of learning. There's coaching, which we have here. There's mentors, which you go find somebody that can give you advice, been there, done that, things like that. And you're going to switch around between coaches,

you're going to switch around mentors, a coach you pay for. And you should realistically be investing about 10% of your income in your personal development and seeing growth out of that. So if you are, if you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year, you should be finding a way to invest $10,000 a year in personal development. People are like, oh my gosh, that's 10% of my income. Yeah. But what do you get back out of it? What do you get back out of it? 10 fold. ROI is huge, man. Yeah. You know it. You're always investing in your personal development. Watch your business grow. So you've got coaching, which you pay somebody to do.

You have a mentor, which typically is through relationships and kindness and gratitude. And then you have a mastermind, which typically you pay to do. And that's getting a bunch of people together that create the power of the association that you're in. And that levels up your performance and gives you a greater accountability group. So coaching mentors mastermind, but coaching is an incredibly important part of this because if you're not coachable, don't bother doing any of those others.

This is the beginning of that because you can have somebody sit there and tell you their perspective on things all day long, but if you're unwilling to learn from it, then why are you there? If you've made it to step four, go back and start a step one. You're not coachable. Totally. So, so here's the thing. If you truly want to unlock your potential, get a coach. It's worth it. Okay. I have coaches and I also coach both are incredibly rewarding. And I, I honestly believe you're, you're not a leader. If you're not willing to be coachable and coach. You're just somebody who continues to check off tick marks and say, all right, I accomplished something else. So I have a question, and this may be a rabbit trail and a different conversation, but one is

where do we find coaches? And two, how do we vet the coach? You know, a lot of times I feel like, you know, we're bombarded online with all these gurus and coaches, and maybe they just wrote a book or they just, you know, understood a system or process really well and can regurgitate that. And they're not really people who have done or are doing. So, I mean, do you have any advice about that for people? First of all, there's, there are coaching companies. You can call them up and hire a coach, things like that. It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. So coaching to say leadership framework, things of that nature. A lot of times the businesses are run by leadership psychologists, people who've studied leadership, MBAs and PhDs and business professors, things like that, who can take from other people's experiences and help you with those. Then you have other types of coaches like myself, for instance.

I've been there, done that in the company as a company leader, speaking from current experience and knowledge of successes and failures in that perspective. So, you know, you just, you got to figure out who do you bond with? Who are you willing to listen to? And who shares that? You know, we talked about alignment with emotional intelligence before. who can you align with? I've interviewed a whole bunch of coaches where I've just gone out in cold, looked at different corporate coaches. I'm like, not really doing it for me. And ultimately you just don't know until you sit down and talk to them. But you got to do your research before that. I always watch videos on people, read some of the stuff that they've come up with. Is that what you're looking for? And I'll tell you what, if you just

want advice, you can ask a friend. If you want somebody to really give you that aha and that uncomfortable movement forward that you're looking for, that's truly what a coach should be able to give you. It was interesting because I run a mastermind. I'm part of several masterminds. And we were on a call today on one of them. And I was walking people through dealing with employees and team members. We were talking about challenging people, challenged team members, challenged employees, basically people who are negative.

I want to put it a certain way. How do you deal with that? And everybody, it's interesting because if you bring that up, you go, all right, who has an employer or a team member that is bringing people down? People are looking around and they're nodding their heads

and they're raising their hand or and they're raising their hand or they're sitting on their hand or whatever it might be, whatever our certain responses, they need a coach. Okay. If you're doing that, you need a coach. If you have, if you have, I don't want to call them mistakes. If you have situations that you know you need to deal with, but you don't know how to deal with, or you're struggling to deal with, or you're like, you have aspirations that you can't quite pursue. You need a coach. This is a new, it's an industry that's been around for a long time, but ultimately it's an adaptation that's coming into society, hardcore mainstream right now that people are going, I can be better. So I don't know if I answered your question.

Yeah, I think that's good, man. This is a big one. Part four. All right. Part five, chess board thinking, having a strategic mindset. All right. Let me run you through a little story here first. So picture this, you're in a competition, the timer's running for you and you have multiple dimensions to think about with consequences for every single move and different strengths and weaknesses of every possible move and every piece that you can move. That's a chess competition right there. But this isn't a chess game. This is business. I think it's a great analogy because as a business leader, I look at it and I go,

I'm not playing checkers. I'm not playing in two dimensions. Checkers, you're forward or backwards. Everything weighs the same. Chess has so many variables. It's like this matrix of possibilities in what you do in your decisions. And that's how business is. It requires multidimensional thinking and a solid sound psyche to make these decisions because you're going to second guess yourself. The question is, is this move for offense or defense? Are you making a sacrifice or are you making a gain? Not all of these moves are created equally in business. And if you can articulate what you're doing and how that plays into this strategic mindset of running your business, that's where you want to be. Because ultimately, I talked about the timer. A lot of people are like, well, we'll wait and see. That is a decision to not do anything.

