Episode 854 - You Showed Up. So What?

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 854. There's a phrase we've heard our entire lives. Half the battle is showing up. And maybe there was a time when that was good advice. You showed up for work. You showed up for the meeting. You showed up for training. You showed up for your team. Congratulations.

0:46 You were physically located in the correct place. Now what? Because leadership requires more than occupying a chair. You can be in the meeting and never contribute. You can walk through your workplace and never notice what's happening around you. You can attend every training class and never apply anything that you learned. You can have an open-door policy and spend the entire day staring at a screen. You can stand 10 feet away from your employees and still be completely disconnected from them. Showing up is attendance. Engagement is leadership.

1:26 And there's a massive difference between the two. Think about the last meeting you attended, how many people were actually there. I don't mean physically, I mean mentally. Somebody was checking email, somebody was thinking about lunch, somebody was scrolling through their phone under the table, someone was staring at the PowerPoint presentation while mentally solving a completely different problem. They were present, they were not engaged. Leaders can fall into the same trap.

1:56 We convince ourselves that because we came to work, walked around the building, attended the meeting, answered some emails, and talked to a few people that we actually led. Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't. Leadership cannot be measured by proximity. It has to be measured by impact. I can stand beside you all day and have absolutely no influence on your success or I could spend seven intentional minutes with you, ask the right questions, listen to your answer, help you solve a problem, and completely change the direction of your day.

2:34 That's engagement, and engagement requires intention. When you walk into work tomorrow, I want you to think about the difference between entering the building and entering the operation. Entering the building means you arrived. Entering the operation means you You actually know what's happening. You know who's struggling. You know where the pressure points are. You understand what your people need from you. You know what problem everyone has been working around because nobody has fixed it yet. You know whether your standards are actually being followed. You know whether the new employee is being trained correctly. You know whether your best employee is getting frustrated and you know when customer experience you talk about in meetings is actually happening

3:22 in the real world. That requires engagement. Leadership is incredibly easy to fake when you measure it by activity. I answered 47 emails today. Okay, what changed because of those emails? I sat through four meetings. Okay, what decisions came out of them? I talked to everyone on my team. Great. Did you actually hear them? I worked 12 hours today. Okay, did your organization become better because you were there? Those are very different measurements. This is one reason I've always believed leadership happens in moments. My entire seven-minute leadership philosophy is built around intentional moments because you don't need an eight-hour leadership seminar every day. You need awareness. discipline, and

4:19 consistent action. Seven intentional minutes of engagement can accomplish more than seven hours of passive presence. Walk over to somebody and ask, what's making your job harder today? And then listen. Ask your newest employee, what doesn't make sense yet? And then listen. Walk through your operation and look at it like it's your first day. What would confuse you? What looks broken? What are people ignoring because they've gotten used to it? That's active leadership. And sometimes engagement means getting uncomfortable because once you start paying attention, you start seeing things.

5:01 You notice the employee who's checked out. You notice the supervisor who is avoiding difficult conversations. You notice the standard that has slowly disappeared. You notice the shortcut everybody takes. You notice the policy everyone claims to follow that nobody actually follows. You notice that the problem everybody complains about could have been fixed six months ago. Engagement creates awareness, and awareness creates responsibility. That's probably one of the reasons some leaders become disengaged, because if you don't see it, you don't have to deal with it. If you stay in your office, you don't hear the conversations. If you don't ask questions, you don't hear the answers. If you never inspect the operation, you never discover the gaps. There

5:50 is a strange comfort in leadership ignorance until something goes wrong. Then suddenly everybody wants to know how the leader didn't know. That's why engagement matters. Your people are watching more than whether you showed up. They're watching what you do after you arrive. They know when you're interested. They know when you're listening. They know when you remember something they told you last week. They know when you follow up and they absolutely know when you are pretending. You cannot fake engagement for very long. People can feel the difference between a leader asking a question because they care about the answer and a leader asking because they read somewhere that leaders should ask questions. And there is another side to this.

6:37 Engagement does not mean inserting yourself into everything. That becomes micromanagement. You don't need to stand over somebody's shoulder while they work. You don't need to approve every decision. You don't need to dominate every conversation. You need to be connected enough to understand what is happening and disciplined enough to know when your involvement is needed. Sometimes engagement means speaking. Sometimes it means listening. Sometimes it means teaching. And sometimes it means getting out of the way and allowing someone else to lead. The common denominator is intentionality. You made a decision to be involved, and I want leaders listening today to try something. For the next week, stop measuring your

7:27 leadership by how busy you were. At the end of each day, ask yourself one question. Where was I genuinely engaged today, not where was I physically present? Where did my involvement matter? Maybe you coached someone through a difficult decision. Maybe you noticed a process that needed repaired. Maybe you listened to an employee who needed five minutes of your attention.

7:51 Maybe you stepped into a problem before it became a crisis. Maybe you recognized somebody doing great work and made sure they knew you noticed. Those are leadership moments. Your calendar might never capture them. Your job description probably doesn't list them. There may never be a spreadsheet measuring them. And yet those moments are where leadership lives. I've spent a career working in environments where presence without engagement can have consequences.

8:23 Emergency services, aviation, disaster response, scuba instruction. These environments teach you very quickly that being physically present doesn't mean you're situationally aware. You have to be mentally in the game and leadership works the same way. Your title gets you into the room. Your engagement determines whether your presence matters.

8:49 And there are leaders right now who desperately need to hear that. They've been showing up for years, same office, same meeting, same routine, same conversations, and they're wondering why nothing is changing. Maybe the question isn't whether you're showing up. Maybe the question is what version of you is showing up because your organization doesn't need another person occupying a leadership position. It needs a leader who is awake, a leader who notices, a leader who listens, a leader who follows through, a leader who understands that attendance gets your name on the roster, but engagement gets results. So tomorrow morning when you walk through that door, don't congratulate yourself for showing up. That is the minimum requirement. Look around, listen,

9:47 ask a better question. Find one place where your involvement can make something better. Give somebody seven intentional minutes of your complete attention because leadership skills, doesn't happen because you entered the building. Leadership happens when your presence changes something. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.