Disposition to Dominate with Ed Molitor

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor. Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molotor Group, Ed Molotour. Today it's going to be you and I solocast. And I am going to give you something that I think will help you. It can either help you reframe where you're at, what you're working on, what's going on in your world, or can help you really lock in. There's so much going on right now. There's so much going on in this world. There's so many distractions, there's so much negativity. There seems to be so much adversity, obstacles.

And one of the things that I have come to really embrace that's helped my success, has helped our success here at the Melodor Group is the willingness to grasp that the world is not black and white, that change is not only inevitable, but it's awesome because it's opportunity. And we'll talk a little bit about change today, but I want to share with you something that I work with my clients on because I think it's so important. And we've had some incredible guests on this podcast and I wanted to take a step back and give you something that you can a listen to while you're working out, while you're driving, working in the yard, whatever, wherever, whenever.

But I also want to give you something that you can sit down with a pen and a paper and really put some thought into and lean into some of the things I'm going to share with you. And this is something that I work on with clients, both as an individual executive coaching clients and with the corporate clients. As a matter of fact, I'm getting ready to fly out this morning for a second week in a row and present this to an amazing client. And last week when we did this, it was incredible. Probably one of the best workshops I've ever been a part of in terms of an engagement, participation standpoint from a client's perspective and what it is. It's something I used to talk about when I was coaching basketball a lot, and that's having the disposition to dominate.

Yes, in athletics, you talk about physically imposing your will on the opponent, but this is coming from the standpoint of the disposition to dominate your goals, the disposition to dominate the challenges and adversity that have been presented to you, the disposition to dominate not only who you were yesterday, but who you woke up as this morning. And a few of the questions I ask my clients as we start workshops or I sit down and start talking to them the first time is, do you want to win? I will never, ever apologize for being dialed into focused on winning and achieving victory at the highest level. But do you want to win? And are you willing to do what it takes to win? Are you willing to do what it takes to win?

And I want my clients to understand, I want the folks that I work with, the coaching leaders that I work with, I want them to understand why winning is so important to them. And I think the first thing you need to do is to really take a step back and dive into what winning means to you. And what does winning mean to you? Is it work? Life, balance? Now, that's an odd thing to say. Cause there's really is no such thing. But is it work like that? Is it hitting your number? Is it metrics? Is it your professional growth? Is it your personal growth? Is it the relationships that you work on and you build on and pour into on a daily basis? Is it the impact that you're having on your team? Is it the team?

In fact, did you find success in winning somehow defined inside of that core team? You know, and again, is it dollars and cents? And I'm not here to judge. I'm not here to say right, wrong, or indifferent. But what does winning mean to you? And how does that look? And what we do here is we take the word victim. We've talked about this, and it's an incredible foundation when you take the time to dive into this. And there is absolutely no way we can go through our whole program and the whole foundational program in one solo cast. But I want to share it with you. And we take the word victory and break it down like this. Values. Intangibles. Okay, values. What is it that you stand for? Intangibles. The little things. What are the separators? What are the game changers?

What are you willing to do that sets you apart? Creativity. Do you have the ability to reframe novel, reframe situations? Team. Do you understand as a leader, you are still a part of something bigger than yourself? Objectives. Objectives. Your vision, your mission, your purpose. What are your goals? What is your process and rules of the game? What are the constraints that may be keeping you from achieving the things you are capable of achieving of? And something we're going to talk about here today is you are the single most important person that you will ever lead. And do you understand that? And are you intentional about that? We've talked a lot on the Athletics of Business podcast about values.

And there is no question in my mind that values based, purpose driven leaders are the ones who put themselves in position to have the greatest impact on their people. And our values are our most deeply held beliefs. As you're listening to this, I don't want you to say, okay, I agree. I want you to think about this way. What is happening? What is going on in your world? What are some of the goals that you're relentlessly pursuing? Or are you relentlessly pursuing those goals? Okay, what are some of the objectives that you have? What are some of the adversity? What's some of the challenges today? Right now, right now, as you're listening to this, okay, what are your most deeply held beliefs? What are your highest priorities?

