The Four Core Dimensions of Leadership for Business Growth: Execution & Accountability

If your team gets fired up by big ideas but nothing changes once you’re back at work, the problem usually isn’t motivation. It’s the missing bridge between vision and results: execution and accountability. We walk through why strategy without execution is just intent, why execution without accountability creates inconsistency, and how that inconsistency quietly poisons culture and pushes your best people to disengage or leave.

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Brian Wright works closely with executives, entrepreneurs, small business owners and executives in five areas essential to thrive in the new economy: Leadership, Culture, Sales, Hospitality & Marketing. You have come to the right place If you want to grow your business and surpass goals unlike ever before

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Today's Episode:

We get practical with the “four pillars of execution,” starting with clear prioritization through wildly important goals (WIGs). From there we dig into cascading alignment that turns broad goals into role-level actions, resource optimization that gives people the tools, budget, training, and authority to actually deliver, and a cadence of tracking that makes meetings useful again. If your weekly meetings revolve around lag measures like sales, production, and quotas, we explain why that drains energy and how shifting to lead measures creates real control and momentum.

Then we move into leadership accountability that starts in the mirror: showing up early, owning outcomes, setting explicit standards, and avoiding moving targets that demoralize teams. We also unpack extreme ownership, integrity in action, and why real-time coaching beats annual reviews every time. Finally, we hit the human side: two-way visibility across the whole team, autonomy without micromanagement, and empathetic intervention when performance drops because life happens behind the numbers.

If you got value from this, subscribe, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more teams can build execution that actually sticks.

Transcript

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Episode Kickoff On Execution

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome back into the studio as we continue on with the five essentials for record growth, diving in what we call the five to thrive. Currently on leadership, and we're gonna keep rolling today amidst the series of the four core dimensions of leadership. And right here we're talking about execution and accountability. If this is the first time you're checking in, I'm gonna link below the beginning of this series. Make sure you go back and check it out. But today let's dive in. Execution and accountability. Now these bridge the gap between your vision and tangible results. Strategy without execution is merely intent. Execution without accountability breeds inconsistency, and then it becomes a recipe of lackluster implementation and great employees leaving. A story I tell a lot, and this was a couple years ago, I was doing Invisalign's A Line and Shine, and I kicked off that event. And whenever I was done, doctor comes up and she's like, Man, that stuff was amazing. It's got me motivated, I'm ready to go. But how am I ever gonna get these things implemented? And I said, look, this goes back to why leadership is so powerful is that if you're able to go back and you're able to streamline these things, motivate and inspire your team, right? Create a strategy, have execution and accountability around that, you're gonna implement these just fine. But if you don't go back and you're not a leader, they're gonna fall flat. And so many of you out there can relate to having an idea yourself or investing in a company that has ideas, or you go to an event and whatever keynote speaker is up there, you're like, I love this person, the ideas are amazing, and everything goes and it just falls flat when you get back to your business. Well, that's what we're talking about right here. Let's break this down. These bridge the gap between your vision and tangible results. Well, first of all, back to vision. You can see how all of this goes back to vision. So make sure to check out part one of these this series to see what my vision is. And how you have to create a vision is so critical because everything else we're telling here, it's telling a story, and without the vision, you can't execute on these things. So they bridge the gap between your vision and tangible results. Remember, the vision you can't track, there's not data that says, okay, I'm accomplishing my vision. Right? There's not data, it doesn't talk about what you sell, it doesn't talk about what you do, right? It doesn't do any of that, right? So for you to be able to see actual tangible results, right, we have to have good execution and accountability. And the next one, strategy without execution is merely intent. So that is going back to the coach comes in with a fantastic playbook, you've got all the players around, and what happens, the players don't execute, right? They don't implement the playbook. Well, that's that great idea that sits on the shelf. Going back to what I always talk about is crap implemented well is always far better than a great idea that sits on the shelf. So our strategy, our playbook without execution of that playbook is merely intent. Now, execution without accountability breeds inconsistency. Let's talk about this, and that will fill in uh the last part of what I'm talking about. So, going back, let's look at this again. Execution without accountability breeds inconsistency. So, today you implement the idea. You've got two rock stars that implement it, you've got two low trust employees, no matter how good at what they do, they're like, Yeah, I don't want to do it. So you've got some implementing it, some don't. Okay, do you think that idea is ever going to get implemented and impact your business at the highest level? Of course not. Of course it's not. So until you have all five team members, all 5,000 team members, all five million team members, executing on the strategy with consistency, you're unable to build upon it and keep making it better. And today, maybe some people do it, and then if your good rock star employees see the the poo-pooers, the low trust individuals not doing it, then the low trust individuals, they get the the rock stars to be like, screw it, this is what I'm sick and tired of this, we're not even implementing it. Right? So we've got to be consistent across the board, everybody, and everyone's got to be held accountable. More on that in a minute. So we can't have execution without accountability because then we're gonna have inconsistency. Who's who's holding people accountable for if you bring me in and I've got this great playbook, right, and and and I'm the coach and I know this playbook works, it works time and time again, it's proven, but there's inconsistency and half the team won't do it, or 95% of the team won't do it, or one day your whole team does it and they do it well, and the next day they show up, they don't feel like it, they don't. If there's no accountability, you can see that it's just gonna fall flat. And that moves us on to this last part because then it becomes a recipe of lackluster implementation, which it is talked about, right? If you're inconsistent, you're never gonna implement it well. And then here, this is how great employees leave because what happens, partly what I just said, is the rock star people or the people that have the opportunity for you to develop them into that rock star potential. It's like that athlete that has potential. We've got to coach them to rock star status. Okay, they look at the ones not doing it, and either they're gonna say, Screw it, I'm done. This is this is a waste of my time, they're gonna stop doing it, and now the the the low trust individuals suck the the high the high trust individuals get sucked in and now they become that, and then you're left going, what's wrong with Betty? She used to be so motivated. Why isn't she doing it anymore? Because your low trust individuals, Navy C SEALs team six training we have, sucked them into becoming one of them, or the go-getters, the ones that are always one of implementing, always want to get better, always want to help your business, always want to learn something new, they're always trying to get promoted and make more money to get more out of life, right? They're they're the ones that quit because they know no matter what idea you have, it's not gonna work because there's poor leadership, creates a shit culture, and it's that kind of situation. Okay? It's that kind of situation. We have to have execution and accountability. Now

