Strengthen Your Leadership Intelligence with Eight Leadership Essentials to Maximize Impact

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W Forcy Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show, program, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W Forcy Radio or its employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FORCY Radio. What's Working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential.

0:45 Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, Doctor Release Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose Program. Thanks for tuning again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor Elie's Quartez joining alive from Dallas, Texas homebase. For me, if we've not met yet and you don't know me, I'm a management consultant, organization logo therapist, a speaker and author. My team and I at Least Cortes and Associates help companies to enliven their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant workplace. There people are in terms, will be motivated to perform with their best gown to their full potential, and are committed to stay and who deliver on their company's mission. You can learn more about us having a worker together at at least quartz dot com. Now with us today.

1:42 In today's program, we have two authors co authors that don't wait for someone else to fix it. There are also the co founders that think to perform a high performance leadership development firm servicing small and large organizations in a variety of industries. They are Douglink and Chuck Wackendorffer. We'll be talking about the eight essential behaviors they treat in the for developing high performance Leadership. Doug joins us from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Chuck joins us from Denver, Colorado. Doug and Chuck, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thanks you, Marie. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm try to be here. I love it when I meet astoundingly interesting people I would otherwise have no business running into. Because you wrote a fantastic book and your PR person found me. So let's just first start by celebrating this thing you brought into the world. Don't wait for someone else to fix it. So I appreciate that. Having written a couple of books, I know what it takes to bring a book into the world. It is harder than childbirth. By the way, just in case you're wondering we wouldn't know, right, well, just tell you been through both and so I do know. So anyway, okay, well let's start here. Um, I want to you make I really appreciate you.

2:52 You situate us early on in your book here, and you, of course, you guys are long time leaders of your own right and have helped develop thousands, maybe tens of thousands of leaders yourselves over the years. And you start with the statement that you put forth the beginning of the book that says it's about creating a safer, happier, and healthier world is in our hands. You don't get to choose whether or not to be a leader. You only get to choose what kind of leader you'll be. I love that smack in your face statement. Let's start there. Well, we basically our position is pretty straightforward, and Chuck and I have felt this way for as long as we've known each other, which is going on forty years now, that everybody is influencing somebody, and everybody is being influenced by somebody or something.

3:45 So we simply make the case leadership is that which one does to influence the behavior of another. And because that's the truth, all of us are leaders works for me and any other thing we ran into was, you know, it's kind of the title of our book. Don't wait for somebody else to fix it. If I believe is that leadership is a title or a position and I don't have that title or position, then it's not my job, right right. And so there's this like, well he or she must see it because it's their jobs. They have they have the office, they have the title, they have the position, and you know, really to fix a lot of the issues that I think your show focuses on, like which is to make a better place in the world, to create a better work environment for everybody, we all have to step up. And that was really the essence of the idea of the book. Doug and I were like, you know, there's fifteen hundred leadership books posed a year. We wanted to write a book that would day act anybody anywhere. The artless of title.

5:00 I love that. I really love that. I appreciate that. The other thing that I love about what you guys are talking about here is, you know, working in sudanizations myself, what happens is if people don't have the idea that you know, don't wait for somebody else to fix it. It's too easy to blame the behavior of the leaders that maybe do or don't get the results if they expect when here, what you're doing is you're enrolling everyone to be a leader. So I really want to applaud that. Let me also situate, if there's a lot of noise coming from my MIC listeners viewers, we're having a fantastic thunderstorm here in Dallas, Texas, So welcome to the tropics here in Dallas in case you're hearing booms and thunders. So, but I do want to really applaud that, you know, you're really you're reaching through those pages and saying, hey man, nobody's off folk here, come with us. Well, we all get caught waiting sometimes, you know, wishing that other people would change their behavior. If they did, my life would be better, right, And I think that's the absence of the leadership logic chain that you we're starting. A reference is like, you know, we work with a lot of firms organizations where they don't say it this way, but they bring us in and too, because if you just fix these other people over here, we'll be fine. And what we help them realize is how they contribute to the issues they see in other people. Yeah, and a person's behavior we can control as our own. We you know, we that's part of what we call the three bucket theory. Bucket one is what I can control, Bucket two is what I can influence. Bucket

