Ep #13: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with Will Bess Part 5

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.

I think everybody that is on these calls knows for the most part Will now. Welcome, everybody. I will have Will just take it away. Will, what are we on this week? Twelve, thirteen, fourteen? Or thirteen, fourteen, fifteen?

Will:            Thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen.

Allison:       Okay.

Will:            Okay, well, thank you, Allison.

Allison:       We’re thrilled to have you.

Will:            Good morning, everybody. Welcome, happy Friday to everybody. I hope that everybody has had a blessed and prosperous week thus far.

Just a quick recap, last week we covered three laws. We covered the Law of Connection, which basically says that leaders touch our heart before asking for a hand. So leaders understand that the way to get someone to help them is to help that person first. As Zig Ziglar said, you get what you want by helping others get what they want. So leaders touch hearts before they ask for something from somebody.

The second law we covered last week was the Law of the Inner Circle. That’s the law that says a leader’s potential is determined by those closest to him or her. So basically, the people that you spend the most time with are the people that are going to influence you and impact you the most. That’s the Law of the Inner Circle.

The third law that we covered last week was the Law of Empowerment. That’s the law that says only secure leaders give power to others. They’re not concerned about somebody outshining them. They’re not concerned about somebody doing the job better than them. They actually want the job done better than them. So they are secure enough to give authority and power to other individuals so that they can get better. So those are the three laws that we covered last week.

Today we’re going to start with the Law of the Picture. That is the law that says that people do what people see. People do what people see. Now to summarize, and what John talks about in the book, he began the chapter talking about the HBO series the Band of Brothers. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever seen that, but it’s a really good series.

This was actually based on a book by historian Stephen Ambrose. So it was based on a true story. Now, of course, when you watch a movie or a television show, they kind of add some stuff for sensationalism to make it seem a little more dramatic but for the most part, it was based on a true story.

It was about the story of Easy Company, which was a group of paratroopers from the 101^st Airborne Division, who fought in World War II. The Band of Brothers, the story follows them from the invasion of Normandy to the end of the war.

John talks about a variety of leaders throughout that particular show, throughout the particular time period. One of the leaders that he talks about is Herbert Sobel, who is a bit of a sadist. He was also on the incompetent side. I particularly enjoyed the scene where this captain and his sergeant tried to teach the soldiers a lesson by stealing their weapons while they slept.

Now if anybody’s been in the military, you know automatically that there is nothing humorous, there is nothing funny, about messing with somebody’s firearms, messing with somebody’s weapon. But these guys decided to teach the guys a lesson. So they snuck in in the middle of the night to steal the weapons. I guess to teach the soldiers that they should better secure their weapons when they are sleeping.

Well, they did manage to steal over fifty-something weapons. So I guess in his mind, his mission was successful. The next day while he’s in front of his troops, chastising them for being sloppy, for being careless, they recognized that they had wandered into the wrong camp. They had stolen weapons from a whole other platoon and did not know that until that platoon came up to them looking for their firearms. So to say that he was a little incompetent was kind of an understatement.

John also talks about another commander in that unit who basically aborted decision making. He tended to take long walks when the men needed him the most. So whenever some action happened, whenever some drama happened, he was gone, taking a long walk, thinking, meditating, whatever it is that he was doing.

In reading this, it triggered something back to me. It reminded me of a commander that I had when I was stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas, when I was serving in the army. This was back in ’87. We had to go to Europe for 90 days. It was for a big world-wide war game. It was called Reforger. When we went to Europe, we went to Germany, we met up with different nations, the NATO nations, for a big training exercise.

So basically what we did was divide into two sides. You would have French soldiers, German soldiers, Japanese soldiers, whatever the case may be on one side. Then they would be split on the other side. So we would have the red team and the blue team and we would have simulated war games. Each side was equipped with electronic simulators that you would put on top of your clothing and on your firearm.

So if someone fired their M-16 at you and they hit you, then your light would come on showing that you were hit. Showing that you were officially dead. So your unit couldn’t use you anymore. They would officially take you away from your unit and take you to the graveyard, that was just the nickname that they had. But they would take you there for a couple of days and your unit would have to do without you as if they would have to in a real war if you had really gotten hurt or killed.

It was a big, big deal. People took it really seriously. There was a lot of strategy involved. You know, it was a little fun. We kind of enjoyed it. But it was a big deal.

I was on the red team and I was assigned to a communications unit, which was assigned to an infantry squad. That was a pretty tough assignment because in the communications, we basically had to get to a site first to ensure the communications systems were up. Then we would be one of the last to leave because, of course, the captains and the sergeants and the majors and colonels or whomever, they wanted to have communications until the very last, until they actually left the site. So we had to wait around for them to leave.

