320 | You Can’t Learn To Lead From A Book

When you read a business book, do you consistently take something from the book to apply to your business or leadership? Well, you can’t learn to lead from a book. You can get insights. You can get excited about the benefits of the “new thing.” But you can’t learn to lead without application of the insights. I have been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 12 years, and I know I would not improve without consistent time on the training mats. Discover how you can be a better leader by doing this one thing…I continue to learn it every day I train on the mat.

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Learn to Lead: The Transcript

You can’t learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu out of a book or even a video. There’s only one way you can learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I really believe this and what does this have to do with you and your business?

Well, you also can’t learn to lead from a book or from a video. You can surely get insights around this but you’ve got to put it into play.

First, let me just introduce myself. My name is Gene Hammett. I work with hypergrowth companies and their leadership teams to help them understand the chaos of hypergrowth and how to harness that so that they can continue to grow consistently and really fast in whatever market they’re in. I’ve studied the Inc. 5000 and about how they’re really doing this from their leadership level and what goes on in sales and marketing, and their culture that makes all this possible.
I have this report that if you wanna get the details you can go to GeneHammett.com/hypergrowth. These companies are growing on average 2700% across a three year period. So, I open this up with you can’t learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu without getting on the mat and actually doing it. I don’t know if you can notice this but I got this like cut on my lip right here.

It happened just a few days ago when I was on the mat rolling, as they say. We were really putting what we know into action on the battlefield, if you will. Rolling is on like, kinda like wrestling mats, if you’re not familiar with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But I share this story with you because I couldn’t learn what I needed to learn by watching videos and reading, and trying to figure it out without putting it into action. And I notice a lot of leaders that are learning all the time, they’re trying to figure out how to be a good leader but they’re not really applying it the way they should.

Now, this video is kind of a call to action ’cause I want to challenge you. If you are reading a book right now, then what are you letting that book do for you?

Now, if you don’t like the book, granted pick another book. But if you like the book are you taking something out of it and putting it into play in your life or in your business? Are you learning from that? Are you pressure testing that? Are you being able to see if it does work for you and your business? Or maybe you just take a piece of it, or two, and throw the rest of it out?

The reason I share all this with you, because I really believe that too many people are trying to lead without actually putting it into play. You’ve gotta have the courage to do that. You gotta have the courage to really go beyond what is comfortable to grow into the leader that you wanna be. That means having conversations that you don’t wanna have before you’re ready, and you want to have them in such a way that people walk away knowing that they feel understood. And that’s odd for most leaders. It’s odd for me when I first started doing it. But you want to do this consistently.

Now, I have been doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu since 2006, so that’s about 12 years. I’m a purple belt and the only way I get better is by putting into play on the mat. And you’ve gotta do the same thing in your leadership, you’ve gotta put it into play. You’ve gotta take what you’re learning and see if it works for you, and there’s only one way to do that.

Here’s one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; “you can only connect them looking backwards. “So you have to trust that the dots “will somehow connect in your future.”

Now, what this means to me is really about your leadership. You have to put it into play, you see what works and then look back, connecting those dots together to say, yes it did work for me or no it didn’t. You can’t just read something and go yes that will work and never do it because you’ll never be able to get the benefit out of that. Steve Jobs is a very smart individual, an innovator of all time. I wanna share this with you because I really believe that as a leader you wanna continuously grow and you’ve gotta put it into action. You can’t learn to lead by not putting those new ideas into play, and it takes courage to do that.

All right, my name’s Gene Hammett. I work with hypergrowth companies and their leadership teams to help them really understand that chaos of growth. This is a hypergrowth tip, if you wanna stay subscribed go to HyperGrowth.tips. You can do that anytime you want or if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can just actually hit the subscribe button and stay subscribed and be notified of the next video coming out from me, Gene Hammett. As always lead with courage and I’ll see you next time.

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