Embracing the Catalytic Mindset: Celebrating 100 Episodes of Transformational Leadership Insights

Celebrate with me as we hit the grand milestone of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast's 100th episode! It's a momentous occasion that brings together the distilled wisdom of countless leaders who've shared their journeys with us. This special episode isn't just a reflection; it's a masterclass in embracing the catalytic mindset that can transform your leadership and accelerate your growth. No matter where you stand on your leadership path, the insights from this episode promise to be the catalyst you need to unlock your full potential.

As your guide, Dr. William Attaway, I'll walk you through the significance of a clear-minded focus and the pivotal role it plays in achieving your aspirations. We'll unpack the powerful principles essential for nurturing a mindset geared towards exponential growth, drawing lessons from the thought-provoking discussions with our diverse array of guests. Prepare to redefine success as we explore the steps to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you're destined to be. Join us for an episode that's more than just a celebration—it's an invitation to step into your own as a catalytic leader.

Chapters

• 1:13 Catalytic Mindset: Key to Success
• 4:02 Developing Clear-Minded Focus
• 5:58 Mastering Calm Control for Leadership
• 8:26 Building Confidence for Growth
• 10:49 Leading with Intention: The Catalytic Mindset

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

Hey, welcome to the 100th episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad that you are here. You know it's been a wild ride these first 100 episodes. I have had the opportunity and the privilege to speak to so many leaders in so many different places in their journey, from people who are just really getting started out and beginning to rise to people who have hit major milestones in their success and in their journey. I would challenge you if you haven't listened to many up to this point, jump in, go back and listen to some of the highlights of so many episodes that you will benefit from. What I want to do today for this special episode is share with you some thoughts that I'm having around my next book that's going to be coming out later this year. What I want to talk about is what I call the catalytic mindset.

Podcast Intro: 0:54

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:11

Your mindset is the source of your success or your failure, and this is a difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. But what I want you to do is I want you to think about your mind as the engine of your life. I want you to think about your mind as the engine of your life. I want you to think about your mind as what is producing the fuel that is going to propel your success. The thoughts that you have matter your thoughts, man over time will yield behaviors. Your behaviors yield your habits, and your habits are what lead to success or the lack of it. And this is a challenge for a whole lot of leaders, because we don't often think about the power of the mindset that we have. Carol Dweck, in her classic book on mindset, dove into and explained to all of us the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. A growth mindset believes that the sky's the limit, that you have potential for growth and that you can continue to improve and get better, that you have the potential to learn and grow far beyond where you are today. By contrast, a fixed mindset believes that, well, it's all pre-decided and pre-determined and you have what you have. So there's really no point in leaning into possibility and potential, because your capacity is what it is today. What I want for you to understand is there is a catalytic mindset, just like there's catalytic leadership that I wrote about in my last book. I want you to understand that the mindset that you have can lead to greater and greater potential, growth and success, but you have to adopt it, and changing your mindset is not like changing your shoes. It's not something that happens in a few seconds Now. This is something that you have to be intentional about. There are three components that I talk about in the book that are, I believe, critical to developing a catalytic mindset. The first one is clear-minded focus. Clear-minded focus what is that? Well, it's understanding where you are and it's understanding where you want to go, and then, once you have defined those two points, it's simply a matter of building a bridge from here to there, but you have to have clarity around where you are today. You have to define reality as it is, like Max Dupree taught all of us, and then you have to define where you want to go. Where's the goal right? That's where you focus. You focus on what you want more of. I want to hit my goals, so I'm going to focus there. I understand where I am, I understand where I want to go. Then it's simply a matter of building the bridge from here to there. It's developing the steps, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, that are going to get me from here to there. Clear-minded focus is absolutely critical there.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:02

Clear-minded focus is absolutely critical. If you don't know clearly where you want to go, then you may be doing things that will take you to a different destination. You may be taking actions, you may be busy, incredibly busy but you're not busy doing the right things that are going to get you where you want to go. That's why clear-minded focus is so important. You have to begin there. You have to clearly define and delineate where you want to go after you determine where you are. That's clear-minded focus.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:34

The second component of a catalytic mindset is calm, control, calm, control. I get this concept from David Allen, who was a guest on the podcast. If you haven't heard that episode, you need to go back and listen to it, because David did a phenomenal job of explaining so many of the concepts in his Getting Things Done system that I've been using for nearly two decades now and have benefited from so incredibly. Calm control is a concept that I pull from David's work. He talked about a mind like water in his book. It's a concept from the martial arts world, this idea of imagine a lake in the middle of the mountains, right, and the mountains are a windbreak, and so the water is just incredibly calm, incredibly peaceful, there's not a ripple on it. Now imagine taking a rock and throwing it into that water. What happens? Splash and ripples, right, but the splash and the ripples are exactly proportionate to the size of the rock and the velocity of my throw. That water does not overreact and it does not underreact. It proportionately reacts and then it returns to its calm state. This is what I talk about with calm control.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:58

