Ep #11: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with Will Bess Part 3

Welcome to Practicing with the Masters for dentists with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. Allison believes that there are four pillars for a successful, fulfilling dental practice: clear leadership, sound business principles, well-developed communication skills, and clinical excellence. Allison enjoys helping dentists and teams excel in all of these areas. Each episode she brings you an inspiring conversation with another leading expert. If you desire to learn and grow and in the process take your practice to the next level, then this is the show for you. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Allison Watts.

Allison:       Welcome to Practicing with the Masters podcast. I’m your host, Allison Watts, and I’m dedicated to bringing you masters in the field of dentistry, leadership, and practice management to help you have a more fulfilling and successful practice and life.

Okay, Will, I think everybody on the phone knows you by now. We’re just thrilled to have you. Will and I were just talking, John Maxwell was here and Dina, Lisa, my whole team, went and saw him live. Of course Will was there and oh my gosh it was great. I told Will I’m starting to get hooked.

It’s funny, I was just introduced to him, I don’t know, months ago and the more I learn from him the more I just think, wow this man has a lot of knowledge and you can go deep with it. Some of it can be kind of shallow. You think “Oh, I’ve heard this before,” and some of it is so simple, but it’s so valuable. We’ve decided we’re going to really use this in our office.

Anyway, we’re excited to have you, Will. We’re working on laws, what is it? Seven through nine today?

Will:            Seven through nine, yes, ma’am.

Allison:       Seven through nine, so I’ll just go ahead and let you take over and fill us with your knowledge and your wisdom.

 

Will:            All right, thank you so much, Allison. And thank you everyone for being on the call and those who couldn’t make it to the call, I hope that you enjoy the recording.

Yeah, Allison you have to be careful with John because that rascal, he’ll get ahold of you and the next thing you know you are going to every conference and buying every book that comes out. I agree with you. He’s written seventy, I don’t even know it was seventy, I thought it was fifty something, but I guess he’s probably written some that he’s actually forgotten about.

But if you read a lot of them, a lot of them do cross-reference each other. But the reason for that is some of the principles are, they’re just set in stone and there is no getting around them. So you can say them a different way and you can hear other people say them a different way, but the fact of the matter is, they are what they are. They will always remain that way.

So today, we’re going to jump right into law number seven, the Law of Respect. That’s the law that says people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. I’ll just start off with a little recap of the story that John told in the chapter of that book if you haven’t read it. He’s talking about a woman, a black woman, short in stature, illiterate, missing a couple of teeth. So I’m thinking she wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. She had abandoned her husband.

She had erratic employment. She would just disappear from jobs for long periods of time, come back, leave again. She would return with no money in her pocket, work a little bit, get a little bit more money, and take off again. She was known as a hard worker, but she was known to fall asleep right in the middle of a conversation. She attributed that to a blow that she had taken in the head during her youth, during a physical altercation.

So you ask yourself, “Who would respect a woman like her, why is she even in this book?” And the year is in 1857. We’re talking about a black woman in 1857. Who would’ve respected a black woman in 1857? Well according to the story, probably more than three hundred slaves and almost every abolitionist in New England respected this woman as a leader, because her name was Harriet Tubman. I’m sure we’ve all heard of her. She was the conductor on the Underground Railroad which was really basically individuals, former slaves, abolitionists, and Quakers, who were helping slaves escape to their freedom.

She was called “Moses,” which is basically a take on the biblical Moses who led his people out of the captivity of Pharaoh. She did the same, led her people to freedom. Now the head injury that she received, she got that blocking the path of an overseer, who was attempting to beat a slave. The slave fled through the door, she stepped in the doorway, and tried to stop the overseer from catching the slave. He threw a two pound weight and hit her in the head. I don’t know how he was carrying, why he was carrying around a two pound weight, or how he got a hold of one. But the man had one. So he threw it, hit her in the head, and almost killed her. She was thirteen years old at the time.

Yes, she did abandon her husband. Her husband was a free black man and she said, “Hey, you know what? I want to be free as well, so I want you to help me escape and go together.” Not only did he say, “No, I’m not going to help you,” he told her that he would turn her in if she tried to escape. So she just left. That’s the story of Harriet Tubman. I’ve actually read her biography before and he was real lucky, consider himself lucky that she just left when he threatened to turn her in.

She made her way to Pennsylvania via the Underground Railroad. She returned back nineteen times to free other slaves. That’s why her employment was so erratic because she would come back, work, get enough money for her journey, and she would take off again. She came back nineteen times. She risked her life nineteen times to free other slaves, people she didn’t even know.

She was quoted as saying that she never ran her train off the track and she never lost a passenger. One of the reasons that she never lost a passenger is people came to find out, once you got on her train, once you agreed to roll with her, you would finish the trip. Because Harriet knew that if a slave decided they changed their mind and wanted to go back to the plantation and the slave owner got ahold of them, she knew that they would be tortured and they would end up giving up valuable information, to stop her mission.

