Start With A Win - The Impact of Attitude

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

What is the first step to leadership? Adam draws from his wealth of leadership training and experience to provide the answer to Start With A Win listeners on this episode. The first step to leadership, he says, is to lead yourself first. It’s counterintuitive because many people assume that the most vital leadership outcome is getting people to do what you want them to do. However, you cannot be an effective leader without first being intentional with yourself. Particularly, it is crucial to have control of your attitudes and emotions.Pastor Chuck Swindoll is famous for saying that life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. Adam expands on this quote by saying that leaders have a choice every day about how they will feel and interact with others and that this attitude can make or break a leader’s credibility, relationships, effectiveness, and impact. You will attract other people who behave as you do, and those around you will start to mirror what they see in you, so make conscious choices. Demonstrate emotional intelligence and emotional maturity despite the circumstances. You don’t have to put on a fake positive attitude either. You can be realistic and optimistic at the same time. Accept that you will face challenges and know that you can confront them and overcome every adverse situation. You get to decide your mindset when you wake up every morning, so choose to be positive and see challenges as opportunities. Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Hey, Mark. Hey, Adam. How are you today, buddy? Fantastic. Awesome. Hey, do you know what the first step to leadership is? Well, I'm sure I'm about to find out. Let's do it.

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. The Dancing Mike. And coming to you from Denver, Colorado, it's Adam Kontos with the Dancing Mike on Start With a WIN. That's right. If you don't follow us on YouTube, head over to YouTube and subscribe because you'll get a little bit of this video action of what happens before and after podcasts. I thought I was going to rip the cable out of my mixer board by doing that.

It's like a domino effect. The lamp behind you falls over and the the stay hungry poster falls off the wall it'd have been a train wreck here in my little eight by eight studio my basement but we made it we made it through the dance in one piece that's right well it's probably way more than people want to know no way they want to know about us. No way. They want to know all this stuff. We've been doing this podcast now for, what, two years? Yeah. It's been quite a while. That's right. So if you've been along for the journey, it's like you're part of the podcast. You know what's funny, Mark? When I talk to people, they're like, hey, I listened to your podcast. We knew we were going to talk or whatever. We had a meeting set up or scheduled. And they're

like, hey, I watched some of your videos, listen to your podcast, stuff like that. It's, it's actually kind of intriguing when, um, you know, you find out how much people research you before they chat with you. Yeah. Well, and this is a great, uh, you know, a great source of, of research. Well, it's, it's funny to me. Nobody yet has commented on my horrible dancing skills though. So, well, you know, I think, uh, skills are bad, but you know what? I would say dancing is subjective. It's like art, right? It's like, you look at a Picasso and it's like, is that a good painting? I mean, it doesn't look that good to me, but it's subjective, right? So dancing, I think is very similar where it's like, right? So dancing, I think, is very similar.

We're just like, is that bad dancing? This is my podcast interpretive dance. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, we can't judge you, dude. It's art. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, don't tell the artist how to paint the painting.

That's right. Don't tell the artist how to paint the painting. So leadership. All right. So this is something that you obviously are into. A little bit. A little. Just a little bit. You've dabbled in the leadership realm. I dabble daily in leadership. That's right. So you have some knowledge to impart onto us. And so let's see, you said the first step to becoming a better leader. Is that correct? The first step to leadership, really. I mean, it's- The first step to becoming a better leader? Is that correct? The first step to leadership, really.

The first step. Yeah. I get asked a lot, give me some leadership advice or whatever. And it's interesting because I always revert to this as the first step in leadership. And it really truly is because everybody thinks that leading is going out and going, here's how I'm going to solve your problem and tell you what to do, which is that's a bunch of BS. That's like that's even not even leading. That's kind of trying to manage people. And that doesn't work for anybody. So really the first step in leading, Mark, get this.

This is very counterintuitive. Okay. You have to lead yourself first. Hmm. You have to lead yourself first. Hmm. You have to lead yourself first. Which is, I think, hard, right? Because it's something that you don't think about doing. It's fascinating when you think about it.

