4: The 14er, Pitfalls and More

Welcome: 00:00

Welcome to Mt Nebo's Leadership Podcast, Leaders Lift. I'm your host Greg Cunningham and I'm excited that you have joined me for this episode.

I want to apologize up front if this episode is not quite up to par on the audio. As I record, I'm on the tail end of a cold. I love my grandkids but this is one thing I wish they would not share with others :)

Intro: 00:24

Today we will be wrapping up the initial Knowing Yourself set of episodes. We have covered Motives and Personality Styles and today I'll be covering a few more topics.

In story time I'll share an experience I had climbing a 14,000 foot mountain with a group of scouts and the lessons I learned from it. For this weeks little lift, I'm going to talk about a newer book from Patrick Lencioni and how it ties into knowing yourself. And then we will dive into other topics on knowing yourself (such as dealing with our potential pitfalls, understanding our triggers and a few other times. I hope you'll stick around through the end.

Pre-roll

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Story time: 01:21

Today for our story time segment I want to share an experience that relates to knowing yourself and what you want to get out of life.

Several years ago we took a group of Scouts to Rocky Mountain High Adventure Base in Colorado. This was a pretty big deal for the troop and was likely a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of us. We knew months in advance when we were going and what we would be doing while we were there. One of the activities was a multi-day hike to the top of Mt. Shavano. Shavano is what they call a 14er and it's peak is 14,230 feet above sea level. This was an amazing experience and I learned a lot of lessons from it.

Lesson 1 - it's all about the quality of the preparation. Leading up to the trip, I was exercising quite a bit because I needed to lose some weight to even be able to go. I continued to increase my work outs as the time grew closer and thought I would be alright. Well, I made it to the top, but as I was climbing the final 1,000 vertical feet or so I wasn't sure I would. I got to the point where I could only take about 50 steps and then rest. Steps is a relative term as we were climbing over boulders at this point.

With all my training, what I didn't really do was push my lungs to expand their capacity like I should have. That was necessary to account for the difference in elevation. In our group we had folks in almost all the different stages of conditioning. Some of the active boys didn't train at all and made it just fine. Others that where less active and didn't pay attention to their training struggled like I did. We had one of our party that didn't make it past base camp. I thought we were going to have to carry him off the mountain (we didn't).

In life, make sure that your preparation is right for what you are trying to accomplish. This requires knowing who you are, what your goals are and what kind of preparation and effort is needed to get there.

Lesson 2 - in life we have false peaks. A false peak is believing you have almost reached the top but that's only because you can't see the actual peak as it's hidden by the false one. As we climbed above the tree line on this hike we could see the glorious peak up ahead. Everyone got super excited and then our guide broke the news and explained that it was a false peak and that the real peak was behind it and we would be able to see it until we climbed the false one.

This happens a lot in life. Either we think we have given it everything we can or maybe we think we have arrived. But if we are open to it, we may realized that there is more to be had in life. I mentioned this in another episode but in a couple of my corporate jobs I definitely thought I was close to the peak. It wasn't until I really looked and changed my point of view that I realized there was so much more.

Lesson 3 - having a guide is crucial when you are on a path you have not traveled before. Our guide on this hike was incredible. She was fully trained and had hiked the trail many times. She knew how to keep us safe, when we needed to rest and when we could push on. She also was fully aware of the false peak and helped us work through that in our minds.

In life, we all need someone to act as our guide. This could be God, a mentor, a friend, family or most likely a combination of all of these. Guides help us with expertise or knowledge that we don't have or that we can't see. They have different experiences than we do and we can take advantage of the lessons learned from their experiences.

Lesson 4 - sometimes you just have to endure and when you do, you are often richly rewarded. Right before we started ascending the peak we had to go through a saddle (a depression between two peaks). This saddle was above the tree line and was completely exposed. It was also about 4 am so it was still dark and when you are at 13,000 ft, that means it's cold and the wind is going to blow like crazy. Side note: the reason it was 4 am is that we had left base camp at 1am so that we could be on the summit as the sun rose. As we approached the saddle, our guide made sure we understood what we were about to do. She didn't hold back at all about what we were about to go through. She also shared that another group she had guided up the mountain got to this point, decided it was too difficult and decided to turn back. Her confidence and transparency set the stage for us to tackle what was probably the most difficult portions of the hike (the saddle and the actual summit).

We pushed through and were rewarded with an amazing experience. I still remember standing at the very peak and facetiming my wife (we had perfect cell phone signal) and sharing that incredible sunrise with her. If you think you have seen amazing sun rises, try it when you are so high up that you literally think you can see around the bend of the earth as the sun comes into view. I'll never forget that experience.

