Why do you think that leaders hide from funding their vision?
And how can those leaders then lean into funding that vision?
Well, what do you mean by funding their vision?
That's a great question.
A lot of times people answer funding as a little money that you can use.
And a lot of times people answer it as the effort, energy, a lot of things you put to a commitment.
You can answer whichever you feel like.
Because I feel like both are important, both are necessary to scale, and both are also required if you want to survive.
So you can answer whichever way you like.
Well, thanks for that question, Harry, because I think what's interesting in that,
my mind went immediately to the energy place.
When we look at how leaders embrace adversity and the changes that come to their business,
it is absolutely all about how they manage their energy and how they, as we talked last time in the last episode,
how they ride that reality curve.
So for me, if leaders are hiding from this funding of their vision, it may be because there's an inadequate amount of energy in their well-being batteries.
And I know we talked a little bit about this last time, but the well-being batteries, there are four.
And arguably some social scientists are now saying maybe there's a fifth well-being battery.
We'll get to that in a minute.
But the four key well-being batteries that leaders and all of us actually draw upon to live our most authentic and resilient lives
are a physical battery, an emotional battery, a mental battery, and a spiritual battery.
And the arguable fifth battery is maybe a social battery of how we are all connected.
So when leaders are saying, hey, I'm not so sure, or I'm not sure I want to invest in this funding of my vision,
we also need to look at the words vision, because is that their own personal mission and vision?
Is that the mission of the organization that they lead?
We can get into that in a minute.
Most of the time, it's about tapping into their reserves and or looking at their battery power in each one of those well-being batteries.
And so if a leader is reluctant to maybe fund into that, it may be because they're running on empty.
I say a lot of times to the groups of people that I lead and to organizations that I consult with is, you know,
you're not going to make it to the bank unless you fill up the well-being tank.
And what I mean by that is tapping into the things that really supercharge you and your batteries,
knowing that particularly if it's physical, that's things like sleep and hydration and good nutrition and exercise,
the obvious things that we talk about with well-being.
If it's emotional energy, we're talking about how you process emotions
and how you may be feeling certain things when you're feeling good
and how you may not be processing or experiencing feelings when you're feeling bad.
Those two energies and batteries are the most obvious to people.
But often where leaders also fall down and forget is the mental charge up.
You know, leaders have to use a massive amount of mental power.
Our mental energy was really how we organize our brains.
It's how our brains actually organize time, how we organize space, how we organize structure and thought and logic.
And, you know, when people come home at the end of the day and say, God, I'm just mentally exhausted.
They're talking about how much they use the left and the right brain and that prefrontal cortex to process the entire day.
And as leaders, you know, we're constantly in that space all the time.
Last but not least is that spiritual energy, that well-being battery around purpose.
And again, we get to the idea of vision.
Leaders may be reluctant to fully invest if they're not clear themselves on what it is that they're doing for their life's work or their life's mission.
And similarly, and often I like to say ideally, leaders are using their personal mission
and their spiritual energy to drive what they do in the work and the organizations that they lead.
Ideally, they're intrinsically connected, but oftentimes they're not.
So there might be a lot of reasons why leaders are hiding from this kind of investment into their vision.
I'd always say that, you know, the best way to consider really showing up fully, most vulnerably,
most empathetically, and most wholeheartedly in the work that you do is to make sure that your four well-being batteries are supercharged.
Part of that includes doing an energy audit.
And I have done energy audits with a lot of leaders to say, let's look at the things that charge you up, supercharge those batteries,
and let's look at the things that also drain those batteries,
because it's the drains that make us vulnerable and susceptible to the hardships of adversity.
And leaders need to be as supercharged as possible when they're leading teams through change and through hard times.
So that's where I would say we may have some evidence where leaders are reluctant to fund into their vision.
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
My next question for you.
I mean, we can go to the second part as well.
If you want to add something to it, then how do leaders lean into funding that vision, unless you want to add something to it?
