I have made a decision to start a new podcast. It is a daily podcast of short, inspirational, and thought provoking ideas to brighten your day and help you grow your business. I plan to keep the length to 5-10 minutes. Short, sweet and to the point.

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Revved book:http://www.revvedbook.com ay Amazon.com

Leadership and Self-Deception at Amazon.com

Importance of Vacations: http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/survive/20040414-smith.html

Extreme Leadership

Greg's Recap on Leadership and Self-Deception

Extreme Leadership - Steve Farber
2 great books:

• Radical LEAP What exactly is an extreme leader? One who cultivates love, generates energy, inspires audacity, and provides proof.
• Radical Edge

Extreme Leadership - the Radical Agenda: Make others greater than yourself!

Phil's response to the Radical Agenda

Coming soon: No Bullshit Failure, a Key to Life, Business and Leadership Success

Another great way to get this past week's "power podcast." Check it out, and make it great!

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This week, and the next few week’s, my buddy Greg Balanko-Dickson is on vacation, so I was left to fend for myself and find another partner for the No BS Leadership podcast. Thankfully, the wonderfully talented and incredibly insightful Jodee Bock joined me for a discussion on Power.

Originally posted at Make it Great!, due to technical difficulties here on No Bullshit Leadership.

Lucky Podcast #13 - The Power Podcast (starring Phil Gerbyshak and Jodee Bock)

Greg is on vacation, and returning for another few episodes is Jodee Bock, from Bock’s Office.

Jodee is taking The Power Course based on the book The Power Principle by Blaine Lee (”Influence with Honor”). This book discusses how leaders can have more influence by having more principle-centered power.

Leadership BS - Leaders lead by using their coercive power. They control others through using fear, because you’re afraid of what would happen if you say what you really want or really feel, and you’d get fired.

REAL leaders use principle centered leadership.

Leaders have 3 choices about power.

1) Powerless - doubt, unresponsive, powerless, victim-thinking

2) Powerful 3 courses

a) Coercive - controlling others through fear
You get some sense of control, but not long-lasting

b) Utility Power - let’s make a deal, fairness, functional relationship, more reactive, also not long-lasting. if the deal goes bad, or you no longer have something I want, so I’m not going to follow you. “Carrot and the stick” mentality. Also known as “reward power.”

c) Positional power. Expert. Charisma. Informational.

3) Best choice - Principle-centered power
Honor makes all the difference. You get sustained and proactive influence.

GREAT leader for this: Mike Abrashoff (author of It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy)

Jodee can think of more leaders that can tell me what I don’t want to do. Jodee says “I was the kind of worker who was very goal oriented and task driven.”

The basis for the book: If you know what it’s like to be led by someone, it’s easier to do that, because you know what it’s like to be led that way. You can be the supervisor you always wanted to have.

Another example: Herb Kelleher

Spend time studying those who do it right.

The Secret Movie
Plot: What makes some of the leaders throughout history powerful.

LONG TERM results matter.

Maybe the tide is turning…We’re seeing more and more leaders showcasing the right case. Focus on the Mike Abrashoffs, the Sir Richard Branson, and other principle-centered leaders, and stop worrying about the others who may strike fear in your heart. Their leadership won’t last.

Coming up in future shows…

Leadership & Self-Deception

CASTLE Principles for What’s missing in Leadership

Radical Leadership

Technorati Tags: podcasts, power, abrashoff, principles, covey, leadership, management

This week’s bullshit: Life and business are constant. Truth: Things are fluid, they flow, they are not static, it’s moving.

We are NOT prepared to take on the world, but we think we are.

Greg was a manufacturers rep and shared a story about counting inventory with an 18 year old kid just out of high-school. He knew his math but he often got the count wrong because his multiplication skills were rusty. The kid was Canada’s worst counter at first but once he got the real world skills, and by next year, and was able to zip through counting inventory the next year.

Was the kid lacking intelligence? Nope…It’s a case of having Foundational Knowledge rather than the Practical Application of Knowledge

Bullshit is thinking we’ve got it all figured it out. Every day we learn something new. We have far more capacity to achieve than ANYONE could ever think.

Technology Entertainment & Design - features many great 20 minute video clips

Sir Ted Robinson - GREAT video with much to think about

According to UNESCO, in the next 30 years, there are going to more people graduating from secondary education than since the dawn of history.

China and India graduate 6 million people per year, US graduates 1 million

Greg muses: What will the value be of a post-secondary degree in the future?

We need to treat creativity and innovation as important as literacy, and it needs to be taught throughout the world and throughout the educational system.