She would basically place a loaded pistol to anybody’s head who decided that they were too tired to go on and wanted to turn back. She told them, “You can go on, you’re going to finish this journey with us or you’re going to die.” Because dead men tell no tales. So she was prepared to kill someone in order to save more lives. So a $12,000 bounty was actually placed on her head. Back in slavery days, twelve thousand dollars, I’m not a mathematician but you can imagine what that would be worth these days.

I really think Harriet was an original gangster when I read her story because this women was tough and she didn’t play. She wasn’t scared, she was fearless. She became a leader and she gained much, much respect. She gained respect and she produced results. So it doesn’t matter where her background was from, it didn’t matter what her physical appearance looked like, she did the things that leaders do. She was stronger than the people that she was leading and they wanted to follow her.

When you talk about respect, self-respect and confidence are two of the biggest factors for a leader to gain respect. People really purchase on emotion, that’s what people do. We are emotional creatures, human beings are emotional creatures and we follow people based on emotion. It’s not accidental, it’s intentional. You know, we don’t just see a long line and go stand in the line if we don’t know where that line is going. We intentionally get in the line.

So people who have strong leadership abilities, they don’t go around looking for people with weaker skills to follow. I mean, sometimes that happens because of the nature of somebody’s employment. But I’m going to tell you right now, and I can speak from personal experience, if you’re following someone who is a weak leader and you are a stronger leader or you have a desire to be a stronger leader, you are going to get frustrated.

You’re going to frustrated and something is going to happen. You’re going to either change the culture of your organization or you’re going to change your address. One of the two is going to happen. The thing about leadership is that the more a person is invested in it, the quicker they can recognize it in others, or the lack of others. I’ll talk about that a little bit here in a bit.

Anyway, the book talks about six qualities that helps a leader gain respect. So we will talk about those six for a minute here. Some people have natural leadership abilities. You know, John always talks about, people ask him all the time, are leaders born? He makes a little joke that yes they are born, I haven’t seen one that wasn’t born. Of course they are all born. Basically what the people are asking or not, is it natural? Is leadership natural? The answer is yes and no.

Some people do have greater leadership abilities than others. Some of it is inherent. You can see, I don’t know if you have ever just sat there and just watched children play or watched children interact, but you can see some of it in some children. You’ll see that other children will naturally flock to them. Whatever that person is doing, the other children want to be doing.

That little person is not trying to lead, they don’t even have a concept of leadership, but it’s just something about them that they are charismatic or they have a strength about them that the other children automatically can tell that this person is the strongest of the group, and I want to do what this person does.

So yes, some of it can be natural. Some people are very charismatic and charming and they can connect well with people. Some of that is natural. But the thing about it is, if you have natural ability, people will want to listen to you, follow you, and be around you, but only if you are not just relying on that alone, because you can’t rely on talent alone. We can see in every situation and every day, whether it’s forced, whether it is just general life, people who are filled with potential, they are very talented individuals but their talent has gotten them only so far in life.

They’re continuing to depend on their natural charm to get them out of trouble, their natural charisma to get the things that they want in life. They’re recognizing that you get to a certain point in your life where it doesn’t matter how charming you are, it doesn’t matter how charismatic you are. You have to do something to go along with that talent because that’s only going to get you so far. So you have to equip yourself with additional skills.

The penitentiaries, and I’ve seen it for eighteen years, are full of people who are very gifted and very talented in a variety of areas but they fall short of achieving anything in their lives because they have only relied on their giftedness and not added anything to it. And not try to equip themselves with something else.

Natural leadership abilities, yes, some people do have them, but you have to equip yourself with other tools. Respect for others, you have to bring value to people. You hear this, this seems to be a common thread, in all of these laws I probably have mentioned it every time. But you do, you have to bring value to people as the leader. There is no getting around it.

There’s a story that I read once about Nelson Mandela and I think all of you, I’m sure have heard of Nelson Mandela, the great South African leader who was in prison for twenty-some years for a crime he did not commit. At any rate, this was the time after he had gotten out of prison and he was hosting a dinner and a dignitary from another country was visiting him. So Mandela was talking to him, and he asked him, “Did you come alone?” And the man said, “No, no, no, my driver, I was driven here, and my driver is here.”

He said, “Where’s your driver?” He said, “Well, he’s outside with the car.” He’s thinking that is what drivers do, they stay outside with the car. Mandela said, “No, no, no, I won’t have it.” So Mandela sent for him, the driver, and invited him to come inside and join them at the dinner table. Respect for others, honoring other people.

You know, Allison and I were talking about John Maxwell earlier and when I went to the certification which was in West Palm Beach, I think it was in 2011. At any rate, it was at a hotel and there were five hundred people there being certified, and it was about forty-two different countries being represented at that function. It was about four days long and so of course you know the hotel staff was doing their thing and they did a fabulous job.

