Are you working with the right people on your team?
Let’s dive into this question. First, I’m going to share why most people, even leaders have this all wrong. Next I’m going to share with you the absolute sure way to frustration and how to avoid it. Lastly I’m going to share with you how to perform miracles as a team leader. Now before we get started, I’m assuming that by team we are referring to some kind of volunteering team or similar to a network marketing team.
If these are paid employees then I would have a little bit different strategy here. You would have KPI’s, you would have thresholds of did they do this, do this, be a little bit different. This is assuming that it’s some kind of either volunteer army or it’s a network marketing team or someone that you’re not being financially drained based on their lack of performance.
Why do I say most people have it all wrong?
Most people, they work with who really needs help. Although that sounds good. It sounds like if you go into your team and someone’s really in in the dumps and they’re really struggling and they really need some help, that makes sense that that is the person that you help because they really need it. They have to want it. There’s a difference between the needy and the hungry and these are two very different things. The needy is the person that definitely could use some help but they may not be willing to take your advice. They may not be coachable, they may not do the activities that you’re going to give to them.
Here’s something I posted on Facebook not too long ago and that is, “if you continue to coach the uncoachable, they’re not the idiot.” If you continue to give instructions to someone who isn’t listening, not doing what you’re saying and you just continue hoping that someday it’ll sink in then that’s on you, that’s not on them. They’ve established who they are, there someone that’s not going to listen to what you say and they’re not going to do what you say. They’ve established who they are, you just don’t understand who you are. You’re the person that’s like the Charlie Brown teacher. Instead you want to focus on who is actually going to be coachable.
A lot of times I get someone who will hit me in the dm’s and say, “Ray man, what do you think about this and you know what’s your advice on this?” I’ll give it to them, only for them to come back and tell me all the things wrong with my advice. Now I’m never upset by that because I don’t care if they take my advice. I care that I show up in a manner to offer the advice if asked, but I do not show up in a manner that they must follow it or I’m somehow angry or something like that. I actually honestly appreciate it when someone tells me all the things wrong with my advice because it saves me a lot of time. I don’t have to give them any more advice. I would say, “cool okay, well you’ll do it your way, that’s awesome. Glad it’s working for you.“
Stop spending an unlimited amount of time with people who aren’t listening, who aren’t doing the thing that you’re telling them to do and instead focus on who is coachable. You will feel so much better about yourself, it will be such a better scenario and one of the ways to do this is really simple. When people come to you asking for advice, tell them, “hey go do this and then report back in.” This leaves your time as almost as small as possible and it’s a little mini test. Maybe for example it could be, “hey, go watch this video, report back in, let me know after you watch the video.” If they don’t report back in then they most likely didn’t watch the video but it’s on them. They know that their job is to do it and then come back to you. This is going to save you time because that’s ultimately what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to save you time and frustration.
How do you avoid frustration?
Now related to above, but a little different is “what is the way that I mentioned to absolute frustration and how do you avoid it?” Well this is you being frustrated by what people are or aren’t doing. You can’t control them, you can’t make anyone do anything to be honest and so that should not be frustrating to you. A lot of times probably the most popular category of this kind of thing, well I’ll give you two examples.
The first one is I will have network marketers they’ll reach out and they’ll say, “how do I get my darn team to start doing something? They’re not doing anything.” A lot of times my response is, “how do we get you not frustrated, whether they do something or not. Focus on your efforts, that you can control. You cannot control their efforts.”
The second type of a very common request is, “how do I get this darn husband to do something?” They they want their husband to change (husband does seem to be the more popular one that needs to change). So I will say, “how do we get you to where you don’t require your husband to change?” See, that’s a deeper question, that’s a more powerful question. How do we show up in the world where we are, like Jim Rohn said, “where we are not wishing for things to be easier, we are wishing for us to be better.”
How do I show up more powerful?
How do I show up better regardless of me wishing that the scenario was better or easier?
Your frustration is absolutely going to be based if you have an addiction to someone out there, not you, doing something or not doing something, that’s a recipe for frustration. Instead just know that people are going to do whatever they want to do. So instead focus on what you can do, how do you constantly improve, how do you improve through you know working out, through meditation through improving yourself, through reading, through whatever (fill in the blank).
