Start Here! - Leadership When Plans Break

Narrator: Everyone talks about summer like it's supposed to be carefree. But if this season brings up money, stress, body stress, family stress, or social stress, that's real too. Grow Therapy can help with that. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person visits, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com booknow to get started. That's growththerapy.com booknow growththerapy.com booknow availability and coverage by state and insurance plan.

Chris: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Northbound podcast. I'm your host, Chris, and today I want to start with a story about a decision. It was a momentous decision. It was D Day, June 6, 1944, and General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Insisted on being in the first wave landing at Utah Beach. Now, uh, General Roosevelt was older than most of the men. He was 56 years old. He walked with a cane. He didn't have to be there at all. He actually had a fairly bad heart condition and severe arthritis. But he wanted to be there. He believed that if he went in with the first wave, it would steady the men, it would boost morale. And he is remembered as plainly saying, I'd love to do it. And so he actually was told he couldn't. And then he argued and he really fought back and said, no, I need to be there. I need to land on the beach with my men. And so he was finally allowed to do it. But when they did land at Utah beach, it's an incredible story, but they realized that something was wrong, and that is that the currents had pushed their boats almost a mile off course. And so they were not where they were supposed to be. And in that moment, they had a choice. Do we delay? Do we redirect? Do we hesitate? Or do we just move? And Roosevelt, he. He looked at that situation and he looked up and down the beach. They could see way down the beach, about a mile down the beach where they should have been. And Roosevelt looked at that situation. He said, we'll start the war from right here year. And that sentence is leadership or it just sums up powerful, strong, bold leadership. And it's not because everything went according to plan. In fact, it didn't go to plan. And today I want to talk about what it takes to make decisions like that, especially when you land off course in your own life or your own business. So I'm glad you're here. Let's just get right into it, into this leadership lesson for today. I want to highlight that they were off course, their plan had broken down and they were faced with that with some options. They could delay or try to figure things out, or maybe go down to where they should have landed or maybe wait for somebody else to make a decision. They could wait for a correction from somebody or something like that, but instead Roosevelt said, we're going to start right here. And they advanced and they ended up catching the enemy at a very weak point. And so their momentum really replaced their own confusion, caught the enemy off guard, and was a very successful advance that morning. So I want you to keep following this podcast and join the community online. And all those links are down below because this podcast is really just going to be also uploaded as a video later. And I'm going to do a video that shows you maps and goes further into where Roosevelt and his men landed versus where they were supposed to land. And I want to share with you some incredible kind of lesser known facts about this landing. So keep following and then watch the video podcast that go along with this where I will go more in depth if you're into that. And then you can see the maps and see the pictures and everything like that. And then I'm also going to go over some action items that you can take to, to maybe, to maybe in the future make decisions more timely and boldly. So I just would love it if you came and joined our community and followed along. All right, so let's get back into some key points here. Bold, timely decisions create opportunity, whereas indecision will ultimately create more just vulnerability. And so this is not about reacting emotionally, it's about responding decisively. And today I want to list out 10 traits that I believe are required for timely, bold decisions. And I want to make clear that you really cannot bypass these traits. And you can't even kind of like do them halfway. You got to be all in. You cannot fake them under pressure. You have to build these up long before Your landing craft hits the shore. So one is competence. I really think right off the bat, you have to be competent. You must know what you're doing, and skill builds that. You have to have courage. Fear is going to be present, all right? Fear is going to be present. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is pressing through the fear and being able to make a decision in that moment, because not making a decision is actually a decision, and it's probably a bad one. Number three is servanthood. Leadership is not about self preservation. It's others first. Roosevelt was not thinking of himself. He was thinking of how I can boost the morale of my soldiers. He's thinking about them. Number four, security. If you are insecure, you're going to hesitate. And we've all been there, uh, we've all been at a place where we were insecure about something. And I'm sure that you hesitated. And so we need to be at a place, we need to find that place where we are secure. Secure. Leaders decide, and sometimes you decide with input from others. And there's a whole other, that's a whole other topic of insecurity where you don't want to get input from others. That can also be very bad. Number five, responsibility. No blaming, no deflecting. You own the outcome. As the leader, you own the outcome. Take responsibility. And number six, take initiative. You got to move first. You don't wait to be told. And sometimes you're going to take initiative and you're not going to necessarily have all the information that you think you might need or you may not actually make a perfect decision. Roosevelt said, we're going to start the war from right here. And it went very well for them, but maybe it wouldn't have gone well and they maybe would have had to correct, maybe course correct as they went. And in fact, in every battle, you do that. You, you course correct as you go. So you take initiative, you move first, you don't wait to be told, and then you can adjust from there. Number seven, you have to have character, because pressure is going to reveal who you really are. When you're put into that pressure, that pressure pot or whatever, and you get stressed out and you get pushed to your limits, people, you're going to be seen for who you are. So you have to have strong character. And number eight, you got to be committed. You gotta stay with the decision or make adjustments and then stay with that decision. But you just gotta be committed to that. You gotta be committed to action. And number nine, you've gotta have discernment not every opportunity available to you is a wise opportunity, and you must see clearly. And this is a hard one. Discernment is a hard one to have, especially, you know, in our society today. Discernment is really, really hard. Like, what is true and what's not. Okay. Um, in fact, in some cases, discernment on the battlefield is probably easier because you just. You're like, nope, we're moving this way. And. And this is where the enemy is weakest, so let's go. All right, move out. And so it might be even easier on the battlefield, but discernment is a tough one, and that does take some effort to get discernment. And we're