So on the last day, when they were on stage recognizing different people, Paul Martinelli who is the head of the John Maxwell team, he had all of the staff come on stage, all of the hotel staff come on stage. He wanted to thank them and he had us thank them and everybody stood and gave them applause and a standing ovation. It wasn’t staged. It was heartfelt because they had done a wonderful job. You can just see the emotion on their faces. The hotel manager said, “That has never happened before, you know that’s what we do, we host events and nobody has ever done that before.”

The reason that that was done is because we want you to know that, you know what, you were here to serve us and we appreciate that and we want to honor that. So that’s what happened. We wanted to honor them and show them that we have respect for you, doesn’t matter what your position was, you served us in a wonderful manner and we want to honor that.

You see, true leadership is voluntary. You can’t make people respect you, you can’t. Some people think they are getting respect, when in actuality, people are following them because they have to because of their position. But they don’t necessary respect them. I don’t know if you guys have ever worked with someone who you did what they said, you were cordial to them, but you really didn’t respect them and what they stood for.

When people respect you as a person, they admire you. When people respect you as a friend, they love you. And when people respect you as a leader, they follow you. If you continue to respect others and consistently lead them, they will respect you and you’ll continue to have followers. It’s a huge responsibility. Leadership is a huge responsibility.

I’ve always said if people really, truly understood what it took to be a great leader, a lot of people would be reluctant to seek those positions and titles the way they do. Because it is a huge responsibility if it’s done correctly, but it is one that you must cherish and be prepared to continually earn. You don’t earn respect one time. You earn it over and over again.

Another thing is courage. It means you have to be willing to stand alone at times. You have to do what’s right and risk failure, danger, and criticism. You know, the other day I watched the movie Lincoln, for the first time. I didn’t go out to the theater to watch it, I watched it on DVD. I had heard some things about the movie and I have to tell you, I was a little upset when Denzel didn’t win the Oscar because I thought he was phenomenal in the movie Flight. I think he was a better alcoholic than real alcoholics were.

So I was thinking, “Okay you know Daniel Day-Lewis won this Oscar in Lincoln, fine, whatever.” But then I saw the movie and I got it because the man was amazing. I mean, obviously none of us alive have ever met Abraham Lincoln but I would venture to say the way that he was played in that movie that I think he was probably just like that.

But let’s talk a little bit about Lincoln the man. He epitomizes what courage was. It’s very appropriate, it’s very appropriate to recognize Harriet Tubman for her courage and leadership. It’s very appropriate because she put her life on the line and she did amazing things. But see, Lincoln had a different kind of courage. He wasn’t a slave, as Tubman was, so he didn’t have that built-in motivation to end slavery like she did. He was the president of the United States. He was risking so much by reaching out on a limb to end slavery. He did what was right, even at the risk of failure. He did what was right.

How much courage does it take to stand on the issue that was the major cause of the Civil War? Can you imagine how much courage that took, to make a stand on that? I mean, I don’t think it’s an accident that he is considered to be one of America’s greatest presidents, if not the greatest. Another man comes to mind, Dr. Martin Luther King, a man who was willing to die for his values and beliefs. I mean, I don’t know how you cannot respect or want to follow leaders like that who display such amazing courage.

Yeah, most of us won’t have the opportunity to impact the world like those gentlemen did but in our own day-to-day life we show courage by doing the right thing. No matter what other people are thinking about it. You can be afraid, it’s okay. Courage is doing something afraid. So it’s okay to be afraid but you still do it.

Another one is success. People are drawn to success, we are, we like winners. We like people who get things done. You know, advice is cheap, but results are priceless. We respect people who get it done. That’s really why it doesn’t matter how vocal you are, no matter how many things you’ve done, people are not going to respond a thing to you if you hadn’t brought them a victory.

As you can tell by now, if this is your third time listening to me, you know I’m a huge sports fan and I love sports because I think it intersects with life. Same traits needed to be successful in life, you need in sports. I look at LeBron James, the basketball player with the Miami Heat and he’s won a couple of MVP trophies, most valuable player. He has otherworldly basketball skills, he’s amazing. But until last year, the basketball community never really gave him the respect that he desired until he won the championship, because people like winners.

They respect success. So it doesn’t really matter how great your individual skills are if you’re not winning, if you’re not producing the results, then you are going to be limited in your leadership. Because it’s very, very, hard to lead and encourage someone to do something when you have not managed to do it yourself.

Loyalty. Loyalty is a dying attribute. It really is because most people want instant gratification. They want it now. We are concerned with the here and now. We live in a culture of constant change and people want things now. You know, as a sports fan, it used to upset me when the players from my favorite teams would leave and go to other teams for more money, or they’d go play for a rival. But then I realized, there’s no loyalty in the sport.

