Podcast #71 Transcript: Learn to Be a Leader - Part 2

Welcome to a learn.org podcast. We are here to support your learning, taking off the limits that we have accrued to our learning, and adding in those ingredients that we've learned from world-class learners that have made them the best so that we can each update our own programming and become the best learners that we can be. We're really glad that you're here to share some time with us. We hope that this brings you exactly what you need today to better engage in your life and your learning. 
Today in our podcast, we're picking up with the second part of our podcast on how to become a leader. This is especially important cause as we mentioned before, we're finding that people that have gone through our program that have really enhanced their ability to learn and resolve the kinds of things that kept them from that and built the vision that compels them and pulls them forward into being a really excellent learner, are the kinds of people that other people are looking to provide a perspective, to have a vision, to make sense of what's going on around all of us, and to put forward a way forward through what is taking place in the world these days. Working with our processes and perspectives develops our capacity to engage, to make sense of things around us, to understand, to have deeper insight, to have a deeper capacity, to really engage and participate in the world in a meaningful way, in a way that has a sense of purpose and a sense that we can creatively respond to what we're encountering in our lives in a way, again, that makes sense to people. 
Through this work, we become the kind of person that other people look to. Now, we should again, just think about a couple of basic models of leadership. So often historically, leadership was thought of as an exercise of power. How to get other people to do what we want, how to elevate our own position, how to fulfill our own ego, how to be the one one that's elevated and get others to do our bidding. And we see that played out through royalty, through history, through strongman, through coerced leadership, or simply through who has the most money, who has the leverage, who's the boss, who's the ceo, and I suppose there's a place for that. It certainly took place and got us from maybe a B lots of downsides to that model. The ideal was the benevolent leader who was looking out for everybody else that was somewhat selfless and really looking out for the best of all people. 
And of course that happens sometimes that even in that model, the people don't get so elevated, they don't become all they can be. So there's so much lost potential. Those people that end up just being followers, just doing what they're told, hoping that they will reap some benefits of that, never really expand into learning what their capability is and how they can contribute. So we see throughout history that there has always been, as a result of that, some lack. There's certainly been benefits of a beneficial leader because oftentimes people didn't stand up, didn't really play their part. Without somebody stepping into that role, oftentimes then things would not progress at all. So there have been benefits to that, and there have been so many times where somebody simply to benefit their own needs, their own craving for power, their own ego fulfillment, stepped into those roles and made use of and abused that role. 
And we can see that over and over and over through history. In recent times. We've begun in some places to see a change to more cooperative leadership so that there's a sense that anybody can rise up and participate. And certainly with the rise of the internet, there have been people that didn't have a voice, that now have a voice. Sometimes that's been used well, many times has been used poorly. But we're learning in the workplace. Corporations, smaller businesses have found that there is a vast body of wisdom, of knowledge, of capability amongst all of the people working in an organization or in many of them. And that if they're engaged, properly, engaged in a real and sincere way, engaged in a way that benefits everybody, that the participation in creating a forward vision and implementing that vision is powerful and much more productive than what would come out of a single leader with only their own ideas to draw from. 
And in this day and age where progress is happening so rapidly and business is so competitive, we see in the business sphere that this is being called for more and more. It's not always done very well, but it is certainly something that people are looking to, businesses are looking to in a hopeful way. There is this sense of if we can just utilize this vast pool of talent and capacity and wisdom and drive and that we can come at it together, that great things, even greater things than before can be done. Of course, with this, there are many questions that are also being brought up. Who benefits the most? Is it the owners? Is there some other distribution model? And that's a question for somewhere else, not in our podcast, but we just want to acknowledge that there are lots of things to be worked out in this. 