Well on one particular day, we had received intelligence that we were going to get attacked by the blue team. So our orders were to relocate to another area because we were headquarters, so we didn’t have the fighting unit there that would be able to prevent an attack.

The leader of my company was this high strung captain. I don’t even remember his name. I know what he looks like, but I don’t remember his name. But let’s just call him Captain Smith. He was a mousey-looking man. He mumbled a lot. Really, nobody ever quite understood his rational about many of the things that he did.

So on this day in question, everybody was packed up and was ready to leave. But intelligence had advised us that we had about four or five hours before we had to leave. So there was carefully plotting and planning where it is that we were going to relocate to.

Well, captain was just in a hurry. He was in a hurry. He wanted to be the first one there. He needed to go get communications setup. So we’re saying, “You know, captain, there’s no big rush. We have plenty of time. We need to make sure we’re going to the right place and doing the right thing.”

Well he got the map and he got the location and he decided that he was just going to go there. He was just going to take our little unit, platoon, and he was just going to go. So he had the communications platoon load up and he was going to go there.

Now we’re in Germany and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in Germany or read a military map, but it’s not like a map that you look at now. It doesn’t have streets and houses and landmarks. It doesn’t have any of that. It’s really, really difficult to … you see the rivers, you see lakes, you see mountains, and that’s about it.

Anyway, he led the convoys, about a six-vehicle convoy, so he was driving first. I was in the vehicle right behind him. It was easy to see right after we left that we were lost immediately because we were going around in circles. You were seeing the same things over and over and over.

So finally he pulled over to the side, got out of his vehicle, you could see he was all animated talking to some of the other officers that were with us. He got back in his vehicle and one of the lieutenants who supposedly could read the German map a lot better got into my vehicle. So we became the lead vehicle and the captain was behind us.

We were driving and we came around a corner and we see a battalion, a huge battalion. They’re wearing blue. Their tanks have the blue emblems on them. Their uniforms have the blue on them. So we know that’s the enemy team. We’re the red team. They’re the blue team. And so the lieutenant calls back and says, “Captain, this is the blue team we’re coming up on. We need to turn around.”

“No, we need to go forward. We need to go forward. Drive straight through them.” He was adamant. “Drive straight through them.” So I’m looking at the lieutenant. The lieutenant is looking at me and I’m like, “Uh, do we really want to just drive through an enemy territory?” The captain is shouting on the radio, “Drive through them! Drive through them! Drive through them!”

“Okay, let’s drive through them.” So we’re driving through them and the guys were like sitting on their tanks, sitting on their vehicles, eating, whatever, I guess they were just kind of taking a break. And they were all looking at us astounded because our vehicles had the red and stuff on it. So they knew we were the enemy. They were looking at us like, “What in the world is going on?” They were shocked.

So we had gotten almost all the way through before one of the soldiers I guess said, “Wait a minute, this isn’t right.” So he had a tank and he pulled the tank in front of my vehicle but I was close enough that I could swerve and go around his tank. I actually got through the battalion and I got out.

Well when I looked in my rearview mirror, they had actually blocked the captain and the rest of our unit. So we pulled over to the side of the road and got out of our truck and just looked back to see what was happening. We saw the captain getting out and he was flailing about, being all animated. Some soldiers came up with their M-16 pointed to him.

Long story short, they took him hostage. They took him as a prisoner, as well as the rest of the unit. So the lieutenant and I went back to the site that we were at originally and we went into the colonel’s tent and we told him, “We have a problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The captain has been captured.”

“What do you mean he’s been captured?”

“He’s been captured.”

We told him exactly what happened and we could just tell by the look on the colonel that for some reason he just wasn’t shocked. So the captain had been captured. So this Band of Brothers story and these captains just reminded me of the incompetence that goes on sometimes.

I just thank God every day that I wasn’t in a real war with that captain. Because had I been, you might have been on this phone call right now, but somebody else would have been giving it to you because I probably wouldn’t have been here.

Anyway, going back to the story that John was talking about. There were also some good leaders in Easy Company. That company turned out to be one of the best companies in the army. One of the things that made them special was the leadership. The good leaders.

The leaders exemplified the model that they wanted the soldiers to be. So the soldiers followed that. Those leaders modeled the Law of the Picture. They showed the soldiers the right way with the right actions. The followers, the soldiers, copied them and succeeded because that’s what the Law of the Picture says. The Law of the Picture says we live what we teach.

