3 Destructive Attitudes for Leaders
I wanna start by telling you what I think of as a tale of two Uber drivers. So myself and a member of our team, Shay, we're going to beautiful, wonderful Las Vegas, and we were going there to meet with a group of business owners to do a couple lessons related to business strategy, annual planning, and personal growth. It was gonna be a really, really powerful day, and we had organized to make this into a day trip. So we get into Las Vegas in the morning and immediately get on an Uber to head to the hotel out in the foothills of Las Vegas. And, you know, Shay and I are people people.
Alex Judd:Right? So we just start asking the Uber driver questions, and I love asking Uber driver questions because these are people that are talking to people all the time, and so they get so many different perspectives. A lot of times, they're really interesting characters, very enigmatic people, and so I always think it's very fun to talk to Uber drivers. And one of the questions that I always ask is one of the questions that I asked here on this ride. And I said, you know, I bet you meet some interesting people.
Alex Judd:What's one of the wildest stories, you've ever had happen in an Uber ride before? And, man, I didn't really think about the fact that asking that question that I ask all over the country to Uber drivers is a little bit different if you ask it in Las Vegas. Right? And so I asked him, what's what's the wildest story you've got? And I'm I'm not gonna share with you on this podcast because what he proceeded to share with me was, there's only one way to put it, disgusting.
Alex Judd:It was gross. And Shay and I were both like, oh my god. And he was talking about how disgusting it was, how awful it was. And then he kinda transitioned from there, and the conversation just kind of unfolded. And he, like, got close to basically just saying, people here in Las Vegas are just awful.
Alex Judd:And he just started really just degrading, not even just some people, just all people, and and just talking about how he doesn't like his job and the people he interacts with are just terrible and how he's just doing what he can to get by because it's what he has to do, and it's just awful. Right? It it went so far to where we were trying to kinda maybe bring some hope into the conversation, some optimism, some positivity. And I think it was Shay that just said, you know, are you married, or do you have a girlfriend? And and then he even said, no.
Alex Judd:Every woman in this city is either a prostitute or they're trying to cheat on their husband. He said that. Every single woman in this city is a prostitute or they're trying to cheat on their husband. And it was crazy sitting in that car ride that day and realizing these are not just things that he's rattling off just as generalizations that are kind of exaggerations that he doesn't really believe. No.
Alex Judd:This guy really believed that stuff was disgusting, and that was going on on a regular basis, that people in Las Vegas are awful, and that every single woman in the city was a prostitute or trying to cheat on their husband. And now we kind of regret asking all those questions, but end up going into the conference after he drops us off. I I do the teaching. We have a wonderful day with business leaders. And then that afternoon, we get into another Uber to go back to the airport.
Alex Judd:Like I said, it was a day trip, And we started asking this guy similar questions. And what was so wild is he just immediately went, man, the people that I meet doing this job are fascinating. They're so interesting. They're from all over the world. They've got different stories.
Alex Judd:He he started talking about how, man, the thing that's really cool about Las Vegas is there's just so much opportunity in Las Vegas. And the entrepreneurial scene here is wonderful, and he talked about certain things he was pursuing with regard to starting his own businesses and even selling businesses. And then he talked about how he just loves the weather in Las Vegas and how beautiful Las Vegas can be if you know where to go and what to look for. And then he talked about how him and his wife just really, really adore and love, the proximity of where they live to Lake Tahoe. And that's just been such a kind of, like, hallmark location in their marriage where they go every single summer to Lake Tahoe and spend time there, and it's just a couple hour drive.
Alex Judd:Again, if you had paired these two stories next to each other, you would have thought they live in two different cities, but they don't. They live in the exact same city. And one was describing it as disgusting. The people are awful, and there's nothing for me here. And the other was saying, there's so much opportunity.
Alex Judd:It's so beautiful, and it's around so much that's so good. And here's the principle we already know, but we're so prone to forget. The way you view things impacts the way you do things. And what I would like you to remember as we jump into this episode is there are few things more subversively destructive than a bad attitude. Because an attitude is like a lens.