Why Strategy Dies On The Shelf

SPEAKER_00 5:51

let's break this down a little bit more, and it's really making hard decisions, taking ownership of results, and removing obstacles so the team can perform at the highest of levels. Your leadership is constantly you're making hard decisions. And some of you want to get everybody else's opinion before you make that decision. Right? It's called being a permissive leader. There's all kinds of training that we have with on-demand content around that. And it's a problem because if you're always looking for someone else's opinion, these hard decisions, you're not gonna make the right one. This one goes back to make the decisions and it makes the whether they're easy decisions, in-between decisions, or very difficult decisions, if you have a vision, you can always say, Does this advance my cause forward? And if the answer is yes, it makes the hard decision much easier. Because if the answer is yes, you do it. If the answer is no, you don't. And if the answer is, well, it could go either way, you need to think about this, you wait. Okay, and then you make a decision at a later time. But by making your own hard decisions, using your vision to guide you in that decision, rather than numbers and data on paper that are liars, they're always liars because they never tell the story behind why the data is what it is. Right, we're able to take ownership of results and we're able to remove obstacles for the team so they can perform at higher levels.

Clear Priorities With WIG Focus

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Now, let's talk about the four core pillars of execution. The very first one is clear prioritization. And that goes back to our wildly important goals, our wigs. Uh, many years ago at our iconic event when we had our wig breakout session, uh, all of our team were up on stage wearing wigs, and my little kids got into it and they were wearing wigs, and it was hilarious. But what do wigs mean? Well, they mean wildly important goals, and this means focusing on really no more than three high-packed impact areas at a time. And so much of the podcasts in these series have already talked about this. This is very difficult. Why? Because our attention spans are shorter than a goldfish, according to Microsoft. Right? According to Forbes, we see more than 10,000 marketing messages on any given day. According to eMarketer, the Gen Z active attention span is just 1.3 seconds. So you start looking at this and you're like, wow, yeah, I'm talking about my, you know, the person I want to become and buy for me as a patient, a customer, a client, right? Ones that are that are already patients' customers or clients, yeah. How do we get them to focus? How do we do different things to make sure their focus is on us and not something else? That's hard enough. But what's even harder that gets forgett forgotten is your focus, your team's focus is shorter than a goldfish. Right? Your attention span is shorter than a goldfish. So focusing just on three things, three high impact areas at any given time is extremely difficult. Now we dive into this with many courses, many teachings when you bring me in, but this is all around lead measures versus lag measures, right? The lead measures are things that you can control to help the lag measures go in your favor. This is why your meetings need to be focused mainly on the lead measures, the controllables that are driving up the lag measures, right? Your quarterly quotas, you know, your your production, your collections, your sales, all the things that you can't control. I always use the weight scale, as you've heard me already in this series of podcasts. If you look at the weight scale, you can't control it, but you can control other things to make the weight scale go in your favor. All right, so we cannot, wildly important goals, we have to focus on no more than three high impact areas at a time. And this is so difficult for so many of you out there. Right? If I told you, look, we're gonna focus on three things for the next year, a lot of you'd freak out. It would take you a week before you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's add a fourth. Right? So three things at a time, become great at it, right? Implement it, become great at it, become consistent at it. You can build upon that, and as it gets better and better, and you feel you're making progress, then and only then is it worth going to other impact areas. Now, cascading alignment, that's our second one, that's translating broad organizational goals into specific actionable targets for individual team members and contributors. Now, this goes back to some of the other podcasts we've done in this series, and again, link below, make sure to check them out. Because without cascading alignment, what this is really talking about is how you can trip over dollars to pick up pennies. So many of you make these short-term, you're like a corporation, right? You've got the vision, you got where you want to go, but all of a sudden, you know, you've got to report your numbers in three months to make the shareholders happy. So you will sabotage everything that you're trying to achieve long term by making this short-term, short-minded decision that screws up your long-term results. You're tripping over dollars to pick up pennies to hopefully get your numbers in a place where the board is happy. Meanwhile, even if it works short term, you're screwing yourself long term. And this goes back whether you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, whatever executive, corporation, small, whatever it is, you cannot make these little short-term decisions that sacrifice your long-term vision. It can't happen. It has to be stuck, you've got to have long-term vision and make short-term impact decisions totally different. Right? Here we're talking about it. We've got to in specific actionable targets for individuals. So we've got to look at the long-term, and then we have to break down these short-term impact areas that are gonna help us achieve the long term, right? Or always strive towards our vision. And you can see how the two are very different. So if I'm gonna say, hey, we're gonna increase new patients, new customers, or new clients, right? That is the long-term goal, right? Then you've got to break down via WIGS, the lead verse lag measures, and then this, you have to break it down into actionable steps. We're gonna do phone training, right, so you can convert the ones you answer. We're gonna streamline operations so you don't miss as many, because the average business getting 30 new patients, 30 new customers a month, you miss five incoming calls every single month when you're fully staffed during regular business hours. I've got the data with my WriteChat company. That's 60 freaking new patients, new clients, new customers a year that you could have had without doing anything else if you just answered your phones. But this goes back to the finite data, you're not gonna see that loss on paper. The infinite data, it's there. And I know it because we do have the finite data that proves it. But that's not the point. But the point is we can become more streamlined and efficient. We can control that. So whenever we do the training, you're on and off the phone with higher conversion faster, right? Whenever we do other things in the organization, that way you're more efficient to where you don't miss as many calls. Things like that. Those are controllable, and we can say, look, a three-month focus on training on the phones, a three-month focus here. So we're giving the players on the baseball team very clear guidance on how they're gonna improve the batting average. In this case, we're giving your business very short-term, consistent little achievements that we're trying to check off the list that are gonna help us move towards more new customers, more new clients, more new patients. You see how that works. Now, resource optimization. Ensure

