Your Motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert-Your host: Dr. Jason Wiggins
I focus on the motivational aspects with a high emphasize on motivating Gen Z and Millennials (GEN X will also find great value) and the employers who employ them for continuous improvement. This podcast focuses on motivating Gen Z and Millennials to empower to overcome obstacles within our everyday lived experiences. I have a passion for educating, speaking and guiding Gen Z and Millennials to achieve great things. Gen Z and Millennials have experienced so much in a short amount of time as the world continue to move faster. Self-Awareness and belief in our abilities provide a strong foundation for health, happiness and prosperity in a world that offers continuous challenges.
This is a motivational series for Gen Z and Millennials and those who aspire to do great things, while interested in understanding these two great generations and how we can aspire to be better because of the value of motivating through life experiences.
Life is hard, but when we challenge others or ourselves to be successful, then the world demonstrates the value of those who put in the effort. My hope is that each listener will find value and then share that value with others. I am a change leader that is passionate about life transformations and taking our passion and motivation to the next level. YOU CAN DO IT! Remembers Dreams without Goals are just Dreams.
Your Motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert-Your host: Dr. Jason Wiggins
Becoming a Leader at Any Age: A Leader Can Be Made and Born (Episode 169)
Can anyone truly become a leader, or are some individuals just naturally destined for it? Discover how embracing accountability, fostering motivation, and embodying personal integrity can transform anyone into an inspiring leader. Whether you're a natural-born charismatic or someone honing their skills, learn how leadership is within your grasp—and how it starts with leading yourself. Prepare to uncover ways to harness your unique strengths, influence others, and embark on a journey of continuous self-improvement.
As we wrap up this enlightening episode, I extend profound gratitude to our vibrant community of listeners across more than 75 countries, from Japan to Germany and beyond. Your support fuels our mission to spread motivation and empowerment globally, and I'm thrilled to continue this journey with you. May the insights shared inspire you to lead with integrity and positivity in your own circles. Wherever you listen from, whether it's morning or night, thank you for being an integral part of our global conversation, and here's to many more enriching discussions ahead.
Hello friends, welcome to your Motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert Podcast. I am your host, my name is Dr Jason Wiggins and it is an absolute pleasure to be here today. Let's get our heads right and I want to first thank everybody for your continued listenership, and everybody has been just terrific, and I get so many great comments about the podcast and I really greatly appreciate it. So continue to share with your family and friends and for those who are looking to get motivated, this podcast is for those who want to get motivated and help others get motivated as well. So today we have an excellent topic on our podcast and it is about how to become a leader or improve our leadership skills, and some of us may be at the point in our life where we may never have been a leader and we want to be a leader. What does it take to be a leader? Is a leader born or is a leader made be a leader? Is a leader born or is a leader made? Does a leader need to be necessarily a CEO, or can it just be a supervisor or somebody who is in charge of a group of individuals? So there's a lot of food for thought within that quick note of what a leader can be and is why? Because a leader cannot just be determined by a word. A leader can be determined by their actions, by how they come across, by all of these different type of leadership skills that a leader truly needs. Therefore, a leader cannot be just developed overnight. A leader is somebody who is willing to take charge, who is willing to be accountable for their actions and the actions of others. A leader is willing to do the things that it's hard to do. So, as you sit here and listen to the podcast, I want you to think about if you're a current leader right now, what are some of the things that you would like to do to improve your leadership skills? What are some of the things you'd like to do to motivate your team? How do you feel like you can get certain individuals to up their game, be able to improve themselves? Then? These are the type of topics and ideas that can help you utilize these to teach, inspire and mentor others.
Speaker 1:As we look at what a leader is, let's define a leader. Well, let's start like this Defining a leader is not just a set of action words. It is about the actions themselves. Therefore, a leader cannot really be put into a box, because a leader comes in different shapes, forms and different ways and walks of life. So right now, ask this question is a leader born or is a leader made? Well, guess what? In this case, a leader can be in both ways. Some are born with the innate qualities that they are able to just have people gravitate towards them and people are confident in their actions, confident in their words, and they are able to lead a team with very little work, while others have to develop skills, have a subset of skills, the tools to be able to start utilizing and then learning how to be a leader. And those are the same leaders that can be just as good or better than those that are born with those leadership traits.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about motivation. A leader has to have the ability to motivate. Motivating is when you're able to get somebody to do much more than they're capable of doing without that extra push. We are human beings. We all need to be able to have that special person sometimes push us to what we need to do to excel, in whatever fashion it may be. Therefore, the more you are able to motivate a team, the better outcome you're going to get.