Alex Judd:It's like a filter through which we view the world. And what's so difficult and challenging and, like we said, subversive about an attitude is that we oftentimes don't even realize that we have it, and yet it is affecting every single thing we do, say, and think. And I would say that this idea of a bad attitude being subversively destructive is true for everyone, and it's magnified in the lives of leaders because you know as a leader, your attitude will cascade. It's not like your attitude operates in isolation, but rather if you're a leader with a bad attitude, you're wearing that filter, you're wearing that lens, that will absolutely affect the attitude of the people that you work with and the people that you work for. We said few things are more subversively destructive than a bad attitude.
Alex Judd:Now here's the counterstatement that's really, really hopeful and should be really encouraging for you. Few things are more proactively constructive than a good attitude. Again, few things are more subversively destructive than a bad attitude, and few things are more proactively constructive than a good attitude. And so as leaders, it would be really wise for us to mind, attend to, and cultivate a good attitude. This was reinforced for me in a quote that I recently read by William James.
Alex Judd:Now I want you to understand the context in which this quote came about. So William James was a psychologist and a teacher of psychology in the eighteen hundreds, and he's really kind of thought of as one of the leading pioneers of kind of a school of philosophy known as pragmatism. And you've heard that word pragmatic before. So this guy was all about pragmatism. He was about, man, how do we create constructs, mindsets, teaching that is rooted in pragmatism?
Alex Judd:And what is pragmatism? It's the idea that truth is measured by practical results. And so his whole frame of thinking was the idea that how do you know if something is true is if in the real world, in action, it creates practical results. And it's in that context that this is what that man said. He said the greatest discovery of my generation this is crazy.
Alex Judd:The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude. This is a guy that literally is the pioneer of the philosophical school of pragmatism. He's like, I don't just accept something as true just because it sounds good. I wanna see the practical results. And it's that guy that said, man, human beings can alter their life by altering their attitude.
Alex Judd:And so that just hits home the reality that as leaders, we would be wise to attend to and cultivate a good attitude. But the way I wanna come at this is actually kinda like the opposite of that. Because we said that bad attitudes, damaging attitudes, destructive attitudes are subversive, it can be really easy to miss. And it's critically important that we understand whenever we are operating with a bad attitude, but but oftentimes, you know, it's so easy to just adopt these and not even realize you have them, and it could be changing your entire life. And so what I wanna highlight are just three destructive leadership attitudes.
Alex Judd:And I will tell you, this is not me just sitting down theorizing what would be bad for leaders to adopt at some point, somewhere hypothetically. No. I will tell you, there is a very particular way that I landed on these three attitudes, and this is what it is. It's it's practice and experience and observation. So practice and experience.
Alex Judd:I have practiced adopting these attitudes. Right? Now praise God. I also have practiced identifying and growing out of these attitudes and and shifting my attitude to be better, healthier, more wise, more productive, and constructive. But but I have practiced every single destructive leadership attitude that we're about to walk through.
Alex Judd:That's why I'm so passionate about sharing these with you because they're they're they're nothing but destructive. They're they're nothing but unhelpful. And then the second piece is that I I practice and experience is where I got these, but also observation. So I I've been having one on one conversations with leaders for over a decade now. And one of my favorite exercises to do is just to look back and think through all of the conversations that I've had and just look for common threads because common threads represent patterns, and where there's patterns, there's principles.
Alex Judd:And what I will tell you is that, you know, a lot of times when leaders stall out or or whenever they're not making progress or whenever their organization is disunified or or experiencing drama, or or not moving forward and growing, these attitudes can be a common thread. Conversely, the best leaders I know are ruthlessly intentional about adopting the good attitudes that we're also gonna focus on this episode. So here we go. Three destructive attitudes. I want you to zoom in, really hone in, and and look for these in your life and leadership.