Alignment And Investing In Support

SPEAKER_00 13:09

teams have direct budget, tools, authority, and personnel required to deliver on expectations. I want to take, and this this is if you haven't watched this series, this is the first one, you know, autonomy is really important, empowerment, psychological safety. Your people have to feel empowered, meaning in this case, they have to have the authority to make decisions on their own, real time. They can't always be leaving and going, hey Judy, can I do this? Hey Barry, am I allowed to do this? This is how you, as a business owner, you as an entrepreneur, you as a corporate executive, this is how your job is to make decisions on high impact outcomes. Your job is to not be bothered every five seconds. But unfortunately, the way many of you work out there, even corporations that have way too many layers of decision makers, way too many egos, this also happens in the small business environment, also happens if you're an entrepreneur, which again are two totally different things in a small business owner. This happens as well. There's too many layers, there's too many distractions, people do not feel empowered, and they do not feel like they have the authority to make the decision themselves. You need to make sure your field team feels safe, meaning that if they have the authority, they make the decision and they screw it up. They're not going to be scolded, but rather we sit down, we look at that as a learning opportunity, we meet on the next weekly meeting, we talk about it, we practice it out, right? Teach them how to make maybe a better decision in the future based on the same information they have, and then we move forward. We look at it as a learning opportunity. So ensure teams have direct budget, tools, authority, and personnel required to deliver on expectations. Again, really quick on budget. Look, again, this goes back to you have to understand there's a difference between investment and a cost. If you're constantly tripping over dollars to pick up pennies, this is unbelievable, I see this all the time. Hey Brian, I've got these three problems in my practice. Hey Brian, I've got these three problems in my hotel. Hey Brian, I've got these five problems at my restaurant, things like that. And I say, okay, well, here's the solution. Okay, so I'm coming off stage, I'm talking to the audience members, I say, here's the solution. And they're like, oh man, you know, I don't know. It seems like a lot of work, and I don't know if I can afford it. What do you mean you can't afford it? You just told me that you're your new c new patient, you have a no-show problem. Right? You you you've got a reservation, people are making reservations at your restaurant, they're not showing up. All right, that is costing you way more money than what I'm telling hiring me to bring it in. I will guarantee I will fix that problem. I'm putting a personal guarantee next to it. I'm also less than what you just told me the problem is causing you. Yet you still won't invest in the freaking thing, yet you'll complain about it. You don't get to complain about your problems if you aren't investing to fix your problems. All of you need to remember that line. You don't get to complain about your problems if you're not investing to fix the problem. And that was just one example, right? But going back to budget, if you want your employees to be better at a patient experience, better at client experience, better in hospitality, better at sales, you want more people to show up so your no-shows go down. You want to increase production, increase sales, increase your price, have a better culture, train on leadership. If you want all those things to improve, you have to invest to fix them and make them better. And that is not a cost because you're gonna get a return on something. It's not a cost. It goes a direct entry into your overhead, right, which every single day just allows you to stay alive and stay open. That is totally different, cannot go in the same bucket, cannot be looked at the same. So this budget really refers to you investing in help. You investing in help. Then we've got cadence of tracking.

Meetings That Track Lead Measures

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Well, this is established regular, non-negotiable review interval on a weekly basis to monitor key lead measures rather than lag measures. I've said it in other videos, I'm gonna say it again and again. Corporations out there, your meetings suck. I have inside knowledge of how Chase Bank as a corporation runs their meetings. They're a complete waste of time. The employees have told me what a waste of time uh they are. They're all around lag measures. They don't motivate any anybody. But back here looking at this is you've got to establish regular meetings, which a lot of you have. As an entrepreneur, I hate meetings, but they're necessary, but they should be short and they should be impactful. Right? It's not a sit around and let's talk session or let's complain session or let's look at our production or our sales quotas or our sales numbers. Are we up or are we down? Are we meeting our new customer quota, our new patient quota? How's our production? How's our conversion? Right? Hey Joey, are you on track to meet your estimates this month? Like these are the meetings and they absolutely suck. Like they absolutely suck. They don't inspire anybody, they don't motivate anybody, and it's again going back to it's like the baseball coach going, let's sit down and look at your stats, Mr. Player. Right? Well, you're hitting out your batting average is this, your swing rate is this, right? You miss your miss where your swing and miss rate is this, and that's it. And then telling them, well, you got to get those better because you're behind. Right? That meeting would suck as a sports organization. No, what do you do is you sit down, and yeah, there's nothing wrong with looking at the finite data. There's nothing wrong with reviewing the lags, but that has to be, and of course they're important, but that has to be the minute, minuscule, teensy weentsy part of your meetings. The vast majority needs to be showing the hitter how to improve those things because that is controllable. Coaching him on the things that are necessary to get his swing, his miss, his swing miss rate up, right? To get his his impact on how hit hard he's hitting the baseball up, right? All you get the point, his batting average up. But the focus can't be on the freaking numbers because you can't control them and you're a crap coach if that's all you do, and that's what your meetings are about. And those out there that lead a team, you could lead a team inside an orthodontic practice, you could lead a team with Invisalign, you could lead a team in the hotel industry, the restaurant industry, right? You are not a leader if you're sitting there talking about data metrics that nobody can control. Talk about the people business you are and how to improve on it. And going back to the five to thrive, how do you improve on leadership, culture, sales, hospitality, and marketing? That is what the meeting should be about because all five of those you can control, you can improve through coaching, you can improve the whole umbrella of things. So we've got to have regular non-negotiable review intervals to monitor key lead measures rather than lags. Okay, and if you do that, wow, it's amazing how the weight scale goes in your favor when you're obsessing over all the things that would get it to go in your favor. It may not be tomorrow because again, the lags, you can't control the timeline. Somebody may have a slow metabolism, somebody have a fast metabolism, somebody's got this, somebody's got that, right? You that's why you can't control it. So if you're focused on doing the right things on a regularly scheduled, non-negotiable review, at least weekly, right? And if you obsess over the right things, eventually it has to go in your favor. Everyone's on a different timetable, so you never know how long it's gonna take. Hey everybody,

