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Episode Overview:
The podcast episode "Unlocking Teams Through 7 Core Principles with Kate Leavell," offers an engaging exploration into the fundamental principles essential for building effective teams. Hosted by Skot Waldron, the conversation with Kate Leavell, an experienced healthcare architect, delves into seven core principles crucial for unlocking the potential of any team. Leavell's expertise provides valuable insights on topics such as embracing diversity, fostering trust, promoting open communication, and maintaining accountability within teams, offering actionable strategies for leaders seeking to cultivate collaborative and high-performing teams across various industries.
Additional Resources:
Hello, welcome to another episode of unlocked. I am Scott, and here we talk about unlocking the potential of people so that we can unlock the potential of today, our teams. This is going to be really, really critical for you to understand. Teams are everywhere. No longer can we rely on that one hero on our team, whether that's a sports team, whether that's a family team, whether that's a community team, whether that's an organizational or corporate or work team, right? We've got to learn to work together. Kate Leavell. She is, best-selling author, she just came out with a new book called Stick Together. She's a VP of Leadership Development for Jon Gordon, she's a cohost of a new podcast she's going to have coming out here in the summer of 2021, so if you're listening to this afterwards. And it's already out so she could go check that out.
She's a speaker, she's was an NCAA lacrosse coach. She's a high school lacrosse coach and she has a lot to say about teams and about leadership. So listen up, it's going to be really, really good, we have a lot of fun. We go through seven principles that are in her book about Stick Together, about how we can be stronger as teams. She believes we are better together and this is going to tell you why. All right, Kate, let's do it.
Kate, welcome to the show.
Kate Leavell:
Hey, how you doing? Good to be here.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, so good. Us South Easterners are enjoying it today, it's beautiful. And we are here to talk about your new book Stick Together. I'm really excited about talking about this. Not only because it lays out the seven principles we're going to talk about, but you do it in a story form, right? So give us a little background on the book, how it came to be, and the premise of what it's about.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, you got it. I really love that this is kind of a quick read so that people can fit it into their schedules. Because I don't know about you, but sitting down with War and Peace right now doesn't really fit in with what I have for the day. And I was really inspired by Damon West and the Coffee Bean and kind of having that short fable that people can pick up and have kind of a deep message. And I really wanted to put the lessons I've been learning over the last six, seven years of transforming as a coach and as a leader together to help people build stronger teams. Something that they can apply, something they can actually give to their team members, whether they're in sports or business, and apply them right away and build something that's going to overcome obstacles.
And kind of ironically, I brought this to Jon a little over a year ago, knowing teams were struggling. No idea that we were going to have a pandemic, no idea that teams were about to up-level their struggles by infinity, and so it just came at the perfect time. So we're in edits and all this stuff is going on, we realized this is an important message. So it was really inspired by that transformation that I had wanting to do more for teams. And also in the book, there's a coach that's inspired by fable. I actually found Aesop's Fable, which I used to read as a kid and it was about the bundle of sticks. And I thought, "Man, this is such a great metaphor for teams. I know I can do something with this and that's kind of where it was born."
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. So teams, why are you so focused on teams? I kind of get it why you're focused on teams, so in particular you, you have a lot of experience with teams and tell us about that background and why this book is so meaningful and why it hits home for you.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, we're better together. I always believe that when you can add more people to the mix, then you're going to bring in more experience, more perspectives, and you're going to round out whatever you're doing. And so we're powerful when we come together and that is one of the biggest struggles that we have is getting people to connect, and right now getting people to not be divided is really important. And so I've always been really passionate about finding ways to work better with others so that you can create... And I'm very competitive, I want to create the best possible outcome through that.
It was also something that was alluding me. I could not figure out how to get people to work together all at the same time. It was like I'd get some people on board and some people would drop off and I couldn't get that consistency going. So it became a mission of mine to learn how to do it. And that's just been my kind of driving piece is to figure out how to master this. Because, like I said, I'm competitive, I'm not going to let it beat me and that's just become my mission.
SKOT WALDRON:
So let me go back to something you said, and I'm going to put you on the spot.