Speaker 1:So today, when we look at how to be a leader at whatever age. That is a topic today. How can you be a leader at any age? It could be young or old, it doesn't matter and I actually had a person that recently asked me. They were younger and they asked me how do you become a leader? And I thought to myself for a second. That is a loaded question. I've inspired, I've helped, numerous leaders that were very young and didn't have the tools or skills that were needed at the time, and that's fine, because everybody needs the opportunity to be able to have a chance to be a leader. And so I said to this person I said the way you become a leader is start by being yourself, start by utilizing the tools that you already have, and that is means could be anything that you have from your tool chest, because we are all good at something. And they've asked me once I said that well, what if I don't have any skills? And my answer in response to that was we all have skills. That was we all have skills. We all have the ability to not only lead ourselves but to lead others.
Speaker 1:So the first step I told them was you have to utilize the old tools by leading yourself first. It does mean that you have to be self-aware, be understanding of what's going on around you and that people are paying attention to what you do. And for you to be able to do that, you have to have personal strengths. You have to be able to build on those strengths and then understand the situation that is gravitating around you and why people look up to you as a leader. Do they look up to you as a leader because you have a title? Do they look up to you as a leader because you have integrity? Do they look up to you as a leader because you lead by example? You're really good at what you do and people want to be able to be just as good. So that was the first thing I told the individuals lead yourself first, lead by example, be yourself and then, at the same time, look at yourself objectively, by treating yourself with objectively, by treating yourself with compassion and admiring some of your, some of the things you've done before. Sometimes you have to look at what you've done and appreciate and admire, but you also have to be honest and assess yourself in a way that is being honest. Sometimes we're not good at everything, and that's okay and that's why you have to accept that your work can always be approved. You can always find a way to be better.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing I mentioned was to have that desire to help others. It's not about the title you have, the money you make, the stature you have. It's about putting others first, helping them. A leader is someone who helps another person move from what they currently are at to what their potential is. That is the power of motivation. And you know there's always going to be opportunities for you to help. You can help people at school. You can help them in their personal life. You can help them in work. You can just be a good listener. You want to be able to grasp the opportunities that are in front of you to help you become a leader. A leader is not about just being by title. Anybody can be a leader and that's how you start out.
Speaker 1:Now what I like to talk about is when I was very young. Unfortunately, I did not have very good leadership skills. When I was in my early 20s, late teens, I was always the type I wanted to be a motivator. I wanted to inspire others. That was my key leadership trait. But my weakness, my weakness. When I assessed myself, I was rather immature, and immaturity caused me to fail in a lot of opportunities, and that is a defining moment for me, because the reality was my maturity, or lack thereof, was getting in the way of me being able to inspire, motivate, and that was my key strength. So sometimes your weakness balances out your strength, and that's where you find a conundrum. That's where you find what your limitations really are, and so, as I talked to this person and tried to mentor them, I could have spent two hours going over at you know what it is to be a leader and what age that you can be a leader, but you have to focus on certain key attributes that you need to be able to be a leader, and there's a lot of them. I could literally sit here for an hour or two and go over all the additional traits. You know taking initiative, building trust, being able to focus on developing communication skills, and you know being adaptable, seeking opportunities, being a team player you know we talked about leading by examples. You know, yet, leveraging your expertise, and those are just some of the key traits about helping others.
Speaker 1:Others be not only great team players, but being able to lead others, being able to inspire others, motivate others. If you're able to do that and create trust. The earned trust separates the real leaders from the pretenders. What do you mean? How can you be a pretend leader? A pretend leader is somebody that is. They just, basically, they try to pretend. They try to pretend that they're leaders. They try to build trust, they try to do things, but what happens is they don't have the interest of the team at heart. They have the accolades, they have what's in it for them as their main drivers and motivators for them to pretend that they are leaders. A leader can be made, a leader can be born, but a true leader cannot pretend. If you do all of these things, you create trust. You continue to improve your communication skills, you have the desire to help others, you learn from great leaders.