6:30 three is but I don't have any control over And there's only one thing in bucket number one, and that's my behavior. MG. That's that's the terrible part. You know, as sucks data. Most people are pretty gifted at seeing what's wrong with other people, like I'm fine, but you have a problem, and so we we have. We get that quite frequently, as Chuck says, a lot of a lot of people, in essence, a lot of organizations, a lot of leaders will say something almost as silly as this. If it wasn't for the people, this would be a great place to work. Oh, I've heard it so many times. Start gun, let's just do it. Let's get of all the people, will fix everything right here, right now, let's do it. Yeah, right, okay, So okay, So to speaking of that, that was one thing to your point, Chuck, I did really I was enamored with your logic a chain, your logic chain idea, and I also appreciate that you say, the leadership logic chain guides you to implement three crucial stages of effective intelligent leadership, and they include, you know, self awareness. They also include this idea of decision making and of course self management. And I really appreciate the emphasis you put on all three and certainly the quality of decision making. So maybe you could just speak a little bit to those three pieces there. Yeah, we make as we mentioned in the book about thirty five thousand decisions a day kind of mind bogging when you think about that, I don't think it's like I did the math. It's, you know, something like fifteen hundred

8:01 decisions an hour. Yeah, you're awake for twenty four hours, which we're not, but not all of them. Do we have to make better, but we made one or two better choices a day. You're talking about five, six, seven hundred better decisions a year. And if you've ever been in any kind of reunion, family or school reunion, you know what I'm talking about. Where you walk in the room and you see everybody used to hang out with, and somebody spots you from across the room they go, hey, a lease, how are you? And you have no idea who they are, And then all of a sudden you go, oh, that's Chuck, and the next pop that is hopefully it's your inside voice says like, what the hell happened to that guy? Like that's you know, thirty five thousand decisions a day over five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty forty years of life. I mean, that's what you're all doing the same thing at the same time. But decision making takes our lives in very different directions, and decision making is the biggest driver of performance in any area life.

9:03 I don't care what you do for a living. You know. One of the things we talk about with that at least is this concept that our performance in life, in every dimension of our life, is really a function of kind of our raw material what we call talent, plus the skills we developed to use our raw material, plus decision making. And as we're saying, decision making has more than twice as much impact on one's actual result then the other two combined. So this is a really big deal. And that's why deciding wisely is such a big thing, and why this whole notion of influencing others by managing ourselves is so critical. Those decisions really really matter, and they up beautiful dog. You know. One thing about this show has been amazing. I've been hosting this show for eight and a quarter years.

10:05 I think you guys are episode four and thirty three, and I keep doing gratulations, thank you. I keep doing it because I'm need amazing people like you, and I learned so much and so to that point, Doug, a couple episodes that go on we had Sheila, doctor Sheila Olsen, talking about her book that she co authored, which is called Wise Decisions. The whole book was all about how to make wise decisions. So yes, I completely em bought into the idea that our impact is a greatly facilitated by the quality of decisions that we make as leaders. So I just really wanted to emphasize that to our listeners and viewers that there's a lot of me in what you gave us there. And one thing I would add to this. And when we did the logic chain, Chuck was actually the one who realized we needed to add decision making. I was trying to to make it simpler, simpler, but it got too simple, and the decision making pieces really the most critical, and similar to our leadership logic team, you know, that was a critical piece to be added. And one of the things that we find is a lot of people just lack the tools. They don't really know themselves well enough to realize their decision making hasn't been that good, right, you know, And the lack of self awareness is significant, and that's why

