The other day I was able to have a conversation with a good friend of mine Stacy Raske about how to become a revolutionary leader. Stacy is not only an incredible expert at helping business owners become and reach their true leadership potential, but she’s also someone who quite literally helped save the nation from biological and chemical attacks!
But what’s really impressive about her is that a lot of people now are trying to be “mindset coaches”, and she is not a mindset coach. She is a true expert on leadership because she’s a veteran and did real leadership.
She didn’t just sign up for a course and say now I’m going to teach people to be a leader because I feel that’s my calling. No, she had a calling to be a leader, helping people in the military and dealing with real chemical and biological warfare. Truly, she is a revolutionary leader!
What gave you your edge when it came to leadership?
“At the end of the day, when we talk about leadership, it’s deeper than mindset. There are so many people talking about mindset, mindset, mindset, and really all they’re doing is superficial. They’re just giving people more stuff to do. “Okay, so you’re feeling the fear, well, push through it anyway!”
“Over the last 20-25 years, between all of these different layers of leadership, I’ve learned that it starts with self-leadership. I was great at doing the external stuff, but to truly create the level of impact that I wanted to do, I had to go inwards, deeper than a mindset, deeper than emotional healing, and heal the inner worthiness wounds.”
“It was really about building a relationship with myself in a way where it’s like, “Okay if I want to lead a revolution, I have to be able to lead myself.” That’s literally what I walk, teach, preach, and help other people do.”
In your mind, what IS Leadership?
“What does it really mean to be a leader? I think it’s something that’s truly internal. It’s something that we embody effortlessly in the highest level of self-ownership.”
“What I mean by that is, we own all the light, the awesome, the great stuff, and we own all the BS too. We own all of it, without judgment, being radically unapologetically who we are.”
“And because I don’t judge myself, there’s no judgment of others. When you bring all of those together with no missing pieces in the foundation, we actually elevate into what I call Influential Leadership.”
What are your thoughts on Bad Leadership?
“I think there’s a lot of middle-of-the-road leaders. I think they have certain elements and certain aspects to making them a good leader, but it really requires going inward into levels of discomfort.”
“I think most leaders are unwilling to do that or just unaware of what’s required for them to truly reach their next level because everything that we want to do externally or everything that’s happening externally is a mirror reflection of something that’s going on internally. When we’re willing to lean in and break down those internal walls, everything starts to work together better externally.”
“Otherwise, it’s compartmentalized, and I often see this in teams. People want high-performing teams, but if you are compartmentalized internally, guess what? Your team is going to function the same way and so is your business.”
“It requires higher levels of communication, we have to have spiritual intelligence, we have to have emotional intelligence, spiritual, emotional, and obviously, we have to have IQ. We have to have intelligence at all of these different levels, functioning together to really be a powerful, impactful leader leading by example, we got to own it.”
How do I know if I’m being a middle-of-the-road leader?
“I think the challenge is that being in the middle of the road actually still creates a lot of ROI. It can create a lot of success and we can see the results. The problem is we end up maxed out.”
“Where I see this on the entrepreneurship side is that yeah, they’re leading, they’re kind of stepping up into that next level, but they’re maxed out, they’re maxed out on time and energy. They’re not leveraging their leadership.”
“In a lot of these other ecosystems, whether it’s the entrepreneur or the executive, what I find the common factor between all the layers in leadership and the biggest symptom is your control issues. And control issues can be very subtle. People don’t realize those are the biggest limiting factors to truly being able to scale your results.”
What’s an example of a subtle control issue?
“It’s when we start doing the worry or the what-ifs. That’s the control issues around the future that eventually turn into anxiety. Subtle control issues like being super results-focused.”
“I don’t know any high performers who are super driven and results-focused because, at the end of the day, we cannot control the results, we can’t.”
“I can’t make somebody buy my program, but I can do everything within my control to make sure I’m showing up. I’m serving, I’m sharing, and I’m available to influence the outcome.”
“It’s amazing how many people will just hustle. Hustle is another one, hustle is a control issue. It blows people’s minds. What are you doing with all of this activity?”
“Well, they’re basically trying to control an outcome and they’re killing themselves doing it. A lot of those subtle control issues show up in moderately effective leaders.”
In your opinion, what would you say is the biggest thing that holds a company back from being successful, with regards to leadership or not being in flow?
“At the end of the day, the control issues that a lot of these leaders have, keep them in a very reactive space. Whether it’s the leader creating sabotage by focusing on putting out the fires, rather than the things that are going to help them get to the next level.”
“Where I see this the most is in a lack of accountability and boundaries, where accountability means consequences. Again, it starts internally for leaders and they have to learn better boundaries, so they can begin shifting out of the control issues, trusting their team more, and leveling up into the space of their job is no longer doing, but actually supporting my team and helping them shine.”
“It’s about having clearly defined expectations, knowing everybody’s on the same page, and then holding everyone to a standard and having consequences.”
In your mind, Stacy Raske, What do S.M.A.R.T Businesses do?
“Personal accountability. All day, every day, and it starts with the leader.”
To listen to the full episode with Stacy Raske on Revolutionary Leadership, and the most comprehensive podcast about strategically building and growing your business, the S.M.A.R.T way, click on any one of these platforms and subscribe!
