Dr. John Townsend

Dr. John Townsend and his team offer executive coaching, corporate consulting, and leadership training in a variety or programs. Join us today!

Dr. John Townsend

The 3 Right Attitudes for Success

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Research has shown us that a major factor of what really drives our success, and pushes us through tough problems, is our attitude.   The right attitude, at the right time, can make all the difference in the world.

Have you ever known someone who had all the advantages: opportunity, resources, intelligence and supportive people, but who somehow managed to lose in a big way, or just never went scale? Conversely, I have also known many people who had very little, and who encountered massive obstacles, and still came out on top. The difference is usually attitude.

Simply put, an attitude is a perspective, or a “spin” on yourself, others, or your circumstances. It is the lens you use to view your world.

The attitudes that I have found in some of the most uber-successful people I work with are below, along with skills you can apply today to develop them.

I belong | 

This is the attitude that “I am not alone.” The attitude of belonging means that you always feel there are a few people in your life who you can turn to when you are overwhelmed, buried and stressed out, who will always have your back. People who have an attitude of belonging always know that no matter what goes down, they are not isolated, and someone has their back.

Skill | Find 3-4 people of character, whom you trust and become vulnerable with them. Bring them into how overwhelmed and stressed out you have been. You will be amazed at the focus and positivity that emerges from this.

I have power | 

The attitude that “I am not helpless, and I can do something about my situation.” Successful people always look for a choice and they don’t give in to what the research calls learned helplessness, which is a feeling that no matter what you do, you will lose, so why not give up? Instead, they think, “I may have financial, strategic or cultural problems, but I also have enough power to make one great choice to change things here.”

Skill | Brainstorm with a trusted friend the toughest situation you are currently facing. Literally get in front of a whiteboard and write down 10 choices you can make (they may be difficult, but it’s movement). Then pick the one that will get you the most traction on the problem and execute it. That is acting on power. Note, this is not power over another. It is power over your life.

I’m OK even when I’m not OK |

 A little bit of a word play, but this is the attitude that failure, even repeated failure, won’t get you down. You will resist the judge in your head who calls you a loser and disappointment and instead remember that every time you fail, you commit to learning something valuable. So failure (doing something not OK) doesn’t mean you’re not OK (a total loser).

Skill | Tell someone you trust the 3 toughest bad choices you’ve ever made (I’m serious about the “someone you trust”, there are lots of people who can’t handle who you really are, or would judge you, so pick carefully). Don’t minimize it or blame others, just say the raw reality. Then ask them what they think of you. The right person will say something like, “Yes, you’ve made some major mistakes. And I’m OK with you and I want to help you grow in life.”   Success comes from knowing that we don’t have to pretend that we are someone we are not. And it comes from hearing that we are acceptable and connected even when we don’t feel so acceptable.

Attitudes can be everything. Just work on one of these this week. You’ve noticed that each skill involves another person to support you. If you don’t have someone, or someones, like that, read my book “How to Be a Best Friend Forever”, which will outline how to have those sorts of relationships.

Best to your leadership!

 

 

Key People Skills Essential for a Leader

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Neuroscience and performance research always comes down to two groups of skill sets that are necessary for a leader to succeed.

The first group is task skills. These are the “doing” aspects of running the organization, involving primarily guarding the mission, messaging the vision, setting the strategy, creating the structure, systems and operations, and ensuring execution. Every leader must know and monitor these.

The second group is people skills. These are the “relating” aspects, which center on creating inspiration, trust, healthy culture, challenge and team development. These skills are sometimes called the soft skills, but they actually are not. They are replicatable, research-based and metrically-proven skills that are just as critical as the task skills.

In my experience, most leaders are somewhere between 60-40 to 90-10, task over relationship. Their training has lent itself to strategy, metrics and accountability. But as the research continues to come out, it is increasingly important for the leader to learn several specific people abilities which drive everything. Here are the top 3:

Listening well. While leaders must clarify roles and expectations, they must also “read between the lines.” All too often, we let our people talk, but in our minds, we are formulating our response to them before they are finished. I often have my clients paraphrase what others are saying, asking, “Do I get your point of view now?”, before they respond.

Being professionally vulnerable. Leaders have been taught to be bulletproof, and not show weakness, for fear of discouraging their people. However, we are finding that people are actually drawn more to a boss who is open about their weaknesses and failures, and lets them know that they are working on improving.

