Attitude Reflects Leadership

Good morning, everybody, Dennis Engelbrecht with FBI, where We Build Better Contractors. Digging Deeper.

So if you've watched this series, you've probably heard me talk about my grandchildren, which is one of the fun things I 
do now and spent a lot of time with, but I was down at the beach recently with our two to three year old, a couple others, 
but Fletcher, is who we're going to focus on today and the things I happened to learn from Fletcher during this last beach 
week.

Well, what I learned was a lot about attitude. So, another reference here, you may have seen the movie, "Remember The 
Titans." Denzel Washington is a football coach, who brings together a team where there was a lot of racial strife and all of 
this. During one of the scenes, the white captain speaks to the one of the black players about their attitude. And the fellow
turns around and says to captain Gerry Bertier, "well, attitude reflects leadership captain." And this was a real turning 
point in the movie because captain Bertier realized that he didn't have the right attitude in his leadership, and he wasn't 
leading right. And after this discussion, the two of them came together and the whole team came together and had great 
success.

So, coming back to my grandson, Fletcher, I noticed a couple of things during this last trip. The first thing was, Fletcher 
gets up first thing in the morning and he's sort of an open slate. He may have a great day, which would be good for 
everybody, or he may have an angry day, which is not so good for everybody. And what I noticed is how that actually 
occurs in probably the first half an hour or hour of the day.

So, one day, his parents get up with him, and they stayed up too late and maybe drank too much the night before, and 
they're not feeling so good. So, the energy that they're giving to Fletcher, first of all, isn't much, but it's largely negative 
and you can see Fletcher reacting off of that. He's not getting the attention and he's not getting the love that he wants to 
start his day. And then on some other days, it's different and you see that. And it actually carries on pretty much through 
the whole day, whether he is going to have a great day or a lousy day.

And so, attitude reflects leadership. And in those bad days, the leadership wasn't good. And in the good days, the 
leadership was good. So really very simple, but leaders set the mood and attitude for the team every day. And the results 
usually are a reflection of how that is set, oftentimes at the beginning of the day.

Now think about yourself, you walk into work. How do you start your day? What's the look on your face? Do you come in 
with something in the back of your mind and you charge back to your office, because you got your mind on doing 
something, don't bother to say hello or look around, don't have a smile on your face.

Well, as a leader, people react off of that. Again, attitude reflects leadership. So, if you want to lead, how you act as you 
come in, what your face looks like, are you grumpy? Are you happy? Are you saying hello? Are you engaging with folks? 
All of those things are going to determine how your whole team reacts, oftentimes for the entire day and possibly even
longer. So, if you want to be a good leader, make sure that your attitude reflects what you want to get out of your people, 
both as you start the day, and then during the course of the day. Just think, during the course of the day, how do you 
engage? Encourage? Challenge? Inspire? Criticize? What does that look like? Do you listen with empathy? Do you 
appreciate during the day? Do you energize? Do you assist? What are the things that you do during the day that's affecting 
the attitude of all of those folks around?

Now a very major recommendation here for each of you is, take stock of your environment several times a day. Just stop, 
look around the office. What are people doing? Are they moving in slow motion? Are they moving in fast motion? Do they 
look happy? Do they look engaged? Do they look energized? And then think about what have you done thus far that 
maybe has affected that good or bad, and what can you do from here? Well, okay. I took stock of the day; this is what it 
looks like. If there's some negative there or I can make it more positive, what can I do to make it more positive and then 
go out and do it because attitude reflects leadership and it's really up to you to set the course for your team every day 
and several times a day, unfortunately, but leadership never ends.

So again, attitude reflects leadership. Thanks for tuning in Dennis Engelbrecht. Digging Deeper.