Show Notes:

Learning to lead. “Everybody’s got a problem. If you’re good at something, you’re screwed. You’re good at law and you develop expertise, so everybody comes to you and you have more work! Now you take on an associate. Now you have a team. You’re trained as a lawyer, but now you’re a leader. You have two jobs. You were trained for one of them. You weren’t trained for the other.”

The role of a CEO. “Some CEOs are visionaries. They just launch off and wouldn’t know strategy if it hit them in the head. Some are very strategic and they make plans, but they can’t engage talent. CEOs try and turn everything into the way they are instead of getting above it and saying, ‘Okay, I’m not good at this, but my firm is.’ Once they do that, you can fix any of them, as long as they’re not an idiot.”

Don’t carry the weight alone. “The mistake CEOs make is they do it in a vacuum. You’ve heard them say, ‘It’s lonely at the top.’ Well, it better not be. Yeah, it’s weighty, but if you’re carrying that weight by yourself, you shouldn’t be. That’s another mistake CEOs make. High performers are never doing it by themselves.”

Become a leader worth following. “I don’t really want to follow somebody whose aspiration is to be a leader. I want to follow somebody who has a compelling vision that has to be done, and they’re good at engaging others to come with and make a difference in people’s lives.”

Confrontation can be good. “Your success in life is equal to your ability to confront. That’s almost the definition of a good law firm. They go in and confront obstacles and conflicts, face them squarely, and find a way through them.”

Unity over power. “One of the bad psychological tools is the victim-persecutor-rescuer triad. That’s when you take a group that feels like they’re victimized and say, ‘I’m going to step in and be your rescuer.’ Now you’re in power, but that’s not what a good leader does. A good leader transcends the divide and pulls everybody into unity.”

What does being a game changer mean to you? “Change the game from ‘we’re losing’ to ‘we’re winning.’ Change the way we play the game and change the game. If a law firm can change from being the regulating parents to the accelerator of how to get deals done, that’s a game changer.”

EPISODE RESOURCES & REFERENCES
Character Structure
Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud
How to Have That Difficult Conversation by Dr. Henry Cloud
www.drcloud.com
Boundaries.me Program
Leadership University