Leadership Choices with David Wheatley
David Wheatly is the Principal and Chief Question Asker at Humanergy, he's the author of “What Great Teams Do Great” and “50 Dos For Everyday Leadership.” You’ll love listening to David talk about his journey from England to the USA with lessons including: The components and elements of leadership choices The common themes that set great teams apart The red path and green path (which one are you on?) What makes great questions “great.” Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about David below: David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humanergy/ Humanergy Website: https://humanergy.com David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidwheatley1 Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Joining me on the show today is David Wheatly. He's the Principal and Chief Question Asker, Humanergy, leadership development consultancy. He's the author of What Great Teams Do Great and 50 Dos For Everyday Leadership. Before we get a chance to speak with David, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: When the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi was asked by Fortune magazine, what's the most important leadership advice she's been given. She said, whatever anybody does or says assume positive intent. And when you follow this advice, your approach to a personal problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're often angry or annoyed. If you let go of this anger or annoyance and assume positive intent, you'll be able to listen generously and speak straight and more effectively. And this advice is not insignificant from a leader who has made one of the boldest moves in their industry in recent years. Nooyi was featured in 2015 issue of Fortune for her bold move of taking PepsiCo in an audacious strategy shift beyond unhealthy snacks and drinks. Despite her critics at the time, PepsiCo has had positive year on year organic growth and has crushed the shares of rival Coke. Assuming positive intent is clearly a powerful leadership move. However, to get good at it, you must first recognize your automatic tendency to sometimes see the negative intentions in people. And then you must deliberately practice looking for positive intent. When you look for positive intent, you automatically give people the benefit of the doubt, and you give yourself a chance to learn about what could have caused the situation you find yourselves in. In fact, you might even be surprised something you hadn't expected might come out of the woodwork. Maybe in a few cases, you'll learn that the person had positive intent, but it just landed negatively. Allow yourself to learn this rather than jumping to conclusions without clear information and doing so you can take action. And of course, by assuming positive intent, you're also practicing great leadership. You'd like to avoid many of the embarrassing situations that come with having negative connotation. So, the leadership lesson here is when you hear or see something that feels negative, reframe it and ask yourself what could have been the reasons behind the action behind the event. And you'll