Challenging yourself and others as a leader to grow

Faisal Ensaun: [00:00:00] People need to know that they can fail forward. Nobody knows everything. Everybody learns as they go. That's especially true in life and entrepreneurship, because we're all making up shit as we're going, there is no recipe book for being a parent. There's no recipe book for the best life. We're just trying things.

And out of that, we're learning. And the ideal situation is that you're learning with a bunch of other people. So you learn quickly enough. So you don't create a disaster. This week is challenge week. We're going to challenge ourselves as leaders, and we're going to challenge other people around us, or at least we're going to begin to think about what that looks like to us.

And I'll start it off with a quote from Simon Sinek. If you guys haven't followed his work, it's pretty powerful around leadership, and all of his talks are great. Leadership isn't about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge. And if you have noticed, as soon as you come into the program, one of the things that I do is even if you don't have the identity of a leader, I give it [00:01:00] to you as a leader.

I'll assume that you are a leader, regardless of whether or not you give yourself that identity. And one of the things that happens over time is that you start to look at yourself as a leader naturally. And, and this was a big block for me because I always associated leadership with to be in charge or to authority or to know things.

Or to know, to be able to know more than other people or to be better than other people. And that's the narrative that people either explicitly say or they imply. A lot of people hesitate to take on that identity, but the reality is that leadership, much of it is not about you. Yes, it will push you to grow.

It's actually about. How you support and build something together towards a common path. What is it usually about for human beings specifically? It's about building a family. It's about building a organization. It's about building a community. It's about working towards a cause, whatever that might be your role as a leader within that organization or that [00:02:00] role is to support those around you.

Who can come together and work towards that common cause. And you're essentially equal with them, you're not above them, but you might be in a position where you mentor, guide, support, challenge, do all those things. As soon as I understood that from, Oh, I don't have to be better than anybody. I don't even have to know more than them.

All I need to do is to show up consistently. And that's the hardest part of leadership is to. Every day you're showing up in little ways to support those around you. Now to backtrack a little bit, one of the other model of leadership that I've heard, which I like. Now, one of my coaches teaches this and says that there's only one form of leadership, it's self leadership, which implies that when you lead yourself and by osmosis, you lead others around you, which means that you guide and model the positive way for them, which is also true.

Um, but being that our nature as human beings, we're not like a lone species, like a tiger where rooms around for a year alone does its own [00:03:00] hunting and all that stuff. And then comes together, maybe with a mate, and that's not how we operate. We operate more like wolves and chimpanzees, where we, we have a social structure.

We cannot operate without that. It's in fact, we know that it's extreme to be alone or in your own corner. Now, everybody has a different intensity of how much they can interact with other people. But the one thing common amongst all cultures, everywhere from around the world is that you are a social species.

That means by your nature, if you're going to show up, you might as well show up in a way where you're growing and you're helping other people grow around you. And that's the process of being a leader. It doesn't mean you're better than others. It doesn't mean that you will know everything. It doesn't mean that you will even show up better than you did yesterday.

But you're trying. You're showing up consistently. Why? The why is the next piece I want to talk to you about is the important thing. And I cannot define it for you. You're going to have to define that for yourself because your why [00:04:00] is very personal to you. I can tell you about my why. My why is very clear.

It comes, it connects to my own story that when I was growing up, I needed other people to guide me and I struggled to find leaders who understood me, created space for me to help guide me to understand my own self. My own thought process, because I lived among other people. In fact, most of the time, what I saw was that other people who seemingly should have known more than me or did know more than me or pretended to know more than me or had more authority, they tended to look the other way, or they would take their responsibility off of themselves and put it on something else or somebody else.

This is why the general theme of leadership is that you're taking on the responsibility. To serve those around you and that you can own for me personally is that you know what I needed it a lot and not only me but every other person who was growing up in that community needed leadership, which meant that he he or she needed a way to be guided to be protected to be [00:05:00] supported to given a safe space to grow as a human being, but many times we didn't get it.

Some people tried their best and they were leaders. They helped in a lot of ways. But a lot of people didn't, they didn't show up with that sense of responsibility that, you know what, this is my community, this is my organization, this is my space, I'm going to help these people around me. And I'm going to show up as my best and model that process.