And how is this done in a way that is genuine and respectful of everybody and everybody's input, everybody's participation, the type of leadership that we're talking about can be done anywhere. We mentioned business just cause it's more obvious how that is becoming a theme. Again, not necessarily well done, but it's becoming an important theme in the business world. There's lots of consultants that come in and try and teach people how to move towards this. Oftentimes the old habits take over and fort the intent of these movements, but there's a reason that those are being given credence in the business world. But we're also talking about everywhere else. This can be in your classroom, this can be amongst your friends, it can be in sports, it can be in other organizations that you are part of. Anywhere where two or more people get together to get something done, there is some engagement of leadership that just natural that takes place there. 
Most emphasized characteristic is what is the quality of the leader and what degree of character have they developed? Character can meet a really broad range of things. If you ask around about what are the components of character, you're going to get a long list. You're supposed to be honest and have integrity. Keep your promises, be loyal, be responsible, pursue the highest and the best. Always be kind and caring. Treat everybody well. And the list goes on and on and it's a great list and it's really important. And people notice these things about us. And if we have them, they're much more inclined to consider our perspective and to be willing to join in with us, to co-create, to cooperate in coming up with a vision and implementing that vision. In other words, to let us participate in leading and moving things forward. So those lists are great, and there's typically not a lot said about how to, you may have noticed in the time that you've listened to our podcast, if you've gone through many of them, is our insistence is that we always come down to how people can say a lot of great things. 
Oh, you should make a million dollars, a billion dollars, but how? Oh, you should be of the finest character. How do you get there? You should do and be all kinds of things. You should be a great student. You should be really good at learning. You should be successful. How do you do that? Again, so often most of the things that are written, most of the things we'll find online, just tell us what we should aspire to, but not how to do it. One of the really great things about YouTube is that if you want to do something almost for sure, you can go on YouTube and look at do it yourself videos about how to do anything. If you want to build a model airplane, it's there. If you want to learn how to fly a plane, it's there. If you want to do almost anything, the howtos, the step-by-step. 
There's somebody that is thoughtful enough, generous enough, or for whatever reason, puts that up on YouTube so that all of us can use that. That's what we're trying to do here in terms of how to learn how to become successful and we're some of good leader and we're starting with how develop character. In thinking about this, we would refer you back to a podcast we did on mistakes. That there are no mistakes. So what it takes to develop a good quality character amongst other things, maybe the most fundamental is we have to really be honest about our mistakes. We have to pay attention to when did we do something that didn't work out that fell short of what our goal was or that we or somebody else was hurt by it or that there was more that we could have done or more that we could have created or that there is a greater outcome we could have gone for. 
So if we're willing to be honest with ourselves and really honest, this is not just, well, I got what I wanted, so I'm a winner. Yes, I got what I wanted maybe in the short term, but what did that do to myself, my relationships to the people around me? What outcomes, what unintended consequences did that produce in this world? If we're learning, were always going to make mistakes. It's just required. If we look at evolution, all of evolution is driven by mutations about doing something beyond where things had gone so far about going a little bit further. Now a lot of those mutations don't end up being viable and they drop out, but occasionally they work well with our intelligence. Hopefully we can hit a lot more useful often than just random mutation, but it's not always going to be correct or it's not always going to bring about the best solution possible. 
So we want to have that willingness to look at whatever we've just done, whatever we've done in the past, even what we're about to do and go, how's that working? How's that going to work? Is that bringing about what it is that I really want and what will benefit all of us? So a lot of times of course we look at it in terms of, well, will it benefit me? Will I get what I want? And in the short run, that kind of works, but very often in the long run, other people are alienated. They can turn against us or we develop a diminished or hardened sense of self in order to pull that off again and again. So if we notice those consequences, then we can look at this. We can look at whatever we've done, whatever we've created, the ways that we've engaged and go, where's the shortcoming and how could I do it better? 
