Ep #14: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with Will Bess Part 6

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.

All right, so here we are, call six. We are on laws sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I’m thrilled to have you guys here.

I’m going to just quickly, everybody kind of knows Will by now I think. Will is our certified John Maxwell coach. I’ve gotten to spend a little time with Will, well actually, more time than usual lately. It’s been fun. We attended a Five Levels of Leadership workshop with Will, me and my team went to that on, I guess it was last week, Will. We talked about that a little bit on the call.

Anyway, we’ve been well in the swing of the John Maxwell stuff and enjoying it thoroughly. So I’m excited to hear what you have to say today.

Will:            Okay. Thank you very much, Allison. Welcome to the call, everyone. For everyone who can’t make the live call, when you do listen to it, welcome to you as well. We’re talking about laws sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen today. But before I get into that, just a brief recap of the three laws we talked about last week.

Thirteen was the Law of the Picture. That’s basically the law that says we live what we teach. The Law of the Picture is that people do what they see. So we have to make sure that we are living the law so people can see what it is that we desire for them to see.

The next one that we studied was the Law of the Buy-In. That’s the one that says people buy into the leader and then the vision. So it doesn’t really matter how wonderful your vision is, if the people don’t believe in you, or buy into you, then they’re going to struggle with buying into your vision. You cannot cast a vision and expect a buy-in until they’ve bought into you.

Then the last one that we talked about last week was the Law of Victory. That’s the law that said leaders find a way for the team to win. This is the mindset that says losing is not an option. Winning is mandatory. It’s not business, it’s personal. Okay? So those are the three laws that we talked about last week.

This week we will start off with the Law of the Big Mo. The big “mo” being momentum. Momentum is a leader’s best friend. Momentum is really defined as the speed of force of movement, a driving power or strength. Momentum is basically getting things going. If you’re a leader and you can’t seem to get things going, you can’t seem to get moving in the right direction, you can’t get your organization moving, then more than likely, you’re suffering from a lack of momentum.

John starts off this chapter telling a great story about Ed Catmull who grew up wanting to be an animator and a film maker. After a series of twists and turns, he ends up working with George Lucas. If you guys know George Lucas, he’s the famous Star Wars director. So Catmull and his team broke new ground working with Lucas.

He tried to convince George Lucas to allow him to make computer-generated feature films but the technology at that time was very new and it was rather expensive. So George Lucas declined the offer and actually he decided to sell that division of the company.

Well guess who came around in 1996 and purchased it for five million dollars? That rascal, Steve Jobs. And we know who Steve Jobs is with Apple Computers. He named the company Pixar. Well it was struggling to become profitable, but great work was being put in while they were doing that.

They created a short animated film called Luxor Jr and it was actually created to rave reviews. It was even nominated for an Academy Award. But they were still struggling to produce, they still were struggling with finances. After years of struggling, they got a break. They had an opportunity to work on a feature film, a little thing called Toy Story.

Now Disney almost pulled the plug on it because Disney didn’t like the characters. They wanted them to be more edgier but the more edgier Pixar made the characters, the more unlikable they became. So they were struggling to get the right recipe for their story.

Well, while they were taking four long years to make Toy Story, other studios were making moves. They were jumping on the technology that Pixar had created. So Jurassic Park came out. Terminator 2 came out. And it was the same technology that Catmull and his team had developed.

So you can imagine the frustration that they were experiencing knowing that people were profiting large amounts of money and exposure using things that they had produced. But, they were patient. Pixar was continuing to slowly build momentum.

Well when Toy Story finally did open and I’m assuming everybody who hears or is listening to this call has seen Toy Story. When Toy Story came out, my son was little. So I’ve had the privilege and the pleasure to see probably every animated movie or cartoon since 1995.

When Toy Story came out, Jobs was hoping to make 200 million dollars. He figured if they could make 200 million dollars, then the movie would be considered a success because everybody involved would make a great deal of money. Well, the film did a little bit better than that. It almost doubled that. It make 362 million dollars worldwide.

I believe that pretty much everyone knows who Woody and Buzz Lightyear are. If you don’t, then shame on you because you need to. So go to your nearest Redbox or whatever and rent the movie. And it’s a trilogy of those movies actually.

Well Pixar gained great momentum when they did Toy Story so they produced in succession, A Bug’s Life, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and those movies combined produced 3.6 billion dollars worldwide. So like I said because of the age of my son, I’ve seen all of those movies, some of them multiple times.

Pixar is a great example of momentum. It took them a while to get rolling but once they got rolling, that’s what happened. Momentum sometimes is the difference between winning and losing. When you don’t have it, small problems seem huge. Morale becomes low. The train really just seems to stop dead in the tracks. But when you have that momentum, totally different ballgame. The future seems brighter. Nothing really seems to be able to slow you down.