11:35 that's such a big part of all of this. Most people don't know themselves nearly as well as they imagine they must. Well, Doug, here's the good news to that. That's why I know I have a job because I do help. You know, part of the work that I get to do is to help leaders to understand themselves. And that's why I think your work. Could you put four piece eight essential what I'm calling behaviors is so critical, the first one being aimed to be your ideal self, and so I really find it's amazing to me people people I meet in their forties and fifties but don't know their strengths, don't know some of their basic personality types, don't know their decision making style, so completely agree with you, which is why they need us here. So what I wanted to do here, gentleman, is I just wanted to touch a little bit on each one of your eight essential areas here and pull out the bits that I kind of really spoke to me. Because I want the readers or the listeners and yours to read your actual book. I just want to call out a few of the things that I thought that really pulled me. So the first essential behavior, as I said, is aimed to be your ideal self, and I really like the alignment model that you you came up with ther with those three frames, can you speak at bit to those three frames for us? Dog, I think that the dog was the author of the element model, So don't you Yeah, I mean, basically yeah, I could speak to that, you know, because the and the concept that we talk about is the kind of the headline is the most effective leaders the most effective influencers of others are people

13:11 who live in alignment most of the time and they help other people do the same thing. So the alignment model is really the answer to the question how will I know I'm managing myself well? Because the logic chain says effective leadership of others is a function of effective management of myself, which is a function of decision making, which is a function of self awareness. So the alignment model answers the question how will I know I'm managing myself well? And the answer is I will actually be the person I am aiming to be. I am aiming to be my ideal self. That person is found in the first frame. The first frame is the ideal self frame, that's the principles and the values that guide us. Yes, the third frame is the reality frame, that's the frame of thoughts and emotions and behaviors physical behaviors. That's that frame. And in the middle the middle frame is our purpose where you fit and our goals, having a purpose. The most effective people live in alignment

14:43 and on purpose and they help others do the same. And when it comes to purpose, that's a double word, a double on toundr. Is that how you say that? One is what I do I do intentionally on and what I do is with a purpose. I do it for a reason, you know. Example, my purpose is to help myself and others achieve our highest and greatest potential. That's what my purpose is. And what I try to do is align my behaviors intentionally with that and in turn my ideal self.

15:28 So that's that's the alignment model. Would you add anything, as I think, Yeah, I just piling on a little bit. It's not about perfection, right. Part of the human condition is none of us is perfect. So what what what the question is? Can I be my ideal self more often? And when I when I'm not, can I correct it a little faster? And when you ask people if they have values? So frame one is values. So when you ask people if they have values, most people act insulted. Of course, I mean, of course I have values. They can't name them. Yeah, that is the second question, which is what are It's kind of fuzzy. So to Doug's point, we have an exercise. Yeah, and I love what's on your website too. By the way, the value is car is fantastic. Yeah, so you can take it for free. I think to performed dot com to identify your top five values. Why five because five is what I can remember. Right.

16:26 If I can't remember my values, then I can't use them to guide my decision making, right. So it's knowing my values and remembering them and increases the odds that I use them when making a decision. So it increases the odds, as Doug is saying, to be my ideal self more often beautiful. And on that note, guys, let's grab our first break. It goes so fast. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortez. We were on the air with Doug Linok and Chuck Wakindofford. There are the co authors that don't wait for someone else to fix it. We've been talking a bit about what's behind this notion of enrolling everyone as a leader, because we need everyone full throttle and now just getting into some of the essential behaviors. After the break, we're going to get into with regard to knowing our real selves some of the common errors we make knowing ourselves. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez as a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose.

17:33 An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with a lease, send an email to a lease a l se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us. Before we get back into the program, I want to share with you something pretty exciting. I think at least it's about the Purpose and Joy Tour. This is a collaboration with Joilie in organization that teaches mindful practices to build happy, healthy, resilient world, and my firm, Elise Cortes and Associates that activates meaning and purpose and company culture and leadership to increase fulfillment, performance and retention. Together, this is crazy, wait for it. We are going through thirty three cities across the United States. We started in Dallas in March and we're finishing in Virginia Beach in October to find our tribe and build a community of people who seek to elevate their lives by and businesses by cultivating meaning, purpose and joy. You can find a list of cities, dates and planned events at gusto dash dot com and then go to the events and tour tab and find your city in the date so see