KATE LEAVELL:
All right do it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Because I don't know if you've thought about what you said. But I would assume you have since you just said it. Is there a difference between connecting and not being divided? I'm interested in your thoughts about that. So trying to get people to connect but also trying to get people not to be divided. What do you think is the difference there if there is one?
KATE LEAVELL:
My immediate thought and no, I haven't thought about that so you got me. But my immediate thought is one of them is very positive based and it's talking about how we can move forward. And the other one is about turning around and looking at the past and seeing what it split us apart. And I do believe we need to learn from the past but I think we can get stuck turned in the wrong direction and constantly looking at what's been pulling us apart instead of trying to just look at how we can bring that all back together so I would say that that's really the biggest difference. But I also think that connecting is deeper. You can divide very easily, you can get two people to be upset with each other and not see eye to eye or have different opinions and the division can happen very quickly.
Connection takes consistent time. And so you really have to see people for their worth and get to know their value and show that you appreciate their value so that nobody feels like they're a pawn, they're being used for what you need or they're a part of some story, they need to know that, "Hey, I'm valued as a person and if I mess up, I know I'm still valued as a person, which makes me want to be better for you." So it's kind of just a cool spin on that connection piece.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well done. See, you've thought about this before, come on now. That was good. Yeah, that was good. I was just doing that so I had time to think about what I thought of it.
KATE LEAVELL:
You got any more brain busters for me? Was that Billy Madison?
SKOT WALDRON:
Totally was. Yeah, you think about not being divided doesn't necessarily mean you're connected, right? Not being divided as kind of a way to look at things of a preventative type of thing of, "Hey, let's fix this but it's not necessarily a proactive push into what we really want to be, right? Not divided, but you know that connection.
KATE LEAVELL:
Kind of like the difference between a team and a group. And so I do talk about this a lot is if you put a bunch of people on a city bus and they're going from Point A to Point B, they are a group of people that are going to the same place, right? So that's a group. A team is going somewhere where they're going to do something together there. The only difference between a group and a team is a connection. So you can be on a bus going to the same destination with a group of people and have no connection and you are not a team. You can get on a bus that is going to a cool destination and you guys start singing songs and getting to know each other and the whole bus trip is like summer camp, and you're now a team you're all centered around a vision and a purpose, but that connection piece that really is different. So people on a bus don't have to be divided, but that doesn't make them a team.
SKOT WALDRON:
That was awesome. So good. So let's dive into the book a little bit and talk about... So talk about the book, the setup of the book, and then how the seven principles come into to that.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, you got it. So the book is a fictional story that really talks about the journey of this coach, coach David. And he's a basketball coach with a high school basketball team and he's got lots of talents. So everybody has high expectations that he's going to go out and just win everything. But the previous season, he had a lot of talent that wouldn't come together and they ended up not even making it into the playoffs, let alone winning. So he's convinced, you know what? I cannot do this again, I've got to figure out how to fix this.
So he comes in inspired by an Aesop's Fable about sticks, funny enough, same one that inspired me. And he comes up with a challenge for his team and the challenge involves seven words that they have to research in teams and then come back and teach to the team why this word matters. But they're also given sticks and they have to figure out how are they going to make their sticks unbreakable. And that is the challenge that goes on throughout the book. So as we go through and learn the principles and the principles are believe, ownership, connection, consistency, inclusion, and hope, and love. Did I say love? I was going out of order and than I'm kind of lost.
SKOT WALDRON:
Love's got to be there.
KATE LEAVELL:
But they learn about those principles. And then in the end, I won't tell you what happens but...
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, don't tell me, don't tell me.
KATE LEAVELL:
I won't tell you, it's too good.
SKOT WALDRON:
I hate it when people ruin the end.
KATE LEAVELL:
It's too good but I'll tell you what. For me, when I wrote it, and I don't know if this is because I personally went through this journey, but I have talked to some other people and it's not an emotional story, but there's a certain part in the story where there's an aha moment as a coach and as a leader where you see posture change in someone and you realize that the light bulb has come on, however you want to say it, it is an emotional connection to know that you have just affected somebody's life. And when I wrote a certain part of the story, when people get to a certain point of story, it's kind of emotional because you connect that to something in your life where you were leading and people got it. And I love that. Even though it's a short story, you still get a chance to just really connect deeply with what the characters are going through because we've all been there.