So here are somethings that you need to know about momentum. Momentum is the great exaggerator. This law can really be seen in sports. Yes, I’m talking about sports. It happens in business. It happens, I’m sorry Allison, but you know I’m going to have to, actually John brings it up a lot in the next three chapters so it’s not really my fault, I’m just piggybacking on him.

Allison:       [Laughs]

Will:            But it happens and in life, but really, when you look at momentum, there is not a greater teacher of momentum than a sporting event. There’s really not. So I’m going to take you guys back a little bit. You may or may not remember this, you may have heard of it, but I’m just going to take you back in time a little bit.

It was 1993 and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was still in Houston at the time going to college, going to school down there. It was a cold day in Rich Stadium in Buffalo, New York. Now I wasn’t in Buffalo, New York. I was in Houston, Texas watching television. But it was cold in Buffalo and there was a wildcard playoff football game between the Houston Oilers and the Buffalo Bills.

These were two teams that had really, really explosive offenses. They both scored a lot of points. Both teams were quarterbacked by future hall-of-fame-quarterbacks, Warren Moon with the Houston Oilers, Jim Kelly with the Buffalo Bills. But in the previous game, the last game of the year, which ironically was between these same two teams and Houston won that game, 27-3, Jim Kelly was hurt. So his backup quarterback, Frank Reich, was playing this game.

The game started. The first half was completely dominated by the Houston Oilers. Now Warren Moon was out there playing as if there was no defense on the field. He completed 19 of his 22 passes. He threw for four touchdowns. The Oilers pretty much moved the ball at will and did whatever they wanted to do. They went into halftime leading 28-3.

Well when the third quarter started, Houston returned an interception 58 yards for a touchdown within a few minutes of the third quarter starting. They had a seemingly insurmountable lead of 35-3. To make things worse for Buffalo, their running back, who was also a future hall of famer, Thurman Thomas, he got hurt. So he couldn’t play with the rest of the team.

So now Buffalo is down 35-3 and they have a backup quarterback playing and they have their backup running back playing. The radio announcer for the Oilers made this statement, he said, “The lights are here on at Rich Stadium and they’ve been on since this morning. But you can pretty much turn them off right now on the Bills.”

Well right after that touchdown, Houston kicked off and right before the kicker kicked the ball, the wind shifted the ball on the tee. Not enough to knock it off, but just shifted it a little bit and so the kicker did not kick it cleanly and the ball only went a few yards to the 50 yard line. So Buffalo had a short field. They scored their first touchdown in ten plays.

They kicked off, they did an on-side kick. They recovered the ball, they scored on a touchdown play a few plays later. Ironically, the touchdown pass that they scored on shouldn’t have happened because the receiver stepped out of bounds, which made the pass illegal. The referees missed it. Buffalo scored a touchdown, that made the score 35-17. And for all intents and purposes, the game was over.

I recall watching that game. I’m a Dallas Cowboy fan by nature but I was rooting for Houston. I almost had to since I was living there. It was amazing because all the things that Houston did right in the first half, they could do nothing right in the second half and everything went Buffalo’s way.

I mean, guys who were catching passes all day all of a sudden were tipping passes right into the arms of defenders for interceptions. Guys were missing field goals. It was chip shot field goals. The snapper would snap the ball poorly. They couldn’t even get the kick off. It was just amazing. The things that started going wrong for Houston.

Consequently, everything started going right for Buffalo. What happened? The Law of Momentum had produced the greatest comeback in the history of the NFL. I recall seeing it, play by play, with my very eyes and it was amazing to see. That when Buffalo got momentum in the second half, everything that they tried to do seemed to work and nothing that the Oilers did seemed to work.

That’s what momentum is. It’s like a magnifying glass. It makes everything seem larger than it really is. You can see it in any and every sport. When things are going good, they are going good.

I don’t know if you guys have ever been to a basketball game where a team suddenly gets momentum. All of a sudden, they have not been shooting the ball well all day but now they can’t miss a shot. The guys who normally can’t shoot well, all of sudden, they’re shooting. Guys who come off the bench who hadn’t even really played much that year, all of a sudden, they’re scoring. It’s contagious.

It’s amazing to watch, especially in sports, it’s amazing to watch when a team gets momentum because it is contagious and it seems to affect every player on the team. The things that normally would distract them and knock them off course, it doesn’t do anything. Everything when you get momentum gets better and it gets easier.

The second thing is momentum makes the leader look better than they really are. When you have momentum, it makes you look smarter and people tend to forget the mistakes of the past. I mean it really does. It changes everyone’s perspective of the leader.

Sometimes young leaders get less credit than they deserve because they’ve really not established the momentum yet. They put in some work but they don’t have the momentum. So once the leader creates some momentum and creates some success, then people tend to give them more credit than they deserve. You see, that’s what momentum does. It tends to exaggerate your success and it may not seem fair, but that’s the way it is. So be careful.