A player can play his heart out for a team, but as soon as he loses a step, he’s not as good as he used to be, they’ll cut him from the team. It doesn’t matter what he’s done for the team, they’ll cut him. So players do the same thing, if you want to offer me two dollars more, I’m going to go over there.

I look in college. I was looking at the news the other day and especially about coach Steve Alford, who was coaching the New Mexico Lobos. He had just signed a ten-year contract to coach that team and was paid handsomely. Ten days after signing that ten-year contract, he quit and he went and signed a seven-year contract with UCLA. I just really don’t understand that.

These are gentlemen, they are recruiting young men, they are going to homes of parents, they’re sitting there telling their mommas, “I’m going to take care of your boy if you send him to me. I’m going to teach him how to be a man. I’m going to teach him how to play basketball better.” But then as soon as somebody offers them a better job, they leave.

That’s what it has come to, not just in sports. There is no loyalty. The average person works at a job for 4.4 years. People are constantly moving, constantly changing, because it’s all about me. If somebody offers me a better deal, I’m gone. Loyalty requires steadfastness, sticking to the task, finishing the race.

Lastly, value added to others. That’s what leaders do. They’ll avoid spending time making sure things are good for them. They make sure things are good for other people. They take care of the team. Sometimes as the leader, you’ve got to learn to take it for the team. Too many times people, they’re quick to name names and throw people under the bus instead of saying it was my responsibility, I should have prepared them better, it’s my blame.

So how do you measure your level of respect? Look at who you attract. Who chooses to follow you? Then look, look at how people respond to you when you ask for a commitment or change. See because when you are commanding the respect that you desire, your people will step up and they’ll sign up. They’re willing to embrace the change because they trust you, they respect you. So if you’re saying this needs to be done, they know it’s necessary.

When someone isn’t respected, when the leader isn’t respected, people doubt, they question, they make excuses, or they just leave. So if haven’t earned the respect, it’s hard to get people to follow you because truth be told, it’s not easy to get people to follow you when you have earned the respect. So it’s doubly hard to do it when you don’t have that respect. The deeper level of respect that you have, the more the person is willing to accept the change.

So when your people, or the people around you, they won’t volunteer or they’re slow to change, you have to look in that mirror and think perhaps that you maybe need to grow yourself a little bit because the more you grow, the better people that you will attract.

We are going to move on to the Law of Intuition. And Maxwell considered the Law of Intuition to be the hardest law for him to teach. He says it’s one of those laws that natural leaders get but it’s hard to teach. It favors the gifted leader. All people are intuitive in their area of strength but not necessarily leadership.

So this law tends to depend on much more than just the facts. It’s based on facts plus instinct, plus other intangible factors, such as employee morale, organization momentum, and relational dynamics. In an interview with General Colin Powell he stated that his leadership practice was to make a decision after gathering only about forty to sixty percent of the facts. Then he used his experience to make up the rest. See, General Powell, he relied on his intuition as much as he did the facts.

Because good leaders, they see things with a leadership bias. Then as a result they instinctively, almost automatically, know what to do. Who you are dictates what you see, meaning that we see the world as we see ourselves, we do. Intuition comes from two factors. There’s natural ability and there’s learned skills.

I kind of like the quarterback, I may have mentioned earlier, he can see the play develop before it unfolds. Some of that is natural but a lot of that is learned skill. He studied, he studied, he prepared, he prepared, he watched countless hours of film. So it seems like it’s just intuitive that he can do these things, but it comes from two parts. Part of it was natural, he has a gift, but the other was learned skills. It requires the ability to read what is going on.

So what we should try to do is be stronger in the area that we want to have intuition in, read the situation, read the people, read yourself. The three levels of leadership intuition that we are going to talk about. There’s the person who naturally understands leadership and these are the born leaders. These are the ones who have the natural gifts of leadership. They automatically understand people and they know how to get them to move from point A to point B. That’s their gift.

Then you have those who could be nurtured to understand leadership and most people fall into this category. It’s teachable, it’s a teachable principle. That’s why you guys are on this call, that’s why we’re doing this, that’s why we went to the Maxwell conference, that’s why we sign up for seminars. Because we understand we can be taught to lead, it’s a teachable skill.

Then you have those who never understand leadership. You may know some of these people throughout your life or your work career. They have no interest in leadership, it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo, it’s a bunch of garbage, it’s a waste of time. They’re not going to ever attend a conference unless the boss is there, unless the boss makes them, or they think they are going to get promoted in some kind of way. That is the only way they’re going to go. They’re certainly not going to ever read a book on leadership.

