58: How to Stop Worrying and Start Leading
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2012
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I wish I could tell you that I’ve always felt confident as a leader, but I used to be a real scaredy cat. In this episode, I discuss six ways that I learned to have more confidence in my leadership abilities and not be consumed by the fear and worry about giving feedback to others.
1) Set expectations early: If expectations aren’t there with followers, create them. If they aren’t clear, clarify. Do it early or as soon as you can.
2) Be willing to change directions: A mentor gave me great advice when they said, “No leader is perfect. You can always acknowledge to a follower that something has been OK up until now, but that you are now making a different decision going forward.”
3) Ask a trusted colleague for feedback: I discovered that asking for advice from a person I trusted often gave me new ideas.
4) Respond in 24 hours: Zig Ziglar said, “If you need to eat a frog, you don’t want to look at that sucker too long. He ain’t gonna get any prettier.” (Customers – SCORE!)
5) Earn trust by being a good-finder: I spent time each day finding good stuff people were doing and told them.
6) Listen to daily inspiration: These days, I listen to podcasts. One that always gives me a boost is Michael Hyatt’s show This Is Your Life.
Discover More
Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to coaching for leaders. This is episode number 58, airing on October 8, 2012. |
| 0:08.0 | Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing human potential. |
| 0:13.0 | Welcome to coaching for leaders. |
| 0:19.0 | This is the show for leaders who want to improve themselves |
| 0:22.0 | so they can better engage and develop others. |
| 0:25.0 | Whether you're a season leader or leading people for the first time, |
| 0:28.0 | improving your leadership skills will drive your success and most importantly the success of others. |
| 0:35.0 | This week's topic, how to stop warring and start leading. |
| 0:41.3 | Well hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Coaching for Leaders. |
| 0:47.0 | My name is Dave Stahoviac, and I'm coming to you from our studio out here in Orange County, California, where this week everyone has been |
| 0:55.2 | sick in our house. |
| 0:56.2 | So I apologize if my voice sounds a little different than it has in past episodes, but Luke got pretty sick this week kind of for his first real bona fide |
| 1:07.0 | sickness whatever you call it and then proceeded to take us down to Bonn and Me so we're just kind of recovering from this sickness. |
| 1:15.0 | And it's interesting as a parent, you learn a lot |
| 1:18.0 | along the way from experience. |
| 1:20.0 | I mean, there's a lot you can do to read books and to kind of prepare yourself. |
| 1:23.0 | But nothing just, nothing substitutes for actual experience of having a child who's sick and |
| 1:29.2 | kind of learning how to read them and learning what symptoms are and talking to doctors and you and |
| 1:35.1 | and thankfully he's already on the mend and doing much better but you just you |
| 1:39.4 | just there's no substitute for actually being there and doing it. |
| 1:42.9 | Doesn't matter how much you know and how many books you've read. |
| 1:45.0 | And, you know, I think about that because leadership is so much like that. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dave Stachowiak, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dave Stachowiak and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.