Being direct and yet connected. Great leaders get right to the point when they have to say a hard truth to a direct. But they do not disconnect from their warmth and their care for their people. This is called integration, the ability to be honest and yet emotionally present. It is more difficult than you think. Learn to keep your eye contact and your connectedness, even during the tough talks.

Strategy and people skills integrate for the best performance. Best to your leadership.

 

Leadership and Relationships: The Two-Way Street

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I was talking with a CEO of a company and finding out how he was doing in his business and his life. I asked him, “How are things going in your personal relationships? Do you think you have enough good quality connections?”

“Sure I do”, he answered. “I’ve got some really great friendships.”

I said, “That’s great. Now, how many of those friends would you say are acquainted with your personal needs, dependencies and weaknesses?”

He was a thoughtful person, and after a pause, said, “Well, actually probably none. I mean, I enjoy spending time with them, and also helping support them in their lives. But that personal stuff is a little hard for me.”

I said, “Then this is probably a good growth point for your own work and life. You need some two-way relationships, that is, people who open up to you, and people to whom you open up.”

The conversation went on, but the man understood where we were going, and got the message. He went to work on his two-way relationships, and I think prevented a lot of train wrecks in his life and career.

Leaders are a special group of people, and many leaders share a common weakness: they tend to be better givers than receivers. That is, the role of leadership often has the power to skew you toward being too focused on providing support, help, encouragement and grace to others, while neglecting your own needs and life.

There is certainly a lot that is good about being a giving person. It is the model of God as giver of Life; and the second greatest command is to love others as ourselves (Matt. 22:39). But at the same time, we can’t give to others what we don’t possess. You can’t provide from an empty cup: “…what do you have that God hasn’t given you?…(I Cor. 4:7, NLT).”

Just as those people you care about in work, family in life, you also need the ingredients of help that you provide for them. Here are a few to look at, and ask yourself, am I requesting, and receiving these, as well as providing them?

  • Grace: someone being “for” you, and on your side
  • Love: someone you can go to when you’re feeling down, lonely or isolated
  • Acceptance: someone knowing your faults and weaknesses and cares about you anyway
  • Safety: someone who won’t judge or condemn you, but will understand your failings and walk alongside you
  • Comfort: someone who will pick you up when you are discouraged
  • Truth: someone who will give you feedback and guidance when you need it.

This is often a little tough for leaders to go out and develop. You might wonder if you’ll be seen in a negative light by others, or if somehow needing these elements will disqualify you from leadership. You may even think leaders need to be strong all the time.

Check these perceptions out with a healthy, growing leader whom you respect and admire. My money will be on the probability that they will tell you, “It’s just the opposite. A large part of my success is due to my having people in my life that I open up to. It gives me strength, acceptance, motivation and direction.”

So look around in your life and start adding another direction to those one-way, all-giving relationships in your life and work! God bless

How Counselors Work with the Townsend Leadership Program (TLP)

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If you are interested in increasing your practice and revenues by using your counseling skills, think about applying to become a Townsend Leadership Program (TLP) Director.   We have found that counselors who become Directors experience excellent results because of their training in attunement, healing and diagnostics. Leaders especially need a confidential place to grow in their personal and professional lives. Here’s a little information about the program:

The model is a group-based leadership training experience, in which a Director takes their team of leaders, from all sorts of industries, through a monthly intensive day, for a year at a time. We will train you in the agenda for those days, including:

  • Helping them set stretch goals for the year
  • Engaging with John’s monthly video content regarding leadership growth
  • Facilitating team process groups where they can be vulnerable and experience growth at a deep level
  • Having work sessions where they use the team to solve organizational challenges
  • Assigning meaningful homework to them to keep the growth going
  • Providing monthly individual coaching sessions for them between team days.

In addition, a huge growth opportunity awaits the professionally trained clinician and a credentialed TLP Director. As outlined below, the benefits include:

  • Personal training by John and Elaine Morris, John’s business partner
  • Monthly videoconference calls with John and other directors
  • John’s proprietary content and marketing materials provided
  • Being part of a national community of TLP Directors with vast knowledge and varied backgrounds and experiences
  • Opportunity for corporate coaching, training, and consulting with your TLP members

So connect with us and find out how your impact as a counselor can grow!