They just will never understand it because they don’t have any desire to do it. See, intuition is similar to when you buy a new car. That may not make sense to you right now. But have you ever heard of reticular activation systems? I’m not going to get too deep with you because I’m not really that smart, but it’s a brain thing. It’s a network of neurons and fibers running around in your brain and it makes up a reticular activating system. Basically, that’s a part of your brain that controls consciousness. It’s believed to control sleep. It’s believed to control wakefulness. But more importantly, the ability to consciously focus on something. That’s what I mean about a new car.

Have you ever bought a new car? As soon as you got your car you started seeing that car everywhere. You thought you were being special, you thought you were unique. I don’t see this car, I’m going to get this car, I’m going to be the only one in town like it. All of sudden, you notice that car everywhere.

Ladies buy a new pair of shoes, I don’t care how fly they are. Buy a new pair of shoes and I guarantee you, you will spot that same shoe somewhere else on somebody else’s foot out of a crowd of a thousand feet. That’s the reticular activated system in your head. It makes you notice things that you hadn’t noticed previously once you got that information. So developing leadership intuition, it’s the same thing.

Once you set focus on becoming a good leader and learning the principles and the discipline of good leadership, you will immediately begin to recognize it quickly when you see it. Or you will recognize it when it’s not there. It’s just like that new car. You’ll start seeing it everywhere or you’ll start noticing there is a lack of it. You may be following someone that you originally thought, this person is a good leader. Then you recognize what good leadership really looks like and you start saying, “Hmm, maybe not so fast.”

That’s what intuition does for you. It helps you notice things and it helps you notice it quickly. You want to develop your intuition, develop your thinking. Learn to trust your feelings of instinct in the area of strength. I’ve heard before that intuition is the warning signal that God gives us. Have you ever done anything and after the fact you said, “Something told me not to do that. I knew I shouldn’t have.” That’s your intuition trying to warn you, trying to tell you.

Before you had any facts your intuition was telling you, this is what you should or should not do. It’s the same thing with leadership. That’s why General Powell was the great leader he was, because before he had all of the facts his intuition was telling him, this is the way you need to go. So listen for that, when you say to yourself, “Man, something in my gut is telling me.” That’s your intuition, probably should listen to it. Or if you say, “Oh, I have a hunch,” or “There is something about that person.” Could be something there.

You want to develop your intuition? Study people, read books, engage people in conversations, get to know people, that’s how you do it, you get to know people. I had a friend of mine email me the other day. “Hi, how are you doing? Hey, how are you doing?” I said, “How are you?” She said, “Fine.” And this was on email. I replied, “Are you okay?” She said, “Yes, I’m fine.” So I picked up the phone and I called her.

I say, “Girl, what’s wrong with you?” She’s like, “Nothing’s wrong with me.” I said, “What’s wrong with you?” Something was wrong with her. So she proceeded to tell me what it was that was bothering her. After the conversation she said, “How on earth did you know something was wrong with me just on a few lines on email?” I said, “Because I know you, I know how you talk, I know the words that you use, and I can just tell even by reading it that your tone was different.”

Most of us on this call probably have children. Do you have intuition with your children? I can walk around the house and I have one son, he’s seventeen, I can walk around the house and I can say, “Hey man, what’s up?” And he can say, “Hey, dad.” And I can instantly know how he says “Hey, dad,” if something’s wrong, if he had a good day or a bad day.

How many of you people have been in a relationship, whether it’s a spousal relationship, with your children, at work, whatever the case may be. You may be feeling a certain way and you can go all day, all evening, and they won’t even notice that something is different about you. But that’s intuition. When you get to know someone and you study them, you get a feel for them, you’ll be able to detect things without the facts there.

As a leader, as an intuitive leader, that’s the place you want to get with your people. You want to get to the point where you can instinctively feel something. Another reason, another way you can do this, and the book does talk about this, emotional intelligence. You know there is EQ and there’s IQ. IQ is how smart you are. That will get you through school, but emotional intelligence, that will get you through your life. IQ is about the brain, EQ is about the heart.

Emotional intelligence, if you haven’t heard of it, and most of you probably have, but if you haven’t heard of it, it is simply the ability to understand and manage both your emotions and those around you. I believe this is essential for leaders. I mean, who is most likely to succeed as a leader? Someone who breaks down under pressure, yells, gets crazy, panics, stresses, or someone who remains calm during a crisis? Bettering your emotional intelligence can help you better connect with people, which in turn increases your intuitiveness with them.

I’ll give you five ways to help you increase your emotional intelligence and connect better with the people around you. Number one is you need to be self-aware. You need to always know how you feel. You need to recognize how your feelings can impact a particular situation, being self-aware.

Recognizing that, you know what, I’m really not in the mood right now for whatever reason to have a certain conversation with a certain person. So you don’t proceed with that conversation and say some things that you wish you hadn’t said or say some things that you need to say but not in the manner that you wanted to say them. Because your mood was already not one best suited for that situation.

