Building Your Leadership Muscles

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment. Thomas Carlyle

That's me in the photo above two years ago. Pushing through a series of burpees that was killing me at the time. I still hate burpees, but I've developed the capacity to do them knowing I can get through it like The Little Train That Could. "I think I can, I think I can!"

Just as athletes are not born with strong muscles and strong lungs that lead them to greatness, leadership is not something you are born with. You grow into leadership with experience and we build them up with practice, discipline and belief in our ability to go further than we thought we could. 

Think about how you flex your management muscles. You are constantly pushing your team members to make sure everyone is focused in the right direction. You do your best to beat your deadlines, and perhaps go further than you thought possible. But being a great manager is not being a great leader. To develop your leadership muscles you need to tap into the core strength of who you are, what you stand for, and build trust and loyalty among your followers to support you when you feel your strength may not be up to the task at hand. 

As a leader you will confront more obstacles than you thought possible as you try to implement new processes, or create new ways of thinking about problems. In fact, you will notice that resistance is built into the structure of any organization and your job is to help others see bigger possibilities, and move beyond their limitations.

To build momentum in any organization means you need a bold vision, and you need to make it compelling so you can inspire those around you. 

As a manager your job is to keep the ship on course, and sail the prescribed route. As a leader your job is to create a new route and help guide people to the place you want them to go. In the process you will fail, and you will rise, just like the storms at sea.

You will change course, and as long as you’re not doing this every other week, you will seek support from those you depend on to fulfill the vision by enlisting their help in creating the kind of environment where care and compassion for each other becomes a vital part of the journey.

Communication is a vital part of this journey, and it’s hard. You need to develop strong listening skills, and the ability to coach your people through the behavioral changes that will need to happen. You must repeat yourself to make clear the direction you are heading, and you must try to understand when there is push back because there is a misunderstanding, or simply, they don’t really care. Then you have to work at it a bit more to build the muscles that instinctively help people understand the importance of why they are doing what they are doing, and what the objectives are in the long run. 

As a leader, you must become a great storyteller. Stories of why you do what you do. Stories of what’s important to the team and the organization. Stories of the impact it will have on the lives of your team members, the culture of the organization, and the impact on the world you are trying to create. These are the leadership muscles that will be practiced over and over again until you have the strength to do them easily, and move onto the next level of strength-building. 

Have you ever tried to do 50 sit ups or a 100 sit ups in one go? You may get to 25 and wonder if you can get through the rest. Or, you’re in the gym and the routine is 30 clean and jerks at 65 to 95lbs. You know your limits. You can lift 65lbs, but 95lbs is out of your range. So you modify. You test yourself and make it 70lbs. It’s tough going, and you’re pushing past the barrier of discomfort and the voice that says, "Why are you doing this?" as you lift the twentieth time, and tell yourself there is only ten more to go, and you're doing great.

I've been active pretty much my whole life. I was introduced to martial arts when I was forty-three years old, and I signed my kids up thinking it would bring some discipline into their lives. Who was I kidding? What eventually became clear was that it brought discipline into my life! I became a serious student after a couple of classes. It felt like I had come home to something I didn’t know I needed.

At first, my kicks were low, and my punches were aiming at the wrong targets, but I persevered and grew stronger. Within a short time, my teacher thought I was ready to break a board but he neglected to give me complete instructions on how to do it. I broke the board, but I also broke my hand. Lesson learned. Pay attention to the details. 

My teacher told me I did my best work when I was exhausted. How could that be? Simple. I wasn’t overthinking it. I had a wall in front of me, and I could either go through it, over it, around or under it, but I would not allow it to stop me. My determination kicked in, and probably a little bit of anger that I was allowing myself to feel defeated, which is not my style.

Too many times, people stop before they reach their limits because the truth is, the only way we really know our limits is when we push them. 

Self-talk is a critical part of doing anything strenuous, and you know how to do that. In fact, I’m a great proponent of talking to oneself. It motivates me to keep going when I’m feeling like it’s time to stop.

I still do the same thing in Crossfit when we are doing a particularly gnarly WOD (workout of the day). Some of the workouts are described as Hero workout and are attributed to service people who lost their lives in war. They usually include running, rowing, and  hundreds of reps in various activities over a brief amount of time. These workouts are killer, but at the end of the day, we are all happy we did it. Another opportunity to test yourself. 

