Your Absolute Best Year Yet 2013

Video Module 4 – Part 2

So let’s study the five elements of leading without a title even more deeply. Let's get even more
intimate with these five elements of leadership rebooted or leadership 2.0, leading without a
title. So number one - and the acronym for you to remember is IMAGE; Innovation, Merchant of
Wow, Authenticity, Guts, and Ethics.

Well, innovation, one of my favourite ideas - and I really wanted to share some insights on
innovation with you. Innovation is simply leaving everything you touch better than you found it.
Innovation is simply having a relentless commitment to making things better. Innovation is scary
for people, because ultimately there can be no innovation without disruption.

The very nature of innovating means you challenge the status quo. The very nature of
innovation means no matter if you're a janitor, or if you're a teacher, or if you're manager, or if
you're the CEO, the very nature of innovation means you are going to disrupt. You're going to
change the way things have always been done, even in the smallest of ways.

As a matter of fact, the best way to innovate are those 1% wins each and every day. 1%
improvements over time, which lead to stunning results. That's the best way to really build
innovation within your business and within your personal life.

But the very nature of innovation means you're a visionary. Visionaries are challenged.
Visionaries are ridiculed. Like I came up with a line yesterday, "ultimately visionaries are
ridiculed before they are understood". So, innovation is about improvement, and it's a scary
thing for most people because what they have to do is they have to leave the safe harbour of
the known.
They have to leave the way that they've always done things, the way they've always behaved,
the way they've always thought about things in work, and move out to a blue ocean. But if you're
not willing to leave the safety of the safe harbour of the known and move out into the blue ocean
you're never going to be able to explore possibilities, because possibility lives in the blue ocean.

To challenge you with great respect, if you're not willing to leave the safe harbour of the known
and go out in the blue ocean, then your competitors or your peers, to use a better word, in you
industry will innovate and they will make you and your business obsolete. I think about
Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus discovered the new lands because he was the
first explorer not to do what other explorers did.

Other explorers hugged the shore line, in other words they never left the sight of shore. What
Christopher Columbus did, and you can research this, but he went perpendicular to the shore.
He went straight out to the blue ocean and he discovered the new land.

In other words, when it comes to innovation, please be willing to leave the way you have always
done things and to think of new ways to deliver value, new ways to serve your customers. New
ways to grow your business, new ways to lead your team and go out into the blue ocean and do
that. Yes, it's scary, but growth and progress lives out on the edges. It does not live in the safe
harbour of the known.

The second element of leading without a title is all about being a Merchant of Wow. I shared this
when I was in London. But if you're doing just what your customers are expecting, if you're
being like all your other peers in your industry, which is what most people do, they benchmark
their competitors or their peers...

You know I don't like the word competitor. Because ultimately every minute you spend focusing
on your competition you're taking a moment away from creation and creating value, which is
going to allow you to get to your mountain top.
But if all you're doing is benchmarking and you're delivering about the same experience and
about the same value as your competition, then you're not going to be in very good shape as we
move into our future. Where there's going to be even more competition, even more disruption,
and even more change.

So on the second point about being a Merchant of Wow, may I encourage you to play it genius?
May I encourage you to be so great at what you and your organization does that your customers
are breathless, that you spell bind them with how much wow you deliver? If you offer that value,
of course your business will be sustainable as you move into the future.

But if you just deliver what's expected, well there's a great chance you might not be around in
five years. So, always be remembering or asking yourself this question. You've heard me say
this so many times. But it's, "How may I more effectively serve? How may I create so much
value for my customers that they are stunned by what I do and that they could not imagine
doing business with anyone else?"

In other words be a merchant of wow in the entire customer experience, or the quality of your
products. Be the Apple of your industry. In terms of doing your own personal work, do your work
so at the end of the day or at the end of the year, or at the end of your career, it's like
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

It's a masterpiece. It's a craft. It's a work of art. Very few people have that commitment to that
level of excellence anymore. You will stand out in your marketplace. You will be one of the great
ones in your marketplace.

The third element of leading without a title is all about authenticity. Authenticity is what the best
businesses are doing right now. What's authenticity about? It's nothing soft. Actually it's
something that's very hard. Warren Buffet said, "There will never be a better you than you."
Authenticity from a personal leadership perspective is simply about being yourself, speaking
with your voice. Going to work, operating under your values, being comfortable in your own skin.

I mean if you want to relate more to your teammates, relate more to your customers. Few thing
are as powerful as being one of those rare heir human beings that is comfortable in your own
skin. I listened to a Charlie Rose interview of Ted Turner the other day. I downloaded it off of
iTunes. It's an incredible interview, so inspirational when it comes to leadership and changing
the world. Ted Turner is so comfortable in his own skin, he likes who he is. That's a very
powerful way of being.

From an organizational leadership point of view, authenticity is one the most important,
competitive edges, or winning formulas in the new world of business we're in right now. Why?
Because being authentic means you're transparent.

People say, "You know what? That's an organization I trust. That's an organization whose
advertising and marketing messages are aligned with who they truly are," and that's what
creates loyalty. That is what creates consumers' trust, so that people understand the brand,
embrace the brand, love the brand.

There is a juice company that I love the juice. I'm not going to mention the name. But this is a
juice company that professes to be very, very authentic. They say, "We're a grass roots
organization. We care about our consumers. We're just one of you. We make natural juices. We
know you love them. We're the real deal."