So you have to be self-aware and recognize that your feelings and your mood does impact other people. The attitude and mood that you bring to the office, it does impact the people that you work with. Sometimes people say, “Well you know, I’m just not in the mood to be messing with people, I just want to be left alone today. I’m not bothering anybody, I don’t want anybody to bother me.” Those people don’t recognize just the mere fact that their mood is obviously different than what it normally is, that impacts the mood of the office.

So while they’re thinking, “I’m not bothering anybody, why are these people asking me what’s wrong and this and that?” Because the way you’re feeling is impacting other people, and that’s what self-aware people do, they recognize that. So always know how you feel.

The second one, self-regulation. Discipline yourself, discipline your tongue, not making emotional decisions. There are very few decisions that have to be made right there at that second. If you are not in an emotional frame of mind to bring clarity to that situation and make an unbiased, objective decision, do it another time. But you have to have the ability to regulate yourself.

The third one is motivation. It’s really hard to motivate people when you are not motivated yourself. It’s almost impossible. So learn how to motivate yourself. A lot of times I will go to a seminar and put on a presentation on how to motivate employees and I’ll do it, I like to do it. I love to do it.

But the fact of the matter is motivation comes from within, it really is. Now, you can demotivate someone very easily. But to just give them motivation is very difficult. So as a leader you’re tasked with trying to keep your people motivated but the first thing you have to do is make sure that you are motivated.

The fourth one is empathy. That’s the ability to at least understand what someone else is feeling. We’ve heard the “put yourself in my shoes,” that’s what empathy is, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Empathy does not mean that you’re always going to agree with the person, doesn’t mean that at all. But it means that you at least have taken the time to try to see it from their perspective. Even if you would not feel the same way under the same circumstances, that does not mean that they’re not entitled to feel the way they do.

Sometimes I think that we get impatient with people because they react to something totally different than we would and it frustrates us, but empathy doesn’t get frustrated. Empathy says, you know even though I would not react this way, I’m really trying to understand why you are reacting this way.

Empathy means you are paying attention to body language. We know that nonverbal communication is about sixty to eighty percent of all communication. So pay attention to people, you could be telling them something and they could be saying, “Yes, yes, I understand.”

But if you are paying attention to them and you are looking at their body language, you can tell that they don’t understand or they’re not buying into what you are telling them. Don’t ignore it, deal with it. “I understand that you’re saying yes to me, but I’m getting the feeling that you’re not really feeling this. Do you have any problems with it? Do you want to talk about it?” Respond to people’s feelings.

The fifth one is social skills. People will go along if you get along. We’re human beings, it is easier for us to do things and follow people that we like than we don’t. It’s just a fact of life. Learn conflict resolution, learn how to appropriately deal with the confrontation or conflict. Improve your communication skills.

Learn how to praise other people, be happy for other people, be excited for other people. Be quick with your praise. If you do all of these things, it will increase your emotional intelligence. You will get a better feel for people and once you get a better feel for people, it will become easier to become intuitive about what’s going on around you. That’s going to help you be a better leader. Finally, the Law of Magnetism.

Allison:       Will? On the self-regulation which I love what you’re talking about, emotional intelligence, that’s amazing. But on the self-regulation you said, “Discipline yourself and discipline your,” what was the other thing?

Will:            Tongue, your mouth.

Allison:       What is it?

Will:            Your tongue, T-O-N-G-U-E

Allison:       Tongue, your tongue, oh, got it. Okay.

Will:            Sometimes we have to tame our mouths.

Allison:       Gotcha, okay.

Will:            Yeah, sometimes, I think it was a saying that says, “Sometimes it’s better to be thought of a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.” Well sometimes we need to just be quiet.

Allison:       Okay, great.

Will:            Yeah, sometimes we need to just be quiet. So that’s the part of self-regulation, is understanding when there’s a time to talk and when there’s a time to listen. We should do more listening than we do talking. That’s why we have two ears and only one mouth. Okay?

Allison:       Perfect, okay, thanks.

Will:            All right, anything else?

Allison:       No, nobody else raised their hand so I think we’re good.

Will:            Okay, well we’ll move on to the final law for the day and that’s the Law of Magnetism. I’ll just tell you this, if some of you guys have the original book, some of these laws are different. Because I think in the original book, he had the Law of E.F Hutten, and I forgot what law that was. But this is the revised copy that we’re doing right now. So if you go and buy it right now, you’re going to get the revised copy but if you have a really old copy, it will probably be the original one with the Law of the E.F Hutten. You guys remember that? That’s the investment broker that when he talks, everyone listens.

John revised some of these laws and most of them are still the same, but he revised a few of them. So if you’re looking at something that you may have gotten from the internet or something and you say, “Well this law is not in here or it’s not in this order.” That’s why. There’s an original copy and a revised copy. So we’re going over the revised copy of the book.

