Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajving. This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fello Aledo. Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode six ninety nine. Let me take you up in the air for a minute. Picture a pilot in a small aircraft climbing out, turning, crosswind, then downwind,
then base, then final approach. The runway is in sight, the wheels touched down, and before the aircraft even fully settles, throttle goes forward again and back up into the air around the pattern again, touch and go, touch and go, touch and go. That pilot is not flying to get somewhere. That pilot is flying to get better. Now here's the part that most people miss. There's a difference between being
current and being proficient. A pilot can meet the legal requirement a certain number of takeoffs and landings in a certain timeframe and be considered current. That means they are allowed to fly. But ask any real pilot and they will tell you something straight. Currency keeps you legal, Proficiency keeps you alive. And that right there is leadership because too many leaders are current, but they are not proficient. They show up, they attend the meeting, they sign the form,
they check the box. They are technically still in the game, but they're not sharp. They're not practicing, they're not improving. They're not pushing themselves through the pattern over and over again to get better at the fundamentals, and leadership at its core, is a skill set of fundamentals communication, decision make, accountability, presence. You do not master those once and move on. You practice them every single day. And let me bring this
even closer to home. In EMS, your paramedics go through an annual skills review. They run through airway management, IV access, medication administration, cardiac scenarios. They demonstrate they can still perform. That makes them current. But if that paramedic only touches those skills once a year, they are not proficient. And you would never accept that on a call. You would never look at a patient say don't worry, the medic is current. You want proficiency, You want muscle memory, you
want calm under pressure. You want someone who has done it so many times that when it matters, there is no hesitation. And leadership is no different. Your team does not need a current leader, They need a proficient Onefficiency does not come from annual reviews, leadership steminars, or a stack of books on your shelf. It comes from daily reps, small, intentional, repeated reps. It comes from having a difficult conversation instead of avoiding it. It comes from giving real feedback instead
of surface level comments. It comes from making a decision when it would be easier to delay it. Those are your leadership. Touch and goes every day gives you a pattern to fly. Every interaction is an approach. Every conversation is a landing. Every decision is a throttle push forward to get back into the air. And here's where most leaders get it wrong. They think leadership happens in big moments, the major incident, the big meeting, the crisis. That is
not where leadership is built. That is where leadership is revealed. Leadership is built in the quiet repetitions that nobody see. The extra five minutes you spend preparing for a conversation, the way you handle a small mistake from an employee, the tone you use when you're tired, frustrated and stretched thin. Those are your reps. Those are your touch and goes. And if you skip them. You only show up when
it's required. If you rely on being current instead of working towards proficiency, you will feel it, your team will feel it, and when the moment comes that actually matters, you will not have the confidence or the control that comes from repetition. You will hesitate, you will second guess, you will default to whatever habit you have built, whether it's good or bad. So here's the question I want you to sit with today. Are you practicing leadership or
are you only showing up for it? Because those are two very different things. One creates growth, the other creates stagnate. And here's the good news. You don't need hours. You don't need a perfect plan, you don't need a classroom. You need intention seven minutes a day, seven minutes where you consciously decide, I'm going to get one rep better today. Maybe it's how you start your shift, Maybe it's how you close out your day. Maybe it's one conversation you
handle differently. That is your pattern work, that is your leadership flight training. And over time, those small reps compound. You get smoother, you get sharper, you get more confident. You stop reacting and start leading, You stop guessing. And start knowing. You move from being current too proficient. And that is where real leadership lives, not in the title, not in the position, not in the annual review. It lives in the daily discipline of showing up and practicing
the craft. So tomorrow, when your day starts, I want you to think about that runway. You are not there to survive the day, were there to get better, take off, fly the pattern, make the landing go again. Because the leaders who commit to daily reps are the ones who show up ready when it counts. And if you take nothing else from today, I want you to remember this currency keeps you in the seat. Proficiency makes you someone worth following. Put in the reps every single day. This
has been the seven minute Leadership podcast. I thank you for listening, and if you want more free leadership resources, head over to paulfolovalito dot com and click on free Stuff. For more Paul fell of Alito podcasts, visit Paulfellowalito dot com