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Invest in Yourself

By Ryan Siebert

I wanted to take a timeout from informational homebuilding blogs to give a summary of my experience attending the 2017 Global Leadership Summit.  For those of you looking for the next best tip on how to complete your custom home project, be patient with me.  I’ll have a new post soon and we completed our second full podcast episode that you can listen to while you wait.  

To have success in life we have to be willing to invest.  The problem that many people face is where to invest.  As a home builder my instant reaction is to tell friends and family to invest in real estate.  Your best investment is and always will be your primary residence.  However, I digress.  If you want to be successful in life you have to invest in yourself.   
I took the opportunity to attend the 2017 Global Leadership Conference this year.   For only $200.00 I walked away with a year’s worth of notes to use for both my personal life and in business.  My wife will be happy that I’ve learned a few ideas to be a better husband.  My co-workers are probably rolling their eyes at the thought of my late night emails and new reasons to meet and talk about ways we can get better.  
It would not be doing justice to try and summarize the entire summit, so instead I’ll give you my favorite 3 ideas that I obtained:

Have a Dream – Belief – Vision

We all probably have goals that we are looking to accomplish.  The question you have to ask yourself is, can you truly identify your goals?  Better yet, do the people you work with know what your goals are?  I hate to even ask, but does your family know what your goals are?  Call it a dream, a set of beliefs, or a vision that you have, but if you have trouble identifying what it is that you are striving towards each day, then those around you won’t know where they are going.  As leaders we have to be willing to take the time to identify where we are at, and where we are going.  We further have to make sure that everyone knows the direction that we are headed.  This on the surface seems so simple, but so many times we get lost in the day to day fire drills that we never take the time to stop and clarify the direction.  This level of clarity will help everyone in your organization from the bottom person on the totem pole to the C level executives.  If you have trouble quickly identifying the dreams of your family or organization it is important you take the time to put your dreams to paper.

Be Transparent or Else

Being transparent doesn’t mean you are running around the office reviewing the monthly Profit and Loss with everyone.  Some people do not care about the financial details.  Here is what is important, giving everyone the opportunity to understand the decisions that are being made in the organization.  What this level of transparency will accomplish is two fold.

1. The cream will rise to the top.  The employees that do want to know and want to do something about the results will have the opportunity to shine.  Staying in the dark with results, good or bad, doesn’t allow your potential superstar players to show off their abilities.  Today’s society wants the opportunity to make a difference, whether it be financial, or impacting the masses.  
2. Vulnerability – Opening yourself up to the masses takes a pair of you know what.  Allowing others the opportunity to question systems, procedures, financials, marketing, or even the way you lead is hard.  Most of us do not care to know whether we are doing things right or wrong.  Allowing yourself to obtain that real and raw level of feedback will put your light years ahead of your competition in any industry.  

Appreciation 

When is the last time that you stopped what you were doing to appreciate your team?  When is the last time you recognized a team member for going above and beyond their required duties?  The people that you are leading need positive reinforcement.  If you are not taking time to recognize efforts in your work environment, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to be a great leader.  Quite possibly my favorite pointer was given by Andy Stanley, Pastor at North Point Ministries, who relayed the importance of replacing the word “How” with “Wow”.  How many times in meetings as leaders are we quick to show the room that we are in control by shooting down an idea by asking, “How in the world are we going to pull that off?”.  What if instead we took time to simply say, “Wow, tell me more.”  Giving our team members that immediate appreciation for the idea that took courage on their part to bring up and allowing them to dig deeper to describe more about it.  I can only imagine how many ideas I killed right away by asking “how” vs “wow”.  The more appreciation you can give to your team for their efforts, the more inspired they will be to go after their own personal goals.  

As I said, I could go on for quite a while here.  I’ll wrap it up with a strong recommendation to attend the GLS in 2018.