How could we do it better? How could I participate more? How can I engage other people more? And how can I do it in a way that has that long list of character qualities? Very often, even if we've done something extremely well, it really worked every way that we hoped it would. Through that, again, we grow, we learn, and an hour later, a day later, we can look back and go, I could have done even better. It's that willingness to look at ourself and always put everything on the line and say, where's the growth? What's possible? Not a harsh demanding way, not in a way that we're hard on ourselves and God, oh, I didn't do it well enough. But always with that eye towards where's the aliveness and how do I bring about more of that? Where's the creativity and how do I bring about more of that from that sense of excitement about the growth, the excitement about discovery, the excitement about finding out what else is possible and then leaning into that. 
Sometimes I think about that old Bob Dylan, quote them not busy being born are busy die. Well, that may or may not be familiar to you, but that sense of we want to be busy being born, we want to be busy becoming. And if we do that, that sense of aliveness, that sense of excitement within our life is going to be pretty strong and others are going to want to be engaged with that. They're going to want to participate with us in that. That's exciting to people. When you think about times that you've done that or times you've seen other people engage that way and you notice how people respond around them, most of the time it's pretty positively. And if others don't respond positively, that's another reason to look at it. And just again, honestly consider is there something I missed? It's not that we're wanting let other people dictate to their perspective, their opinions, their that's not what we're about. 
Of course, there's to that tremendously inhibits growth in human beings, always trying to please other people. We're not talking about that. We're really just trying to look at if I did something, what was the result? And can I now see a better way to do it? And then do that better way that develops character, that develops capacity, that develops creativity. And that's the essence of learning. Learning is always about what don't I know and what can I know and how do I go about learning what I can know? So that's not just in a classroom, hopefully in a classroom, they're helping to develop that attitude of learning is fun, learning is exciting. Learning transforms our lives. Learning makes the world the kind of place we want live in. But a lot of times that's not done. But we can develop that for ourselves. That's what we're encouraging. 
That's the first step here in terms of how do we develop our own character in such a way that others are engaged by us, inspired by us, want to enter into cooperative engagement with us, to work on projects, to envision things with us, to participate with us in exploring what's possible. Again, wherever that is at work, at play at school, in our day, day-to-day life, let's turn our attention now to another way to build, to develop our character. All of us have shortcomings. All of us are demons. All of us have those things that our capacity, we've talked about that here. What do we do about those when we find those? So the first thing we want to do is get some sense of what is that demonn? What is holding us back? And find a way to articulate that. Find some way to say, oh, here's the challenge in my own being, in my own psyche. 
Here's the limit that I'm dealing with. Here's what's not functioning well. And then we want to be able to state that in terms of what will it be like in us, in our life experience when that has been overcome. Let's say that our underlying limitation that we've just discovered is I always fall short and never really get things done at the level with the quality in the way that I envision, in the way that I hope to. So we would turn that around and look at what would it be like if we did, and how would we express that? So we may come up with this vision of ourself, of being very capable, very on top of it, really doing well at things, completing things on time and with really high quality. And then we want to turn that into a positive statement. I always complete in a powerful way what it is that I set out to do or whatever statement matches for you. 
Then we want to take that statement and repeat it to ourselves. Maybe we write it down on paper over and over. Maybe we just repeat it. But as we do, we're going to notice that with a few repetitions, we start hitting resistance. Maybe in the beginning we say, yeah, I always get things done with the best of quality. And everything may go, okay, yeah, fine, but then we're going to start to get something that goes, Nope, not true, not capable. That's not who I am. And we're going to start in that As we stay with that, finding these deeper levels of what the underlying concept is, what the underlying belief is, what it is that is really taking place in our deep psyche that is holding us back. If we're thinking about the brain from a computer point of view, what the instructions are at that deep level of programming that is diverting us from the outcome that we want. 
