Stop Being the Leader with All the Answers - E65

Speaker A: Last time I asked you to do one thing before you touched another AI tool. Name the problem we're solving. Pick the one lever that moves it, and then keep your hand on it. And I made you a, ah, promise at the end. I said the next thing I wanted to show you is what the lever reveals about your organization the moment you pick it up. So pick it up. Here's what happens. You go looking for the one problem worth solving, and you find something you did not expect. Not the problem. The page underneath it. It is covered in marks you never saw before. Answers that your people already had. Opportunities that were sitting there the whole time. Dots already, uh, drawn in ink that you couldn't read under an ordinary light. The lever did not put them there. It simply turned on the light. That light has a name. And I didn't come up with it. A leader that I respect so tremendously handed it to me in one sentence on one call. She called it the Blacklight. And once you see what it does, you cannot lead the same way. So let's get into it. This is leadership unlocked. Let me describe something that you do, and you tell me if this is you. Someone brings you a problem, you are good at problems. That is part of how you got here. So you see the answer almost before they finish the sentence. And the fastest thing, the thing that feels like leadership, is to hand it to them. You say it, they nod, everybody moves on. It feels like value. Now, here's what it actually cost you. Every time you hand someone the answer, you teach them to come back for the next one. You become the place where answers live. Your people stop building the muscle to see for themselves, but you, because you keep seeing for them, the team gets faster this week and weaker this year. And you end up tired, holding a stack of answers that should be living in other people's heads. You have felt this. The line outside your door. The same questions slightly reworded. The sense that, uh, nothing moves unless it moves through you. This is not a sign that you are needed. This is a sign that you have been seeing for people instead of helping them see. Now pick up the lever and the cost compounds. Most leaders are using A.I. ah, the way they were taught to do the work as a faster way to do the things that already existed. They point the most powerful tool any leader has ever held at the tasks they can already see. And they get a small return on an enormous instrument. The real opportunities, the work that cannot be done before by anyone, at any price, stays invisible. Not because they are not there, because nobody Turned on the light. So here is the trap said very plainly. You are holding the most powerful lever that any leader has ever held, and you're pointing it at the answers you can already see instead of the ones on the page that you can't. And I want to give you the same permission that I gave you last time. The discomfort you feel, the sense you are supposed to be doing something with all of this and you're not sure what or why. That is not a gap in you. That is your judgment speaking. It is telling you that the answer was never the job. Seeing is the job. You do not need to invent more. You need to reveal what is already there. Let me tell you about a moment that someone handed me the words for that. She saw it before I did. I was on a call with a leader I have worked alongside of for the last several years. She's the CEO, uh, of an incredibly successful organization. One of the strongest leaders I've had the privilege to serve. The kind of person who is better at her own business than I will ever be and better than she gives herself credit for. I serve on her board, and we talk often. We were not in a coaching session. We were just talking. And. And in the middle of it, she stopped to describe what it's like to work with me. I didn't ask her to. She just reached for an image. She said, what I appreciate about working with you is that if somebody handed me a piece of paper, the dots are already written on, uh, it. And then she said, the thing that really stuck with me. She goes, what you do, Dusty, is give me the black light that lets me see them. And I was sitting there going, ooh, that's kind of cool. That's really good, because it was. And she kept going. She said, uh, the dots are existing. They're already there. They are relevant. They are meaningful. They're already on the page. She just can't always see them clearly. And when someone like me comes into the picture and hands her the black light, it's like suddenly the page just makes so much more sense. It's like everything becomes very, very clear. When someone brings me a problem, the answer shows up in my head. And there's a part of me that just wants to say it. I want to be the one with the answer. The discipline of asking instead of telling is not natural to me. I had to build it on purpose and against my own instinct, because I learned that what people reach on their own, they own, and what they own, they actually do. She named that, too, on the on the same call, she said I have never given her an answer. She says it forces the leader to dig down and figure out what they're actually struggling with. Then she told me the part that mattered the most. She said she had started asking those same questions of herself. What is it I am really trying to do? Why am I really frustrated? What is the root? That's the whole game. The light does not stay in my hands. It becomes hers. So I want you to sit, uh, with what happened on that call. She did not just describe the skill, she used it. She held the light up on our own working relationship and named what was already there. That is who I am talking to right now. Not someone who needs the answer. Someone sharp enough to see what is already on the page and say it out loud. Let me give you the three part frame that I lead with, and it's the one that she named. First off, your job is not to invent the answer. Your job is to reveal what is already on the page. The dots belong to the other person. The opportunity is already sitting in your business. You are not the source of the answer. You are the source of the light. So the first component here, walk in as the light, not the answer. And here's the belief underneath this. And I will say it the way I actually say it to myself. But before I get on a call with a client or before I speak with anyone about their leadership challenges, I walk in and I think this person is better at what they do than I could ever be. So my job is not to tell them what to do. My job is to help them see what they cannot currently see. I want to say that again. My job is to help them see what they cannot currently see. When I think about this, it changes the entire posture. You stop walking into the room as the person with the answers. You walk in as the person who turns on the light. You are not the source of the answer. You are the source of the light. The second component to embrace is this idea that the discipline is restraint. Now, it's the hard part. And it's hard precisely because you are good. You can connect the dots for people. So can I. We see it, and that is the trap. The skill is not seeing the answer. You already see the answer. The skill is choosing not to hand it over, choosing to ask the question that lets them see it for themselves. Because the answer that I give you, you forget by Thursday. The answer that you reach yourself, you own, and what you own, you act on. That is the discipline. You do not ask because you do not know. You ask because they need to know it in their own words, with their own hands. The restraint is the entire skill. The light only works if you hold your tongue long enough for it to do its job. And the third component that I use is this idea