Leading People Through Challenging Times, with Brett Gilliland

I am excited to be able to bring you something special. In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, I’ve been doing a lot of speaking to business owners. One of the topics that I’ve been talking about is Leading People Through Challenging Times. One of those opportunities to speak was on another podcast. It’s the Onward Nation Podcast, which is hosted by Stephen Woessner of Predictive ROI. Stephen and I had a great conversation for his podcast. I thought I need to use that same audio and make it available to our audience. After this brief intro that I’m giving now, we’re going to cut over to that episode. It will sound like you’re tuning in to the Onward Nation Podcast, but that’s okay. I’d love for you to check out that podcast if you never have.

It’s an outstanding show. Stephen Woessner is a fantastic host and brings a ton of value to people who are trying to establish their thought leadership and influence more and more people with their thought leadership. His podcast is amazing. I’ve been a guest on it a few times. In the most recent time, we talked about leading people through challenging times. If these aren’t challenging times, I don’t know what are, and I thought all of you would benefit from this episode.

Please enjoy. It’ll cut over and Stephen will magically become the host of our show, and I’ll be the guest being interviewed. I hope that it helps you. If along the way, you have any need to reach out and get help from me, you’re welcome to do so. My email address is Brettt@GrowWithElite.com. During these challenging times, I and my team are making ourselves much more available for business owners who are trying to figure out how to lead their people through challenging times. Without further ado, enjoy the episode.

—

I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation. Thanks for coming back for this episode. If you’ve been tuning in to the show for a while now, first off, thank you. You know that I like to bring you conversations with guests who are strategic as well as practical and tactical, and who will generously give you the best of what they’ve got so that you can then take it, apply it, and move onward in your business.

Each of us as business owners and as people is facing unprecedented challenges, things many of us could have never imagined as a result of the Coronavirus. What was even that word a few months ago? Each day, the responsibility and the burden is that we need to show up as the best leader we can because our teams, clients, and communities, not only do they need that from us but they deserve that from us.

The business owners that I meet with each day are doing everything they can to effectively lead during these challenging and historic times. Candidly, Onward Nation, today’s business environment requires another level of leadership, proven strategies, processes, and our willingness to put systems in place. Because of all of that, I am over the top grateful that Brett Gilliland, CEO and Founder of Elite Entrepreneurs said yes to my invitation to come back to Onward Nation for yet another encore interview so we could talk through leadership strategies, processes, and systems, which you can take and apply into your business and be better for it. Without further ado, welcome back to the show, Brett.

Thank you. It’s my pleasure. It’s an honor to be on your show. I look forward to our discussion.

I’m looking forward to it too because I know that you can be very helpful. You come into each of these conversations with such a generous heart and spirit. You’re all about sharing the best of what you have. I’m grateful for that. Thank you. You did a pivot. You were going to talk about something different, and then you thought, “I can be more helpful on this other topic.” You came to your audience with some real in-the-trenches, like how to be best during these challenging times. I know that there are some big takeaways from that conversation. I’m hoping that we can step through some of that with this show. Give us a high level as to what that conversation was like, and then we’ll start going through some of the bigger nuggets.

As you know, we serve seven-figure business owners. What we’re going to talk about applies to any business owner. It doesn’t have to be seven-figure. In our community of seven-figure business owners, just like in business owners circles all over the US and the world, there are a lot of question marks about what to do in these challenging times. You used the word historic earlier. I agree with that sentiment or description of what we’re living through. It doesn’t mean anything like it has ever happened, but nothing in this modern age of information sharing and people are moving around a lot. We’re in this knowledge economy, and the disruptiveness of the pandemic is in different world circumstances than any pandemic that has happened previously.

It’s a different world. We have business owners scratching their heads. Maybe there are a lot of uncertainties in their own minds, but they’re trying to figure out, “How do I lead during these times?” We had a regularly scheduled monthly webinar. We always share some topic. It was scheduled. It was one of those moments where I knew I can’t go forward as usual. It’s not a go-forward-as-usual time right now. I knew that the whole community that we serve would be interested in and benefit from a conversation about how to lead people through challenging times. I was very thoughtful about that title. It’s not just leading people in challenging times. How do you lead people through challenging times? We made the pivot. We had a conversation a couple of days ago. It was well received. I appreciate your willingness to continue that conversation today.

