004 - The Future of Culture in Business
28m
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Leadership's Edge
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Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
Do you ever wonder what the future of culture in business looks like? In today's episode, I'm going to dive deep into what I believe are some of the key pillars of what's the culture of the future.
And so let's dive in first foremost and talk about the concept of competition. Competition, first of all, does not exist. it's as real as you make it. It's like fear. There’s this great interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs is talking about how in the beginning they were trying to figure out how to compete with Microsoft and they were failing miserably until they realized that their job is not to compete with Microsoft. It is to do their own thing.
Second of all, you could take all that bandwidth, time, and energy that you're putting into the fear of competition and what you need to do to be better than the competitor; and put all of that energy and funnel it into how can we be better.
So what does that do culture-wise? It creates an ecosystem where people are predominantly focused on creativity rather than scarcity. Scarcity is the other guy that might wipe us out. And then you have a culture of playing the game out of the fear of losing, rather than the desire to win or even better, purely playing the game out of the desire to play the game just simply because you love the game. Let's face it. Sometimes in business, you're going to lose. And so the first concept that you really got to get today is there is no competition. And if your company does believe in competition, you're playing the wrong game. It's time to change the game.
The next piece of the puzzle is trust. There are a lot of layers to that. The first piece of the puzzle is they must trust the leadership, not each other. A leader is always the Genesis. The more responsibility a leader takes, the better it is.
If you look at something in your company and say, “That's not working,” then if you're taking responsibility, you have the courage and the ability to turn that finger on yourself and say, “I'm not working.” Your company is just a reflection of you, and so if they don't trust each other, probably what that means is they don't trust you. And maybe if you want to go deep, what that means is you don't trust yourself. If everything is a reflection on life, everything externally that you experience is a reflection of what is happening internally.
We always learn from behavior. This is synonymous with companies. They talk about culture, they talk about trust, they talk about mission statements and vision. They're very good at talking about it. But very seldom do they really deliver.
Does the behavior illustrate what they believe? And so when it comes to trust, the first question is, do you trust yourself? Or how much do you trust yourself? If the answer is “I don't trust myself,” or if the answer is “Not very much,” that might be a good place to start.
One of the greatest things you can do is create a leadership style that prioritizes your own self-expression. And so, this always comes back to choice. It always comes back to what you want. Because if you have a strong ability to express yourself, then you're going to give that same permission to your employees.
Your employees are going to spend the majority of their time at work. And so that environment absolutely must be a place where they can feel like they can be themselves.
This is something I talk a lot on the show about because the two things that employees want the most on the planet are not money. It's acknowledgment. The number one thing that all human beings want is to be acknowledged.
From there, the next thing that all employees want is opportunities to grow. That doesn't even necessarily mean up the ladder. It just means to grow as an individual.
Those are the major pillars I wanted to go over in today's episode as far as creating the culture of the future. What you can do now is not only become aware of some of these things but begin to implement them; so that when the future gets here, you are on the edge of leadership.
Ideally so that, your leadership takes you to the next level as an individual and your company at the same time.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]
The episode 004 - The Future of Culture in Business from the podcast Leadership's Edge has a duration of
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001 - Leadership's Edge
Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
Due to the popularity of Leadership's Edge first episode, we bring it back again!
Leadership is the most important factor in moving our world forward. I believe in what I call personal leadership. Whether you have a business or you have a dream, you are the leader of that. And your success in your business, in your legacy or even in your personal life comes down to your ability to successfully lead it. This show is going to dive into the mindsets, the tactics, and the strategies that are going to help you take your leadership to the next level.
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Your job right now is to decide that you have a new story. It is your job as an individual to claim as much of your worthiness as possible to deeply believe that you are enough - because it’s going to create a world that yields results and makes an impact.
The majority of our leadership has led from a place of lack. Now it's time to usher in an era of leadership that gives and creates from a place of overflow. You get to be part of the future where whether you're leading a company or leading a legacy or just yourself individually, you get to lead and live from overflow because you know that you are enough. You know that you are worthy of everything that you want to give and receive.
