WELCOME TO LEADERSHIP – Episode 1
Great leaders know that if everyone is consistently agreeing with you, there's a problem. This episode shares a quick story from my days as a SWAT team member that taught me one of the most valuable leadership and success lessons of my life. It's one lesson that I continue practice, and it has allowed me to experience the success I've enjoyed so far.
Here's 5 quick takeaways for you:
- Just because someone sees something differently than you, doesn't mean one of you is wrong.
- Even when you think everything is going just fine, someone close to you can be having a terrible experience.
- Leveraging the perspective of those around you who are committed to the same goal is a powerful recipe for improvement.
- Micro-adjustments can be more valuable than big changes.
- Being an outstanding leader isn't about telling people what happened or what's going to happen, it's about creating an environment where they can discover those answers without you saying a word.
The greatest leaders encourage diversity of thought, not unwavering compliance.
TRANSCRIPT:
Aaron Keith Hawkins (00:04):
If you truly want to be an expert at something, this is the most important lesson I can give you. I want to lead this with a story. So, uh, if you don't know, my previous career was in law enforcement and just so happens. I was on a tactical team, a SWAT team for about 15 years. And one of the best lessons I learned was from, uh, my first team leader, because after every mission we would go on, you're talking about a group of anywhere from 12 to 15 SWAT operators, depending on the year, every time we had a mission, uh, whether it was an unexpected hostage situation or pre-planned operation, whenever we were finished, when everything was done, our team leader always, always made us do the same thing. We had to go somewhere privately as a group, sit in a circle. And one by one, we had to explain exactly what we experienced during the operation before, during entry and after everything was done from start to finish where we were, what our assignment was, what happened, what we saw, what we heard, what we felt and give our perspective on the operation.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (01:13):
Even though everything went according to plan, we would do that one by one. And yes, it took time. And yes, sometimes it was annoying because most of the times when these operation happened, it would be somewhere between midnight and five in the morning. But it was such a powerful lesson on the value of perspective. Because even though we were by our own sense of identity, some of the most skilled people on the planet in doing what we did, it was such a powerful lesson on, on the fact that no matter how good you think you are, no matter how much you've learned on a topic, in whatever area of expertise you want to thrive in, you better be seeking perspective because this one habit that we did countless times throughout my career taught me five valuable lessons. Number one, just because somebody sees something or has a perspective about something that's different than yours.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (02:15):
It doesn't mean one of you has to be wrong. You could just have different perspectives on the same situation. The second thing is, even when you think everything is going just fine, it doesn't mean somebody close to you. Isn't having a different experience. Number three, leveraging perspective of those around you, who are committed to the same type of goal is a powerful recipe for improvement. Because number four, micro adjustments can be more valuable than big changes. I'm gonna say that again. Number four is micro adjustments. Meaning small changes, small adjustments can be way more powerful than big changes. And number five, being an outstanding leader is not about telling people what happened or telling people what's going to happen. It's about creating and facilitating an environment where they can discover those answers without you saying a word that's leadership. So I encourage you. If you wanna be an expert at something, you have to seek diversity of thought, you have to seek opinions other than what you're learning by yourself.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (03:31):
It's impossible to do it alone. And it's such a powerful leadership lesson because as leaders, we have to encourage diversity of thought more than we encourage unwavering compliance. Because your job as a leader, isn't to get people to listen to you, it's to empower people to be better today than they were yesterday and better tomorrow than they will be today. That's our job as leaders. That's our job as individuals always be seeking perspective other than your own leave a quick comment below. Let me know how you've been able to be more successful than you were by gathering perspective from someone other than yourself. I'd love to hear how you feel about this lesson and how it has helped you out in the past. Leave me a comment below. Did you like that episode? If you did go ahead and hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you're using to listen to this episode, that way each new episode gets delivered directly to you.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (04:34):
And second, go ahead and leave a quick five star rating and review and share this episode with two people that might also find it valuable, just like you did, because given that five star review and sharing an episode may seem like a very small thing, but in reality, it does make a big difference in helping more people get this message and helping us continue to give you more useful episodes. I appreciate you and I will see you soon. Hey, did you know if you have a question on leadership or life that you want to hear answered on, welcome to leadership. You can just ask, just send me a text message to 2 3 9 2 1 7 7 4 3 4. Again, that's 2 3 9 2 1 7 7 4 3 4. Or just head over to AaronKeithHawkins.com and hit the podcast question tab and send me your question. You just might hear your question answered on an upcoming episode.