The AAPL Fall Institute: Day Two, Hardball

Day two of the AAPL Fall Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, began with a challenge: What is one thing that you will change?

In her keynote address, Tracy Spears, a world-renowned speaker, leadership authority, and former member of the U.S. National Softball Team, played hardball when it came to bringing out leadership skills.

Tracy is the Founder of the Exceptional Leaders Lab. She specializes in developing leaders, inspiring teamwork, and enhancing inter-office communications.

Much of her presentation was taken directly from her best-selling books, What Exceptional Leaders Know and The Exceptional Leaders Playbook. Her energetic and interactive approach has helped leaders and aspiring leaders all over the world improve their leadership skills, their communication, and their understanding of how people and organizations succeed.

Tracy’s first lesson was key: understanding the difference between imposter syndrome (when we doubt our own abilities) and the Dunning Kruger Effect (when our perceived ability exceeds actual competence). That’s pretty much the secret to life!

She said that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates each cite the word focus as the one most critical to success.

And she presented a list of things – tools, strategies, philosophies, tactics – that aspiring leaders can embrace to affect change:

• Focus

• Leverage the right toolbox

• Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing

• Strive for objective self-awareness

• Culture is an emotional reaction to leadership

• Always explain what success looks like in detail

• Performance management boils down to two-word types: can’t and won’t

• Tell the truth about performance

• The best way to disagree

• Know how you are most likely to make mistakes

• There are only two ways to influence positive change in others: recognition and expectations

• Position weight influences every employee encounter

• Exceptional leaders give up the luxury of moods

• Pygmalion affect – if we expect more of our teams, they will deliver more

• Stop using the Golden Rule and use the Platinum Rule

• What are you pretending not to know?

• Never waste a crisis

• Be good at contextualizing change

• Leverage Parkinson’s law to be more effective: Work expands to fill the time available for completion

• Don’t confuse emotion and passion

• Stop trusting your gut

• You already have all the answers

• Make room for other people

• Delegation is a compliment

• Where have you created too much dependency on yourself

• Black belt level delegation: I only do things only I can do

• Sustainability is greater than availability

• Have a durable self-esteem

• Debate ideas, not other people

• Almost everyone is right at least 10% of the time

She asked the attendees to choose one thing from the list that they would adopt and do differently. What is yours?

From there, coursework and networking continued.

Attendees learned about compensation issues such as how to apply “call pay” from the MaxWorth Consulting Group.

And, depending on their loyalties, it was either a night of celebration or remorse for the attendees as Game One of the World Series kicked off.