I recently sat down to talk about my new book START with my mentor, Dave Ramsey. It was fun getting to talk with him and dig a little deeper into the heart of what I want START to accomplish. I hope you enjoy it and hear something that encourages and challenges you to START!
This interview clip is courtesy of the EntreLeadership Podcast. Check it out for great teaching on business, team building, and leadership.
I fly a lot in the fall and spring. (Yes, like a migrating monarch butterfly, which is probably what you were thinking.)
A few weeks ago, while at the Nashville airport, I walked up to the security line.
There were three lines open for the station where the guy checks your ID and your boarding pass. The one on the left had 25 people in it. The one in the middle had 25 people in it. The one on the right? It was empty.
Nobody was in the one on the right, which I thought was weird.
Old generation leaders think:
“If I share my weaknesses, my followers will never be able to trust my strengths.”
That thinking helped create leaders who, in meetings, and in speeches only share their successes or mistakes they made twenty years ago. The ridiculous assumption is if you don’t share your weaknesses, people won’t know you have any. Usually, the people you lead are already well aware of your weaknesses, even if you’ve been fronting like you’re perfect.
This next generation won’t stand for that line of thinking.
New generation leaders know:
“If I don’t trust my followers enough to share my weaknesses with them, they’ll never trust my strengths when I share those with them.”
The days of fake leaders are drawing to a close.
Don’t overshare as a weapon or a way to manipulate, but don’t think you can be an authentic leader without being an authentic human first.
Question:
How would you define “authenticity?”
I hate telling people no.
Regardless of the request, I feel like I am disappointing them, failing them, and letting them down.
So instead, I say “yes” a lot and then secretly hate the person who’s requested something from me. Or I say yes and then break my commitment at the last second.
Both of those options suck.
Do you remember the Segway? Of course you do! You’ve probably got a couple of them in your garage right now. Remember when we all used to walk? With our feet? That was so ridiculous! Things sure have changed since the Segway came out.
Only they haven’t. Despite the hype, the product was a dismal failure. Despite what all the experts said, it never really blew up. And smart people really thought it was going to be huge! Take this quote from a Segway enthusiast:
“If enough people see the machine, you won’t have to convince them to architect cities around it. It’ll just happen.” (Page 146, The Dumbest Moments in Business History)
Know what this is?
The number of times I walked my kids to school in August.
Know how many times I want to do it this year?
50.
Know why I wrote it down?
Because I tend to ignore things I don’t write down.
That’s a fun sentence.
So is “See Tony Dungy for free.”
So is “See Cokie Roberts for free.”
So is “See Patrick Lencioni for free.”
So is, well we could play this game all day because there are 14 speakers at the World Leaders Conference and the entire webcast is free.
That is awesome.
Going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of giving you access to cool stuff I find. Like this.
Don’t miss the free webcast. It’s on September 27 and 28. (Or in layman’s terms, this Thursday and Friday!)
One time I got to hear business guru Seth Godin speak at a lunch.
There were about 15 of us in a small room in a conference center.
Godin spoke for about 30 minutes, and then opened up the floor for questions.
Here was one of the most successful marketing minds in the last 20 years.
Here was someone who has sold millions of books.
Here was a keynote speaker who gets paid tens of thousands of dollars, asking 15 strangers at lunch if they had any questions. And do you know what happened?
This week, you will have the opportunity to sit on your talent.
To walk when you could actually fly.
To hold your tongue when you know you’ve got a great idea.
To let fear win the day when there’s a smoldering bit of boldness you need to act on.
When presented with the choice to accept average this week, I want you to remember this photo.
I want you to be this duck.
Because all the ducks on the sign have the gift of flight, just like all of us have some innate ability inside.
But only one of them is daring to use it, the rest are walking. And it doesn’t look like he’s having an easy time, does it? He’s not soaring. His wings aren’t spread in a heroic V like a hawk high above the trees. He’s struggling, pushing agains the sky with everything he’s got. He’s going to fly, not walk. And I hope you will too.
Be this duck.
I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old daughter.
A few weeks ago, they grabbed my iPhone, took a photo, and then added cats to that photo.
This is what kids do. They add cats to photos.
I then posted that photo on Instagram. It was a funny photo. I’m a dad who loves sharing how awesome my kids are. End of story.
Next morning, L.E. comes downstairs. I tell her I posted the photo.
Her first response was, “How many likes did it get?”
That is why my kids won’t use social media any time soon.
She’s 9.
She doesn’t need to be worrying about how many “likes” something she created got.
I’m 36. I’ve been to college. I’ve worked at a lot of companies. I’ve purchased a house, done my taxes and a lot of the other things you do as an adult and, even so, I have a hard time handling “likes.”
I don’t want to add that to her tiny self-esteem.
When I was in the seventh grade, a guy named Dan Smith laughed at me in the courtyard before school started. He didn’t like the shirt I was wearing. He got other people to laugh. I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of “likes” in that moment.
But I couldn’t measure them. I didn’t count them. Other people weren’t about to see how low I was on “likes” in that moment, but with social media you can.
I don’t know how old your kids should be before you let them use social media. If you’re a parent and your kids have Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, please don’t think I’m judging your decision.
The title of this post is “Why my kids won’t use social media any time soon,” not “Why your kids shouldn’t use social media any time soon.”
I don’t have the answer for your family. I honestly don’t have it all figured out and will make countless mistakes along the way.
What I do have, though, is a recent realization that as a dad, I want to do everything I can to protect my kids from anything that will force their hearts to ask, “How many likes did I get?”