Bonus Episode 12: Using Sports as a Leadership Laboratory

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Hi, this is Stephen McLain of the finance leader podcast. And this is bonus episode number 12. Lately I've been doing really deep thinking about the role of sports when it comes to leadership development, and leading by example, sports lends to us a very visible presence as coaches and on field or on court athletes do their best to overcome adversity every day. It takes leadership to pull together a team to overcome another team sports has always been a very visible and very applicable leadership laboratory to examine basic leadership principles in action, even while dealing with COVID-19 on a worldwide scale, sports gives us another example of dealing with adversity. In the US we have witnessed the NBA, the NHL, and the W NBA crowned champions after seasons were halted to the virus. Major League Baseball is very close to seeing a World Series Champion, Major League Soccer is also playing. Along with golf and tennis, they have all run major events, and worldwide soccer leagues are playing along with other major sports, they are figuring out how to play and how to deal with covid. How to deal with adversity in a very major global scale. The individual leagues approach the problem a little differently, the calculation of risk was present, but persistence and the development of protocols helped to address residual risk and overcome the problem. They also had to figure out new lines of revenue, because the old lines were nearly non existent and new ways for fans to engage. Now, this discussion isn't about COVID 19.

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It's about overcoming adversity.

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And just using COVID-19. As an example of that kind of adversity. He had to overcome the sports leagues had to figure it out. If they wanted to present their product on the field on the court or on the ice this year, they had to figure it out. They had to overcome all the problems that were present and all the problems that they were facing in order to keep everyone safe. And again, create and present that product in a way for people to consume it.

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Major League Baseball also decided to experiment with changes to the game and an already crazy year, Major League Baseball took risk at a great time to tinker with a game that people will defend its traditions with incredible passion. Now I also like this, I have a great respect for when people look at things, especially at ways and things that need to change and try to make things a lot better. And that's what Major League Baseball was trying to do by by throwing in a few changes to the game to see if they would work if they would stick or the season made the game better have made gameplay a lot faster. And I really liked that I really respect the fact that people are trying new ways and looking at things differently. looking at things from a different angle.

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That is what leadership is about. We are seeing adversity, defeating leadership every day through our sports leagues. Even when we see virus breakouts, we are seeing leaders who get their organizations through the problem, we have seen perseverance and determination to accomplish the end goal of securing championships. Now we can use this example leadership and application of how we approach our organizations and our teams. pro athletes have to get extremely close to each other during their competitions.

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It doesn't stop them from the goal. Now to win you have to play. To grow. You have to be involved in your development to succeed you have to take on that calculated risk. overcoming adversity takes leadership it takes a growth mindset do we let a challenge stop us and this discussion again isn't about taking unnecessary risks around COVID it's what we do and facing any challenge or obstacle because for many a tiny obstacle could stop you from accomplishing your big goal. I'm encouraging you to not let these obstacles stop you develop your growth mindset. Don't be afraid to tackle work challenge when we are challenged is when we really grow and become something more and bigger than what we are today. This week I'm sharing an encore episode from Season number two and that is episode number 20. about becoming your best self becoming your best self is essential when you are developing your leadership ability because when you lead others you should be your best version to encourage growth and development while avoiding toxic behavior. During the episode I discuss becoming your best self using the following focus areas number one, continuous improvement. Number two, develop a deep respect for others. And number three, take the high road when dealing with an adverse event or personal setback. I am working on bringing season number four to you, which will debut on November 10 continue to grow and develop and ensure your team members are to please enjoy. Thank you I hope you're having a great week. The episode this week is about becoming your best self, but the best version of yourself.

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always striving to be better you to maximize life's opportunities and have positive growth oriented relationships and to have a fulfilling, thriving life. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 20. And today, I will discuss becoming your best self. And I'm going to focus on three areas that are important to me as I strive to become my best self. These are the things that I believe that are important. Number one is continuous improvement. Number two, develop a deep respect for others. Number three, take the high road when an adverse event or a personal setback happens to you, Pat Summitt, who coached the University of Tennessee women's basketball team for many years, and won eight NCAA championships said, and I quote, change equals self improvement, push yourself to places you haven't been before, and quote, becoming our best self is working to be the best version of ourselves. But that, of course, leaves many different ways and different definitions about what that really means.