Live Webinar Invitation

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Brian Wright of the Brian Wright Show. Let's step away for a moment. I want to talk to you about a live webinar. I'm gonna be delivering all the details and the date, the time, everything you're gonna need to register, it's all linked below. Just click that and you're gonna have everything you need to come and enjoy something that's gonna be awesome. I'm gonna dive deep into Five to Thrive. So, no matter what your goals are, if you're somebody that's wanting more new patients, more new customers, more new clients, if you want to increase sales conversion, offer a better patient experience, client experience, learn more about leadership and culture, how to build and set your business up for success so all the ideas get implemented at the highest levels. Whatever your goals are, this webinar is gonna cover some pretty amazing things for you. It's gonna be interactive, come with your questions. We're gonna have live QA. Make sure to come with your questions because I want to make sure to give my expertise to you, help you out in whatever direction you want to go. Our clients are gonna be there. We'll have some podcast followers. It's gonna be interactive and you're gonna learn a lot. I'm gonna be giving away a couple free on-demand courses on that webinar as well as some other special offers. It's gonna be a great time. Come and see me, look forward to seeing you there, and let's get back to today's episode. Now,

Accountability Begins With Showing Up

SPEAKER_00 21:26

let's dive into accountability and leadership. Boy, is this a leaky hole. And you know, so many of you out there, when you go through our four parenting types of business courses, members, you'll see that course, or as private clients when I'm working with you as well. And that helps identify, yes, how you raise your kids, who you were raised by, and also how you are you are leading your people inside your business and how all three of those, right, can kind of just cause chaos and drama in your culture. Right? Well, one of them is is being permissive, and one of them is uninvolved. Well, those people do not hold people accountable. Right, so if there's no accountability, right, it shows you don't care. You may you may think by being nice and sweet all the time and just letting people do whatever they want, never having a hard conversation is nice. It's not. That's a direct way of getting rid of your great people, which we're gonna touch on here in just a minute. We've got to have accountability. Rockstar employees or those that want to become that, they appreciate it, right? So it starts with you. The accountability starts with you. All right, accountability and leadership is the practice of taking ownership of decisions, performance, and culture, while establishing clear expectations for teams to deliver results without micromanagement. There's a lot there. There's a lot there. I I think I'm gonna say this here in just a minute on a different story, different topic. I'm gonna say it now as well. Is that as an example, let's say your morning meeting to kick off the day. Let's say it starts at 7:30 a.m. or whatever time. We'll use 7:30. I see so many business owners, so many entrepreneurs that say, I can't get my team to show up on time. Then our private clients, I'll go in and you know, I'm there ready for the meeting. I want to watch it, I want to help guide it so I can script it out in a different way. And I'm looking around and well, the team's there, but guess who's not there? The business owner. And I say to myself, huh, well, that's interesting. Business owner wants the team to be there on time or early to have a really good, successful meeting to set them up for a nice day, but the business owner doesn't think they have to be there themselves. You guys are living in la la land, if that's you out there. It does not work in this new economy that way. And you deserve to be a role model for people to look up to as the entrepreneur, the business owner, the corporate executive. You have to be there first. And you've got to be there early if you want other people to be there early. You need to stay late if you want other people to stay late. The days of why isn't Judy staying late? Why doesn't she care? Well, maybe because she's looking at a business owner that's disengaged, uninvolved, maybe even permissive, and you aren't really checked in yourself. You need to stay, it starts with you. So accountability and leadership, it starts with you. And part of that is taking owner and ownership of decisions. So a decision you're making is showing up late to your own meetings. That's a decision you're making. You need to take ownership of that. Employees watching, and again, all of you can be a leader, right? But right now, again, positions of rank and title I'm talking to, you have to take ownership. If you're the lead clinical assistant in the back, you're the VP of sales that leads a large a large sales team, whatever it may be, you have to take ownership of the results your team is performing. If your team is down, you don't get to come in and say, well, you know, Brian, it's it's down because Susie and Mary, I just can't get them to do what I want, and they're just not good at what they do. That is not what a leader does. My response is going to be, guess what? Why aren't you motivating them? Why aren't you inspiring them? Why aren't you coaching them better? Their performance is a reflection on you as a leader. Tons of stories I could dive into in the Navy SEALs world or others that talk about this. So if you aren't succeeding, if your team isn't succeeding, it's not hitting it. There's sales quotas, whatever it is, the person at the top, again, doesn't mean you're a leader, but in this case, you're supposed to be, this case, your your rank, position, and title, that is on you. And that is taking ownership of the decisions, performance, and the culture of your team. Now, also clear expectations for teams to deliver results without micromanagement. The micromanagement is hard for a lot of you, right? This is where in the corporate world, egos can get away. I don't want Judy to get the credit. She's gonna want, she's gonna get promoted before me. Right? The ego can really screw yourself and your career and the organization, but the ego exists in small businesses too. It exists in the entrepreneur world as well. You should want other people to get credit. That shows you that you're a fantastic leader. So if your team is dominating, right, or or Judy comes up with a great idea, great! Like that's awesome. That's what you should want from your team, right, without having to micromanage them, that the micromanage them. So that's why you've got to empower them. That's why there has to be psychological safety. This is why you can't be trying to find them making mistakes. What you should be trying to find is them doing things right, giving them words of affirmation, right? Whenever they do things wrong, showing empathy if they don't do things right. This is the whole world, and all of this, everything I'm saying, right, is in-depth training that we provide in this program because it is all a trained skill set. Very, very few people. Now, some have the inheritable traits, like wanting to see other people thrive in their life, in their career, in their business. That can be inheritable, right? But there's also training to change the mindset to get people to look at it to where then they are excited for somebody else's advancements and successes in their career. But all of this is trained, thousands of things is trained skill set. So the