Speaker 1:I always say surround yourself with great people, great leaders that have the intangibles, that have the tangibles. And then also look at yourself objectively, know what your strengths are, know what your weaknesses are and then lead yourself first. If you can't lead yourself and be accountable for your own actions and look at where you are within your spectrum, then how do you expect others to be able to look in that spectrum and have the desire to follow you, and those are the key aspects of keeping yourself in the game. What does that mean? It means you need to be ruthless in finding time for yourself, and finding time for yourself Self-care is extremely important. What is self-care, for example, for me? I absolutely love playing basketball. Basketball is my outlet. It's my way of exercising, along with spending time with my family. When you're looking at exercising. It releases the endorphins, it releases your objective of exercise. It improves your basketball game. But that's why I always say is put yourself first. Be selfish when it comes to self-care. Find something that allows you to not only help yourself, but will then give back to helping others, being able to help them improve. So that's why I always say leadership is about helping others become better than who they are now.
Speaker 1:There is no I in team. A team is able to conform and that when they conform, they're able to operate at their best. That's why coaches, managers, ceos get paid a significant amount of money. Because how? It's because they're able to formulate a team. They're able to manage personalities. They're able to formulate a team. They're able to manage personalities. They're able to communicate extremely effectively.
Speaker 1:Imagine this If you have a CEO of a large company. Do you think that they are able to communicate effectively? Do they get their message across the way they should? The answer, in most terms, is yes if they're the right person for the job. But if they can't communicate, if they're not able to basically conform to the group and ensure that they all know what they're doing, from top down, no matter where you are in the division of the company, if you're able to strike the message across the whole company, then you're going to be a successful leader, because if you can communicate and you can act with trust, integrity, become adaptable and be somebody that people effectively want to follow, then you're going to be able to be a great leader.
Speaker 1:So when that young person asked me how do you become a leader, I always like to say it's not about becoming a leader. It's about becoming a great leader, because a great leader is one that is going to be able to have people morph around them and be somebody that everybody wants to follow. So I'd like for you to take a second. Think about a great leader that has impacted your life. They could be work, school, family, friends, groups, whatever it may be. Think about that leader. What do you think made them a great leader? What were some of the traits that you loved about that person and how did they effectively demonstrate they were a great leader? And if you surround yourself with all of those types of individuals where you can share those leadership skills and they can be a mentor to you and then in return, you can be a mentor to somebody else, then that is what I consider great leadership. I want to leave everybody with this last message leaders are born and they're made. Great.
Speaker 1:Ceos understand what it takes to be a great CEO because they were able to effectively utilize all those traits. But if a leader cannot utilize all those traits or a leader of a country or a leader of anything, if they're not able to effectively communicate, they don't have the integrity, they don't have the trust, they don't have the trust they don't want to help you in a way, to help you become successful then that is where they're going to struggle. So the first steps in becoming a great leader, remember, are lead yourself first. If you're able to lead yourself first, then you're able to lead others. Look at yourself objectively, remember you have to look at your strength and weaknesses, and that will help you understand what traits you have that are great and ones you need to improve. Surround yourself with great leaders, help others leaders help others. Remember to continue to improve your communication skills, create trust with your team and take initiative. If you want to be a great leader, you have to demonstrate those qualities.
Speaker 1:So, again, I want to thank everybody for the opportunity to share with you and help motivate you and inspire you, and I hope that you take these lessons to help others and share with others. I am very thankful. I would not be here without you. So we've had individuals from over 75 countries continue to listen. I have a great listening base. So thank you to all those individuals all across the countries that follow us, from Japan to Germany to Eastern Europe I mean, I could go on and on and on because we have some great listeners all over the United States. So, wherever you may fall, from Canada to all these countries, thank you for your continued listenership. At this point, I want to thank you and if, wherever you are, have a great day, a great night, and we'll talk to you later. Take care, bye, bye.