Not making a decision is a decision because the timer is always running and you may miss an opportunity. You can't run your business based upon fear of missing opportunities, FOMO, fear of missing out. Because a lot of times impulse comes into play with that instead of strategic thinking. You have to understand all those different variations. And that's strategy right there. That's talking strategy. Then you bring tactics in. Tactics are the actions that you take. Strategy is the thinking, several moves ahead, the ultimate goal, big scale thinking, decision points, stage gates, whatever you want to call them. Tactics are what does that move? What does that move cost? What are you trying to accomplish with it? Things like that.

So strategy is what do you want to accomplish? Tactics are how will you accomplish it? So many people can come up with the tactics, but really leaders need to take a step back and go, why? And what else? And what if? And why not? And how do we? And do we? Things like that.

So that's what leaders need to be considering. And you got to have that mindset of chessboard thinking. You're not just looking at today, tomorrow. Or you're not just looking at, is it going to be five o'clock yet so I can go home? You're looking at, what does my one, three, five year plan look like? And how does this strategy fit into that? What are all the little nuances and variables in that? And you can't get attached to anything. You have to be attached to the end goal and the ultimate value of that strategy. I feel like just staying educated and learning constantly will help with this type of mindset, having a strategic mindset. If you're constantly growing and reading and educating yourself and putting yourself in

situations where you're learning constantly, it seems like that would really be beneficial for you. Totally. Totally, totally. And I'll tell you, before we move on to the final one here, one of the key red flags in this that you'll notice in business is if somebody only falls in love with their pet projects and doesn't look at the grand picture of the entire company, because sometimes you need to give up your pet projects,

your chess move, and give that chess move to somebody else. It's going to make a bigger difference in the strategy than your chess move. It's interesting. You got to be really in a giving mind to be at the level of the chess pieces in order to rise above and get to the strategic place. Strategic thinking, chessboard thinking, always take a step back and go, am I thinking strategically? And then you can dive deeper and make those tactics happen. So let's talk about part six. Before we talk about part six, let me review four and five real quick here. So part four, coaching. Are you coachable? Can you coach? Part five, chessboard thinking, a strategic mindset. Now part six, I love this one because the one common thing that all great leaders have in common, consistency. You can chip away slowly and surely on that conquest for success.

It's not about one big move. It's not about one big move. It's about tiny little moves consistently built up over time. Running a marathon is not just going on and running 26.2 miles. It's taking a step and then another step and another step. And it's a lot of steps to get 26 miles, but they're all another step. That's leadership right there. So what does this provide to people in an organization?

It provides comfort that they know what they need to be doing. Consistency provides comfort. Employees that see inconsistent leadership get worried because they don't know what they're supposed to do. They feel lost. It's unclear. They don't know what their goals are at the end of the day, let alone at the end of the month or the end of the year. So consistency gives employees a future to build on. Leaders who change often have teams that change often. Leaders that change often have teams that change often. And guess where they get?

Nowhere. Yeah, they start over every time. That's it. Consistent leaders build followers who become extremely loyal in the pursuit of consistent direction. And really what gets you success is not change. It's adjustment. Change is a novelty. It's sought by the weakness of the human brain. Change is a novelty. The strong usually have the rare brains that seek consistency. Now you're going to make adjustments Now you're going to make adjustments.

You're going to make adjustments. Little tiny 1% course corrections. You have to recognize, measure, manage those adjustments. But you're not wholesale making change. So think about this. Professional athletes, you only see them on the field. You don't see the 10,000 hours they put in running the same pass pattern, hitting the ball the same on the putting green,

throwing the ball the same or shooting the ball the same, or NASCAR drivers. You know how many laps they've put in before they actually get out and run a race? Thousands. Yeah, lots of them start when they're like four years old driving around the driveway or something like that it's consistency any expert consistency any community leader consistency really ultimately what consistency is it's tolerance for boredom and repetition it's tolerance of the boredom. I mean, it's monotony.

Yeah, it's a muscle we all need to work on. Exactly. It's patience for slow achievement. So when temptation comes creeping in and you want to chase the shiny thing, take a step back and think to yourself, consistency matters. That's our number six, Mark. There you have it. The six traits of high performing leaders. Adam, thank you so much.

This has been solid. I got a question for you, buddy. What's that? How do you start your day with a win uh well it starts with a delicious cup of spin coffee and then i head to the gym get in a good workout and uh head to the office and practice being a high-performing leader to my team i love it i, Mark. This is a great series. Yep. If you missed the first part, obviously we've already said this, go back, listen to the first half and then come back here. But hey guys, thanks so much for listening. Without the Win Nation, we couldn't share our podcast with the world. So thank you guys so much for being a part of the show and tuning in each week and writing comments and leaving reviews. It means a lot to us.

We have been consistent over almost two years creating podcasts, and we're just excited for the next two of consistent podcast creation. Anyways, hey, don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, rate a review, and rate the show. For more great content, head over to startwithawin.com, follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and subscribe, rate a review and rate the show. For more great content, head over to StartWithAWin.com. Follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.