How To Guide Yourself to Accelerate your Growth & Develop Yourself And Others That Surround You Through Daily Practice of Discipline.
(Moving Yourself From an Expert to an Authority)
Some traditions around the world have had exceptional guides💡 before, during, and after their adventures. Do you consider yourself someone whose an adventurous human being that takes the road less traveled? If not, stay tuned we are about to change that.
“It’s easy to improve on mediocrity, not so easy to improve on excellence.”
Tim S. Grover
We call them by many names: Trusted advisors, sages, elders, wisdom-keepers, coaches, teachers, mentors, shamans, gurus, or masters of their craft.
No matter what their titles are, we have always turned to them to help us gain an advantage by changing the internal gears to have an external advantage on the outside so we can all benefit from those gifts.
We ALL look at our lives and behaviors from a deeper layer of existence and a narrow vantage point that can help us WIN.
Sometimes we are ONLY experiencing a surface layer that gets us fair to middling results for the short term. What about the long term?
Our coaches aka known as Guides helped their “coachees” YOU — truth seekers, disciples, students, mentees, apprentices, and struggling neophytes — who see the world with fresh unapologetic eyes, transcending through them what they thought was possible, and glimpsed their seed of greatness to their fullest potential with the actions of experiential learning, and gaining insights, challenges, and break throughs from testing their gifts.
We know from our global research that most people rate “coaching and developing others” among the top three most important leadership competencies, according to the 360° assessments that are out there. However, despite the rated importance of these critical competencies seem, it actually scores as the lowest practiced competency around the world. No other leadership competency has such a wide gap between the importance of practice, of earning the learn on the skill, and being supported along the way as we are much more complicated than just a test. We agree that coaching and development are critical to transformative leadership in each and every employee in their unique butterfly stage developing state of where they are looking to grow. As each business is in a different stage of exponential growth.
There is just one major problem: we don’t practice enough where we are at to go where we want to grow! Why? Leaders often tell us that they do not have enough time to implement their practices (but yet, they want to win, or have the mirage of winning which they themselves have been mediocre in being a full-blossomed leader, falling below their standard of excellence to the highest level of their preparation which has faltered); they do not know a precise, proven process; and/or they feel it will slow down their immediate performance to perform way down.
We all know this is a reality check Regardless of the reasons, learning a pragmatic, straightforward methodology to guide and develop yourself and the others that surround you in your immediate environment is extremely critical to high-performing leadership amongst your peers. Leading yourself first is first, and foremost a priority around your peers.
Business Guidance which I love to call it instead is Business Coaching disguised as questions to awake your inner greatness because we are guiding each of these individuals to reach their own peak potential of the greatness that is inside of them to align their vision of the leader's ideal dream in reality.
We do this by supporting their employees to fully understanding their ideal self through “Dreaming Big,” themselves! Aligning their critical eye Vision under the umbrella of the Leader’s dream of the company they are prioritizing to business building.
“Your Dreams MUST be so big that EVERYONE else who works with you’s dream can fit inside of your umbrella”
-Ed Mylett
If that quote above isn’t a WOW moment for you, then I don’t know what is…
…For our Guider-ship of building relationships to have a lasting, transformative impact and scale towards high-performance leadership around those you are looking to elevate uniquely around you, the three interrelated foundations need to be constructed in your high performance:(Reality) Awareness, (Reality) Devotion, and Daily (Reality) S.M.A.R.T. Practice process to result in goals.
“ Chop wood, carry water, take a leak, fix the bucket.”
-Ancient American Proverb
If all three of those are present during your performances you are present as a gift to accompany all three and operating at the highest learning curve potential, then the breakthroughs will occur for both learning better and learning for worse, and the growth will be maintained and sustained over time by course-correcting, instructing, tweaking and adjusting accordingly. If any one of the three is absent, the results will dissipate over time. You may earn the learn on the best techniques and disciplines to practice, but if you lack devotion, you won’t continue your efforts with convicted energy towards your big picture dream.