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Some say that is to live a rich and full life. And it really depends on where you want to go with your life. And what you want to accomplish comes down to what are your goals? What do you want to do with your life? And also, how do you react to stimuli in your life? What happens when something goes wrong? We all don't escape chaos and hardship, and we're all going to face it. But what happens when something happens in your life when a setback occurs? Or something doesn't go quite according to plan? How do you face it? How do you deal with it? How do you take that step forward? When something happens wrong in your life? And how do you approach other people in your life? How do you develop those relationships? How do you foster good relationships in your life? Now we all don't escape chaos, and we all don't escape hardship, we're all gonna face it. Now, some may think that becoming your best self or becoming our best version will be or could be a religious experience or a spiritual experience. And it's possibly that it may be that I believe that becoming your best self is essential to developing your leadership ability. Because when you lead others, you should be your best version, to avoid toxic behavior, and to avoid hurtful behavior. And when you become your best self. And when you're in a leadership position, you should be working very hard to developing your team and ensuring that your team members become their best selves that they have continuous improvement, and they become the best version that they can be.

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And they fulfill their potential. Of course, it depends a lot on your team members and how they approach their life and how they approach their goals.

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But in a leadership position, we should be striving to give our team the best chance and the best opportunity that they can become their best selves continue to give them opportunities to excel. So this is why this episode is important that you as a leader should be striving to become your best self, so that you can in turn, become that great example, and inspire others to become their best selves. Of course, I mentioned the three things that I'm going to focus on, there are other areas that you can add in.

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There are many lists out there about how to become your best self. This is why I wanted to focus on just three areas today.

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There of course, you can add in areas like the physical aspect, like getting better sleep and controlling your diet and drinking more water. But we are all different and we have to figure out those things for ourselves. And ultimately, I believe that becoming your best self is really a mindset issue.

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I talk about mindset a lot I write about it. I post things on my social media accounts, a lot about mindset. And if you ever heard me speak before, or read my posts, I do believe that if you change your mindset, you will change your outcome.

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becoming our best self is about changing our mindset, to have a positive outlook and to have a continuous improvement methodology as we go through our life. For me specifically, becoming your best self means I will continue to grow and develop and also I want to maximize my personal relationships. I like a small intimate inner circle of friends so I can share ideas and feel safe doing so I have very strong opinions about inner circles and inner circle needs to be supportive and growth or anted not toxic and not enabling enablers are just as bad as toxic actors, toxic people judge you, and they try to control you for their own purpose. And when you get invited into an inner circle, you also need to be supportive. Being a member of an inner circle means you are also trying to help the person become their best self to grow. And growth also means tough conversation, sometimes not judging conversations and not trying to control conversations, but real growth oriented conversations to help the person see things that they don't always see, to help them achieve a goal or to go overcome an obstacle or to get past a setback that may have happened in their life. That's what we want to have also, in our very close personal relationships, is that we want to be surrounded by people who are supportive, who want to see us grow, who don't want to try to control us, and also don't want to enable us and doing behavior. That's not very encouraging to ourselves, and behavior that doesn't contribute to a growth mindset. When you're involved in an enabling relationship. The enablers are just going to let you do what you feel is right, even though the things may not be right for yourself, you're not going to hear the feedback that you need to hear for you to move forward, you're just going to hear the things that the people think that you want to hear. And that enabling relationship doesn't help you grow, as a leader doesn't help you grow as a human being, regarding your relationships, and regarding how you can achieve your potential, I also believe that becoming your best self is the ability to explore the possibilities of what life has to offer, becoming your best self can help you see opportunities that can help you see what opportunities are out there. And also gives you the courage and the strength to go after those opportunities. I also like this concept of becoming my best self, because I want to continually create as much independence for myself regarding my career, my future, and also in order to free myself from toxic environments so that I can continue to grow. Because when you're in a toxic environment, you don't really get that an opportunity to grow, you're always dealing with whatever's going on around you and you have to get over it, or you have to overcome it. So the three areas that I want to focus on that are important to me, in becoming my best self. And again, that's going to be continuous improvement, developing a deep respect for others, and then also taking the high road when faced with adversity or personal setback.

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So the first item is continuous improvement. And this may be developing new skills or improving your current skills, and preparing ourselves for greater responsibility. Now, if you also heard me for a while or read what I have on my blog, or in the posts that I do, I'm a big believer in mindset. But I'm also a big believer and never becoming complacent. I despise complacency. Because when you're complacent, you're not growing, you're not improving. I believe that you need to continue to strive to be better. I know we all have our bad days, we have our setbacks, we have our moments, but I believe that we need to have this mindset. And this focus around our life as leaders that we need to be striving to be better and striving to improve. I believe that you need to be growing your potential to advance your career, and growing your leadership skills. So you can develop your team, because that's the most important of all, we're going to grow ourselves so that we can grow others in the future, you need to own your self development, you also need to put in the work and find that fire inside you to achieve that long term goal you have for yourself. I do believe that as leaders, we need to help lead our team to development.