You're absolutely right. And I talk to a lot of CEOs in different companies. I talk to a lot of people in senior leadership positions. And it's interesting because every leadership challenge is not necessarily the problem itself. It's the people. It's always the people. And well, let me just kind of give you a snippet of a quote here. I'm going to get into the whole quote itself. But have you ever heard the quote that says, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react?

I have heard that, and I love that quote. All right. So this is by a pastor named Charles Swindle. Oh, Charles Swindle. All right. Yes. So Charles has this lengthy quote, and I want to read this to everybody here. This is so good when it comes to building that foundational aspect of leadership, which is yourself.

And it's fascinating. So I want to unpack this a little bit. Okay. This is what Charles said. The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our own attitude. Man, let that sink in. I've also heard it about the idea of allowing, you have a remote to your emotions and your feelings and your attitude, and you're in control of this remote. But so many times in life, we hand that remote over to somebody else and let them be in control of us. And so it's so important that we hold on to that remote ourselves and we dictate and control

our attitude, our emotions, our feelings, all these other kinds of things. Because obviously, when we give that remote over to somebody else, we're no longer in charge. They're the ones saying, be angry, be upset, be fearful, be frustrated. And they're changing the channel of our emotions. And so, yeah, I would agree 100%, 90% of how we, you know, the things that happen to us, you know, it's just how we respond to them. So that's a great message. It's so impactful to a leader and to those that are being led. And the first thing that I've heard from really, really great leaders is when you ask, what's the piece of advice you have for a leader? They always say, control your emotions first. And emotions are your attitudes. So you have two aspects of leadership. You have attitudes and

actions. And attitudes, like what Charles talks about here, really is 90% of your leadership. People don't follow people because they're freaking miserable, okay? Because they have a bad attitude, because they hate life. You know what you attract? You attract people just like that. And those people are incredibly challenging to lead or to accomplish or to find success with. All they want to do is continue to drive whatever it is you're trying to accomplish into the ground because of that horrible attitude. When it can become very toxic for business and organization, whatever it is. Over time, it's toxic. Totally. So I mean, really, what it boils down to when you go back to that first step in leading is lead yourself first,

is you have to check your attitude first. And it's not just your attitude in that circumstance, because you can't hide a bad attitude in your life by just jumping into a circumstance. You're fake. Nobody will believe you. They will see right through you. So you have to holistically have an attitude in life that you want to translate across all aspects of it. Your personal relationships, your finances, your faith, your health and well-being, your family, and your business. Your attitude. You get to pick one attitude in those things. One attitude.

And that translates across all of them because, again, you can't be fake and expect it to not show up somewhere else. So really, I mean, before you can lead others, you have to be able to lead yourself, which means you have to get along with yourself. Because here's the reality. You can't break up with that relationship. Everywhere you go, there you are. Yes. That's it. Can you separate yourself from yourself?

No. No, you cannot. No. No, you cannot. No. So don't try and lead your way around your personal problems. It doesn't work. Your attitude follows you everywhere. So you have to pour everything you have into it, and others will see this and follow suit.

Leading is about projecting the image that you want others to mirror. Think about that. We learn by mirror neurons in our brain. When we see something, we imitate it. That's how babies learn. That's how you teach your child to do things. How to, you know, everything from holding a pencil or a marker or a crayon or chopsticks or a fork or a knife to smiling, to squinting, to winking, to throwing a ball. You know, it's the old saying, you know, we all put on our pants one leg at a time

because that's how we learn to do it. Right. You know, we mirror, we mimic everything that we see, including and predominantly attitude. So you talk about values. We recently did an interview with Joanna Colton, who is an amazing woman leader, CEO of several REMAX offices in Portugal. And she talked about leading with her values because that's the kind of people she wanted to attract. And that's how she wanted to live her life. When you live a certain way, you attract certain types of people because you're leading

yourself first and other people will go, that's how I want to be led. Yeah. Yeah. The values, you know, she had loyalty, communication, gratitude, and no drama as her values. And so you think that when you wake up every day and lead yourself with those, those kind of core values, that it's almost, your attitude almost can't be negative or, you know, down or, or disrupted at some point, you know, and I think there, I wonder like what the balance is. Cause I get, I get accused of, you know, living with rose colored glasses a lot, uh, where I'm always seeing the glass half full and things will work out, expect that it's all going to be okay. And so I wonder if there is a balance of,