 "Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal."--Vince Lombardi

Leadership takes strength, coordination and control. You must be willing to take risks, build relationships, show courage, and create growth opportunities for your team and yourself through consistent actions, good communication, and strong emotional intelligence. I call this developing leadership muscles.

It takes time to build your leadership muscles. Long hard hours of commitment to excellence and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone. A willingness to confront your weaknesses, and determination to build strength in areas that are not a natural fit for you. Becoming aware of these tendencies is a challenge that must be met with six elements to guarantee success.

1. Number one is your commitment. Are you taking your role seriously? Are you fully engaged, and prepared to do whatever it takes to become a leader that will garner respect from your team because they know they can trust you to do what you say you will do, and you have their best interests at heart.
2. Number two are you focused on the right outcomes? Do you take right actions, in the right way, over the right amount of time? Do you communicate that clearly to your team members. Many times the focus is in the wrong direction, or the wrong actions, and there is a tendency to wander in many directions at the same time. It creates confusion and uncertainty which leads to lack of trust.
3. Number three is discipline. It takes a strong leader to be willing to do what others may not have the ability to do. Thousands of hours of doing things you would prefer not to do, but you do them anyway because it benefits the team’s performance and your own fulfillment. Discipline is a willingness to learn the hard things. Creating greater self-awareness means observing your behaviors and seeing which ones serve your highest purpose, and which ones are barriers to your success, and by association, the success of others.
4. Number four is about follow-through. Do you follow-through on things you say you will do, or ask others to do. Do you hold yourself and your people accountable for the results you want, or do you let things slide. Do you sometimes think no one will notice if you don’t pick up on something that needs your attention but is inconvenient or uncomfortable to address in the moment.
5. Number five is probably the most important of all the elements to generate success in any enterprise. Consistency. It’s saying what you will do, and doing it, consistently. It’s the core strength of leadership muscles. Without consistency you will continue to have aching muscles because they are not being used correctly. Lack of  consistency means people are unsure what to expect and in turn, they will doubt your intentions and thus, distrust your intentions.
6. Number six is the most advantageous of all the leadership muscles to develop. It helps you overcome failures and strengthens your ability to rise again when you may be tempted to give it up.  Persistence leads to resilience, and correlates strongly to success. We have all had times when we want to give up lifting the heavy weights, but with determination and grit, you pull one more time and rise to the occasion.

These six elements have been my guide for the last twenty-five years, and I continually come back to them when I lose sight of what it is I'm trying to do.

Martial Arts and Crossfit have taught me everything I needed to know to be a success in any area of my life, and has given me the strength and fortitude to withstand the roller coast ride of running my own business, which as anyone knows is the toughest thing to do.

I've used these guideposts to build a strong leadership practice over the succeeding years, and wrote The Fearless Factor to teach people how to address the fears that determine our success and failures in life.

Now, I'm hard at work writing The Fearless Factor @ Work because we all need to push past the fears that stop us from reaching our potential and living our best life.

When building your leadership muscles it helps to have a plan, and to get the support you need to make it happen. We don’t know what we don’t know, and many times it’s helpful to have someone hold up the mirror and give some input to increase the awareness and understanding you need to lead the way forward. It can be a mentor or a coach who understands the journey and can help you develop your path to success.

As a strong leader who leads with compassion and understanding, your team will follow you knowing you have their best interests at heart. In turn, you teach them what they need to know to become strong in their own domains, and build future leaders who can catapult the organization’s performance and revenue stream. After all, that’s why we are in business, and it’s only as good as the people who are running it!

With strong leadership muscles and clear goals there is nothing you can’t achieve if you want to build successful relationships, develop unbreakable trust with your team and organization, and create great outcomes that will leave a legacy for future leaders. 

Jacqueline Wales believes that the purpose of life is to express yourself with honesty, integrity, warmth and compassion in order to awaken the spirit of greatness within you, and in each person that you encounter, and to leave the world a better place. She challenges her clients with no-BS coaching, behavioral assessments, and a compassionate approach that develops a more inclusive and collaborative workplace.

This is an excerpt from her upcoming book The Fearless Factor @ Work due to be published in March 2020.

If you would like to talk with Jacqueline about her programs please reach out.