19:03 you there. Find it, you can register, look what's available registering events, and tell your friends if you are just joining the program. My guests are Doug Lennock and Chuck Walchendorffer. They are the co authors of Don't Wait for someone Else to Fix It and the co founders of Think to Perform a high performance leadership development firms serving small and large organizations in a variety of industries. I'm your host, doctor Earlie's Cortez. So one of the things that I thought was interesting about your next behavior here, number two is know your real self. And what I wanted to really get you both to speak to is some of the common errors that we make in knowing ourselves. Because you just give us a couple mistakes that we make in that regard, well, I'll start with one. I think the most common behavior or issue I think with knowing our real self is not realizing how often our minds wander from what it is we think we are doing. You know. So now, fortunately, because all three of us are trained on this, we actually are able to stay focused for a period of time, probably longer than most. But it's quite common for someone to get in like a conversation. Let's say you and I are talking to one another at least, and I'm doing, you know, kind of pretend I'm listening thing. I don't know, I'm not listening, But I have figured this out. Guys do this a lot,

20:33 by the way. I hate to say it, but we often do this when we're talking to our spouses or significant others and we're nodding and smiling, you know, and I'm nodding and smiling, and then an unusual look comes over your face, and I think, you know, fo, yeah, I not my smile. We're probably inappropriate for whatever it was she said. I wonder what she said. Moreover, I wonder when I quit listening. I don't know. I don't even know when I stopped listening. Worse, we read books. Somebody's read your book or my book, our book. They read our books, they get to the end of the chapter and they go, what the heck did I just read? Think of that. That's me reading to myself and not paying attention. So most people just don't realize how often their mind wanders from whatever it is they thought they were doing.

21:36 You know, I think the other part about self awareness a lease is we most of the way we live our lives, we live out of a part of our brain called the basil Gangley. That's the habit center part of our brain. So what we do we do because we've always done it that way. And what happens is as we get older, our lives change. Some of the patterns that used to work for us stopped working, but we keep demonstrating the same pattern. And it's the self awareness piece where you recognize, well, I'm not getting the result that I want. Maybe it's the pattern of behavior that I'm demonstrating. I'll give you an example. It's as an example in the book, I worked with a female executive about ten years ago.

22:17 Her name is Sharon. Sharon was very successful and miserable, and you know, she had this pattern where she'd go to work at seven thirty in the morning, worked till about eight o'clock at night, skip lunch, eat one meal at about nine o'clock at night, go to bed at eleven o'clock, and do it again all day. Every day she had to stay at home. Husband, she had two adult children lived at her home. She was about one hundred pounds overweight, and she was very unhappy. And so one of the homework items we gave her was to pay attention to how often she was sacrificing her own needs. She came back a few weeks later and she said, I don't even know what my needs are. Yeah, And I said, well, Sharon, where did you learned that your needs didn't matter? And without any hesitation, she said, I was raised by a single mom, and when I was seven years old, my mom came down with cancer. And so from the time I was seven till when she died when I was eleven years old, I was there to take care of my mom. Now that's what Sharon needed to survive as a child. But encounter to what most people learned their parents take care of them, Sharon learned she took care of her parents, her mom, and it was a pattern she continued into her fifties. And so behavioral change begins with self awareness. It's noticing this pattern of behavior and then understanding where it came from because I started at some reason, because I got the result I needed, and then deciding what, if anything, I want to do about that pattern. That's the

23:48 real value and self awareness. It's paying attention in the moment, as Doug saying, But then it's a broader level like when I'm happy, why am I happy? What am I do am I with? If you believe you're happier, when you're happier, you do better. Noticing when you're happy is really important. If I'm worn out and exhausted, why is that what am I doing? How often is that happening to me? That's where self awareness can become so important. That was a beautiful illustration Chuck, and definitely, ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to this, all of us are run by these patterns, right, and so I love what we're talking about here, the opportunity to just get present to these patterns out of running us because we are we live automated life. So this is that was beautifully illustrated. Okay, Now if we go into essential behavior in number three, ignite integrity and responsibility. What I want to just say about this, and if you get one of you could speak to this, you say in that particular behavior, you say and I quote, by admitting mistakes, you encourage others to take smart risks, fostering innovation and superior performance. And then you go on to talk about what you know. Miles Davis says is once you hit a wrong note, it's the next one that makes it all good or bad. But that thing about admitting mistakes, I know so many leaders who believe that they're supposed to know it have it all down. So God forbid, I couldn't possibly admit a mistake. And I think this is really powerful. So if one of you could speak to this essential behavior of admitting mistakes through the lens of igniting integrity and responsibility. Well, there's admitting mistakes. I will have to admit I make a bunch of them, and I earlier in my career