SKOT WALDRON:
Definitely. So let's talk about belief. It's the first one. Hit on that for us.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, great. So belief is... Every word is the most important, this one's my favorite.
SKOT WALDRON:
Which kid's your favorite?
KATE LEAVELL:
Everyone asks, "Which is your favorite?" And I'm like, "Oh, my favorite is these seven." You really can't have one without the other ones. But without belief, you're going to get what you believe you're going to get, not what you want to get. Because everybody out there wants something, and why is it that there's only a small percentage of people that actually get to their goals and get in the direction they want. And if you have one person on your team that maybe wants to get to a certain place, but believes that you're probably going to fall short, then everything they do, all of their actions, thoughts, and words are going to back up their belief. And so their belief is we're going to fall short. And so that is the performance that you're going to get, or at least the inconsistency of performance that's going to be mixed in with those moments when they want it.
And so that belief is important. But on top of that, we all have moments of doubt, we all have moments where we think, "Maybe I can't do this. Maybe my team can but I'm not helping the team." We have those negative thoughts that come in. That's why I love teams, right? Because we have the ability to transfer our belief into someone else. And as a leader, our job literally is to transfer our belief into someone else. And so what we speak, think and do, is going to be contagious, it's going to spread. So that belief piece is important. So when you walk into a room, you need to know, "What do I believe? Because whatever I walk into this room with I'm going to share with the people here. And am I going to bring them to their goals and bring us together? Or am I going to bring them down?" Because you're doing one or the other.
SKOT WALDRON:
And so you're talking about belief from the leaders standpoint. Does the belief play the role in the team standpoint.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, it's everybody. It really is, is your collective belief is what you're going to get. And that's why if you have that one or two people on your team that are not on board or who think you're going to fall short, that's going to hold you back. It's kind of like, if you have a goal over here and then you have a couple of people believe over here, and there's a rope tying you to whatever you believe. And so some people believe you're going in this direction, some people believe you're going in this direction, you're tethered. You're never going to fully get to that other place until you can cut that negative belief away and release you so that you can all go to where you're going together. And that's just so important.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. Ownership.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yes. I wish it was my favorite word.
SKOT WALDRON:
After belief. Or maybe it is the same as belief.
KATE LEAVELL:
Here's the thing with ownership. I believe it has always had this negative connotation that's associated with it. Because when someone tells you to own something, typically they're telling you, "Hey, I want you to take the blame for this. I want you to take the fall for this. So let's just go ahead and own that. You didn't work hard, so own your consequences." It feels negative when you think about it. I want to turn that around because ownership is super empowering, it's really positive. Because let's say you're in a situation and it leads you to an outcome you don't like. If you can't claim ownership of anything, then you are living in somebody else's world, somebody else's problem, you have zero control, so what's the point, right? However, if you can find a little piece of it that can own, any little piece, maybe you can own the whole thing. But if you can even find a little piece and make it yours, that piece that you own, you are now empowered to change.
You can now create a new choice, a new opportunity, and you are no longer stuck. But as long as you live in blame, you will never move towards where you want to go to and that's why so many people who are a part of a team gets stuck. They're so busy looking at whose fault it is they cannot see the opportunity they have to turn something around. And so even if it's somebody, technically it's someone else's fault, our reaction is ours, our thoughts are ours, our outreach, whatever it is, is something that we can own.
So I believe ownership is powerful. So when I talk to teams, I tell them, "Instead of saying, what's the problem or who's fault is say, here's what I would like to do to help turn this around. I'm going to own this piece of the solution." And in order to ask them to own a piece of the solution, you're internally asking them to own a part of the problem without actually asking them to own a part of the problem. And now we're focused on the positive and they're deep thinking and we're all thinking about how I can move forward and it's contagious. If somebody on the team owns something, you kind of feel like, "Oh, you know what? I actually did this part," and it starts to break walls down and now we're building those connections.
