Dave Anderson's Blog, page 16

Sales VP to Entrepreneur – Leadership Lessons interview with Mario Martinez Jr on IMPACT Talk Radio

Dave Anderson interviews Social Selling Evangelist Mario Martinez Jr. Topic: Leaving Corporate Leadership and Leading as an Entrepreneur. (30 minutes)

Social Selling Evangelist and Keynote speaker Mario Martinez of M3Jr Growth Strategies. Learn more at www.m3jr.com.

All past and current podcasts also available on iTunes. (Over 5 Million downloads to date!)

Please rate us on iTunes as well!

Other resources -free PDF downloads of character-based interview questions are available at Overwhelmedmanagersguide.com.

Listen Here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.toginet.com/podcasts/impacttalkradio/ImpactTalkRadioLIVE_2016-05-25.mp3

Or download the podcast by clicking here and listen later!

Stop Reacting! Start Leading!

Listen to IMPACT Talk Radio today for no fluff, straight talking solutions designed to IMPACT high IMPACT leaders who want to lead high IMPACT Teams. Every show goes beyond theory and gets into HOW to make an IMPACT that matters.

A Tribute: To A Fallen Friend And Hero

My best friend, Donnie Tillar convinced me to go to West Point.  He was a year older than I was.  Thanks to his persuasiveness I joined my childhood friend as part of the Corps of Cadets.  This is a Memorial Day tribute to Donnie.

This is worth reposting annually.

Donnie And Dave Graduation Day

In February of 1991, Donnie’s Blackhawk helicopter was shot down in the last hours of Operation Desert Storm.  It took a few weeks before I got the word  in a letter from my father.  We did not have email then.

I kept a journal while I was part of Operation Desert Storm.  Below is an entry from my journal on March 14th, 1991.  I was a young, brash and broken 25 year old 1st Lieutenant in the Field Artillery when I wrote this.

I read this journal entry at a memorial service I organized with some high school friends.  The only other time I have shared this was at a Veteran’s Day Chapel service at my kids school.

I now share it every Memorial Day Weekend here.

Day 151 In Country       14 March 1991

Today I cried, I screamed, I shook and a part of me died.  I got a letter from Dad telling me that Donnie Tillar had been killed when his Blackhawk was shot down over Iraq.  The details are sketchy as to when and what mission he was doing.

I’m just so shook up by the whole incident.  Donnie and I go back to 7th grade.  We were inseparable. He’s the closest I ever came to having a brother.  Dad said he learned in Vietnam that it was always the best ones who got hurt.  Now I know the true cost of war.

In a way, I idolized Donnie.  He could accomplish anything he wanted to.  He was the best athlete I ever knew.  He could play any sport.  He was smart.  He made Dean’s List constantly at West Point without really seeming to try.  He could dance.  Man could he dance.  The ladies loved him.  I loved him.  I still do.

When I heard, I couldn’t stop sobbing.  I grabbed my Walkman and walked about 2 KMs.  Then for about an hour and a half I just walked in circles.  I yelled, I cried, and I sang.  I was listening to the Rolling Stones Hot Rocks.  Donnie loved The Stones.  I sang at the top of my lungs, by myself in the middle of the Arabian Desert.  I talked to Donnie.  

After a while, my mind turned to our adventures together.  I began to smile.  Then I found myself laughing and crying at the same time.  If that is possible.

I returned to my vehicle in a state of numbness.  But I began to tell everyone and anyone, Donnie and Dave stories.  They just came flowing out of me.  When Donnie and I got his parents’ car stuck in the snow ON TOP OF THE SKI SLOPE.  Donnie and I driving away on his motorcycle with a case of champagne after work at the Hotel Thayer.  Donnie and my trips to Stowe skiing and the hell we put his Dad through.  And, the story about whenever we’d go out Mrs. Tillar would roll her eyes when she found out he would be with me, while my mother did the same when she knew I’d be with him.

