When subordinates aren’t doing what they should, leaders who exercise Extreme Ownership cannot blame the subordinates. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute. (Jocko Willink – Extreme Ownership)
Leaders are intentional influencers.
When things seem to be headed in the wrong direction they don’t blame the team. Instead they:
•Acknowledge that they are ultimately in charge,
•Take ownership of the situation,
•Get clarity of reality,
•Collaborate with their team on a better direction,
•Empower and enable change.
Ownership paves the way for a better direction.
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A new HERBISM is published each Monday morning as an encouragement and reminder of the things that successful leaders do. We are all busy, so more often we need to be reminded than instructed.
Herb Mast is Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. He would love to assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.
It’s not intellectually honest to say, “I didn’t have a choice”.
Saying that you didn’t have a choice is just an excuse.
The truth is, we always have a choice!
The real issue is what did you do with your choice. In other words, what actions did you take as a result of your choices?
Take Ownership
The truly honest thing is to own your choices, own your actions, and own the consequences that resulted from them.
Maybe that is also a good way to explain what wisdom is…taking ownership and directing actions in line with better choices.
I believe the concept of ownership together with the practice of intentionality determine the depth and growth of our wisdom.
Ownership seems like a straight-forward concept, although ego and invulnerability often keep us from taking ownership of our choices, actions, and the resulting consequences.
Take Action
Intentionality, however, is a word you don’t hear much. That’s unfortunate because it represents a very powerful principle. People often talk about their intentions, but intentionality and intention are not the same. Even good intentions can be deceiving. Samuel Johnson (not Samuel Jackson, the actor) went as far as to say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
My father-in-law used to tell me a story about three frogs on a log. He said that there were three frogs on a log and one decided to jump off. How many frogs were left on the log?
This is not a test to see if you are smarter than a first grader, nor to test your math skills. This is, however, a test of your understanding of the concept of intentionality. You see, decisions are similar to intentions. Decisions and intentions without action amount to nothing. In other words, regardless of whether the frog decided to jump or not, the issue is whether the frog followed through and actually jumped. Without action, there would still be three frogs on the log.
A Seinfeld Episode for Every Situation
Our family are big Seinfeld fans. It seems there is a Seinfeld episode for every situation in life. Who would have imagined that a show about “nothing” could have so much insight into life? Anyway, in one of the episodes, Kramer, after he makes his usual grand entrance into Jerry’s apartment, announces that he has decided to build levels in his apartment. Knowing Kramer’s erratic personality Jerry promptly rebuts him with, “no you won’t!”
A debate ensues where Kramer argues that he will build the levels and Jerry keeps denying that he will actually do it. Jerry challenges him to put money where his mouth is and Kramer agrees to a wager.
In a subsequent scene Jerry asks Kramer how his levels are coming and Kramer states that he decided not to build them after all. Jerry smiles and holds out his hand as a gesture for Kramer to pay up for losing the bet. Kramer refuses to pay and claims that he technically did not lose the bet because he could have built them if he wanted to. He just decided not to. Exasperated, Jerry says, “that’s exactly the point…the bet was about whether you would do it or not and you didn’t.”
Intentionality is about having an intention, or making a decision, and taking action. It’s about thoughts and choices together with action. Here is a model that explains what intentionality is and how it is at the core of every great endeavor.
The model also shows how a lack of intentionality—having potentially good intentions, but taking the action—is ultimately at the core of failure.
If at First You Don’t Succeed
Abraham Lincoln said, “if you want to increase your rate of success increase your rate of failure.” I agree with this statement and see no contradiction with the Intentionality model. You see, every action has an effect. If our action does not produce the effect we intended it is referred to as failure. In reality, however, failure is simply feedback—feedback that our action did not produce the desired result. The challenge and opportunity boils down to whether we do something with that valuable feedback.
Physics suggests that if we keep doing what we did we will keep getting what we got—an unfavorable result. Hence, it is incumbent upon us to change something. However, without taking ownership of our actions we deny ourselves the benefit of the feedback we need to make necessary course corrections. In the process, we doom ourselves to keep repeating the same actions and continuing down the path of failure.
I was an avid skier growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and we used to say that if you don’t fall it’s hard to become a better skier. You see, people tend to fall when they embark on new things and push the boundaries of their abilities. But just because you fall does not mean that you have to stay down. To get better get up, dust yourself off, and try again…while learning from what made you fall. And eventually you get better.
The Seven Simple Steps of Intentionality
Practice the following seven simple steps of intentionality for guaranteed results:
Make a plan. Be specific about the result you ultimately want, the steps you will take, and the result you anticipate [aka goal] by taking these steps.
Set check-points. Check-points are interim time intervals at which you measure the results of your actions and compare those results to the goal. A good rule of thumb is to set check-points at intervals which are between 10-25% of the overall time anticipated.
Execute the plan. In other words, take action in line with your plan.
Measure progress at the first check-point. After an appropriate amount of time evaluate the results from your actions and match those against the results you anticipated.
Make adjustments. If the actual results are not in line with the anticipated result re-evaluate the plan and adjust. It is said that the trajectory of a rocket is only correct for first 5% of the journey. After that it is all about make course corrections or adjustments.
