Drama Free Living Podcast Dennis McIntee

As leaders, we’re constantly learning and trying to get better for the teams that we lead.  No leader is perfect, so we’re all bound to make mistakes along the way. Being able to see and identify the mistakes that we’re currently making gives us the power to change our behavior and see progress.  Listen as Dennis unpacks 5 common mistakes leaders make and how to avoid making them in the future.

In order to get the drama out of our teams, we need to start with the individuals.  Dennis talks through his proven 5-step-process to help you lead your team members out of drama, eliminate the excuses, and move forward toward creating great outcomes.

Every constraint in your life tends to be in a strength overplayed. Most leaders have big hearts and want the best for their people, but sometimes that desire translates into rescuing that actually ends up hindering their teams.  If we want our people to think at a higher level and grow, we must stop rescuing them. Dennis explains how when we move from telling to asking, we create empowered teams with high responsibility and high ownership.  Those teams achieve faster results with less stress- eliminating the need to micromanage and freeing up space for leaders to focus more on higher value activity.

Every leader wants to be productive and efficient.  When you take the drama out of your productivity, you don’t have to live anxious about what’s not getting done because you can make more happen in less time.  When you get the right mindsets, the methods will appear. Confidence and creativity are key, and Dennis talks about how to create both.

We can have high ownership teams or high story-telling, excuse-making teams. When people own their lives and their jobs, they take a sense of responsibility for their teams. By using the Excuse Buster, projects go faster; we save time; we save money; stress is eliminated, and that friction is gone because people get out of the emotion and get creative. Teams like this—they change the world. 

The enemies of the Expectation Reality Gap are potential and ideal. However big that gap is in our mind's eye is where all drama lives. We want to continue to shorten this gap without lower ideals or expectations. By utilizing the Reality Check, we work to bring the reality closer and shorten the gap. The shorter the gap, the faster outcomes we can create. The more driven and goal-oriented you are, the more you’re going to need a Reality Check.