It would be good to be wary that when you have momentum, that’s fine, and you want to enjoy it without letting it destroy you. If you want to do that, just be grateful. Just always be grateful and it will help you remember the source of what you’ve gained in that momentum.

Caller:        So, can I ask a question?

Will:            Of course you can.

Caller:        So what’s momentum? As a leader, they kind of steer the ship but the players can take it over and build on it. So the leadership kind of steps back because even maybe weaker team members can get involved in the momentum and they’re surprising themselves because they can do it.

Will:            Absolutely.

Caller:        So it just is kind of like a good, positive force.

Will:            Oh, it’s a great force.

Caller:        The energy that just feeds on themselves. Even teams, like with the football, like you said. My dad had four girls and we watched football, I mean, we had no choice. So I know exactly what you’re talking about. So just in that, even players that never got to play and they just were kicking booty to make it happen.

Will:            Right.

Caller:        It’s awesome, yeah.

Will:            Right and thank you. That’s a great statement because really that leads right into the next one where it says momentum helps followers perform better than they are and that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

Like I say, sports is really the perfect analogy for this whole chapter about momentum because normally, the great players, the star players, they pretty much perform all the time. You kind of can expect that. But the thing about momentum that’s so wonderful is just like you just said, it’s the role players. It’s the people who may be seen as being weaker in some areas. They start to shine. They start to step their game up.

So if you see players on the winning teams and you see the stars perform at a high level, that’s expected. But like last year, I think of last year in the NBA Championship when the Miami Heat was playing. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, the superstars, the future hall of famers, they played consistently. They did what they do.

But the games that the Heat won, that they really, really needed, it was never LeBron James and the other guys. It was always those role players. Like Mike Miller who had been hurt all year long. Sometimes the guy couldn’t even sit on the bench because his back would tighten up so bad he would have to lay on the floor the entire game to watch it. I mean, the guy was just a walking hospital bed, but in the final game, he hit seven three-pointers.

It was the role players, it was the guys who you really don’t pay attention to when the team hits momentum and everything is flowing, then everybody gets into the act and it makes everybody look good. So you’re exactly right. The average people even step up their game in the organization.

Caller:        This is interesting because just two weeks ago, I’m working with a doctor in Georgia, and two of his employees left, long-time employees. He was like, “Oh my gosh, they’re my star collectors, what am I going to do?”

I said, “What you’re going to do is you’re going sit back and watch this one. This one’s got it. You’re so interested, watch what she can do. She’s going to bypass what you thought your star person was in collection because now she has the opportunity. She’s been dying to get out there and collect for you.”

Will:            Right.

Caller:        He’s like, “I don’t think so.” I’m like, “You’ve got to believe in her. You don’t need to run out and hire and panic. Trust your team. You built that team. They’re on your bus. Give them the chance to have that momentum.”

Will:            Absolutely.

Caller:        So this is good. I know I’m breaking in after missing four of these, but I’ve been listening to you guys.

Will:            That’s ok. That’s fine. You got some questions you’ve been holding onto, right?

Caller:        Oh, I’ve got a lot. I’m going to have to setup a call with you, man.

Will:            That’s no problem. Hey, we definitely can do that. But anyway, I know, I appreciate your input.

Caller:        Yeah.

Will:            The next one is momentum is easier to steer than start. That’s like everything else. It’s much easier to get something going once you start it. It could be working out. It could be dieting. It could be anything. Starting is the hardest part, getting started. Once you get started, than it’s a lot easier to steer that thing once you get it rowing.

So the initial work is the toughest and sometimes for the least results. But don’t lose heart and don’t quit. You’ll recognize that once the momentum gets flowing, once that boat gets in the water and gets to rocking and rolling, then it’s easier to steer it than it was to get it started.

The next one, momentum is a powerful change agent. Change is necessary and momentum helps make it easier. Sometimes people get comfortable. Sometimes people don’t like change. They like their routine. But when you’re winning, change is easy and it becomes easier to accept change when you’re winning. When things are going your way and you need to change up something, you can roll with it.

So who has led people to a victory, then people easily will accept change from that leader. Momentum is the leader’s responsibility. It takes the leader to create it. It takes followers to catch it. It requires someone with vision, the ability to assemble a good team, and someone who can motivate others.

You know the saying that if you can’t stand the heat then get out of the kitchen? Well, it isn’t that saying. It’s basically, if you can’t make the heat, than you have to get out of the kitchen because when you’re the leader, that’s your responsibility, is to make that heat.

The last one is, momentum begins inside of the leader. As Eleanor Doan observes, you cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning within your own. Essentially, if you don’t believe in the vision, and you don’t pursue it, than you won’t do what is necessary to get the ball rolling. Remember as the leader, it isn’t enough for you to be successful. You need to help your people be successful.