I might just say, you know, do the energy audit and, you know, connect with me if any of you are leaders in organizations or, you know,
in families or social structures where you are curious about how to do an energy audit.
It's really a valuable lesson in looking at all the things that you do in a day, because it's not time that we need to manage.
We all have the same 24 hours, seven days a week amount of time.
What we need to manage is more of the energy that we put in different places.
And doing that energy audit is a great way to start the awareness journey in how you want to lean into where you want to get different results or have different outcomes.
Tell me more about the energy audit.
Is it something how long does it usually take?
And is that something someone can do?
Like, can we do an experiment right now to take longer than that?
I'd love to know more about that.
Yeah, it can be as long or as short as we want it to be.
Often with my clients, my coaching clients and some executives and leaders that I work with,
we take several hours and we identify all the activities of a day.
And those are the personal activities from the time that you wake up to the time that you go to bed.
What are all those personal things that you do?
Do you exercise?
How much do you eat?
When do you eat?
All of those things, when do you spend time with your family?
When do you spend time with your spouse?
Are you spending extra relationship time at work that is outside the working hours?
Then we do the same thing with the working hours and we identify all those activities.
Once we identify the activities, we look at the actual amount of time.
After we look at the amount of time, we associate a level of emotional connection to that.
What are the feelings that are related to doing that particular work or that activity?
Then finally, what we do is we try to identify in a very black and white way,
is that something that supercharges you and charges up your battery, makes you feel great?
Or is that something that actually drains your battery?
In a black and white way, then looking at one day, you can do the same exercise over a week,
over a month, over a year, depends on how much time you want to invest.
You get a real good sense of where you're spending your energy
and which activities you're spending energy in and how those either positively charge up your well-being batteries
because we also identify which battery does it charge, which battery does it drain.
Not all of them are superchargers.
For example, I don't mind doing expenses.
In fact, that's what I was doing when we got on the phone.
I don't mind doing it. It's kind of energy neutral for me.
But if I do too much of it too long, it drains my mental battery.
My mental well-being battery is drained.
What I have to do in order to charge that back up is to go out for a walk, drink a glass of water, get some fresh air.
That helps me readjust.
This is what I'm talking about, is looking at the things that drain you and the things that charge you up.
Thank you for sharing that. I think that was very helpful.
My next question for you goes along with what we have been talking about.
To you, Nathan, what defines a great leader?
That's a big question here.
I answer some of this in my book, which is Your Real Life.
We talk about not just being a great leader in organizations, but a great leader in your life.
Great leadership starts with leading yourself.
I would say that what makes a great leader is a leader that is authentic, which is what I mean is really genuine,
knows inside out what their values are, what their strengths are, what their beliefs and philosophies are,
and how to use those in the world.
But in addition to being authentic, they're great listeners.
They know how to listen with empathy and how to lead with curiosity.
These three things kind of in combination enable leadership, particularly leadership of self,
to move and progress to a life of well-being and joy.
I would say a great leader, particularly those who lead themselves in their lives,
are ones that are also really connected to their purpose, which is part of that authentic understanding,
but also lead their lives and lead their inner and outer world with love.
Love is the fourth anchor of my book and the real model.
I think it's not just a Huey Lewis song from the 80s, the power of love, or a ballad love song,
but love really does enable us to get a lot of things done.
And great leaders are those who lead themselves with love, but also lead their organization with love.
And specifically what I mean in my definition of love is they know how to manage forgiveness, how to navigate forgiveness.
They know how to communicate and are very wise with the word choices that they use,
both in the words that they use to talk to themselves in their inside voice and outside voice,
their inner voices and their inner coach and inner critic voices uses language of love,
but also how they speak to the people that they lead.
Thirdly, love consists of creating a community and a chosen family and a network of people
who understand what it means to show up and be in a place of well-being and joy with each other and navigate hard things.
And last, humor.
Humor is a big part of the love formula. We're not laughing enough at some of the hard things that happen to us.
And great leaders know how to harness humor in the adaptation of using and leading their lives with love.
But I would say those are some of the elements of that formula to great leadership.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.