It’s a great title. Our good friend here at Predictive, one of our clients and mentors, you and I have talked about Drew McLellan often before when you and I have gotten together. For context, he’s the CEO of Agency Management Institute. He released an episode and said, “As the business owner, you are the captain of the ship. Your job and your number one priority is to steer your business into calm waters.” Now we’re realizing that the waters that we’re in right now are rough. Using one of your words, there’s a lot of uncertainty. Being able to navigate those challenges does take skill, compassion, grace, being proactive, and all of that.

I’m looking forward to the conversation that you and I are about to have because Onward Nation business owners are feeling that uncertainty too just like everybody else. Your title is very appropriate. If it’s okay with you, I will likely name this episode that same thing because I think it’s going to match very well with the mindset of where our business owners are at too.

Leading people through challenging times is the name of the game for business owners, regardless of the size of the team. I had lunch with a good friend of mine, the CEO of Keap, Clate Mask. He’s been on your show a couple of times. He’s going through the absolute same things as a leader, to lead people through challenging times. When I told him about the webinar we did with our community, he said, “Can I get a link to that? I’m going to send that to our leaders.” It’s the same stuff. It doesn’t matter how many you lead, you’ve got to learn and you’ve got to figure out, “How am I going to lead people through these challenging times?” It’s relevant.

What were some of the big nuggets that you came to your community of business owners on that topic?

Let’s take one step back before we do that, and talk about the framing. Let’s get everybody’s minds in the right place around their role as the business owner or CEO. They do lots of things, but we like to simplify it down to these three things. Number one, they’re responsible to set the vision. Help people understand where we’re headed, how we’re going to get there, and the clarity that the team needs. That’s the job of the leader or the business owner. Number two, the responsibility is to build the team to go make that happen. Sometimes that means hiring. Sometimes that means building existing team members. It might mean in this case, not just developing people but providing the support they need to build the team to get through these challenging times.

The third responsibility that every business owner has is one that we’re all too familiar with. We usually call it, “Don’t run out of money.” As business owners, we’re like, “How’s the cash going to going to fare during these times?” In our framing at Elite Entrepreneurs, we like to call it Secure Fuel For Growth. The only difference there being Secure Fuel For Growth is more of an investment mindset. It’s more on the offense and the balls of your feet versus “Don’t run out of money,” which comes from more of a scarce mentality, and more defensive, reactive, and on your heels

In most circumstances, we’re going to be advocating for Secure Fuel For Growth. In these trying times for businesses, most of us are going to try to naturally revert to this scarce mode of, “Don’t run out of money.” It may cause us to make short-sighted short-term decisions instead of optimizing for a longer term. Those are the three hats or roles of every business leader, set the vision, build the team, and secure fuel for growth. That’s the framing we want to have in the front of this conversation before we talk about how to lead through these challenging times.

It’s interesting and coincidental because I love those three things. Those are the three points that you instilled in us when we attended Elite Forum, which is awesome that we attend it twice. I was at a friend’s house and he asked me, “How is the business going, Predictive ROI?” I said, “Good, but I’m also preparing for what is to come and I don’t know what that is.” It’s the uncertainty as we talked about. I said, “I have one role with three parts to it.” He looked at me like, “What?” I said, “My job right now is I’m totally focused on vision, team, and don’t run out of money.” I’ve taken those lessons from you and the forum. It’s awesome. Thank you for setting that framework for us in this conversation too.