You know, Allison mentioned earlier that we were in the Five Levels conference last week and one of the things the presenter Audrey Morales did was talking about fires and talking about going from level to level. One of the things that she said, “If you don’t have the ability to build your own fire, yeah, you might catch some momentum from other people, from other people’s fire. You just stick your stick in there and light it.”

And I think a lot of times, that’s what goes on in good economy, people are getting fire from other people’s fires. But when those fires start to dim, if you haven’t learned how to create your own fire, if you can’t kindle your own fire, then you’re going to have a problem. So that’s what the leader does. The momentum builds inside of that leader. They have the ability to make the fire themselves. So that’s all we’re going to talk about today about momentum.

The next law, law seventeen, is the Law of Priority. This one says that leaders understand that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. This is the law that focuses on instead of getting more done, the great leader gets the right things done.

You see, leaders never get to the point where they stop prioritizing. Busyness is not the same as achievement. Have you ever heard anyone always talking about how busy they are? “Oh, I’m so busy. I’m so busy. I’m so busy.”

But when you look at them, they’re really not doing anything. They really haven’t accomplished anything. They really haven’t finished anything. They’re just bouncing around like the little Energizer Bunny rabbit, doing all of these different things. But they never really seem to be accomplishing anything.

People tend to think if they’re always doing something, if they’re always on the go, if they’re always on the move, then they’re accomplishing something. That’s really not the truth. The truth of the matter is we waste a lot of time being busy just for the sake of being busy.

John said there are three reasons why it is hard for some leaders to practice prioritizing. The first one is, we think being busy is achieving. And prioritizing requires leaders to continually think ahead. To see how everything relates to the overall vision.

Prioritizing causes us to do the things that are uncomfortable and downright painful at times. A lot of people are procrastinators. Why do we procrastinate? Because we don’t want to do something. A lot of times it’s unpleasant, it’s undesirable. We don’t feel like it. It’s painful and so we put that off to last. But the great leader prioritizes. Even if it’s uncomfortable and painful, they know that if that’s important, that’s what needs to get done first, then that’s what they’re going to do first.

John talks about the 20/80 rule. He’s really talking about the Pareto Principle. He says that you really should focus your attention on the activities in your life that rank in the top 20 percent in terms of importance. If you do that, you will have an 80 percent return on your investment.

For instance, if you have ten employees, he suggests you give 80 percent of your time to the best two because those best two are going to produce the majority of your work. The top 20 percent of your customers tend to provide you with 80 percent of your profit.

As a probation officer, I recognize this law pretty much every day. In law enforcement, 20 percent of your offenders, 20 percent of your probationers, parolees, whatever, they’re pretty much going to cause you 80 percent of your problems. They’re going to cause you 80 percent of the work that you have to do because they’re going to cause 80 percent of the trouble. That’s why if you look at our population, it’s about 20 percent of our population that creates 80 percent of all the crime that’s committed.

That 20/80 rule, if you look at it across the board in your life, almost in any area, it really is accurate and it really is true. So as a leader, when you’re talking about prioritizing, you find those 20 percent most important things and spend most of your time on that. That’s going to get you the higher, the greatest rewards.

So John talks about the three Rs for priorities. He talks about what is required. We are all accountable to someone for the work we do or to someone in our lives, even if you’re self-employed. You’re accountable to someone, somewhere.

So the question that he always asks himself is, what must I do that nobody can or should do for me? If you’re doing unnecessary things in your life, you need to eliminate them. If it’s something that isn’t bringing a positive to you, then you have to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” I mean, have you ever found yourself doing something that you actually kind of resent doing it but you feel obligated to do it because you told somebody you’d do it? I know this happened to me.

You end up going to a meeting, you end up going to something and you’re kind of in a bad mood because you don’t want to go. But you want to keep your word because you told somebody you will participate, but you don’t enjoy it. So there’s some resentment there. Your heart is not in it. And not only are you mad that you’re going, you’re kind of mad at the person for even asking you, for even putting you in a position to have to say yes, so now you’re going.

See that’s what happens if we don’t prioritize. We end up overcommitting. And when you start to overcommit to things, you’ll find that you’re probably not going to be committed. You stretch yourself too thin and then you’re not really getting anything done anywhere because you’re trying to do a little bit of everything and you end up not doing anything.

You know, people sign up for things, they jump on board for things because they’re interested. Sounds good to them at the time, they’re interested. But then they lose interest in it and they find themselves in a bit of a dilemma. So what we need to do is try to make a habit of committing ourselves to the things that are important to us. Not necessarily important to someone else. But they’re important to us. Because if it’s not important to you and if you’re not doing it for the right reason, you’re going to find yourself in a bad spot.