Now the beat goes on.  I’ll be telling people about my best friend Donnie Tillar for the rest of my life.  My first son will be named after a true hero and a true friend.  Donaldson Preston Tillar III.

I am going to have a party for him.  In his honor, I want to gather his old friends and old loves together for a big blowout.  He’d love to be there.  But, he’ll be in a much better place.  All we can do is raise our glasses and drink a couple for a man who touched all of us.  A man with a penchant for fun.  A man we will all miss.  A man I will fondly remember as the brother I never had.

Post Script:

I have a 19 year old son named:  James Donaldson Anderson.  He and his twin sister were born 6 years to the day (March 14, 1997) after I originally wrote this journal entry.

In November 2012, Donnie’s younger sister Lani got married.  I had the honor of officiating her wedding and being with her whole family.  Donnie was there too.  We all felt him.

Remember our fallen heroes and their families.  Not just on Memorial Day, but every day in your prayers.

 

Character – Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

There is really only one person on earth who truly knows your character – YOU. All of us have strengths and weaknesses in our character. But do we stop and really look at ourselves in the mirror?

We have developed the My Mirror Character Assessment for just that purpose. You will get a snapshot of your character in as little as five minutes and it is FREE!

Take it now: http:/mycharactertest.com

The catch is – you have to be honest with yourself when you answer the 18 questions that make up the assessment. No one else is going to see the results. We are not storing them anywhere. You will get immediate feedback and also an email with your results for your own records.

Leaders of Character are needed in our culture. When you look at most leadership failures, most of them are, in fact character failures. The failure wasn’t the result of someone not knowing HOW to do his/her job. The failure was usually a result of a character weakness.

Yet we keep training leaders on more and more management skills, but we ignore the essential issue of character.

Our goal is to help grow leaders who believe character is #1 and change businesses, change families and change our culture as a result!

We are rolling out the My Mirror Character Assessment (http:/mycharactertest.com) prior to the launch of our new book Becoming a Leader of Character – Six Habits that Make or Break a Leader at Work and at Home.

If you take the assessment and identify a Habit of Character you want to work on, we believe you will find Becoming a Leader of Character a valuable resource to help guide you.

Take the My Mirror Character Assessment now! It may expose something about your character that needs work. You won’t know for sure until you invest the 5 minutes required to answer the questions and get instant feedback.

It’s Free!  http:/mycharactertest.com

If you like the My Mirror Character Assessment, there are buttons at the bottom of the assessment for you to share it with people on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and email. Please help us spread the word about this unique assessment.

Our goal is to change the conversation about leadership to a conversation about character!

The Hypocrisy that Limits Your Ability to Lead

Most people do not look in the mirror and think – hypocrite. But, if we pick and choose when we act with Integrity, what should we call ourselves? Answer: Hypocrites

Part time Integrity is not really Integrity. It is hypocrisy.  If we only choose Integrity when it is easy, what are we? Answer:  Hypocrites.

The root word is Integer – which means whole or pure. That means if Integrity is not a Habit of Character we exercise in the hard decisions AND the easy decisions, we are probably damaging our ability to lead at work and at home.

It all boils down to a choice. Do we choose the easy path or the path less travelled? Do we choose hypocrisy or do we choose Integrity?

The Choices We All Face

Our character is the some total of our habits – the good habits and the bad habits. Our habits are formed based on our choices. Each time we make a choice, it makes it easier to make that same choice again.

Each time we choose hypocrisy, it makes it easier to choose it again. Each time we choose Integrity it becomes easier to choose Integrity the next time as well. The issue comes down to our choices when we are tempted to take the easy route.

Do I choose to allow someone to be deceived about my role in a team’s success, or do I proactively clarify things?
Do I choose to move to the front of the line, or offer the spot to someone who was waiting longer?
Do I choose to bend the rules to make my life easier, or do I follow the letter of the law and not cut corners?
Do I choose to blame traffic for being late, or do I claim responsibility for leaving the house late?