And to me, as I realized, had a few of them done some things, even a few things differently, That would have completely shifted my life in a positive direction or another person's life in a positive direction in extreme cases, that meant somebody getting saved from suicide. That meant somebody getting saved from depressions of all kinds, from divorce, from career and life breakdown, all health breakdowns that could have had that kind of effect.

And on the positive side, that meant that creating better health, more intelligence, more emotional intelligence. More connection with other people. It's so, it means a lot to the people around you for you to show up with [00:06:00] that sense of responsibility that you know, what is part of my job is to show up there for other people.

Now that doesn't mean, and this is a downside of, um, like people get the wrong idea around leadership. A lot of times people are like, I need to sacrifice myself completely to show up for other people. That's not true. Actually, when you study some of the best leaders, you find out that they temporarily did that at certain times.

When they looked at long term, they temporarily sacrificed certain things, but they never did it long term. Long term, they had the best practices for themselves. They took care of themselves. For example, there's this term around self love. They valued their own body, their mental state, their emotional state, their spiritual state.

But most people take the outside of these leaders. They'd be like, well, they sacrifice themselves. So I don't want to sacrifice myself or they sacrifice themselves. So I should sacrifice everything that I am. For example, as a parent or as a company leader, you might sit there and constantly show up and overloaded, overstressed, not taking care of your health, not taking care of your sanity.

And you're taking it out on other people. And then you're justifying it by saying that, [00:07:00] Oh, you know what? I'm showing up for them. They should be grateful for me. No, you're not taking care of yourself. That's a different thing. So the first piece was that you need to understand what your why is, and that's connected to your story.

Nobody else can tell you. This is why we do a lot of the vision work. This is why we get you to think about the why. Why are you showing up as a father, as a mother, as a team leader, as a head of an organization, the head of a community? Why are you building causes? Why is that important to you? It needs to mean something personal to you.

Without that, you're going to challenge yourself in all sorts of weird ways that doesn't mean anything. So this is where you see the trend out in the world, where people are doing all sorts of things like cold plunges and marathons and all this stuff. Nothing wrong with any of this stuff, but they don't know what their why is.

So they're trying to pick up every hard thing in the world to do for them to be a good leader. Not necessary that your heart will be very different than somebody else's heart. And for somebody else, doing cold plunges every day to show up [00:08:00] better might be a great thing. Doing marathons might be an amazing thing, but for you it's not that.

And the only way you can differentiate what's for you versus others is if you understand what your why is and why you're showing up for those reasons. And that's very personal to you, nobody else can define that. And this is where you get away from trying to do hard things for the sake of hard things, but trying to do things because it's, it personally means something to you.

And you direct your focus and energy in that direction. And that's very important. So whatever you do, make sure you understand what your why is around leadership. Now I want to talk about a few areas in relation to that. One is embracing discomfort, the process of growth in itself. is uncomfortable. It just by the nature of if you want to be comfortable, comfort is an incredible thing.

I love my comfort. I love sitting on the couch. I love watching my shows. Sometimes I love watching movies. You can do your comfortable things, but when you want to grow, you have to let go of comfort. So what does that mean? What is embracing [00:09:00] discomfort? It doesn't mean you do random things that are difficult.

It just means that things that you know will help, or you suspect that will help you in serving other people and yourself. And the process in building better cultures, better communities, better organizations, better families, you adopt patterns that are difficult to do, but they push you and stretch you.

So the first one is that as we all have patterns, we all have things that we're comfortable. We, we talk a certain way that's comfortable to us. We think a certain way that's comfortable to us. We do things a certain way that's comfortable to us, but that process of growth requires you to actually stretch yourself a little bit, like, okay.

It's uncomfortable for me to go out there and talk to a bunch of people to raise, uh, funds for this investment. That's really important to me, but you know what, that's part of the growth process. It's uncomfortable for me to pick up the phone and talk to a bunch of random people, but you know what, that is part of my role because I understand why it's [00:10:00] important for me to show up like that.

