Come along with us as we work towards creating a complete list of crucial skills leaders must possess. Today's focus is on the power of information, so press the play button and start practicing the art of analyzing information and using it to motivate and lead your team. Don't miss out on this whole Finish Strong Friday experience!
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
Come along with us as we work towards creating a complete list of crucial skills leaders must possess. Today's focus is on the power of information, so press the play button and start practicing the art of analyzing information and using it to motivate and lead your team. Don't miss out on this whole Finish Strong Friday experience!
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
I found this early on in life that the better and more relevant and useful information I had available, the more I was able to amass, influence and make meaningful change. Hello, my friend, and welcome to this Friday episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, your host, and I am so glad you are here every Friday we work on one tool for your leadership tool. Well, it's just the two of us. No co-hosts, no special guests, and really unpacking different aspects of your leadership journey. Perhaps they have been concepts you've thought about, concepts that you've considered, but you really haven't taken the time or identified how they apply to creating a model for influence that leads to a better future state to progress.
[00:00:48]
Because really leadership is so much about progress and as we embark continually on this journey of leadership, I just want you to know that it is a total blessing and an honor to walk with you as we aim for greatness in serving others because there are so many ways that we can grow as leaders. And I commend you for taking the time out of your day to increase your value proposition as a leader by investing in yourself because the self-investment is one of the best investments you can make because it will pay dividends on your journey, on your story, on this great adventure called life. So as we continue this journey in this series on power, I am just thrilled. We've already gone through five social bases of power through a lot of the work by French and Raven all the way back in the fifties.
[00:01:44]
If you haven't listened to those five episodes, You can go back and listen. You don't have to listen to any, in particular, one first, but this one is just as important as all of the others. This is the power mechanism, not by French and Raven, but by a gentleman in Cartwright and others have talked about this as well. This is the power source that is easily accessible. And has massive, massive impact. It's the power of information, information power. You say, what's information power, Nate? You've exhibited this, you've experienced this. Anytime that there is data, anytime that there is simply put information that is of value to you that someone else has, it has.
[00:02:32]
Power. And power, as we've said in the series, produces influence and leadership is the capacity to leverage that influence into action. And again, this is just a quote by one of my colleagues in the academic space, Dr. Justin Ganon and I'm so glad that he shared that with me years ago because one way to understand how power manifests itself and creates influence, it's not the only way, but it sure is a good one. Now, what does information power actually mean? How do we manifest or exhibit it? Well, I'm gonna give you some examples of information, power, and how you can utilize it in business and family and life. And I'll start with a very old adage about information power. For those of us who were around before, cell phones, before Google Maps, before Siri, you remember when you took a road trip what you had to do.
[00:03:22]
You had to, and you can even say before computers, you had to use maps, like real maps, books that told you which interstate to go on, what road to turn on. And God forbid there was some construction or a detour, you had to figure out how that was going at times. First had computers. I remember MapQuest, if you remember MapQuest, it was an online it's, you can, I think you still use it and you can type in where you wanted to go and it would give you directions. Well, it wasn't foolproof. It wasn't flawless. So every so often on a road trip, I'd find that my maps or my map quest had some kind of a break. It didn't take me where I wanted to go. And so what would I do? Like many people, perhaps someone listening here today would remember a story where you would stop in at a gas station and you would what?
[00:04:09]
You would ask for directions, right? Hey, I'm trying to get to this place. Do you know how to get there? All right, stop right there. Think about what's happening here. I'm asking a total stranger, someone who I don't know. I have no idea whether they have integrity, whether they have competence. They have good character to lead me in a direction that is really where I want to go. But I'm asking them for what? I'm asking them for information and they say, oh yeah, you know you haven't been, you have to make a right turn at the mailbox. And then there's gonna be a McDonald's just on the road. Make a left at the McDonald's, two streets down. You're gonna see an old Arby's. Make a right there.
[00:04:49]
Go straight past the, fill in the blank, right? Go past the water tower. And you should be at your destination. You're like, okay, I'm gonna try to remember all that. Right? And then what do you do? You follow the directions, right? What was happening here? That was influence, right? Influence causes motion. It causes action, right? So when this particular information power is exhibited, and of course the information has to be valued to the target or the end user, the individual who's receiving the information. Then it causes action, which is influence. So this person was actually exhibiting form of leadership. Right? That clerk at the gas station.
