325 – Getting Through The Breaking Point of Change

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been on an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership. What makes the best leaders so good? After running companies small and large over the last 20 years, today I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name is John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. Welcome to tomorrow’s leader. 

John Hello. My name is John Laurito, and I’ll be your host today on tomorrow’s leader. Boy. Wouldn’t that be a fun way to open up an episode? Okay, let’s get down to serious business. Welcome to the show. My name is John Laurito. I am thrilled to be here once again with you. I just got back from traveling again and I do love traveling, but it is so great to get home after a trip. I was in Philadelphia, love Philly and of course come back with more stories, more leadership stuff to share with you. And and by the way, let me correct a story. I think I need to correct a story that I told you back a few episodes ago, because I was retelling it to somebody who’s retelling a story about how Philadelphia Airport has this really cool thing in Terminal five. And they have the Pan Am Hotel right outside Terminal five, which is like instantly go back in time. It is unbelievable. And I was telling a friend and another friend was there who is from Philly is like, wait, terminal five? There’s terminal five in Philly. What are you talking about? There’s no numbers. So yeah, there is. There is. There’s that terminal five and then now here I am going in and out of Philly zillions of times and I’m saying, yeah, you know, terminal five, you know, the one and these you go outside in the zoo, Pan Am hotel. 

John And I realize after some thinking, I’m like, wait a sec, that wasn’t that was actually not Philly. That was not Philly. That was JFK. Totally wrong airport. So sometimes it all blends together. You know, you travel a lot and then all of a sudden you just forget. And every airport, some airports seem kind of like the same. But then the other thing is, hey, you know what? It wasn’t Pan Am Hotel, it was TWC Hotel. So if I said and I got to go back and track it down and listen, but somebody told me like, you got not only the airport wrong, you got the hotel wrong, too. It’s JFK Airport, Terminal five TWC. So if I told that wrong, maybe I retold it wrong. But if I told it wrong on the podcast, that’s my now I’m on record correcting it. It is JFK Airport, terminal five two way hotel. Awesome. It’s like stepping in a time machine. Fantastic. Fantastic experience. Anyways, there we go on record having corrected my in correct statement. Okay, so another airport just phenomenon. I just don’t understand this. Why does Philadelphia airport, the B terminal, why did the gates go? That was going to be three. And I’m like, okay, I’m kind of running late for my flight. So thankfully I’m B3 and not be, you know, 43. So I get there and I’m like, okay, it starts at one, which is great. And I’m like, B1, B2, like, great. It’s going to be b three. It’s not, it’s B for I’m like, okay, I guess B three or B maybe right after. That’s kind of weird. Sometimes you see that? No, the next one is not even what you think. You might think in this story that it goes to be five. 

John It doesn’t. It goes to be six. And then it goes to be three. Now. I sat there for a long time trying to figure out how does that happen? Like, how do they do they move the gates? Do they set it up in a way where they say, hey, you know what I mean? It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not like it was, you know, ten, 15, out of order, but it was enough. So I was thinking, okay, did I pass it? Did I miss it somehow? I did. I turned around and looked. I’m like, I didn’t pass it. And sure enough, where be seven should be is where be three is. So if you’re traveling to Philly in the big gates, look for B three after B six. So that’s my my $0.02 for you. Okay. So end into the show. I was talking to a group yesterday about change. I’ve talked a lot about change recently, but I was talking to this group and I’m like, okay, this is this is a great podcast topic because I know leaders go through this, but everybody is a leader or leader of life. You’re a leader of your life. And leadership is all about change. It is all about influencing people, including yourself, to do things that you otherwise would not have done. It’s disrupting disrupting the current path, which takes a few different things. One, it takes some kind of impetus. Something has to happen that causes you to make the decision to make a change. But most people think that that is the toughest part of change, is making the decision. Now, I will say you cannot make change. You cannot change unless you make the decision. But here’s what you have to realize. 

John And if you understand this and realize this and anticipate it expected, it’s much, much easier to get through change successfully and get through to the other side. Because I will tell you, most of the time at the end of change is this incredible picture that is brighter and more enjoyable and more successful and smoother and less stressful than the one you’re in right now. That’s why you’re embarking on change, whether you’re leading an organization through it or whether you’re leading yourself through it. But the tough thing is the decision to make the change and start the journey is tough, but it’s not nearly as tough as doing the things that you will have to do to go through change. And I’ll give you an example. If I sit here and say, hey, I am going on a diet, I am going I’m I’m going to lose £20 in the next four months. That’s my commitment. I’m going to do it. I don’t care. Now, there’s a difference between saying Ed. And truly in your mind committing to it now. You know, the the difference the difference would be if I’m now on top of a building and I’ve got a parachute on and I’m saying to myself, okay, I’m going to jump off and and I’m going to base jump off this building. It’s one thing to say that and even in your mind, say it with conviction versus actually deciding that you’re going to do it and you’re going to jump. Okay. Totally different, right? We are physically going to do that. So I’m talking about the decision where you have made up your mind. You are going to do it great. But that’s not enough. Because we have to realize is it’s kind of like this big bell curve picture, this big curve with a it’s like a normal mountain. 

