Welcome to the Mission-Critical Leadership Podcast! In this episode, we’re talking about three leadership lessons from the Civil War you need to learn on your journey as a mission-critical leader.
We’re all on a journey. We all face hardships. We all have shortcomings and difficulties. That’s a given. What’s not a given, is our response. We can choose to rise to those moments, see an opportunity instead of an obstacle, and choose to rise above.
OR
We can shrink back, live in fear, and play small.
The American Civil War gave us insights into both. While there are thousands of lessons we could cover, today, we’re going to cover three.
Dr. Justin Hiebert works with mission-critical leaders to accomplish the unimaginable. Realizing that no leader has ever needed more things to do, he works with his clients to get the right things done. His clients rise above burnout, captivate their teams, and transform their communities. By engaging their hearts and minds, his clients unlock their full potential to be, do, and have it all. This affords them the ability to leave a legacy of influence and impact on the world. He is a husband, father, teacher, learner, and champion of joy. He resides in Bakersfield with his wife, four kids, two cats, and one dog. In his free time, he loves exercising, riding motorcycles, and doing anything outdoors.
Every year, I choose a guiding phrase for the year. This year, the phrase is simple: choose joy.
After years of an ongoing pandemic, the damage I’ve seen done to small businesses, my own coaching experience, and the upheaval in the lives of friends and business associates, the choice became easy.
It’s also easy, because I spent years, not choosing joy.
Stuck in my Head
Several years ago, I went through a difficult season of life and business. It culminated in a cross-country move to restart many aspects of my life. Those experiences left me far from feeling joyous. Instead, I was angry, bitter, and resentful. Many times, I didn’t even realize it or see it in myself.
I would have told you I was happy.
Chances are, I would’ve even believed I was happy.
In all sincerity, I was convinced that as bad as those experiences were, “I was fine.”
I was lying to myself.
It took me a year to even realize it.
When I did, I felt overwhelmed. I had suppressed my emotions for so long, I didn’t know how to handle them all. (I’m a good Enneagram 3).
Once I did realize it, I was stuck in my own head. I replayed the situations over and over again, analyzing each detail.
I found myself asking questions, growing angrier, and becoming disillusioned.
Maybe that was a necessary part of my healing journey, but it was here that I learned the importance of choosing joy.
Choose Joy
Sometime along the way, I just started to say the phrase.
When a situation would arise, or a decision needed to be made, I just found myself saying, “Choose joy.”
What’s the joyous response?
What does it look like to be happy?
How do I pick optimism and growth?
Where does my heart find peace?
The more I made those choices, the more reason I found for joy and contentment.
As this year dawned (and hard to believe it’s 1/12th over already!) it became the natural way for me to navigate this year.
As I sit down to review my 2021 goals, I realize all I set out to do that I didn’t accomplish … that means it’s time to celebrate failure!
Understanding Failure
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
It should come as no surprise that I set pretty lofty goals.
As we look to wrap up an incredibly fast-moving 2021, I’m sitting down to review some of the goals I set for myself and my business.
I attained relatively few of what I set out to accomplish, but I’m here to tell you that’s a good thing. It means I get to celebrate failure. And while not pleasant (or natural) it is what will keep me going in the new year.
And it is the best-kept secret of the ultra-successful.
Learning to Walk
What happens when a baby is learning to walk?
It falls over.
A lot.
No parent, in their right mind, would see their baby fall and just assume walking isn’t for them.
Well, sweetie, you tried walking once and failed. Clearly, you’re not meant to be a walker.
Ridiculous.
Instead, we pick them up. Celebrate that they were at least able to stand by themselves, and then make them try again.
Then we celebrate the first step.
The second.
Third.
Fourth.
And soon, they are running around and we just pray we can keep up.
But each milestone comes with a celebration, even in the midst of failure.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, we stop finding that so natural. Instead, we beat ourselves up and become our own worst critic.
(Re)Learning to celebrate failure pushes us to keep reaching for our goals and makes the status of “mission accomplished” that much more enjoyable.
Celebrate Failure
So, where am I celebrating failure as we wrap up 2021?
Here are a few of my personal highlights.
1.) Books Read
I made a goal to read 70 books this year. While I have a few weeks left, the final number will be somewhere around 40. That’s down from last year and significantly short of my goal.
So what I am celebrating? First, the quality (and most of the time length) of books I read went up. The biography of Alexander Hamilton was over 800 pages. These sorts of endeavors take longer than one or two hundred page books.