SKOT WALDRON:
I like that because you're right, that owning it is almost like, "Okay, I own that flaw or I own that mistake that happened." That's really insightful. And giving people ownership of something, especially something that aligns with a purpose that they have and some greater goal that they're having is definitely empowering and it gives them a sense of responsibility. It gives them a sense of when we do accomplish this, I was part of that and I helped build that.
KATE LEAVELL:
And I think we forget we own the problem and then we get stuck on it, and we forget that we need to own the solution, and that's that second piece. So a lot of leaders teach ownership, but they don't teach ownership of the solution, of the next steps.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. So connection's the next one. We spoke a little bit about that earlier with the bus, which is awesome forever, but talk about connections.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yes, absolutely. Connection. My favorite word of all of these is definitely connection, but all of the things that we're talking about lead to connection. And if I had to pick a word, if I had to, it would probably be that one, because in order to have connection, you really have to utilize all of the other [inaudible 00:17:24] into using all the other ones. But connection is something that has to be intentional because we can get very transactional. And I know a lot of people talk about transactional coaching and transactional leadership, but it's not just leadership, this is about the people on your team and how well do you know them outside of the tasks you need to ask them to do. And if you're in a business and you're exchanging emails and you wait until the Christmas party or whatever to ask them about their family, or find out anything about what's going on, then when you need to challenge them and push them and hold them accountable, they're going to be less likely to receive that.
You think about how much more open would I be to feedback if I knew the person talking to me truly cared about me and had my best interest at heart. If I knew that, I'm going to say, "Okay, I need to really think about what they're saying." If this person does nothing but judge me and tell me, "Hey, you're doing a good job. Hey, you're not doing a good job you're not measuring up." And they don't know anything about me personally and they've never shown that interest, it's like the neighbor who asked you to move the couch down three flights and they've never said hi to you, versus the one that's constantly checking in on you and seeing how you're doing and you're always talking by the mailbox or whatever. And they're like, "Oh, I really need help." You're going to jump in for that person, even though you don't want to do it. Because that person has invested in you and that's what connection is, it really is an investment.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. I talk about there's three options, right, when you're leading somebody or working with somebody on a team, it's either I'm for you, which is what we want, I'm against you or I'm for myself, right? Those are the three options. If I feel that you're against me or that you're for yourself, that transaction, that trust is not going to be built. Just like the couch, right? "Now you're coming to me for the couch, you've never said hey to me ever and... So it's clearly just there for themselves, right? But I feel their for me, maybe they brought me cookies in the past or whatever, brought me my mail then there's something there. So very cool. Inclusion is the next one.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, inclusion. That's such a key word right now in general, but inclusion is so big. You can break it into many categories, I think we need to. But in general, inclusion is about making sure that everyone feels they have a value. If you think about a team, there are typically people who are on a higher level, maybe talent wise or skill wise, or maybe they have more experience and they come in and they tend to get more recognition, that sort of thing. So we can start to feel like there's a divide between my role is less important than this person's role. My role is less shown and this person is more seen in the spotlight while I'm doing things behind the scenes. So we get a little bit of a divide on teams.
And when you see breakdowns, a lot of times it comes from that feeling of whether or not they feel included. And the cool thing about inclusion is that, even though we all want to feel included, we want to be in that kind of environment, we have to go first. And this goes for any of the words, but we need to lead and put out there what we want to have come back to us. So if you want to be in an environment that feels inclusive, then you need to look at what you personally are doing every day when you walk into a room. Are you walking to a room and scanning and seeing, "Is there anybody in here that I haven't greeted today? Is there anyone here that I haven't checked in with for a while or invited to come be a part of this?" Are we reaching out and including the people around us or are we buried in our phone waiting for someone to invite us in?
So when we wait for it, we'll never get it. Anything that you want to get, put that out, and it's going to come back around to you. Or if it doesn't come back to you, it's going to start to shape the environment. And eventually it's going to catch on because it's going to be contagious. But the other flip side of inclusion is that you have to think about whether or not you really are committing. So a lot of times people get upset because I wasn't included in this project or I wasn't included or invited to be the captain or whatever it is. But if you think about it, you might've been invited to do something else that you don't want to do and you turned it down. So if you pick and choose what you say yes to, but then you complain about not being included, then it's time to step back and take some ownership and look at it and say, "All right, my goal here is for the betterment of this team, to bring my best self every single day to whatever task I am needed for. And some days it's going to be a task that I love and some days it's going to be a task that I don't love, but I'm going to bring my best to it every single time."