Beginning with that as the framing, as we’re putting on our leadership roles. We bear that on our shoulders. It’s hard to ever escape that. The number one thing if I were to simplify everything we’re going to talk about is that your role is to fight FUD. It’s Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt for those who are not familiar. It’s not one that I made up. Larger companies sometimes will use that acronym. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are the enemies. Our role as leaders is to fight fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Most of us have heard of two natural responses if human beings or any living organism is in danger. It’s fight or flight. Most of us know that. You either fight it or run away from it. There’s a third response that’s probably the most prevalent in the Coronavirus atmosphere that we’re living through. It is the response to freeze or to become immobilized and do nothing.

Fight or flight is the natural survival response, but a third response that happens in situations like the one we’re facing is to freeze. We try to say, “We’re going to act like nothing is wrong. We’re going to try to keep things as business as usual as we can. I’m not fighting or running away from anything. I’m just holding a pattern.” That can be, if not an equally dangerous response, the worst response. Our role is to fight fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We have to lead ourselves and others through that. I don’t want to just ramble on here. You’re a master interviewer. Why don’t you dictate how much we have a conversation? I could dive right into lots of things to share.

Before we dive into those things to share and before those nuggets, when you said freeze can be the most dangerous, I think there are a couple of layers there. That’s an interesting point of view. Tell me more about why you’re cautioning business owners to not freeze. What is the danger you see there when they just freeze?

The nature of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a big question mark. It’s like, “I don’t know.” Leaders are in a circumstance right now that they’ve never been in. You see in the world around us, whether it’s governments, businesses, or whatever groups are dealing with things they haven’t dealt with, people are looking anywhere they can for leadership. There’s this absence of leadership. You don’t want to be that for your team. You don’t want to be in the absence of a leader because you’re frozen with your team. They need you to be actively leading them through this time. It may be at a level that you haven’t done previously. You might even be comfortable engaging with your team at a level that I’m going to suggest.

Great context. Let’s dive into some of the big pieces.

Concept number one as to what how to lead through challenging times, and I purposely omitted the word people this time from leading people through challenging times because it starts with yourself. There’s a little bit of you’ve got to place the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can help somebody next to you. That’s an important point to remember if you are experiencing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. By the way, you would only be human if you were feeling those things. How do you get yourself to a place where you can lead others out of that? You have to lead yourself first through getting that oxygen mask yourself first. Here are a few thoughts on that. You need to be intentional about your mental and emotional health, and your own well-being around your mental and emotional state.

I love Jim Collins. We always talk about his stuff. Your audience might not know that, but that’s all right. Jim Collins wrote several books. One of them is called Good To Great. It is one of his better-known books. In that book, he shares a principle that he calls the Stockdale Paradox. He named it based on a man named Admiral James Stockdale. He goes by Jim. James Stockdale was a prisoner of war. He was the ranking official for the US troops in what was called the Hanoi Hilton. I don’t know why they chose to call it that. It wasn’t luxurious accommodations. It was a prisoner-of-war camp, one of the worst ones. James Stockdale was a prisoner there for seven years, not seven weeks or seven months.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

What Jim Collins came to call a Stockdale Paradox as a result of his learning from his interaction with Admiral James Stockdale is that the paradox is this. There are two pieces to it. Number one, you must confront the brutal facts of your current reality. One side of that paradox is this, confront the brutal facts of the current reality. The other side is you must maintain an undying belief that in the end, you will prevail. There’s this duality between, “I got to be realistic. I got to be optimistic. I got to maintain belief.” That paradox is what allowed James Stockdale and others to survive the horrors of that prisoner of war camp as opposed to others who blindly believed, “I’m sure by the time Thanksgiving comes out, we’ll be home. We’ll be home for Christmas. Maybe we’ll be home at Easter time.”

They were always putting their hope and belief on a fixed date that it would be better by then, but they were missing confronting the brutal facts of their current reality. The date would come and go. They were still in the Hanoi Hilton, and they lost the will to keep going to win. They didn’t make it. That was the difference between those who made it and those who didn’t. Confronting the brutal facts of the current reality had to go hand in hand with that undying belief that eventually, not by a certain date, we will win. We’ll find a way.

