Extraordinary Results: Mastering the Art of Leading, Coaching & Influencing Others

By Joe Contrera

Your Ability to be an Effective Leader is Directly Connected to Your Ability to Influence Others

Leading, Coaching & Influencing Others is an art, and if you want to achieve Extraordinary Results, you must not just possess the tools nee

• Language: English
• Publisher: ALIVE WORK® PUBLISHING
• Release date: Jun 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9780974760216

Book preview

ALSO BY JOE CONTRERA

LIGHT ’EM UP! How to Ignite the Fire

in Your Sales Team in Just 21 Days

I Could Love No One…Until I Loved Me

EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS FOR LIFE:

Discover Your Path to Be UN-ordinary

EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS:

Mastering the Art of Leading, Coaching, & Influencing Others

Copyright © 2018, Joe Contrera and ALIVE @ WORK® LLC

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

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LCCN: 2017915765

Issued in print, electronic, and audio format.

ISBN: 978-0-9747602-2-3 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-9747602-1-6 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-0-9747602-3-0 (audio book)

This book is dedicated to my mom, Rose Amelia Adornetto Contrera, better known as simply Rosie.

Mom, you are a beacon of strength, determination, and faith.

I love you more than you will ever know, and I am proud to call you my mom.

I Love You, Rosie!

INTRODUCTION

Years ago, I had the good fortune of spending some time in Florence, Italy. During my trip to the Gallery of the Academy of Florence, I had the opportunity to sit and take in what I believe is one of the greatest masterpieces in all of the world, Michelangelo’s David. I could try to tell you that it is magnificent, that it is fabulous, but until you experience this work of art, I can only share my experience, which we know would be far different than yours.

With just the smallest amount of research, you’ll find that the statue was created between 1501 and 1504 and stands seventeen feet in the air. It is a statue depicting David, the biblical hero who slew Goliath, the Philistine giant, with a simple sling. As the story goes, Michelangelo was asked to complete the unfinished project that had begun thirty-six years earlier by two other artists, Agostino di Duccio and later Antonio Rossellino. It was well known at the time that both artists had rejected the enormous marble block because according to them, it held far too many imperfections to be usable or to achieve the desired result…and so it sat for twenty-five years.

Michelangelo was just twenty-six years old when he accepted the challenge to sculpt the David from this massive rock, and he worked diligently for more than two years to complete this incredible task. To sit at the feet of his work and take in the subtle detail of the bulging veins on the hands and the perfect muscular depiction of the human anatomy is indescribable. You notice that certain parts of the body are enlarged so they can be seen from the perspective of the audience, who was originally supposed to be viewing the sculpture from 260 feet below while it was perched on top of a building. This begs the question…why such attention to detail for a statue that was to be viewed from so far away? As the story goes, when Michelangelo unveiled his near-complete masterpiece, it was deemed too perfect to be displayed in such a position. A committee of thirty members, including the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, decided that the statue would be placed in the political heart of Florence, in the Piazza della Signoria on June 8, 1504. After moving the near-complete work to the Piazza, Michelangelo continued to perfect the intimate details that transformed this giant stone into an even more lifelike statue.

The David sat outside in the Piazza della Signoria from 1504 until 1873, when it was moved to the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. The intention was to protect it from further damage caused by being exposed to 369 years of weathering from both natural and unnatural factors. And yet, you can’t help but see the pure brilliance and genius of the artist represented in this form—a form chiseled from what was deemed poor quality rock by lesser artists.

There were various attempts to restore this statue to its most original state, and as with most things, there were arguments between those who proposed a variety of right and proper processes by which it would be restored. Some took a forceful approach, using hydrochloric acid and iron brushes, which resulted in damaging the piece. Others used a much gentler approach, even though it was painstakingly slow and tedious. By combining distilled water and clay over handmade Japanese rice paper, they drew out the dirt and then carefully removed it to reveal the inner brilliance and genius of the artist that had lain hidden for all these years.

Sometimes achieving extraordinary results takes time and patience.

Today, you can sit for hours and be influenced and inspired by this incredible statue. I’m not sure Michelangelo ever dreamed that his story about his decision to carve the David would be influencing the lives of others or that his art would still be mesmerizing millions of people each year so many centuries later.

The original meaning of the word art was a skill, a craft, or craftsmanship. Years ago, an untrained artist or craftsman was apprenticed to a master. The apprentice then spent a minimum of two years (often longer) learning the ins and outs of mastering their craft. For example, when Michelangelo was thirteen, Michelangelo’s father realized his son had absolutely no interest in traditional schooling or the family banking business and apprenticed the young man to a master painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, under whom his talent began to develop. He later studied under a master sculptor, Bertoldo di Giovanni, under whom he would find his true passion to sculpt.

