Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
The Power of Non-Negotiables
Non-negotiables are the minimum daily actions that leaders refuse to skip, which over time transform unpredictable outcomes into predictable success.
• Daily behaviors entirely within your control that you commit to no matter how busy, tired, or stressed you become
• Focus on realistic commitments across body, mind, mission, people, and integrity
• Start with three manageable non-negotiables rather than creating an overwhelming list
• Leadership success comes from consistent small actions rather than occasional grand gestures
• Examples include daily scripture reading, 30 minutes of movement, and expressions of love to family
• Consider how to "gamify" your commitments to maintain motivation over weeks and months
• Focus on what you can control when choosing your non-negotiables
What small, consistent action will you commit to today that could transform your leadership tomorrow?
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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today and we rolled out some excellent interviews in recent weeks and, if you've been paying attention, yeah, we took a few weeks off in the summer maybe more than a few weeks and that was one of the things that I was really committed to when we launched this podcast a few years ago. I knew once I launched it, you can't let yourself off the gas. You need to put something out there on a regular basis and we've been doing pretty well on a weekly basis, trying to give you some great content. But you know, life happens. I'm not going to beat myself up too bad, but we didn't go anywhere and it was a pretty insane summer. Obviously, everyone should be spending time with family and some relaxation in the summertime, but specifically where I've been was Phoenix, arizona. If you aren't familiar with our work there in the city of Phoenix and exposing the Department of Justice for literally lying about that agency 97% of the time in the report, which is really insanity. You can check that out at lawofficercom backslash DLJ. The entire document is there. It's hundreds of pages, but we put a lot of effort into that because it was important. And the very next day we released, that is the day President Trump pulled a lot of these investigations back from agencies. It wasn't just the effort here with us here, there was a lot of people making that effort. But that's where we've been and I've been on the road quite a bit as well. I'm always humbled to be able to do that and speak in front of audiences. That will not last forever. It can't last forever, but as long as people keep calling, I'm very humbled to do that. But the podcast is up and going. We're back on pace and I hope you've been paying attention to that. Listen to some of these excellent interviews as much as I sort of get down on some leadership issues. We have so many great leaders out there and we're very happy to highlight them here for you, to encourage you.
Travis Yates:But in the middle of some of those interviews, I want to start giving you some of my general thoughts. I want to start giving you some of my general thoughts, and the one thought that I have been honing in on recently is the idea of the non-negotiables. What is a non-negotiable? Is anybody ever? Whether you're on the job or off the job, you have all these ideas in mind to do and you sort of come home from work and you think to yourself I was really busy today, but I got nothing done. What is that about, right? What is that absolutely about? And much of that you don't control. You don't control the outcome of so many things in any leadership position that you're in, but you do control the inputs and if you can think of these inputs as non-negotiable, you're going to find out in time that a lot of the outcomes start coming out in your favor. So let me explain what a non-negotiable is. What's a non-negotiable? That happens, and because so much we don't control whether it's chaos in law enforcement or stock markets or politics or just the people around you there's so much you don't control. And so most leaders, all leaders, I would say they cannot be defined by the chaos, but they're really going to be defined by most by the small set of behaviors that they control, these minimum daily actions that you refuse to skip, even when things are kind of crazy. You may be busy, tired or traveling or under a lot of stress, but what are the daily things that you're going to commit to that you will do, no matter what.
Travis Yates:Now I've got an example from many, many years ago and people may be surprised to hear this, but I at one time weighed 100 pounds more than I weigh today. That's insane and that's stupid and silly. I got away with that a lot because I'm almost 6'4". That's what my kids would say I'm 6'3". My kids would say I'm almost something. I'm 6'3". I've got a pretty large frame and I can can put on weight and it's not immediately noticed, right. And so, just through time, you've heard the stories through year after year after year of not taking care of myself and working shift work and doing all these silly things. I woke up one day and I was 355 pounds.
Travis Yates:Now I may have been more than that, but that's when I quit weighing and I and my, my chief at the time he had this sick sense of humor. He decided to put Travis over the wellness unit, can you imagine. And I had some other assignments at the time. It was an academy assignment, it was. So I was over a lot of the training functions of the academy, which is kind of what my specialty was. So I understood that.
Travis Yates:But they sort of threw these other units at me that I sort of thought that maybe they're throwing them at me because no one really wants them, so let's just throw them at Travis. And one of them was the wellness unit, which was a small unit. It was a sergeant and an officer and but I thought to myself this is, I'm such a hypocrite, right here I am. I am morbidly obese, I may not look it, I may not act it. I was still very active, I was still speaking on the road, I was standing on my feet all day, I was still doing most everything, but I knew it was only a matter of time before that caught up to me. I was in my early forties at the time and I knew I mean, for someone that was fat, I knew all the information there was to know to not be fat. So I knew all the studies right. And so how was I able to break that mode?
Travis Yates:I made working out a non-negotiable, no matter what, and I even set a time to it. First off, I was at the academy, so it was stupid to not to not do it. There was a nice, you know six figure thousand, multi-thousand dollar gym that that was there. I mean, there was, everything was there to do it. But I just said at three o'clock every day, no matter what I'm doing. That's a non-negotiable. And for close to two years that's what I did. Now I may have had a workout in the morning with the cadet class, or I may uh, I was doing some crossfit at the time with a buddy of mine and maybe we were doing that at lunchtime, but it didn't matter. At three o'clock every day, no matter where I what I was doing, that's where I was.