If you’re going to school, if you go into the military, if you’re working a job, if you’re choosing a career, for someone other than yourself, it’s going to be a hard climb and a hard road. Because that’s not really the right. So you have to ask yourself, “What is required? Do I need to be doing this? Is this necessary for me to do? Do I want to?”

The second R, return. What gives me the greatest return? Leaders should be working in their areas of strength. You shouldn’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone because you need to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow, in order to stretch. But while you’re stretching and growing, you still operate in your strengths. I think it’s human nature that people just tend to be more productive and more content when they’re doing something that they’re good at.

John has a personal rule for himself and I have talked to people and I know people who are in his inner circle and they can attest to this. If he has something that he does that can be done at least 80 percent as well by someone else, he’ll delegate that. John’s written 70 plus books. John hasn’t written every word in all of those books.

Even my training partner, Audrey, she is helping John do some writing for his upcoming book because he says, “Hey, you know what, she can do this at least 80 percent as good as me. I’ve got some other stuff to do. Here, girl, go to it.” That’s how he does it.

Because basically just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you should. Especially if you’re a leader in your organization, you have to recognize that because that really goes back to the Law of Empowerment, which we talked about either last week or the week before.

Sometimes we find ourselves too busy because we’re doing things that we actually can let somebody else do. But we’re doing it. Let somebody else do it. Because not only does that free up some of your valuable time, but it helps them. It increases their level of responsibility and it helps them to grow in the role that they’re doing.

So learn to delegate. Learn to empower. That will help you. Yes, they probably can’t do it as good as you. But they never will get to the point that they can do it as good as you if they don’t get the opportunity to do it. They have to start somewhere.

Being busy doesn’t mean that we’re productive. It simply means that we’re doing a lot of something. So you have to ask yourself, what can you do? What do you have on your plate that you can double or triple on purpose? If you have something on there that is small and it’s going to stay small and there’s nothing that you can do to enlarge it or make it grow, you have to ask yourself, does it need to be here? Why is it there? It’s not giving me a great return on my investment, why is it here?

We have to make the habit of clearing out some of the clutter in our lives. So you have to look at your plate. Clean your plate.

The third one is reward, the third R, reward. What brings the greatest reward? The quote in the book was, there are many things that will catch my eye but there are only a few things that will catch my heart.

Allison:       Okay.

Will:            You know, some of us are like cats and shiny balls. You know, you get a cat, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a cat in front of you, but anything that glitters, anything that’s interesting, their attention is gone. I don’t care what they’re doing, they’re going to pick their head up and they’re going to look.

And some of us are like that. It looks interesting at the moment, there we go. We’re chasing that ball. Then we find ourselves with a big old bag of shiny balls and we don’t know what to do with them. You’re asking yourself, what in the world am I doing with all these shiny balls?

Sometimes that’s what happens to us. Anything that seems interesting to us at the moment, it catches our eye, “Okay, I want to do this. I want to do this.” So we go and we chase it and we do it and then we recognize that okay, you know what, this is too much. Why am I doing all of this?

We have to make a practice of committing to things that are important. Things that we love and make those the priorities. Make sure that you invest in yourself as much as possible. So on your list of priorities, it should be something that you’re investing in yourself to grow as a person. To grow as a leader.

As a leader, I believe we should be striving to put ourselves in the position or in the place to choose what we want to do. Not have it chosen for us. John talks about the former CEO of GE, Jack Welch. He’ll be speaking at the Leadercast next Friday. We won’t have this call next week on a Friday, on May 10^th. We’ll have it actually on May 11^th because some of us will be at the Chick-fil-A Leadercast. Jack Welch will be one of the speakers.

When Jack took over GE, the company was already pretty strong but he came in and like great leaders do, he knew we could make it better. So GE at the time had about 348 business or product lines that they operated. So he looked at every single one of them and he applied one single criteria. He asked, “Can this company or our product be number one or number two at whatever they do in the marketplace?” That was it. That was the only question he asked.

So when he found the businesses that could not or the products that could not, they were either closed or they were divested. And the sales that he brought in by divesting the ones that weren’t working, brought in about ten billion dollars, which he promptly took and reinvested into the remaining businesses.

During Welch’s tenure at GE, GE was ranked by Forbes magazine as the nation’s most admired company. That was because Welch never mistook activity for accomplishment. He knew they were having a lot of things going on. I mean, it’s impressive to say we have 348 different businesses. But it didn’t matter to him because he recognized that it wasn’t the number that they had. They had a lot of things going on but what were they accomplishing?

He recognized that success would only come when they focused on what was really important. So that’s what we have to do. We have to streamline the activities in our lives and ensure that we are spending most of our time on the things that are most important.

John talks about John Wooden and John loves Wooden, that was his mentor, and he died I believe at age 99. The late, great UCLA basketball coach. John Wooden orchestrated pretty much every moment in practice for his basketball team, so no time would be wasted.