All of these choices have an effect on our character. The size of the choices or the consequences implicit in those choices is not important. If I choose anything other than Integrity, then I should rightly see myself as a hypocrite.

The Easy Choices
“If doing the right thing were easy, everyone would be doing it.”
– My dad (The General)

The fast track to hypocrisy is to consistently choose the path of least resistence. The pragmatic decision, the decision to do what would make our lives easier, is frequently the wrong choice when it comes to our character.

The 12 Word definition of Integrity we present in our book Becoming a Leader of Character (click here to preorder) is:

Doing what is good and right and proper, even at personal cost.

If the only time we choose the right thing is when it can’t hurt us, we can’t call ourselves a person of Integrity.

The Hard Choices

Integrity is not forged in the easy choices. It is forged in the hard choices. Without developing the habit of choosing the harder right instead of the easier wrong, we will all succumb and become the hypocrites we never dreamed of ourselves to be.

It is hard to be the person who stands alone in a crowd of people who all want to make the easier choice. It is hard to put ourselves at a disadvantage because we chose the harder path of Integrity. But it is the habit of making these hard choices that creates a leader of Integrity other people want to follow.

The Bottom Line:

The choice between hypocrisy and Integrity presents itself everyday. The opportunity to build up our character or tear it down is always in front of us.

Whether we are hypocrites or Leaders of Character depends on our daily choices – the big choices and the small choices.

Choosing Integrity does not always bring tangible rewards.  Most of the time the only reward is an inward one.  We have just become a stronger leader with stronger character.

The choice is ours: Hypocrisy or Integrity

If you want to look at yourself in the mirror and determine where your strengths and weaknesses may be, click on the following link and spend 5 minutes evaluating your own character.  IT’S FREE!

We call it the My Mirror Character Assessment.  No one will see your results but you.  You will get them instantly and also via email.

http:/mycharactertest.com

Please give us feedback on the assessment.  We will be promoting it from now on, and we ask you to share it with others as well via the social media buttons at the end of the assessment.

Question:

What choice – large or small- do you face that will test your Integrity today?

One Thing That Kills Trust

Who do I trust? And why do I trust them?  There are a lot of things that play a role in whom I trust.

Integrity, consistency, and reliability are just a few.  I trust people who display these attributes – most of the time.  However, even the most honest, consistent and reliable person will lose my trust if they are arrogant.

Humility inspires trust.  Arrogance creates doubt.
Doubt kills trust.

How Arrogance Creates Doubt

I have run into many arrogant people in my life.  In fact, I am sure some people in my past believe I am the pot calling the kettle black!  If any of you are reading this right now, I apologize.  I am a work in progress, and I hope I have grown in this area.

I just illustrated one of the ways I have tried to grow in this area – admitting failure.  Too many people have a hard time admitting failure or weaknesses.  It’s ironic really.  Most of us are good at identifying fault in others, but refuse to see it or admit it in ourselves. 

What message do we send to others when we never admit mistakes, weaknesses or ask for forgiveness?

Perfection.
If I never own up to being fallible, then I must think I am infallible!

That is logical conclusion most people will make.  The thing is, everyone knows I am fallible.  Only one guy in history was ever perfect and everyone knows I am not him!

Therefore, if they all know I am fallible, yet I portray myself as infallible I will cause them to doubt.

“I know he makes mistakes, so what is Dave covering up?”
“Who is he when I am not looking?”
“What hasn’t he told me?”
“Who is he going to try to blame instead?”

It does not matter how honest I may be.  It does not matter how consistent I may be.  It does not matter how reliable I may be.  People will doubt because they will see me as arrogant.

A Scary Yet Related Story

I taught High School Boys Sunday School class for a couple of years.  One day as we were talking about the subject of forgiveness, I asked my 20 guys a question.

“How many of you have ever heard your parents apologize to you for a mistake they made that affected you?”

One hand went up.  Only one. Scary.

We wonder why teenagers and young adults have a hard time owning up to their mistakes?  Is it because it was not modeled for them at home?