Travis Yates:Now I was in, I would be in meetings and three o'clock a hit. I'd get up and leave people. You know, to set a meeting at three o'clock. People knew it, non-negotiable. You may not be in that position, may not be able to set a time, but I was able to at that moment in my career and life and I just and you know, my workouts weren't always great, they weren't always that hard, sometimes I got lazy, but I was down in that gym every day at three o'clock, non-negotiable.
Travis Yates:And just through time and sheer will, I got to a weight that you know. You know I lost 100 pounds, which seems really dumb. I even got there. People go oh, that's great. No, it's not great. The great, the great ones, are the ones that never gained 100 pounds. That's the people that I admire Me lose 100 pounds is just a sign of my complete, utter weakness. Right, but anyway, but that's just.
Travis Yates:I got to thinking about that a few weeks ago. That's success, and I think to myself well, what other non-negotiables do I need to have? What other non-negotiables do you need to have? I have a few right now that I do. I read scripture every day. I'd like to say I would set a time for it, but I haven't. They'd probably be better if I would, because they're sometimes late late in the day that I have to get to it, but I read scripture every day. I move about 30 minutes every day. I haven't defined that as a workout, but I move Because, depending on where I'm at in the country maybe it's a walk, maybe it's a run, maybe it's a treadmill I just move 30 minutes every day. I tell my wife every day that I love her, and there's a few others out there. Right, there's a few other non-negotiables I have, but the key is no matter what, I'm going to do it Now.
Travis Yates:I could dive a lot deeper into what non-negotiables could be right. Number one had to be what you control. I'm not going to sit here and say a non-negotiable is eight hours of sleep, for instance, because you may not control that, right, if I'm getting off of airplane at one in the morning, I got to be in front of a crowd at seven. I'm not getting it. So when I say non-negotiable, I mean things that you absolutely will do no matter what comes up, and I want to encourage everybody listening to this to think of three to five of those. They don't have to be complicated, but think about them in the terms of body, mind, mission, people, integrity. Okay, body could mean drinking so much water or working out.
Travis Yates:Mind can mean you're going to read 10 pages from a book. Right, it could mean that you're going to spend five minutes journaling. Mission could mean that you're going to. You know, I would say, check your email, but that's sometimes to be destructive. But maybe you only check your email this many times a day, or you block off 60 minutes a day to write your book or to check your emails or to whatever it is Right. People could be Listen.
Travis Yates:You're going to text three people a day, or two people a day and tell them you're thinking about them. You're going to tell your wife you love them or your husband you love them or things like that Integrity. Maybe you're going to set out and you're going to tackle one hard thing a day. It could be a conversation, it could be working on yourself, something to that effect but think about this in those aspects and I'm not going to, don't you know, don't need to come up with one per category but mission, body, mind, mission, people, integrity. I think the key here is whatever you do and I'm going to get to the point of this in a minute Whatever you do, you got to do it, no matter what you do, you got to do it no matter what. So make it realistic, make it something that you absolutely can do, no matter what, and just do it Okay. And I would say start off with three, right Start off with three and go from there. And here's what you're going to find out You're going to find out that when you do that, a lot of uncontrollable things in your life are going to seem controllable. You're going to find out that a lot of successes you've been going for are going to actually happen.
Travis Yates:I read a book recently and I forget the author, but it was the Power of One and the guy basically said in there you know, people see someone with success and they just think that this just happened. He says what you don't see is is the day in and day out grind of doing menial tasks, small things, doing the small things to get to that success. Sometimes we'll sit back and we'll think, well, I've got to do this or that and we sort of just think it's going to happen or we try all these different angles to make it happen. What this guy said is just do the small task each and every day and in time it makes those larger tasks better. We talk about this in our leadership courses all the time. We all think about these great leadership successes and we think of the people historically that have done these great things. But the truth is they didn't just do those great things, they did all the small things over and over and over.
Travis Yates:Think about some of the leaders in your life that have impressed on you or mentored you. Most of those were not big things I can think of in my life. People that just pat you on the back and say good job. The people in my life that just randomly text me and say, hey, I'm thinking about you those are made incredible impressions on my life, right, if you've been in my courses. I talk about a couple of personal examples and none of those are huge lists. They're not huge paths. They're not going to make the headlines. It's just leaders that do the small things in a very authentic way and that's how you do the more important things.
Travis Yates:So there's some pitfalls here you need to avoid. Don't think of too many. Think of something that you can actually do, no matter what, and just do it. No matter what. You know you think about these non-negotiables, all of the this is called the gaming effect out there. You know my, my wife, I'll admit we've got a Peloton and a Tonal and a non-negotiable for her is that she does that tonal and that Peloton. Well, I would say every day. She's pretty much on every day, but every week and she does it weekly. I think she's done this 200-plus weeks in a row, no matter what. We may be out of town for that whole week and she gets on her phone phone and she does something related to those you know. And of course these companies build this gamification to just get people to keep coming because there's some endorphin involved there. But that's a non-negotiable for her and what happens is, through those 200 plus weeks of that non-negotiable.
Travis Yates:My wife was in the best shape of her life. I'm proud of her. I'm proud of that. But she didn't get there by waiting for something big. Right, it was that non-negotiable. And so think about how you're going to gamify your life. Right, it doesn't take your little Apple Watch to hit buzz because you got up off, you know, and buzz, buzz, buzz, and you got up off the chair and it's giving you all these rewards. No, and you got up off the chair and it's given you all these rewards? No, what could you do? What can you make? Non-negotiable today, where no one's watching? That, you know, will make great strides in the future. Something to consider, something to think about. And thanks for listening. God bless, lead on and stay courageous.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at travisyatesorg.
