Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving.
Speaker 1: This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul Fellovaledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven oh one, and today I want to
Speaker 2: challenge something that most leaders have never questioned. What if
Speaker 2: leadership is not about leading people at all? What if
Speaker 2: leadership is actually about managing momentum. Think about that for
Speaker 2: a second. Every organization, every team, every department is already moving.
Speaker 2: It has a direction, a speed, a rhythm, It has habits, patterns,
Speaker 2: and it has energy. Even when it feels stuck, it
Speaker 2: is still moving. It's just moving in the wrong direction
Speaker 2: or at the wrong pace. Most leaders walk into that
Speaker 2: environment and try to control people, and I think that's
Speaker 2: where they lose. The radical view is this, You are
Speaker 2: not in charge of people. You are in charge of momentum,
Speaker 2: because people follow momentum, not titles. And let me explain further.
Speaker 2: You've probably seen this before. A new leader walks into
Speaker 2: a team and starts making announcements, setting expectations, maybe even
Speaker 2: tightening the rules, and nothing really changes. The same behaviors continue,
Speaker 2: the same problems show up and the same attitudes stay
Speaker 2: in place. Why because the leader tried to control people
Speaker 2: instead of redirecting momentum and momentum is built from repeated behaviors,
Speaker 2: shared beliefs in what gets reward or ignored over time.
Speaker 2: It is invisible, but it is powerful. It is the
Speaker 2: current underneath everything you see. And here's the thing. You
Speaker 2: cannot stop momentum overnight, but you can redirect it. That
Speaker 2: is leadership. If your team is used to cutting corners,
Speaker 2: that is momentum. If your team avoids accountability, that is momentum.
Speaker 2: If your team shows up early, prepared and focused, that
Speaker 2: is also momentum. The leader's job is not to fight individuals.
Speaker 2: The leader's job is to change the current. So how
Speaker 2: do you do that. You do it by controlling the
Speaker 2: inputs that create momentum. Let me give you a few
Speaker 2: that matter more than anything else. First, what gets attention.
Speaker 2: Whatever you consistently pay attention to becomes the direction of
Speaker 2: your team. If you ignore sloppy work, you are building
Speaker 2: momentum toward mediocrity. If you highlight precision effort in discipline,
Speaker 2: you start shifting that current. Second, what gets repeated Momentum
Speaker 2: is built through repetition. One speech will not fix a culture.
Speaker 2: One meeting will not fix a problem. What you repeat
Speaker 2: daily becomes the standard. This is where your seven minutes
Speaker 2: matter more than anything. Small, consistent leadership moments compound into
Speaker 2: massive directional change. In third, what gets protected. Every team
Speaker 2: has a few people or behaviors that are quietly protected.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a high performer with a bad attitude. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's a long term employee who avoids accountability. When you
Speaker 2: protect those things, you lock in the wrong momentum. Fourth,
Speaker 2: what gets rewarded. Not what you say matters. What you
Speaker 2: reward matters. If you reward speed over quality, you get
Speaker 2: rushed work. If you reward loyalty over performance, you get complacency.
Speaker 2: If you reward ownership, you get leaders inside your team.
Speaker 2: Now Here is where this gets even more interesting. Momentum
Speaker 2: does not care about your intent. It only responds to
Speaker 2: your actions. You can say all the right things, but
Speaker 2: if your actions do not align, the momentum wins every time.
Speaker 2: That is why some leaders feel like they're losing control.
Speaker 2: They're not losing control of people, they are losing control
Speaker 2: of momentum. And once momentum is moving, in the wrong
Speaker 2: direction long enough, it becomes culture. At that point it
Speaker 2: feels almost impossible to change. But it's not impossible, it's
Speaker 2: just slower. You have to become more intentional than you
Speaker 2: ever have been. You have to be consistent when it's boring.
Speaker 2: You have to hold the line when it's uncomfortable. You
Speaker 2: have to make decisions that signal a new direction, even
Speaker 2: when they're not popular. This is where red key leadership
Speaker 2: shows up, because redirecting momentum requires decisive action at the
Speaker 2: right moments. Those moments define whether the current changes or
Speaker 2: stays the same. And let me give you a real
Speaker 2: world example. You have an employee who constantly shows up late.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows it, no one says anything. That behavior becomes
Speaker 2: part of the team's momentum. Now every other employee sees
Speaker 2: it and thinks this is acceptable. You can give a
Speaker 2: speech about punctuality, or you can take one clear, decisive
Speaker 2: action that signals a shift. One action changes the current
Speaker 2: more than one hundred words. That is momentum leadership. And
Speaker 2: I'll take it a step further. If you understand momentum,
Speaker 2: you can actually predict your future. Look at your team today,
Speaker 2: what behaviors are repeated, what standards are tolerated, what gets attention.
Speaker 2: That is your trajectory, not your strategy, not your mission statement,
Speaker 2: your momentum. And here is the radical part that most
Speaker 2: leaders are not ready to hear. Your team's momentum is
Speaker 2: a direct reflection of your leadership, not your intentions, your leadership.
Speaker 2: If things are drifting, it's because you allowed drift. If
Speaker 2: standards are slipping, it's because you allowed slippage. That's not
Speaker 2: an attack, that's ownership. Because the moment you accept that,
Speaker 2: you gain control again. You stop blaming people, You start
Speaker 2: managing momentum. And when you do that, everything changes. You
Speaker 2: become more focused, you become more consistent, You become more
Speaker 2: aware of the small decisions that shape the bigger picture,
Speaker 2: and over time, your team starts to feel different, not
Speaker 2: because you changed people, but because you change the current
Speaker 2: they operate in. That is leadership, not control, not authority direction.
Speaker 2: So here is your challenge for the next seven days.
Speaker 2: Stop trying to manage people. Start observing momentum. What is
Speaker 2: moving in the wrong direction, what is accelerating in the
Speaker 2: right direction. Then make one intentional move each day to
Speaker 2: shift the current. One conversation, one decision, one standard correction.
Speaker 2: That's all it takes to start a new direction. Because
Speaker 2: leadership is not about force, it's about flow, and once
Speaker 2: you learn how to control the flow, everything else follows.
Speaker 2: This has been the seven minute Leadership Podcast and I
Speaker 2: thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.