The Psychology of a Leader

“The issue here is that it has a lot to do with the psychology of a leader. And it’s about timing. You have to create the opportunity when all of the psychological things that hold you back are in sync.” Innovating an Industrial Giant

The most common refrain we get from clients when we’re working with them is that they always insist and push us towards wanting to know what they must do and how much they must do it.

And if we don’t get into those details, some clients become quite frustrated.

As if we are holding them back because if we could just tell them what to do and how to do it,
they would be very successful. But that is not true.

Assume you had the chance to spend one hour with Stephen Curry.

Stephen is wildly and widely, and I am choosing those two words for a reason, regarded as one of the greatest basketball point guards of all time.

So you have an hour to work with him. And in that hour, he will show you how to do a 3 pointer, and you’ve never seen a three pointer before.

A three pointer is when you shoot for the basket from outside the semicircle.

And he is going to show you the exact technique he uses, and you can watch him and ask questions.

You have an hour of coaching with Stephen Curry. You’re on the court with him. He gets to see how you’re shooting the ball. He gets to correct you.

Would you be able to shoot a three pointer like Stephen Curry after that one-hour session?

The answer is almost certainly no.

Because it takes a lot of time to master this.

Just knowing what to do and how to do it
doesn’t mean you are going to do it at the level of the greats.

Same with cooking. You can work with one of the world’s best chefs for an hour, and they can show you how to do something. The exact technique. You could write it down perfectly. But replicating it, knowing the nuances, truly understanding it, and having that background knowledge—you’re not going to have it.

The same applies to any field in the world.

So, the point I want to make here is that:

Knowing what to do and how to do it is not enough.

It’s not even a question of time. Some people never master these things, no matter how long they do them.

LeBron James is not LeBron James because he spent more time playing basketball. There are people in the NBA who spent more time playing basketball than him. But they’re not at his level.

The issue here is that it has a lot to do with the psychology of a leader. And it’s about timing.

You have to create the opportunity when all of
the psychological things that hold you back are in sync.

There are many psychological issues and challenges we’re going to go through and deal with in this program.

But we also did it fast.

If we are working with anyone, in this case, Andrew, if we compress his ability to do what a senior partner can do by 40%, that’s enormous. That means that if it normally takes a senior partner 10 years to learn how to do this, and we can shave off 4 years, it’s still going to take Andrew six years.

That’s a huge accomplishment and will be the kind of improvement that is significantly bigger than most people will ever experience.

But it is still a long time.

So we’ve got to figure out a way to really compress this into a year, two, three, at most.

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I honor your drive and determination to achieve greatness in your professional career. How do I know you have this drive? Because you would not get to this part of this article otherwise.

You may be thinking, “Andrew is one lucky guy.” But we want to help you become that lucky person—the one who becomes an influential, in-demand, and well-respected (most importantly, by yourself) business professional.

You may know that FIRMSconsulting and StrategyTraining.com mission is to help driven and well-meaning individuals, just like you, to have a meaningfully more impactful and successful career. To nurture, groom, and help advance the kind of leaders who will move the world forward.

As I mentioned last week, the world will go backward if people who have a will and desire to create capacity and acquire capability do not step up and focus on creating something for this world to take it forward, to make it better, kinder, happier, and more advanced. To reduce the amount of suffering, loneliness, averageness, and degradation.

Yes, you will get bigger results if you work with Michael and I personally, but life happens step by step. And you may not be at that step yet. I wasn’t for a big part of my career.

You can get great results using the resources we create for our members. Since we are focusing on this new Mega program today, take a look at the Innovating an Industrial Giant program. And the first Andrew program (How to Sell >$10MM Consulting Studies. The Andrew Program).

Be the unique butterfly you are on the wall, seeing step by step what was done over a period of time, in what sequence, and why it was done. And how and why a multitude of steps were taken that added up to building a system that resulted in closing the $42 million single-fee contract, saving sinking but crucial relationships, and putting Andrew on solid ground (AGAIN) to influential career and C-suite.

And you don’t have to go as far as Andrew if you don’t want the level of responsibility. But I bet you do want to advance from whatever role you have now. Right now, your colleagues are gunning for that promotion too. Its a race. Give yourself ammunition to win that race.

And if you choose to do it not just for yourself but to make your above-average contribution to the world, you will multiply your chances of success.

Thousands of clients used StrategyTraining.com Insider and Legacy memberships, as well as Strategy Control Room add-on membership, to achieve accelerated career progression and meaningfully higher level of influence and impact. So can you.

Enroll as an Insider or Legacy member (the largest business strategy, problem-solving, and results-oriented leadership audio and video training library in the world; scroll down to membership options):

https://www.strategytraining.com/

Enroll as a Strategy Control Room member (our internal knowledge management system, advanced reading materials), an optional add-on to Insider or Legacy membership:

https://www.strategytraining.com/pages/scr

Take care,
Kris Safarova

P.S. Both Insiders and Legacy members have access to the Innovating an Industrial Giant program, as well as the first Andrew program (How to Sell >$10MM Consulting Studies. The Andrew Program).

P.S. By the way, if you are an Insider and want to upgrade to Legacy (Legacy members have access to additional advanced programs plus, twice a month, their most pressing question can be answered by me/Michael during Legacy group coaching calls), go to the Exclusive to Legacy Members section on StrategyTraining.com. The system will offer you an opportunity to upgrade, taking any paid days into account as credit towards your Legacy membership. If you upgrade from Insider to Legacy, you can move back to Insider at a later date. But I doubt you would want to because of the ROI you can get from the individualized Legacy members’ coaching calls and additional advanced programs.