It’s like when you tell your children to do something as a parent but you realize that children do what you do and not what you say. When I was a federal probation officer, I used to tell young men and women that I dealt with in the federal system that, “You know what, you can tell your sons, you can tell your daughters all day long not to hang out with the wrong crowd. Not to use drugs. To get a job. To be a pro-social person. To be a positive contribute to society. You can tell them that all day long. But as long as you continue to live the lifestyle that you’re living, that’s going to be more powerful to them than any words that you say. Because they’re doing what you’re doing, not what you’re saying.”

That’s why unfortunately I saw generations of people come through the federal system. Grandfathers, fathers, and grandchildren. The whole generation. Because while they were saying, “You know what, don’t follow my actions. Don’t do what I’ve done.” They were still doing it and that’s what the children were modeling, what they saw. It’s like Gandhi once said, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” Leading by example sounds like a cliché but it still rings true. And it will always ring true.

Leaders must be practical enough to realize that vision without action achieves nothing. Leaders make themselves responsible for helping their followers take action. Many times leaders come up with a vision of how to improve the workplace, or how to improve morale, how people can improve, self-growth.

But then they take no action in helping the followers get there. So they come up with these plans, they come up with the, “Oh, we should do this, or this would be a good idea. Let’s try this.” But they don’t actually follow up on it.

See, the leader is the one responsible for seeing the big picture and what’s best for the entire team. The leader is the one who communicates their vision but they don’t stop there. They don’t tell their people that you need to invest in self-growth. That you need to do this. That you need to do that. But they don’t do it. They don’t model it themselves.

Yesterday we had a training and Audrey and her team was there, which was wonderful. I was glad to see them there. But I really appreciate you, Allison, because you’re not that parent that tells their children to go to church but they don’t go to church. You know?

You’re that leader that says, “Okay, this is what we should do as a team” and you’re there leading the way. That’s what leaders do. The leader is the one who communicates the vision, “This is how we want to be.” Then they do it. They model the way. The followers see that. Thus, they want to follow.

Good leaders are always conscious of the fact that they are setting an example and others will do what they do, for better or worse. So if you want your team to have a good attitude, you have to have a good attitude yourself. If you want your team to be positive, you have to be positive.

You’re not perfect. Leaders are not perfect. And leaders are not expected to have the answers all of the time, but that’s okay. As author Andy Stanley made the comment, he said that “Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership. It simply indicates a need for leadership.”

He goes on to say that the nature of leadership demands that there is an element of uncertainty. Leaders can afford to be uncertain, but they can’t afford to be unclear. So not having all of the answers right then and there, that’s okay. As long as you are clear about the direction that you’re going to take.

I’m going to share with you guys some modeling insights for leaders. One of the things that you have to look at is that followers are always watching you. They’re always watching you. I know a woman, she was at ATB. She went to ATB to get some groceries and then she went back home. So it was a typical cold and windy day in the middle of winter in Midland. You know how it is, always windy. It was cold that day.

She had her little son with her and I think he was about two or three. He was strapped into the vehicle. As she was getting the groceries out of the car, the wind was howling, she was cold, and so she said something to the effect of, “I can’t believe how cold it is out here. I’m so tired of this wind. I wish this ‘blank’ would just end.” The word that she said, it rhymes with split but it wasn’t split. But you can figure it out what it was.

So she preceded to get the groceries out of the car. She took her child from the car and she went into the house and they weren’t in the house for two minutes before the little fella promptly yelled out, “Split!” Again, he didn’t say “split,” he said the word that rhymes with that. It was funny when she was telling me that, it was so funny because she had said two full sentences but the only word that the little boy decided he wanted to repeat was the one word in those two sentences that he wasn’t supposed to say.

We know as parents that children learn more from what they see than anything else. For better or worse, they’re paying attention, they’re watching you, they’re listening to you. It’s the same thing with leaders. For better or worse, people are paying attention. They’re watching you. They’re listening to you.

I recall a story when I was in high school, several months was at a friend’s house. Now this guy, he was a good guy. He was a bit of a redneck. I mean, he was country as country comes but he was a nice guy. We’re over at the house and I’m the only African American there but we’re having a good time. We’re sitting around talking and shooting, and shuckin’ and jivin’, and shooting the breeze.

His little sister comes into the room. She’s about six years old, cute as she could be. She preceded to tell us about her day in school that day. So she was telling us about a classmate of hers. So in describing the classmate, she referred to the young man as the N-word. Now she had no idea it was a bad word until her brother, who was extremely red-faced yelled at her, “Don’t say that! Don’t say that! Get out of here! Get out of here!” So she turns around and hightails it out of the room.

So he’s apologizing to me, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that she said that. Don’t be mad at her.” I said, “She’s a child. I’m not mad at her. I’m not mad at her.” I said, “She was only repeating what she had heard in this house, Mike. That’s what’s going on.”