In life, things are going to get tough. Generally the things that are of the absolutely most worth come after much effort, trial and tribulation. So when things get tough, go back to your plan. Remember what your goals are and how what you are doing now is going to help you reach those goals. Our goal was to see the sunrise from the top so we had to endure that part of the trail. You can do the same in your own life if you know what's ahead in your path, why it's important and then you do your part to get there.

Little Lift: 07:01

6 Working Geniuses

For this weeks Little Lift (I'm trying out this name suggestion from a listener) I have another book recommendation for you. This one is related to our next topic of strengths and weaknesses (although I'm going to use a different term for weaknesses). This book takes place in a professional environment but it's about the process of getting things done (starts with an idea and goes through execution) and that would apply in any aspect of our lives. This is just another way for you to get a better understanding of yourself.

There will be a link to the book in the show notes.

Today I want to start off talking about dealing with the potential pitfalls in our personality style.

g with Our Potential Pitfalls: 07:44

Ever heard of selective hearing? The older I get, the more I believe others are very selective when I speak :) From a leadership standpoint I have found that most leaders generally have two tendencies. They tend to hear the good and the bad and not much in between. If we are honest, I think we would all admit that we like to hear how well we did at something or to have someone mention the strengths that we have. On the other side of that, we also have a tendency to focus on the things we didn't do well and our weaknesses. That comes from a desire to want to improve.

It's actually a good thing to see both sides in our leadership journey. If we only see the good things about ourselves then we are going to stop growing and stagnate very quickly. If we only see the bad, then we will never achieve our potential or be able to help others do the same.

Today I want to discuss at a high level how to handle our strengths and potential pitfalls that come out of a personality style report or that we are aware of in our lives.

What are Strengths and Pitfalls

Strengths are the things that we do really well, and normally it's something we do naturally. I had a colleague tell me recently that one thing I do well is identify what the real problem might be (even if it's not the obvious thing). That's not something I think about a lot, I just do it.

I'd also like to talk about our weaknesses as potential pitfalls. The reason I say that is that the term weakness comes across as such a negative. By calling them potential pitfalls, we are saying that they may or may not be a problem and generally when I think of a pitfall, I think of something that I can avoid or hopefully at least mitigate. I also want to avoid labeling things we wish we were as weaknesses or even potential pitfalls. Similar to many of our physical attributes (height for example) some of our potential pitfalls are just part of who we are.

Where Should We Focus

So do we focus on our strengths or our potential pitfalls. The best answer is both as long as we take a different approach for each category. I read a story many years ago about Tiger Woods. He could absolutely hit the ball a mile and that was definitely a strength in his golf game. His short game was not nearly as strong. Most people would probably assume that he spent all of his time working to improve his short game but that wasn't the case. He worked on his short game so that it got good enough (what I would call mitigating a potential pitfall). And by good enough, I mean that it would not be a fatal flaw in his game. Then he continued enhancing his strength which was his ability to hit the ball a long ways.

We too should take this same approach. Our strengths are there and we should always be looking to enhance and take advantage of them. For the most part we should not try to turn our potential pitfalls into strengths.

Approaching Our Potential Pitfalls

How should we approach our potential pitfalls? First, we need to be aware of what our potential pitfalls are and when they might be triggered or become a major issue. Sometimes our potential pitfalls are just merely annoyances and other times they can completely derail our progress. You can find some of these in your personality style report or you can get feedback from those you trust. You may already be aware of some of them.

You also want to be aware of what may trigger or put you in front of a potential pitfall. Stress is the most common thing as it tends to bring out our default behaviors more than anything else. But there also may be other situations for you to consider.

One of my potential pitfalls is a natural tendency to overthink or complicate things. This finds it's way into a lot of aspects of my life. It's triggered in a lot of situations like when something is high stakes or when I'm deep into my perfectionist tendencies. Written communication is a good example. When I write an email, I know that it needs to be short and sweet but I tend to want to spell everything out. In a lot of cases, this tendency is just an annoyance (for me and for those around me), but when I'm trying to communicate something super important, I have to remind my self to start simple and the expand as necessary. If I don’t do that, I'll lose my audience up front and then it's hard to get them back. From a personal standpoint, this can also be triggered when one of my kids is going through a tough time. My son was recently in a car accident and my brain immediately went into overdrive trying to think through all of the various things that could happen as a results of the accident. Unfortunately, he is very much like me in this regard and started to do the same thing. We both had to take a breath and realize that we just needed to keep things simple and take the process one step at a time.