It's uncomfortable for me to be expressive and tell people that, you know what, I don't like that. I need to set boundaries, but you know what, that's part of my edge and growth. It's uncomfortable for me to wake up and actually do something, go outside or be in the cold or exercise, all this stuff, none of this stuff is easy.

It will push you past your comfort to whatever your goal is. That requires you to actually show up and be okay and accepting of discomfort because we know what is on the other side of discomfort, what is on the other side of consistent struggle. It's usually progress. And that's the normal theme for human beings is that there's struggle and progress.

That was a quote by Brandon Burchard. There's only two themes in the human growth. There's struggle and there's progress. That applies to our species. That also applies to individuals. If you don't struggle, you don't progress. Uh, you don't create progress, they go hand in hand with each other. You can't say I want to make progress growth, but I'm not okay with struggling with this and struggle [00:11:00] doesn't always mean you're suffering.

It just means that you're okay with challenging yourself. For example, lifting a weight, it can be a struggle, but you're not suffering lifting a weight. You know why you're lifting it. You feel pain, but it's not suffering. Same thing. Learning a new way of expressing yourself or a new way of communicating with your life partner or your team members.

Is uncomfortable and it can be painful at times, but that discomfort pushes you as a leader. And the second piece of that is setting bold goals. Actually, my clients sent this to me. I've had this for years. Be bold. It doesn't mean that you kill yourself for bigger goals or out of reach goals, but you always want to set stretch goals that might not even be attainable for you in the next few years.

That will push you to think beyond. And that's how your mind thinks is that, Hey, what if I said this thing that looks impossible or not practical, but inspires me to work differently, to think [00:12:00] differently, to show up creatively, to bring people together that pushes you as a leader. So the first one, you're being open to breaking your patterns that make you uncomfortable.

The second one is. Creating stretch goals for every part of your life, your health and well being your emotional side, your spiritual side, your relationship side, what would stretch you as a leader, which brings us to challenging others. And the reason why I went through your stuff is you need to model that for other people.

If people don't see these things in you, you can challenge others all you want, but people don't hear you. They watch what you do. You can say all the things that you want, but if it's not correlated with what your actions, people are not going to want to listen to you. They subconsciously know that there's a dishonesty in there.

It's that code, listen to what I say, not what I do. So most people want you to listen to what they say and not what they do, but we don't trust people who don't do what they say. Their two sides are not correlated. We know [00:13:00] that with religious leaders, with business leaders, with any kind of leader, when we watched him, we were looking for a congruency.

Is this person's doing what they're saying? Now, nobody has to be perfect. We're all going to fall down. We're all going to break down. And that's the process of leadership. Every day, you're going to make mistakes, fail, and not be able to grow in the way that you want to, but that day to day monotonous stuff that you do to show up as that identity of holding that identity of a leader helps you grow.

At which point you actually don't know it's a day to day process. That's why Simon Sinek also says leadership is a lot like parenting, which parenting is also leadership. It's one of the hardest things for most people. You show up every day, day after day, and it's thankless job. You're meeting all kinds of demands and all sorts of things from your kids.

And even as kids, us growing up, our parents did a lot for us. We can't even keep account of what they did and what they didn't do. Usually we remember the things that affected us negatively, but we don't remember all the journey [00:14:00] that they went through to even give us the life that we have. And I love this quote from Tony Robbins is if you're thinking about your parents, if you're going to blame them for all the negative things, also blame them for all the positive things that you have, whether that is the strength of character that you've developed, the resilience you've developed.

Even though you felt some negative things, but leadership can be a lot like that where you're showing up day in, day out, but there is no specific point at which you can say that, Oh, I've become a leader. You just own that. And you show up daily because why? Because your family is important to you. Your community is important to you.

Your organization that you're creating or you're part of is important to you. Otherwise, why are you waking up every day? And this is the challenge most people have is that they wake up and they do what other people do, but it's not important to them. They lose sight of that. They're like, I'm just doing it because the next person is doing it.

I'm just doing it because I need to survive, which are, which can be fine reasons, but. When it becomes personal, you show up with purpose, you show up with intention, you show up because it means something to you personally, it's not just because somebody's going to [00:15:00] give you credit for it, but you have an internal reason for it.