New skill sets are needed to compete. We need Creative Intelligence

Phil McKinney - Killer Innovations
Remember business and the economy is fluid, they flow, they are not static, it’s moving.

Next week’s show: Creating Your Resourcefulness Gene

• A&E on Touch the Top
• Erik Weihenmayer's site

This week's bullshit - we tend to discount the ability of those that are disabled. We tend to bullshit ourselves about what we can achieve. We can do better and do more.

But we can't do it alone! It takes a team to defeat the bullshit, to buy into our goals, and to provide the support we need to "break through."

Erik's parents wanted to keep his life as normal as possible. They chose to support what he wanted to do. They struggled with it, but they chose to be supportive and help him do what he wanted to do…to climb Mt. Everest despite the challenges of a blind man climbing Mt Everest.

Greg's tips on how to get a team to surround you.

1. Publicly state your goals, and allow people to ask you if you're crazy for setting such lofty goals.
2. Find people that have the same interest.
3. Find people that are willing to follow you. Takes a lot of leadership.

Leadership creates the human inertia to overcome our willingness to learn and change.

Your ambition that keeps you moving up the mountain. It's your fear that you're going to step off into space and die that keeps you alive.

We can live our lives in a more concsious state if we are willing to face our fears. We have to be really clear about our ambitions AND our fears. Fear that freezes you isn't healthy, fear that gets your attention is. You must manage the tension between the ambition and fear. Don't ignore it, face it and acknowledge it.

• Acknowledge that we have a fear.
• Identify the Fear.
• Quantify the Risk.

Your Reticular Activation System (RAS) Can Help You

The Reticular Activating System is the attention center in the brain. It is the key to “turning on your brain,” and seems to be the center of motivation. It is designed to protect us from danger or notice things we had not thought of before.

Phil drove a tan Ford Taurus, now drives a white Pontiac Grand Am. After getting the Grand AM he started 'noticing' them everywhere, especially the white ones. That is how the RAS can help you by bringing getting your 'attention'. So just start pay attention when you begin to see 'new things' it could be something new that can help you.

Some individuals have a overactive RAS which allows them to notice things others might miss. Some think that part of ADD is due to a lack of adequate levels of Norepinephrine in that part of the brain.

When you notice a fear, ask yourself some questions. How much of a risk is this? Is there a real possibility this could happen?

If it could happen, then identify where the potential problems are and take action and you will not only reduce your risk but suddenly, the fear disappears. To learn more, read Greg's "7 Steps to Achieve Anything You Want" (Performance Bridge)

Remember, tension is our friend and it calls our attention to what's really important.

Tension seeks resolution, like a rubber band. If you're not feeling any tension right now, maybe you need to ramp up your ambitions or become more conscious of where you are in your life compared to where you would like to be. It may be the right time to take a risk.

Fear in Business

Some of the areas discussed in the podcast where managers and business owners feel fear include:

• Fear in Management in Business
• Hiring People
• Firing People
• Borrowing Money

What are the areas of your business or personal life where you experience fear?

Take action and face your fear. You can do it.

NOTE: this is a continuation from Show 9 which you can get here.

Show Notes

Best man at Greg's wedding just passed away this past week. He died young, and one of his friend's biggest challenges was that he could not forgive himself for all of the mistakes he made.
Admit that you made a mistake and learn from it. Need to cultivate the courage to look at ourselves and to admit that we failed, so we can move forward.

Leadership is a calling — it can be taught but it’s not about approval, ego, or convenience.

You feel leadership in your heart, a calling. Not about being the boss.

Rare is to find the boss that helps you find meaning, and connect to what they are passionate about.

Plugging into your passion creates enthusiasm.

By helping others connect with their passion you get the opportunity to witness the transformation. We need to start asking better questions. How can I help you? We're missing something here. Let's see how we can meet that need.

Tackle Cynicism and Resignation and Mediocrity

Losers stop trying - That's the true definition of a failure. Never, never quit.

ICE first. You must be AWARE that there's something better than what we have.

MELT second.

Quote from Phil’s friend: “Life is perfect…even when it sucks! What am I supposed to learn from this situation?”

Tension - Identify a problem without having a solution. Tension is good. It gets us moving. Create an expectation beyond ourselves.

Greg’s info: gregbd@sbishere.com, http://sbishere.com, Toll free: 1-866 281-8281.

Phil’s info: makeitgreat@gmail.com, http://makeitgreat.org

NOTE: this podcast is split into two shows. Show 10 completes the conversation.

Show Notes

One of our listeners submits a response to how to ICE the bullshit, with a proposal on how to MELT the bullshit

Let's begin with what "ICE" means

• Identify
• Challenge
• Eradicate

We create our own bullshit when realize that we did something that didn’t feel right, for approval, or something doesn’t match with our core values.