I said, “So I don’t know the things that you guys say in this house but you need to recognize whatever you’re saying in this house, this child is listening and she’s repeating it.” I said, “If she will say it here, she’ll say it to somebody else. She’ll say it somewhere else. So you may want to get with your parents, you guys may want to discuss this.”

Children watch and they emulate the behavior they see. Employees do the same. Followers do the same with leaders. If you’re coming in late, they’re going to come in late. If you’re leaving early, they’re going to leave early too. If you’re calling in for any reason, they’re going to call in too. But if they see that you’re devoted, they see that you care, they see that you’re interested in growing yourself and growing them, they’ll follow that as well.

Number two: it’s easier to teach what is right than to do what is right. I think we all know that. I do leadership training and I tell the audience that I’m speaking in front of, “I don’t want you guys to get confused. Don’t get it misunderstood. I’m not an expert at all of this stuff. I struggle with the same things that you guys struggle with.”

I’m going to tell you right now, it’s a lot easier for me to tell you guys how to behave and how to act than it is to do it myself. I think that’s all of us. That’s one reason parents, we would tell our children, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Because we recognize it is a lot easier to them not to do it than us to stop doing it. It’s easier to tell our little kid, “Don’t use a foul word. Don’t use this foul language.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Because I’m mommy. I’m daddy. You’re a child. You’re not supposed to it.” We shouldn’t be doing it ourselves but, it’s kind of hard, but it’s easier to tell them not to.

John makes the statement that many leaders are like bad travel agents. They send people to places that they’ve never been before. He said, “But they should be more like tour guides.” A tour guide is somebody who takes you somewhere that they’ve gone. They’ve been there time and time again. So when they’re taking you, they can share the wisdom of their own experiences.

So those are the kind of leaders that we should strive to be, like the tour guide. That when we’re telling someone something or we’re sharing or we’re pouring into them or we’re adding value to them, we have the experience. We’ve been there before and we can share that with them.

The third one is that we should work on changing ourselves before trying to improve others. Although as leaders we are responsible for the actions of others, but we must be very careful in trying to change someone else’s behavior before we change ourselves. Because as leaders, we really have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than we do others. The leader is the one who should work the hardest.

So many times, people want to be elevated to positions of leadership because they think they’ve earned that right because they think it’s easier. “I’ve been working hard all of this time, now it’s my turn to be promoted. It’s my turn to sit back and kick back.” Because in their mind, that’s what the leader does. That’s what the boss does. But the real leader, the true leader understands that no, the more responsibility you add, the more rights you give up as a leader.

So the leader is the one who should be setting the example. That’s the one who should be working the hardest. That’s the one that should be working the longest. Just like on a sports team, and you guys know I was going to go to sports. The leader of the team, that’s the athlete who works the hardest to set the example. That’s not the one with the loudest mouth. That’s the one who walks the walk. They talk the talk and they walk the walk.

If you’re a team player, you’re the leader of that team, you’re a future hall of famer, you know your spot is secure. Ever year when you go into the season, you know you have a starting position on that team. You know you are. But even still, you work harder than anybody else. You work harder than that fifth-round rookie who’s trying to make the team. You work harder than that free agent who doesn’t even have a contract in front of them to make the team. You’re working harder than those guys.

If you’re the one that’s working like that, who has the audacity not to follow you when the best player is working the hardest? When the leader of the company, the one who’s paying your salary, is working the hardest, who has the audacity to not follow that?

I went to this organization to do some team building for the owner because this owner was concerned about the employees and their morale. There’s a lot going on there, the owner was concerned. So the owner brought me in to do some team building. So I did a group team building and then I did some individual one-to-ones with the employees.

What I found out was this: the real problem was the owner. I spoke with the owner and I relayed that. See because this particular owner, they wanted me to come in and fix all of the individual employees but the owner wasn’t willing to fix himself or herself. They weren’t. They wanted everybody to get into shape and to get it together, but they were the ones doing those things that were causing other people to not get it together, to not get in shape.

So this was a case of, “I want you to fix everybody else but don’t worry about fixing me.” We can’t do that as leaders because we recognize the hardest job you will ever have in leading is leading yourself. We’re our biggest problem 9.9 out of 10 times. So we have to lead ourselves before we can lead others.

The fourth is the most valuable gift a leader can give is by being a good example. By being a good example. More than anything else, employees want a boss who will lead by example and their actions line up with their beliefs.

Now John mentions Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York when September 11^th happened. Many people in New York City and basically around the country, when they looked at Rudy and how he lived and how he carried himself and conducted himself after September 11^th, many of us learned how to deal with that tragedy by watching him and how he dealt with it.