25:22 it was a harder thing for me to do was to admit the mistakes. And I found that by failing to do so, I essentially sucked out of the organization the courage that people need to have in order to admit mistakes so that things can be corrected. And I also found, you know, we talk about igniting integrity and responsibility when we developed the concept of the Moral Competency Inventory. My personal lowest score my lowest score, and I think I'm a highly integral person. My lowest score was standing up for what's right. I would occasionally witness the wrong behavior in the work course, and rather than call it out, I would look the other way or act like I didn't get it, and and that destroys trust, you know. So when we talk about igniting integrity and responsibility, it's really critical for the health and well being of the organization. Because and Chuck knows Stephen Mr Covey. I've met him,

26:56 but don't know him. I newest dad, but he wrote the books of trust. When you have integrity. You create trust. And we're talking behavioral integrity, which is more than not lying. Not lying is as easy as not saying anything. If you don't say anything, you won't have lied. When I didn't stand up for what's right, I didn't lie. I just didn't say anything. Now I didn't tell the truth. But but I didn't. I didn't lie, And so we can hide behind non behaviors. But what we're talking about is behavioral integrity. Tell the truth, stand up for what's right, keep your promises. These are behaviors. When those behaviors exist, trust exists. And the speed of trust is fast coming down, slow going up. You know you can destroy it quickly. And being responsible, I am personally responsible for an You know, we grew fast last year.

28:04 A number of the things there's growing pains that happened our twentieth year. We had a great growth year. Well guess what, When you grow too fast, you outrun your supplies. And a lot of my commitments I didn't keep. I had to admit that. I admit that every day. So I wish I was perfect. I am not. I make mistakes, and I must tell you I find it remarkably uninspiring when people are unwilling to admit they do also, So with that, that's kind of the whole whole enchilade on it. Okay, a couple of things, Dog, that was awesome, that was totally right there or worth the price of admission. A couple of things. First, thank you for modeling what it looks like to admit mistakes. That's what it looks like, ladies and gentlemen. You are real, You're vulnerable. You're this human being with flaws walking about the planet beautiful.

29:02 So that's the first thing I want to say, Dog, thank you for showing us how it's done. Secondly, um, Steven Mr Covey was on the show as well, and he is a beautiful man and I got to have a beautiful conversation with him and he's the real deal. So I just want to celebrate him once again as you brought him up too. So more we could say about that, but I want to keep going because there's so much goodness in your book that I want to cover. But before I do, Chuck, did you want to wagh into something real quick? I just been to tie back to your point around creativity. You know, in order to grow, we have to be willing to get uncomfortable. Yeah, we have talked about we will willing to try new things. Well, when I try new things, the odds of me making mistakes goes up. So when companies want to grow, they have to encourage your people to try new things. If I take people's heads off, I tend they make a mistake or I'm unwilling to meet my own mistakes. I don't create to the point that Doug and Stephen M. R. Cowby were making vironment of trust people keep their heads down and play it safe. I don't get people's best efforts connection to admitting mistakes. Yeah, it's so beautiful, and there's more I wanted to say about that, but I do want to hit this next number number essential behavior number four, embracing empathy and compassion, because that also, of course speaks to eliciting creativity. But gosh, you know, I can't think of a leadership book today that doesn't somehow speak to emotional intelligence and empathy.

30:26 But the way you guys do this, which I think is really beautiful, is you contrast empathy and compassion. And I'll just do that quickly, and then I would love for one of you to talk about the empathy compassion pathway. But the way you distinguish this is you say, empathy is the ability to understand and appreciate what others are thinking, feeling, and doing and why gorgeous. Compassion, on the other hand, you say, involves taking the next step using what we have come to empathetically understand about others the show that we care about them concretely. That is probably the best distinguishing piece that I have seen on empathy and compassion. So hats off, gentlemen. And now if one of you could speak a bit more to the empathy compassion pathway.