Let's dive into MELT

• Manage from failure — if you’re not failing, you’re not playing a big enough game
• Empower others — mentor, yes, but get out of their way
• Leadership is a calling — it can be taught but it’s not about approval, ego, or convenience
• Tackle cynicism and resignation and mediocrity - at every opportunity AND Take on integrity — be impeccable in every word you say

Quoting our listener: "It is clear that leadership is not about me. The more I empower others, the more I grow. The more I give up, the more I understand."

Awareness comes before ICE, and before MELT. Identifying the bullshit comes from a feeling inside, not doing what you know should be right.

Managing From Failure: if you’re not failing, you’re not playing a big enough game

Strengths & Weaknesses: Develop our Strengths and learn from our weaknesses, mistakes, and failures.

Greg stated that we have a cultural bias that predisposes us to hide from failure. Hide from the truth of what we've done. Nobody wants to fail. We are so programmed into ‘Performance Based Approval’. You are accepted as ‘good’ if you perform, and not if you fail. That is Bullshit.

Need to find a reason to believe in yourself or you will not be able to move forward and press through.

Example 9/11/01 that happened in New York: Greg had a meeting with a Business Owner September 13th and 14th in New York right after 9/11, the meeting was canceled because she was in the hospital.
For many business owners, their customers died. That's not bullshit, that's real stuff.

So lets look at what happened, before 9/11, life was great. You were optimistic, things were moving forward.

Then 9/11 happened.

They shift from ‘possibility’ thinking to necessity thinking. They shift into survival mode and end up trapped in what I call necessity thinking.

Necessity Thinking: Start focusing on ‘getting by’ and simple survival. You stop thinking about improving and growing and cannot see the possibilities and all the good going on around them.

You can transform from Necessity Thinking to Possibility Thinking.

Possibility Thinking: start looking forward and believing once again in the future. To be thinking about what is possible, innovation, hope, and what is possible. The key is to uncover your hidden passion and reignite that drive.

We are taught to ignore our weakness. Are we learning from our weaknesses or are we hiding from them?

As business owners we need to base our actions on specific principles including business and personal development principles. For example, the purpose of a business ISN'T to create profit. It's to create and keep customers. Then if you manage the business well, you create a profit.

Greg is reading Uncommon Friends by Jim Newton. Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor and very practical. In the book Uncommon Friends Jim describes a situation where Edison gave a couple of recent engineering graduates an assignment. He handed them a light bulb and asked them to calculate how much water, by weight the light bulb would hold.

They went away and could not agree on how to approach the problem. At the end of the day they both cane back with different answers. Edison took the light bulb, removed the base, weighed it, then filled it with water and weighed it again and then subtracted the two values to come up with the correct answer. The engineers calculations were wrong.

Sometimes we make things to difficult. We need to get back to the basics. Keep it simple stupid. KISS

Thomas Edison had 1093 patents. This means Jefferson created a new patent every 10-12 days of his working life.

Edison had an intuitive spark. For example, he was trying to figure out a way to get multiple signals on one telegraph line. He got the idea, which ultimately lead him to inventing the solution one day when he stepped on a Cat’s tail. He noticed that the cat’s impulse was to screech. Impulse, impulse, impulse to put multiple messages on a telegraph line.

We spend 12 years of our lives in school and gradually our inquisitive nature is broken or buried. Teachers don't want you to challenge their ideas and thinking.

Have you stopped seeking, discovering, and learning? We don’t need the right answer we need to ask the right questions.

Often all the education system wants you to do what you are told to do. It creates apathetic workers. Like trained dogs. We're not teaching people to think creatively, we're teaching them to think the same.

Ask the right questions. Stop recycling others thoughts, think for yourself.

Anyone can succeed but to succeed it takes real courage to look at your weaknesses. Have to face your beliefs and discover that some of the things you believe are not true.

Babe Ruth held the record for the most homeruns AND the most strikeouts. .300 hitters in baseball fail 70% of the time. Think about this another way: if a hitter had 700 at bats, and hit 70 homeruns, we'd applaud the 70 homeruns, but do we realize that they hit a homerun only 10% of the time they tried.

Empower Others and Yourself

People who succeed are massive failures BEFORE they become successful.

To empower others look at the person NOT the event! When we focus on the failure event we are making a judgment about the outcome. If we want to empower others we have have focus on the person,

“All things come to him who hustles while he waits.” - Thomas Edison

"No telling how far most will go to avoid the real work of thinking." - Thomas Edison

As soon as you start thinking, you become self-aware. Don't just empower others. Empower YOURSELF!