There are a lot of ways you can mitigate potential pitfalls. On minor ones, just being aware of them and their triggers might be enough (such as is the case with me putting too much detail into my communication). If you have something that is major then you need to look at how to mitigate it. One way you can work on this in both your personal or professional life is to share with someone you trust what that weakness is, what triggers it and how you want to mitigate it. Then ask for their help in doing so.

In the professional world, I have also used the diversity and strengths of other members of my team to mitigate some of my weaknesses (like not being naturally warm and fuzzy).

One final note on potential pitfalls. When you do fall into a pit (and hopefully it's not a fatal one) there really is no room for pride. You can't say "well that's just the way I am. Deal with it." You have to be willing to apologize and try and do better the next time. This type of transparency and humility will go along way with those you impact. Not only will they be more patient as you progress, but it will also make it ok for them to do the same thing. That way you lift each other.

Magnifying our Strengths

Once you have spend the right amount of time on your pitfalls (meaning you have the important ones to the point where they won't be fatal), go right back to developing your strengths. You should address questions such as how can I improve on my strengths, what are some ways I can leverage them or does my current path really align with my strengths. The answers to those questions can help you build an action plan to make some change and put yourself in a position where you can meet more of your fullest potential.

Mid-Roll

If you are enjoying this episode, remember to subscribe (it's free) and share it with others in your circle. Reviews are also a great way to spread the word. If you want more leadership and personal development resources, be sure to visit my website at www.mtneboconsulting.com and while you are there, sign up for my email list.

Thoughts on Knowing Yourself: 14:43

We have spent the last few episodes talking about the importance of knowing yourself better than and how doing so can make a difference in your professional and personal lives. Knowing yourself better has many benefits like aliging your goals and plans with who you really are, being aware of strengths and potential pitfalls, just to name a couple. The impact this kind of information can have on your life is tremendous. You will find more satisfaction in your journey, build better relationships (this is going to be the theme of the next few episodes) and help you support and guide those around you to do the same thing.

To wrap up this series I want to share just a few more ideas and then provide a summary.

It's the First Step

Knowing yourself better should be considered one of the first steps in your leadership or life journey. Now many of you may be further down the path than others and are thinking, this would have been nice to know a couple of decades ago. Or you may wonder if anything you do know can make a difference. My answer is a resounding yes. Think about someone that is contemplating retirement but has no idea what they want to do with that time. If they had a better understand of their core personality, do you think they could find more meaning in retirement? I had a doctor at one point that when he retired passed away shortly thereafter. Nothing was wrong with him but those that knew him wondered how he would handle retirement. If you are considering retirement but are driving to help lift others, then thinking you will just sit home and catch up on the latest shows is probably not going to work for you. You may end up, like a lot of retired folks I know, just endlessly scrolling through social media.

So think of getting to know yourself better as the first step in this next phase of your journey. Maybe you will learn one thing and decide you want to make a change in your career, family life or something else. I know at this point in my career I'm very committed to finding a better balance between that career and the things that are more important in life and that means I need to better align with some of the nuances of my personality type.

Lastly here, be sure to look at this as an opportunity to continue learning and growing. Even if your life is pretty well aligned with who you are, maybe there is a potential pitfall that you can work on. Or maybe you have a strength that you kind of always knew was there but never really took advantage of. If I think about the retirement phase of life, there are lots of folks that need support and guidance and those that are heading into retirement and have a desire to lift others might find great joy and fulfillment in being a mentor or something similar without going right back into the "9 to 5/corporate" world.

Improving Relationships

Building mutually beneficial and fulfilling relationships with others is another area where knowing yourself can have a tremendous impact. I'm going to spend the next few episodes diving into this more but here I thought I'd mention just a couple of things.

First, by understanding yourself better, you start to get a sense for how your personality is going to mesh or conflict with someone else (even before you really understand their style). This could be something as simple as knowing you are an introvert and if everyone in your friend group are hard core extroverts, there could be some struggles. Another example might be if you know that you are driving by helping others and that you sometimes do so at the expense of your own wellbeing, you need to make sure you are constantly surround by those that just want to take and not give back.

Overtime, understanding yourself better will also allow you to understand others in a more beneficial way as well. Once you get comfortable with being an extrovert and understand what that means, you may be more willing to give the important introverts in your life some space. This is an example of understanding yourself and recognizing that not everyone is like you. That's part one. Then part two is understanding what those that aren't like you might need to get more out of life.