And I think when we get caught up in the fight, when we get caught up in the noise, we tend to unintentionally stray a little bit from our highest priorities, especially when we put too much on our plate. I absolutely know that I'm guilty of that. Okay, what is it that you stand for? And here's what's interesting is the values are the criteria by which we judge ourselves. Now, if you're sitting here and listening to this and you're taking the time, pen and paper, to take notes, what I want you to do is I want you to write four things down on a piece of paper. We can call this your scouting report. And I can get you a digital copy of this.

If you reach out to me@edemolitargroup.com I'd be more than happy to send you a copy of this, what I give to my clients, because it really helps you lay things out. In the upper left corner of this piece of paper that you have, I want you to write the word values. And underneath it, 1, 2, 3, 4, I want you to have five bullets underneath values. Okay? I like to work with my clients in the different exercises that we do, come up with three to five core values. And then below values, okay? After they're five bullets, you have below that, I want you to write down the word standards, same thing, five bullets below it. And we're going to get into what that means, what that represents here in a second.

And then to the right of values, upper right hand corner, I want you to write the word expectations. And below the word expectations, five more bullets. And then below that set of Bullets and lines. I'd like you to write the word blind spots, and I'm going to go through what these mean, what they represent, how values pour into them as we talk here. But I want you to think about those and keep those front of mind as we're talking here. So one thing I think is important to get back to values real quick is this. And I absolutely, I love this quote. Our values determine our character, and our character determines what? It determines our value. It's pretty powerful when you think about it. I mean, think about that. Our values determine our character, and our character determines our value. So let's do this.

Let's really quick. I want to give you an exercise, and this is something that we take some time to do in the workshops and with my clients. But I want to give you this quickly because we don't have enough time here to really dive into it. But I want you to take time. Take 15 minutes, take 30 minutes quiet time, and do this exercise. I call this a spotlight exercise. And here's how it goes. The first thing I want you to do. Step one, think about a peak experience in your life. Think about when you were at your best, when you were absolutely hitting on all cylinders, on fire. You're in. You know, we talk about flow however you want to word, but just think about that when you're really on and what were the values that were showing up?

And it can be a personal something in your personal life. It can be something in your professional life as a leader. But what was happening and what were the values that were resonating? Now let me back up and talk about what my values are, and maybe this will help you and get an idea about some of the types of things that I'm talking about. First of all, my first value is transformation. My second value, Fundamentals. My third, compassion. My fourth, mental toughness. And my fifth value is vision. Transformation, Fundamentals, Compassion, mental toughness and vision. And I'll do a solo cast later that dives into those five values, where they came from and the extensive amount of work that I did along with my partners at FOG Pilot, to really come up with those five values. But think about that in your peach experience.

Step two is this. When was the time when, eh, maybe you weren't at your best. Okay, you came up short. You didn't lead as positively as you could have, as you should have when you didn't perform to the best of your capabilities because something got in your way mentally. Just something where your values were suppressed, where you rush to judgment, where you're in a conversation and possibly you weren't listening to understand and said, you're waiting your turn to talk. Okay. And you walked away and you realized I really, I kind of screwed the pooch on that one. Okay, but what was the situation where you had suppressed values and write down what those values were? So the first one, you have peak experiences. What values showed up? The second one, suppressed values. Had a great question last week in my workshop.

By the way, gentlemen said, well, won't they be the same values? No, they won't. They won't. Because inside of an event, an occurrence in my life, all five values aren't always there. No, they won't necessarily be the exact same values in step one and step two and then step three is. This is really cool. And it is. If you listen to the podcast for a while, you know that I wholeheartedly believe in and lock into the power of visualization. It's so significant. And I won't dive into that right now. Cause that's not what this podcast is about. But this step is awesome. Code of conduct. Visualize a moment. And we're going to do. I'm going to share something with you here later, but visualize a moment when you are absolutely at your best.

It could be in pursuit of a team goal right now that you're working towards. It could be a pursuit of one of your long term goals, something that you have coming up. Picture yourself at your best and what values are shining through in that moment and write those values down. Now here's what you do. Take all those values. You could have 20, you could have 25. After you go through this, you could have 10. Clunk those values together. And what I mean by is this, let's take the word positivity. You could have positive energy, you could have positive mental attitude. You could have positive outlook, you could have positivity, you could have optimism. You group all those together and then you find a word that encompasses all the words in that group. For that I would use positivity.