How do we improve ourselves because the best thing we can do for the world is become the best version of ourself, not shake our finger at the world and tell it how to be better but us to be better.
If you want to avoid frustration, stop being so addicted to those outside of you doing anything or not doing anything.
Let’s hear from you!
What kind of team are you leading? I would love to hear from you. Drop me a comment down below. I would love to hear what kind of team are you leading. I just love to hear about our subscribers journeys.
How to perform miracles.
Now I’m going to share with you how to perform miracles, but first I feel like I need to explain and give an example. About a year and a half ago now, I started ballroom dancing lessons with my wife. I wanted to spend more time with her, didn’t know where it would go or whatever… We start these ballroom dancing lessons and I am terrible like really bad. When I start the instructors are like “Ray, do you hear the beat you know where it goes, you hear the down, you know what I mean? Ray, did your hips- were you in an accident, do your hips move, did something happen?” I’m out there I’m stomping around like Frankenstein. They’re like “can you kind of drag your toe?” I’m like killing cockroaches or something. I was just a nightmare. I’m going twice a week to these lessons for four months straight and I’m still terrible.
I know that this is true because there was a guy that came in a little early (his lesson was after me) and he was new and he’s lacing up his shoes and he’s watching me and after I finish he runs over to me and happily says, “oh my god, I’m so glad I came in early. I feel so much better.” I’m like thanks, thanks for that. Didn’t need to tell me that but thanks. However he actually did need to tell me that because that was the little kick that I needed that made me realize, I know all this mindset stuff and yet I show up twice a week to this studio and I’m not very good at dancing. My whole mindset is all around what I can’t do, what I’m not good at and so I wasn’t progressing, it really sucked. I decided that day because of what he said that I was going to make a change.
I go home… this is how I performed a miracle and how I’m going to lay it out. I go home and I decide that I’m going to start visualizing myself as a good dancer and not only that, I’m going to stop noticing all the things I don’t like about my dancing. I saw myself in my mind, in my imagination. I saw myself as a good dancer just gliding across the floor and people being amazed. I asked myself, okay how would that feel? I would feel amazing, I feel confident, I feel good, I feel like I’m representing my wife (which by the way is an amazing dancer.. so double whammy on me). I would feel amazing, confident, excellent, it would be so so cool. I actually saw- I said well if it was true people would compliment me. Okay well who would compliment me and what would they say? All right, (see how deep I’m taking this?) I saw my dance instructor, Victoria. I saw her say “wow impressive.” I saw the dance studio owner Irina say, “very much improved.” I see it, I feel like man that feels really good, it’s all in my head. I go back to the studio and about four days later, I do a move. Victoria says, “wow impressive.” Same class Irina says, “very much improved.” Later they told me that I really wasn’t progressing very well and then all of a sudden one day I just skyrocketed and I got way better really, really fast. The end of last year, we came in first place as a couple in salsa and cha-cha at an international event in Miami.
Again my instructor is like “yeah, there’s just this one day where just things just really really took off.” I did not increase my lessons. I didn’t start going to three a day or three a week or four a week or whatever. I had the same number, all I changed was my mindset.
Why do I share this in this post?
Because you can start to see yourself having an amazing team. How would that feel if you did have an amazing team? Now what I’ve noticed about people that feel they don’t have a good team is they constantly notice they don’t have a good team, that’s like me with dancing. See, I was still miss stepping, I still made mistakes, I stopped noticing the missteps. I stopped noticing the mistakes, I stopped dwelling on them, feeling bad about them, beating myself up over them. I stopped doing that…When I stopped doing that, it allowed more attention and energy to go to what I actually wanted. You can do that too. You can have conversations in your head, you won’t be crazy I promise, have conversations in your head of people congratulating you for having the best team, of people congratulating you, people thanking you for being such an amazing leader, that’s called perspective and if you change your perspective, you’ll change your reality. As a leader or as an up-and-coming leader, we have some incredible leadership resources. Here is a link Higdongroup.com/leader. Click the link and it will take you over there. It’s a bunch of free resources dedicated to leadership. I know it’ll really help you out.
Ray Higdon
Play Bigger. Make An Impact.
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