[00:05:26]
Of course, nowadays not so much, right? Nowadays you use your cell phone, which is also a place where information power is very active, right? Years ago we, when the, at the dawn of this thing called the internet, we. Learn to label it very quickly. The information superhighway, right? It's a super highway, a conduit for information. And that information has power when it's valuable. So we seek new information so we can do what, so we can guide our decisions so it can influence our behavior. And sometimes that influence and that information is important and it's helpful. Sometimes it's misinformation, friend, you know this right? Not everything that is on the internet is valid, or what we say is gospel.
[00:06:12]
Good news. No. Sometimes it's information that's erroneous. Sometimes it's just plain false. Sometimes it's malicious. It can be malicious as well, so you have to know your source. In the case of the gas station clerk, you're hoping that that person is leading in the right direction, but you can have the power of information at your fingertips. That information allows you to progress pretty quickly when it's accurate and valid. Think about societies, think about societies in the past who have been able to connect, have their own information superhighway, whether it's a trade port, whether it's the lavant in the Mediterranean, where for many years there was so much activity that shared information, traded information, and that trading of information influenced the each era's growth.
[00:07:00]
It influenced progress as cultures, as civilizations grew, and so that power of information is so relevant, so important. The question we have today, one of the questions is how are we utilizing information to gain strength in the marketplace, in the family? And right now it's so at our fingertips. Even you listening to this podcast today, right? I have given you some information. I may or may not be an expert in the area, but I've informed you. On a certain area, and that information then helps you to make hopefully wiser choices, better decisions, so that you can continue to do what, to progress to a better future state. That's the heart of leadership with those around you who share your purpose and your values and your mission.
[00:07:43]
So I found this early on in life that the better and more relevant and useful information I had available, the more I was able to amass, influence and make meaningful change. So, I dunno if you've seen the movie The Matrix, but there was a character in the movie called The Merovingian, and he called himself a trafficker of information. Right? Information has great value because if you have information that someone else needs, that information then can be used, not necessarily as leverage, but it can be used to perhaps, Make an exchange, right? And that's really what so much about business is it's utility. Now, sometimes information doesn't go the right way, like I was talking about earlier with this idea of misinformation.
[00:08:30]
And unfortunately it happens all the time, even in my own family, I find myself to be less and less relevant because my son and my nieces, well, they go to the internet for information instead of coming to me. And today we also have artificial intelligence, right? This artificial intelligence, you may have heard of it or even used it ChatGPT. It is revolutionizing how we access information so you can do a search and using your AI bot just a mass, a compendium of information in just a few moments that will help you again, influence you to make decisions. Part of the challenge is friend, not all that information's accurate. In fact, I was recently doing a study.
[00:09:12]
On the person of Israel or Jacob, and I asked the chat bot to help me to form a study on it, and there was a story about him having to marry Leah and then of course Rachel. And so the chat bot had it wrong in terms of some of the facts, right? Now if I didn't know those facts already, I may have made an error in the information I was receiving cuz your information is only as good as the individuals or the sources you retrieve them from. That's why it's so important for us to not simply take carte blanche information that is not been vetted and integrated into our understanding of whatever it is we're trying to accomplish. The world around US life, politics, marriage, family, relationships is very dangerous because it then creates a naive and oftentimes misguided and misjudging approach to life.
[00:10:15]
So we have to vet the information we receive. Go to the source, do the work, do the hard work to gain the information you need. And it is hard work because going to the actual original source, not just hearsay, but the original source gives you a better understanding. It lays a solid foundation. For what it is that you're learning. That's why I love to give you sources when I'm sharing these concepts. Don't just take Nate's word for it. Go to the original source because you know what? I may not be right all the time, and that's something that you have to vet as well. And as you do, you begin to amass a solid understanding of where you are getting your information.