What I want you to understand is that if you are not appropriately responding to what's going on around you, if you are overreacting or underreacting, that's going to be a problem in your leadership. This is a mindset issue, and this is one thing I work with my clients to help them develop. Is this calm control, where they can proportionately react to what's going to happen. See, you're going to get rocks thrown into your water. So am I. That's part of life. You can't control that, but how you respond, that is in your control. What I want you to learn to do is to respond appropriately not overreacting, where you just blow up at somebody who really wasn't part of the problem, maybe, or underreacting, stuffing it all inside, hoping that well, I'll just sweep it under the rug and it'll go away. Yeah, problems never go away when you sweep them under the rug. As another one of my guests, steve Cain, says, bad news is not like a fine wine. It does not get better with age. If you stuff it inside, what's going to happen is just like the steam in a tea kettle Eventually it's going to come out and most often it's going to come out at a time, at a place and at a person not of your choosing. This is not what I want for you. I want what I call calm control, where you have ways to release the pressure, where you have ways to release the steam from the tea kettle and maintain that calm control. This is what I want for you. This is what I work with my clients to achieve.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:33

When you add calm control to clear-minded focus, the results grow exponentially, and the reason is that you're not sabotaging yourself. Self-sabotage is a real thing and so often it's because we are lacking calm control. We are instead just reacting to what's going on and so often our reactions are not healthy and they're not going to get us where we want to go. Right. Go back to the clear-minded focus. So you have clear-minded focus. You add to that calm control and the third component of a catalytic mindset well, that's confidence, and confidence is something that most people would love to have. They want to have more confidence. But a lack of confidence so often is because we don't have clear-minded focus and we don't have calm control, because we don't have clear-minded focus and we don't have calm control.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:26

When you have those two components first and you add confidence, it begins to grow, it begins to build. Confidence is based on your past results and what's going on in the present. So often, and when you are intentional, and when there is alignment, like I talk about in my strata process, when there is alignment between what you do every day, between the projects that you currently have on your list and between your three, four and five-year goals, when there's alignment there, this gives you confidence in the day-to-day. This gives you confidence that you are taking steps, that you are moving the ball up the field, one yard at a time, and you will make it to the end zone. That's the confidence I want for my clients and this is what I see. As they begin to build each one of these components into this catalytic mindset, they begin to see the results, they begin to see the fruit from all of this intentionality. And truly, this is the undergirding piece of all of it, isn't it? It's being intentional and truly this is the undergirding piece of all of it, isn't it? It's being intentional. It's saying I'm going to be purposeful in what I do and how I do it. I'm going to be purposeful even about the mindset that I create, and a mindset is created every single day.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:40

In my last book, catalytic Leadership, I talked about the importance of a teachable spirit. No-transcript. We decide every morning are we going to be the most teachable person in every room we're in today? Are we going to be the most teachable person in every conversation we're in today? You and I get to decide that we can pre-decide and pre-determine long before we're in the situation. And if you will maintain that, what you will find is alignment with the catalytic mindset principles, as you understand, I want to learn.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:13

I want to learn, I want to grow. I'm going to do that intentionally and purposefully and nothing is going to stop me. There will be obstacles, there will be rocks thrown into the water and I can't control all of that. But I can control how I respond. I can control the mindset that I'm building intentionally, one day, one week, one month at a time. What are you going to be glad, five years from now, that you started doing today? Here's what I want for you. I want you to lead, not just in a catalytic way, but I want you to lead from a catalytic mindset.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:49

When this book comes out, I'll be sharing more about it, but I wanted to share with you some of the principles that I'll be sharing more about it. But I wanted to share with you some of the principles that I'm talking about as I write, because I believe this can be a game changer for so many of you. If you will step into this, if you will intentionally design the alignment, if you will intentionally design the mindset, then you will see the fruit that comes from that kind of intentionality. Imagine, if you get this right. Imagine what that's going to mean for your business, for your family, for your team, for your clients. Imagine what that's going to look like. This is what I want for you as we celebrate 100 episodes. I want you to know that I'm not done. I've got so many great conversations ahead. I've got so many people that I can't wait for you to hear from. I've got so many learnings that I think are going to benefit you as we move forward together.

Dr. William Attaway: 11:47

Continue. If you haven't subscribed yet to the Catalytic Leadership Podcast, I'm going to challenge you to go ahead and subscribe. You can click the subscribe button in whatever app you're listening to the podcast on or in YouTube. Stay up to date and remember you can learn from anybody. Sometimes you learn what not to do, but that can be incredibly valuable. Remember, the questions that we ask determine the answers that we get. It begins with your mindset, and my goal, for you and for me, is to lead with a catalytic mindset. Will you join me in that? Let's head into the next hundred episodes together and let's see what happens next.

Podcast Intro: 12:28

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.