Similarly, all the enthusiasm and commitment in the world won’t get you far if you don’t adhere to the right practices. And without awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, how will you know what to devote to or what you need to do in order to expand your personal brand actions for yourself in your role and response-ability to your company and be a leading performer for your company in whatever you decide to do(Play out fully)? Get feedback daily. Improve your performance secondly per second.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an exceptional quote, “Accept the place that divine providence has found for you.” Indeed, guiding people and coaching them to greatness may be the most important of all leadership skills, because helping foster the growth of those around us gives us sustainability to your leadership as a unique individual amongst a team of greats and perpetuates optimization and actualizing value creation through your daily greatness of task.
The Art of Business Guidance for Others…
Turning that light on. Business Guidance/Coaching is the art of drawing out the absolute potential onto the canvas of high-performance employees seeking greatness within themselves through daily betterments and improvements.
Also, knowing that we have to go to our personal drawing board and begging again with the end in mind to reverse engineer that to where we are is crucial and will become a crucible for your greatness. It’s the gentle yet firm calloused hand of leadership guiding our way, like a caring friend who tells you the truth, helping the “coachee” steer clear of danger or setting a more positive course and also not standing up for their small selfless actions. It’s about pushing and pulling the dynamic tension of their slight edge string so you can elicit the peak performance advantage that your company is looking for in the long run. This is winning, in a nutshell, every day. The door closes at the end of the day and you MUST earn the price of admission every day by paying the price with your divine mindset the next day and so on…
I call it “BLeadership.” Yes, this is my term that I came up with as an advantage that surpasses others leaders in tow. You MUST be a bleeder to be a leader. It is more than just a job from 6 am to 9 Pm or beyond. It’s about leading fully by FULL bore-hole example. The leader of a group of any size, from a family, club member, congregation, or a student in the classroom to a multinational corporation or a global allied nation, sets the tone for all the members of the group by making powerful agreements within-with what IS…(Not what was…)WHAT IS the agreement(s) here? THINK ON THIS!
“Leaders touch lives and hold people's destinies in their CALLOUSED hands accountable if they have done the work themselves; it is a sacred calling to be a “Bleader,” with s(a)cred 100% responsibility rooted in the cause of the effects that they themselves initialize.” — Raymond J. Negron
For most of us, the word coach evokes images of a hulking figure(or usually someone FAT) in a sweatshirt, blowing a whistle and barking directions to a more or less compliant group of players. But a REAL coach has a far more interesting make-up and refined role than giving shouted orders. Think of it this way…
If you are being led by a Sherpa or a Guide in the Tibetan Mountain Rage on a mountain climbing expedition stuck in your struggling with the mountainous terrain as your landscape, lost in dense fog or a falling fast snowstorm, and not able to see the top of the mountain or even 2 feet in front of you-you are grateful for the guide, calling down from above becoming you inner guiding light to move you forward, sideways, over, above, around and through the passage so you come out the other side less scathed then going in not knowing or from a souls perspective seeing the body parts scattered on the rocks below at incongruent angles. He shouts “Go to the right. Dig in! Place your left foot on the 3rd rock. Most of the pressure should be on your left foot “middle toe”; “fore toe”; and fourth toe, pinky. Place most of your weight on the right side of the right foot as you don’t have a full step hold. If not, readjust until you feel and tell me what you are feeling before you do this? I need to be sure you can place your weight on that blade of your foot or we have to go back. I know you can’t see right two feet in front of you, now. I need you to trust me. I know you don’t believe in you. I need you to believe in me. Bend down feel the rocks first, second, the second rock, and third, the third rock is two hand-spans above that one and it’s off the wall of the mountain. There is a false rock between the 2nd and the 3rd so be careful because you’ll slip if you place pressure on the false rock. Retrace it again to make sure we are understanding each other. This is where you will place your foot as the rock is missing in front of your right foot and you need to clear 3 feet.”
This is where the true form of your Guide's authoritative expertise shines through as your guiding light towards bleadership. Whether he’s been there or not, he will work with you to navigate the method of grooves to grab your attention and get you there because he did the work to get a few steps ahead of where you are. It’s a leveling up of both ways of the constant flux of safety and security and then back to survival vacillating both ways so you can navigate for a better. Great you made that leap to your advantage and made it. Now, you are on stable ground, except for the loose rocks that will have you falling over the side.