At any rate, the Law of Magnetism, that’s you are who you attract. Who you are is who you attract. It’s that simple. You know effective leaders, they’re always on the lookout for good people. You kind of carry around a mental list of the type of people that you want in your department.

I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with a young lady in my office one day. We were talking about relationships. She was talking about the perfect man for her and she was listing all of these qualities that she was looking for. “I want him to be good-looking. I want him to be financially stable, supportive, passionate, a good father,” and on and on and on. So I asked her, “Let me interrupt you for a minute and let me ask you a question.” She said, “Okay.”

I said, “Do you know your credit score?” She’s like, “What?” I said, “Do you know your credit score?” She’s like, “Um, no, I think it’s okay.” I said, “You think it’s okay?” Have you been able to get cars and this?” She said, “Well I don’t think it’s great, you know, I got a car and somebody had to cosign for me, but I think it’s decent.” I said, “Okay.” I asked her several more questions.

So finally, she said, “Why are you asking me all these questions?” I said, “Because I’m just really puzzled.” I said, “You’re sitting here telling me the perfect man that you want for your life and so my question to you is, what are you going to bring to the table? If you have that perfect guy, what are you bringing to the table? You say you want somebody who is financially stable, but you’re not financially stable, so why would he want to be with you?”

I said, “I’m not trying to offend you. What I’m trying to make you understand is, if you’re looking for a certain type of person and you want a certain quality in a person, you have to be that yourself, you have to be that.” It’s the same thing with leadership.

If you want wonderful qualities in the people that you work with, people that may be under your authority, you want them to get along well with others, you want them to be great team players, you want them to be motivated, you want them to have great attitudes. You want these things. You have to make sure that you have these things and that you are bringing them to the table. Because we attract who we are, not who we want.

You just look around your circle. Look around the circle of the people that you hang out with. You know, Maxwell, in the book, he asks us to write the qualities, the list of qualities of the people that we would want to work with. So when you have time, I think you should do that. Write down the qualities. If I had an organization, or if I was starting my own business, or even right now if I have my own business, these are the qualities and the people that I want to hire. These are the qualities in the people that I want to work with me.

Then you make another list of the people who do work with you and list their qualities. See how big a match it is. Then you go back to that list, you go back to that list of the qualities that you desire in people and you ask yourself, how many of these qualities do I possess? Because if there’s not a lot of matches, then you are going to realize you’re not probably going to get those people. Because those people are not going to voluntarily want to follow you because you don’t have the qualities that they have.

If you want people with good attitudes but you have a bad attitude, people with good attitudes don’t want to be around people with bad attitudes. I think that’s really a great cause of dissension in many relationships, any kind of relationship. Whether it’s a friendship, whether it’s an intimate relationship, a work relationship, we want people to do the things that we are not doing ourselves.

See as the leader, if you want someone who has a winning attitude, you have to have a winning attitude yourself, you have to. Because most organizations, groups, companies, departments, they attract individuals who are similar to them. There’s some things that people look at, they look at generation. People tend to hire people in their age group, right around kind of their age group. If you go to a company that is owned by a young CEO or a young entrepreneur you will see the kind of people working there, they’re typically younger people.

Consequently, on the same note, someone who is older, they relate better to older people. That’s who they’ll tend to want to be around and hire, people with similar attitudes. You rarely see positive and negative people hang around each other because positive people, they annoy negative people. They’re always upbeat. They’re always excited.

I remember when I was in the army, I’m in Korea, it’s freezing, below zero temperatures. I’m nineteen years old, a Texan, wondering why am I there. One of the guys in our tent was a morning person, and he would jump up at 5:00 in the morning talking, singing, laughing, talking, just drove us crazy. He was too positive for that time of day. Nobody should be positive at 5:30 in the morning when it’s below zero, that’s just not normal. He annoyed us and we annoyed him.

You see, negative people suck the life out of positive people, they do. You’re excited about things, you’re excited about life, you’re excited about opportunities and you’re around somebody who just wants to talk about how bad things are all the time. Do you have them in your life? You know who they are, the pity party people, every time you talk to them.

Are there people that when your phone rings you look at the caller ID and you say, “No, not today, I don’t have the energy for this person.” Because they are going to bring you down, they are going to suck the life out of you because they have something negative to say about somebody or some situation. If you keep associating with these people and hanging around them, they will affect your attitude.

That’s why, if you have an organization, if you have employees, you have people you work with, you have a bad attitude in there? You better deal with it, don’t ignore it. They will eventually affect other people and run them off.

Background. We tend to be attracted to people with similar backgrounds. We’re comfortable with people who are more like us. We tend to stay around and spend most of the time with people who are like us. That’s why people, most of the time, spend time with people of their own race on their social time. It’s not a racial thing, it’s a comfortability thing. Similar backgrounds, you feel more comfortable with people you’re similar with. People who are educated tend to associate with people with educational backgrounds. We tend to go with what we know.