Because Rudy was determined not to let the terrorists dictate to him how he was going to live his life. He was determined not to let terroristic acts dictate to the city of New York how they were going to live their life.

So he was saying, “Tourists, we don’t have the Twin Towers anymore, but we’re still the same fabulous city that we’ve always been. Come and see us. You’ll be okay. You’re safe here. Come and see us.” And that’s how he led his life. He modeled the behavior.

He gave the example of how New Yorkers should recover from September 11^th and that’s what they did. He was a good example and that’s the most valuable gift that we can give as a leader, whether it’s an organization, whether it’s in our personal life, is by being a good example. That’s the best gift we can give to our children, is by being a good example.

The next law, the Law of the Buy-In. The Law of the Buy-In says people buy into the leader and then the vision. The leader follows the dream and then the people. The people will follow the leader and then the dream. John talks about Gandhi and how his vision for non-violent civil disobedience captured an entire nation and eventually won India home rule.

See many leaders approach leadership in a backwards view. They think if the cause is great enough, that people will follow. They think if the why is good enough, that people will follow. I mean, why wouldn’t people want to follow? This is a good reason. This is a good cause. Why wouldn’t you want to follow?

People are not built like that. It’s just simply not true. People will follow a worthy leader who promotes a cause that they believe in. They won’t just necessarily follow the cause because there is a good cause. If you run a nonprofit organization, and that’s really a place where you can really practice good leadership because many times people are not being compensated for the things that they do. So it really takes good, strong leadership to influence people to do things.

But if you run nonprofit organization, you may get a few people who follow you because they’re personally invested in the cause. Maybe they are afflicted with some sort of ailment or somebody in their family or they lost a loved one to something, so they may be personally invested in the cause.

But for the most part, people will follow because they believe in you and then they support the cause. So it doesn’t matter, if the leader hasn’t built credibility with the people, they won’t follow. No matter how great the cause is, no matter how great the vision is, they won’t follow.

John gave the example of the dot-com boom back a decade or so ago, where any and everybody with just a little bit of computer experience was attempting to start their businesses. We hear people like the Mark Cuban’s of the world who started his dot-com and sold it and became a billionaire.

We hear some individual stories about people who became millionaires and billionaires, but the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people who start their own dot-com business, they never found backers to finance them. They didn’t.

The people who did find investors the first go around, they found it much easier the second time to get backing. The second time, sometimes the investors came to them, looking to give them money because the investor wasn’t even really particularly interested in what that person was trying to do.

They had a vision, they had a goal, yeah, fine, whatever, but they believed in the person. They saw that that person had success so they believed that whatever it is that that person was trying to do, they were going to be successful at it. So they were invested in that person not so much what that person was doing.

It’s kind of like the coach who implements the game plan before a game. The players may not know exactly why the game plan is that way, they may not know why we’re running plays that we have not run all year long. They may not know why we are running defenses that we’ve not played all year long. But if they believe in that coach, if that coach has led them to success before, they’re not going to question the plan. They’re going to learn it and they’re going to buy into it because that’s what people do.

You can have the greatest plan in the world and that’s fine. But if the people don’t buy into you, they don’t trust you, if they don’t believe in you, they’re not going to buy into your vision, which is why it makes sense that we need to connect with people first before we push a vision on them. Every message that people receive is filtered through the messenger who delivers it. It could be the greatest message in the world but if the messenger is not somebody with credibility, the message will be lost.

When we think about the greatest speeches in the world, you know, “Four score and seven years ago,” Abraham Lincoln. And Dr. Martin Luther King, “I have a dream.” When we think about those speeches and those magnificent words that were spoken, they’re wonderful, they send chills through your spine, but you look at the people who gave those speeches. That’s what gave those speeches juice. That’s what made them come alive. Because the individuals who gave those speeches were the people who the world, who the country for the most part, had bought into.

That’s the reason why so many entertainers and athletes and people of that such make so much money promoting products. Most athletes, the really, really good ones, who have a lot of endorsements, their endorsements paid them more than the actual sport that they play.

Michael Jordan was never the highest paid athlete when he was playing. He didn’t need to be because his endorsements paid him four or five times the amount that his salary did. So he wasn’t concerned about his salary because there were endorsements.

Because people like and buy into the person who’s making the endorsement, they assume the product is good as well. That’s why paying those people, popular people, that’s why they endorse products, because the companies understand if you get the person who people like, who people trust, who people buy into, then they’ll buy the product.