Today’s episode is all about you being worthy. Everything that you want and desire is possible. And it's inevitable if you are willing to take responsibility for it and to accept your worthiness.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]
010 - Through The Artistic Lens
Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
I have considered myself to be an artist. When I was young, I grew up doing martial arts and writing poetry.
I always looked at life through this artistic lens; and with that artistic lens came an appreciation for mastery and for beauty. That lens of being an artist has served me very well throughout my life and frankly, through my ability to be a leader and to make an impact.
There's another side to being an artist that I believe is important to talk about: passion. If you are an artist, it means that you are willing to be immersed in something.
We live in a culture currently that is kind of shy when it comes to extreme words like ‘obsessed’ or ‘addicted’, because they can often bring with them negative connotations. To be immersed in something doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. I think sometimes culturally, we can miss out on a lot of the juice that life has to offer.
Life as an artist is the willingness to go to those extremes - to feel the highs, to feel the lows, but also to put yourself out there. If it's one thing that artists do on a regular basis, whether it's music or drawing or art, they're willing to express themselves publicly. They're willing to put themselves out there and be critiqued for it.
I think what our global culture needs the most is more people who are willing to be self-expressed. This has served me very well in my life because everything I've done, whether it's relationships or my professional career, have all benefited from this lens of being an artist.
I have this philosophy that I call ‘highest probability of deep impact’. I heard John Travolta say that he had been offered lots of different jobs over his career; but if he was offered a job that he didn't feel was worth it to him, then he wouldn't do it.
Many actors will take whatever jobs they can get, but he was so committed to the craft. He was so committed to the mastery that he was only willing to do jobs that he really liked and that he felt like he could do a good job with. And in his world, by the way, doing a good job means create something meaningful for other people.
One of the greatest things I ever learned from Tony Robbins was, “If you want to change your life, you have to change your standards.” My question to you would be: what is it that you are willing to turn down? What is it that you're willing to say no to?
You might say that you don't think of yourself as an artist. You should. The reason is because we are all the creators of our reality. We all have the same opportunity to create our own reality, the way we see fit.
Life can be as rich, as fun, as expansive, and as impactful as you decide. If your life currently is not exactly the way you want it, then this is a great opportunity for you to reflect on that and to think to yourself, “Maybe I can take more ownership of this ability to create my reality.”
The other thing that most people forget about is that you become an example of what's possible. I think a lot of people admire rock stars and movie stars that achieve at a very high level, not because they're famous, not because they have lots of money, not because they travel the world, but because they're so self-expressed.
The next best thing is to be a fan and to be in close proximity to the people that are like that. Still, I think it would be better if you decide to be your own version of that.
When you do that, you give other people permission to do the same thing. That's leadership. The greatest definition of leadership that I know is that: a leader is not someone who creates more followers but creates more leaders.
As you expand your leadership - whether that's in your company, your family, your community, or just your personal life - your ability to enrich your own life by being the artist of it gives other people permission to do the same.
Sometimes we can get stuck when we talk about business, and we talk about numbers and metrics, and how to create success and do this stuff. But life does not exist in a silo. Business is not something outside of life. It is a part of life.
Life is colorful and you have the ability to paint it with whatever colors you desire. So, I want you to take ownership today of being an artist of your life.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]
009 - Interview with Christopher Graham
Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
I recently talked with my brother, Christopher Graham. He is quite frankly one of the brightest guys that I know. He graduated from Emmanuel College with a degree in International Relations and Philosophy.
The topic that day was essentially how technology is empowering mankind and the collective consciousness. The recent issue that the people Hong Kong were experiencing, made him think about how technology allows people all around the globe to communicate with each other through video, through Twitter, or through any sort of social media.
We're able to watch videos and literally hear from these protesters. And that in itself is a great example of how technology is allowing people to become more conscious of their ability to fight for their rights.
Moreover, Christopher thinks that social media, at least at this point in time, is sometimes more objective than news. He says it’s because you have an individual sharing their experience with the world. It's unfiltered.
He believes that social media and with the advancements of technology and how relatively easy it is today for people to access social media, allows the individual to tell their story to each other. It empowers each other to tell that story.
Meanwhile, I believe a collective consciousness is only as good as the individual consciousness. An individual who sees someone else having a voice purely as a function of this piece of technology has the opportunity to be inspired by that, and do that themselves.
