Good day. Good morning, depending on where you are in the world. It is morning over here in Houston, Texas. Um As people are coming in, I'm just gonna give a couple ground rules of what this is gonna look like.Um I, this is a quick 20 minute session and there is a lot to talk about. So I, I will be watching the chat for questions. There's not gonna be a lot of time at the end for questions. Um If you do end up with questions at the end and you wanna have a conversation, I am more than happy to spend time with you outside of this conference. Uh You should be able to find my speaker information um in the online portal where all the information is. Uh But just find me on linkedin Robin Fuentes. Luckily, my name is pretty rare, so I'm, I'm pretty easy to find for the most part. Um But thank you for being here and I'm excited to talk to you about this today. So,

um as I was building this talk,

I was like, all right, cracking the code to your leadership potential. And I was thinking about the journey in my life now to, to put that in perspective, I am a VP of consulting at improving, improving is a, you can think of us as a technology experts where we help guide companies to leverage technology, but we also help them with the implementation of it.

So I in what most would put it would be like, yeah, I'm a leader. I'm a leader in the sense that people report to me. I'm a leader in the

sense that I helped to drive the direction the company, I'm a leader in lots of different ways. And I was walking through like, what, how

would I give advice?

And this is a question I get a lot is how do you become a leader? So the big question I had to answer for myself

is, well, how did I end up

here? Um

And at what point in that journey did I become a quote unquote

leader? And I was thinking about it? And I was like, well,

was it when I was 15 years old

working at Starbucks? And the first time I was

the lead of the store? Seems a little interesting

or was it the first time when I was a manager or got promoted to be a manager at a pizza place where there was like 50 employees that reported to me and I was responsible for shift and inventory and all that was I a leader then? Was it the first time that I was a team lead on a software development project. A couple of months into my career post college. Was it the first time I officially had somebody reporting to me in a

quote unquote big girl job.

All of these were like,

I'm like, man, what, what is a leader? And so I wanna

talk about that first and foremost. Um

So I was like, all right. Well, is it a title? Is it, is it the promotion that makes you

a leader? Um And I thought I was like,

well, that doesn't seem to fix. I know a lot of people who have titles but I wouldn't follow them, right?

Um And I was like, well,

is it a legacy? Is it people who make a substantive difference? I'm like, well, yeah, I think that that applies. So, is it both, is

it neither, is it a mix of the two? I'm not sure. And so I was like, well,

let's go to, let's go to the dictionary

definition, right? So let's read this

real quick definition of leadership,

the office position of a leader that doesn't help capacity to lead. And that really doesn't help for the purpose of the talk, the actor

instance of leading again doesn't help. Uh And so going through this, I was like, man, that, that's, that's

interesting. So let's, let's dive a little bit deeper, let's find other people's opinions on what leadership is. This one goes, leadership is the process of influencing people by, by providing purpose, direction and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.

There are a lot of words here, I'm Marty lost.

Let's try again.

Leadership defined right process as a process. Leadership is the use of non coercive influence to direct and coordinate the activities of group members to meet a goal as a property. Leadership. Uh Still not quite hitting what I'm looking for. Let's try again. What is leadership, the

ability of an individual or a group to

guide followers or other members of an organization? OK. Um Leaders, ability to get others to do something they want because they want to do it because they understand why it matters. And I'm like, man, I can't think of the number of times that I've had to try to get people to do something that they don't want to do. It's like trying to get your kid to want to eat broccoli. It just doesn't happen, right? Keep going. If your actions inspire others and dream more, learn more and do more. You are a leader. So this looks like a great thing to post on your wall. All right. Cool. Uh It seems

really inspirational to me and none of this really, really helps me understand when that doesn't answer that question. When did I become a leader? What, how do I tell somebody else to get there?

And so I started trying to look for commonalities and this is what I found,

there's this common

thread and it uses different words to get there,

but it talks about influence

inspiration, uh desire, this, it's motivation. A bunch of these words are

used in a lot of these. And that's the one single thread that I can find pretty

much consistent across the way. So I'm like, all right, let's talk about miss a

leadership because if we, if we take that idea, like, all right, if leadership's

fundamental is inspiration, then what are the myths of leadership today that we can debunk

to help dec

cloud that environment? So one of them, you have to have a title to be a leader. This one I believe in very, very strongly. There are tons of leaders in this space that uh don't have titles and it makes me a little

bit sad actually, when I hear somebody talking about, hey, I want to be a leader and they are asking their boss like, well, I need that title and I'm like, well, is, is that what you really need to do it? And so the the

difference between a title and having a title, so a title gives you a form of leadership, right? So if inspiration

leads to leadership, a title really leads to authority.