Get to the “Why”

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Great leaders use the skill of digging into the true causes of why challenges happen, and don’t stop with “try harder” solutions, which simply don’t work most of the time.

I was working with the executive staff of a several hundred million dollar company, and asked the sales manager how things were going. He said, “My best salesperson Robert is not hitting his numbers and it’s impacting the whole team.” I said, “That’s tough, what did you say to Robert about this?” He said, “I told him there are a lot of people who want this job, so pay attention.”

I asked him, “Did you ask him why he’s not hitting quota?” “No”, he said, “He’s a professional, he just needed some motivation.” “Not all the time”, I said. “There is any number of causes for performance problems: lack of clarity, being overwhelmed, lack of resourcing and even being discouraged, for starters. You need to find the “why” before you tell him he needs to work harder.”

A month later, the sales manager told me, “I explored with Robert what was going on and I found out that I was the problem. I had given him too much territory and didn’t prioritize them for him. Once it was solved, his numbers went back up.”

Leaders are under lots of pressure, and sometimes don’t feel they have the time to dig into the “why” of things with their people. But my experience in consulting with organizations is that you actually don’t have time not to dig.

That is, a tactical answer to a strategic problem, or a pat answer to a complex cultural issue will always result in more time, energy and resource wasted until the problem is truly solved. Think about all the time you wasted with a respiratory infection not wanting to go the doctor for antibiotics, and you get the picture.

Here are some helpful tips for being a great leader with a great “Why”:

  • Save “work harder” as the last solution. Sometimes it truly is the solution. But it’s easy to default to it. Just keep it in your pocket.
  • Ask your directs what they think is causing the problem before you say what you think. Avoid the leadership disease of coming up with the answer first and then having everyone else shut down because they don’t want to push back.
  • Use “Why” several times. This technique has been very powerful for me in solving complex problems with companies. For example:
    • Why are we losing market share?
      • Because we aren’t attracting the market.
    • OK, why is that?
      • Because our approach is outdated.
    • I understand, why do you think that is?
      • Because we’ve been scrambling and haven’t gotten feedback on how our market is changing.
    • Makes sense, why is that?

You will get to the bottom much quicker for the true solution.

“Why” takes patience and requires some restraint. But you stand a much greater change of resolving knotty problems in your organization once and for all.

Best to your leadership.

Who Are You Accountable To as a Leader?

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As I leader, I have to admit that I hate being accountable.  It is not that I want to rob banks or run red lights.  It is more that I love freedom and having lots of choices.  There is nothing wrong with freedom, it’s great.    But if that freedom has no accountability to it, you run the risk of losing focus and clarity on what your leadership mission is.

To be accountable is to answer to someone you trust and respect.  All leaders need someone to advise, counsel, direct and guide us.  When we are accountable, we open up about our challenges, questions, and decisions.  Those we answer to have their own tasking; to provide grace and truth to us, in the same way that we should do with others. As a leader, you have no idea of the potholes you will miss, and the opportunities you will reap if you are accountable.

When I am consulting with a management team, no one argues that point. Nobody has ever said to me, “I don’t need to be accountable to anyone.”  That is, except when my kids were teenagers.  Most of us just know that accountability is a good thing.  The problem comes when we either pick the wrong people to be accountable to, or when we don’t truly answer to those people

Here is the issue of the wrong people:  we become accountable to our spouse, God, and our friends.  That sounds great, but it is not enough.  You can slide by your spouse and justify your decisions.  God will let you slide and make your own choices.  And your friends will rubber stamp you.  You don’t have enough of the right people on the right bus.  I recommend you get 3-10 people of character and maturity, to whom you say, “Here is my life and leadership.  Here are my numbers, here are my challenges.  I give you full permission to ask me the hard questions.”  Now you’ll get somewhere.

Here is the issue of not truly being accountable:  you get the benefit when you listen, follow up, and report back the outcomes.  Don’t go into the “my mind is made up, please don’t give me the facts” trap.  Deeply listen in a vulnerable way to what your people tell you. Go beyond listening to acting on what you hear.  Take steps.  And finally, report back to those to whom you are accountable.  Maybe you did 10% of what they recommended.  Maybe you did 100%.  But if you do this, you will reap great fruit and see measurable change.

I still don’t like accountability.  But I do it.  And it pays off for my own life and leadership.  It will for you too.  God Bless you.

Do you have any stories about the benefits of accountability? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!