He always ensured that he had a list of priorities for the team to work on every day and he and his assistants planned every practice meticulously. Sometimes they would spend about two hours organizing a practice that would last 30 minutes. But he wanted to make sure that everything that they did was for a purpose and was just not wasted activity.

Something that I didn’t know, with John Wooden, he never scouted his opponents. You know, a lot of teams, that’s what they do. They watch film, they scout the next week’s opponents or the next game’s opponents to see what their strengths are, their weaknesses. He never did that. He only focused on his team and making sure that they were doing well at what they were good at. This might seem unusual, this might seem, I don’t even know if any coach would be bold enough to do that today.

But for John Wooden, over 40 years of coaching, he had one losing season. And that was his first year. He led his team to four undefeated seasons and won ten championships. That is really so ridiculous, it’s almost unmentionable. College basketball, they’ve been playing the tournament for 75 years. There has only been seven undefeated teams in 75 years and John Wooden coached four of those teams.

So the things that he did, they worked. I don’t know if you’ve ever played sports or you’ve seen a practice of a sporting event whether …

Caller:        What was it? Undefeated? Wooden?

Will:            The undefeated teams in college history in basketball, yes, he had four of the seven.

Caller:        That is crazy.

Will:            It is crazy. He won ten championships. His accomplishments will never be duplicated again. I am quite sure of that because he was just simply an amazing coach and amazing man.

Caller:        Gosh, it just tells you to go back and believe. You don’t have to watch those practice tapes if you just focus on doing what you need to do.

Will:            Exactly.

Caller:        But you’re right, nobody would probably admit it that they’d never try it with technology, they’d all be suckered into watching other tapes.

Will:            Yeah, exactly. It would kill most coaches to not be looking at other tapes and see what they’re doing. But that’s what John did and his accomplishments are crazy. But I was asking, has anybody ever played sports or seen a practice of something. I played sports in school, so I definitely remember and know what John is talking about, but sometimes you see teams, they’re going hard, they’re going hard, but then you see a lot of standing around.

Caller:        Yes.

Will:            You might see a coach talking to a small group of players and all the other players are just standing around, no action, standing around. John talks about the “stand around and wait” description when he’s talking about the military, and I sure remember that. Stand around and wait. Hurry up and wait. That’s what it was.

Drove me crazy. I remember one day when I just started basic training. We were going to the administrative building to do our wills, you know just in case you didn’t make it out of the military, doing wills. You’re having your direct deposits sent to certain places, just doing all of that technical stuff.

We were in that little building for about five or six hours, just sitting there. Of course, you’re in the military, you’re a soldier, you’re in basic training, so you’re sitting in there quietly. You listen to the drill sergeant bark orders and you’re just sitting there. Sitting there. Sitting there for five or six hours. We were just sitting there.

I recall going into the office to do my business and it took about twenty minutes. I could not for the life of me wonder why did we spend six hours in this building for something that took twenty minutes? I mean, couldn’t we be doing something else and you just call people in one at a time to do their thing, whatever? That just frustrated me and I just never could understand that. Throughout the time of my military career it happened. We would be in the field, we would pick up our stuff to go move to another location, so we we’re being timed. “You need to hurry up. You need to pack up your tents, pack up the camouflage. Pull up all of the telephone lines. Get everything in order so you can move.” So we would be ready, the convoy would be ready and then we would sit on the side of the road for another hour, hour and a half, before we left.

So we’re all sitting there mad saying, you know what, this is some sleep we could be getting right now. Why in the world did we do all this rushing? Hurry up and wait. Leaders don’t waste time. Leaders use their time wisely. They make sure the time counts.

So in order to practice these laws of priorities, you have to answer these questions. What is required of me? What gives me the greatest return? What brings the greatest reward? Once you’ve done this, then create a list of things that don’t fit and then either delegate them or get rid of them. That’s what we need to do.

The third and final law that we’re going to talk about today is the Law of Sacrifice. I love this one. I mean, I like all of the laws, some more than others, but this one right here, in my own personal experience, this one right here trips up more leaders that I’ve dealt with. The Law of Sacrifice, this is the one that says the leader must give up to go up.

John asks the questions, why does the individual step forward to lead other people? The answer is different for different people. Some people do it for survival, they have to. They have to lead. Some people do it to make money. Some people do it to build and create, establish new organizations. Some people do it because they want to change the world. You know, it’s been said that if you are enjoying success today, somebody has gone before you and paid the price.

That really leads us to the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ll tell you as an African American man, I hold this man dear to my heart because of the things that he’s done. His leadership ability began in college when he was in Morehouse College in Atlanta.

He was a very bright young man. He skipped two grades in high school. He skipped, I believe his freshman year and then his senior year. So by the time he was 19 years old, he was an ordained minister and had a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Morehouse.