We wonder why teenagers and young adults don’t trust their parents and/or rebel?  Is it because they know we are fallible people acting like we are infallible? Is it because the hypocracy of our actions makes them doubt us and trust is killed?

People Trust Humility

It takes Humility to own up to our failures.  Most people don’t expect their boss, their spouse, their parent or their friend to be perfect.  So why portray ourselves that way?

Not admitting my weaknesses or my failures is a habit.  The good news is we can create a new habit one decision at a time.  I know from experience.

It was not easy the first time I said to my wife, “It’s my fault.  I was wrong.  Please forgive me.”  It was not easy the first time I did it with my boss or my sales team either.

However, just like any other decision in life, each time I made that choice, it made it easier to make the same choice the next time.  Each time I admitted a mistake, it stung my pride a little less.

I decided I wanted to be trusted by my family, my friends and my collegues at work. It didn’t happen overnight, but my willingness to admit my faults changed our relationships.

The development of Humility is just one of the Habits of Character we dig into in our new book:

Becoming a Leader of Character

Six Habits that Make or Break a Leader at Work and at Home

(Preorder here:  bit.ly/LOCBook)

The Bottom Line:

I don’t believe people think I am hiding anything any more.  I believe my willingness to admit my failures, weaknesses and mistakes has created a level of trust that I never achieved when I was acting infallible.

All it took for me was to begin saying, “It’s my fault.  I was wrong.  Please forgive me.” 

This is not a theory.  This worked for me.  I know it changed many of my most important relationships at home and at work.  Try it.

Humility inspires trust.  Arrogance creates doubt.
Doubt kills trust.
Question:

Who needs to know you are fallible?

The Pride that Limits Your Ability to Lead

Humility or arrogance? As leaders if we believe we are the most important person in any situation, we begin to limit our own ability to lead.

Our culture seems to celebrate the arrogance of leaders who pound their chests and promote their own accomplishments. But a Leader of Character is a counter-culture leader because a Leader of Character chooses Humility instead of arrogance. The choice is ours.

The Choice

Do we choose to argue with people instead of admitting we blew it? Do we choose to avoid asking for help, when we are struggling? Do we choose to formulate rebuttals instead of truly listening to another person? Do we choose to behave like we have it all figured out instead of constantly searching for ways to grow?

The choice is ours.

The Cultural Choice – Look at me!

Many people believe that Humility is a sign of weakness. They believe that people will think less of them if they choose to act with Humility. Therefore, their pride takes over and arrogance steps in.

“If I don’t toot my own horn, who will?”
“If I make a mistake, they will think less of me.”
“This isn’t arrogance, it is confidence.”
“If I show a weakness, I will be less respected.”
“I have been doing it this way for a long time, I am not changing now.”
“I need to get my way here, or else I will look weak.”
“I never questioned my leaders and neither should my people.”

To be a humble Leader of Character we need to put aside our instincts, our sinful natures, and the voices of the culture and realize:

As leaders – It is never about us!

The Counter-culture Choice – It’s not about me!

The definition of Humility we use in our book Becoming A Leader of Character (bit.ly/LOCBook) is:

Believing and acting like “It’s not about me.”

A Leader of Character does not see Humility as a sign of weakness but a quiet declaration of strength.

They understand:

It is the arrogant leader who refuses to ask for help or admit mistakes.
It is the arrogant leader that needs to have the attention and win every argument.
It is the arrogant leader who demands the spotlight and craves recognition.
It is the arrogant leader who fears what others might think if he fails or admits a weakness.

Humility is a countercultural approach to leadership. The brash and the bold leaders are constantly getting the headlines or are seen pounding their chests in professional sports. But, who really wants to follow an arrogant leader?

The Leader of Character understands that he can be humble and confident at the same time. They know that sometimes the people doing the most to promote their own accomplishments or abilities are often the most insecure. In fact, the people they are trying to lead see that as well.

