My Dad Said 4 Words That Changed How I Lead #675

Most leadership advice tells you to be tougher. Push through. Grind it out. But after running 58 marathons in 58 days and coaching over 1,200 high-performing men, I have learned the most powerful leadership skill has nothing to do with endurance.

In this video, I share the story of a 12-hour overnight walk through Brisbane that taught me two critical lessons about leading men. One about what happens when you do not set standards. And one about what happens when you simply invite someone in.

My dad, recovering from prostate cancer surgery, drove two hours to join us. He planned to walk half an hour. He stayed for four. And the four words he said when he finally stopped changed how I coach, lead, and show up for the people in my life.

If you are a man who feels like you are carrying everything alone, who has never actually invited someone into your world, this might be the most important leadership lesson you hear this year.

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Transcript

The Limits Of Grit

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We love talking about grit. Push through it. Do not quit. Grind it out. Every leadership book, every keynote, every Instagram post with a mountain in the background that says the same thing. The strong survive because they endure. And look, I believe that I run 58 marathons in 58 consecutive days. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you that toughness doesn't matter because I do believe it does. But I'm going to tell you that it is not enough on its own. Because the most powerful thing I've ever done as a leader, as a coach, and as a son had nothing to do with endurance. Well, a little bit. But it had to do with four words from my dad at a petrol station at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. So I want you to stay with me on this one. I'm Lotham Stewart, and I am a keynote speaker, life performance coach, based out of Brisbane, Australia, one of the best places on the planet. And I have coached over 1,200 high-performing men. And I'm also the bloke, as I said, who ran the 58 marathons in 58 days from Alaska all the way to Brisbane. So yeah, I do know a thing or two about toughness. But what I'm about to share with you completely reframed how I think about leadership. And it came from a single night walking through Brisbane with my dad and 20 mates. So I want to take you back March 2022. Feels like yesterday, it was actually four years ago. I organized a 12-hour overnight walk through Brisbane, 20 blogs from my coaching program, 6 p.m. till 6 a.m. We were going to raise some money for prostate cancer. You're probably thinking, 12-hour walk isn't that bad. That is exactly what I was thinking, exactly what my mate Gaudi was thinking as well, hence why we chose to go from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Because we thought, or Sam actually thought, let's make it even harder. I don't think a 12-hour walk is going to be that challenging. But let me tell you, it was freaking excruciatingly challenging. The reason why we went with prostate cancer Australia was because it was a personal one. Normally I'm raising money and awareness and funds for, well, money and funds are the same thing, for mental health. But this time it's different because my dad had actually been diagnosed with prostate cancer. And we found out a few weeks after my wedding, he'd been in a bit of pain at the wedding and not have really done anything about it. You know, most of us men are really stubborn, and it's a classic bloke move, right? So it got so bad during the wedding that he had to go to the hospital to quickly, you know, be able to go to the toilet, which was crazy because he couldn't go for a leak. And he didn't say anything. They ran scans and did all the blood tests when he got back to Taumba, you know, a couple of weeks later. And I remember when he called me and he said, mate, I've got prostate cancer. And my instant reaction was, How do we solve this? I didn't really want to listen, I did listen, but I really wanted to go straight into how do we fix this? So he had sat through weeks of pain before it finally got too much that he had to go to the hospital and start doing all of the tests. And had that pain not got so bad, maybe he wouldn't have gone to go to test. So thankful for that. Look, the good thing about that is that is who he is. And honestly, I think it's who most of us men are, myself included. We carry things quietly because we don't want to be a burden. And as I was putting this walk together months after his surgery, I invited him and I just said, Hey dad, we're doing this walk, come walk with us. And what happened that night taught me two lessons that I've carried into most coaching conversations since. About halfway through the walk, we hit Mount Kuther. And then anyone who's walked Mount Kutha, you know it's pretty bloody hilly. But someone suggested a shortcut down a hill. So we we'd gone up and it was quite late, and we were pretty fatigued, and we obviously could go back the way we came, but we knew it was going to be hilly, so we thought, hey, let's take the shortcut down the hill. We can hopefully pop out there. And we all followed, but halfway down there was a bloody locked gate in front of us, and then it went into sort of locked-off areas, and then we got so pissed off. It was a dead end. And that meant that we had to turn around and we're all the way back up the hill. We had just come down and we're like, this defeats the whole purpose of trying that anyway. And that's you know, not all shortcuts pay off, which way you shouldn't try and take shortcuts. But the reaction with the crew was immediate, right? The group split up. We were like, people were filthy. I knew this was going to happen. Some blokes just started walking in whatever direction they thought was going to be the fastest. Others actually tried climbing the fence. A couple of guys just sat down and refused to move until they got a few bits of snacks in them. And the group splinter. It was insane to watch. And here's the thing: it wasn't that big a deal, right? It was not a life or death thing. It was a wrong turn. An extra 20 minutes of walking, maybe a bit of elevation. But when you're six hours in and your hips are screaming, everything gets amplified. And in that moment, there was no standard for how we would handle the adversity together. It was something that I'd skipped. I should have set the standard before we started. Something like when it gets hard, and it will, I can tell you it will. Here's how we're going to operate. Who's in on that? We stay together, we communicate, we do not fracture. But I did not do that. I didn't think about that. I just thought everyone would follow. So think of it like a football team without a game plan. Every member might be talented individually. But the moment the opposition does something unexpected, and you're like, whoa, everyone reacts differently. Some panic, some freelance, some check out. That's not a team, right? That is just a group of individuals wearing the same