Explicit Standards And Stable Targets

SPEAKER_00 27:12

very first one under this topic is explicit standards. So that is defining exact success metrics, quality benchmarks, and deadlines up front. If a baseball player comes into my office, I'm the general manager and says, Look, I I really want a new contract. This is what I want to be paid. And I guess in this in the pro sports world, that would be the agent having that conversation, but you get the point. I would be a really crappy coach, a really crappy general manager, if I didn't say, okay, I'm willing to give that to you. So employees, think about this. You come in asking for a promotion or a bonus, all right? We're just using the sports analogy, right? Or business owners, somebody comes in and does this and says, I want a promotion, you're the one listening to it. I would be a really crappy GM, a really crappy coach, if I was like, no, talk to me later. Or I would be really crappy if I if I if I just said no, there's no chance, or if I said, Yeah, okay, someday I'll think about it, but I didn't provide a path to get there. Right? So a great coach, a great leader would say, That's awesome. Like I I want you to get that because I am here to help you make more money, get more fulfillment out of your out of your career, advance things forward, because I know if that happens, our team is gonna do better. So here's where we're at. Right, currently, you know, you're batting about 270, you have 12 home runs, okay, and you have about 42 RBIs. I want this is where we've got to take that. And if we take that, you are going to get the pay entry and the pay raise, period. Right? But here's what we're gonna do, right? Everything I just said, that we need to take the average from here to here. We've got to take the power from here to here, we've got to take your contact rate, your hard-hit contact rate from here to here. This time next year in the season, we've got to take your RBIs from where they are this season to here. You nail those or nail 75% of those, you will get your pay raise. And I am gonna outline a plan that's gonna show you exactly it's gonna have the coaching, right? Everything we're gonna do to help you increase every single one of those. Now it's gonna be on your shoulders to bust your butt, right, and take the coaching and the feedback and take a thousand swings a day, right? Be willing to do things different, change your mindset, right? This is how it goes. This is explicit standards. So this is me saying, look, if you get from 245 average to 270, if you get from 40 RBIs to 70, if you get from 12 home runs to 20 home runs, this is me setting the metrics that really are not controllable. So the lag measures, okay. Now I as a coach, I'm gonna deliver the lead measures to work on with this player to get them to that end goal. Now, again, employees, just like the athlete, it's on their shoulders to take the coaching, right, and kick butt with it. Right, but it's on my shoulders to deliver that coaching at a high level and give you metrics along the way. Okay, so now maybe your is is you want to increase production. See, this is also being proactive, right? So this explicit standards, right? You can't have moving targets. One of the biggest complaints I get from employees when I go in to work with a business is the doctor or the hotel owner or this business owner or that business owner, they're changing things all the time, right? We start a project and it's like let's increase our production 15% in the next three months. If we do, everybody gets X. Right? I'm not a big fan of that bonus system, but let's just use that as an example because a lot of you can relate to it, right? We increase our sales by 20%, everybody gets X. That kind of thing. Then they change it. It's like, ah, no, 15% isn't good anymore. We gotta go for 20%, right? Or as you're about to reach the goal and bonus out, then the goal increases and then you miss it. You want to demoralize your team and your organization. That is pure crap leadership that's gonna destroy your culture. So we've got to be proactive to find this exact success metrics that stay the same. This can't be one of these things, whoa, my overhead went up, not making as much money. I want to buy that second house, I need an eighth car, whatever it is, business isn't producing enough, right? So we've got to change the goal, raise the goal. Somehow you thinking that's gonna help the team and the boots on the ground. We have to be consistent, we have to be exact, we have to set quality benchmarks and deadlines up front. The second one here is the why alignment. And all of you, if you follow me at all for many years, you know how obsessed I am and how long I've been teaching the why. I think there's teachings out there around the why that make you think if you just have a why, everything's gonna be great. Couldn't be further from the truth, right? It does start with a cause and a vision and a why, but there's thousands of things beyond that to actually make it work. This is one of them. Connect individual tasks directly overreaching organizational goals so teams understand the impact of their execution. You know, going back to inspiring, educating, and motivating people to transform mindsets, that is my vision. And a lot of the things we sell require us to change mindsets, to make all of you see the most obvious things staring you right in the face, but for whatever reason, all of you out there have been lied to that your problems are marketing. They're not, right? Marketing is part of the problem, but it's the least amount of the problem. And that's why we're walking through this five to five five to thrive. There's four other things that must come first before you reach marketing, and that's what we're diving into. But this here, Connect Individual Task, that vision that I just stated, I want to make sure that I educate, right? I inspire, right, and I motivate my team to understand look, this is the target we're trying to reach. These are the things we're trying to do. And as we do it, our vision, we're gonna be striving towards it because part of that is transforming mindsets. Okay, and and that's the beauty, right? As we get better at inspiring, motivating, educating people to transform their mindset, these things over here are all gonna work themselves out. Okay, the why alignment. It's bringing whatever you're doing, your goals, your stats, what you want to accomplish, whatever it is, bringing it back to whatever vision that you have.