Well, one of the things about this juice company is, I find it really hard to open up the lids. So, I
love the juice, but every single time the user experience... Keep on thinking about the user
experience. Be like Steve Jobs, a brilliant user experience for Apple products.
So, the user experience when you drink this juice is not very good. It's frustration every time you
consume the product. That's not something you want to etch onto people's brain cells. So I
thought I'd call this company and inform them about the problem about the lid in a very
constructive, optimistic, positive, supportive way.

Well, I went to the website. It was almost impossible to find a number to get a live person. It was
so hard. It was almost like this company had erected a blockade or fortress so that none of their
customers could get to them. I finally got a call center that didn't even have an employee of the
company. Someone had been outsourced.

I said, "Can I talk to a live person? I have a helpful idea." The operator said, "You know what? I
know it's really strange but they don't want anyone to call them. That's our instruction." Long
story short, how is that company authentic? I have a negative impression about that company's
authenticity as a result of that experience. So be authentic. Be transparent. Be the real deal.
People will love you for it.

Okay, as I move towards the final two elements of leading without a title - guts. Leadership is
about bold moves. Leadership is about doing what's right rather than what's easy. Leadership
isn't a popularity contest. As a matter of fact, the more you lead without a title, the more
brilliantly you shine, and the more you become a truly great performer, the more people will not
understand you or they will challenge you or they will criticize you.

What I've realized is the very nature of playing it world-class means you are going to disrupt the
status quo. The very nature of being exceptional means that you will behave and think in a way
that most people are not willing to take. You see, most people not only refuse to embrace the
opportunity of leadership, most people are too scared to embrace the responsibility of
leadership, because it means that they would have to change. They would have to refuse being
average.
They would have to work harder, dig deeper, innovate more, and connect with more of their
personal potential and bring it to bear in the world. That means they would have to leave what
they've always know. They would have to leave the safe harbour of the known and most people
are too scared and threatened to do that. They just don't want to change. They just don't want to
go out into the unknown, which is where their true potential lies.

So, you need a lot of guts to be a great leader. You need a lot of guts to play at your absolute
best. You need a lot of guts to be a visionary and say, "You know what? Our marketplace has
never done this." Or, "Here's a new way to deliver our product," or, "Here's a new product we
can bring to serve our beloved customers."

People will not understand that or they will ridicule you or if you become really successful they
will try to tear you down, because you are basically giving them a glimpse of what was possible
for them. Rather than owning personal responsibility and saying, "I could have done that too,"
it's easier to criticize and tear you down. So guts is what you must have as a leader, and
especially a leader without a title.

Then the final piece for the lead without a title philosophy, the final trait of leaders without a title
is simply ethics. Nothing is more important than your good name. Nothing is more important
than going to sleep every night with a clear conscience. You will never go wrong in doing what's
right.

It might take you longer to get to your goals. It might take you longer to build a world-class
brand. It might take you longer to build a world-class team. It might take you longer to get to
each of your financial objectives. But please, please, please, don't lose your reputation as you
get to your mountaintop.
Nothing is more important than knowing that you have traveled the journey with a sense of
integrity, that you've practiced your preaching, that you walk your talk, that you do what you say
you're going to do. It could take you a lifetime to build your business, and you can lose it in 20
seconds of bad judgment. Never let that happen to you.

You look at some of the sports stars right now, or some of the business leaders that have fallen
from grace, and have they ever fallen? I mean, sometimes the higher you climb, the more
harshly you fall, and how were they fallen? It's because they lost public trust because they have
not been ethical.

So in your quiet moments work on your character. In your quiet moments work on your honour.
Be a person of nobility in a world that has forgotten those kinds of leadership responsibilities.
Anyway, that's lead without a title, and I hope you've enjoyed this session. I hope you've
enjoyed being here with me. So I'm your leadership coach Robin Sharma, here at the Dead
Sea. Keep leading without a title and playing at your absolute best.

So, I wanted to offer you as I usually do, three action steps to engage in over the next 24 hours.
First of all, there was a lot of content in this session. So, what I would like you to do is review it,
take lots of notes, and then come up with a lead without a title document. In other words the key
elements of leading without a title that I shared with you.

Then, within the next 24 hours teach it to at least three people. In other words share with at
least three teammates, your beloved teammates, the five elements of leading without a title and
the insights that I shared with you. In other words, coach three people on your team on lead
without a title concept. It will help them. It'll help you grow leadership culture, and also it will help
you deepen the whole idea and integrate the learning.

Number two, what's your biggest opportunity right now that you are resisting to lead without a
title and to grow your business and to expand your life? Seize that opportunity within the next 24
hours. In other words, run towards your resistances. How do you grow in power? How do you
grow in confidence? How do you access more of you hidden potential? You do the things that
you are resisting doing, even if it scares you. Because on the other side of that fear door lies
your potential, and your next level of excellence.

The third thing I want you to do, come up with a leadership mantra. In other words, a one line
statement that you can repeat to yourself 10, 20, 30, 40 times during the day to deepen your
connection with the leader you're meant to be. It could be, every day and in every way I am
becoming an excellent leader and world-class at what I do. You'll probably come up with
something more elegant, more powerful, more articulate than that.

But come up with a leadership affirmation that you can repeat over and over, because words
have power. Words effect your emotional life. Words effect your thoughts. How do you re-script
your belief system? How do you change the game? Words are very powerful, come up with a
leadership mantra from that. Again, those are your three action steps. Do them over the next 24
hours. From the Dead Sea, I'm your leadership coach Robin Sharma. Keep leading without a
title. Bye-Bye.