And the more you do that, the more you will be included in general. And I think it's a trap when we start to just wait for things to come to us. So I love inclusion. I think it's so important to reach out and to invite other people in and to just build that environment everywhere we go. Even if you're in line at the grocery store, we need to look around. Again, remember when we used to make eye contact with people and talk and have conversations? And it's good to get back to that, especially now that we're all back in public a little bit more again. So we can really, really focus on reconnecting with that inclusion piece.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. Love. This is our [inaudible 00:22:30], we're talking about teams, whether it's in a corporate environment or even on the field, right? I felt a brotherhood, right, with my teams growing up to some extent. Some with other players that I really connected with or I was best friends with growing up. Other ones, they were just on my team. So I don't know if I'd necessarily felt the brotherhood love for those. Is that what you're talking about? Give us the context behind love.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah. And it's funny because there's a very distinct, either I'm super comfortable with the word love or I'm like, "Mmm, this is getting a little icky." And sometimes corporate clients are like, "Let's not use that word." And some other people are like, "Yes, love, I embrace it." So it's kind of a funny word, but what we're talking about here is, "I truly deeply care about what happens to you. I truly deeply care about you becoming your best self and my role in that." And it's really, love is, it's not using people, it really is just their best interests at heart and that true connection. That's kind of the summary of all of these words put together when you love somebody. And I have been in a place where I'm very comfortable when I'm coaching, telling my team that I love them.
And I truly do, because I worry about them like they're my kids, I think about them all the time. And as a leader, even the ones... We don't like our family all the time, but typically, we love them. And it's the same thing with your teams or the people you work with. You may not like them all the time, but if the building was on fire, you'd go get them, you'd pull them out. We do love them deep down and focusing on how we can show love. So we have these handbooks, we come into a workplace, now with HR, you get this binder like this and then you're watching training videos. And it's all like, here are all the rules, here are all the consequences.
First day of sports, here are your expectations, here are the consequences, and we'll go into all that, and then at the end, we'll say, we're going to be a family and you're going to love it here. It's like, okay, just give us a million rules. But if you put love at the center, I love my team, I care enough about what happens to them that I'm going to bring my best self. So if you have love, you don't need a lot of rules because you're already functioning out of a place where I want the best for them and I don't want to let them down. And so it's so much easier to focus on love and care of your teammates than it is to sit there and outline all these rules, because you're not going to break those rules and you're not going to need those rules if you're already making choices based on, I need to watch out for the people on my team. And that's really what that's all about.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. This is one of my favorites, consistency. I love this word. In every walk of life, I love this word. So tell me about your thoughts on consistency.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, you got it. Consistency for me goes back a ways because my background was in personal training before I got into coaching. And so the funny thing that you see with when your personal training is that people will sign up and they'll come in and they're doing like a three hour workout and then they don't work out for two weeks and they'll try and make up for it by not eating all and doing and like all these crazy doing extreme things. And it's kind of like the tortoise and the hair. If you had worked out 20 minutes every single day, and been consistent with that over time, you would far surpass the people that have been here for 10 years, grinding out for three hours a day on the weekends.
And because consistency is what gets you where you're going. And it's really important that you people accept that I have to bring my best every single day no matter how I feel. One of the things people hire trainers is because they need motivation. Motivation is an emotion. So you can go out and you can pay someone to motivate you, but it's going to come and go, you're going to wake up sometimes and say, "I just don't have it today." And if that is your deciding factor on what your actions are for the day, your life is going to be up and down and all over the place. And we base a lot of our actions and our thoughts on how feel. Consistency is about knowing what I've committed to, knowing what my greater purpose is, knowing where I'm going and making the decision to say, "No matter what, I've already decided, this is important. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it if I don't feel like doing it, whatever."