gonna. We're gonna talk more about that. We're probably gonna talk more about that in the action study and get a little bit deeper into that. And then problem solving, you've got to have solid problem solving. When you land off course, you got to adapt. And before you ever get to that point where you're solving problems, you do need to prepare. It's very important that you have prepared beforehand so that you have different options. And you can make solid decisions one way or the other and say, okay, we're going from here. So what I'm saying is like. Like, even on the beach, they may have landed almost a mile off course, but they knew the beach. They knew where they had landed. Yes. They were not where they were supposed to be, per the plan. And we're going to get into that on the action study. They actually landed at a zone called Victor, but they knew all about that zone. And I'm going to show you on the map why. It was actually pretty cool that they landed there. It was actually more advantageous to the soldiers, uh, that they landed there than they had landed where they were planning to land, but. Which is pretty crazy. But that's because if you don't prepare when. When everything goes to hell and it all falls apart, it's going to fall to the level of your preparation. And so you want that fall to be. Be the least or least amount of fall as possible. So you want to prepare, you want to study, you want to be ready. All right, those are the 10. Now let's get into some action steps. You know, how do you. How do you actually build these? What do I do? Let's start right with competence. How do I build competence? Well, it does depend. It depends on what you're doing. It depends on what your trade is or what your career is or what, you know, whether it's in ministry or, uh, Whatever the case may be. But more often than not, you should be learning all the time. Whether that's taking classes, studying on your own, seeking mentors, higher education, getting on the job training, seeking on the job training. Don't wait for somebody to say, hey, you should go learn this. No, go ask. Go ask like what? What kind of OJT is there here? Practice before it's ever required. Practice something, even something that you might be responsible for in the future. Go, uh, practice that. Think about it, read about it, study it, research it. Competence is going to reduce hesitation. That's what you want. You want to reduce that hesitation. All right? And then we talked about identity and knowing your identity. And this is foundational. You got to know who you are. And you know that here on Northbound, I want to help elevate your team through Christ centered leadership. So we, we want to identify or know who we are, what is our identity? Who did God design us to be to know the boldness that he put inside of us? He created you with convictions. What are those convictions that you carry? Insecure leaders are going to delay. Secure leaders are going to decide. But in order to be that secure leader that makes those decisions, you have to know who you are. You are going to need to spend time in reflection. I encourage you to do that. I'm not a big journal guy. I don't keep a journal. But if that's something for you, do it. Keep a journal. Pray. Know your values, know your worth. Study it. Study and dwell on what God designed you to be. What passions did he give you? What has he taught you? What has he put in your life that taught you something that makes you bolder or gives you confidence? Just really like, lean into that. Embrace it. And one that is so important here is putting others before your self. Servanthood fuels courage. So you ask yourself, who am I responsible for? And literally list them out. I said I'm not a big journal guy. But if you are, that's a great place to list them. List out your spouse, your kids, your team employees, those who work for you, clients, people in your church and in your community. List them out. Like write their name out, literally. I know it seems crazy, but when you write that name down, you are placing physically, you are putting a name in front of you to think about, how can I help this person? How am I responsible for them? How can I encourage them? How can I empower them? When you know who you serve, you're going to stop making so many decisions about your own comfort and you're going to Start making decisions that include or think or consider is probably the best word their future. Roosevelt didn't go ashore for ego. He went for morale. Another thing you can do is practice small decisions quickly. You're going to build decisiveness by deciding. Stop overthinking. Make those small operational calls. Set daily priorities. Have hard conversations. We talked about this in some earlier podcasts. Don't shy away from the hard conversations. Embrace them. Train yourself to assess, decide, and act. The military really gets into that. They. They get into. They have all kinds of acronyms for the assess, decide, and act. Because that's very, very important in. On the battlefield. You know, when you're executing a mission, you gotta be able to assess things, you gotta be able to make decisions, and then you gotta be able to act. And so I, I threw that in there. It's a little bit of a different acronym than what the. What the military uses, but the principles are still the same. And then strengthen your courage on a daily basis. Courage is like a muscle. And so again, just like we just said, having the hard conversations will build that muscle. Setting boundaries, that builds that muscle. Saying no when you need to say no, and saying yes even when it's going to cost you something, it builds courage. And another one that this also builds courage is taking responsibility publicly. So when things go wrong, own it, adjust, move forward. And that is going to build trust with the people you lead, but it's also going to build you. In fact, it's going to build trust that you're like, trust in yourself to make that decision. And if you're walking with God and you know your identity and who you are and who God designed you to be, you're going to trust him and you. And he is, you know, you're going to have faith in him, and he has faith in you to accomplish what he set you out to accomplish. And that is a relationship that you have with God. And it's a relationship built on trust both ways. So that's very, very important in any relationship, is that you trust each other. And it's really important in your team. When, when you're leading your team, trust is like, uh, well, it's everything. And trust goes into every single principle that we've even talking about today. So when things go wrong, own it. Own it and move forward and do that publicly. All right, let's go back to Utah Beach. They were off course, but what did they do? They did not retreat. And instead of waiting, instead of complaining, they said, we're going to start the war from right here. Your life will not land exactly where you plan and your team, your business, your family, it won't either. Question is, are you going to hesitate or are you going to advance? Are you going to wait or are you going to go? My encouragement for you is to not wait or need perfect conditions. You need prepared character. So build the traits. Know who you serve. Know who you are. And when the moment comes, start from right here.

Speaker C: Most people overpay for car insurance, not because they're careless, but because switching feels like too much hassle. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jeri could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Libsyn today. That's J E R R Y AI Lib S Y N.