Hopefully that gives you a good example there. Then you highlight the central theme of each group and that will be your value. Now this is a very basic exercise to come up with your three to five core values. You want to do a deeper dive? My partner's at FOG Pilot. They're incredible at it and we can do that for you. It is an unbelievable workshop. We talk about self awareness being the competitive advantage here at the Molotor Group. This is a huge exercise in self awareness. When I worked with fog Pilot, literally. It was uncomfortable, it was frustrating. It was in the same breath, enlightening, exhilarating, and eye opening was really powerful. But take some time to go through this exercise because values are so significant. Values absolutely drive the standards that guide our actions.

They are the criteria by which we judge ourselves, be careful not to judge others by. But they're the standards that guide our actions, our evaluations, the choices that we make. Now, here's a big one. Our values are the standards by who we allow into and. And who we pursue to pull into our inner circle. They're also standards that guide who we spend the most time with, what we read, what we watch, what we listen to. And they guide our attitude. And our values absolutely support the foundation of how we communicate. Lately, we've been talking a lot about expectations at the Molotov Group, and we've been writing about it a lot. And on podcast, episode 149 here at the Athletics of Business podcast, I was beyond blessed to have Steve White.

And Steve is the former president of Comcast west, and he has an incredible book out right now, Uncompromising. I highly recommend. We'll put the link to that book inside of these show notes. Phenomenal book. Steve has a very fascinating story, powerful story, going all the way back to his childhood, his upbringing, and his ascension in the business world. When you look at expectations, you have to be cognizant. You have to be aware of the fact that there's three sets of expectations. One, the expectations that you have of others. And there's the expectations that others have of you. And then the one I want to talk about today are the expectations that you have of yourself. Go through that again. The expectations that you have of others, the expectations that others have of you, and then the expectations that you have of yourself.

And it is so significant to set those expectations high. And when you set the expectations of yourself. Okay, people often ask me, what are the difference between standards and expectations? Expectations are the things that you absolutely believe should, could and will happen. Standards are your benchmarks. Unfortunately, in some people's views, it's the bare minimum. But the standards are how you operate, how you do things. But your expectations are so significant. Now, here's the thing, and you gotta be careful of this. You can truly become a prisoner of your challenges and your adversity for a few reasons. You don't believe in who you are. You don't believe in what you're capable of. We talk all the time here, right, about growing through adversity.

And here's the third One, if you don't respond well to failure, which this is a game changer because you and I both know that in order to grow, you a have to get way outside your comfort zone on a daily and you have to consistently push yourself way outside your comfort zone. It's a complex world. It's a chaotic world. You have to find a way to push yourself and prepare. In coaching basketball, I was always very intentional about helping make practice harder than a game would ever be. So how do you show up every single day to prepare you for the battles that you'll have in your world? And you have to embrace the fact that you are going to fail, you're going to lose, and you learn from that.

And I don't want to dive into it now, but I wholeheartedly believe you learn from winning as well and you learn from success as well. Right? You double down on those things that made you successful but not responding well to failure. When you reframe failure as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to grow, and an opportunity to get better. Better, then you move away from being a prisoner of your challenges. I share a story in my workshop about Bethany Hamilton. Bethany Hamilton is the woman's pro surfer. Amazing story. If you haven't seen Soul Surfer, watch it. When we realized were really in for a dog fight here with this pandemic with COVID 19, Nancy and I, my wife and I sat down, we're like, okay, what can we do to keep the kids moving forward? And we did. I mean, my wife is amazing.

She was amazing, but was amazing at that moment. I mean, you talk about rising to the occasion. We had Christmas in June, we had Halloween in July, we had Easter, and on. We just did things to keep the kids entertained and moving forward. We had carnival night. We just kept creating things. And one of the things I wanted to do though, I wanted to be really intentional about keeping them positive and realizing that there was going to be this huge blanket thrown over everything in this world. There's sports, there's school, outdoor fun. And it's really mind boggling when you look back on what went through. And the first thing I did, I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to watch a new movie.