Second, I’m celebrating more implementation of these ideas. My homesteading and gardening have improved significantly. The time I could have spent reading was spent outside doing. I could say the same for my speaking content, parenting, and relationship with my wife.
Action trumps knowledge.
2.) Income generated
Wait, what? You want to celebrate not making your financial targets!?!
Well no, not really. This is one of those times where I say it’s necessary but not natural. To be honest, though, I set a really lofty goal. I more than doubled any of my previous financial goals.
And while I won’t hit that number, I can say I made significant growth over 2020 (though that wasn’t hard with a worldwide pandemic and all 😬😂).
More than my business growth, I focused on filling the need in my micro-niche. I also focused on helping others grow their businesses and their dreams. I feel as though I have succeeded at those as well.
So yes, while I didn’t hit my wild-crazy number, I did make a lot of progress in my own profession and in those, I work with.
Service trump selfishness.
3.) An amazing vacation
Maybe the hardest one for me to admit I need to celebrate is that our family won’t be taking the big fancy vacation I hoped for at the start of the year. Some of it is still certainly pandemic related, but most of it is a change in our own values. Instead, my family has simplified it’s values (and living) and adjusted the way we interact with things.
One of those big differences for me is better work-life balance. Gone (mostly) are the days of working until 8-9 pm, and starting again at 4 am. Instead, over 90% of the time, I’m done working between 4 and 5 pm.
(This also partly explains number two above).
My kids have quality time with me almost every day.
I attended my daughter’s volleyball games.
I read books to my kids (though I’m not counting those to help me get to 70).
I spent more time snuggling, instructing, teaching, laughing, and building.
I’ve also taken my wife on more dates this year than our previous 15 combined.
So do we get a fancy two-week vacation? No. But we are gaining so much more.
Quality trumps quantity.
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I’m off to celebrate and set even bigger goals for next year.
The story we tell ourselves, our internal narrative about the way we are, determines the trajectory of our story.
Understanding the Programming
Early on in life, we all start to acquire an internal narrative, programming, about the way we are. This identity-shaping story becomes one of the largest determining factors in who we end up becoming. From an early age, we all start to experience those labels.
We’ve all been called things like:
worthless
good for nothing
late
nerdy
oddly small
too short
freakishly tall
too big
ugly.
The words may start off as meaningless but slowly, after hearing them enough, they become an accepted part of our worldview.
We all know the person who heard, “You’ll never amount to anything” growing up. Pretty soon, they would be saying, “I’ll never amount to anything.” In the blink of an eye, they had given up on their dreams, settled for less than they were worth, and didn’t amount to anything compared to their true potential.
It’s a heartbreaking reality for many of us.
The good news is that not only can that destructive cycle be broken, but what is true of negative stories is also true of positive ones.
Telling a Better Story
If we want to reach our dreams, we have to be willing to rewrite the story we tell ourselves.
The hard work of personal growth happens internally. Putting in the time, effort, and energy into filling our minds with good things.
It involves telling yourself:
I am competent
beautiful
loved
admirable
strong
hard-working
driven
successful
capable.
The story we tell ourselves influences the person we will ultimately become.
The Story We Tell Ourselves
I was working with a client recently on this idea and explained to him the three camps we can fall into.
1.) We have a negative story and believe it.
This is like the first example. The story we heard growing up is the story we believe. We are somehow not enough, unloved, unworthy, or pitiful.
In coaching, I see this story all the time. It’s one of the main reasons people don’t achieve the goals they start out with.
Why would a lazy, good-for-nothing, unlovable, unworthy, pitiful person try something as grandiose as starting their own business?
It probably wouldn’t work anyway.
In reality, they have everything they need and are totally capable of amazing success. The problem is not they have believed the lies.
2.) We have a positive story and believe it.
These are the fun ones. The easy ones. They already believe the right things. These people know that they are strong, competent, and capable. They are able to set goals and achieve them because they believe in their ability to accomplish hard tasks.
3.) We don’t know what to believe.
This is the place where my client found himself. The bad news was that he didn’t have a positive story about himself. However, the good news, was that he didn’t have a negative view of himself.
He was somewhere in the middle. Drifting in the open ocean with no paddle, he didn’t know which way to go. I asked him to come up with five adjectives to describe himself he knew to be true.