Extreme Ownership As The Culture

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Next one, extreme responsibility. We're gonna be talking about absolute ownership in this one. And there's a couple to talk about absolute ownership here. And the very first one is extreme responsibility. Really fast. You know, we just coming off. I'm gonna back this up a couple, we're coming off crystal clear expectations. That's what we were just going over. And as I go over me forward this through, now we're on absolute ownership. And the first one is extreme responsibility. You have no chance in hell of any team member ever accepting responsibility in your organization when they see you choosing not to, period. Right? So, all of you out there that are blaming your team for so many things that you see every day, it goes back to a self-reflection, which is what great leaders are always doing. You need to ask yourself in your organization, are you taking extreme ownership? Now that's model the behavior you expect, right? And that's what I just said. If you model the behavior you expect, you want people to show up on time. You better be there early. You want them to go the extra mile. For the patient, the client, the customer, you better damn well go the extra mile yourself. Whenever we have you send out your personal welcome video, you can't complain, that's too much. Can't do it. The moment that happens, it's game over. It's game over for our ideas that we know work, it's game over because your team's gonna look at that and go, well, you know, the business owner said they're not doing it. I'm out, I'm not doing it either. Okay, own mistakes publicly, not behind closed doors. I mean, look, I I as much as I teach this stuff, you know, my team will be like, hey Brian, you're screwing up. You're not doing what what what people, what you teach other people to do. And it is easier to coach than it is to do it yourself. I mean, but I am happy to go, damn, you're right. Or I am happy to get on stage in front of people and say, look, this is the part of leadership you should be doing. I currently am messing this up. Let me tell you how it's hurt my organization and why I need to be better and why I'm teaching all of you to be better so the same things don't happen, right? And when you're a public figure, right, and you're on stage a lot, right? I don't think a lot of keynote, like when people are up there speaking, a lot of times people in the audience looking at them going, why is their business so great? Why is her business so great? Everything, all my struggles, they don't seem to have any of them. Trust me, we all have all of them, right? And I am happy here to tell you that. I'm happy to get on stage to tell you that, because that is being an expert. Like getting up on stage and acting like everything is perfect in our world, right? That's ridiculous. And and and anybody that speaks on stage out there, you should want to get up on stage and say, here are three things I am messing up right now. This is what it's doing to hurt my organization, and this is why I need to get better, and this is why I'm here to teach you. That is an expert, okay? So publicly admitting faults and address system failures rather than deflecting blame on external factors or team members. I see this a lot. You know, we're not reaching our goal. Well, Susie, Samantha, and Timmy, well, they're sucking it up, that's why. Well, it just goes back to maybe it's a systematic failure because there wasn't the right motivation and inspiration, there's not enough coaching and guidance, right? Work, there's not enough accountability, there's not enough communication, and maybe you don't have a culture of psychological safety. So maybe these three or four team members that you think are sucking it up, maybe they realize, hey, this is not working, but they're too scared to tell you. Because every time they tell you something's going wrong, you guys look at it as a mistake. Now they're scared to hell to even talk to you, and now you wonder what's going on, and you don't find out until the last second when it's too late. We can't deflect blame. We have to be a role model and mimic the behavior we want our teams to

Integrity Means Keep Your Word

SPEAKER_00 37:12

do. Now, the other absolute ownership piece, number two here, integrity and action. This is honor commitments consistently. Leadership credibility relies on you doing what you say you will do. I have a fault with this because I like to help people. And a lot of times I'll say, look, I can get this done and to you by this date. I send it, and then I'm like, oh man, like I don't think I can, I don't think I can get it done by them. Why did I not say I can get this to you and give them a date three weeks out, right? And then get it to them a week early and exceed expectations. That's what people should be doing, and that's something that I've gotten better at, but I still struggle at mightily. Right? So honor commitments. There's two types of reciprocity. Many of you know that we teach a lot around reciprocity. One of the types psychologically around reciprocity is keeping your word. If you say the Invisalign trays are gonna be in on this date and they come to pick them up, they're actually there. Okay, you say the sales quota is gonna be met on this date or before on this date, and I look at the data and it actually has been done. Right? I'm gonna get this task done, that task done, whatever it may be, whatever date you provide, is filling one of the meetings of the psychological meaning of reciprocity, meaning you're keeping your word. You say it's gonna be done, do it. Right, and that is easier said than done. Like I said, I want to help all of you so much, but I'm only one guy. So sometimes I get my I there's just too much going on, and I'm like, damn, I shouldn't have promised that. It should have promised it two weeks later, and then got them to them early if I possibly can. So we have to honor commitments consistently. Leadership credibility relies on you doing what you say you will do. Sometimes team members, you know, when you're leading an organization, you have a lot of moving parts, and you're like, hey, I'm gonna get the bonus structure, it's gonna be installed by September 1st. I'm gonna get this done, it's gonna be installed by October, right? And and you're talking to your team this way, then it comes around, it's not done, right? It's not done. And see this, I'm talking to team members right now. We don't do it on purpose. It's not that it's not important, it's that there's 18 million things on our plate, and we're always prioritizing which needs to come first. But from a team member perspective, now talking to air quotes, leadership team, position of rank and power, looking at you saying, you know, they're looking at you like you're a joke and that you don't care. Right? So, in this integrity in action, if for whatever reason you're falling behind, if for whatever reason a date that you said it was gonna be committed to is not gonna be committed to, you've got to communicate that to whoever it is, the prospective client or patient, the current customer, right, the team, whoever it is. We've got to communicate properly to let everybody know look, this was not with intent, right? But it's still not as good as honoring your commitments and getting them done.