And I don't mean that authority in the sense that, that you're going to whip

people in line, but it does mean that you control of

something they desire as a

parent to a kid, you control their freedom in a way of the ability to go do the hobbies, they want, have the gifts, they want

the toys, they want, et cetera. As a boss with a title, you have control over their career, how much money they make sometimes, um, or have some influence into those types of decisions. And so you

have control over something they want and you can use that

to say this is the way we're going to go, period. You can disagree, but this is where we're going my way or the highway kind of approach. Now, my opinion on this matter is that if you get down to using your title, when it comes to leadership, you've already lost title sometimes has to be used but should be leveraged as infrequently

as possible. So it's

the aspect of it but not the whole thing.

So what is, what does it mean to be a boss and be a leader? It's a different

type of leadership instead of it's going, I'm telling you which way to do it. It's more like I'm gonna be the one that makes it possible for you to do it. I'm

gonna clear the roadblocks. I'm gonna be

the stepping stool by which you can step on and a firm foundation at that as well. So the other myth is

that a manager is equal to a leader. Um

Now I wanna touch on this really briefly and this is a much much longer and deeper conversation. But

managers and leaders are both

valuable and in society, people talk about managers as, as this kind of side role. This, that's not a thing to be desired. But man, a

good manager, a leader is almost, they don't, they aren't able to do what they need

to do without good management now. So let's talk about this a little bit. What's the

difference? A manager? They create goals, they limit change, they avoid risk and they create

processes like they're, they're the how behind what we're doing, the a

leader creates a vision, adapts quickly takes risks and build relationships. So again, there could be somebody who's good at both of these, that's incredibly rare. I mean,

there's, there's kind of like a hey, I'm like 80% good over here and 20% good over here or some version of that. Um Sorry, I just messed up my, my slide. Um

But in general, in the company, you need depths in both

of them. So keep in mind

both are necessary

for success. They're different skill sets.

Um because vision without, without execution is hallucination. So let's talk about great leaders in this world like people who, who have this great ad like audacious um dream. But unless you have somebody who's willing to say, OK, this is exactly how we're gonna do it. These are the things we have to limit to make that

happen, you're not

gonna get there. So the viability

of both is very, very valuable. So for you in your careers, what I want you to think about is like, OK, which skill set am I naturally good

at? Because some people naturally will stand up in a room and be like, I have a vision of where we're gonna go. And I'm willing to, to wear the risks of going that direction or somebody who's like, I am incredibly good

at making sure that this thing that we're looking to happen happens.

Which one are you? Because

that might change the direction of what type of role you want to go in in the future. Another myth is a leader has all the answers entirely not true. We are all incredibly human,

but the

important thing about leadership is that we're aware of our own limits

and we see other strengths. Now, the only

way to be aware of our own limits is because, and this is one of those things that we all have blind spots and they're called blind spots because we are blind

to them. So how do we

become aware of something that we are not aware of? And it requires growth. You have to have an intentional practice of growth in and out. And this is also so

the more you become aware of your weaknesses, interestingly enough that helps you see other

strengths because you're like, man, I'm not good at that,

but they are and the ability to say I'm not good at that. And though you're standing in front of a bunch

of people who are, you're, you're expecting

to follow you that can, that

can be really intimidating.

You're like, well, if I admit that I'm not good at this thing, they're not gonna follow

me, but that's not necessarily true.

As long as you have the, the people in the right places to help get us there

anyways. Right. Um, because

nobody and I do mean nobody has all of the skills,

has all of the strengths, has the whole package completed.

It's really about bringing the

right people together to help balance strengths and weaknesses

and to that end,

that's you, you heard the analogy of the bus, right? Putting the right people on the bus being able to mirror strengths and weaknesses and then it's really important in the sense that you're not just finding more of yourself.

If you think about when you're interviewing somebody

for a job, let's say you want them to come work for you, you're looking

for yourself most of the time. So you have to intentionally say I want

perspectives in this room that are the opposite

of mine so that I am challenged regularly and make sure that we are not just making a decision based on

my own bias and my own blind spots.

So those are some of the myths. Let's get into some of the keys that I think will help start you along this path. Now again, this is a very, very long path and each one of these tips can be a entire talk all by itself. I'd be more

than happy to connect with people. Um Afterwards, if you'd like to connect with me on linkedin or send me an email, um I'd be happy to talk about these in more depth. So I mentioned this one

a little bit earlier working, getting 1% better

every single

day.