I think of my son, who’s going to turn 18 in a couple of weeks and I think of Dr. Martin Luther King, what he had done at 19. Yeah, my son is not Dr. King. Bless his heart. I just hope he can get out of high school. But at any rate, while attending Crozer Seminary, Dr. King heard a message about the life and teachings of Gandhi and that changed his life.

He obtained his Ph.D. from Boston University around the same time that he met his sweetheart, Miss Coretta Scott, and they got married. He accepted his first pastorate in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. Had a baby and settled down into a normal family life. That lasted for about a month.

Why did that only last a month? Well, about a month after that, Ms. Rosa Parks was riding the bus. Ms. Rosa Parks was tired. She was sitting down. She refused to relinquish her seat on the bus to a white passenger. She was arrested. So a boycott of the transit system led to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, where Dr. King was elected president.

So after multiple protesting, which demanded courteous treatment of African Americans on buses, in November 1956 the Supreme Court struck down segregated seating on buses. When I think about it, it’s rather humbling to me because I was born in ’68, and it was humbling to know that this happened just a mere twelve years before I was born. Because I’ve not known segregation in my life like that. My mother has, and she used to tell me stories. But it is, it’s kind of scary to me that it was just a little over a decade that this happened before I was born.

But at any rate, although the boycott was successful, Dr. King was paying a major price for it. He was being constantly arrested on minor, trumped up charges, just being harassed. He had a bomb thrown on his porch. He was indicted on false charges. As he climbed higher, the price that he was paying became steeper. His wife, Coretta, stated that although they lived in constant danger, her husband inspired her. I don’t know if there’s a better compliment a man can ever get from his wife.

He met with presidents. He led massive, non-violent protests. He received a Noble Peace Prize. But he was also stabbed, stoned, and physically attacked. The day before he paid the ultimate price of his life, he gave his last speech. It’s one that’s familiar to a lot of us and it’s etched. I’m just going to talk a little bit about it. I’m not Dr. King but I just love, love, love this speech.

He says, “I don’t know what will happen to me now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead but it doesn’t matter to me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I won’t mind. Like everybody else, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

And wouldn’t Dr. King be pleased that America elected the first African American president? You know, the United States changed for the better because of the sacrifices of Dr. King. He paid the ultimate price. He traded his life for it. But in leadership, the more he gave up, the more he went up, the more he had to give up.

Sometimes people think leadership is just about arriving. They feel they’ve paid their dues, now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of their labor and enjoy the perks that come with being in charge. They believe power and wealth and freedom are at the top of the ladder. The reality is that true leadership is not as easy as it looks to those on the outside.

True leadership requires sacrifice. A leader must give up to go up. I believe that is the thing that hinders many leaders. A lot of leaders that I’ve seen personally. Their inability to put others first because they are so enamored with their position and with their power. So instead of being servant leaders, they’re more concerned about others serving them. The heart of good leadership is sacrifice.

There is no success without sacrifice. People wanting the easy road to success will find out that it doesn’t exist. People tend to want the glory but they don’t really want story. The story is that it requires sacrifice to get to places in life.

There are so many young guys who want to play basketball like Michael Jordan did. But do they want to spend hours in the weight room and on the basketball court like he did? They want to shoot like Larry Bird, but do they want to shoot hundreds and hundreds of jump shots every day on a daily basis? Do they want to refuse to leave the gym until they hit a thousand free throws every day?

I recall one day in my role as a probation officer, I was having a conversation with a young lady. She made the comment that I simply didn’t understand her situation because I had a good job. I was wearing a suit. I had a good job and I just didn’t have to struggle like she did. So I didn’t feel I need to prove anything to her but I wanted to make a point with her. So we had us a little one-to-one conversation.

I felt it would be helpful for her to know that I grew up in a single-parent home. We didn’t have a hot water heater in our house so we had to heat up water on the stove to take a bath. I didn’t have money for college. I wanted to go to school so I joined the military to get the college fund. I spent thousands of miles away from my home and my family for some years to get money for school. Then I went to school.

I worked. I didn’t do a lot of partying. I went to school, I made good grades, I was dedicated to it. I moved my family from east Texas to west Texas for a job. I told her, nobody just stopped me on the street, tapped me on the back, and said, “Hey, come take this job.” There was some sacrifice and some work required.

So I wasn’t trying to impress her but I was just trying to impress upon her that it takes sacrifice and dedication to get the things that we desire. It’s the same in leadership. Leaders sacrifice what is good to get what is great. Some people want the title and the job, but they don’t want the sacrifice that it takes to get there.

The second thing is that leaders are often asked to give up more than others. The heart of leadership is putting others ahead of you. You do what’s best for the team, not what is best for you. One of the rights that you give up is the right to think about yourself.