John And as you’re going up, it it goes from the easy part, which is making the decision and it starts to get hard and then it gets a little harder and it continues to get a little harder. And then it gets to its hardest point. Now, what is making this hard and harder and hardest? Well, you’ve got different things that are happening. And I’ll give you an example. I deal with lots of leaders. One of the very challenging thing is as they are expanding their business, a critical thing for a leader to do to expand his or her organization is they have to give out responsibility. They have to delegate responsibility. They’ve got to give up control. They’ve got to bring people into the organization. They’ve got to put tasks, responsibility, decision making in other people’s hands. You cannot do that as a solopreneur and be the one person operation. Otherwise that’s all you’re going to be. You have to be able to delegate and and develop other people and empower other people. But it’s hard if you’re doing something and you’re used to doing something and you figured out a way to do it really well. But, you know, you shouldn’t be doing it because it’s not using your talents and your skills the right way. So you’re putting it in somebody else’s hands. You have to assume there’s going to be a lot of bumps in the road. Right. You have to know that you’re going to hit frustration. You’re going to hit you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to be annoyed. You know, you may bring somebody in and there’s like now you get a you’re talking so much this person and going over stuff over and over again. You’re retraining them, training them, retraining them. 

John You’re fixing mistakes. You’re just getting frustrated. They’re getting frustrated. They’re trying to learn. It’s confusing. There’s all these kinds of things and what it’s going to do, it’s going to challenge you and push you and taunt you and tease you and try to push you into saying, You know what? I’ll forget about it. Let me grab this back. Resist the urge, okay? Resist the urge to go backwards. This is the biggest mistake I see people make. They they hit into this hard stuff and yes, it will get harder and yes, it will get to the hardest point. And they get to those hard and harder points and they want to turn back because they just see, you know what, it was a lot easier to do this before they’ll get let me just take this thing back and I’ll do it myself. Forget it. And it’s the biggest mistake leaders make. You have to keep going, because I will tell you this. You’re going to reach a point. And it’s the pinnacle, the hardest part. And then you know what happens. It doesn’t get as hard. It’s not as hard. And it’s actually easier and easier and it’s less and less hard and less difficult and less obstacles and less frustration and less annoyances and less temptation to want to turn back, because you now see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then you get to a point where you’re like, I ride, this is really working great. And then you get to the point where it’s even better than you started and it keeps getting better and better and better. And again, I don’t care what this is. If this is a journey about personal health of its journey, about relationships, it’s a journey about building an organization. 

John If it’s a journey about developing a leader in your organization, whatever that case may be, it will be really hard. But you have to just keep going. Push the full, full throttle, full force for for for full force ahead. And you will get through it. And I will promise you it will take less time than you probably thought. When you start reaching these obstacles and once you overcome that hardest point, it will start to get easier and easier and easier. And that journey down the hill, you know, down to the back end of the hill where you’re going downhill is a lot quicker and easier, of course, than going up and going up. It’s the toughest part. So just you have to keep that in mind. And our brains are just trained to go back to what we now. We just we are our minds work that way. We just have to retrain our brain because our natural instinct, we have to think through new stuff. We don’t have to think through the stuff we’re already trained on. If I’ve got bad habits, I mean, my mind just goes right back to that. I just my natural tendency is to keep doing the bad habit thing. I’ve got to think through the new habits. I’ve got to become consciously competent. You know, I went to a hotel this week and they gave me a little key. That was a little badge thing. It was a risk. It was around my wrist. And then they said, Hey, you can just use this to get into, you know, the doors and all that kind of stuff. I’m like, Wow, that’s really key. That’s really cool. I don’t need my key, which I didn’t, but I still carried my key with me. 

John And I will tell you, I when you get on the elevator, you’ve got to swipe your key to that. Your floor. I missed my floor, no exaggeration, at least three times on the elevator, because I would forget I have this key on my wrist and I’d be fumbling around trying to pull the key out of my my pants or my suit jacket. And and I missed the floor. And it took me, like, two days to realize we just, like, I’ve got this thing on my wrist. How would I use it? Like it. It made my life a lot easier, but I just forgot. My tendency is to go back to the stuff. The old way of doing stuff. I know a key card, I know how to use that, and that’s what I’m used to. So. And why would they give me both? I don’t know why they gave me both. They should have take out the option of going backwards. That’s there. They would have done a better job leading me if they didn’t give me anything other than the wristband. Right. Just take out the new. The old option only give the new one. Then you’re really going to help somebody accelerate through change. So great leadership lesson in any event. Want to share that with you. A quick story quick, quick little travel story, more travel stories to share. But I’m going to break them up into other episodes. So a little bit of nuggets there on how to get through the pains of change. Just keep going. Trust me, there is a smooth, nice, comfortable road ahead. You just got to get through the Rocky stuff. All right? If this was helpful, let me know. As always likes your subscribe to Down Below, give a five star review, all that kind of good stuff. 

John I’ll see you next time. Thanks. Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. For suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, reach me at John@johnlaurito.com.Thanks, lead on!