Day 1 – Is SIMPLE Leadership even possible?

Action Step

Answer this question – What would improve it you could simplify your life, work, and leadership? To get the best results through this process, be as specific as possible.

Session Transcript

Welcome to 15 Days of SIMPLE Leadership!

In this short course, we’re going to look at the concept of SIMPLE Leadership. So many people find out that we are interested in making leadership simple for people through cutting through the chaos and helping people to identify how they can simplify their life, work, and leadership. They say, “Is that even possible? How can we simplify our leadership? I mean, the world is the way that it is, and our work is the way that it is, and people are incredibly complex, and technology, and communication. All of these things have become incredibly complex.”

How can we simplify our life, work, and leadership?

I want to start up by telling you about our experiences with leaders all over the world in all different sizes of organizations. From stay-at-home moms and dads, to executives of Fortune 500 companies – billion dollar corporations. We began hearing some of the same things, and we heard them over and over and over again. We would work with our clients and they would come into a session and they would say, “I’m stuck,” or “I’m overwhelmed,” or “I’m frustrated,” or “I’m blocked, I can’t make progress. There’s some reason that I can’t make progress.” We would hear them blame it on all types of things. I mean, some of the same conversations that you and I have with people, and other leaders, and with our team members. They would say communication, or technology, or children, or education; things are so complex.

When we really began digging in to it, we found that it wasn’t the external pressures in our external environment, the things that were going on around us, that were bringing the simplicity and the chaotic nature into our life, work, and leadership. But that it had more to do with the decisions that we were making.

Here’s what we learned: Every decision that we make does one of two things, it either simplifies or it complicates. It either adds more simplicity or it adds more complexity and chaos.

So, our experience with leaders, again, in all types of organizations, caused us to realize that there is an epidemic problem, and something has to be done. What can we do?

And so, we started thinking about the same questions that you have. Is SIMPLE Leadership even possible? If so, how do I get there?

So many of us find ourselves at some point on this downward spiral to chaos, to disaster. There’s several phases of it. Most of the time, we start this downward spiral by simply getting distracted. I mean, it’s not somebody coming in wanting to blow up what’s going on, somebody providing critical or negative feedback, or somebody working against us, or some external force that causes a problem — throws a monkey wrench in things. It usually begins with someone, either the leader or someone that’s in a significant role connected to the project or the team, whatever it is that we’re working on. We just get our eyes off of the vision. We get distracted in one form or another.

That distraction then, leads to discomfort. People began to realize we’re not focused on the vision anymore or when we receive that negative feedback, it derailed us a little bit. Now, there’s this uncomfortable, “Are we going to keep moving forward, or do we really still believe in the vision?” There’s a discomfort. You’re uncomfortable. Your team members are uncomfortable. People within the organization are uncomfortable. Maybe even your customers or your clients become uncomfortable.

It leads us to a point of discontent, and that discontent can also come at all levels related to the organization. The leader starts looking for a way out. Customers start looking for a way out. Clients start bailing ship. We start losing and we’re like, “Man, what’s going on?”

And then we end up going from this discontent into despair. “I don’t know how to get out of this. I don’t even know the way back.” We reach this point of despair like, “I don’t even know if there’s a way to make progress here.”

If we don’t get it corrected somewhere along the way, either at the point of distraction, or discomfort phase, or in the discontent phase, or even in despair; if we can’t find a way out, the downward spiral inevitably leads to disaster. We’ve all been there. The craps hit the fan, the bottoms fall out, the rug has been ripped out from under. We’re at disaster and we’re like, “Man, that’s not what I wanted.”

So, what we want to help you do is make a few fundamental decisions that will simplify thousands of future decisions for you. We want to help you identify where you are so that you can experience dramatic improvements at home, at work, and in your leadership.

For the next 15 days, we’re going to send you an email and it’ll link to video or audio sessions, whatever works best for you, so that you can walk this path with us toward SIMPLE Leadership.

Are you ready?

Let’s get started.[/text_block]