Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajieving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellowledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven oh five. There's a quote that I
Speaker 2: saw that's been stuck in my head, and maybe it
Speaker 2: hits you the same way it hit me. Don't live
Speaker 2: the same life seventy five times and call it a life.
Speaker 2: Let that sit for a second, because if you're honest
Speaker 2: with yourself, and I mean brutally honest, how many leaders
Speaker 2: are doing exactly that right now? Same routine, same decisions,
Speaker 2: same conversations, same excuses, different day on the calendar, same
Speaker 2: exact leadership. And here's the dangerous part. It doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like failure. It feels comfortable, it feels controlled, it feels predictable.
Speaker 2: It feels like you're doing your job, but you're not leading.
Speaker 2: You're repeating, and there is a massive difference between those two.
Speaker 2: I want to take you into a scene. It's Monday morning,
Speaker 2: you walk into your workplace. You already know what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. You know who's going to complain. You know
Speaker 2: which employee is going to underperform, You know which problem
Speaker 2: is going to show up again, and what do you do?
Speaker 2: You respond the same way you did last week. You
Speaker 2: say the same things, you tolerate the same behavior, you
Speaker 2: delay the same decisions. You already know the outcome because
Speaker 2: you've lived it before. That's not leadership. That's replay. And
Speaker 2: leaders get trapped here because repetition feels like experience. You
Speaker 2: tell yourself, I've been doing this for years, but have
Speaker 2: you really or have you lived one year of leadership
Speaker 2: ten times, twenty times, thirty times? Because real experience creates change,
Speaker 2: It sharpens your thinking, it upgrades your standards, it forces
Speaker 2: better decisions. Repetition without growth is not experience. Its stagnation.
Speaker 2: And here's where this gets real. If your team can
Speaker 2: predict your leadership, you've stopped growing. Think about that. If
Speaker 2: your team knows exactly how you'll react to a problem,
Speaker 2: exactly what you'll say in a meeting, exactly what you'll
Speaker 2: tolerate when someone drops the ball, then you've become a
Speaker 2: script and scripted leaders don't inspire anyone. They don't challenge anymore,
Speaker 2: They don't move anything forward. They simply maintain the status quo.
Speaker 2: Now I want to challenge you with something uncomfortable. What
Speaker 2: if the biggest risk in your organization is not a
Speaker 2: bad employee. What if it's not budget issues, staffing issues,
Speaker 2: or external pressure. What if the biggest risk is you
Speaker 2: running the same leadership playbook over and over again, same playbook,
Speaker 2: same results. You don't need more time, you don't need
Speaker 2: more resources, you don't need another leadership book sitting on
Speaker 2: your desk. You need a disruption, You need to break
Speaker 2: your own pattern. Because leadership is not about managing what is.
Speaker 2: It's about changing what could be, and that starts with you.
Speaker 2: So here's what I want you to do. I want
Speaker 2: you to identify one area of your leadership where you
Speaker 2: are on autopilot. Maybe it's how you run meetings. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's how you handle conflict. Maybe it's how you hold
Speaker 2: people accountable or avoid holding them accountable. Maybe it's how
Speaker 2: you communicate or how you don't communicate. Find that one
Speaker 2: area and ask yourself this question. If I were forced
Speaker 2: to lead this differently starting tomorrow, what would I change? Not?
Speaker 2: What could I change? What would I change if staying
Speaker 2: the same was no longer an option? Because that's where
Speaker 2: growth lives. Growth does not happen in comfort. Growth happens
Speaker 2: when you disrupt your own habits. And here's the part
Speaker 2: most leaders don't want to hear. You cannot expect a
Speaker 2: different team if you're the same leader, You cannot expect
Speaker 2: higher standards. If you tolerate the same behavior, you cannot
Speaker 2: expect innovation. If your leadership is predictable, your team is
Speaker 2: watching you, They are studying your patterns. They are learning
Speaker 2: what matters based on what you repeat. So if you
Speaker 2: repeat low standards, you get low standards. If you repeat
Speaker 2: in DECI vision, you get confusion. If you repeat silence,
Speaker 2: you get disengagement. But if you break the cycle, everything changes.
Speaker 2: And I'll give you an example. You've got an employee
Speaker 2: who consistently underperforms every week, same issue, in every week,
Speaker 2: same conversation. You soften it, you delay it, you hope
Speaker 2: it fixes itself. That's repetition. Now imagine you walk in
Speaker 2: one day and handle it completely differently, clear expectations, direct conversation,
Speaker 2: defined consequences. That's disruption. That's leadership. And here's what happens.
Speaker 2: When you start doing this. Your team notices, they lean in,
Speaker 2: They realize something is different in that moment right there.
Speaker 2: That shift is where your leadership becomes real again, because
Speaker 2: leadership is not built on time, it's built on intentional change.
Speaker 2: You don't become a better leader because another year passed.
Speaker 2: You become a better leader because you chose to lead
Speaker 2: differently today. And this is where your seven minutes comes
Speaker 2: in seven minutes a day, that's all it takes to
Speaker 2: break repetition. Seven minutes to reflect, seven minutes to adjust,
Speaker 2: seven minutes to decide I'm not going to lead the
Speaker 2: same way I did yesterday. That is how you avoid
Speaker 2: living the same leadership life over and over again. That
Speaker 2: is how you create movement. That is how you build
Speaker 2: something worth calling your career, because one day, whether you
Speaker 2: like it or not, you're going to look back and
Speaker 2: the question won't be how long you lead? The question
Speaker 2: will be did you actually lead? Or did you repeat?
Speaker 2: So here's your challenge. Don't let tomorrow look exactly like today.
Speaker 2: Break one pattern, make one different decision, Have one conversation
Speaker 2: you've been avoid raise one standard you've been letting slide.
Speaker 2: That's leadership, that's growth. That's how you make sure you're
Speaker 2: living a real leadership life and not just replaying the
Speaker 2: same one over and over again. This has been the
Speaker 2: seven minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.