I’ve not met Admiral Stockdale, and I know you’ve spent time with Jim Collins. I can’t even imagine what those seven years must have been like. Was Stockdale’s mindset even stronger after leaving that place seven years later because he had almost gone through seven years of mental conditioning?

Absolutely. Another person that we haven’t talked about, but who I’ve learned from in the past is Dennis Deaton. He has a business called Quma Learning. He teaches a class called The Ownership Spirit. We taught it to all of our employees at Infusionsoft for years because it teaches the idea of developing tough-minded ownership. The opposite of being a victim versus being an owner, where things happen to you versus you create or you choose how to respond to life.

We taught these ideas to every single employee that we were onboarding at Infusionsoft for years because we believe strongly that you create your own future despite any obstacles or things you may face. James Stockdale didn’t choose to be in a prisoner of war camp, but through his mental toughness and others who he led, he was able to get through that experience and become stronger on the other side of it as a result.

I love this paradox. You must confront the brutal facts of your current reality, and then at the same time, maintain the belief that you’ll prevail. That is awesome. I love how you’re starting off with this first nugget of leading yourself. Is there anything else that goes into that category?

Let’s get practical with that because that’s all fuzzy ideas at this point. What does that mean? How do you help yourself confront the brutal facts while maintaining an undying belief that in the end, you will prevail? It does require some very intentional disciplined optimism. You must feed your mind with things that will help you maintain that undying belief. The brutal facts are slamming us in the face right now. I did advise my community when we talked about this to only go to the narrow few sources that you must get information from to make good decisions, and then block out everything else related to the bad news that’s out there.

Whatever you feed your mind, that’s where it’s going to go. If you feed your mind with all the doom and gloom, that’s exactly where you’re going to go. You can’t help but stay focused on that if that’s what you’re feeding yourself constantly. If you turn on any new source today or any medium, social media, radio, TV, or wherever you get information, it’s almost all negative. We’re not trying to turn a blind eye to what is. We are trying to be disciplined in maintaining positivity and optimism in ourselves while we get the right amount of facts to be able to confront those facts. My biggest advice here is people need to be very choiceful, “Where am I going to get the information that I must have to make the best decisions for my business, team, and family, and then tune out from everything else?”

You can’t afford to have that constant negativity coming into your mind. What should you be filling your mind with? Anything that helps you stay in a positive and healthy place. We talked the other day about gratitude. For people who practice some personal spirituality, whether it’s prayer, meditation, and scripture reading. Anything that would fill you with positive things, you need to make sure that you’re not skimping on those things right now. You need to probably spend more time in that, exercising, serving others, and whatever helps you stay in a positive and healthy place personally, that will allow you to lead others.

I’m totally stealing your two words there, discipline and optimism. It is awesome. I love that.

It is a discipline, especially in times like right now because the easy thing to do is take everything coming. You have to choicefully say, “I am not going to eat that mental junk food or that mental thing that’s not going to help me.” It takes a ton of discipline because we’re all connected to devices and the information is flowing.

The thing that I love about discipline optimism is that it shows me that there’s a choice to be optimistic and have a victim mentality. With that said, I’m not saying that bad things don’t happen to good people, and so forth. As you were talking about with Stockdale, he chose to not fall victim to that. That is an incredible thing. The power that he had over his mental state is amazing to me.

The power of that choice. People talk about empowering others all the time. If you think about what real empowerment is, it’s when somebody understands they have a choice to act regardless of the situation. When they step into that choice to act, that is true empowerment. That’s what you’re trying to give to others as a leader. You have to be there yourself. That’s the mental emotional stuff that we must do. We can just write that stuff off. If any of your audience is like, “Blah, blah, blah,” this is the stuff that’s going to separate those who lead powerfully through this time and those who get knocked around mercilessly by the waves.

I doubt that any of them are going, “Blah, blah, blah.” I think most of them are probably like, “I want to learn more from Brett.”

