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50 Management Maxims

In this transcript, Clay Clark (Founder of Thrive15.com and owner of 9 businesses) and Tim Redmond (Executive Business Coach) discuss the importance of management maxims on Thrive15.com, the business sales training program.

Clay:    Now Tim, point four, effective leaders first go inward before they go outward. What are you talking about?

Tim:    Okay, so really my good friend John Maxwell, says that everything, everything, the success of your business, everything in life rises and falls on leadership. If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to go inward to say what can I do to improve the situation, before I go outward and start blaming other people.

Clay:    The other day I was on the phone with somebody and I said, I go ultimately it was my fault, and I always try to … and I read John Maxwell’s book, I tried to teach myself to say that no matter what the situation is, ultimately it’s my fault. I think when you do that it gives you a sense of ownership and responsibility, like you can actually do something about it. You can watch sales training videos on Thrive15.com.

Tim:    Yeah, owners own their stuff. I say these things so much. Owners own stuff, they own the results. It’s like Jim Collins says that effectively the level five leaders, when bad things happen they’re going to look in the mirror, when good things happen they’re going to look out the window and say look at these people.

The idea here is, if you’re going go just outward, I was just on the phone last night with this client that blown up, they were about ready to lose two of their key staff and it’s a company of four people, they do about three million dollars a year, we’ve really leveraged a lot of things for coaching him and just having a phenomenal thing. they’re reacting all over, they’re going outward first before they’re going inward to say, what can I do to improve this situation before I start running over other people.

Clay:    I’m watching this, but we’ve got a problem right now, be it an employee that’s being crazy, you’ve got a payroll problem, you have a bad sign out in front of your building, ask yourself, I mean am I the one that made the bad check list, am I the one who hired the wrong person or didn’t train them properly or not holding them accountable or whatever the deal is.

Tim:    Right, even if it’s totally somebody else’s fault, even if you are an absolute saint, which you are, probably or probably not, one of those two, even if it’s clearly somebody else’s fault, it’s still going to increase your leadership and your ability to change the situation if you go inward first, you take ownership first, what can I do to improve this situation before I start demanding something of other people. It’s a pattern where your followers will turn into leaders as they follow you.

Clay:    Maxim number six, here we go, if you don’t become part of the solution, you have no right to gripe.

Tim:    Yeah, I don’t know if that needs any explanation, just …

Clay:    Well, I will say this, this is where I see the little text context here. I feel like that what happens is, in companies, owners, all the time, even if you have a client, they come in, with you and me clients pay us to help them work with their business and stuff. These guys are paying a decent amount of money, and they’ll come in, meeting starts at 10:”00, and at 10:35 they’re still like the economy and the weather and my staff, and you got to be like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don’t really have time to gripe, we have to focus on a solution.

I know it’s an addictive, almost like we think it’s therapeutic, but it’s like reverse therapy, you complain and then you feel like well I’m just getting it off my chest. Then you complain some more.

Tim:    It goes off your chest and just infects your whole work environment. Here’s the idea, is I’ve trained my employees, and I don’t want a bunch of followers, I don’t want a bunch of employees, I want a bunch of owners that own their stuff too. If you have a gripe, you better have a solution attached to it. If you have something you’re complaining about or concerned about, I want you to come in with a solution.

I’ll say, “What are you going to do about it?”, because they’re coming to and saying, “This thing is going wrong, what are you going to do?, and the tone of their voice, if they don’t actually say it themselves, “What are you going to do about it?” and I say “Well, I want, I want to hire employees that do something about stuff like that. How about you? Show us how it’s done?” It’s teaching them to go inward before they go outward.

Clay:    Now, you say here on Maxim number 7, you cannot complain about what you tolerate. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

Tim:    All right, when I’m coaching my clients, this is probably the most frequent statement I’ll make to them. Usually, after the first day of coaching, I start on the second day with them, I start it and then they finish it for me. We have all this pent up energy, we’re growing this business and it’s not perfect, and there’s things that are going bad, and we’re trying to plow ahead and it’s almost like we’re doing this Michael Jackson Moonwalk, we’re trying to move forward, but we’re actually moving backwards here. You want me to demonstrate that? No, you don’t want me to demonstrate.

Clay:    No, I do not want you to.

Tim:    A white boy that can’t jump here, I’m not sure if that’s politically correct, but that’s where we’re at here.

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