I don't know if it was every night, every other night, whatever it was, but every time we watch a new movie, it's going to be a true story and it's going to be related to sports because I knew the sports part would keep them Engaged and based on true story. Our kids, we, us parents, think it's really cool too. So Soul Surfer was one of the movies that we watched. Bethany Hamilton was. She was. At the age of 13, she lost her arm in a shark attack when she was surfing. Okay. When she was competing. So she's attacked by a shark. It's a mind blowing situation when you really think about it. The movie's really powerful when you peel away her story and her journey since then has been nothing short of exceptional. Inspiring, I mean, amazing. But it was very interesting.

Bethany said that she was more fearful and more scared of not getting back on a surfboard, getting back in the water on a surfboard again, than she was of losing her arm. She was determined to let nothing get in her way. And there's people in her world, in her inner circle, her father, that did not want her. They were very apprehensive about her getting back out there. And she had a quote that I love. And you think about this in terms of your prisoner of your challenges. Courage means you don't let fear stop you. Lean into it. Lean into it. And then if you reframe it, you really start to think about the power of your expectations. And your expectations are what? They're the road that you're going to travel. The road that you believe you are going to travel.

Don't let anybody tell you can't do something. This is something I'm very intentional with our children. Don't let them project their limiting beliefs on you. Whatever it is you want to be, pursue it. And pursue it with every single thing you have and you come up short, I guarantee you're going to better for it. And our expectations affect our beliefs and our actions which absolutely drive our results. Now, I want to share something with you that is going to require you to write this down so you remember it. Okay? We talk about our attitude being the first choice we have every single day. Before our feet even hit the floor. We can decide what type of disposition we're going to have. What type of attitude we are going to have that day, no matter what the world throws at us.

Here's a way to control your attitude. It comes down to attention management and being in the moment. To attention management. Okay? Being in adverse situations, attention management. Being consistently achieving and sustaining a high level of success comes down to attention management. Wherever you direct, focus your mind, okay? Wherever you focus your mind, your attention. That is what your mind, excuse me, wherever you focus your attention, that is what your mind is going to pay Attention to. And with that, you are going to drive your thoughts. And those thoughts that you drive are absolutely going to influence what you believe. Attention management works like this, okay? Where we direct our mind is where our thoughts are going to take us. Our thoughts, what is it? Our thoughts. Our thoughts create emotion, they create feelings. And that emotion defines our behavior.

And our behavior drives our performance, which determines our results. So think about that in terms of how significant your attitude is. First choice you have every single day. And something to remember is we are absolutely the product of our expectations. I mentioned earlier that were going to talk about you. You being the single most important person you'll ever coach and you will ever lead. And when you think about you as a whole, you have to have a commitment to a strong body and mind. We talk all the time here about commitment, being committed versus being interested, operating with conviction instead of convenience. That's how you have to approach self leadership and you consistently focus on getting better. We had Kevin Eastman on the podcast and Kevin, incredible person, incredible coach, incredible leader.

And he spent many years in the NBA, got an NBA championship with the Boston Celtics. And he has a wonderful book out, why the Best Are the Best. And inside of that book he talks about it. On the podcast episode he talks about how everybody thinks the NBA is just league full of superstars, okay? And it's truly a league with a couple dozen superstars. And then the rest are role players who every single day come to work to get better. And even the superstars, their focus every day when they work out. He talks about when he was working out with KG, talks about when he was working LeBron out as a high school kid. He talks about Kobe. It's about getting better, get better that day. It's disciplined work focused on becoming the best leader and the best team member possible.

Being the face and voice that your team needs to see and to hear every single day. And here's a big one. Take ownership for the role you play in your respective success. Step into where you're at and step into the success that you're experiencing. One of the things I think gives you a competitive advantage as a leader. And I want to talk about this because I think it's so significant in normal times, whatever normal times are. But I think it's so significant right now is having proper perspective, understanding what is important and what isn't important. How much time do we spend on what is not important mentally and physically? For some reason, we're wired as humans sometimes to not lean into what's Important. Your perspective is going to help shape your point of view and your attitude about a circumstance.