Alex Judd:They are each kind of categorized as phrases that we either verbally say or mentally think. And the first phrase, the first destructive attitude I got for you is this, they just won't. This is talking about people they, quote, unquote, they, oftentimes external outside of our organization is how I often hear it or how in the past I have been subject to saying this. Right? And we're oftentimes talking about customers or prospects or or or audience or things like that, and we say they just won't.
Alex Judd:And I've heard contractors before say they just won't pay on time. There's no way. They will not pay on time. Right? Obviously, talking about their receivables.
Alex Judd:They they just won't make the time for this service to be provided to him. They they just won't do that. They they you don't understand our customers. They will just not ever value our team the way we want our team to be treated. They talking about maybe in a recurring revenue company, they just will never stay with our business for more than eighteen months.
Alex Judd:It just won't happen. They just won't. That that that group of people, they just won't ever make a decision. They're never gonna buy. They're never gonna make a decision.
Alex Judd:Our customers, you just don't understand. They just won't refer more customers to us. They just don't act that way. Right? They just won't.
Alex Judd:This is a flawed attitude. This is a bad attitude. Anytime we start verbally saying or mentally thinking they just won't, we have adopted a lens or a filter that is incredibly unhelpful and incredibly unproductive, and it's also not true. And here's the flaws, although there are many, we're gonna just hit on two, that are embedded in this attitude that we've just got a call to the carpet, and we gotta realize how how flawed and and feeble this attitude actually is. The first one is this, and it's a principle.
Alex Judd:Ambiguity is a world class way to avoid responsibility. And here's why that principle applies to this attitude. They. They is just this incredibly ambiguous phrase. Right?
Alex Judd:We're we're not talking about anyone specific. We're not even talking about a particular individual or a particular section of our customer base. We're just saying they. We are generalizing every single person that could be a customer or that currently is a customer or that's part of our community or that's part of what we do as a business, and we're just putting it under this massive umbrella of they just won't. And man, the minute you and your team start to speak in ambiguous generalizations like that, what you're essentially doing is you're saying, I have no responsibility because we can't apply responsibility to ambiguity.
Alex Judd:The minute we start operating in specifics with individuals or with sections or with demographics, well, then we can actually start to make judgments. But to the degree that we live in ambiguity, it can be nice because we don't have any responsibility, but but that means we also don't have the ability to respond. Here's the other flaw in this attitude. This attitude turns a predictor into a predetermined conclusion. And here's what I mean by that.
Alex Judd:What what's the best predictor of future behavior? Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Right? The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. There's a difference between something being a predictor and something being a predetermined conclusion.
Alex Judd:And what we need to recognize is that oftentimes, there's something that stands in the way of what's always occurred occurring moving forward. And that thing is leadership. Right? The the thing that so often, we know this happens, that things that were or not what they continue to be, something shifted, something changed, something grew, there was progress, there was improvement, there was forward motion, and almost always, the initiator, the instigator of that occurring is an act of leadership. If you ever see something sustainably good over time, you can say, man, there's a leader behind that somewhere.
Alex Judd:And so what we have to remember is that just because past experience is a predictor, it's not a predetermined conclusion. Just because it's been that way doesn't mean it has to be that way. And in doing so, then we start to accept leadership responsibility, but then we also start to experience leadership opportunity. So so here's the attitude shift. And I I first heard Craig Rochelle offer this practical tool, and I thought it was so helpful and so good.
Alex Judd:We don't get to say they just won't. Here's what we we can say. We have not led them to. We don't get to say they just won't because that's abdicating responsibility. It's destructive filter that operates subversively in our minds and in our organizations.
Alex Judd:What we can say is we have not led them to. And you can see how the minute you adopt that attitude, you are also adopting responsibility. Okay. Let's move on to the second destructive attitude for leaders. The second attitude is actually not that dissimilar, although the way it plays out looks a little different.
Alex Judd:If the first one is they just won't, the second one is we just can't. We just can't delegate that from the CEO's plate. We just can't hire outside for that role. We just can't find someone that fits our culture. We just can't make time to think and work strategically on this problem.