It's a little bit of this domino effect of when someone sees someone else talking about a subject that they're very passionate about, and it gives them the kind of courage to “pick up the microphone, vocalize, and have a voice for themselves.”
Christopher and I also agreed that the youth is becoming a formidable agent for change. Suffering is a universal language that everyone understands.
If there's a Twitter video today that you see from kids in Australia that were all protesting together to create climate change, every kid in the world can relate to that. You don't have to understand English, to understand that kids all over the world understand that urge for protests to change the world, and to change the way politics and economics are affecting our climate.
Connecting this topic to leadership in the business standpoint, Christopher noted that sometimes, leaders become leaders and they don't even expect to become a leader. Leaders are people who inspire and enact courage within others that they did not know was there.
Leaders have such a level of courage that they may not even be aware of how much they're influencing others. He thinks that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are creating a lot of inspiration for younger entrepreneurs and people, who are having that drive to think outside the box and create something new.
He believes that similarly with technology leaders in the business world, Bezos and Musk understand the power of social media. They understand how far and how vast their reach can be with social media, and how many eyes and ears can see what they're doing and how they're changing the world.
Christopher added that sometimes, people can take things the wrong way. Sometimes kids can see certain people in the spotlight and take it in a negative way.
We agreed that with great power, comes great responsibility - especially as we advanced in social media and our ability to expose ourselves to thousands, if not millions, of people within minutes.
For me, technology is enhancing the collective consciousness. There's no question about it completely. From a leadership standpoint, what that means is the necessity to up-level your standard of excellence, so that what is getting transmuted to the masses is something that has a high probability of affecting people in a positive and powerful way.
Christopher closed the discussion by saying that despite being relative with every individual, as long as we're aware of the impact we have on others and the responsibility, we can create something really powerful and positive. He believes that's how we create change and how we can help each other move forward and, help this world stay together.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]
008 - Interview with Brad Hollister
Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
I have talked to a very special guest: Brad Hollister. He is the CEO of Swan Leap, which is currently the number one growing company in the United States.
I asked him what he believes are some of the key factors of his company’s growth. If there were two or three pillars that were responsible for that growth, what would they be?
Brad answered that the biggest thing that they've done, as far as competitors in their space omit to do, is listening to the customers about what exactly they need. He said that he had his ear to the ground about what the company is, the product division, what problems they are solving, and wherever they can position against the competitors.
For him, that's a big piece because they're able to understand better the mindset of the customers. He also thought that one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is they design a product or a solution or a service that they think is brilliant.
And it might be, but it doesn't matter what you think as the entrepreneur. All that matters are what the market determines.
I prompted another question: “Now that you are producing outstanding results for people, what degree it might be hard to tell about new business? do you think you're acquiring as a function of producing outstanding results for your current and previous people?”
Brad responded that it’s like they're building this growing snowball of positivity and happiness. But he said that there's still been some bumps and bruises along the way.
Sometimes, when there's turnover within their clients, it can be challenging for them because they don't always come at it with the same approach. He said that here's this interesting change of guard happening right now in business where there is a certain type of professional group that is looking at their vendors as opportunities and partners to collaborate.
Brad noted that he loves collaborating with competitors, too. But then, there's that old school mentality of ‘beat up the vendor’.
He thinks that it’s another important acknowledgment. But it's not somebody that fits their culture and their ability to do business.
They had a relationship with a certain business but in the long run, didn't become sustainable for them any longer. He said that as much as they don't want to lose a customer, they can't jeopardize their employees in their vision there.
Brad also discussed that one of the biggest mistakes people are making out there is: yes, your focus was the data; but what are you going to do with it? For him, it doesn't make sense to have AI machine learning big data if you can't change your behavior as a result of it.
He added that we should talk about, first of all, the flexibility to rapidly change strategy like mid-day, as opposed to tracking a truck to find out it's late, but you're not going to do anything differently because of it.
Moreover, he told me that he read an article recently that talked about the year 2030, and some of the really big trends that are going to be happening during that time. One of them is global empowerment.
Because more and more people are going to have access to the internet, more people will be empowered. And therefore, more people will have opportunities to create businesses and income.
