Tony Robbins is a top coach who has helped entrepreneurs discover their leadership abilities. According to Inc Magazine, some very successful people pay Tony as much as one million dollars per year for personal coaching. That is out of range for most people. Even his $8,000 seminars might seem expensive. But his insight is truly valuable or clients like expert trader Paul Tudor Jones wouldn’t keep coming back for that 7 figure service. So we have distilled seven insights on leadership from his recent interview with Inc. You can read the first four in our previous article how to become an exceptional leader. Today, we will talk about the importance of making a commitment to innovation, three different types of leaders, and why it is important to realize you don’t know what you are doing.
Learn, Get New Ideas, Innovate, Grow
Tony believes you should always strive to be moving forward. Business today is very competitive and change is the key to improvement. A great leader doesn’t just learn; they inspire others to learn. If you want an edge, you need to be extraordinary. A standard education with no follow-up is not going to produce outstanding results. You need to get inspired and make a never-ending commitment to educating yourself, learning something new all the time, and inspiring others around you to do the same. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying inside,” Tony says.
Three Types Of Leaders
Tony invites us to consider three different types of leaders to understand how we can make our greatest contribution and achieve success. Tony thinks of the people who create ideas and products as artists. An artist type of leader must be careful not to fall in love with their creation. Their most important challenge is to make sure they see the big picture. Who is that product for? They need to make sure they fall in love with their clients rather than their product so their creative ability can reach its true potential through service. The artist type of business leader needs to team up with an entrepreneur and a manager. The entrepreneur is going to embrace the risky elements of the business, raising capital and putting together deals. They need an artist to come up with a product and a manager leader to organize people to produce it. Success comes from getting the right people in the right roles and then encouraging them to strive for constant improvement.
Ask What Business Are You In Today & Tomorrow
Tony says it is important not to be complacent, and he takes this idea to an extreme. Most people feel like they know what their business is about and they don’t consider that being complacent. But Tony says you shouldn’t tell yourself you know what your business is about. Ask yourself, every day, what is my business about today? And what will my business be about tomorrow? This is the key to growth.
Tony tells the story of Steve Jobs taking over Apple and asking “what business are we really in?” If Jobs had settled for knowing Apple was in the computer business instead of asking the question, he never would have found the answer that changed everything for Apple. He came up with a much better answer. He realized he could define Apple as being “in the business of connecting people to their passions and we do it artfully, we do it beautifully, we do it in a way that works.” That extra effort to redefine the mission resulted in Apple’s evolution – first to a music giant and then to a phone giant.
We agree with Tony. Every business should invest time and effort in thinking about what it should be today and what it can become tomorrow. Tony recommends spending 90 minutes with your team once a week to talk about how to understand the business you are in today and how to plan and discover what you can become tomorrow. If you don’t make a habit of active planning then you are just always stuck reacting. According to Tony: “Losers react. Leaders anticipate.” So consider setting up a weekly or at least monthly meeting to redefine your current and future business and lead the way to a better future.