That's much more sustainable. So, the other side of it then becomes challenging others around you, incredibly crucial. So, leadership is not done in a vacuum, like, that's by the nature of human beings, we live in packs, we live in communities, we live with other people. Even though the modern world has given us the illusion that we get to live in our own separate apartment or house.

We don't have other people around us, but for you to have that house, a lot of people had to work to make that happen. A lot of people had to work together to make the electricity, the heating, the all that stuff happen. For you to enjoy that comfort, for us to show up here on a Zoom call, a lot of people had to work in the background for this to be possible on the internet side, Zoom side.

For my wife to be there with my kids, for you guys to take care of your people who are, you're delegating to all that stuff had to happen for you to show up here. There is no equation where you're an individual and you don't rely on anybody else, unless [00:16:00] you're out in the forest and you know how to hunt for years and very few people know how to do that and you can take care of yourself and even then you're going to have the need for social companionship to some degree.

Thanks. You cannot claim that you're self sufficient. Nobody is, none of us, zero. And we forget that because we have the illusion of being an individual. We are, but in the meantime, we're also part of a social sphere and how we show up there makes a big difference. So the first piece of that is how do we challenge others?

Usually when people think of challenge, they're like, you're pushing somebody to do the hard things and those kinds of things, actually, the first step in challenging others is. Psychological safety. And this is really important early on. If you have kids or if you're around kids or you're around younger people, but also even if you have employees or team members, people need to know that if they make mistakes, you're okay with mistakes.

[00:17:00] People need to know that they can fail forward. Nobody knows everything. Everybody learns as they go. That's specially true in life and entrepreneurship. Because we're all making up shit as we're going. There is no recipe book for being a parent. There is no recipe book for the best life. We're just trying things.

And out of that, we're learning. And the ideal situation is that you're learning with a bunch of other people. So you learn quickly enough. So you don't create a disaster. You make educated guesses based on a common learning pattern. That's how human beings have evolved. That's how we've grown. So psychological safety from childhood is very important.

Now here's the problem. Most people didn't have psychological safety when they were growing up. In fact, our school systems are set up to not give you psychological safety because if you fail something, there's something wrong with you. You're graded based on that. If our kids make a mistake, they, and I'm guilty of that.

I've yelled at them at times. I have, because it was too much. But then when I thought about it, What the hell does that matter in a moment where [00:18:00] they spilled something or something happened? And then I've had to course correct and I'm still learning some of that. But now think about it, these employees that are working with you, or colleagues that are working with you, or business partners that are working with you, or your life partner that's around you, they've gone through a long life of being scolded for the mistakes that they've made.

And all of a sudden they make a mistake, your first reaction might be is, why the hell did you make that mistake? Their first reaction is, let me defend myself. And then Dr. Marshall Rosenberg says that we play the game of who's right. And if he can prove that I'm right, I'm better than the other person. If they're right there, I need to apologize to the other person.

But what if the game is not that what if the game is that, Hey, you know what? We're all allowed to make mistakes as long as we can grow within that process. So that psychological safety, how do we develop that? The best ways to model that share the mistakes that you make every day. Stop pretending that you're perfect.

That's true in every industry and every walk of life. If you pretend that you're perfect. Other people are going to [00:19:00] hold that as a model and say, this person is great. What if I can't do this? But if that person is constantly sharing struggles and things that they're failing at, that gives them the model for psychological safety.

And the second step is if they make mistakes, help them understand that's okay. In fact, that's the process to grow. And this is where you can be okay to delegate things to people. As long as it doesn't break down the whole system, most people can learn their mistakes fairly fast. The second piece of challenging other is to create a growth culture.

What is a growth culture? Which means that there's an expectation within your family, within your community, within your organization that we're all growing. It doesn't just apply to those that work for you or team members, but you're the first one leading that you're constantly growing. So you're actually making a goal for every do, for example, every quarter or every year.