When Tiger Woods had that fiasco several years ago involving his personal life, a lot of his sponsors dropped him. Why did they drop him? Because he wasn’t a good golfer anymore? Because he wasn’t going to the hall of fame anymore? No. it wasn’t any of those reasons. But he had lost some credibility and trust with the public and they realized that if the public doesn’t like you or trust you as a person, then they’re not going to like the product that you’re pushing.

It’s the same thing with your vision. If they don’t like and trust you as the leader, they’re not going to like the vision that you’re pushing. When Michael Jordan came out with his tennis or basketball shoe brand, Air Jordans, and they sold better, and still sell better, than any shoe in the history of tennis shoes.

It wasn’t because the shoes were so fabulous, it’s not that you were going to put them and all of a sudden you were going to play like Michael Jordan and start dunking the ball like Michael Jordan, no. Kids wore them because Michael Jordan wore them. And he’s Michael Jordan. That was a good enough reason. If they’re good enough for Mike, they’re good enough for me. Once people believe in you, they’ll always give your vision a chance.

Another one is when followers don’t like the leader of the vision, they look for another leader. When followers don’t like the leader or the vision, they look for another leader. The only time a person will follow someone that they don’t like and who has a vision they don’t like, it’s when the person has leverage on them. More likely than not, that’s the person who holds the keys to your employment.

So although you may like them, you may not like them, or how they do things, you follow them anyway because they sign the paycheck. And you need the paycheck. They follow because they don’t have a choice. But more than likely, while they’re following you, they’re looking for somebody else to follow. That’s why people rarely quit jobs, they quit people. Because if they don’t like you, they don’t like your vision, they’re going to look for somebody else.

Second one is people also look for a new leader when they like the vision but don’t like the leader. So you might love your job, I cannot tell you the number of people that I’ve talked to, they love their jobs. Their actual job, they enjoy it. That’s what they want to do. They may enjoy and appreciate the vision that the job forecasts but they don’t like you. They don’t like the leader. They don’t like their boss. They don’t like their supervisor. That’s enough for them to change jobs. Although they like the job, although they value what they’re doing, they don’t like the person leading them, they will look elsewhere.

John brings this up talking about sports, and this time it was John, not me. He made the point that that’s why teams change coaches so much because the vision of winning a championship is the same for every team. That’s why you play the sport, is to win the championship. But if the coach loses the team and the players stop listening, stop respecting the coach, stop responding to the coach, the team will change the coach. You will change the leader. So the vision is the same, you’re trying to win a championship. But the leader has to go.

The third is one is when followers like the leader but not the vision, then they try to change the vision. Sometimes it will work to convince the leader to change the vision. If you don’t know by now, I’m a diehard Longhorn fan and in 2004, Texas Longhorns had a sophomore quarterback named Vince Young. They had lost a game to Oklahoma Sooners, the Red River Rivalry 12-0. First time Texas had been shutout in over a decade. The game right after that they played Missouri and they won the game but they didn’t play well. And actually, Vince Young was taken out of the game for certain parts of the game.

So after that game, Vince Young went to coach Mack Brown. He said, “Mack,” well he didn’t say Mack, he said, “Coach Brown, I need you to loosen the reigns a little bit on the team. I need you to loosen the reigns a little bit on me. Let me have a little more fun. If you watch the tape when I played in high school at Houston Madison, you saw that I conducted myself a certain way on the team. I played fun. I played loose. That’s what I do. So I know this is college, I know this is a different ballgame, but I’m not being me. If you allow me to be me, and allow me to have some more influence on this team and the attitude of this team, I think it can help.”

So Mack Brown was smart. Mack Brown was well liked by his team. He was respected by his team. But they weren’t completely sold. His quarterback, the leader of his team, wasn’t completely sold on Mack’s style of leading the team. So he liked the leader but didn’t like the vision. So he changed the vision. Mack Brown said, “Okay, you know what. We’re going to try it this way. We’re going to see what happens.”

What happened is for the rest of Vince Young’s career as a quarterback at UT, which spanned a period of twenty games, Vince Young and the rest of the Longhorns never lost another game and they won a National Championship. Because they liked the leader, didn’t like the vision, changed the vision, and it worked.

Fourth and finally, when followers like both the leader and the vision, they follow both. No matter how bad the conditions get, they’re going to follow. That’s why the Indian people followed Gandhi and refused to fight back even though they were being massacred by the military. That’s what inspired the U.S. to fulfill JFK’s vision to put a man on the moon. That’s what inspired people to continue to have hope even after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Because when people like and believe the leader and the vision, they’re going to run through walls for you. They’re going to go to the ends of the earth for you.

The buy-in is not about the leader. It’s about the leader’s ability to make the people, to take the people to where they need to go. So if you can get people to understand that you’re there to help them and take them to another level, and you get the buy-in from them, then you’re on your way.