The other thing that you need aside from the mental and emotional health aspect for yourself is clarity. You might say, “I would love to get clarity. It’s hard right now. It’s hard to get clear right now.” The best leaders build the best businesses, and the best businesses win. That’s what’s going to happen as a result of all of this shake-up. The best businesses will emerge as winners and the other businesses will at best struggle and finally recover after a long painful time, or they won’t make it at all. We have to get more clarity for ourselves.

You participated in an experience I created around getting clear for yourself as a leader. I call it A Personal Offsite. I usually advocate doing that on a quarterly basis in “normal times.” Now, it might need to happen more than that. I don’t mean one full day a week, I got to be in personal offsite mode. Whatever the required timeframe is for you to feel centered and clear as a leader before you go into the interactions with your team members every day or every week, you need some form of, “I’m getting clear,” before you can go help others get clear.

Let me stop you there for a second. Clear around what? That will be helpful for our audience.

Clear around what specific things the business needs to go do during turbulent times. If the top of that list is to figure out what our options are, before we can choose, then go get clear about what the options are. I was driving down from the mountains back to my home. We were in spring break mode with our kids. We had one of these late winter snowstorms here in Arizona. It was up in the pine trees. Heavy snow is falling.

From living in Wisconsin, you know what that’s like. You’re probably like, “Brett, what you were going through is kid’s play or child’s play.” Our version of it was I couldn’t see very clearly. I couldn’t see very far. There was enough snow that we had to go slow because we couldn’t see very far ahead of us. Sometimes clarity means clarity at 50 feet. Sometimes it means clarity at 500. Sometimes it means, “I can see a mile down the road.” Whatever the current circumstances allow, you have to get as much clarity as possible.

Let me give you back this quote here to make sure that I got it right in my notes. You say, “The best leaders build the best businesses, and the best businesses win.” That’s powerful.

For you to get clarity, let’s get more practical, it’s not just time by yourself, although that will be important. It’s also time with mentors, coaches, peers, and advisors. Whoever you think is going to help you get clear, go spend time with them. Be careful. Spending time with them also invites them to fill you with negative stuff. Only go to people who are going to help you be productive in getting the clarity that you’re looking for.

Leadership Strategies: Go only to people who are going to help you be productive in getting the clarity you’re looking for.

Let’s loop that back for a second here back to Stockdale. What you’re saying is you certainly want to go to peers, mentors, and coaches, and spend time with yourself and focus on the positive. Probably, also invest time with people who are going to help you see the brutal facts of your current reality, but then also help you keep perspective in maintaining the belief that you’ll prevail. Would that be an ideal mentor who helps you with the Stockdale Paradox?

Absolutely. Somebody is going to help you not just stay in the belief by cheering you on but arming your belief with facts and ideas that would support you.

Not falsely sugarcoating it.

I have a good friend named Tyler Norton who talks about this principle in a very relatable way. Relatable in the analogy, not because any of us have done it. He talks about sending a team into battle against an enemy who’s heavily armed. You’re sending the team into battle with a pocket knife. That’s not going to be high on the belief scale for your team. You have to arm them with whatever is necessary for them to believe, “We have a shot here. Not only do we have a shot, but we’re better off against the enemy because of these things.”

It’s not just sugarcoat-coated belief, apple pie, and lots of things like that. It’s mentors, coaches, peers, and advisors who can help you see why you should believe, given the brutal facts of the current reality. It’s a wonderful blend. I encourage your audience to think through those people in your life who can bring you that nice combination. If you have to piecemeal it and get brutal facts from one person and reasons to believe from another, because those might be distinct gifts from different people, that’s fine. Just be clear with yourself about why you’re going to both of those sources to get the right blend for yourself.

Anything else in the leading yourself category?

I think that’s great. Let’s give some practical ideas for now to help others. All the same things we talked about around your own personal well-being, mentally and emotionally, and your team are in the same place. One advantage I have in this area is that I live with people who have anxiety and depression in my immediate family. We’ve spent years with therapists, counselors, and lots of professionals.