We talk about reframing, we talk about opportunity instead of adversity. When you have proper perspective and you're able to deal with reality in real time, and I'll talk about that here in a second, it helps you approach it with the right attitude. Again, attention, management. You want proper perspective, what is it that you're paying attention to? Again, perspective helps us deal with reality in real time. It helps us create that plan that we need moving forward. And this is disposition to dominate. What is it that we need to do? What is it we need to do today? What, what is it I need to do? Say it's this afternoon, this morning, what is it I need to do for the next hour?

To move forward in perspective is going to give you this frame of mind to make decisions with confidence and in the world, in this fast paced world that we're in, especially when you start talking in the business world, you're going to have to make quick decisions without all the information sometimes and perspective will help you do that. And you're going to become a more resilient leader when you are consistently working on your proper perspective. And this will absolutely give you, like I mentioned, a competitive advantage in the process. And if you learn to love that process, if you really embrace the process, you're going to love what the process does for you. And there's so much that goes into the process, so much that goes into it.

But when you're locked in mentally, physically, emotionally, and you really pay attention to the different things, you operate with a singleness of purpose. Again, you have a plan. You realize that part of the process is having setbacks, part of the process is winning. And you take the time inside of it to reflect and adapt. We go back to the five fundamentals of coaching which we've talked about here in the podcast, right? And the five fundamentals really performing at the highest level possible. It's preparation, communication, execution, reflection and adaption. And when you take time to reflect and adapt inside of the process, it's powerful and really pay attention. I want you to think about this, really pay attention to your lead indicators as opposed to just your lag indicators.

Now what is that we are, when I say we, I mean us high achievers, high impact coaching leaders, people who are focused on winning based on what it means to us as we define it. We are very goal oriented, we are very specific about what it is we are trying to do. So we can be very specific about how we are going to get there. Now, the goals we have three to six months, a year, then long term goals. Those are lag indicators. And why is that?

And I'm not saying they're bad, but they're lag indicators because once that dates that you set to achieve that goal, once that date arrives and you wake up that morning or maybe you give yourself to the end of that day, at the end of that day, you look and you're like, you know what, I either achieved it or I didn't achieve it. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it right now. There's nothing I can do about it right now. That's a lag indicator. A lead indicator are your behaviors. Your lead indicators are your behaviors. Are you. How do you break down those goals into your projects and tasks? When you reflect at the end of the week, okay, what is it I did? What is it I set out to do? How did I do inside of that?

Holy cow, why was I able to knock that out of the park? What was it? I'm going to double down on that next week. Okay, what was it that kept me from achieving the things I set out to achieve this week in relentless pursuit of my goals? I need to change those now. Okay, I need to change those. I need to fix that. That's the power of lead indicators. You absolutely have the ability to change those immediately. Lag indicators either is or it isn't lead indicators. You have total control over that. And speaking of total control over that, we're going to pick this up on the next solo cast. Okay.

With respect to your time, I wanted this to be a little bit shorter, more brief because I gave you a little bit of work to do and I want you to seriously do that. But what is it that we control inside of pursuit of our goals? What is it that we control with the lead indicators? That's your attitude, your effort, your authenticity and your fundamentals. Control the controllable. Control the controllable so you can compound and accumulate winning habits. Think about the compound interest of your growth, your improvement, getting better. When you accumulate winning habits, the effects multiply as you repeat them in the daily difference might seem little. When you keep doing things in terms of lead indicators, you keep changing them. It might seem like a little thing that day, but I promise you it is enormous over time. It is exponential. Exponential.

One of the things that helps people accumulate winning habits. Take the time to celebrate the small challenges, the small changes and the micro wins. I tell a story Five years ago. It's funny how you lose track of time as you're really locked into doing things. But the year that Loyola went to the Final Four, I was downtown Chicago for a meeting and I stopped by a practice. Say hello to Porter to watch him practice. And it was late in the season. Nobody could fathom. The fact that they were about to make a Final Four run is Loyola of Chicago nobody could fathom. And I'll never forget that day is I walked in and there was one week left of the regular season and they were going on the road and they still had to win. I believe they had to win two games.