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But they also need to do the work to get better to number two is that we need to continually develop a deep respect for others. I think this is going to really come back in a very positive way is that if we encourage and we develop a deep respect for everyone that we come in contact with, even if we disagree if we have a deep respect for that person, that that relationship will help us grow as people and it will help us grow and enrich ourselves because we will learn and we will understand. And we will know more about people because we have to overcome our biases that we have in our life. I've talked about this too in many forums in that we all have some kind of bias in our life and as we decide and it is a decision it is a it is a very strong decision that we must make in our in our life. And as we approach people is that once we learn and once we have realized that we need to grow a deep respect for others because it's going to come back to us in a positive way. It will help us overcome those biases that have been grown in us as we have grown up in whatever environment that we are in as leaders, we need to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to maximize their potential. And as leaders, we need to give opportunities to Excel to our team does sometimes team members won't grasp onto those opportunities to excel in an opportunity to maximize their potential. But I think as a leader that we need to be continually providing those opportunities and providing a way for our team members to grow and develop, I do believe that we need to treat our people and treat everyone that we come in contact with, with dignity, we need to stop blaming others and focus on growing our teams. Now even if you have a team member who is not performing well, you need to give great feedback, provide opportunities for them to come back up to the standard that you have established, provide opportunities for growth. And then if no change occurs, then you have them move on, but in a very respectful and dignified manner, and you provide for them a graceful exit off the team and out of the organization. If that is the decision that has to be made, I want to reiterate now as we have this growth of having a deeper respect for others. And as we understand and comprehend our own biases, and we start to view others in a positive way, and we start to build strong relationships, then we get to have this great opportunity to see others grow, and we get to see others maximize their potential, it would be absolutely outstanding, if that we could have everybody in our workplace grasp onto this concept of having deep respect for others, and to see what the opportunities and we see what the organization can then do after that if everyone in the organization started to treat people with respect and with dignity, the organization I think would just blossom and grow. And there would be new ideas. And there would be new ways to looking at things. And we you could eliminate all these horrible behaviors and this disrespect and you will get to see something you hadn't seen before you get to see an organization and even your team to go into another place into a new level. So that's why I want to encourage you in becoming your best self having this concept be one of the most important concepts you can have in your life. And that is treating people with dignity and then having a deep respect for their ideas, having a deep respect for where they came from, and having a life of empathy and understanding the third item that I wanted to highlight in becoming your best self. And that is taking the high road when faced with adversity or a personal setback.

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Now when faced with trouble, or pettiness or a change in your life, it's best to hold your head high and act with a strong sense of character and honor, I know this is easier said than done on something has happened wrong in your life or something has not gone according to plan or something has done something to you that isn't right. Now, how do you move on from that?

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How do you process that? How do you get over that setback. And I believe that depending upon the situation, depending upon what happened in your life, that I believe that we can continue to move on with dignity, and that we don't dwell on the adverse event or what is causing the problem. We develop solutions to move on. And we continue to solve the problem for ourselves.

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Again, this is a mindset issue.