What I’ve learned is you cannot fight fear, uncertainty, doubt, or anxiety with logic. There’s an important tidbit here. You cannot fight the fearful lizard brain place or the amygdala that everybody is going through when they’re feeling threatened with straight-up logic. You have to relate to them, assure them, and help them feel safe first, and then you can bring on maybe some logic. You can give reasons to believe beyond that.

If you start hitting them with logic and facts, they can’t hear you. It’s like a different wavelength. Know that people might be coming to your interaction and your communication with you. They might be in a very fearful spot. You may have to acknowledge that and help them see, “We’re not in our frontal cortex. We’re not in our best logical reasoning thinking when we’re in a state of fear.” It’s hard to be creative and collaborative. We’ve got to get out of lizard brain survival mode and get into more creative and logical reasoning thinking to be able to handle a certain situation best.

This is huge because when you said you can’t fight fear, anxiety, and doubt with logic, I thought there was a big mistake in my communication pattern or style because that’s absolutely where I would go. It is the facts, data, figures, and logic or however else you would describe logic. When you said that if you try to do that first without assuring, relating, and helping your team feel safe, they’re going to be on a completely different wavelength. I’m like, “I made that mistake five times this week.”

We all do. Even with all of the “personal training” I’ve had because of experiences in my own family, I’ll still go to that quickly. I’ll try to talk to somebody who’s in a very irrational fearful state, and I’ll try to convince them why they shouldn’t be very logically. It doesn’t work.

I’m thinking of a conversation.

Not to be stereotypical, but a lot of male leaders will do that. We can’t do that. Maslow’s Hierarchy is another angle at this. If people are concerned about their basic physical needs, “My safety and my physical security.” You can’t talk to them about anything else beyond that. You have to establish safety and assurance. Calm them down to feel comfortable and safe first before we can go to anything else.

This would be some great coaching for me. I’m totally asking this question selfishly. Realizing there are probably some Onward Nation business owners who are struggling with the same thing as me. How then? When I think about assuring and helping them in feeling safe, I know I can improve in that area. How would you suggest a business owner like me, in particular, would get better in that area?

People need to feel acknowledged and understood. They need to say, “It’s absolutely normal for you to be feeling what you’re feeling right now.” Sometimes it’s difficult that most of us aren’t dealing with these types of concerns on a day-to-day basis. This environment that we’re in is forcing leaders to enter a little more personal space with people than they’re used to doing. It’s okay to have a conversation about, “Let’s get it out as a team. Let’s talk about what are some of our fears, worries, doubts, or uncertainties right now. Whether you think they’re rational or not, let’s get them out. Let’s talk about them for a few minutes.”

Lots of expressing, listening, and validating are all super normal things to be feeling right now. I am not surprised. You sharing being vulnerable with others about how you might have felt or experienced some of that allows for an environment of safety. It’s okay.

We can then calm down a little bit and say, “Let’s acknowledge that we’re wired to respond to danger this way.” We’re wired to worry about our safety. We’re wired to worry about our family, “Are we going to be able to support them?” We’re wired to worry about the economy, “Am I going to lose my house?” We’re wired to worry about all these things. This is normal. I have a former colleague. His name is Mark Chesley and I love this phrase of his. He says, “I have a 100% track record of getting through hard things.”

Think about that for a second. I individually and as a team have a 100% track record of getting through hard things. We’re still here. We’re still doing it. Most of us can look back on some hard things and say, “That was hard.” We made it through that. Together, we’ve been through some hard things before, “Here’s what we did. Here’s how we came together. Here’s how we overcame it.” You can use people’s own experience with getting through hard things in the past and the team’s collective experience to boost the belief that we will figure this out as well.

Let me give that back to you and make sure I have Mark’s quote here correct, “We have a 100% track record of getting through hard things.” It’s funny but it isn’t funny. It’s profound because you wouldn’t be sitting here if you hadn’t.

All those natural things are trying to protect us in our own brains. Those were present back then, and they helped us however they helped us. We’re going to say, “Thank you, lizard brain or amygdala, for trying to protect me. You’ve done your job. I’m aware of the danger. Now, we’re going to move on to a higher level of thinking and reasoning, collaborating, and problem-solving to get us through this challenge.”