Real Time Feedback Over Reviews

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Next one we're gonna talk about is transparent and continuous feedback. This is real-time coaching, which is really where we come in as with all my companies. Replace annual reviews with ongoing constructive feedback loops to course correct performance immediately. You know, these annual reviews, everybody, are really a joke. Let's say today was January 1st and you saw something with a team member and it just wasn't up to par, and your your review of person isn't till December. Do you really think that that review is helping? Of course it's not helping, right? This is in the real moment. This is why your weekly meetings, this is why us coming in, you know, role-playing with people, giving them real-time constructive coaching feedback, having them role-play it again, this is why our clients kick everybody's butt. Right? It's these five to thrive. And as it relates to this, there's not many companies that have more than annual reviews, even twice a year is a joke, right? Back to with the ongoing constructive feedback loops, course correct performance. So if we're working on our VIP greeting when somebody walks in, that initial phone call, right, or our existing phone call, they're already a customer, a patient with you. We're working on salesmanship with treatment coordinators, we're working on salesmanship with whatever sales team you are out there, right? Whatever it is, we practice, we role play with people, and we are giving them real-time constructive feedback, right? This continuous loop, if you will, and then say, let's do it again. Okay, let's do it again, okay, let's do it again. And this happens forever with us. And this is not only why you keep getting things implemented well and better, and then they help stick, if it does start to fall off the table, we catch that, role play it again. That's exactly what real-time coaching is, and why all of you out there that are blocking that hour at minimum every week, like we teach you to do, this is the majority of what the meetings need to be about is role-playing, working on the lead measures, the controllable measures, and giving feedback on how you think they did real-time coaching.

Two Way Visibility Across The Team

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Now, another one with transparent and continuous feedback is the two-way visibility. Share operational metrics and organizational status, open source across teams, so progress remains visible to everyone. Key word there is everyone. Okay. Imagine again back to the sports analogies, and you can learn so much with sports. It's really kind of crazy. I'm gonna use the football analogy. Obviously, their goals, everybody knows them. We had 10 wins last year, the goal is 12 wins this year. We came in second place last year, the goal is to win the division this year. Those kind of things. Then they have individual goals and breakdowns on how we're gonna make that happen. Okay, imagine a football team, all those goals that I just said, imagine they were only communicated to the defensive line. Nobody else knew it. Okay, so they're operating aligned. Imagine there was no performance plan and coaching and metrics for each player on the team so they were to get better and contribute and do their part to achieve all the goals. Okay, what if Sam on the offensive line had no idea what the defensive line was doing and what their goals were and what they're trying to get better at? The wide receivers never met with the offensive line because that's a different division, and so many of you in your businesses do this. It's a disaster. This is how you create unnecessary divisions. This is how you create when you call the 800 number and nobody can help you, and they transfer you, and then you have to repeat yourself all over again, and then they they they can't even help you. You wait on hold forever. This is the disconnect that exists. Small businesses out there, you do this, and it's a huge corporate mistake, but you've got seven employees all acting as their own division. It's ridiculous. Right? When when every business out there, I don't care if you have 10 million employees. Or one. You should cross-train. You should communicate together. So with the NFL teams, football teams, yes, do they have individual department meetings where it's just the wide receivers, it's just the quarterbacks, it's just the offensive line? Of course they do, and all of you should do that the equivalent of your business too. But the one thing that does not is not absent from their organization is everybody meeting together. Making sure everybody knows what other divisions are trying to accomplish. Making sure everybody knows how their division impacts the other divisions. Make sure everybody knows all the protocols in your business so they can handle any situation at any given time. So you don't end up with 97 divisions when you only need one. This right here is two-way visibility. Everybody has to know what the goals are, the success metrics. Janice has to know what Timmy's doing, even though Janice's in the back, Janice is in the back, Tim's in the front. You're VP of sales. You've got to not only make sure that the sales team knows what's going on, what about the marketing division? Like those you should meet together drives me nuts when you guys think sales and marketing are two separate things. They're the exact same thing. Should even be a separate division. It's totally unnecessary. And so many businesses, especially corporations out there, marketing and sales have no idea what the other one is doing. It's a mess. I get reps from big companies that I consult for. You know, all when I first start with them, say this is a disaster. Right? These things were great initiatives, great ideas, and the business owners didn't even know about it because the team that's out there never meets with us and we're not on the same page. Two-way visibility. Now,