Alex Judd:We just can't. Y'all know how to respond to this attitude. Right? You've heard that Henry Ford quote probably a billion times. If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
Alex Judd:Right? It's kinda sad that that quote is so used today in business and leadership lexicon that that it's become cliche. But, man, it's so true that that what you think about what is and isn't possible can actually be a self fulfilling prophecy. Now here's the flaw in we just can't. A lot of times when you start to adopt this language or this ideology of we just can't do that, you start to confuse can't with haven't.
Alex Judd:This is a, distinction that I first learned from a a kind of unexpected source, and it's, Josh Pate's college football show. So one of my hobbies is I love following, listening to, learning about. I get really into college football. College football is my emptying the dishwasher hobby. Right?
Alex Judd:And I listen to college football podcast. I love following the storylines. I love the pageantry. I love all of the change that's going on in that ecosystem right now with NIL and money and the way that, you know, the University of Indiana has completely upended the sport by doing what they did in the past year. I just think it's all fascinating.
Alex Judd:And and so Josh Pate is my go to college football podcast. And here's what Josh Pate here's where I first heard heard him kind of talk about this is, couple years ago, he was talking about Ryan Day, who was the head coach of Ohio State University. Right? And he said, the story that so many people will tell you about Ryan Day is this. He he he's a good coach, but he can't win the big game.
Alex Judd:And what they were referring to there is he can't win the national championship. He might be a good coach, but he can't win the national championship. Meanwhile, Ryan Day was repeatedly getting, you know, number one or top five recruiting classes in the country, repeatedly making it very far in the postseason, and repeatedly knocking on the door. But people are just saying, he just can't win the big game. And Josh Pate, very prophetically, would say, you are confusing can't with hasn't.
Alex Judd:And can't win the big game is very different than hasn't. And he said, you just watch. He's in the neighborhood. And if you stay in the neighborhood long enough, you're gonna see this guy win a national championship. The next year, Ohio State beats my school, Texas in or out to winning a national championship.
Alex Judd:And so that just proves that there's a difference between can't and hasn't. And so it can be really, really toxic for leaders to to start thinking because we haven't, that means that we can't. But but one of the things that that does is you start to lose any sense of agency. That this is just a result you have to live with and that you don't get to do anything to change that desired future or to influence the future that you're going to experience. And what I would tell you as a leader, we're gonna record a whole episode on this, is you have agency.
Alex Judd:Right? There are things that you can do to affect the result. And to the degree that you're lacking belief in that area, man, we gotta we gotta work on our attitude. I'll tell you where this, bad attitude, destructive attitude seeps in for me is the areas of our business where it's just like we've tried a bunch of different things, and we've come up short. Or even by circumstances out of our control, we get bruised and battered and bloodied.
Alex Judd:Right? We have worked for quite a while on what does it look like to operationalize marketing and sales in our organization. How do we go about doing that? And I'll tell you, we we have learned a lot of lessons in terms of how we go about doing that. And a lot of those lessons were learned the wrong way.
Alex Judd:Choosing the wrong contract service, hiring the wrong person, pursuing the wrong strategy, not allocating resources appropriately, not measuring and being clear about the results that we actually want to see, not understanding the relationship between turning strangers into prospects and then turning those prospects not into, man, your end all, be all top tier customer, but just turning to them as a into a part of your ecosystem. All those are lessons that we've learned. I could list a 100 more for you, and most of them we learned in hard ways. Right? And some of that is emotionally hard because there's people involved.
Alex Judd:A lot of that is financially hard because it's like we keep trying this, and and every single time we try something, it costs money. And more than it costs money, it costs time, and then it would come up short. Right? And and it could be so easy, and this happened for a while, to just think, like, we've tried so many things, and we haven't been able to figure it out, so we just can't. We we operationalizing marketing and sales is something that we cannot do.