”Watch out for the loose rocks as you climb. Slide your feet in a scuffing motion so you are grounded until you reach the grassy knoll. I know you can’t see one foot in front of you and trust me. You’re doing fine. Harder scuffing! Harder! You are lightly scuffing. Stop, listen! Harder! Feet need to be grinding stone on foot, no pebbles on the floor underneath. Stop! These rocks are fine-wet dust and will make you slip like a ballerina on a banana peel if you are too easy. Hard scuff or you will die. ”
The guide has your best perspective, “Top of Mind, All of the Time,” as you are experiencing your true self in real-time, and critically-crucially SMASHING what you did know, the surface knowledge you fed yourself to go even deeper to that fear door self, so you can enter it and trust your guide so you can have an easier way that you don’t have right now and level up.
Similarly, the players on a sports team are caught up in the moment-to-moment action on the field, having little perspective detectives of what’s to come unless they are constantly reviewing that inner game tape rolling them towards the future through visualization of what can go wrong and what can go right. The focus is always ongoing right and feeding ourselves the positive constantly. Will speak on the power of visualization in a future article. An effective guide rises above the fray of playing to get a more complete overview picture from which to guide optimal approaches and actualized actions to carry us through to the end friend.
Some coaches simply assert their authority. Great coaches blend know-how expertise with the authority of the tried and true to facilitate and execute to help players go beyond their previously held boundaries to something new and exciting. In his book, Masterful Coaching, Robert Hargrove notes, “When most people think of learning, they don’t think in terms of having to change themselves. They tend to think of learning as … acquiring ideas, tips, techniques etc. Seldom does it occur to them that the problems they are facing are inseparable from who they are or the way they think and interact with other people.”
Coaching helps us step back to see more of the whole person and more of the whole situation, as well as the dynamics between the two as the parts of tension play to the whole movement and out (“Holon,” for those Ken Wilbur fans).
The Practice Of the Art of Guidance is Messy. Discovering order through the chaos is the norm of the storm where you are reborn constantly.
Without the day-in and day-out practice, there is no transformation. We can be fully aware of and devoted to noble goals, and if we fail to practice them day in and day out, it is like someone lighting a lamp and then closing our eyes in order to see the truth.
“In the end,” said Max De Pree, “it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we were.”
Practice makes the path carved out from possible to probable to inevitable; the advanced, enduring practice makes the only thought possible real by taking action every day. Practices involve the consistent repetition of new behaviors that transform our mediocre life from living an extraordinary life to becoming a world-class sample/example of a bleader. Exercise is a practice to build health. Every rep counts. Every extra rep is in good to fair form elicits an advantage. The extra rep in the messy form leads towards a disadvantage when too many are done in that form, it can take on a new shape that is detrimental to moving forward. It’s only in the end of the day that we begin again or something like that. HMM!
Meditation is a practice to unfold our spiritual life.
Visioning is a practice to unfold your future life.
Genuflecting at the end of each day on how our interpersonal interactions went is a practice that builds relational effectiveness.
Look up the “After Action,” review that the military goes through on how to improve their next day in every day out. For most of us, not letting fears or limiting beliefs sabotage our business goals of growth and development can be a lifelong practice for self-awareness.
Aristotle:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
For practice to become a habit, it needs to be consistently engaged for at least 66 or more days. Try it, prove me wrong and do it until it becomes a habit like brushing your teeth. A day here and a day there will not bring transformation. At first, our practice requires a rigid hard discipline to do something we may not be inclined to do if we did it gently. It MUST hurt, we MUST pave the way through suffering. We MUST pave the way through suffering squared to the action of passion. We Must develop a sick Love and fine-line Hate relationship with our best self and see the form in the future now. We MUST eventually enjoy it to the point of not returning to the old self. We MUST enjoy it so much that we cannot see ourselves doing anything else less perfect than the rush that it gives us. Does this make sense?
Over time, however, the discipline is replaced by the life-enriching benefits we are gaming that becomes bliscipline; the practice becomes more self-sustaining and requires less effort. This is where we look to make it harder as we have reached that New Level. Here is the key to practice: if you stop practicing, no problem — just start practicing again over and over and over and…
The Best Practices For Practice is to Practice ( No Matter what?)