Execute the revised plan.
Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 until your goal is achieved.
In grade school we used to play a game called “King of the Mountain”. The whole idea was to be the one on the top and to keep anybody else from taking over our top position (i.e. keep everybody else down). Even though that was just a game it seems reflective of how many business owners and managers continue to operate.
Yet, if the entire purpose of business is to make a profit, and the first lesson of economics is to find a need and fill it, then the king of the mountain approach is not going to help us achieve those objectives.
Truly successful business leaders understand that the better their team serves customers the more customers they will retain and the more profit they will make. They also understand that their highest responsibility is to ensure their team has everything they need to best serve customers. This is especially true for front line staff who are the ones closest to the customer.
Unfortunately, unless the team is aligned around a customer centric paradigm many bosses and managers default to a king of the mountain mindset, which conflicts with what should be their ultimate focus. Don’t confuse service with weakness. It takes a strong and courageous leader to humbly serve rather than be served. If servant leadership seems like a paradox it is only because we confuse the concept of a boss with that of a leader. Followers is the best sign of a leader and you will find more followers behind a leader than you will behind a boss.
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Herb Mast is Leadership Coach and Growth Catalyst. He would love to assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here. He is confident that in the process you will enjoy a 10X return on your investment.
Conflict is not always a bad thing and should not always be avoided. In fact, sometimes conflict can be healthy, both physically and emotionally.
Consider the presence of a splinter. It seems like a small thing, but left unchecked it will fester and become a big thing. People have died from the poisons that developed from infections when splinters festered. But dealing with splinters requires intentionality. The decision must be made to take action. And there are times that splinters have penetrated deeply and require more than casual effort to extract. Sure there will be short term pain, as the splinter is pulled, but invariably that pain pales in comparison to what will be experienced after some festering.
There is always the risk of getting relational splinters whenever you bring people together. We may not always realize that a splinter has rubbed off, until some level of discomfort develops. But, more times than not our emotional brain, our gut feel, senses the splinter. Unfortunately, we have been taught to avoid conflict and told that time will heal all wounds. That is just not true, just like with a splinter. We may not see the damage at first, but left unaddressed relational splinters fester with time and produce poisons.
Recognizing the potential damage that can result from not addressing issues, leaders choose to embrace “healthy conflict”, recognizing that conflict in this context represents the pursuit of truth and the best possible solution.
The next time you are tempted to sweep an issue under the rug remember the splinter and courageously take action for the ultimate betterment of all involved.
If healthy conflict is a foreign concept to you and seems unnatural I would be pleased to help you adopt this powerful leadership concept for the betterment of your team and culture.
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Herb Mast is an Automotive *Team Performance* Coach. He would love to assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented above. He is confident that in the process you will enjoy a 10X ROI.
Why does one dealership perform better than another?
I have yet to meet members of a leadership team who I thought lacked the intelligence or the domain expertise required to be successful. I’ve met many, however, who failed to foster organizational health. Their companies were riddled with politics, various forms of dysfunction, and confusion about their direction and mission. – Patrick Lencioni, author of the book The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business.
Investing in the health of your organization is one of the best business decisions you can make considering that the average US worker is only 40-70% productive due to poor leadership, dysfunctional teams, weak cultures, and poor communication. Gallup reports in their annual State of the American Workplace (2015) that only 32% of US workers are considered to be engaged at work. Of the other 68%, 50.8% are unengaged and 17.2% are actively disengaged.
According to the Corporate Leadership Council the benefit of employee engagement to business is:
87% increased employee retention
21% improved productivity levels
10% greater customer retention
22% greater overall profitability
The fact is that people tend to be less engaged in an unhealthy environment. It’s no different than when you have a cold, the flu, a headache, or something more serious. When you are not feeling well motivation and the ability to think reduces dramatically.
Unfortunately our society is more reactive, than proactive. We spend multiple times more on fixing things than what it would have cost had things been maintained. It is the same with health care—most people wait until they get sick before they seek help. And, then, it is not because they necessarily want to get healthy as much as they just want to feel better so they can continue doing what they were doing without the pain and discomfort of being sick. It’s such an illusion. The truth is, we all function better when we are actually healthy and fit.
There is no clearer example of the importance and benefit of health than in sports. And, when it really matters, like in professional sports, the idea of NOT having a trainer and team doctor on hand is short sighted—not only for issues and injuries during the game, but to help players get in, and stay in, the best possible shape so they can perform at their best, and avoid illness and injuries. Sports understands that health and performance are inextricably linked.
It’s time for business to take another lesson from sports and invest more in organizational health. Even Benjamin Franklin told us that, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” which suggests that prevention has a 1600% ROI.
What are you doing in 2018 to increase employee engagement? I have great ideas if you need some.
Let me know what questions you have or how I can assist you in achieving greater health and performance within your store.
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Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Business Consultant specializing in the Automotive industry. He would love to assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented above. He is confident that in the process you will enjoy a 10X ROI.
Herb Mast is Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. He would love to assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here. 
