Robin Sharma is one of the world’s leading leadership coaches, consultants. He works with a ton of fortune 500 businesses to help transform their organizations and he is one of the most inspiring people.
Below are bunch of big ideas:
Flip the switch
- The basic idea: The idea is you don’t need a title to lead. We all have an inner leader and we don’t need to wait until someone bestows us with a title. eg. we get the corner office for whatever to exert a tremendous of power and influence in our lives. What we need to do among other things is flip the switch. We need to flip the leadership switch and the basic distinction we need to make is we need to claim responsibility.
- We can choose to be a victim, we can choose to be a leader, we can choose to complain about life’s problems and challenges in our circumstances in our life or we can choose to do something about them.
- And create the most empowered response we can and create a better future. Victims complain, leaders create. You need to flip the switch. If you want to have an extraordinary life.
- The moment you flip that switch and you quit blaming things outside of yourself and you take a hundred percent responsibility. The extreme ownership style is the way that the Navy SEALs guy put it in in their book on leadership. No more complaining, blaming, criticizing etc.
- It’s all on you. You are going to choose your most empowered response. When you do that, your life changes within minutes.
- You need to continue to flip that switch because it has a way of falling the off position, the victim position. So it’s a moment-to-moment thing but just notice how often you’re complaining flip the switch be a leader. Be relentlessly solution-oriented.
Action
- When you are exposed to an idea that fires you up or you have a brilliant idea where you hear something. Whether reading a book or in a conversation or a workshop or whatever, you just have this distillation of clarity. Of that’s a distinction I want to bring into my life.
- He says the moment you have that idea, you need to take action immediately. Take white-hot action on red hot ideas. Don’t let the time come in between your inspiration in your action.
- The longer the time elapses between your inspiration and your action, the less likely it is you’ll ever take action. So take action on ideas that fire you up.
- It doesn’t matter how small the baby step is. Just do something to make progress, take action.
Fear
- Robin walks us through for leadership conversations with four leadership teachers in the story, so we meet these fictional characters who teach our hero, how to do certain things.
- One of the ideas and the main concepts of the book is that turbulent times create great leaders. Every leader talks about a time when they were challenged, about the crucible of challenge that brought out the best within them.
- Robin talks about this in some really powerful ways in this section on the fact that turbulent times create great leaders. He says challenges are just an opportunity for you to step up heroically.
- You need to know that every time you move into your fear and you’re able to go past your comfort zone, you just expanded your comfort zone. Your zone expands incrementally over time in magical ways. Embrace challenges if you want to do extraordinary great things.
Be helpful
- Fourth big idea is that love is the best-kept secret of business, of leadership. Loving what you do, with the people with whom you do it, treating them with respect.
- Robin says a number of things but here’s one my favorite kind of practical life hack. He says, be helpful. You want to strengthen relationships, be helpful. Try to be the most helpful person you know. That’s an extraordinary way to very practically apply the idea of being more loving.
- Tiny little opportunities that benefit the individual, you’re blessed and able to serve and you get the immediate boost. The fastest way to boost your own mood is to do something nice for somebody else. It’s both the quickest way and also the one of the most robust ways to sustain a positive mood.
Athlete
- The next big idea is the first person you need to lead is yourself. You need to be a great human being if you want to be a great leader and Robin walks us through the fundamentals.
- Think about an athlete who tells a reporter in the locker room after a game one day says, I’m done practicing, I’m not going to prepare before games anymore, no more training, no more practicing, no more prep and I’m going to still show up at a stupor superstar level.
- Robin says if someone actually said that you’d think they were a bit crazy because that’s not going to happen. The higher you go, the more you need to train, the more you need to practice. That’s what the elite performers know.
- People who don’t perform at that level, either haven’t taken the time to figure out what they need to do on a consistent basis or they don’t have the
- discipline to actually do it.
- Don’t be the athlete who says I don’t need to practice or train anymore. But instead approach your life like a world-class athlete, how would you show up, what would you do if you weren’t athlete training to win an Olympic gold medal or a championship in your area of expertise.
- How would you eat, how would you sleep, how would you train to be the best in the world at what you do.
- The athletes give us such a powerful model in a context. We need to figure out what the key things all we need to do and then do them as if we’re going after the gold medal or the championship. Because what else is worth going after.
- Define what that is for you and go out and perform at your best and be helpful in the process.