What is one way that somebody around you is growing? You can ask that question from your kids. You can ask that question from your team members, from other executive team [00:20:00] members, from your business partners. What's one way that you're growing this quarter? How can I support you with that? Let's say somebody says, I want to develop better listening skills.

Great. Now you can pay attention to that. Now you can support them, keep them accountable. And that tends to help people in that process and also helps to know that, Oh, I live in a growth culture. I need to grow. It's a part of my process. And the same thing applies in your home as it does in your work. Now, a lot of times when people say growth culture, they think that they need to reprimand other people around them.

No, you just need to remind them that we're part of a culture that does this. One of the favorite things that I've learned was in a parenting book. When your kids ask you, for example, those kids have lots of chocolate. Those kids have iPad. The best answer to that is this is just what we do as a family.

That we're not that family. We're not, doesn't mean we're better or worse than them, but this is our value system as a family. We don't have chocolate every day. We don't have iPads every day. We don't look at our phone [00:21:00] when we talk to others. This is how cultures are built, whether it's a company culture or community culture or something else.

We build culture by reinforcing it, first modeling it, then reminding that, Hey, we have a culture of growth. How do we create more growth? It doesn't have to be personal development ish. It can just be, Hey, what is one thing you're trying to learn? What is one thing you're challenging yourself with? What is one thing that you're trying to do better next quarter, next year or whatever, and human beings generally understand that is just that, is it part of your culture and how can you do that more of?

And then the last piece of it is accountability. And a lot of times, again, when I said this accountability, most people think it's punishment because that's how it's been used in the bigger culture. It's not. All it means is that you help each other. Remember that, Hey, we both agreed to do this thing. How is that going?

So somebody says, you know what, I'm trying to be a better listener or better conversational or somebody who can show care. Two months pass by, [00:22:00] they, they're not doing this. Hey, what are you doing in that area? Are you working in that area? Doesn't mean you're punishing them. Just asking that can shift things.

Why? Because again, we're a social species. We value. Reciprocity and feedback from other people around this. And in fact, this is how we grow as human beings. If we didn't have accountability and feedback, we wouldn't grow. That's just the nature of things. So I just wanted to cover some of those areas and we're going to go much deeper into this in our Thursday call, because we're going to dive into your life to see.

What's actually happening? Are you clear about your why? Are you challenging yourself in these ways? Are you challenging the patterns that you might have that might not be helpful anymore, even though you've developed them? Are you challenging others around you in a way where you can create a psychological safety for them to help them understand that mistakes are okay?

And are you showing up in a way where people can see that what you're saying is what you're doing to the best of your ability? Of course, we're all going to make mistakes in that area, but people can generally see that [00:23:00] you're showing up the way you're talking. There is not a big difference between the two.

And finally, do you have a peer group around you? And this is the success. That's why we say that we're an average of five people around us is because other people around us giving us feedback and they're challenging themselves to grow, helps you grow very fast as a team. Whether that team is in a family, that team is in an organization, that team is in a community or branches of that community.

It's all the same for human beings. And just keep in mind, we live in the world of. Like almost everything is about comfort in the modern culture. I think it's great that we have those things, but we fall into the habit of everything in our fingertips. So anything that's outside of that looks odd. Human beings struggled a lot, even just 50, 30 years ago.

Now life is much easier than most people think. Scientists said that. Most of your problems are problems of abundance, too much food, too many things around you, uh, too many conveniences, too much comfort. You don't get to walk [00:24:00] anywhere. Like most of those problems are abundance problems. They're not a lack problem.

Most people in the past that lack problems have motivated them to come up with solutions. Now people have comfort problems. It's just the world we live in, at least in the Western side. I love this parenting code as well. That says. Your children come through you, but they're not yours. They're not off you.

And same thing, your team members might be part of your company. They might be for part of your friend group or whatever, but they're not yours. You don't own them. In fact, they all have a path that they're actually trying to figure out. To be honest, just like we're trying to figure out. And like I said, half the time we're making stuff up on that process.

And when you understand that your path is so challenging and you're always struggling to figure that out, developing a little bit of a compassion for others that, you know what, if I was in their shoe, I would act exactly that way. And that's what we call empathy as well. Take care.