I know they had to win one game to clinch the regular season title. And something else had to happen for things to fall into place. Remember, I walked in and partner came out of his office, came downstairs, and there was two news reporters there. And him and I were like, we're fist bumped. We're like, this is the greatest thing ever. The media is starting to understand. Loyola basketball is for real. The culture here is what it's all about. The play, I mean, just everything. It's amazing. Two reporters. Little do we know, seven weeks later, six weeks later, they would be the darlings of the NCAA and they would be blowing up all over the world.

One of the managers puts a chair at half court for me, and I'm sitting there watching practice, and it's going to be kind of a light practice because they literally have to get on the bus and travel to Peoria to go play Bradley the next day. But they're leaving that night after practice. Anyways, Porter takes Cam Cruttweed down to the other end of the floor by himself, and he's working on a couple post moves with one specific. And I mean, the energy level that Porter delivered in those 10 minutes was phenomenal. It's part of what makes him so successful and his team so successful. Watch what he does at Oklahoma. It's going to be special. Anyways, I'm watching this. And he said something that I immediately wrote down. As you know, I carry a notebook with me everywhere.

I immediately opened up and wrote it down. And Cam got this post move right one time, then he got it right a second time, then he got it right a third time, on and on. And Porter was, I mean, just off the charts fired up, genuinely excited for the kid. And he started talking about habits. And he said, that is forever. That is forever. Now he yelled it. I don't want to yell it, but he yelled it. That is forever. When you think about the power of that, the daily difference is little, but over time it is enormous. That is forever. And that is the significance of accumulating winning habits. So I'm going to end with this. I want you to take some time and think about this. Habits compound. Exponential growth. Habits compound. They compound positively and they compound negatively.

Let's talk about the positive. Let's end this. We're talking about the positive. Okay? Disposition to dominate. What is a knowledge compound that you can work on today? What's one new thing? What's one new idea that you can learn about anything? What's one new idea you can learn? Productivity compound. What's an extra task that you can do each day? Growing up, when I was in high school, I was semi recruited by usc. There's an assistant coach there by the name of Brian Hamill who went on to become the head coach at Northern Illinois. And Brian was one of the gentlemen in the business. I mean, he was one of the greatest guys, one of the hardest workers I've had friends that have worked for. Brian, just an amazingly successful when he decided to step away from coaching. And he's a real person. He's so authentic.

But I loved the daily letters I would get from usc. And, you know, I remember when Coach Hamill came to watch me practice. I knew that back then I was a PAC 10. I wasn't good enough to play in the PAC 10. But I asked him, I said, hey. And he was very honest with me. And I said, can you please keep sending me your letters, because I keep them and they're great. And one of the things that he talked about, and I kept this with me for years, and I'm sure it's in a box somewhere, but when I was coaching, I would look back on it. He talked about the power of one extra phone call each day. One extra phone call, one extra. And this is back when people picked up the phone when you called and didn't send you the voicemail.

Okay. And you didn't text. One extra phone call a day. And think about it. You do one extra phone call a day. How many phone calls that multiplies into how many relationships you're pouring into, how many new things that you are going to learn. You could call a client, a potential client, a peer, a friend you haven't talked to in years, a family member, right? You could pick up the phone and call someone in another industry that's doing something a certain way that you want to learn about and ask them, hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time? How about that power. And then the third positive habit area of habits that you can compound is your relationships. And we all know that people reflect your behavior back to you. We talk about being kind, be compassionate, be empathetic and be encouraging.

But that power, the power of picking up and I just kind of knocked it. But I'm going to say something that I do that I love, and I think it's pretty powerful. Think about one person today that you haven't talked to and you're really curious to see how they're doing. And you may have heard from the grapevine or through social media through they might be struggling or they just had a big win or whatever it is. Text them to one person a day. One person a day. Text, check in or pick up the phone and call or my favorite, write a handwritten note. Think about how that will compound over time. Okay, so I gave you a lot today in a short period of time. Work on it. We'll jump into controlling the controllable here on the next solo cast.

But until then, keep asking yourself this question every single day and really break it down and think about it. Am I doing the best I can physically, mentally, emotionally with what I have? Your skills, your strengths, even your weaknesses, right? Your resources, your time, your energy, your money. Am I doing the best I can with what I have to become, the best I'm capable of becoming? Thank you for listening to the athletics of business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathletics of business.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.