Alex Judd:And I will tell you, to the degree that we adopt that attitude, we're absolutely right, and there's no options available to us. The the minute we start to say, this is just a problem, and it's not that we can't solve this problem, it's just that we haven't yet solved this problem, Well, then we get to adopt the attitude shift. And what's the proper attitude? What's a good attitude? It's not we just can't.
Alex Judd:Here here's a good attitude. Every problem is solvable. So so we're just gonna label this as a problem, and we know that every problem is solvable. And it's not that we can't. It's just that we haven't.
Alex Judd:And if this is a problem, which we think that it is, then then we're just gonna keep moving forward. We've got belief that it can be solved. You you know the principle. Effort never sustainably exceeds belief. So to the degree that you believe it's impossible, you will never exert the effort.
Alex Judd:To the degree that you say, man, it's possible to solve this problem, we will take action. And that's exactly what happened with us. Right? We we took action. We we hired Ben Loy on our team that many of you have met.
Alex Judd:And then out of that, we hired Shay and Catherine, and we have a business growth team now. And we're not fully there yet, but we have made more progress in the past year towards operationalizing business growth. But the first thing that had to occur before any of those practical steps was we had to adopt the belief that it was possible. Here's the third destructive attitude for leaders. I'm not wired that way.
Alex Judd:I'm just not wired that way. Right? They just won't. We just can't. I'm just not wired that way.
Alex Judd:Now you could hear this and say, man, to me, that feels like a statement of self awareness. Yeah. I I totally agree with you. And and hopefully, you trust me enough and know me well enough to know I'm very pro self awareness. Right?
Alex Judd:I think you should know how you're wired. But but sometimes, if we're not careful, we start to confuse a personality predisposition with our identity. And so we start to say, I'm just not organized. I'm just not a visionary. I I'm just not a communicator.
Alex Judd:I'm just not creative. I'm just not good with details. I'm just not good with people at all. And here's the deal. Here's what I see happening.
Alex Judd:Here's the flaws in this attitude. It is that we start to make wiring into an identity, like like we said. Now let's let's understand what's true here. Is wiring a real thing? I I think it is.
Alex Judd:I think people are born in such a way or even raised in such a way, nature and nurture, it's both at the same time, to be predisposed towards having strengths in particular skills, proficiencies, aptitudes, all of that. Right? Like, I I genuinely believe that, and I believe that that's a God given thing. So I I certainly don't think we should deny that. In fact, I actually think we should celebrate that.
Alex Judd:But here's what I also want you to remember, and and I believe this because I've seen it play out as true so many times. Your wiring is a statement about your personality and your predisposition. It is not a stagnant identity. So organization, the ability to catch and cast a vision, the ability to communicate well, the ability to attend to details, the ability to be good people, all of those things are skills. And some people might be more predisposed initially, might start at an eight or a nine on their route to becoming a 10 in those skills.
Alex Judd:But maybe you start at a two. Does that mean that you're not even capable of becoming a four? Absolutely not. Right? I see people go from two to six all the time in some of these areas.
Alex Judd:And and what I'm not challenging you to do is to master your weaknesses. I think it would be an incredibly unfruitful and unproductive use of your time to try and go from being a two with regard to details and organization and say, I'm going to become a 10. But, man, I'll tell you, I I don't know many leaders that grow healthy, centered, stable, organized organizations. It's literally called an organization. If they just say, well, I'm a two at organization.
Alex Judd:I'm always gonna be that way. Right? And so we we don't just get to abandon it entirely. We say, man, that's a skill that I'm gonna shore up, that I'm gonna work on. But here's the other thing that I think is is really maybe even more damaging than that statement on skill development.
Alex Judd:When we start to say, I'm just not wired that way as a a statement of finality or totality, it can prevent you from owning your weaknesses. And here's what I mean by that. I I think you have three ways of dealing with your weaknesses. You can avoid them, you can acknowledge them, or you can own them. Now when we avoid our weaknesses, we basically what we do is we say, I don't know what you're talking about.
