Are you CEO capable? Of course! We all have talents and strengths that, if used effectively, could provide great leadership to any organization. In this episode Jimmy shares his three strengths, based on StrengthFinders 2.0 Evaluation, and how you can become the CEO of YOU.
You will gain insight into:
- Why it is vital to truly understand how you think and function to gain the greatest outcomes in life.
- How to access Clifton StrengthFinders and review the report to learn more about your talents.
- What do Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and you have in common? Everything needed to become a world class CEO!
- When to look for a “who” to solve a “how” and why that will make you a better leader.
- Who you become as a leader is a direct impact on the lives you will influence throughout your walk on this earth. Be the best you can be!
Podcast Transcript
Good morning and salud! Hey, this is Jimmy Williams, your host with the most for Live A Life by Design. We’re gonna visit this week just for a few moments, and I’m gonna give you some great action items. So I hope you can take some notes. If you’re listening in your car, just look at the show notes. You’ll get a lot of the content that you need. Look at the transcription. We keep it right there on the old podcast website at livealifeby.design. But the real thing I wanna bring to your attention this morning is that you have within you the capability to be one of the greatest CEOs of one of the most valuable entities on the planet. I’ll explain a little bit more of that here in just a few moments, but I want you to pay close attention today to the three particular traits or skills that will help make you the world’s greatest CEO at the world’s most valuable entity.
In the past few months or years even, you have heard of some of the greatest names ever in the business of being a CEO. These people are extraordinary in the results that they achieved. They work with companies that have had horrible leadership, turned them around and gave their stockholders a tremendous value. See, being a CPA, CEO requires us to have a tremendous different skill set than simply being an employee, simply being someone on the team that just takes a role and performs it. As CEO, you must exhibit certain traits, and to be honest, certain amount of courage. You see, there are friends of mine who have tremendous talent. They have got capabilities far beyond what I possess, but they lack one thing. They don’t have the courage to step out of the comfort and into the courageous. That is the ultimate key for all of these CEOs we’re gonna visit about today.
So when I mention the names of Richard Branson, Meg Whittman, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon, what do you conclude is the common trait of all of these individuals? You got it. These individuals are CEOs of some of the greatest companies on the planet. You as an individual are engineered with the same chemical, makeup, brain, and other body parts. As these people needed to perform your duties as a CEO, the question is, why aren’t you leading the most important enterprise in the world? And that enterprise, that entity I referred to at the beginning of the show is you taking charge of you and leading your own brain, body spirit in a vision to achieve greatness. In this episode, we’ll explore the areas of life where you can take action today to bring your outcomes in life, to realize greater success on levels you’ve never experienced.
To be a great CEO, you must be able to first assess areas of strengths and weaknesses in your organization, in this case, in yourself. By using tools that are available to us today, such as Strength Finders 2.0, or Colby, you can quickly gain knowledge as to your strengths and how you function as a person. You got to understand how you are processing information you receive and how your vision takes those items do you receive of information and puts them in a forward motion to achieve the end result you desire. Now, that’s a lot of words. Let me back up and say it this way. You gotta put the right stuff in to get the great stuff out. So you can’t be filling your mind with junk. You can’t be filling your mind with, you know, YouTube videos all day when they’re not instructional to you or gaining some knowledge.
You hear the rule that a person must spend 10,000 hours at a certain tasker skill to really gain expertise. I’ve heard this mentioned, I’m a guitar player and I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t know that I have 10,000 hours in it because my playing doesn’t reflect that . But hey, I digress. My point of that is, is that you as your own personal CEO, must work toward your goals that you have defined. If you haven’t defined those goals, then you are not working in a purposeful direction with the information you are gaining in life. These simple tools like StrengthFinders 2.0 or Colby, they are assessment tools that you cannot fail. These are not like exams when you were in grade school or high school or college. It doesn’t matter. These are exams you cannot fail. They are simply telling you a reflection of based on scientific research, what you do and how you do what you do.
That comes naturally. So your cognitive state is what Colby looks at to say, Well, how does Jimmy, what’s his method of operation? How does he naturally function? It assigns you a score based on four areas we’ve talked about previously on this show. Those areas really shine light on how you are functioning and why you are functioning in the manner you do, and you can use that to build your organization with people that supply the strengths from their natural cognitive abilities and thoughts for the areas of which may be less strength for you. So what am I saying? Find the whos that can do the how instead of you doing so, because it’s probably not an area of excellence or passion for you. It is critical that we as CEOs learn to work with a team. Even if your team consists of all the people you outsource to, even if they’re vendors and they’re not necessarily under your employment umbrella still, that’s your team.
Now, one of the most important people on my team is my executive assistant. This lady has been in our organization for almost 12 years. As a matter of fact, she knows pretty much how I think before I have to say or ask for any of her assistance. She generally has a presumptive approach to understanding what I am going to need on a particular project and has it waiting for me. This, to me, is invaluable. You cannot find talent like this unless you are purposefully looking for them and attracting them to an organization where they have opportunities for growth of their own talents. It’s important for you to take the Strength Finders 2.0 and the Colby assessments so that you can form a baseline of function, and this determination helps you in the areas that you do not wish to work as well as those you do desire to work in. For example, one of my top five strengths from the StrengthFinders 2.0 is significance. This means that I as a leader, bring influence to the organization that when coupled with my other strengths allows me to take a leadership role while making certain others in the group or organization are heard. It’s not just the one voice from the top down. It must be a leader as someone who can attain information, but also allow others to express what their opinions are on a particular subject matter.