31:07 You have four steps in that one of you could speak to those would be great. You want to go, Chuck, No, he was gonna let you go for it, all right. So one of the things when we think about being empathetic, and as you mentioned, and I really appreciate how you set it up at least because as we talk about it, compassion is empathy in action. And when we talk about don't wait for somebody else to fix it the title of the book, there are a lot of empathetic people waiting for somebody else to fix it. They see the problems that others have, so to be empathetic and compassionate. It really starts with understanding somebody else, and that begins with kind of a curiosity. So I, you know, I actually want if I don't care, don't ask right. And this is Stephen R. Covey. So the Steven R. Covey seven habits, this is seek first to understand, right, Yeah, and you genuinely, and this is understand the person, not just their problem. Understand the person. Seek to understand. Be curious about that. You know, we we we're gifted, you know. Covey would talk about the gifts that we've

32:40 been given. We we have this gift of curiosity. We have an imagination that Chuck talked about, you know, and we have the self awareness. I want to use all of that stuff in getting in touch with somebody else. And one of the people that we've worked with for the years who's at Harvard University, her name is Helen Reese, doctor Helen Reese. You may be familiar with her work on empathy, and empathy is really just getting in touch. Be curious. And what we know to be true is if I'm curious and I ask you about yourself, I will get to know you and I will get to understand you from the inside out right, and so I need to know who you are on the inside. So what are your values, what do you care about? And I'd like for you to get to know me too, because we want to build a little bit of trust in this process. So it starts with and she uses an acronym, but think of e as eye contact. We're not in the same room, but we can have some eye contact. I can look to orize, but our eyes tell us something. And there's these mirror neurons that are actually helping us biologically, physiologically pattern one another. So if I maintain eye contact with you,

34:13 we will begin to pattern one another's behavior. Pay attention to the what the face is saying muscle, m muscle? What's your muscle? What's your face saying pee? What's your posture saying hey, what's the affect of all of this? Te what's the tone? So pay attention to somebody, and when we do that, we can be empathetic. And what we're talking about even in the four RS, when we talk about paying attention to someone, the first star is self awareness. Pay attention to self. The second R or the second part of the first star of recognition is recognize the other person.

34:57 That's empathy, and then re ignize what is stimulating us, what's making us feel the way we feel, and then we can bridge our way into being compassionate, which is, now, what can I do about it? How can I actually help and not just hope someone comes along and saves you. Yeah, I feel at least I surely hope someone does something. I think it gets back to the point around influence. If if my job as a leaders is to influence other people's behavior, that's part of what I'm trying to go for. Sometimes people get stuck emotionally, like they don't understand something, or they have an issue outside of work, the car accident, health issue, whatever, it is, something that emotionally paralyzes them. If I'm not empathetic to that, if I'm not intutible that I can miss that and they stay stuck. So the empathy pathway compassion pathway is I recognize. It's not sympathy, I recognize how you're feeling. How do I do that? It's when I say you look upset, you look concerned, you sound excited.

36:12 I try and name it, and if they say, yes, I am, I am upset well, then it leads me to the second step, which is tell me more what's going on. Let's get to the bottom of that. Empathy is not sympathy sympathies. I feel what you feel. Empathies, I recognize what you feel. So tell me why you're stressed, tell me why you're upset. Well, I had this happen. Now that gets to the third step, which is I can help you deal with it, and we put together a plan to help you overcome it. It's not me buying into what happened to you, but it's helping you deal with it. That's the compassionate part. That's beautiful. And then they feel supported and I'll do what everything, anything for you, right because you get me and you're trying to help me. So let's grab our last break. On that note, I didn't want to stop you because I just was so into the moment and you were generating it so beautifully. But let's grab our last break.