So these are reasons that people will buy into a leader. The leader develops relationships. The leader is honest, authentic, and develops trust. The leader holds themselves to higher standards. The leader gives people the proper tools to become better. The leader helps followers achieve their goals. The leader develops the leadership of the followers.

When you’re thinking about your vision and the vision that you want to have in your life and with your team, ask yourself these questions. Does your vision resonate with them? Then ask yourself this question: Are you giving them enough time to buy into your vision? Because sometimes the leaders will come up with a new vision, and a new direction, a new way of doing things, and they don’t give the people time to adjust to it. To let it soak in. To let it marinate. You want them immediately to jump on board, immediately. And it’s not always immediate. So you have to ask yourself, are you giving people time to buy into you? Into your vision?

Then the final question you want to ask yourself, is your vision right for other people? It may be right for you. But is it right for the team as a whole? Is it right for the organization as a whole?

Sometimes a leader, someone in charge, wants to change some policies, change some procedures because it impacts them directly but it may be negative for the whole other team. Then they can’t understand why the team is not buying into it. Well that’s because you’re the only person that benefits from that vision. So you have to ask yourself, is your vision truly right for everyone?

Finally, the last law we’re going to talk about is the Law of Victory. That’s the law that says leaders find a way for the team to win. It’s that simplistic. Leaders find a way for the team to win. The question in this chapter is what does it take to make a team a winner? What separates the leaders who are victorious from the ones who are not?

John says that the victorious leaders have one thing in common. They have a refusal to lose. Crisis and adversity brings out the best in all of us, that includes leaders. True leaders thrive under pressure. They don’t run from it. They don’t hide from it. They don’t cower in the corner. They thrive under pressure.

Little history lesson this morning. John talks about Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during World War II, who battled Hitler, who was threatening to crush Europe and remake it under his own insane and evil image. In 1932, Churchill foresaw what Germany was trying to become. He saw it early. See that’s one of the great signs of leadership, they see first and they see more. Churchill saw it. He was trying to prepare England for what was to come. He spoke out against Germany but the other leaders in England did nothing to stand against Hitler and more of Europe fell to the Germans.

By the 1940s, most of Europe was under Germany’s control until the control of England fell into the hands of the 65-year-old Winston Churchill. For more than a year, Britain is still alone facing the threat of German invasion, but he refused to deal with Hitler.

Hitler wanted to make a deal. No. He refused to deal with him and he stood firm even when Germany started bombing England. Churchill continued to rally the British people, including his first speech after becoming prime minister. I won’t say the whole speech, but basically he said victory at all costs was the goal and the aim. Victory at all costs, no matter what.

See Churchill hated communism but he was smart enough to ally himself with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. He would send the Russian’s aid even when his own troops, even when England needed the aid himself, he would send it Russia. Healing that relationship. He also was very clever. He built a personal relationship with another powerful world leader, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president of the United States.

See Roosevelt was reluctant to enter the war and Churchill respected that. But Churchill worked to build the relationship from one of friendship and mutual respect to a full-fledged war alliance because he knew if we have the United States on our side, that would change things. So he worked on that relationship.

And Japan, bless their hearts, they assisted Churchill greatly when they decided to bomb Pearl Harbor because they drew the United States into the war and the rest is history. That’s a pun intended. That the rest is history. We know what happened.

See the president of the United States at the time, Roosevelt, he was a leader himself who practiced the Law of Victory. This was a man who overcame polio to win the presidency and he was responsible for pulling the American people out of the Great Depression. There were only a dozen or so democratic states on the earth around 1941 and Churchill and Roosevelt, they provided the democratic leadership, like John says, like a one-two punch.

Victory was the only option for both of those men. Had those two men accepted anything less than victory, I’m afraid of what the world would look like right now. But the world would be a different place right now. Hitler had a plan. He had a thousand-year Reich plan that German was going to dominate for a thousand years.

But because of the greatness of men like Churchill and Roosevelt, and the courage of the men and women who battled, his bloody rein lasted twelve years. Now that was twelve years too long but that twelve years was a lot shorter than what it could have been and what he was intending for it to be. See great leaders find a way to win.

Nelson Mandela, another great leader. Did the same thing. He was in prison for 27 years but he became the president of South Africa at the end of apartheid. He found a way to win, refused to give in.

A leader’s mindset is one that losing is not an option. It’s not a choice. It’s not even on the table. There’s a plan A: win. There’s no more plans. There’s no backup plans. It’s plan A. Losing is not an option. It’s not business, it’s personal. Some people say, well, it’s not personal, it’s only business. No. It’s personal to a leader.

