Becoming Built to Lead

Chet Scott – Founder, Built to Lead: In 2010, Chad hired Chet Scott, founder of Built to Lead, to coach him and his team at Choice Recovery, Inc. What started as a 1x1 leadership partnership quickly evolved into a decade-long journey of growth. Together, Chet and Chad practiced weekly 1x1s and led more than 400 team practices, meeting every other week to build clarity, connection, and conviction.

Your Six Pack

We need to understand, design, and cultivate all six areas starting with the one that runs like a thread through all the others…our worldview.

At Built to Lead, we believe it’s all about your CORE. You cannot inherit this from another. You must build your own with the help of a few builders. Here are the six pack elements to your CORE. Hope you enjoy the rinse…

This is the element of the CORE that ties and binds ’em all together. Your worldview represents your deepest held beliefs and serves as your internal “matrix” through which you interpret the meaning of life and try to make sense of it. Many of us have never thought about our deeply held beliefs but, sadly, know very well the ones that limit us. Authoring your worldview is hard and energizing. Start here, friend.

Identity flows from one’s worldview and represents how you see yourself. This one is captured by writing,reflecting, and discovering who you are. Our family, friends, and clients are introduced to “identity” through the writing of their “I am” statements. For many, identity begins with replacing some very old, negative, self limiting images from our childhood.

Principles are how you live and work. These are the values that mean the most to you. My big three you may have heard me mutter over and over – model the way, embrace pain and suffering, and embody truth in love. These are my big three and I’m far from mastering ’em. Work in process (WIP). Good…

Passion is what you LOVE. The discovery of your passions, through the writing of your “Love to’s” is the roadmap toward a clear sense of purpose. We have been wired and gifted all in unique and stunning ways. There are no mediocre humans. Love is the jet fuel for big dreams. You are made to dream and do, remember. All are made for magnificence. Most have simply never discovered their unique strengths, talents, and abilities that offer the opportunity for seemingly endless energy. Of course passion is more than love, but we are only focused on the discovery of this form of passion because, it alone, provides the long lasting burn we’re after.

Purpose. Purpose is why you live and work. Discovering your CORE purposes connects you with your deepest passions, giving them an aim worth working toward. The most powerful force in the universe is a soul that is both on fire, and aimed toward their big dream with a real sense of purpose – a sense of why. He who has a why, remember, can deal with most any how. Thank you, Nietzsche.

Process. Process is how you do it. This is where most of us stop. We dream but never seem to do. We brainstorm a bunch of great ideas for what might be a really cool work and life, but stay stuck in our current state and slowly settle. At BTL we help our clients dream and do. This process lasts a lifetime. Very cool.

So, the BTL six-pack is really a work in process. Let me further illustrate.

We’ve broken the six pack down to two three packs. The “WIP” & the “3P’s”.

The WIP is your Worldview, Identity, and Principles comprise your character. Your character is the proverbial WIP – A lifelong work in process.

The is your Passions, Purpose, and Process represent your competence – your 3P, if you will. According to all the latest brain research it takes a long time to master just about anything. We can only build mastery in very specific domains which is why we have to discover the other elements ahead of just getting busy.

Do you see it?

Your strong CORE is comprised of these six elements and broken into these two buckets of character and competence. The result is your personal culture. The most powerful individual cultures are those built around strong character and equally strong competence. We all know examples of one without the other. Strong character but weak competence is someone that we like but don’t want to work with. They have a hard time focusing and finishing. Strong competence and weak character is someone that we see as productive but we don’t like how they get it done. They create problems and oftentimes leave lots of bodies in their wake.

Individuals with strong character, strong competence, and an attractive culture are BTL. These few experience something very rare in our world today. They are internally aligned and engaged. They are alert and oriented times four. They have answers for life’s tough questions and have authored them from deep within. They may or may not appear to be strong to the untrained eye, but make no mistake, they are. They are tasting what it’s like be who they are regardless of where and with whom they find themselves. They are becoming ONE. This is real strength and real power. These individuals feel it with uncommon clarity and act upon it with incredible, often unimaginable, consistency and calm. These individuals have dealt with the toughest leadership challenge of leading themselves. Now, and only now, are they ready for you and me. Good…

These few but focused individuals are on their builder’s journey and aimed toward their OPUS. Their disciplined productive action keeps moving them around and over life’s adversity with hardly a break in stride. Like minded folks are coming alongside and, as a band, they are picking up speed with their ever deepening sense of trust. This team is becoming a “community with chemistry.” No surprise, they are freakin’ magic for those that see through a performance trained eye. Their performance is almost mesmerizing in it’s simplicity and crispness. They make the difficult look doable. They, in fact, make it look easy. Their size and audience are exactly what they are meant to be, at least for now. This team is becoming ONE. Here’s the truth about this team and this process. Do not miss this. This is HUGE.

Becoming one internally is a long hard journey of discovery, reflection, and productive action. Becoming one with another, a few, or with many, is seemingly impossible. Only time and deep practice make it possible. The enemy is to do what is expected. The enemy is to simply focus on results and outcomes, neither of which you control. The world lives here, focused externally, and is why there are so few individuals, teams, and leaders that are BTL and becoming ONE. The BTL leader focuses within and on Productive actions – who she is and what she does. She focuses on becoming whole by aligning behaviors with beliefs. She slowly closes her integrity gaps by changing behaviors and bolting down beliefs. She is becoming ONE and knows it. Good…

The reason it’s critical to build a strong core is simple: so you can become your own biggest influence.

Your “six pack” becomes the foundation of who you are and who you're becoming. It’s what transforms an insecure, uncertain individual into a strong, core-centered leader.

Often we do not take the necessary time to adequately design and cultivate our CORE. We convince ourselves that there is not enough time. Producing results is what the world wants and rewards. Many of us are driven to be a “success” so we must get busy!! We focus on the things that other people can see. Looking good on the outside becomes our deepest motivator. The latest and greatest is what we chase. We spend countless hours and dollars trying to learn and apply the latest self help theories. We learn new communication strategies that are guaranteed to get results by sometimes “bending” the truth. We tell ourselves, absolute truth does not exist, so we are not lying. We are simply being “smart about how we speak.”

Image and style, our culture tells us, have replaced character and substance as the key ingredients of leadership. As long as you are producing results your company will look the other way when questionable behavior is part of the equation. Charm school is reserved for people with poor results regardless of their behavior. Business “ethics” are being taught by our corporations again. Unfortunately, this does not represent a movement towards old values, but is simply a defensive strategy to avoid lawsuits.

Our corporations and the media are not responsible for defining our success. We are. We need to go below the surface and focus on our CORE. We must cultivate our CORE. We need to begin going deeper today regardless of our age. We need to become inspired to reach our God-given potential instead of just trying to outperform our neighbor or peer. A strong CORE gives us strength, resilience, and meaning.

You are being Built to Lead . The key question is who is your builder? Are you letting the world choose how you are built? Are you like a buffalo, willing to follow the herd mindlessly? Are you building you? Your CORE is being built regardless. A strong CORE provides the inner strength to weather life’s storms. How do you stand up under pressure? Are you satisfied with how you respond under fire? Our true selves are revealed under pressure. If you want to change how you respond to the input of life you must start cultivating your interior life…your CORE. What comes out of us under pressure only reveals what has been in us all along. Remember, together we transform.