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Are you able to dust yourself off and overcome that adverse event because your life is going to be filled with setbacks and adverse events? It's how you approach those adverse events that will define you going forward? Are you able to overcome it? Are you able to go forward with your goals? Are you able to just get up and say, Hey, this is something that happened to me, Hey, I probably didn't get what I wanted in this job or in this profession, or in this relationship. And that I'm just going to go ahead and move on, I'm going to move on with dignity, I'm going to have a new plan of action. And this is not going to stop me from accomplishing my goals is not going to stop me from going on with my life. I'm going to create a new independence, I'm going to create a new way of achieving what I want in my life and this adverse event is not going to stop me and then the next time you have an adverse event, you're going to be continually growing, you're going to be continually getting tougher and stronger. And you're going to build resilience and you're going to be able to overcome adverse events. So this is why I'm encouraging you when you have an adverse event in your life. You step back, you assess it, you solve the problem in the immediate you overcome whatever it is that has happened to you, you didn't get a promotion, you didn't get an opportunity that you wanted. You didn't get a training opportunity that may have been offered to a few people, you didn't get an opportunity to do something that would really accelerate your career, but we don't dwell on it, we move on, we develop a new plan, we take the high road, we find something else that can get us moving forward and get us moving towards our big goal. And we do it with dignity. I believe that these three areas can help you develop a rich, full life as you lead others because as a leader, I believe that we should be developing others. Now in finance and accounting, we are faced with a myriad of requirements, we are often overwhelmed with monthly close requests for information, completing reports, and analysis and trying to grow the business all while trying to develop ourselves and our teams, we need to continually show appreciation for our teams, for our people, for the people that we interact with. And those we come in contact with on a daily basis, whether it be in the office, whether it be at work, whether it be at the store, or wherever we go in our daily conduct of our lives. And as a leader. And in all the requirements and tasks that we have. Sometimes we need to let go some of those so that we can see our team grow and develop. And we need to focus on empowering our team so that they can help us out. And this is another part of becoming our best self. And as we grow ourselves. And as we grow our team, we need to let go of certain things and get out of that micromanagement and over control over tasks that we have, and look at how we can develop a team member and give that task over, that's going to improve yourself as leader and it's going to improve that team member and is going to improve the organization in the department that you're in as a whole. Because you're going to see that you're going to be able to accomplish more, and you're going to be able to accomplish more at a higher standard, a higher level of excellence. This is why I am encouraging you to as you become your best self and you improve, you're going to realize that you're going to improve how you lead how you deal with tasks. And as you grow and develop others, you're going to have deeper respect. And you're going to realize that you can give up a little bit of control. And you're going to be able to give over some tasks that you have always held close to yourself, and you're going to be able to accomplish a lot more. And even if your team member doesn't quite accomplish that task to the same standard that you did the first time and you have some kind of a setback as you go into present. Or as you brief this task, as your team member goes in and briefs this task to maybe a senior leader. And maybe you're faced with a little bit of setback that you can walk out of that meeting and out of that presentation, knowing that your team member got developed, and you're going to be able to coach them to be a little bit better.

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And now you can see the tie in to these three things that I showed today. Because what I want to see is that your team being able to explode an excellence. But in order to explode an excellence, you need to let go of some things, you need to get out of the micromanagement. And you need to go to a higher level yourself in the way you lead and the way you prioritize and the way you see to the accomplishment of all your tasks. And as you grow, your team members will grow. And as things happen to the team, and as an adverse event happens, you're going to be able to smile, and you're gonna be able to develop a course of action.

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And it's not going to set you back as far as I did before. So for an easy win today, what can you do to develop the best version of yourself?

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Now again, I focused on three areas in this episode, continuous improvement, deep respect for others, and taking the high road when faced with adversity. Now what can you do to become a better leader, so you are stronger influence of doing what's right in the organization. And for your team, I want you to think hard. And I want you to develop a few areas to work on. And if you can put this into your individual development plan so that it is written down. It is measurable, and you have a set date and develop a plan around becoming your best self. Now I have a little bit of research to share with you. I found an article that Harvard Business Review published in 2019. And it is a correlation between China give positive feedback to your team members about their strengths and their contributions and how that builds a very healthy relationship between you and a team member and then your team members also in that when you give this feedback about their strengths and contributions that is going to build trust, and it's going to build resourcefulness and it's going to help strengthen the quality of the relationship on your team and in your organization. The article is also encouraging having This topic of wanting to share your own personal reflections how you become your best self with your team members, especially your new team members when they are going through the onboarding process because in the long run as you do this, the research shows that it will increase job satisfaction and you're going to reduce employee turnover. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offerings through finance leader Academy is called Advanced your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization this course helps you analyze what you bring to the organization how you can set yourself apart from your peers to high visibility work and developing your leadership skills plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead you can go to Stephen McLain calm and select the store from the menu. We are still in production mode with this course. So I'm offering a limited time offer to buy it now. So get this special offer because that'll be gone soon. In this episode, we talked about becoming your best self. This concludes season number two of the finance leader podcast season number three will begin on August 4, and in the meantime, I will share bonus content with you each week for season number three, there are some exciting topics that will be coming to the podcast and some of those topics will include setting expectations for your team especially new team members, building your influence collaboration, becoming a better coach for your team developing a culture of winning and several more. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. Hope you enjoy the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. If you are enjoying this podcast, please leave a review so that others can get introduced to this forum. I will be reading reviews on future episodes and it might be yours.

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Thank you and please share with your colleagues. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time.

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Thank you

Bonus Episode 12: Using Sports as a Leadership Laboratory

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