The Bottom Line:

We all have a choice between Humility and arrogance. When we begin to make choices in order to place ourselves in the center of the story, we have become an arrogant leader and limited our impact on the people we wish to lead.

To be a Leader of Character, we must overcome the ugly pride that wells up inside of all of us. Each time we beat back the beast of pride and choose Humility, we improve our ability to lead with character.

Pride places us right in the middle of our cultural norms and makes us just one of the ever growing crowd of people leading with arrogance.

Humility makes us a countercultural Leader of Character. We will be the rare leader who does not need the spotlight, will admit mistakes and be on a constant search to get better.

The choice is ours.

Who would you rather follow?

Question:

Why do you think so many people believe they need to have the spotlight?

Why Do People Follow You? Interview #2 w/ author and Sales Gravy CEO – Jeb Blount & Dave Anderson on IMPACT Talk Radio

Dave Anderson interviews best selling author Jeb Blount. Topic: Why Do People Follow You? (30 minutes)

Jeb Blount is the CEO of Sales Gravy (www.salesgravy.com) and the best selling author of People Follow You along with 6 other best sellers.

All past and current podcasts also available on iTunes. (Over 5 Million downloads to date!)

Please rate us on iTunes as well!

Other resources -free PDF downloads of character-based interview questions are available at Overwhelmedmanagersguide.com.

Listen Here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.toginet.com/podcasts/impacttalkradio/ImpactTalkRadioLIVE_2016-05-11.mp3

Or download the podcast by clicking here and listen later!

Stop Reacting! Start Leading!

Listen to IMPACT Talk Radio today for no fluff, straight talking solutions designed to IMPACT high IMPACT leaders who want to lead high IMPACT Teams. Every show goes beyond theory and gets into HOW to make an IMPACT that matters.

The Fear That Limits Your Ability to Lead

Courage or Cowardice? It is the leader’s choice. There is no middle ground. Leaders are constantly confronted with choices that will expose us as a coward or a courageous Leader of Character.

What do we do when we are faced with uncertainty?
What do we do when we are faced with a situation that makes us uncomfortable?
What do we do when we are faced with saying what someone wants to hear versus something they need to hear?

Our choices when we face our fears define who we are as a leader.

The choices we make when fear raises it’s ugly head determines the impact we will have on those we lead. These are not easy choices, but they are the choices we all face as leaders.

The Easy Choice – Do Nothing

We can choose the easy route. The easy thing to do in many cases is to let our fears make our decisions for us.

“I don’t know how he will react.”
“I trust very few people.”
“I’m just not good at confrontation.”
“I’m too young to say anything.”
“I don’t know how it will turn out.”
“I’ve never done this before.”
“I don’t know him.”
“She never reacts well in these situations.”
“I might lose my job.”
“I might lose my friend.”
“Nobody else is doing anything about it.”

Therefore, we do nothing. Fear has won the day. We have lost an opportunity to grow and do the right thing. We have also limited our ability to lead moving forward in the future.

The Hard Choice – Acting with Courage

Leaders of Character will have a lot of the same reservations as those who make the easier choice. But instead they decide to exercise Courage. Courage is the fulcrum that defines a leader’s character.

Without Courage, Integrity is impossible. If we only do the right thing when it easy or there is no risk involved, that is not Integrity, that is pragmatism. The Courage to make the hard choices leaders are faced with determines whether we are a Leader of Character.

Without Courage, Selflessness is impossible. To be selfless, we must be willing to give up our desires or comfort for the good of someone else. We must have the Courage to have a hard conversation with an employee, spouse, or child. If fear prevents us from speaking up, then fear has convinced us our own comfort is more important than the other person.

In Becoming a Leader of Character – Six Habits that Make or Break a Leader at Work and at Home, Courage is the first habit addressed because it is so vital to each of us becoming a Leader of Character.

Pre-order Becoming a Leader of Character here: bit.ly/LOCBook

The Bottom Line:

Few of us picture ourselves as cowards. But what are we if we let fear make our choices for us? Leaders of Character do not have a magic pill or some special power that helps them make those hard choices. They just have more practice at making those choices.