37:05 Here. I'm doctor Elise Cortez Move on the air with Doug Lenik and Chuck Walkindorffer. They are the co authors of Don't Don't Wait for someone Else to Fix It. We've been talking a bit about some of the essential behaviors in the book. After the break, we're going to finish with a couple more state well Us. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Doctor Elease Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with a lease, send an email to a lease ali se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thank you for danying well us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I mentioned in the last break about the launch of the So far we've been I think to twelve or thirteen cities of the Purpose Enjoy Tour, the latest two books that I wrote a part of those events.

38:37 So the tour experience. They are the great revitalization, how activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business, which helps leaders to learn how to build elevating and high performance cultures and leadership. It's my latest bout of research. The other of latest book is called Coloring Life, How loss invites us to live more vibrant lives and that helps people who are navigating laws to transform to growth and vitality. You can find them both on Amazon, but come along with the tour. It's much more fun if you're just joining us. My guests are Doug Linic and Chuck Wachendorffer. They're the co authors that don't wait for someone else to fix it in the co founders of Think to perform a high performance leadership development firms serving small and large organizations in a variety of industries. I am your host, doctor Eleas Quartz. Of course, I wish we had the ability to work through all of your eight behaviors, but they're so media. Of course, we'll get through maybe half of them or two thirds of them. So the two that I want to make sure that we cover next, of course, has to be achieve purposeful goals. And what I loved about that when gentlemen, if one of you could speak to this is you know you talk about you encourage people to adopt the widom whiff them I think is what you call that. Anyway, the goal achieved that model what stands for what do you want for yourself? And this approach requires achieving self awareness about what you want, applying an asset test to your goals, and following five clear steps for achieving these goals. If you could just speak a little bit, I mean this notion, I don't think from what I can see in the work that I do that a few people really do will first set out to achieve purposeful goals and then but then two have a plan

40:07 to do so Yeah, well you know that's an interesting one too. By the way, I loved how you pronounced it. We pronounced it witty whiffy Okay, yeah, yeah, w d y wfy and um and the and the notion is and this really relates directly to the alignment model. Getting what one wants for oneself is a rightfully selfish process provided what one wants is in harmony with principles and values. So achieving what I want in the middle frame is totally rightful, provided it's guided by those principles and values. Those are the guidelines, and then it's as simple and one of the things Chuck and I spend a lot of time trying to help people understand is simple and easy are not synonyms. All achievement is simple and hard. It's simple and hard, and each of the steps can be hard by itself. So the first step is to just have a goal, which in the acronym whitty whiffy, there is no G. So the first step you got to take that one.

41:42 That's the asset test. So for a want to become a goal, it has to be a want that passes the asset test. The asset test is can I, which means do I have the talent and the skill and will I? Will I decide? Sort of talent plus skills plus decision making? Can I and will I afford it? And if the answers are not yes and yes, I am dreaming, it's okay to dream, but that's not a realistic goal. So taking the first step is plenty hard. The second step is to have a plan, plans come fully equipped in what we call key activities. I nobody but me must non optional, do non passive three words, I must do. That's my plan. Third step, implement the plan. This is when it gets ugly. Now I actually have to convert from deciding to doing, and that's hard. By the way, a lot of people have a plan that they decide to execute and don't execute.

43:04 There is a difference between decision and doing. So we've got to decide and then accompany that with doing. That's execution. That's the third step. Fourth step control direction. What that simply means is your plan will not be perfect, and implementation of your imperfect plan won't work. So you will need to control direction. You will start out and you will discover along the way you have to make corrections. You have to make some course corrections, keep score, redirect and the fifth step is to throw off discouragement. Full achievement comes fully equipped with discouragement, and if you can't throw it off, it's going to kick your butt and you're going to not get what you are wanting to get, which is rightfully yours, provided it's in alignment with your principles and values. Now star at the chuck. Yeah, what we're talking about at least's goal. Difference between goal setting and goal achievement. Yes, right, so a lot of people and I just had this, I just had this conversation with a company this morning. They were really good at goal setting, right, we set a goal specific, it's measurable, attainable results based time bound. We've all heard the acronym smart. What they didn't understand, and