Leading, coaching, and influencing others is an art, and yet when it comes to developing leaders these days, sadly, we do the exact opposite of apprenticing students to teachers. Instead, we take a high-performing individual contributor who is achieving great results and promote them into a leadership position before we determine whether they have the desire to lead or whether they possess the skills and tools (the brushes, if you will) to effectively lead others.

The truth is that most selected do not possess the skills needed, and so they scramble and attempt to apply the same principles that made them successful as an individual contributor to their new role as a leader. The results are leaders who micromanage, overcontrol, and do the work themselves, creating employees who are disengaged and unmotivated because they feel underutilized and undervalued. When they fail to achieve expected results, we don’t own that we set these new leaders up for failure. Instead, we either blame it on the leader and remove them (losing a great individual contributor in the process), or we ignore the issue and hope it will resolve itself. It rarely does.

To fix the problem, we send leaders to be trained. TrainingIndustry.com, which utilizes data gathered from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, estimates that US companies spend approximately $161 billion a year on training. And yet, many leaders question the overall effectiveness of those dollars spent because there is often no way to measure the return on investment.

Still, organizations continue to send their leaders to half-day, one-day, and two-day workshops despite the fact that 75 percent of what they are taught is forgotten when they walk out of the training room because there is no system in place to implement the learning or continue to build the skills. You don’t achieve extraordinary results sitting in a training class for a few hours or a few days. You achieve extraordinary results over time and with practice, accountability, and an ongoing process in place to continually hone those skills.

This book is about mastering the art of leading, coaching, and influencing others and the subtleties and skills of guiding others to do their best work and be their best selves, so they can achieve extraordinary results. The misconception about influencing others is that it falls into the category of what we call soft skills. Many leaders believe soft skills will not get you the results that driving people and processes forward will achieve. In fact, many leaders, especially task-driven leaders, see soft skills as a weakness. These leaders see soft skills as an obstacle to achieving results instead of a path that will achieve extraordinary results. This book will teach you how to achieve extraordinary results by leveraging the power of influence. Our seven-month Leadership Development Program, The Art of Leading, Coaching, & Influencing Others™, is a revolutionary way of training leaders that blends the benefits of interactive classes, executive coaching, group coaching calls, accountability programs, and an ongoing 360-degree feedback model that facilitates a life-changing process. Like the course, this book was written specifically for leaders who are driven to achieve extraordinary results. Most leaders know only one way to lead: The same way that got them success as an individual contributor. This book offers you another way. It isn’t about teaching you what to do to lead, but rather it teaches you how to be a true and extraordinary leader.

You will learn the basic core principles of influence to achieve extraordinary results—whether you are influencing one-on-one, one-on-ten, or one-on-100. Master these principles, build your skills, and use them to transform your ability to influence others exponentially. The more people you can influence, the more extraordinary your results will be.

Why I Wrote This Book

This book is the culmination of more than thirty years of professional development. It is everything I have learned about people and influencing others. I have learned that it doesn’t really matter the situation: whether it involves sales, leading others, coaching an employee, facilitating a small group, or presenting to 1,000 people…the skills required to successfully influence others and lead teams are all the same!

This book will help you understand the theory, concepts, and relationship between leading, coaching, and influencing.

Whether you are new to leadership or you have been in a leadership position for thirty years or more, there is something in this book specifically for you.

If you are holding this book in your hand, there is a very good chance that this is the perfect time for you to read it. How do I know? Because you’re holding this book, and nothing happens by chance.

I don’t care if this is the very first leadership book you’ve purchased or the hundred and first, I just have one question for you:

Are you willing to do the work so that you can achieve extraordinary results?

The truth about this book is the same truth that applies to life. What you put in is what you get back. Put in a little, get a little. Put in a lot, get a lot. You can take a few ideas from the first few pages, or you can learn all the way through to the very end.

The ideas you take from this book won’t mean a damn thing if you don’t take action and integrate those ideas into your interactions with others. It is about getting results, and you won’t get results if you simply think and don’t take action.

At the end of select chapters you will find a section titled Practicing the Art, written to offer questions and ideas to help you put these concepts into motion. Additionally, within some of the chapters, you will find additional tools and assessments to embed these concepts into your daily leadership practice. The further you embed these concepts and ideas into who you are as a leader, the closer you will get to achieving results that are extraordinary.

Becoming a leader who masters the art of leading, coaching, and influencing others will not happen overnight. It requires effort, commitment, and a willingness to change. It also requires the humbleness and vulnerability to fail. If you are willing to do the work, if you are willing to fail and try again, you just might find that, like Michelangelo, you too have significantly influenced the lives of others…and what a story that will be for you to pass onto those you are developing into extraordinary leaders!