He said that for the first time in history, the middle-class will actually be larger than the poverty class. Brad does sound like a visionary, to me.
Brad mentioned that he’s building probably the coolest thing. He has this little sphere that he has in his phone of contacts of other CEOs that he can call when he has a problem or if he has a question or a challenge - personal or professional.
He clarified that it does not mean like over LinkedIn or cold calling, but being genuine, meeting someone and taking a true interest in their business. He noted that he has learned it is important to have networking, not for trying to get anything out of, but offering when you think you can help.
Brad summarized that if you are someone who's willing to help other people, then you create this community of connection where no one's in it for anything in particular, but you're all just there to help. For me, that is very beautiful and valuable.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leaves a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]
007 - Being Decisive
Visit http://ShannonGraham.com/contact if you are a highly committed leader who is ready for quantum leaps in your personal and professional growth. Let's talk.
Welcome to Leadership's Edge. Today, I want to talk about decisive decision-making. If you're a leader, one of the most valuable skills that you can develop is the ability to make decisions rapidly.
I have been in the coaching and consulting world for 16 years, which means I've had 16 years to understand what helps leaders truly have the edge and make a global impact.
What are the elements that ultimately hold them back? The ability to make decisive decisions is one of the most important parts of being not just a leader, but a leader that can truly make a huge difference in the world.
The challenge in decision-making: a large number of people have a hard time making rapid decisions. I'm sure at some point in your life you've had some big decision and you hesitated or you evaluated or you waited and probably in some way, held you back. The reason for that, if we get underneath the hood, is usually fear.
It is the fear of making the wrong decision. That's why we hesitate. That's why we deliberate. That's why we evaluate. It's because we don't want to make the wrong decision. And if we want to go a layer deeper, usually what it means is “I don't trust myself.”
Today's focus is all about how you can make the internal shifts to allow you to rapidly make decisions regardless of whether you succeed or you fail. It all stems from that self-trust. Your ability to trust yourself is everything.
What that means is very often we can't trust our mind, but we can trust our gut. The idea is to get better at the ability to trust ourselves and not have to spend so much time thinking about things, but just trust ourselves to make the decision.
When you make rapid decisions, first of all, what you're doing is you're demonstrating to yourself that you trust yourself. That is an excellent habit for you to develop. The more you deliberate and hesitate, the more you reiterate the habit that you don't trust yourself.
So even if I really want you to hear what I'm saying, even if you deliberate and you evaluate, if the essence of that comes from you not trusting yourself, then you still made the wrong decision. If you trust yourself and you rapidly make a decision and it ends up being a mistake, it's still the right decision because you trusted yourself. You can never lose if you trust yourself and you can lose even when you win, when you don't trust yourself.
The universe is essentially evaluating and choosing certain ones to come into existence based on their synergy. Think about that. Everything in nature works together. The trees, the ocean, the flowers, the bees, they all work together. It's very synergistic.
When big things in a business context are desiring to happen, there is a certain speed in which the universe favors. When deliberation happens and when hesitation happens, the universe begins to feel a little shaky about that. Very often, the more you deliberate in, the more you hesitate, the further you get away from enough innovation and synergy.
I think one of the best things you could do is create a culture where two things are happening. You create a culture where everyone from the founders, CEO, all the way down to the janitor, has this culture of self-trust. The amount of innovation and progress that you can create when you make decisive decisions is huge. There are two huge benefits. You create this amazing culture of positivity, and you create a culture of innovation and progress.
As Tony Robbins likes to say, nothing has meaning other than the meaning that we give it. You have to be decisive about the meaning that you're gonna give it. Maybe you have a thought about a new product or a new service, and maybe there's some risk involved.
I guarantee the long-term cost of hesitation and deliberation and not trusting yourself far outweighs any failures that you might experience as a function of decisively deciding because that takes us full circle to what I said at the beginning, which is: it really doesn't matter whether you fail or not.
Deciding and failing is better than hesitating. I want you to commit to a big decisive decision today. I want you to incorporate some real courage into it because I know at the end of the day, huge impact usually is right around the corner from big decisions.
If I could inspire you to make one big decision, and that became the catalyst for this new habit of decisive decision-making, I think it would change everything for you.
If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at [email protected]