Alex Judd:I am organized. It was literally I mean, this gentleman, young entrepreneur, actually a pretty fast scaling organization that a lot of outside capital have been invested in. He was one of the most disorganized people I had ever worked with. And it was crazy. I was in an initial conversation with him, and I asked him, like, you know, what would you say your strengths are?
Alex Judd:And he said, I think I'm pretty organized. And I I mean, I literally thought this guy had, like, four eyes or something like that. It's like he it was a blind spot for him. He didn't realize. He lacks self awareness.
Alex Judd:And and we even had a conversation about it, and I said, man, not only do I not think that, I I have talked to people that you work with, and they would say that is crazy. That like, that is lunacy. And he even fought for the idea that organization was a strength for his a little bit, and he tried to to justify it as a strength that just other people just didn't understand how he was organized. And it's like, man, if everyone is telling you you're not organized, you're probably not organized. Right?
Alex Judd:We need to remember that. And so he was avoiding his weakness. Right? And and you can't do anything. You you'll never fix what you refuse to see.
Alex Judd:So so the next step is we can acknowledge our weakness, and and acknowledging weakness is something that good leaders do, but but it's not what the best leaders do. Because you can just name something a weakness and then do nothing with it. That's basically like saying, I'm just not wired that way. Here's what great leaders do. They own their weaknesses.
Alex Judd:That means they have a plan for developing in them to shore them up, or they're gonna hire for them, or they're gonna delegate them. What we're not gonna do is say, well, I'm just not that wired that way, and so we can't possibly have a plan to solve for it. No. Your weaknesses are going to become an organizational weakness unless you either get better at it or you hire for it or you you delegate it to someone else and allow them to have ownership, authority, and responsibility of that area. But what we don't get to say is just I'm not wired that way, so we're always gonna be bad at this thing.
Alex Judd:It's just not helpful, and it's just not good. So those are our three leadership attitudes that are incredibly destructive. They just won't. We just can't, and I'm just not wired that way. And to close out kind of with the attitude shift that we need on number three that actually applies to all of this is I can grow.
Alex Judd:We can grow. You are not stagnant. You are not stultified. You can be better tomorrow than you are today. Your organization can be better tomorrow than it is today.
Alex Judd:It's gonna take work. It's gonna take intentionality. It's gonna take, diligence, all of that. But, man, what else would you rather do? Right?
Alex Judd:What we can't do is adopt an attitude that limits all of that goodness from occurring. So what would I challenge you to do out of this episode? I I would challenge you to examine your attitude. And and don't just think about it as a general statement. I I would look for in the particular areas of your business leadership in life and say, what's my attitude towards that thing?
Alex Judd:I particularly think about areas where things are stalled out. And think about an area of your business that's stalled out, and then just say, what's my attitude towards that thing? And and be honest with yourself. How could you shift that attitude and in the process of shifting that attitude, shift the results that you're experiencing. Let's go.
Alex Judd:Well, there you have it. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. If you want any of the information or resources that we mentioned, that's all in the show notes. Hey, before you go, could I ask you for one quick favor? Could you subscribe, rate, and review this podcast episode?
Alex Judd:Your feedback is what helps our team engage in a sequence of never ending improvement. We wanna amplify what's valuable to you and obviously reduce or even remove the things that aren't. Also, you leaving a positive review is what helps us connect with, build trust with, and serve other leaders around the country. So thanks in advance for helping us out on that front. Are you a leader that wants to grow your business in a healthy way, serve people exceptionally well, and glorify God in the process?
Alex Judd:Go to pathforgrowth.com to get more information about our community of impact driven leaders and schedule a call with our team. Hey, thank you so much to the Path for Growth team, Kyle Cummings and the crew at Podcircle, and the remarkable leaders that are actively engaged in the Path for Growth community. Y'all are the people that make this podcast possible. Y'all know this. We're rooting for you.
Alex Judd:We're praying for you. We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me. Your strength is not for you. Our strength is for service.
Alex Judd:Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