Who’s fault is it? Phil starts the conversation last week, here.

Why do we fail? We're not clear enough on the results we say we want. We're not clear on the expectations we set. We need to start at the end, asking the good questions to ensure that's what we REALLY want. Or am I listening to someone or something else.

We assume, and adopt, a lot of beliefs because all of our actions are based upon our beliefs. We don't always see what we believe, below the surface. We still react to these things we don't see.

Start with the vision: what do I really want, and is it WORTH the cost? We often don't think about the real price of success.

Time - effort - energy - reputation - all things add into the cost.

Take the time to think about the result, and think about our intent, and the cost, and whether or not it's in alignment with who I am and what my goals really are.

What are we really aiming for?

Begin at the end, and work towards today.

Lack of accountability is just a symptom of something else. Some other failing. Resistance to change. Can't change something you're not aware of. You can't grow if you don't know what you don't know.

Take the time to get to know what you don't know, and uncover new truths and new meaning. If you don't know, you have to take time to find out. Writing is a great way to force yourself to examine your actions. Awareness that things could be better.

You need an awareness that things could improve, and then start looking out at someone doing a better job than you. Make a direct comparison to what you're doing. Once the awareness is there, you can start to compare and contrast at how you can improve. It's why monopolies often stop innovating. They're the only game in town, so they rest.

To help people grow, we need to find a way to sow a seed of personal growth.

Setting goals we don't attain sets a negative anchor about failure that we stop trying to do new things.

If you're afraid to fail, don't go into business or management; just be happy being an associate. Business owners and managers fail EVERY DAY! It's not that you make a mistake, it's how you recover from that mistake. That requires an attitude.

Greg's Bullshit (I was much younger, but I did it)

When I was in my early twenties I was a partsman at a local automotive jobber. One of our best customers called for a couple of brake drums for a truck. The truck was specialty ambulance and did not use the standard parts. Paul was the owner of the shop and wanted them asap. I found the unique parts at a local warehouse in the west end and sent the driver to get them.

I called Paul and told him that it would take about an hour and a half. He said, "make it quick" and he hung up the phone.

The 90 minutes came and went and no sign of my driver. Five minutes later Paul called asking where the parts were and I said that the driver was late and I was trying to track the driver down. Paul was not happy. 10 minutes later he called inquiring about his missing brake drums, to which I replied, "I still have not seen the driver and he is not where he is supposed to be. I am working on it."

In the meantime my phone was ringing off the hook with customers ordering parts, and three customers at the counter wanting service and I was all alone in the store. 10 minutes later, Paul is asking about the brake drums, again, frustrated I stated, "When I get them, they will be sent over to you." and hang up on him.

A few minutes later my boss walked into Paul's shop and Paul gave him an earful and stated that unless he gets an apology from me, we would loose his business. Paul was big customer. My boss said I better drive over and eat some crow. By then the brake drums had arrived and I loaded them into the car and drove over to see Paul.

In a gruff, loud voice Paul said, "Stand over there, I will be right with you and we will talk." So there I was standing in the middle of the shop. Feeling sheepish, I waited for Paul for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, in a loud voice Paul came over and asked, "Why do you think I was pressing you for the brake drums?" "Because you needed them to finish the job?" I queried. "No!" he shouted. I just stood there kind of dumbfounded. Paul began to explain, "As long as that Ambulance is in my shop it cannot be used. They are short of vehicles and with this in my shop they are in a code red. If someone has an heart attack, they may not be able to get to them in time to save their life."

Paul's lecture gave new meaning to the value of the job of a partsman. Perhaps doing your job does not make a difference in saving someone's life but what is important is that you find 'importance' in doing your job.

Find Meaning in Your Job or Find New Job

Task might seem meaningless, but it's not. It means something to someone. If it seems meaningless, then you need to find a new job, get out of business, or (better) find a way to give it meaning! It's not the employees' fault that they don't find meaning in the job, it's the leader's fault. It's the leader's job to help the employees see the meaning in what they do. People work because they want to grow! Work gives employees an opportunity to find meaning. That's what will get them out of bed in the morning!

Every employee in every job needs a vision statement before they can start their job. WARNING: This is work! You have to know yourself. Greg’s 7 Steps toi Achieving the Results You Want.

• Start by identifying the results you want.
• See the intent.
• Ensure it's in alignment with your own personal growth statement.
• THEN set the goals, because you know what you're all about then. These will be the DEEP lasting goals.

Benchmarking - Hiring Tool

Have your best people take this test, then the rest, and it sets the benchmark.
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