Another CEO that exhibits this trait is Richard Branson, an iconic leader and entrepreneur. Branson has the capability of finding the correct who for each of his how situations in a company. This gentleman has well over 400 enterprises that he is either founded or co-founded and leads in some manner. By listening to his team he has assembled, he gains tremendous buy-in from the team by allowing him to focus on the vision for the enterprise. In other words, what I’m saying is he’s got others to help him carry the load of the processing and what needs to be done to get the product out the door, the service implemented in the marketplace. While he continues to do that, that’s most important for his talents, and that is creating a vision where those other team members can see themselves becoming and staying successful. You can learn more about the Strengths Finders 2.0 in our show notes.
Another trait you must be able to develop is that of an activator. This is the type of person who has an attitude of when can we start? Have you ever worked with someone that can’t seem to get outta the starting gates on any project? Man, this just wears me thin. All right. Now I’m getting a little off the point here, but here’s my whole contention. You’ll never reach the finish line if you don’t leave the starting block . It’s just that simple. It’s a, it’s a founded truth of life. The question is, is one that great CEOs understand, when can we start? This is as important because he or she believes the best device for learning is to take action. It’s in the doing of the process that you truly gain knowledge and growth so that you can complete the project. That sounds almost circuitous as if I’m just doing one step that leads to another step, but then gives me information that leads back to another step.
But it truly gives your mind the capabilities to learn while doing in a much quicker fashion than simply by reading and studying. Who would you think is a CEO who exhibits this trait of activator? I will tell you, he owns several big companies. He founded a rocket building company that is now working with NASA making billions of gross revenue. He builds electric cars that have set the baseline for electric car production in the United States, and dare I say, the world with the technology included in these vehicles. Of course, I’m talking about Elon Musk now, although many of us are shocked by the time he spends and the factories of Tesla directly supervising his engineering and production teams. A side note here, some rumors are that he sleeps on a sofa at his office instead of his mansion, which he has several so that he can be in the atmosphere of doing.
When an idea strikes , and I got news for you, I’m not gonna sleep at the office on a sofa, but I do admire his approach to get started, get going, and we’ll learn the rest of what we need to know during the process of doing. While many people must have all the data to make a decision to take action, not a great CEO, you understand that additional information will be coming as a process takes shape. You do not need 100% of everything you think you’ll need to know to reach a final product or service to the marketplace. It is better to take action with less information than to have all the information and the desired opportunity has already passed you by. The final traits you must possess and master to be a CEO is responsibility. This is a big term in today’s world. So often we see yes, leaders of government, leaders in our community, leaders from Hollywood.
You see all of these people and every one of them when caught doing something that shouldn’t be done in the public or is something that’s counter to what they had spoken before to the public. You know, actions do speak louder than words. All of them absolve themselves of any responsibility they try in some way to deflect all of the criticism from their actions to some other person or reason. But you must take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. Your good name depends on you doing this. If you can’t fulfill a commitment as an activator, you don’t look for excuses. This is unacceptable to any great CEO. You must take responsibility. Apologies are not enough. You will not be able to live with yourself until you make restitution for missing the deadline.
You obsess over impeccable ethics and your desire to be utterly dependable. Finally, you must be selective of the tasks or projects you accept due to your capability and talent. You will attract many opportunities to shine with this trait. It is vital that you be selective. A great leader in history that I love, a quote that he originated was President Dwight Eisenhower. He had a comment that he had made as the commanding general in World War II when he said this. He said, A great leader is someone who takes the blame when the process goes wrong, but gives all of the credit to the team when it performs well and goes right. It seems almost as if a leader or CEO is that person who has to create the vision, see that the vision is attained, and then if it’s not, is the one who takes responsibility.
That is great leadership. You have capability between your ears today to be the greatest CEO of one of the most valuable entities on this planet. That’s you. You sitting there listening to this or standing there listening to this podcast or wherever you find yourself, you have the greatest opportunity to be the best person you can be. Each of us has a talent, a capability, and need only refine our vision to reach the ultimate goal in life, and that’s to be the CEO of our own lives. You can be the next Bill Gates or Alan Mulloy for your organization, your family, and your own being as a person. Go ahead and start today by building your CEO capabilities with these three traits. The challenge this week is take the Strengths Finder 2.0 evaluation and print out the report. Study it to assess your strengths and put them to work building your bigger future.
You’ll find a link in your show notes to help you do just this. Go to our Facebook page show and tell us what your three big traits are that you’re working on this week to become the best CEO you can become. Or perhaps you’ve taken Strength Finders 2.0. Tell us what your Clifton’s strengths are from the report. We’ll look forward to sharing those items with you on Facebook in our lo in our community until we speak again next week, Share this podcast with some of your friends and family, help others, and then by doing so, you’ll certainly grow yourself.