If you haven't read atomic habits, I highly encourage the read of this book. Um In

this book talks about if you do 1% better every day that has this exponential

effect that you can see in this graph here that by the end of the

year, you'll be 37 times

better than when you started. So say right

now you want to get to the point that you're, you're going to the gym regularly and 1% better could be, you go on a walk, another percent on top of that is you go

on a longer walker, you start jogging part of the walker,

then you do go to the gym or there's, there's a

path to get there. It's not a light switch, right? Growth is never a light switch.

Um It's a great book. I read it multiple times and every time I pick up

on something I missed the first time, but the opposite of this is also

true. The decline is a real thing. If you, if you say I've made it, if you ever in your career, say you've made it

and you've just, you can stop growing. Your decline starts that day. At that point,

you regress

and you lose all that growth and all that hard work that you put to it.

So this is a thing that's, it's not, it's like a diet. It can't just be this short,

short period of time. It has to be a lifestyle of growth. And for leaders that is, that

is incredibly

important because um

the one way to get the all the entire group following the whole company that

reports to you to go better is to make yourself better. And so if you decline, your company declines, the people are poor to decline. It's, it's an exponential thing in, in a role of leadership and it's incredibly important to do this. Well, number two is believe in yourself.

And I think that this

is specifically applicable to this audience, women, right?

Why are there less than 20% women in leadership roles?

We, and it's, it's a statistic that has been held true.

Let's say you have a job that uh a job posting and

a man goes and looks at it and says, hey, I'm 60% qualified for the job. I could totally do it. A woman would do look

at the exact same thing with the exact same experience in history and go, I'm not qualified for that job. I won't even submit,

please. For the love of God, take the leap, even if you fail, even if you say no, get really, really good at hearing no and getting up and doing it again every time because that's what, that's the thing that's gonna make you go on the next trajectory on the next path. I have a rule for myself. And that's the only reason I'm not doing something is because I'm scared to do it.

I have to do it. I have to say yes. And that has been incredibly impactful in my life. Get a mentor. There hasn't been a time in my life since I was 12 years old that I haven't had a mentor. And this has been another huge accelerator in my career. They're gonna provide advice, give feedback, share experiences and create connections. The connections are incredibly valuable. Uh the power of who is a book that talks about this one in particular. But that advice, talk about those blind

spots. Who's gonna be the one brave enough

to say, hey, I know you think you're doing it this way or you know, you think you're being perceived this way, but you're not, let's talk about

that and it's gonna hurt. But you have to have somebody who's willing

to say that and that's what a mentor's role is, is in your life. And last, but definitely not, not least is build trust. Now you can look at me and say,

well, of course, trust is everywhere. Trust is an intentional thing that has to be built day in and

day out.

Because while you have a a default code for how you

understand and receive and build trust with yourself or people do it with you, that code is

incredibly different for

somebody else based on their background, their social history, whatever, right? And so there's another book that is really impactful for this. But first, I want to point

out this is something that, that when focused on and when their companies have an intentional

high trust environment, this is what happened. People are more

productive, more engaged at

work, enjoy their jobs, they're even

more green and they recommend their company if you're having trouble with turnover, if you're having trouble with people who are being zombie

employees where they're there, but they're really

checked out. Look at your trust, take an

honest, look at whether or not there's a strong trust between them and their manager, them and you, them and anybody else. Now, there's another book for this and this is a book that I have read at least seven times. And I, I've done talks and I lead an initiative inside our company

to help us grow in this thing, in particular that talks about 13 behaviors that you can work on, on and take a look at. And I've done practices where every single day I'm taking a behavior and saying, how can I do this today that I didn't do before in a new way with a, with a new person. How can I intentionally go and, and do these things proactively instead of reactively to the situations. And what I've learned over years of doing this is that people see this so incredibly different. It's like uh from the movie rewards and onion, you keep peeling

back more and more layers and he's like, what can it be? A cake?

I hope you guys get that joke because I think hilarious. Um but in this uh the 13 behaviors

and I, I found that my understanding

of them was a little bit skewed. Each

one of these have counterfeit behaviors that say, uh you know, this is a way that people

would normally perceive them, but it actually

destroys stress instead of builds trust. And some of those I was like, oh, I really

totally do that. And then over the years I've continued to learn and grow in those areas.

Um And it has a, has had a huge impact on me not only in my career and the people that I work with at work, but with my

relationship with my family. Um So if nothing else read these three books,

right? Uh At Tomic habits,

power of who and the speed of trust. And I would love to hear what you guys think and what you guys get out of those again, please reach out to me. I love, I love getting connected with people who are passionate in the same,

in the same area.