Values. We attract people whose values are similar to ours. You don’t find many pro-social people spending a lot of time with anti-social people. You don’t find a lot of drug addicts spending a whole lot of time with people who don’t use drugs. We tend to want to be around people who appreciate and value the same things that we do. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same.

Later on when we talk about the Law of the Inner Circle, we’re going to talk about why it’s important to have some people who have some differences from you in your circle, but for right now I’m just talking about these are the things that attract people to us.

People with energy, wired up people, anybody know anybody who’s just wired up all the time, just hyperactive? If you’re not that person, it drives you crazy. They make you tired just looking at them. You just want to tell them, “Sit down somewhere, you’re making me tired.” You may have some children like that, just Energizer bunnies, running around all the time. People who like that, they like to hang around with people like that because other people, us normal people, we don’t have time to be running around all day long. We want to sit down sometimes. So they don’t like to hang around us. They want to hang around other Energizer bunnies.

Giftedness. Gifted people do not look for average, ordinary people to follow, they don’t do it. They are attracted to talent. As a leader, if you want someone who is highly talented and gifted to follow you, you need to make sure that you possess some of those traits. If you don’t possess all of them and you hide them to kind of extenuate your weaknesses that’s fine, but you make sure that you appreciate the giftedness that they’re bringing to the table.

Finally, leadership ability. If you’re a seven in your leadership, we talked about the Law of the Lid and how you can measure what your lid is, if you’re a seven, you really, really, don’t want to work for a six or a five. If you’re a seven and you’re hiring people you don’t want to hire a bunch of twos or threes, you don’t.

As you grow as leader, you will find yourself wanting to be surrounded by people who are growing with you in leadership, people who have similar ability, skillsets, or even greater than yours. That’s why mastermind groups are so important. They’re so beneficial. Because you’re surrounding yourself with people whose abilities are on par with yours, sometimes better, sometimes a little less, but you’re all trying to grow in that same direction.

Like I said earlier, we’re going to talk about the Law of the Inner Circle and you have to make sure that you have people around you to balance the team. Because if everybody is strong in the same area and weak in the same area, you’re going to be very unbalanced. But for the most part, if you would just look at your life, look at your circle, you will see that most people that you associate with you have a lot in common with.

If you’re leading a team, you have to recognize that your team is an extension of you, they are. You set the culture, you are responsible for it. Sports teams are an extension of their head coach. They take on the personality of the coach. That’s why when a team is not doing well they replace the coach and not the players. You have to change the personality on top.

I’m a huge Texas Longhorns fan, I like Mack Brown, but the fact of the matter is, Texas has a reputation lately of having a soft football team. If you look at Mack Brown, Mack Brown is a very genuine, likeable guy. I could see him teaching the leadership stuff just like I can in John Maxwell. Mack Brown has that personality.

When you talk to the players that go to that team, what do they like most about the school? They like the family atmosphere. They like the genuineness. “He doesn’t cuss us, he treats us well.” That’s fine, that’s wonderful. I would have no problem with my son going there. But if you look at a team like Alabama, you look at their coach, Nick Saban. Nick Saban has never been accused of being gentle and soft and sweet. He’s a great coach, it’s just not his personality.

The players who go to Alabama, they want to be coached by a coach like that. You don’t hear Alabama’s culture that their team is soft, you hear that their team is physical, that their team is disciplined, that their team is rugged, which is why they’ve won two National Championships in a row. It is not a slight on Mack Brown. It’s a different style.

The point I’m making is that the coach’s personality sets the tone for the personality of those teams. So if you ever want to grow an organization, you have to grow the leader because the leader is going to set the tone, the personality, for those teams. So if you find yourself surrounded by unreliable, untrustworthy people, the first place you’ll want to look is at yourself.

We attract who we are. It’s those kind of people that you find yourself surrounded with, then you may have to make some changes and grow yourself a little bit. You can change the people you are attracting by changing yourself. That’s all I have for you today, ladies and gentlemen.

Allison:       Thank you so much. I do have another question. At the very beginning when you were going through, you said there were six ways to, I think, to help you gain respect, six qualities to help you gain respect.

Will:            Yes, ma’am.

Allison:       Can you say those again?

Will:            Okay, your natural leadership abilities is one, respect for others, courage, success. Having success, people like success. Loyalty, being a loyal person, and the last one is adding value to others.

Allison:       Okay.

Will:            If you do these six things on a regular basis, it will help you increase your respect and gain respect as a leader.

Allison:       Okay, thank you.

Will:            You’re welcome.

Allison:       Thank you so much, Will.

Will:  Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Practicing with the Masters for dentists, with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. For more about how Allison Watts and Transformational Practices can help you create a successful and fulfilling practice and life, visit transformationalpractices.com.