What else goes in the category of helping others?

Another thing I learned in our family life with therapists is people who are stuck in negative thinking patterns, especially depression and anxiety. There are three things that can’t coexist with those negative feelings. When those negative feelings are present, you can’t dwell on them. Here they are, good music or anything that is uplifting to you from a music standpoint. Exercise, so physical activity. You can’t stay in a worry place if you exercise. The third one is laughing or humor. You may not feel like laughing, good music, and exercising, but if you can bring some of that into your own life and your team’s life, it will pull them out of some of the worry state or that down negative place. It’s physically impossible for you to stay there when you’re engaged in those activities.

That sounds like a recipe for helping teammates get unstuck, especially if there’s depression and anxiety afoot.

That’s on the mental and emotional health side. You need to get clear for yourself and for the business. They need that clarity. What will it take for the business to win? They need that clarity. It’s even better if you can enroll them in the problem-solving to go do that. Anything that you can help them see clearly about what it’ll take to win, reasons to believe we can go into battle and win, and then their role specifically in that bigger picture. What are they going to have to do? What does their focus need to be during these times?

I’ll give a quick example. I share a concept called Big Three, where every role in the company knows these are the key three responsibilities they have in the larger machine of the business. Here’s what you must own as the owner of this role. Three measurable things they own. It could be activities or results, but they’re measurable ownership items. When your world gets turned upside down, or there are all these uncertainties out there, some of those measures may become temporarily either irrelevant or less important. There may be new things that need focused attention. You have to help every team member know exactly what’s expected of them during these times, and they can see how that connects to the bigger picture of helping the business win during this challenging time.

Leadership Strategies: You have to help every team member know exactly what’s expected of them during these times and see how that connects to the bigger picture of helping the business win during this challenging time.

That’s awesome not just for the clarity piece. I’m a big fan of the Everest mission and getting the Big Three in place, the measurables, and all of that. It’s also an accountability piece. What it will take for the business to win outlining each person’s big three makes things much easier and much more efficient. When we have this limited amount of time, and whether we talk about mental capacity or a limited amount of time, we have to make the right choices as quickly as we can during these challenging times, focusing on the things that truly matter, and not being stuck in the thick of thin things, the big three is awesome.

It’s super awesome, especially during this time. You just need to make sure that it maps right to what we agree as a team. It is necessary to go win in these challenging times. There may be an adjustment to the regular beat on that, but then once you get clear about what we have to do next, then you align everybody’s efforts through that big three clarity. I’m happy to go as long as you would like to on this. I’m going to acknowledge this probably has gone a little bit longer than you anticipated. I have a couple more very practical best practices for leaders during these challenging times that I’d love to share.

I would love that. Thank you.

We talked about what it takes for you to be well emotionally and mentally, and how to help yourself be clear. We’ve talked about how to do that, but you have to do those same things for your team members. What does it look like day-to-day as a leader? During challenging times, the mantra in leadership is always good communication. Good leaders communicate well. During times like this when there’s fear, uncertainty, and doubt, communication can’t be said enough.

If you weren’t doing daily huddles before, do daily huddles. If you were doing weekly one-on-ones, continue doing them but maybe do them longer. You invest more time in that. If you weren’t communicating to your people that, “My door is always open. You can always reach out to me,” this is a time to overdo it on the, “I’m accessible whatever you need to talk about. I’m going to do lots of informal checking-in. I want to see how you’re doing.”

Your job is to make sure they’re not going back down into survival mode. You’ve got to be constantly assessing where you are at, how you’re doing, and pulling them back up. Lots of daily and weekly communication rhythms even if it feels unnecessary to the team members. You’re checking back in, “How are you doing? What’s going on? What can I do for you? What’s your worry?” Lots of communication.

The other thing I would say is you got to keep them focused. You need to understand what’s happening externally. You need to share enough with them to make good decisions, but you can’t let what’s happening outside consume the team. As much as possible, I’d encourage you to shield them from all of that noise. The biggest challenge is they have their personal device and their phone, and they are constantly connected.

