James Laughlin 00:00

Welcome to lead on purpose. I'm James Laughlin, a former seven-time world champion musician and now an executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week, I'll publish a solocast, where I'll share my top high-performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

James Laughlin 00:48

Did you know that 83% of organizations believe that it's important to develop leaders at every level of the company yet, only 5% of businesses have implemented leadership development at all levels? A big disconnect there, right? That's talking talk versus walking the walk. Looking at every year, a company delays leadership development, which costs on average 7% of their total annual sales. That's a huge chunk of profit loss there. And I'm going to share some more statistics from the World Health Organization, The American Psychological Association, Forbes Harvard Business Review, and Bloom. 79% of employees said they quit due to a lack of appreciation. You heard me right, almost 80% of That's the Pareto principle at play there have said that in their lifetime they have quit their jobs because they feel a lack of appreciation. How simple would it be to fix that for your staff, for your team, for your family, for your people? Just appreciate the people around you. How do we show appreciation? We spend time with them. We invest in them, we invest in their learning, we invest in their lives, and we get curious. Only 33% of employees report feeling engaged. Yeah. So, there you've got around 70% of a team or organization that feels disengaged, wow. What's that costing in productivity? What's that cost and staff churn is significant, right? Companies with high employee engagement are 22% more profitable. Imagine if I could say to you right now, hey, your team, your organization, or even your family, you could be 22% more profitable this year. That's a significant increase. And just engaging with your people, will make the difference. And that's the difference to me that makes the difference. Here are the top five key leadership skills that kept showing up time and time again, in these research studies. Number one is self-development and self-leadership, and for me, that's what my high-performance leadership framework is all around. It's about learning to lead self at BIF. When you're a best-in-field leader at what you do, and how you lead yourself, your life, your thoughts, your skillset, your heart set your physical set, then you can lead others. And that's number two is team development. That's the second key leadership skill, but you cannot develop teams unless you've actually done the work yourself. Number three was strategic thinking and acting right that last bit is so important. Strategic Thinking is one thing, but thinking doesn't get the job done. Strategic Action and acting. So crucial. Number four, ethical practices, really thinking about others and doing the right thing. The right thing is not always the easy thing. Number five is innovation. Now, when companies are successful, success often leads to failure. Why? Because they then just keep repeating what they've always done and what happens. Other competitors, whether that's on the field, in industry, or in relationships, other competitors are leveling themselves up, and are more appealing and attractive, and therefore you lose business. So, innovation is key. But go back to the start. People cannot innovate until they learn to lead themselves so that they have confidence and conviction. So, it comes back to really investing in your people giving them access to leadership development. And that's you know, getting them books that suggest podcasts or shows for them to watch. That's actually investing in their development month on month, year on year. Look, as always, I'm a big believer in tactics, right? You've got to have go-to tactics that help you to move forward, and I really want to help you lead leaders, I want to help you grow more leaders around you, this world relies on more leaders. And we could sit here and pick apart all the bad leaders. But actually, what’s better is if we can look around at some of the great leaders that we have, and we do, go, why are they great? Well, they're great, because they're curious, they're great because they invest in the people around them. So, I want to give you three strategies, and three tactics that you can take away. And I'd love you to implement it today. And again, you can apply this whatever element whether it's at an organizational level, whether it's in your life, whether it's in your relationships with family, look, number one, you must, as a leader, create space, time, and if needs be a budget for leadership development at all levels. Look, I work with some incredible high-end clients, people that are running multi-billion dollar organizations, the top sports team, nationally and internationally. Look, the one thing that I see with them is that they're continually investing in growth, continually investing in learning new strategies, and they do it at all levels. You've got to do the same for yourself, you've got to look and go, how much time and space, and budget am I putting into myself and my leaders? You know, as a coach, I often get asked, how do I find the right coach for me? I always say the first question you have for a potential coach is, who's your coach? How many coaches have you had? How much have you invested in the last year in coaching? And if the answer is I don't have one, or I invested a very small amount, then I don't think that's the coach for you. You want to be working with people and being mentored and coached by people who are truly committed to the philosophy of coaching and learning and developing oneself. Number two, bring in industry experts. Don't try and be a lone wolf. Don't try and do everything in the house. If you're privileged enough in a position where you can make decisions around leadership development, get the best. If you want to BIF, be best, and failed, then you've got to make sure that you bring BHF, coaches, leaders, and trainers, in people who can connect people who can get past the theory, people who can go deeper than the page further than the PowerPoint slide. You want people that can move your people. That's so important. It's got to come from the heart to land in the heart. And if you truly want to see leaders around you, you've got to talk to the heart, not to their head. And so, if you're bringing people in, make sure they've got energy that's passionate, they've got a vision to help you and your team be BIF. And just before I share the last one, I like to ask you, for one small favor. And you know, I love this podcast, we have now three episodes a week, got one feature-length interview each week, which is with one of the world's leading experts in their field, then we've got a recap of just the highlights from the interview. And also, we've got the solocast and mastery session where I go deep, which is today and it's very tactical, that's what this session is. Now, for me to continue to do that, what I need from you is just a really simple request. It'll take you about 30 seconds of your time. Just hop over to wherever you're listening on Apple, or Spotify and leave me a rating and a review. If you love it, please leave me a five-star rating. It really helps me to reach more people and impact more incredible leaders like you. Now, let's get back to it. Last, but not least, if you want to lead leaders if you want to grow a leadership team, and you want people to be more innovative, and more independent, then you've got to model a learner's mindset. Always. You've got to model the fact that you're curious, that you're a learner, always you're asking questions, and you know you don't know it all. You're reading books, you're listening to podcasts, you're going to events, you're bringing in trainers when those trainers are training your staff, you're there in the room taking notes, asking questions, learning showing vulnerability. I don't know how many times I've been brought in to work with corporates and other organizations where the CEO and in fact most of the C suite are not there. They take the time to go and do their own strategy session, while the rest of the staff are doing leadership development. To me, if you're a high-performance leader, you're there in the room, shoulder to shoulder-with your people. So, that's last but not least model our learner’s mindset, always. Well, folks, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

James Laughlin 10:04

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love it if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.