B (18:36)
Okay, so we're starting with vowels because you keep saying Dr. Anthony. That doctor took a lot of long, long hours, right? I mean, I never, I took the SAT three times, Mick. I never broke a thousand. I was the third alternate to get into West Point, right? My, my junior year in Advanced English composition, my professor sat me down, took out an essay that I'd written. There was more red ink on it of his handwriting than black ink that came out of my computer. And he said, wow. He said, cadet Randall, he said, when was the last time you had a urine analysis and drug test? And I said, sir. He goes, are you on drugs? I said, no, sir, I'm not on drugs. He goes, you've got to be on something because this is the worst writing I've ever read at the United States Military Academy. And then he failed me in Advanced English composition, right? So it has been years of practice and a couple other opportunities and stories I share in my keynote of people speaking into me. To overcome self limiting beliefs, to love to write. And today we've written a couple books and I love to write. So we'll go back to the vowels now, but just know that this guy ain't no good at grammar, you know what I'm saying? So you know, my seventh and eighth grade, you know, grammar teacher's like, son, you don't write no good. You know, And I said that once in a keynote, and I had a person in the audience go, you mean you don't write that well? And I'm like, if I got to explain the joke to you, then, then it's so anyways, the five vowels, right? So I think for leadership, you know, you break it down in these five vowels. Acronyms are always a good thing when you're walking in organization and you want to create a culture of excellence, you know, A is assess, right? Assess the situation. And I always try to assess the audience who's my influencers and who are my influential leaders. And I think we see that in society today. We have all sorts of people that are influencers. Way more followers and likes than I'll ever get on social media. But what are they influencing? What impact are they, are they really having versus an influential leader that gets stuff done? They're committed to. They're committed to the process. Right. And they lead by influence, not by power or role or responsibility or title. So that's a. The second one is enlist. Enlist. And a good friend of mine, Clint Hurdle, who I had the privilege to serve with in the, with the Pittsburgh Pirates for eight years, Clint used to always tell us to pick your Mount Rushmore. Who are those four or five people chiseled in stone that, that are always going to be there for you foundationally. So a is assess. E is enlist. Enlist. The. Enlist your Mount Rushmore or the Knights of the Round Table. Who is going to have your back? Who. Who captures your vision, builds your strategy and drives your execution with passion, purpose and precision, by the way. Right? Who. Who, who demonstrates trust and adaptability and execution? Who develops leaders of character as more unethical thinkers and high eq? Right, yeah. Enlist those people. And then who's also in that team willing to confront you and be candid? I mean, we've got an amazing team at Vanguard 21 and I've surrounded myself with a whole bunch of people that are willing to just bludgeon me in the face if I need it, because I need those kind of leaders around me. Right. So you've got to surround yourself. Enlist. Enlist. I identify the people and I'll even go so far as say, identify the terrorists. Because if you've ever been in an organization, you know, there's always someone out there that's trying to destroy everything they try to put together. They're trying to destroy the enemy, the organization. And it's always about they're out for themselves or they've been wounded or hurt, or they've always got some sort of motive, you know, hard heartedness, self righteousness, whatever it is, that they'll do everything they can to destroy your organization. We talk talent management. I talk all the time about, you know, you can hire high character individuals and create a high culture organization or you can hire a bunch of characters and they're going to destroy your organization. You got to identify the people that are going to do everything they can to break that down. And frankly, HR people, we can talk about this on a more empathetic level, but you've got to identify them, you got to isolate them, and then frankly, you just have to eliminate them. Do you want a championship culture or not? Do you want to be a transformational change agent in the public square or not? And quite frankly, some people just don't want to get on board with a growth mindset and be a team player and win and they need to go find someplace else. So that's the A, E and the I. The O is observe. And I'm a big fan of emotional intelligence. We teach a lot of emotional intelligence in our leadership courses. We teach EQ, we facilitate EQ360s. And so I think observe, observe. Have some social awareness, understand empathy and compassion, but also understand cultural values, understand the written rules and the unwritten rules. I know you're an athlete. You and I spent some time in some locker rooms, right? I mean, how many of us know that there's written rules and there's unwritten rules, right? And there's always the clubhouse boss, right? That runs the clubhouse, that runs the locker room. And you either follow those rules or not. And so observe when you come in as a leader, observe what the written and the unwritten rules are, right? Legacy is a great book about the All Black Kiwis and the All Blacks, the Kiwi, the New Zealand rugby team, they have some written rules, they have some written principles that make them great. I guarantee you there's probably also some unwritten rules in there too. So observe, and then the last one you is utilized. So assess, enlist, identify, observe, and then utilize. Utilize a coaching language and a coaching culture. We're finding just study after study today, that when you implement a coaching language and a coaching culture, when you bring in leadership and development executive coaching, when you build an internal executive coaching bench, when you teach your leaders in depth to spend more time coaching and less time directing, you begin to empower people and draw the full potential out of people rather than enabling people to keep asking you for the answer. And that's one of the hugest things that's in our marketplace today, in our society today. That's why we've got so much incivility in the public square, is we're overwhelmed with information and misinformation and people today are just comfortable being told what to think. But high performing organizations, high performing cultures, high character leaders, they coach people how to think. And when you can coach organizations in depth how to think, you begin to create morally and ethically autonomous leaders that get stuff done and you flatten out organizations and you begin to move much faster and that's how you win,
