Episode 1 – Performance: Inside the Minds of Performers

“When you, as a leader, neglect to impact the way in which you and the people you lead are … relating to the situation, you’re missing the point.” -Kari Granger

Welcome to Leadership Impact, the podcast for modern executives who are reinventing leadership within their organizations. Hosted by executive performance coach and CEO of The Granger Network, Kari Granger, and Sound Financial Group CEO, Paul Adams, this podcast aims to address topics of performance and leadership through real life examples. This is Episode 1 of our four-part series on performance.

In this episode, we delve deep into the minds of performers and uncover what it takes to go from a top performer to a mature leader who makes an impact. Top performers tend to look at facts, figures and past results to assess their next actions. The limitations of this thought process often plague even the best in their field as they advance to leadership positions. Instead, Kari and Paul show how a new context “observation  action results” can yield more fruitful results. Paul gives an example of a time when he experienced this exact phenomenon. Early in his career, when he made the leap from top performer to leader, Paul created a near-mutiny! Kari deconstructs how this happened for Paul and provides insight on the importance of observation as it relates to action and, ultimately, results.

By looking at the issue so many top performers face through this lens, we discover critical insights about how to transform such challenges into making a leadership impact. Through anecdotal storytelling and analysis, Paul and Kari successfully guide listeners into mastering the subjective.

What We Covered:

00:19 – Introducing hosts Kari Granger and Paul Adams

01:57 – The goal of the Leadership Impact podcast

02:22 – Paul’s experience with a breakdown of leadership

05:02 – Why understanding the driving force behind actions is imperative to effective leadership

07:17 – Kari deconstructs what happened in Paul’s example

08:52 – Observe, action, result

10:35 – Master the subjective

13:13 – What Paul’s CEO told him after this leadership breakdown

15:09 – Wrapping up what it takes to go from a star performer to a mature leader

Tweetables:

• “When we focus on actions alone, we miss a really critical part of leading others, of making that leadership impact.”

• “If we want our people to be taking effective action, we need to ensure a way of observing the situation such that they’re going to want to take action.”

• “As a leader, what we want to do is actually learn how to master the subjective in ourselves and others.”

•  “When you, as a leader, neglect to impact the way in which you and the people you lead are … relating to the situation, you’re missing the point.”

• “It’s not what you say, it’s [others’] experience of what you say that actually matters.”

•  “If you can shape the way you and others observe, the actions that come out of that will be the natural right actions to produce a better result.”

•  “Stop mitigating the subjective and learn to master it…it’s an illusion we can mitigate it anyway!”

•  “It won’t matter at all how many results you produce or how big of results, if I don’t feel like I love coming into the office because you’ve made all the people who’ve worked for me for years miserable.”

•  “From a purely bottom-line perspective, you know how expensive turn-over is? You might produce results in the short term, but those people will find other jobs.”
  

Links Mentioned:

Kari’s Website – http://grangernetwork.hexcode.ca/

Paul’s Website – http://www.sfgwa.com/team/paul-adams