He couldn’t give me any.
It should be no surprise then, that goals have been hard for him. Without the confidence and clear direction of knowing what to believe, he has trouble setting and staying accountable to goals. Without knowing the truth about himself, he doesn’t know what direction to pursue.
The story we tell ourselves matters.
Get clear on what you believe, not just about the world, but about yourself.
Give yourself positive imagery to believe about yourself and put it into practice. How would you, the strong, competent, capable person you are solve this problem? Once you believe that, you’ll crush any goal in your path.
Accountability is important. Want help reaching your goals and changing the trajectory of your life? Try coaching!
I have spent much of my life in the garden. What I have discovered in the soil holds true in my soul: the time spent pruning, watering, and nurturing is never wasted.
Life in the Garden
As a kid growing up on the plains of central Kansas, I spent much of my time in the garden. My family grew a fair amount of our own food, and it was usually one of my daily tasks to spend a certain amount of time clearing the weeds from the produce.
Strawberries.
Rhubarb.
Tomatoes.
Carrots.
Beans
Cucumbers.
Peas
Corn.
We grew a whole variety of food. However, it wouldn’t take long in the humid days of summer to see weeds grow up right along with the crops.
So for thirty minutes every day, I’d be out there making sure only the good stuff grew.
As I got older, I started to hate it more. As a teenager, there were thousands of other places I’d rather be than in the garden doing work.
Now, as an adult, I wish I had more time to devote to my own garden. The thirty minutes a week are far too few.
Here are three takeaways from my life in the garden.
1.) Remove the bad, harmful, and damaging weeds.
I’ve already mentioned my disdain for gardening as a child. Part of it was my allergies. They were so bad growing up, my eyes would swell shut and I found it difficult to breathe. There were many days where a family member would have to escort me around the house because I couldn’t see, my eyes crusted over with goop.
If it were like that inside the house, you can imagine how bad actually having my face near the plants.
However, in those brief moments where I could concentrate and focus on getting something accomplished on a row of cucumbers, I always took satisfaction in seeing progress.
Weeding gave two primary benefits: clear signs of work done, and better yields.
In our own lives as leaders, we see the same benefit. When we weed out the poor, distracting, bad, harmful, and damaging ‘weeds’ of our lives, we see clear progress and get better yields.
Our souls are full of many bad weeds.
Pride.
Arrogance
Destructive relationships.
Bad habits.
False mental beliefs.
Spending time in coaching, counseling, mentorship, business alliances, and other thought-provoking and challenging ideas weeds out these self-perceived limits and gives the good, nurturing fruit of leadership space to grow.
2.) Prune and nurture the good.
As you clear out the weeds, you give the good fruit space to grow. At the same time, this good stuff needs to be pruned, fed, and watered. Carefully cutting off areas of less productivity and overgrowth gives the main plant more time to thrive.
In the garden, watering and fertilizing your plants also leads to bigger yields.
For the garden of your soul, the same beneficial steps need to be taken.
Limit the amount of ‘good’ in your life to pursue the ‘great.’
Take control of your calendar to get more of the right things done (and not just more things).
Limit (and eliminate) time with people who drain you, your time, and your resources.
Spend time with people who bring your more life, vitality, abundance, and joy.
3.) Cultivate beneficial species together.
A lesson I learned early from my life in the garden is the power of beneficial and antagonistic plants. In my raised beds, I made the mistake of planting tomatoes and cabbage too close together.
While it seems like no big deal, in terms of plant production, it was a very big deal.
My main tomato plants, living next to beneficial plants, grew and thrived. I was harvesting tomatoes and cucumbers on a regular basis.
The tomatoes that were planted near the cabbage resulted in both plant species struggling. The cabbage never had more than a few leaves, and the tomatoes stopped growing after a foot and never produced fruit.
Thankfully, I was able to transplant the cabbage, and now both are thriving (well away from each other).
Plants need the right environment to survive. This includes their relationships with other plants.
In our own lives, we have the same problems. When we are too near negative thinking, small-mindedness, hypocrisy, anger, judgment, fear, and limiting beliefs, we start to adapt to the same. Just like in my garden, there is a general failure to thrive when we are in the wrong environments.
Removing that negativity from your life and exposing yourself to like-minded people and beneficial thoughts results in more of the same.
Expose yourself to positive and be positive.
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What about you? How have you seen one of your hobbies benefit you in your professional life?