Leaders, you have to make sure that you surround yourself with people who believe in you, but they think different thoughts. Because if everybody is thinking alike, then somebody is not thinking. In the leader’s view, leadership is responsible, losing is unacceptable, passion is unquenchable, creativity is essential, quitting is unthinkable, commitment is unquestionable, and victory is inevitable. That’s how a leader views the world.

John refers to Michael Jordan who was the epitome of a winner. Michael Jordan was an exceptional player. His athletic ability and his athletic talents were superb. But to a man, those who played with Michael Jordan, those who played against Michael Jordan, nobody said that, “You know what, Mike was so quick, I couldn’t hold him.” Nobody said, “Mike jumps so high that I …” Nobody said that. Nobody talked about his physical skills, although they were plenty. They talked about his desire and his will to win.

That was what made Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan. His desire and will to win were unmatched. See early in his career, when he first came out of North Carolina and played for the Bulls, Michael relied on his natural talent. He had a lot of individual success. He would lead the league in scoring, averaging over 30 points a game. He would do all these wonderful things on the individual level, but his teams ultimately were not successful.

But when Jordan developed leadership skills and he turned his attention to making the whole team better, then the Bulls become a legendary team. The greatest players in any sport are always known for that. They’re always known for that. Not just being great themselves but making other people better.

That’s the same thing with leaders. It does you no good to be great alone. Do you make people around you better? Do you make the people around you better? Do you lift them up? Do you help them lift their game up? Because if you help them lift their game up, the team is going to be better.

Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, John Elway, Joe Montana, all of those guys had that in common. It didn’t matter what the sport was. It didn’t matter what their talent level was, that’s the thing that they had in common. They made people around them better and they refused to lose. That’s what leaders do. Leaders make the people around them better and they refuse to lose.

There are three components to victory. Leaders create a unity of vision. You get people who are playing for the team and not for themselves. The second is leaders find a diversity of skills. You can’t have a team only good in one area. It just won’t happen because you’ll be weak. Diversity is a strength. In order for the team to win, everybody has to do their part. Different skillsets. Same vision, same goals, but different skills. Diversity is key.

The third one is leaders raise team members to their potential by knowing and utilizing team’s strengths. You have to know what the strengths are of the people that you’re working with. You have to have the ability to free them from their weaknesses. Wherever you’re going, take them with you.

You expose them to an experience and you cultivate their personal growth. That’s how you raise their potential, by doing those things. Knowing their strengths, freeing them from weaknesses, taking them with you, exposing them to an experience, and cultivating their personal growth.

Some organizations, some leaders, they go to all these magnificent leadership conferences and trainings and stuff, which is wonderful, that’s great. But they never take their people with them. You want to cultivate their personal growth as well. So I’m just going to end by giving you three steps in practicing the law of victory.

You want to take responsibility for the success of your team, for your department, and for your organization. Make it personal. We invest more when it’s personal. Your commitment and passion must be higher than that of your team members. If you have an organization and the most excited and enthusiastic and passionate person is not the leader, then you’re going to have a problem.

The second, ensure the right people are on your team. Hire smartly, recruit wisely. People have asked John, “How do you motivate employees? How do you motivate people?” His answer is, “I hire motivated people.” That’s how you do it. If you hire the right people, if you recruit the right people into your organization, you’re not going to have to spend a lot of time doing all of those other things.

You’ve had somebody working for you for four or five months and you’ve got to send them a training on attitude. You have to send them to training on how to motivate them. No, it’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to do that. You hire smartly, you recruit wisely. Make sure the right people are on your team.

Finally, find out if your vision is unified. Find out what’s important to your team members. Because your vision may not be theirs. But if you were to find out, if you were to take the time to find out what’s important to them. What are the things that they feed into? What are the things that they want to do? What’s valuable to them? It may help you, it will help you, in getting buy-in from them. Because even if you say well, my vision has to remain the same, at least you can address the things that are important to them or you can explain the benefits of the things that are important to them by doing your vision.

Ask questions. Talk to people. Get their opinions. Don’t be defensive. When you ask for an opinion, be prepared to get the worst opinion imaginable. Not saying that you will, you probably won’t, but be prepared. That way, you’re not going to be mad and angry and defensive. I don’t know about you guys, but nothing irritates me more than someone asking my advice or asking my opinion for something and then when I give it to them, they’re upset with it. What do we say, “Well, don’t ask if you don’t like the answer.” Don’t ask.

So you talk to your people. You ask questions and you find out if your vision is unified. Be prepared that everybody may not buy into it. But as the leader, if they bought into you, they will eventually buy into your vision. So thank you very much. That ends our conference for today.

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.