jersey. Same thing happened to us on that wall. So without the shared standard, people did not fall apart because they were weak. They fell apart because no one had told them how to be strong together. And there was no leadership. And that fell on me. That was lesson number one. And to be honest, this is where a lot of men get stuck, not just in teams, but in their own lives. You know something is off, but you can't quite put your finger on where. And if you're wondering where you actually stand right now, across health, across your mindset, your purpose, your confidence, I created the Life Performance Scorecard, and you probably hear me talking about it every week, but it can give you clarity in literally under five minutes. The link is in the description. Now, let me tell you what happened at the start of that exact same night. So as I said, my dad drove two hours from Taurba. When he rocked up, I could see it straight away. He was nervous, right? So he didn't know any of these blokes. Quiet, and he's an amazing bloke. But he goes quiet in a lot of new situations. And I think I do the exact same thing. I'm sort of sussing out the lay of the land. And 20 blokes he'd never met, and he's just standing there. I ended up introducing him to a few of the guys, but most of the blokes did the work themselves. They came up to him, shook his hand, introduced themselves, started having a chat. And that moment the conversations kicked in, he lit up. Like you could see it on his face. And he had planned to walk only a couple of kilometers, maybe half an hour tops, which is crazy. He had dried longer than he was prepared to walk. But then what happened? One hour turned into two, two turned into three, nearly four. And I could see his back aching. He was sort of walking with different people. And this is a man who is still recovering from prostate surgery. But he's just kept going, and I kept saying, Look, Dad, whenever you're ready to stop and you know, head home, that's completely fine. But he didn't stop. And it was only when we got near the Regatta Hotel, after almost four hours in, he pulled up, he walked over, gave me a big hug, and said four words. Thank you for that. And he called an Uber and left. And look, it wasn't that dramatic. We waited around, right? But I still had eight hours ahead. The group still had eight hours ahead. But watching him push himself that night when it would have been so easy for him to call it after the first hour, that carried me through every single hour after that. So my dad did not wake up that morning planning to walk for four hours through Brisbane in pain. He was not trying to prove anything. He showed up because someone he loved said, Hey, come be part of this. And that's it. The invitation was a catalyst. And this is what I see constantly with the men that I'm coaching. I hear it all the time. High performing blokes, you know, in their 30s to 50s, successful by all the external measures. But when I asked them, who have you invited into your world? Who knows what you're going through? Who have you said, I want you there to? They almost all answer, no one. And we are terrible at this as men. We wait for people to ask. We assume that people know they are welcome. And we think the door is obviously open. It is not. And think about the difference between an open door and a hand-delivered invitation. An open door says, you can come if you want. An invitation says, I want you there. One is passive and the other one changes someone's life. So look at the contrast from that night. At Mount Kutha, I did not set the standard or extend the invitation to face hard things together. And the group fraction, and that sucked. I hated having to own that, but it was a valuable lesson that I've since changed. And with my dad, I simply said, come walk with us. And a man recovering from surgery pushed himself further than either of us of us thought he could. Same night, same walk, two completely different outcomes. The only variable was the invitation. And when I'm working with them, and we go through the core four frameworks a strong body, calm mind, clear purpose, confident life, this sits squarely in confident life. And it's not the version of confidence that most people imagine. Standing on the stage or walking into a room like you own it, real confidence is the courage to be seen, right? To allow people to see, to let people in, to say, I need you in this or I want you here. When every instinct tells you to just handle it yourself. We all know that. So my dad sat through an entire wedding week in pain. He did not say a word because he didn't want to burden and take away from that week. And to me, that is one of the most selfless things. But I'm not saying get out there and do that. I'm obviously anyone who's worked with me or been through any of our programs, you know how focused we are on a health perspective of getting your baseline on everything so that we can see when things are off. That's why we make you get your blood tests, we get you to wear a whoop band so we know when things aren't going the way they should be. And also the idea of not burdening people through moments in their life, we need to break that. And I'm guilty of it, and I need to learn to ask for help more and share people who've invited my mates in. And this episode here today is almost for me as much as it's hopefully helping, uh sorry, helping you. So that version of toughness that we as men default to, the quiet, self-contained, never wanting to impose. We got to break that mold. So when my dad accepted my invitation to walk, something shifted. He was not just enduring anymore, he was participating, right? He was part of something, and that's what lit him up. It's standards, not just motivation. This is what I teach. And my dad did not need a motivational speech that night, I can tell you that. He needed an invitation and a standard that said, you're welcome here, go at your own pace, and we'll walk alongside you. And that was enough. So here is what I want you to think about today. Not how do I get tougher or how do I push through. You already know how to do that. You've been doing it your whole life. But the better question is, who in your life needs the invitation? Your mate who is going through something but has not said a word, your dad, who would probably love to be part of your world but you never ask. Your partner who is waiting for you to say, I need you in this, instead of I am fine. Pick up the phone, send the text, say the words, I want you there. And you might be surprised what happens when you do. If this episode has resonated with you, the next step is not always doing more. It's getting clear on where you actually are in your life. So that's why you can take that life performance scroll card. It's free under four minutes. The link is in the description. And it may be the most honest conversation you've had yourself, had with yourself this week. So subscribe if this landed for you. We've got more coming for men who are done with the surface level advice and ready to do the real work. Check out the other videos too. We'll see you in the next one.