When we found that deep programming, we want to then change that so that we really are in integrity with ourselves so that we really are showing up in a way that is going to elicit other people's support and their interest in cooperatively creating that is going to get them to want to be part of leading our group forward. When we have found this, here's how we go about changing it. This is one of a number of ways of doing this. Again, you can search our prior podcasts on our website and find numbers of ways to change beliefs, to change concepts. For today, we're going to come at, we know, as we've discussed in prior podcasts, the beliefs are always ForSight people encoded in the brain as an image, as a picture. We've tested this over decades with thousands of people, and it is always the case as far as we've ever found. Now, some people would say, no, no, I encode those as feelings or as something I say to myself, and certainly that can be there. But the fundamental encoding is as a picture. We may look at the picture and get a feeling. We may look at that picture and say something. That picture may be even a little out of consciousness, so we may not notice it, but with a little probing, we find that it's there and that is the fundamental piece that we need to change. 
So when we find what this fundamental underlying concept is, we want to ask ourselves just a couple simple questions. Well, is that picture in or is it in black and white? Is it more in front of us, behind us, maybe above or off to the side? The reason that we're asking these questions is not that those details are so important for our outcomes, but they let us notice where these concepts pictures are. It's a really easy way to get the brain to recognize that rather than try and go, well, where is it? And a lot of times that engages things in such a way that it's sometimes works, but sometimes not this way of doing it. Almost hundred percent of the time people go, well, I think it's in color. We don't have to know for sure. Oh, I think it's in front or behind me. 
Or maybe it's around. And then we have that next thing. We take that picture and put it ways out in front of us. If it's around us, we just take it off. We take off a sweater, we put it way out in front of us. If its in front of us already or behind us, we do the same thing we put in. And then we have that sense of opening up that picture and taking out the erroneous data, that sense of, oh, I, I'm not good enough, or I fall short, or there's some fault that I have. Whatever. You take that out of that picture that usually got in there at an early time in our life when we didn't know how to really interpret our experiences or we took on somebody else's view or whatever else, got that in there. But we take that out and we replace it with the sense of, I can do this, or Im good at these things, whatever. 
It's, we want to replace it often in the context of, I can learn to do this. I can learn to be whatever it is that I want. We don't put it in as an absolute. We put it in as a learning process, which gives us a lot more ease and freedom, and there's much less pushback in our system about that. And then we take that picture when we updated it and we put it back around in front of us or behind us or wherever it goes, and let it integrate back into our system. And it does that pre readily when we put it back in that place. So now we have a new and updated belief. Now, this doesn't always take care of all like beliefs. A lot of times we have sort of cluster of beliefs. The one that we've changed in our experience stays changed, but sometimes that puts a little pressure on another one that's somewhat similar and that will come up and we just do the same thing with it. 
There's a limited number of these, and that will complete the process. Now, a lot of times just the one change is enough. We like you to know the range of possibilities. Now, some people would say, well, isn't this just an imaginative exercise? And if you listen to any of our podcasts on the imagination and the power of that and the importance of that, we think you'll see through that consideration. Now, some of you'll say, well, didn't we do this exercise a long time ago? Yes. And its important sometimes to come back to these, try and state in a little different way and remind us of what the tools are in our toolbox. Interestingly, just yesterday we got a call from the founder of a multi-billion dollar investment fund, very capable person, and they were saying, Hey, I feel a little stuck, and how do I change that? 
How do I overcome this so I can get on with this project that I'm working on? And we went back over this very process in a very similar way, and we got a message from them this morning saying, oh my God, that changed so much. Why hadn't I been doing this all along? Well, sometimes we forget again what our tools are, and just a little reminder can be of help. So if you've done it before, reapply this. Keep this as a handy tool that you can come back to whenever. And if it's new to you, we think you're going to find that's very useful to do this. And doing this upgrades our system in a way that makes who we are more engaging with other people in a way that, again, puts us even more in a position to bring leadership to the groups that we're engaged with. Try it out. You think you'll find that you can make some pretty big movements in these directions. Thank you for listening. Our purpose is supporting your capacity to learn and to attain all that you can imagine. We hope you use the perspectives and exercises that we have shared. Feel free to send us questions, ideas, experiences that might benefit our listeners via learn to learn.org, l e a r n dash t o dash l e a r n.org. Finally, please help others by sharing our link with your friends, family, and other loved ones since how you learn is how you live.
​