Practice Courage in the small things and your character will be prepared when you need Courage in the big things in life.

All of us can develop the habit of Courage by making the hard choices instead of the easier choices. The more we make a choice, the easier it is to make that same choice again. That is how all habits are formed – one choice at a time.

Each time I choose to act with Courage the easier it is to make the same choice again. Conversely, each time I choose to let fear make my decisions, it makes it easier to do that again as well.

Leaders must have the Courage to make hard choices whether it is at work or at home. Developing the Habit of Character called Courage will do more to impact your ability to lead than any MBA course ever will.

Question:

What small daily decisions challenge our Courage and therefore our ability to lead?

Corporate Culture Left Adrift

84% of employees do not believe their company’s culture is widely upheld according to a study by the Aberdeen Group.  The startling thing is the numbers are only slightly better for executives who answered that same survey – 81% admitted they are not doing a good job upholding the company culture.  These are the people who are responsible for reinforcing the culture!

A ship left adrift rarely ends up in port.  That ship usually ends up on the reef.

The irony occurs when you see in another survey by Deloitte where 88% of employees and 94% of executives said they believe a defined work place culture is important business success.

Who’s Steering The Ship?

If the leaders are not in engaged in the culture of an organization, no one will be.  Saying my company has a strong culture, but doing nothing to build or reinforce it is like saying I want to lose weight, but continuing to eat fried chicken and barbeque ribs.

Just saying something is important to me, doesn’t make it important.  The importance of something is actually confirmed by my actions. 

What Do Leaders Demonstrate?

When my actions work against my proclaimed priorities and values, they aren’t truly my priorities and values.  When I discuss culture with my client organizations I actually use the term Organizational Character.

When culture is discussed in business publications too often the focus is on the décor of the office, casual Fridays and paid time off.  These are perks.  People can have great perks and work in an ugly corporate culture.

Organizational Character is a term I’ve heard my father, General Jim Anderson, use for over a decade now in his talks with multiple Fortune 500 organizations.  He defines Organizational Character as:

Organizational Character
An organization’s demonstrated values.

An organization’s proclaimed values have no influence on the character of the organization unless these values are demonstrated by everyone who carry that business card.

Leaders Go First

The first people who must demonstrate the values claimed by the organization are the people at the top of the organizational chart.  Without leaders who act in accordance with the values of the company, the organization will likely drift toward another set of values (and rarely are they good ones).

When the leaders do not embrace, reinforce and guard the core values of an organization, the organization will drift with the current until it lands on another set of values.

How Do Leaders Go First?

Leaders must be intentional.  The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that a system left to itself tends to breakdown.  Leaders must not leave the company culture/character unattended!

Define The Values:  What does good look like?  What do the organization’s values look like in action?  Here is an example. This is a company I worked with on defining their values. Below is their company’s description of what integrity looks like for them:

Integrity In Practice

We will keep our promises to our customers and each other.
We will only ask of others the things we expect of ourselves.
We will own our weaknesses and mistakes by eliminating excuses from our vocabulary.
We will choose the moral and right thing to do even if it costs us personally and financially.
We will tell people what we think they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

Communicate The Values Frequently:  Values should go beyond the website or bulletin board.  They must be communicated in both the written and the verbal mediums.  A once a year mention at a yearly leadership retreat is not adequate.

Hire For Values:  An individual’s values need to be aligned with the values of the organization.  Interviews and reference checks need to dig into specific areas in order to confirm that alignment.

Fire For Values:  If an employee demonstrates an unwillingness to demonstrate the values the organization professes, that person needs to go.

The Bottom Line:

Saying something is important does not make it important.  Though 94% of executives believe that having a good work culture improves performance, only 16% of employees believe they work in a place where that is demonstrated.

An organization’s culture is like a giant battleship.  It is not going to turn on a dime.  But once the captain at the helm makes the choice to turn the wheel, the ship will follow.