PART I

MASTERING THE ART

OF LEADING OTHERS

CHAPTER 1:

SIMPLE TRUTH

People have been studying, analyzing, and attempting to define what characteristics and attributes make a great leader for thousands of years. Every so often, a new leadership theory hits the professional development world and a new fad is born. Each fad promises success, whether it be Ten Ways to Communicate Better or Five Ways to Be More Effective. The bottom line is that there are a lot of folks trying to grab your attention with the best intention of helping you be a better leader, salesperson, manager, husband, or wife, while the expectation seems to be that each holds the silver bullet that will solve all of your problems. That is just the way the self-improvement industry works.

The simple truth is that there is no silver bullet, book, or single training event that will cure your dis-ease or eliminate your issues. Chances are, if you are struggling with an issue, you always will. You can work on it and improve in that area, but it rarely ever goes away completely. For example, if you don’t like conflict, you probably never will. You can acquire skills and a mindset that may change how you face conflict and thus make you more effective, but you will never like it! But that’s okay, you don’t have to like conflict to be a great leader. You just need to be able to effectively manage through it.

This book is rooted in simple truths, simple ideas, and simple actions you can take to increase your ability to influence others more impactfully. Just remember that simple isn’t always easy, and easy isn’t always simple. Things will be hard until they are not. In other words, when you decide that something isn’t hard, it won’t be. It will just be something you do.

Defining Leadership

You can turn on any cable news network and watch panels of experts debate the topic of leadership, who is a good leader and who is labeled a horrible one. At times, it is difficult to comprehend how folks can hold such diametrically opposed opinions of the very same person. Some love Donald Trump, and some hate Donald Trump. Some love Angelina Jolie, and some hate Angelina Jolie. Who’s right?

Successful leadership comes down to your ability to influence others. That said, here is how I define a leader:

A leader is a person who influences others to do or to be their very best.

Based on that definition, everyone has the ability to influence others, which means that every one of us—good or bad—has the potential to be a leader.

If I asked you to tell me about people in your life, past and present, who have influenced you in a positive way, I’m sure you could mention at least one person. Perhaps someone you’ve worked for, or maybe a parent or relative, a teacher, or your high school soccer coach. Regardless of who comes to mind, it’s because they influenced you to achieve more, to be more, or to accomplish more than you thought you were capable of achieving. In the same way, I’m sure you could also bring to mind a leader who has influenced you in an incredibly negative way as well.

All of us have been influenced throughout our lives by leaders—some good and some not so good. The ones we remember most are those who had a positive influence on our lives, the ones who helped bring out the best in us so we could accomplish extraordinary results. True leaders who have a positive influence on others realize they first have to stop focusing on themselves, which is easier said than done.

Why? Because most leaders get promoted to a leadership position after proving they are an exceptional individual contributor, someone who has been successful by doing the work themselves and focusing their efforts on their individual contribution. They directly affect the work. Leaders, on the other hand, have to step back and influence others to get the work done, and for some, this can be a huge problem because they don’t know how to influence. There must be a complete and total shift from doing the work to effectively influencing others to do the work without micromanaging or taking over and doing it themselves, which can be quite a difficult transition. This is the challenge highly driven individual contributors must take on when they don the leadership cape.

Defining Influence

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines influence as the power to change or affect someone or something, the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen, a person or thing that affects someone or something in an important way.

I am often asked about the difference between influencing and manipulating others. I don’t mean to generalize here, but the question usually comes from leaders who are very nice people and worried that they are being sneaky and insidious.

So, what is the difference between influence and manipulation? Let me reframe it with a question: How many of you love the experience of sitting down across the table from a car salesperson and his manager to buy a car?

For most non-type-A personality people who are not driven by a need to win, buying a car is a terrible experience because they feel like they are being manipulated. The truth is…they probably are. Car salespeople know they have a very limited window of time to sell you a car, because if you walk out that door, chances are that you’re not coming back. So they have to pull out all of the stops to get what they want…to sell you a car!

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines manipulation: to manage or utilize skillfully: to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one’s own advantage.¹ While not all car salespeople are like this, a high percentage of them are. The key here is that the difference between whether it is influence or manipulation comes down to the intention of the person attempting to achieve a result. Manipulators emphasize their own advantage, seeking to satisfy their own selfish needs. Leaders emphasize the greater good and put the needs of the other person first. They first seek the success of their people, knowing that their own success will follow as their people achieve higher and higher levels of productivity.

Defining an Extraordinary Leader

To be an extraordinary leader, you must truly understand the purpose behind leading. Your job as a leader is to hold up a flashlight—and sometimes a mirror—so your people can see the obstacles they place in their own paths, trip over, and then look outwardly for the causes of, and help them understand that they are placing those obstacles in their path, and that they are responsible for removing those obstacles so they can move forward. Forward can be realized as better results, a promotion, a higher level of productivity, a bonus, a pay increase, a job they truly want, or even a career shift that takes them away from your team, and sometimes your company. In the end, leaders help others achieve extraordinary results.

Years ago while I was working with a company going