When people talk about how they feel, they walked past my treadmill every single day and I just can't get motivated. Okay, do it not motivated, just get on it. You don't need to have that emotion to get on and do it. It's a commitment. And that's really what builds that consistency and your teammates need that. I think about as a leader, if you're inconsistent as a leader, everybody is reactive to you. When you have a reactive team, then you don't know what you're getting from them and then you become reactive to their reactiveness and you have a mess so you're all chasing each other's emotions. If you are consistent, even if you're consistently not great. This is great. If you're not a great leader, this is good news for you. If you're consistently not great, your team starts to adapt and understand what they're getting every single day. And they at least kind of fall into a pattern. But when you're up and down, that reactiveness is going to become the focus instead of learning and performing and all the things that you want them to do.
SKOT WALDRON:
I've talked about consistency for years externally with marketing and sales and brand strategy on the outside of saying, "Hey, that consistent brand image, that consistent message, that consistent way you serve your customers, that consistent way you deliver your message to the world is going to make or break your brand." And that means perception or the way people feel about you when you're not around. Now, I talk about that from the internal side, right? Your personal brand or your team's brand, or your organization's brand, how consistent are you in the delivery of your message? How consistent are you in the way you speak and what you're saying to those individuals at specific times, right? If it's all over the place then I never know what to expect from you and then I'm losing trust and I'm not really going to be bought in to anything you have to say, cause I don't know what you're going to say next. And you treat me different than you treat them, and it blows up all over the place. So consistency is key.
KATE LEAVELL:
If you've looked at...So The Coffee Bean, which Damon West wrote with Jon, and it's all about living from the inside out and not letting your circumstances decide who you are. And when you know who you are, what you stand for and how you speak to people, then it doesn't change based on that situation. And when I'm talking to teams, I love working with teams. One of my favorite things to do is that we talk about how, if you talk one way, not the way that you talk, not that much in the detail, but if you talk one way or with one sort of attitude towards your teachers and a different attitude towards your friends and a different attitude when you go home, you're three different people. Are you three different people, you are not living from the inside out you were letting people on the outside tell you who you should be and then you're adapting that.
And so now you're trying to live something that you're never going to feel fully fulfilled in because it isn't you. You need to learn about as a teenager, this is the time to do that. Learn about who you are, what's important to you and what you care about and what impact you want to leave and then live that way. And now you kind of take away that peer pressure and you start to just become whole and live from your heart. And I think that's so important, even as adults, that when we go into any situation, we are living truly who we are. And not that we're not going to have moments where we mess up or our emotions are going to take over at some point. But that core person that we are is going to correct it, is going to say I had a moment and I slipped and people will know that's out of character for you, right? There should be a category of that's out of character for you because they understand who you are at heart.
SKOT WALDRON:
So good. Yeah, if somebody can point out, "Hey, this isn't you, right? This isn't norm, right?" That's a key indicator that you should either look and say, "Well, this is who I should be," or, "Oh, how am I acting towards this person that isn't consistent with what I'm doing in other places," right? So let's talk about the last one. Hope.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah. Our hope is fuel. When you don't have hope you're done, right? If there's no hope that things can get better, if there's no hope for anything in the future, then there's no reason to move forward. So that hope is the most important word of all these, to have it to move forward. I love that you can have hope almost in your pocket all day. You can walk around with hope in your pocket and it's free and you can hand it out to people by showing them how you believe in them, showing them what you see in them, supporting them, encouraging them. We can fill our teams and the people around us and everyone we interact with hope of the future. And we've become so critical, we're kind of in this kind of newer environment where we can hide behind keyboards and we can critique people and we've become the judges of everyone.
We can be hope-stealers, and I think that's become a theme. We don't want to be hope-stealers, we want to be dealers in hope, right? I think Jon said that, dealers in hope. And we want to hand it out to people and build our teams with it because the more gas and fuel you have, right, the farther you're going to go together to whatever destination you're going to. So if you start to see people losing hope, that's like an emergency. It's kind of like that little red light that comes on in your car, by the way, do you ever, is this a girl thing where you try to push it and see how far you can go before it runs out? Or is that?
SKOT WALDRON:
Oh no. I almost ran out of gas [crosstalk 00:32:16] wasn't going anywhere. It was horrifying. My wife was not happy with me.