[00:11:02]
For the power that's available to you through it. So using technology. Yes. Use it wisely. Use it judiciously. When you're listening to experts, vet what they say, walk in mindset of skepticism, not a skepticism that's based on cynicism. No. A skepticism that's healthy, that gives you a true depth of understanding that doesn't just agree or believe everything you see. Right? This is so important because even today in the media, you know this, the media has so much bias, right? It speaks to you in ways that it thinks that you need to hear something, and sometimes it's not even true. The algorithms. It's so sad today. Even with information we access online, the algorithms are speaking to you in a way that they believe validates your decision-making and your beliefs and your habits.
[00:11:58]
So what happens is it just feeds into that. Say for example, you're a conservative, all your news is going to be conservative news. Believe it or not. We talked about this on the show. I posted a question about the Bud Light situation with the, uh, deviation from what the reputation, right? And I talked about this on the show. So now just about every single time I open up my Google. There's a story about Bud Light, right? I don't really care so much. I mean, it was good to talk about it, and it was good to have a conversation around reputation, and I'll check in from time to time, but now the algorithms seem to think that this is so very important to me, this information, and it's feeding me this information from a very biased perspective, and I don't want a biased perspective.
[00:12:45]
I wanna see all the perspectives. I wanna have so much vast and varied and diverse information sources that it helps to give me a wider understanding so that I'm not narrow-minded, that I am wide-minded enough to understand that there's more perspectives, there's more variables than my limited context, my limited area of understanding. That's what we call humility, because even as we seek out to be experts in our field, even as we seek out to have information that helps us make decisions, it's always good to step back, step back for a moment, release your bias, release your judgment, and just think about that, even other beliefs, other ways of putting things together, other ways of understanding the world around us.
[00:13:41]
May have some impact in our own lives to be secure in that I tend to look at life in a more conservative way. However, I still look at the liberal views, right? When I'm looking at the political specs, I not only look at the conservative. Conferences and conservative debates. I look at the liberal ones too because there are some aspects of each of the, at least in the United States, the main two party systems that I find appealing to me, and so I want to be able to have a wider net on the information that I take in so that I can be more informed. And that higher level of security in myself to where I'm okay with listening to someone else's point of view, that may be completely contrary to my understanding. My perspective is you may have information that will benefit my point of view, that will further my point of view. That may even challenge my point of view in such a way that causes me to reevaluate my point of view.
[00:14:44]
Now you say, well, Nate, doesn't that just make you someone who's wishy-washy all the time and is like a wave toss in the ocean? No, not at all. It's simply someone who is discerning, someone who has the wherewithal to deeply consider all of the different information sources. Now you say, Nate, what about information overload? True. Right now it's so easy to have information overload. It's so easy to get too much data, too much knowledge. And I don't know that it's all that good for us to overload our brains with information. Sometimes we gotta take a step back. Sometimes just close the computer, close the book, turn off the phone, relax your mind.
[00:15:32]
Give it time to digest, to decompress. And allow yourself to process all of that information. So sometimes it can be noise, too much information can be noise. And for us as leaders, we have to take a step back, not only evaluate all the sources of information that's critically important, but also as leaders to then take time to review the information so that we can utilize it to help our followers achieve a better future state now. Other aspects of information are important too. We have to have people around us who we can trust their information. Bring people around you within organization. Make sure you have people around you who have information that's solid, and people who are researchers who will help you find new ways through better information, through better data.
[00:16:24]
I love having researchers in my camp. My wife's a researcher. She's always. Researching information. I love having them in my organization. I have several people in my organization who are constantly researching better, newer ways, and they bring them to me because I have an open door, so, That says, Hey, new information means new ideas. And new ideas are innovation, right? Innovation isn't necessarily the next big thing. It doesn't have to be disruptive. It can just be an idea. And where do ideas come from? Ideas come from information. They come from curiosity. They come from creativity and invention. And so friend, as you embark on this next day, Ask yourself the question, am I a person who is information overload or using it to my best abilities?
[00:17:14]
Well, my friend, that's this episode. I'm so glad you joined me on A Call to Leadership. Well, my friend, we did it again. I'm so glad you joined me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. If you've been with me on the show listening in, you'll know this, but if you're new, you may not know that I created a free course for you, that you don't need to provide an email address. You don't need to go anywhere. But to stay right here in the podcast, I created the very first six episodes of the podcast because I wanted you to have the kind of value that you need to take advantage of to thrive as a leader. So we haven't done that yet. Listen to episodes one through six, and I'll see you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.