You can’t physically run around and shut off everybody’s devices. They are going to hear stuff, but you can help them understand why it’s important to keep that disciplined optimism going, and you can build into your communication rhythms practices like positive focus, “How are we winning today? What’s going well?” Talk about, “What’s the one thing we could do differently today to make it even better?” We’re going to be in a constant rhythm of helping them stay in a positive place and avoid all the negativity out there, and then, make sure that their basic needs are being met so they can focus on winning.

In our first couple of interviews when you said yes to joining me here onward, I don’t know that we ever talked about positive focus. I love positive focus. We use that as part of our leadership team meetings, although, we do have daily huddles and we’ve not blended positive focus into that, which we’re going to start doing. I know it’s a quick little recipe, but could you give Onward Nation business owners the recipe behind the positive focus and why you’re such a proponent of it?

It goes back to some of the brain science we’ve already alluded to earlier. If our people or we are coming into the office or a meeting in any place of negativity, we can’t be in our best thinking. We can’t be in our highest-order thinking where good reasoning, good logic, good collaboration, and good creative problem-solving exist. If we’re in a negative place at all, we’ve got these little chirps in the back of our mind telling us something bad happened.

It could be something as silly as I got cut off on my way to work and I was mad at that. I had one of those lovely interactions with my teenage daughter. We were having this conflict, and I’m carrying that around. It would be all sorts of things that bring negativity into our minds. As a simple practice, positive focus on the front end of a meeting, where we each share something we’re positive about, just brings that positive creative energy into ourselves and meeting that gets the meeting started off in our minds in the right place to do good work.

I’ve seen you do that in groups of 10 and 70. It’s super powerful.

It sounds like an elementary practice, but it is powerful. It’s one of those things if you’ll adopt a consistent habit, we already talked about disciplined and optimism. This is one of the ways you can install a little bit of disciplined optimism into your company on a very rhythmic basis when you get together as a team.

I took you down a tangent with a positive focus, but thank you for going there. It sounded like there was another nugget that you wanted to share before we wrapped up and said goodbye.

We’re good with nuggets. You have a role as a leader to set the vision, build the team, and secure fuel for growth, or don’t run out of money. Now more than ever, those three things need to be on full display in your leadership. The best leaders will rise to the occasion during these times, and everyone else will look everywhere else for direction. You can’t be looking everywhere else for direction. You’ll wander aimlessly, all the changing direction based on whoever you’re listening to. You have to get clear as a leader first. You got to take care of yourself, and then your team and help them get clear. Help them believe that in the end together, you will prevail through these challenging times.

That right there is a big nugget. What you said is on full display. The reason why I say that is because if we’re truly leading with discipline and optimism, we’re taking the Stockdale Paradox, and we’re using that as a way to drive our mindset and so forth, then we’re leading by example. We know that we should be, but if we’re doing it on full display, realizing that now more than ever, our teammates, our family members, and community stakeholders are going to be looking to us as examples of maybe one little piece of clarity in their day, that could be powerful. This has been a great conversation. I am grateful that you said yes. Thank you for your generosity. Before we close out and say goodbye, can you please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you?

I appreciate the opportunity. Elite Entrepreneurs, which is the name of my company, we’re super passionate about helping elite entrepreneurs grow meaningful businesses. Our website is GrowWithElite.com. If anybody wants to reach out to me directly, especially during these times, I’ve been given out my direct email, it’s Brett@GrowWithElite.com.

Onward Nation, no matter how many notes he took or how often you go back and re-listen to Brett’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do, the key is you have to take what he generously shared with you. Learn from that but take it and apply it right away. Brett, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. I am grateful that you said yes to coming back to Onward Nation for a third time to be our mentor and guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much.

It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Stephen.

Important Links

• Onward Nation Podcast
• Predictive ROI
• Brettt@GrowWithElite.com
• Drew McLellan – Onward Nation Podcast Past Episode
• Good To Great