Leadership is a Journey and NOT a Destination | Episode 225

Scott McCarthy [00:00:00]:
On episode 225 of the peak performance leadership podcast, I go solo, and I’m gonna explain why leadership is a journey and not a destination. That’s right, folks. It’s all but the path today. Are you ready for this? Alright. Let’s do it. Welcome 1. Welcome all to the Peak Performance Leadership Podcast, a weekly podcast series dedicated to helping you hit peak performance across the Three domains of leadership. Those being leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization.

Scott McCarthy [00:00:43]:
This podcast couples my 20 years of military experience as a senior Canadian army officer with world class guests bringing you the most complete podcast of leadership going. And for more, feel free to check out our website at movingforwardleadershippedot comp. And with that, let’s get to the show. Yes. Welcome 1. Welcome all to the People’s Horns Leadership Podcast. Your host, founder, and chief leadership officer, Scott McCarthy, here with you today and here all by myself because I’m gonna be real with you. I got annoyed the other day, and I want to explain to you why that is.

Scott McCarthy [00:01:35]:
You see, I’ve been in this leadership gig for a while. I’ve been podcasting now for almost 5 years. I got well over a 100 and probably 80 ish interviews under my belt. I’ve been a leader for more than 20 years, 25. I can’t even remember that I’ve started this journey, and I’m not there at any destination yet. And one of the things that I’ve realized in my journey is that leadership is a journey. There is no destination to it. Now you might be thinking, Scott, but I got goals and aspirations.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:21]:
Yes. I’ll get to that, but Give me a second here. So I got triggered the other day as I mentioned. And the reason why I got triggered is because I saw someone’s profile, another leadership coach in this space that said, I’ll take you from a a follower to a leader in 90 days or less. So You might be thinking, wow, that sounds great. That sounds amazing. I want it quick, and I want it now, because we live in this world of a drive through society, as I often like to say. We show up to the order, but when, order Squawk Box, And we put in our order, and couple minutes later, we are at the delivery window.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:14]:
We pay. We grab our coffee or food or what have it, and away we go. That is the mentality around the world this day and age, which is, In some things, cool. Fine. Yes. I want things now. I don’t want to have to wait, but Leadership is not one of those things you can just simply go and order and expect to be able to deliver on it. Just because someone says they can take you from a follower and make you a leader in 90 days or less, that doesn’t mean anything.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:53]:
Because as I said in the opening, there is no destination. It’s a journey. Being a leader doesn’t start. It doesn’t stop. You are or you’re not. You don’t go to beginner to intermediate to advanced leadership. We are dealing with people. And when you deal with people, it doesn’t matter.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:20]:
There is no such thing as basic or advanced or intermediate. It just doesn’t exist. Human beings Are there they’re whole. They’re in front of you, and you have to take the situation in front of you and run with it regardless of the skill set you have. And if you find yourself overwhelmed with the problem, you seek advice. And guess what? The most junior leaders do that, and so do the most senior leaders. And sometimes, it’s on the exact same scenario or situation, or the premise is the same. So how can someone go from a 0 leader to 1 in 90 days? It takes more than just 90 days to understand.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:17]:
Hell, I will tell you it took me a lot longer. I had to lead myself, let alone other people. It took a lot longer than 90 days. So This is the moral of the story with this episode this week is that leadership is about the journey. It’s not a destination. So let’s talk about that journey, and let’s talk about it in great detail. Let’s talk about what makes up the journey. And the journey is made up of 1 major component, and that is continuous improvement.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:01]:
You as the leader need to continually improve yourself so that you develop your skills. You develop new skills. Why? Because the world is constantly changing around us. People’s needs, wants, desires, things that influence them, motivate them, inspire them change. You can’t learn what inspires people and be done with it and expect that one thing to work with every single person or groups of people or generations of people. It just doesn’t work. That’s why continuous improvement is so crucial. We need to continually upgrade our skills, adapt, become better, learn new things, Look at problems in different angles, so on and so forth.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:04]:
That is why I actually don’t believe in, quote, unquote, leadership courses. And you might go, but, Scott, you have your par goals course. Yes. I do have Power goals course. Yes. I have a goal course set on goal setting. But why? Because goal setting and goal achievement does have an end and a start. You can go through the process, and you work through it and you achieve it, or you don’t and you learn, and then you go and achieve it anyway.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:37]:
That is completely different. I’ve never bought into the ideology that, oh, we’ll do a basic leadership course, and then we’ll do an intermediate leadership course, and then we’ll do an advanced leadership course. It doesn’t work because those topics are the same. The problems are the same across the board. Now that being said, Could you have a course that focuses on problem sets that are focused on large organizations that you would see, like, in a large corporation. Absolutely. Or small business. Absolutely.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:23]:
Why? Because those problem sets are different. Yes. They’re the same across, you know, the bulk of small businesses or the bulk of large corporations. But when we’re talking about leading and leading our ourselves and our teams, that don’t matter. That doesn’t work. So this is the point. It’s about a journey. And I know this episode is probably coming up quite because even just thinking about this concept gets me fired up.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:53]:
Hence why it’s probably coming across that. And that’s fine. You know what? We could use a little bit of spice in the podcast every now and then. So How do we actually go about getting in and going towards the journey? You need to drop your ego. The first thing you have to do is drop the ego. Why? Because ego is what keeps you from actually experience a journey, but rather sets you to a destination. An ego testicle leader would say, Well, I’m the leader. I’m the boss.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:28]:
I’m here. I don’t need to learn more. I don’t have to sharpen my skills. I don’t have to do this. I’m already there. Look at me. Load of crap. K? That’s the first thing you have to do.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:45]:
You have to drop your ego. And when you’re dropped your ego, you can except one fundamental rule of leadership. And it is you Don’t know Jack. You don’t know Jack. You know absolutely squat. And you’re like, wow, Scott. Thanks. Thanks for putting me down.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:11]:
No. Obviously, you’re a educated person. You’re a smart person. You wouldn’t be listening to this podcast if you weren’t, but the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. And no matter what situation you get yourself into, if you think you’re the smartest person in the room, You either in the wrong room or you have the wrong people in the room with you, but most likely because your ego has not been checked. You need to continuously Learn and have an open mindset so that you can learn from your people, your team, other stakeholders, What have it? The moment you think you know it all is the moment you’ve become useless to your organization and team. And that way, You now have hit a quote unquote destination, and you are not embracing the journey. A leader who’s embracing the journey would go in with eyes wide open, listening ears on, ready to suck in what information they can in order to make the best decision possible while understanding they are not the smartest person in the room for all the different individual topics, but rather, they are the key individual to take the information from those smart people, weigh it accordingly, Look at the pros, look at the cons, and, ultimately, make a decision and own it.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:52]:
A leader who has hit a destination would not do any of that, but rather simply make the best decision that they thought was the best decision without really giving a crap about what anyone else had to say nor the weight of their statements based off of their experience. So keep that in mind as you go forward in your leadership journey, ladies If you find yourself thinking, I am a great leader. If you find yourself thinking I’ve made it. If you find yourself thinking, wow, this is too basic for me, then you are hitting a destination, and you’re not embracing the journey. And I can tell you from example that there is no such thing as this advanced and basic and so on and so forth. One of my coaching clients is a senior vice president of a sales team of a fairly large company. And we were talking one day about decision making and prioritization and stuff like this. And I said, Well, you’ve always heard of the you obviously know this matrix.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:13]:
The Eisenhower matrix, actually. You can look that up. And he’s like, what are you talking about? I’m like, you know about the Eisenhower matrix. Right? And his reply was, nope. Don’t know what you’re talking about. And to me, that was a basic concept. Eisenhower matrix is a matrix that enables us to determine, based off of priority and urgency importance and urgency. Sorry.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:41]:
The priority of a problem and when and how we should tackle it. So if something is high per, high importance, high urgency, we need to deal with it right then and there. Whereas something is high priority, low urgency, we can delegate it or we can schedule it. If something is low, low, we just get rid of it, so on and so forth. Four quadrants to the matrix. And he never heard of this concept. I’m like, but you’re a senior vice president of this company. And it shows you that there are no basic concepts, and there’s no advanced concepts.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:20]:
It’s simply leading. So to wrap up this podcast episode for this week, Embrace the journey of being a leader. Never think that you are there. Never think that you have made it there because There is no. There is no there. It is continuous and continuous improvement. And if you want to continuously improve yourself and if you want to continuously challenge yourself, then there’s no better way to do it, let me tell you, than surrounding yourself with like minded people who are going to keep you account, to call you out, to push you, challenge you, and then support you on the journey. And that is the reason why I created the Leader Growth Mastermind.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:24]:
It is a place for leaders to come and do just that. So if you want to learn more, if you want to join, Simply go to lead, don’t boss, .comforward/mastermind, and you can easily join our mastermind right there and begin to excel in your journey. And that is it for me today, ladies and gentlemen. I wish you all the best. Take care. And as always, lead the boss. We’ll see you next time. And that’s a wrap for this episode, ladies and gentlemen.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:10]:
Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the peak performance leadership podcast. But you know what you could do to truly support the podcast? And, no, that’s not leaving a Rating and review. It’s simply helping a friend, and that is helping a friend by sharing this episode with them if you think this would resonate with them and help them elevate their performance level, whether that’s within themselves, their teams, or their organization. So do that. Help me. Help a friend. Win win all around, and, hey.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:42]:
You look like a great friend at the same time. So Just hit that little share button on your app, and then feel free to fire this episode to anyone that you feel would benefit from it. Finally, there’s always more. There’s always more lessons around being the highest performing leader that you can possibly be, whether that’s for yourself, your team, or your organization. So why don’t you subscribe? Subscribe to the show via moving forward leadership.comforward/subscribe. Until next time, lead. Don’t boss, And thanks for coming out. Take care now.