Another Powerful Leadership Expert
Another great example of a leader is entrepreneur and LinkedIn expert Mike Shelah. I had the honor, privilege, and pleasure of grabbing coffee with him in Westminster, Maryland. Mike embodies all of these qualities of leadership and more. He certainly has had plenty of setbacks and disappointments, but he is a wholly positive person and a joy to speak with.
“After making decisions, true leaders are slow to change them,” Mike said. “As Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, says, ‘Seek to understand yourself and why you made particular decisions.’”
What Mike is saying here is that it’s fantastic to pursue opportunities to the fullest, but don’t change from one endeavor to another without a reason and purpose for doing so. I have lots of energy, and I’m constantly generating new ideas, but I make sure to stick with a project and see it through to completion. I tend not to jump around by choosing to channel my energy into a specific purpose. When you know why you chose a particular course of action, it will be more difficult for someone to deter you from your path (we all face countless external influences on a daily basis). When you become clear on your why, you can focus your energies on a single, important task.
Be flexible in your approach, but be deliberate about the decisions you make. Give yourself time and don’t let others rush you. Once you make a decision, be true to yourself and follow through.
From a leadership point of view, be aware of the “bright, shiny object syndrome” where it is easy to become so excited about new opportunities that you never see your ideas through to completion. Part of the process of becoming the expert yourself is to make a decision and then make your decision right, rather than endlessly worrying about making the right decision. This is the brilliance I picked up from talking to Mike.
I can speak to this because I’ve been there! I have an innate and true love for traveling, so for a while, I was bouncing back and forth between being a travel expert and being a leadership expert. I finally got sick and tired of the delay of indecision, so I thought, alright, cool – I’ve lived abroad, traveled the world, and genuinely had some ridiculously amazing travel experiences. But I’ll never be the “go-to” guy in the corporate market unless I put my whole heart and soul into it, instead of being half in travel and half in the corporate market.
Guess what happened? Businesses and corporations started seeing me as the authentic leadership expert. I’ve now spoken to businesses not only in the United States of America but also in Europe and Asia. But it wasn’t an easy process. It took a heck of a lot of leadership because I had to not only be 100% accountable for my thoughts, actions, and habits, but I had to cut out the outside world and listen to what my heart and soul were telling me to do. And you know what the beauty of it all is? I still travel all the time (as I write these words I’m 38,000 feet in the air, traveling home from Europe to the United States). You can have multiple passions, and you can pursue multiple things at the same time. Just be sure to have that one main focus.
Leaders ask themselves: What do I want the most? And how can what I want the most help others? Once you have that figured out, then live your values, create a vision, and go after it! It’s not always easy to do it in practice, but it’s a straightforward process. And it’s an ongoing endeavor, not a one-time thing.
This is what Mike means when he talks about leadership. When making a decision, make sure to do something for the right reasons. And then align your habits and daily actions to run with your decision. The world favors the bold. Leaders are courageous and go after what they want with full force.
“I took a sales job when I was younger,” Mike said, “and I didn’t vet it. It turned out to be one of the worst career moves I’ve ever made. The lesson I learned from that experience is to take a job because it makes you happy, not just for money or one of the million other reasons there are to take a job.”
I relate to Mike here because I, too, made the same mistake when I was younger. I got lied to in the interview about what the job would be like, so it wasn’t entirely my fault, but the lesson I learned from that experience is that you are vetting the company as much as they are vetting you.
This book is not a job interview handbook, but this was the perfect way to end the chapter: reminding you that leaders make decisions from within and for the right reasons. This is the essence of reaching your Mountaintop. Of all the different situations you will encounter in your life – good and bad, big and small – this is one of the most important tips to remember. Start with leading yourself by understanding yourself, and knowing why you do certain things. The more you know your why, the less external factors will be able to sway you astray. When you do this, things will start to flow beautifully for you.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of the award-winning book, Reach Your Mountaintop: 10 Keys to Finding the Hidden Opportunity in Your Setbacks, Flipping What You’ve Heard on Its Head, and Achieving Legendary Goals.
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