Practicing coaching ourselves is a challenge. Disciplining ourselves to slow down to speed up and pause to develop ourselves and others is not easy. We also need recovery time. Society has us mesmerized to recover too much. While coaching in real-time itis ideal for guidance effectiveness to sit in unconsciously, it requires discipline in the current time to pivot from the transactive immediacies of management to the transformative opportunities of coaching yourself to greatness and rising above yourself.
Some leaders are so passionate about developing others that they not only coach at the moment, and also develop practices that are more far-reaching to the core people around them that are the movers and shakers of their companies.
Paul Van Oyen is CEO of Etex, a $3 billion-plus light weight building materials company based in Brussels whose diversified its business portfolio as well. Paul developed a “go-beyond” coaching practice to significantly advance the development of his key team members while also creating deeper intimacy and connection with building relationships that sail. Once a year, Paul invites each senior team member to take a one-day special trip with him. Each team member selects that date and the place, which can be anywhere in the world. It is their choice. Paul’s only caveat is that it be a place that is compelling to them. The place may have a family connection, be a place that inspires them to expand or be a place they’ve always wanted to explore.
What is the purpose of the day and the place trip? It is to share the exploration together, outside and inside. As they walk the streets, visit notable sights, and witness small, minor things and impressive ones that have changed, they share it all together, and at the same time, they share more of themselves. They talk and get to know more about each other: what is important to them, their significant relationships, and their life stories. The deeper purpose is to create the space and the conditions to foster intimacy through meaningful conversations about life and aspirations for the enterprise. In short, it is a rich opportunity to pause together to give personal and business transformation an opportunity to emerge in their unique greatness. Hopefully, this helps and supports you to foster the key members of your team to build towards greatness.
Commenting on this practice, Paul reflects, “I didn’t set this up to have greater influence with my people. I did it because I care about them and their development. I wanted the free space to grow together. It is one of the most important practices I have as a CEO to accelerate the growth in my team and myself.”
So let me ask you? “What will be your practices for pausing to grow others in your organization so you can grow your company and scale for impact?” Grab a pen and paper or a recording device and answer this question for yourself now and become that Seth Godin Purple Cow in your industry.
Elaborating on the principles guiding his commitment to developing others, Paul shared this:
- Coaching Principle One: Coaching Begins with Caring
Coaching without care is a mechanical performance process. When people know you care, they open up and become co-creators in the development journey. - Coaching Principle Two: Invest the Time
While impactful coaching requires deep attention vs. lots of time, it is critical to see the attention and time as an investment that you have to do in order to get a significant return. - Coaching Principle Three: Be Present and Listen Deeply
Deep presence and authentic listening give people a pause to reflect and to be. Give the gift of presence and listening. The gift of presence may be our most valuable coaching gift. - Coaching Principle Four: Lead with Questions and Curiosity
Managers have the best answers, leaders have the best questions. Use questions to help people sort out their needs, approaches and aspirations. - Coaching Principle Five: Meet People Where They Are At
Mentoring imparts experience or expertise where we want people to be. Coaching meets people where they are in order to help them move forward. Mentor less, coach more.
Devote yourself to a lifelong process of Real-time Awareness, Real Devotion to the long term, and Real Practice every day to co-inspire your leadership in all those you grace with your potential greatness so that they see how theirs is a part of yours. Become a results leader in action and a thought leader in your advancement: a leader devoted to developing your next generation to success and to catch greatness through pursuing excellence.
From Vince Lombardi “The Lombardi Rules.” Read this for inspiration and share it with others on your team. I always hear this in my mind in those era voices like the old radio of your parents. Feel the impact of these words. This is a man that chases excellence to catch greatness. It’s in this quote as well
Discipline
“I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. “
“There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline.”
“Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind — you could call it character in action.”
“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.”
“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
“Once you have established the goals you want and the price you’re willing to pay, you can ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure and the temporary failures.”
“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of the goal.”
“There is only one kind of discipline, and that is the perfect discipline. As a leader, you must enforce and maintain that discipline; otherwise, you will fail at your job.”