44:34 to Doug's point, is what their key activities were. Who's going to do how much and how often to achieve that goal. So when they realized is they set these goals but no idea of key activities. Nobody answered the asset test to us because we didn't know what we had to do to achieve that. And they're not on track, not even close. And it's so that's where people quit. They set a goal, but they don't have the key activities, they don't answer the asset test question and they fail, and they like have a bad expectation around setting goals. So it's the it's all four steps, how a plan, implement the plan, control direction, and throw off discouragement. That increased my odds for goal achievement. Oh, we have a whole soul just about that couldn't wait, Yes, don't get read to say we could have a whole show about that. But you know, the thing about goal achievement is oftentimes people assume that whatever plan they authored has to be executed perfectly or it won't work. And the truth is the plan they authored is imperfect. They just don't know that. Yes, they don't know that. So I'll use this as an example. Since we're on TV, I can do this. Imagine here, my index finger is underneath my chin, and I decide my goal is to get my index finger to the top

46:07 of my head without leaving my face. Okay, so I've got to I've got to move this up here, and I got to end up here. And you know, and I thought, well, my plan is the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So I decide, I got a plan. I'm going to go straight up my face and I'm going to be up here at the top of my head. So now that's the plan. Now I execute the plan and I begin moving up. Now because I'm talking, my mouth is open and cocking. My finger ends up in my mouth. All of a sudden, I got to get out of my mouth.

46:52 I have to control direction. I got to back up. I got to figure out another way. So the process of controlling direction is taking steps one and two over and over and over again until you get your index finger up to the top of your head. That's the deal. That was an extremely useful example. Of course, where I went on that Doug was the only way to do that was to go actually through your mouth, through your face, through your brain to the top of this and that would probably not work out well for anybody. That speaks to just how badly plans can be orchestrated too. Yeah, well yeah, but you can see how it plays out. But that's that's metaphorically what we're trying to help people do goal.

47:40 But it is very doable. I can say for absolute certain We've helped thousands of people achieve what they want for themselves. Now, does anybody ever achieve perfection? No, So we talk about progress, not perfection. Progress not perfection is the name of the game. We're not going to you know, the human condition is such that we will always see problem and opportunity in our circumstance, right so, and I think that to that point around progress, the nice thing about the eight essentials is you don't have to implement all eight If you start something out of one of those essentials and start to implement it.

48:27 You will have an impact in your life or in your business. That's the nice thing is it'd be great if I implement at all eight. That's probably not going to happen. I mean, Doug and I are I'm sixty two years old, Doug seventy. We've been working on the eight essentials, and I will still continue to work on the essentials for the rest of my life. And there's always opportunities for me to get better. But I could start with focusing on one essential, and I gues you'll have an impact. Okay, So, Chuck, that is a great way to finish the show. We are at a time and I got to tell you that was beautiful because people could go, oh my god, these eight things. I gotta get good at eight of these things. No, if you just did one of them, worked on one of them, you would move the needle on the steel. So Dog, you wanted to say something and we gotta gotta, I would say this. What we wanted to do and what we've meant for this book to be is a used book. Yes, I used book.

49:16 And literally the idea is you can open it up to any page, any chapter and if all you did was focus on that one essential, it will change your life. Agreed, Doug. Agreed, guys, I'm so happy to know you. Thank you so much for coming into my sphere. Mad pleasure. You can run, but you can hide. I somehow show people's doors so it could happen, just so you know. Thank you both for being on working on purpose. It's a pleasure. Pleasures ours, thankfully, take care. Thank you, You're welcome. Listeners and viewers. If you only about Doug Lenk, Chuck walking door, if their work at Think to perform, order book, don't wait for someone else to fix it. You can start by going to Think the number two perform dot com, Think tooperform dot Com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can almost catch it re recorded a podcast. We were on the air with Travis James, the founder and chief technology officer of Tribe Health Solutions, talking about his passione democratize health records and put them into the hands of patients.

50:16 He also gave us a very powerful crimer on the uses of chat GPT. Next week will be on the air with Curtis Bateman, who is the co author of Change, How to Turn Uncertainty into tomorrow. See you there, and remember that work as an integral and important part of our lives and can be one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortez, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.