Knowing yourself and better understanding others can lead to improved communication and collaboration. If you know someone is very expressive and you are not but have something really important to share, then you can use that knowledge to help get your point across.

Triggers

Now another thing that you will start to be more aware of as you go through this process is what your triggers are. I've already mentioned that stress is probably the number one thing to trigger our default behaviors and to surface our potential pitfalls. Stress comes in many forms and is almost always different from person to person. I know that some of the things that are stressors to be don't bother my wife and vice versa. So we work together to try and alleviate some of those things. As a simple example: standing in line to return something at a store is not my thing at all. I would rather just eat the cost of it. But it doesn't bother my wife so we split up in the store and she handles that part.

Other triggers may include things such as specific behaviors, personality styles, attitudes, level of energy or anything like that. Remember that our default behaviors show up when we aren't being deliberate. Sometimes our triggers are related to our habits. If I'm a night owl but I'm working with a group that is in a time zone two hours ahead, I might be facing a potential pitfall or a trigger for my default behavior when that early morning meeting comes around.

Finally for triggers, be conscious of how your own mistakes can trigger these behaviors. I'm not sure if that makes sense but I know that if I make a mistake, I automatically go into default mode, which actually may be the opposite of what I need to be doing.

Being Deliberate

All of this leads to what may be the most important advantage you get out of knowing yourself better - and that’s the ability to be deliberate in life. This applies to professional careers, families and anything else you can think of. Let me put it this way: if I don't know where I want to go, if I have the ability/talents/skills/drive to get there or how that may impact me, what are the odds of my success? They aren't good. Most likely if I'm in that type of a situation, I'm going to just let life guide me.

All of these different aspects of getting to know yourself can and should be written down. Then, even if you aren't a planner, you can make some short of a plan. That could be just a list of to do's or some ideas or themes that you want to remember or act on. You need to do what works for you. But I will suggest that all of us could be more deliberate in life. And if we want to get more out of life, no matter what that is, we can't just assume that it will happen unless we do our part to make it so.

Wrap Up: 21:41

Let's start to wind this episode down. I want to end with one more message for all of us and that is that we are responsible for our own development, whether that's personal or professional or both.

If I think about the professional world, once you get into a leadership position, your development is going to change. As an IC, you probably had some collective goals and specific performance objectives that were part of your development. Occasionally companies throw in one spot for you to choose a personal development goal and they give you very little input or support to achieve it. That's unfortunate but that's the way it is. And the more you move up the ladder, the more this happens.

In life, can you think of anyone that will take responsibility for your personal development? And by that I mean is anyone in your life going to suggest that you sit down weekly and talk about your personal goals, objectives and progress? It's just very unlikely to happen. Life is so busy that even parents that are involved in their kids lives struggle with this. And then when they reach adulthood, it is even more difficult (that's assuming they even want help).

So whatever you want to get out of life, you need to own. If you want a better job, go out and find it, get new skills or whatever else needs to be done. If you want to have better relationships with your family members, you are going to have to put in the effort. Don't assume someone else will make it happen. If you want to fix a habit, get some help and get started on it.

And let me end by saying that just because you need to take responsibility for your own development, doesn't mean you have to do it on your own. There are people out there that will help. They could be family, friends, co-workers, a boss, someone at church or maybe you need to go out and find those that will help and support you. But the message I would give is that you don't have to do it alone. You can choose to try it but I wouldn't recommend it.

And if you don't know how to get started. Reach out to me and let me see if I can at least get you pointed in the right direction.

I hope that you got something out of this Knowing Yourself series. If it has caused you to re-evaluate your motives or take a look at your personality style and build a better plan then you are headed in a good direction. I would love to hear any stories you have of how knowing yourself or anything I have shared so far has helped in your life. Feel free to use the contact us form on my website or reach out to me directly. And as always, if there is something I can do to help lift you or to help you lift others, please reach out.

What's Coming Up: 242:20

Over the next few episodes I'm going to be talking about relationship and team building as it relates to life and professional leadership. I'll start off by covering some foundational topics and then I want to cover what is probably the most important thing for any relationship, and that is building trust. Following that I'll have an episode on how relationships help us and others get the most out of life. So if you want to be notified when those episodes drop, hit the subscribe or follow button or follow ldrslft on instragram. You can also visit our website for more great content and resources to help you on your leadership journey.

Check out the show notes for all the relevant links and takeaways from this episode.

Thank you again for tuning in. Now go out there and keep lifting.