RealityOS | How to Lead with Resonance

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Yep, they sure are. We make it easy for him to save on all his insurance needs, all in one place, with coverage that fits his business and bottom line. Ooh, I shouldn't have looked down. It's all right. We're, we're so far up here.

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It feels good to GEICO. If your team's culture feels flat, disconnected, or drifting, the problem isn't them, it's you, and specifically the frequency you're broadcasting as a leader. As the chief marketing officer at TrustedChoice.com and Agency Nation, I took a lot of heat for something that I didn't think twice about. On podcasts and in articles, I mentioned and promoted other organizations in our industry, even those some saw as competitors. To me, it was a smart strategy.

Build bridges, grow the pie, create opportunities. But to our board, it was heresy. "Protect our turf," they said. I literally would get phone calls from board members every day. "Why would you give the spotlight to anyone other than us?"

I thought they were crazy, and frankly, they were. But I wasn't there to guard turf. I was there to push the mission of our business, so I kept speaking, kept collaborating, kept amplifying the voices and ideas that would help the industry evolve, not just ours. And the result? Today's episode of Finding Peak is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Those connections turned into partnerships the industry had never seen before, and ultimately, the exposure that came with those connections and partnerships cultivated and elevate one of the most talked about conferences in the history of the insurance industry. Years later, people still tell me that Elevate changed their careers, all because I refused to mute my voice to fit a scarcity mindset. Here's another story. At Rogue Risk, I made it a habit as CEO and founder to call out the moments when I got it wrong, not in a shameful, beat-myself-up kind of way, but in the context of what I called wins and lessons.

Our goal wasn't to get everything correct the first time. Our goal was to make damn sure we didn't make that same mistake twice. It wasn't about being right. It was about getting it right. And one time, we were on a call, and a teammate had made a pretty big mistake.

I called an all-hands meeting to talk about the general issue and how do we, as a team, would make sure that it didn't happen again. Now, I never mentioned this woman's name. I didn't wanna embarrass her. It was an honest mistake, and it was something that could happen to anybody, which is why we were discussing it on this team meeting. But during that meeting, she spoke up and said, "That was me."

She claimed responsibility for the mistake, and because of the culture we'd built, the team rallied around her instantly. Like, they had her back like we were on a high school sports team. They reinforced that it was the lesson that mattered more than the mistake. It was fucking epic. I'll be honest with you.

I'm even getting a little emotional thinking about it. And it happened because we established a culture where the leader's voice made it safe to tell the truth. This is what it means to lead with resonance. Your words, your tone, your presence set a cultural rhythm for your organization. So what do we mean lead with resonance?

Well, resonance is about clarity plus consistency. Clarity, people know exactly what you stand for. No guessing, no mixed signals. Consistency, they hear it in every meeting, see it in every decision, and feel it in the way that you show up for them. When you lead with resonance, your voice aligns the team to the mission without you having to micromanage.

People self-select in or out, which is exactly what you want. Your culture becomes self-reinforcing because everyone's operating on the same frequency established by you. When you don't lead with resonance, you leave a vacuum, and vacuums get filled, often by the loudest, not the most aligned. So quick case study here. Take a look at Patagonia.

From day one, founder Yvon Chouinard's voice was clear Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire, and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. That voice didn't just live in press releases. It resonated through product design, supply chain choices, hiring, marketing, and even activism. The result, a global brand whose culture is as recognized as its logo. That's resonance.

The leader's voice sets the tone. The tone drives culture, and the culture sustains the mission. So another quick exercise for you guys. We call this the resonance audit. Step one, write your mission's core truth.

Just one sentence, no jargon, no filler. This is probably gonna be harder than you imagine if you haven't already done this, just so you know. Step number two, get the echo. Ask five to 10 people on your team to write their version of the mission. Do not show them yours.

Step three, find the gap. Compare what your team writes down as their version of the mission versus yours. Where's the overlap? Where's the drift? Once you've found that gap between your version and your team's version of your mission, it's time to close that gap.

And to do that, we need to take the new combined version of your mission and choose one bold action this week, a decision, a campaign, a message that amplifies this new shared truth and cuts through the noise. Final step, repeat monthly. Resonance isn't set it and forget it. You have to keep striking the tuning fork over and over and over and over again. And if you will feel like you are repeating yourself, I promise you, your team needs to hear it.

So my friends, lead with resonance and you won't need to push your team. They'll move because they're aligned. That's what we're going for here. Leading with resonance is about finding alignment. You won't have to remind them of the mission.

They'll speak it back to you. Now, if you want to post your resonance audit in the comments, the first five I'll take a look at and give you my feedback on. And if you're not subscribed, do so because we have a few more episodes of our Reality OS Core Tenet series coming out. The next one being Own Your Edge, how to weaponize self-awareness so you can lead from your zone of genius. And if you haven't already, go over to findingpeak.com and join our free leadership community where unreasonable people are achieving unreasonable results.

I want to see you over there. And my friends, just please, if you don't define your culture with your voice, someone else will. And I promise you, you are not going to like the sound of it. This is the way. Happy holidays.

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