One of the things that I noticed when I was initially promoted in my last job to a supervisor was that somebody was always looking for me. Somebody always needed me for something. See, when I was a regular officer, I could come and go as I pleased as long as I was doing my job. I didn’t have to worry about anybody else. If I wanted to take a day off, as long as my business was taken care of, I could take a day off. I didn’t have to clear it with anybody.

But as the leader, no. I had to make sure that I was available for other people. So I had to work my schedule around other people because they needed me. I had to be present, I had to be accounted for at all times. I lost a lot of my freedom but that was just simply the cost of leading.

You can’t do what the followers do. You must give up more than the people that you lead. People have to give up different things but true leaders recognize that they will have to sacrifice something to lead.

The next one is that you must keep giving up to stay up. Sometimes people make that initial sacrifice for what they desire, they’ll put in the long hours to get the promotion, they’ll be the team player to get the recognition, they’ll accept that transfer to get that new opportunity, and sometimes they’ll take a step back in order to move a step forward. But the problem is that when they think they’ve sacrificed enough and they stop sacrificing. The problem is when they think someone else, it’s their turn to sacrifice.

John says that sacrifice is an ongoing process, it’s not a one-time payment. It’s like the old saying that says, what got you here won’t keep you here. You have to keep doing more to rise and improve. John makes a great point about how infrequently sports teams repeat as champions, and it’s so true. Because they tend to think the things that led them to that initial championship, if they just replicate those, if they just do those same things, it will get them back there again. But that’s not true.

The teams who have actually repeated, they will tell you that it is harder the second time because you have to work harder than you did the first time. All of a sudden, you’re a target. You’re the champion. Everybody plays their best game against you. You bring out the best in everybody. You have to remain hungry and make additional sacrifices.

Today’s success is the greatest threat to tomorrow’s success because people tend to rest on their past accomplishments and they stop improving and they stop growing. Leadership requires constant change, constant improvement, and ongoing sacrifice.

The higher the level of leadership, the greater the sacrifice. John gives the example of an auction. When it starts, everybody is placing their bid but as the item increases in cost, the bids decrease. The person who wins the auction is the person who is willing to pay the highest cost. Leadership is similar. The higher you go, the bigger the cost.

He uses the example of the president of the United States. Most people would agree that the president of the United States is the most powerful leader in the world. Pretty much everything that he says has an impact at home and abroad. Every four years, a multitude of people throw their hat in the ring to get this job. And I was always a person that why would anybody want that job?

One of the first things that you have to give up is your privacy, your past, your future, your present. Everything that you’ve done in your life comes under scrutiny. Every relationship, every job, every mistake you’ve ever made. I mean, think about Herman Cain in the last election. You know, the republican candidate. He was rolling along, getting him some momentum, but then something that happened in his past caught up with him because they scrutinized.

As the president, you are accountable for every word you utter in public, everything you do is scrutinized. I mean, I promise you if you’re a president and you run into a burning building to save a child, somebody, somewhere, will criticize you that you didn’t put the fire out. “He should have put the fire out and saved the child.”

You’re going to give up your personal life pretty much forever. So, yes, you’ve achieved the highest office in the land. Bravo. But you had to give up your personal life to do it. The higher you go up, the more you give up.

John talks about Condoleezza Rice, who also will be a speaker at the Leadercast next Friday. I’m looking forward to hearing her. I don’t have time to go into it, but you know, she was three generations removed from slavery, but her grandfather went to college. He was the son of a slave, he went to college. 1920 he graduated from college and that was no small feat for a black man.

She was, Condoleezza was lucky. She was lucky and blessed enough to be born into a family where not only her parents but her grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, everybody was college educated. Of course, we know that she ended up going from being an educator at Stanford to the Secretary of State during the tenure of George Bush.

But her story is great because if you read it, she constantly gave up to go up. She constantly sacrificed to go to different levels. She constantly gave up great, lucrative, comfortable positions to go to another level in her life. So basically she has now put herself in the position to pick and choose whatever she wants to do in life. That’s primarily because she was always willing to give up to go up.

So the questions we have to ask ourselves are these: Are we willing to sacrifice? Are we willing to put in the work? John suggests that we make two lists. One with the things that you’re willing to give up and then a list with the things that you are not willing to give up to advance. See, too many people, they’re willing to give up family, health, relationships in order to reach a certain place and that’s their call. But you have to ensure that the sacrifices that you are making is worth the climb.

John also suggests that we take the time to write down the areas where we may have “destination disease.” That’s the idea that we can sacrifice for a while, for a season, but then once we get to where we want to go, we stop sacrificing. He suggests that we create a statement of ongoing goals of growth that would counteract that thinking if we have it at any place in our life.

So just to end this, I just want us to remember that we need to get up, give up, gather up, and grow up, in order to go up. That ends our call for today. I thank you very much for your time.

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.