that it's the same light in a different room. Let me hold this image up one more time. Because it does real work. A black light does not write anything on the page. It does not add. It reveals ink that was already there, invisible under ordinary light. That is what you're doing when you ask the right question. You are not adding to your people. You are revealing them to themselves. Now, the same light works in two different rooms. Point it at a person and you reveal the answer they already had. Put it at your own work in this new era, and you reveal the opportunity that was already sitting there. The work that could not be done before at any price. The thing nobody on your team is looking at yet because everyone is heads down, using the most powerful tools in history to do the tasks that they could already do. The leader who knows how to ask the question that helps a person see their own dots is the same leader who can ask it of a tool. What becomes possible here that was not possible before? It's the same light. It's just being applied in a different room. Most leaders don't need more advice. They simply need clarity. That's what the Vision to Victory Scorecard is all about. It's free, it's fast, and it gives you a clear picture of where you are and what's next. Start now at clarity alignment, execution.com. let's make sure that your next step forward is the right one. Let me show you what that looks like in a second room. I sat down recently with the CEO who has 18,000 contacts in his database. This is not a vague market of millions of people. There are 18,000 specific named decision makers sitting right there in his system and a team that could not get to them often enough. So most of that list, it just sat there. I couldn't tell him what to do. I don't know what he should do. But I asked him one question. What signal is already in that data that could tell you which of those 18,000 is ready to move right now? And you could watch that question land. He said it out loud. If we just get really good at paying attention to signal, we can target the right minority within those 18,000. We can speak to them at exactly the right moment. Our, uh, prior method, call them sequentially. Now pay attention to the Signal and the noise so that we can do something that's never been done. We can reach out to the right person at the right time with the right message. That opportunity was not something I gave him. It was already on the page because he knows his business so exceedingly well. 18,000 dots on the page. No one had, uh, turned on the light. We're talking about 5, 10, $20 million of value, and he was sitting on top of it, not seeing it. I did not hand him the answer. I simply handed him the black light. The dots were his. They were on his page the entire time. Time point the light at a person or at the work. It's the same light in a different room. And that's the bridge I want you to hold on to. The thing that clients keep naming about how I lead is not a coaching trick. It is the perception skill that sits underneath everything. I made the case on the show that your leadership matters more now, not less, because the principles do not expire. This is the principle that comes before all of them. Before clarity, before alignment, before any of it. There is sight. The black light comes first. The ability to share with others, to expose to others the dots that are already on the page. So how do you actually do this on a Monday or in the real world? Let me make this very, very concrete. Um, here's the exercise I like to use, and I'm calling this the blacklight rule. You can run it for a week, and starting with your very next conversation. The rule is simple. In any conversation where someone brings you a problem, you ask three questions before you offer one answer. Step 1. Ask one question first, and then simply go quiet. You can try this in your next conversation. Start with one question. Just one. The next time someone walks in with a problem, before you say a single word of solution, ask them this. What do you already know about this that you have not said out uh, loud yet? Then stop talking. Let it be quiet long enough that it gets a little uncomfortable, because the silence is the light. The silence is what lets them find the dot on their own page. If you feel the silence, you take the light away. Step two. Track your blacklight score. Just do this for a week. I want you to track one number across one week. Count how often the person reaches the answer for themselves before you give it. That number is your blacklight score, and I'll tell you what to expect. If you're very good at your job, your score starts low. That is the point. You are good. You are so good that you've been able to answer These questions for years. Watch the number climb as you learn to hold back. The climb is you becoming the light instead of the answer. And step three, carry the light to your AI work and do this in the same week. Do this right now. Carry that same light into the other room, the non human room, your AI work. Before you ask a, uh, tool to do a task that you already do, ask one different question first. What becomes possible here that was not possible before at any price? Write down whatever surfaces. Do not judge it, just write it. That list is where your net new opportunity lives. Not in doing the old work faster, but in the work that was never possible until now that you can finally see because you turn the light on. And if this feels slower than just answering it or just going right to the solution, it is for the first week. And, um, that's the cost of building the muscle. You are trading a fast answer today for a team that sees for itself every week hereafter. That is the whole practice. Three questions before one answer with a person. With the tool, it's the same light in different rooms. You can run the first one of these in your very next conversation. Today, you do not need better answers. You have plenty of answers. So do your people. So does the page in front of you right now. The marks are already there. Do not hand them your answer. Hand others the black light. Help them see the dots that are already on their page. Shine the light so you can see the dots and connect the opportunities that were never before possible. In our prior episode, we named the problem we're solving, and we picked up the lever. This week, we're talking about what the lever reveals. It's the same hand. It's the same discipline. It's just one turn deeper. Next, I want to take this black light into another room. Because once you can see the opportunity, you still have to leave the tools that chase it. You can't unsee these opportunities once they're there. So our next episode is about running these tools the way you run a team and the way you actually lead. Managing A.I. uh, like people, not like software. Until then, focus on handing someone the black light so they can see the dots on their page. Hey, before you go, if this episode helped you see leadership differently, I have three personal requests. First, and this is the most important one. Share this with one leader who needs it. Think of someone in your network who's frustrated with their team's execution or is trying to scale their own impact. Copy this episode link right now and text them. Hey, I just listened to this episode. And I think you'll get real value from it. That simple act of sharing that is servant leadership in action. Second, subscribe to Leadership Unlocked. Whether you're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player, just hit subscribe or the follow button. That way you won't miss the next episode and it helps us reach more leaders like you. And third, if you're willing, this would be a huge help for us. 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