The great news is, once it is heading in the right direction, the battleship just like a company’s culture, has a lot of momentum and is hard to stop.  It only takes the decision of the people in the wheel house to begin that process.

Question:

What are some other ways leaders can positively affect the culture of the teams they lead?

To download more resources for building a winning culture click here:

The Overwhelmed Manager’s Guide to a Winning Culture

Why a Good Leader Can Make a Bad Decision

It happens everywhere, and we are all vulnerable. In business, in the military, in non-profits and in churches good leaders succumb to a temptation. Every leader is vulnerable including me and you.

I am talking about moral decisions. Decisions that ruin our credibility, our reputations and our moral authority. The public is shocked. Our friends are surprised. And our family may be devastated. 

Why does someone with a good track record for acting with character decide to take the wrong path in some situations?  I believe it has to do with exercise. Leaders become vulnerable because they forget that character is a muscle that needs to be exercised.

Exercising To Avoid Injury

The muscles in your body grow weaker without exercise. As I have aged, I find that without exercise, my back becomes vulnerable. I may feel fine for a few weeks or months without doing the exercises I know I should do to strengthen my back.

But a day of reckoning will come. A day when I try to lift something heavy and BAM. My back is out. I made myself vulnerable because I had not been focused on staying fit.

I made multiple small decisions over the preceding weeks to not do the right thing – exercise. As a result, my muscles became weaker and without warning, I injure myself.

Exercising Character

Our character is the same way. Without exercise, we become vulnerable. We may have a history of wise decisions that demonstrate our Integrity, our Selflessness and our sense of Duty.

But we may become lax and begin to ignore the small decisions in our lives.  When we tell a fib, put ourselves first, or avoid a part of our job we hate. It is similar to not exercising at the gym.

Our muscles will atrophy and lose strength. Then when a big test comes, we are not ready. We make a decision and find ourselves in a situation of our own making, that shocks everyone including ourselves.

If we tell ourselves that a “little white lie” is no big deal, we are setting ourselves up for a bigger failure in our character later. If we allow ourselves to slip away from exercising our Integrity, Selflessness or Duty in the small things, we will not be ready when the big test comes.

If you have never bench pressed 100 pounds, what makes you think you will be able to bench press 250 pounds? If you used to bench press 250 pounds and quit working out, would you expect to be able to lift that same weight again if tested? Probably not.

Six Character Muscles

There are six Habits of Character that my father, General Jim Anderson and I focus on in our upcoming book, Becoming a Leader of Character. Those habits include Courage, Humility, Integrity, Selflessness, Duty and Positivity.

Each of these Habits of Character is like a muscle. If you are in the habit of exercising them daily and weekly, you will be less likely to succumb to the negative temptations everyone faces.

But if you ignore those muscles, those areas of your character, you will be similar to someone who is bench pressing for the first time, or the first time in weeks or months. You may not be strong enough to perform the task at hand or you may even injure yourself.

The Bottom Line

Exercise is never easy. Consistent exercise will develop our muscles – our character – to the point where we are strong, fit and less vulnerable. However, if we get away from what kept us fit in the past, we are setting ourselves up for the failures in character, the bad decisions, that every leader will be tempted to make.

At the end of every chapter in Becoming a Leader of Character, we provide a list of exercises that can strengthen each of the six Habits of Character. These are daily and weekly exercises that are designed to prepare you for the temptations to come and help all of us avoid the downfall that weakened character muscles can create in even the best leaders.

Preorders for Becoming a Leader of Character – Six Habits that Make or Break a Leader at Work and at Home have just opened up on Amazon. Click on the link below to order now:

bit.ly/LOCBook

Other retailers like Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, and Powell’s Books will sell Becoming a Leader of Character as well.

Question:

Which Habit of Character do you think makes leaders most vulnerable if they ignore exercising it – Courage, Humility, Integrity, Selflessness, Duty, or Positivity?