KATE LEAVELL:
I take it as a personal challenge. Oh, you think I can't make it? We'll see.
SKOT WALDRON:
Oh yeah? Watch this.
KATE LEAVELL:
Watch me. I've lost that challenge a couple of times. But hope is so key and it has to be built, it has to be refueled. You have to go to the fuel station and you have to hand it out, but you have to be intentional because we have it to hand out we just have to remember to do it.
SKOT WALDRON:
So cool. So I love this. Every word you hit on is so key and to make own stick stronger, and the team that we're involved with to make us as a bundle that much stronger to make us unbreakable which is amazing. That will totally unlock our own potential as teams to see what we're actually capable of for the future. Again, we're out of this mentality of there's that one hero that we all rely on, there's that one person, that one that carries us all the way to the top, that conquers every project or every win, right? It's without the team that we're going to have problems. That one star player can also block the goal. There's aspects and roles that we have everywhere. So what can people do to get in touch with you to purchase the book. It's out now, they can get it. Where can they get it?
KATE LEAVELL:
Pretty much everywhere. It's anywhere you can get books you're you're going to be able to find it. Amazon's obviously super easy to jump on there and grab it. And otherwise you can come track me down. I've got my website, just my name, kateleavell.com. You can check me out on Twitter is probably the main place you're going to find me. So it's just @kateleavell. My Instagram and I'm streamlining, I'm trying to not be like squirrel, but it's a lot of my work stuff, but a lot of my dog. There's a mix of everything in there so [crosstalk 00:34:22].
SKOT WALDRON:
Work people like dogs.
KATE LEAVELL:
Yeah, if you're into seeing Kate's crazy life mixed with some inspirational messages, definitely head over at [inaudible 00:34:29]. That's awkward.
SKOT WALDRON:
You change your name? Just now?
KATE LEAVELL:
I did it. I don't know how to spell that. @coachleavell, that's my Instagram. Yeah, come check it out. I got a new podcast launch announced this summer so it's Inimitable Impact. Man, it took me a while to be able to say that word, but it's all about every single person has had a unique impact moment in their life. We've all had struggles and things that helped direct us to where we are and our mindset determined if that took us to a good place or not a good place. And so we're talking to people who've had incredible successes in their lives and what that impact moment was, what mindset helped them overcome it, and then their mission, the impact they want to leave on other people. And so it is inimitable, it is unique, it is the best, and it is the only, only you can deliver that impact because of the experience that you've been through. So that's going to be our focus so we're excited about that.
SKOT WALDRON:
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So glad you're here today to share this with us. I really appreciate it. Good luck with the launch. Good luck with the speaking. Good luck with the coaching and transforming teams out there. Really appreciate the work you're doing and good luck.
KATE LEAVELL:
Awesome, thank you so much, it's fun.
SKOT WALDRON:
How many of you experienced transactional relationships? Not just transactional leadership but transactional relationships. There's no heart there, there's that whole thing of, is this person really interested in me or are they just interested in them and what they can get from me. This ideology does not work for the long-term and we need to learn to implement these seven principles that Kate talks about. So belief, ownership, connection, inclusion, love, consistency, and hope. And again, she believes we're better together. Being part of a group is fine, right?
We can all get on the bus, as she said earlier, we can get all get on the bus and ride together as a group to camp. Now, when we leave camp, we're going to have experiences at camp, we're going to have all these things that bond us. And then when we come back on the bus, we're going to be different. Hopefully we're more of a team. Hopefully we've had connection and we built some comradery that is going to enable us to get to that next level of our relationship and become better performers over time. So stick together, I'm not just telling you that, I'm telling you because it's the name of the book. You need to go check it out on Amazon and everywhere you can get books right now. Thanks again, Kate, for being on the show, I really appreciate you.
If you want more information about me, you can go to scottwaldron.com, I post all my interviews there. There's some free tools and resources there about how to build a more, I guess, trusting teams and better communicate as teams. And if you also want to go to my YouTube channel, like, subscribe, comment, all those things on the channel, that's fantastic. And you can connect with me on LinkedIn, I would love to hang out with you on LinkedIn. So thanks everybody. I will see you next time on another episode of Unlocked.
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