Autonomy Without Micromanagement

SPEAKER_00 45:37

empowerment and capability support. One, resource delivery. Ensure team members have the tools, budget, training, and decision-making authority required to succeed. Exactly what we were talking about before. No different, right? This is the exact same one, just falling under empowerment and capability support rather than the other one. Right? They've got to have the tools. You have to give them the budget, differentiating between cost and investment. Let's keep going on empowerment, autonomy over micromanagement. This is this is hard for a lot of you. This is hard for a lot of you that love to keep information in your head. You don't want to train the others, thinking that adds more value to you. This is hard for a lot of you that don't want to give somebody else credit. This is hard for a lot of you because you're trying to catch people making mistakes rather than them doing things right. This is hard for a lot of you to look at a mistake as a learning opportunity, right? The sign of a great business is not one that doesn't screw up, it's one that wants to learn from the screw ups. I can tell with clients that we work with, with one of my companies, Right Chat, we make mistakes, period. Right? We don't make them any different than your receptionist is currently doing. The only difference is you have visibility when we do it, but when your receptionist does it, you don't have visibility. Okay, that's one difference. The other one is it shows me exactly how leadership is inside an organization and exactly what culture they have because of it. Because a lot of businesses will be like, hey, you made a mistake, it's okay. This is what happened. Next meeting that we meet with you, let's talk about it, we'll practice it out, discuss it, and I know you guys will fix it because we will, because we care. That's the sign of a true great business. Looking at a mistake as a learning opportunity to develop their team, to give them the right training, to minimize the chances of it ever happening again. That's a sign of greatness. A sign of greatness is not somebody that doesn't make mistakes. That's just a company not taking enough risks. That's what that is. Okay, but then there's other people that are like, oh my god, you made an ex, you made, you scheduled this patient here, you scheduled this client here, this is a disaster, you're fired. And it gives me complete insight to how their entire organization is run. And if that's you out there, shame on you because you need to flip how you're looking at leadership, and we have to focus on outcomes and results while granting individuals the freedom to choose their execution plans, and that's autonomy. It's giving people the freedom to make decisions on the fly, giving people the freedom that if they make those decisions on the fly and it happens not to work out, right, a mistake happens, we don't reach our targets, our finite targets because of it, you're not gonna, they're not gonna freak out and go, oh my god, I'm fired, I'm gonna get yelled at, I'm not gonna make my bonus, whatever it is. No, that is a bad place to be as an organization. So we've got to have people that have autonomy. We've got to end the micromanagement. And that leads us into consistent consequences, okay? Because again, without consequences, again, the accountability, this is not gonna work. Recognition of success, right? That's focus on outcomes and results while granting individuals the freedom to choose their tactical execution plans, right? We've got constructive interventions that is address underperformance early, directly, and empathetically, establishing clear paths for improvement or necessary transitions when standards aren't met. Now, there's a lot there. Uh, a lot of this is what I I teach all over the world. Okay, let's break this down. Address

Empathy When Performance Drops

SPEAKER_00 48:54

underperforming early, directly, and empathetically. So a long time ago, uh worked with an orthodontic practice, and we had them rolling. They were kicking butt. All of a sudden, talking to the doctor one day, we're looking at uh the orthophy data, conversions going down and down and down, like, what's going on here? Had it in the 80s, had it in the low 90s. And we're talking, we sit down with their treatment coordinator, and again, again, no matter what business you are out there, this so applies. This so applies. Talking to the treatment coordinator, and um we were empathetic, right? We didn't scold her, we didn't come in there going, why's your conversion down? Which a lot of you do, right? And this goes back to why the lag measures in your meetings are terrible, right? Because it ends up being a negative tone. We're not doing this, we're not doing this, the new patients are down, what do we do? You know, the conversion's down, our sales targets, we're not gonna meet them, and that's what you make your meetings about, and the meetings absolutely suck. So we addressed the underperformance, but we approached it empathetically, and luckily enough for us we did because her husband had been killed in a car accident. This is about a month and a half ago, right around the time the numbers started to dip. And then also her kid was killed a few days prior. So this is a lady that's showing up trying to do her work, and this is why the old school method leave it at the door. Like if you if you can't wrap your head around why this new economy that has to change, I don't know what's gonna. If I can't convince you, if I can't transform your mindset, I don't think anybody can. Right? So if you don't approach it empathetically, you're gonna screw yourself as a leader. And props to her for showing up to work and doing the best she can. But see, this is the problem. All of you out there know your data. You don't know your people. Your people are the ones controlling the data. The boots in the ground, the people busting their butt every single day. They're real humans. And shame on you for not knowing more about them. Because this girl, as an example, that's devastating. It's gonna affect anybody and everybody when that happens in your personal life. And that is why transformational leaders, as well as is little stid that's of other types of leadership types, that we're gonna be diving into is the next series before we get to part two of the Five to Thrive. The next series is gonna be going into those leadership types, and we're gonna be pulling the good from every one of them, combining them into a new type of leadership type. So, this is what all of you need to understand is that under performance, you have real people that have real problems, real issues in their life. And because of that, you better damn well give a, you know, care enough. And this is the problem with so many corporations out there, your quotas are all finite, you jam these things down people's throat, you're not motivational, you're not inspirational, and you have 0% of your time to even get to know your people and find out what's going on in their lives, right? What the struggles in their career. All you give a damn about is these finite goals that of course are important, but you can't control them. As I said a million times, I'm gonna keep saying it. Okay, so empathy, it's a trained skill set for all of you in the office. Have empathy for each other because you never know what's going on in someone's life. Boyfriend beating her up, you know, kid dies, husband dies, right? Financial problems, whatever it may be, whatever your problems out there may be, it's gonna affect your performance at work. And as leaders, position of rank and title, but also each other, because all of you can be leaders, you should care enough about your people to get to know them, and they should feel safe coming to you, letting them know what's going on. Establishing clear paths for improvement, we've already talked about that. That's just in a different way, right? If you want consistent consequences, you've got to say, look, here's the problems I'm seeing, here's the clear guide to get you there, and here are the consequences that are gonna happen if you choose not to change, choose not to take the coaching, choose not to implement these things. We have to have consistent, consistent consequences and also necessary transitions when standards aren't met.

Closing And What Comes Next

SPEAKER_00 52:58

All right, so I hope everybody enjoyed that one because now we're gonna be moving on to part four of this ongoing series, and I'm gonna link it below, and we'll see you over there.