I don't know, as a leader, how do you be real and then also stay positive? What are your thoughts on that? I choose to be real in a positive manner. I mean, it's, you're going to have challenges in life, life. You know, you don't wake up without having challenges in front of you. The first challenge is what do I do next? When you open your eyes in the morning, that's a challenge. And it's a huge challenge for a lot of people. And some people make it a bigger challenge than it needs to be. You know, they're like, oh, my back hurts, or I don't want to stand up or I, you know, I want to sleep in, you know, they they're, they're hiding from their challenges. You can't hide from your challenges, confront them and confront them

with the greatest attitude ever. And you'll overcome them because again, you know, life is 90 or 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react. So what happened to me this morning? My eyes opened because my alarm went off. You know what I did? I was excited. I put a smile on my face. It's hard to be angry or sad when you have a smile on your face. You get to choose how you want to be, what your attitude is. I put a smile on my face and I thought, I am blessed to have the opportunity to go exercise and make myself better. It's the same thing when you have, you know, and maybe you have a challenge with a business item, a contract, and there's arguments over the contract. Do you take and get this really angry attitude and go, oh, I can't believe they're saying that,

or I can't believe they're doing that? Because, I mean, what did you just do? You just shut off your ability to think productively. So your approach to looking at the world with rose colored glasses, and by the way, we love your glasses, Mark. Listeners, if you're not- They're more white than rose, but- They're white, but it's a white rose, okay? That's right., they're more white than rose, but they're white, but they're, you know, it's a white rose. Okay. Um, so there are white roses, you know, every color of the rainbow roses, it's whatever we want to make them. But, um, see positive attitude right there. But, uh, I mean, the reality is, is you get to decide how you lead yourself before you lead others. And you can't lead others until you lead yourself. It's just that's the way it is.

So that's the foundation for success. You're never going to find success if you grumble and hate your way through it. You will never find success. You will always find something wrong and you always find failure, period. And it's OK to fail. It's OK to fail as long as you have the right attitude about it, as long as you're grateful for the opportunity to try. So, and you're right.

Some people are like, I can't stand your positive attitude. Great. I love your passion for my positive attitude. I love it. And you're not going to take it from me because Mark, you know, we get to give our attitudes to whomever we want and they get to give us theirs if we let them. Right. And it's, it's holistic in life. Everything, everything. I, I mean, Kelly and I, we, we plan our meals for the day. I'm like, I love the opportunity to eat healthy today. I love to have some vegetables. I love this. I mean,

just, you know, a lot of people are going to be like, oh, you're just too positive. You're damn straight I am because I love it. So I lead myself first and that allows me to be the very best leader that I can for others. And when I talk to business leaders, business managers, the first thing that breaks down is that. That's the very first thing and it's not recognized. That's the first domino to fall in causing challenges, causing cancers within organizations, within projects, things like that, instead of finding solutions. So that's why I wanted to talk about that today, the first step. It's that 90s saying, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself. Bam!

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. You know, you can, it, you know, you can stop, collaborate and listen also. Okay. Too legit to quit. Oh, well, awesome, Adam. Thank you so much for the insight on leadership. Hopefully this was encouraging podcast to you this morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever you're listening to it. Don't forget, you can go on to startwithwin.com. You can get a lot more great content. If you really enjoyed this episode, head over to YouTube, subscribe to our channel there, and hit that thumbs up. Also, if you want to leave us a voice message and maybe tell us how you start your day with a win, give us a call.

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