Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goalajieving. 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 seven oh seven. I want you to think about something for a second. Five years from now, most of the people you see every single day will not be in your life. Your co workers, your employees, your neighbors, even some of the people you're bending over backwards for right now. They won't be gone in a dramatic way.
They'll simply drift out of your orbit. And that idea hits hard when you really sit with it, because if that's true, and it is, then it forces a leadership question that most people void. What are you doing today trying to impress people who won't even be around later. Turnover happens, roles change, people move on, priority shift, and yet leaders still make decisions like every relationship is permanent.
And let me tell you where this gets dangerous. You start saying yes when you should say no. You tolerate behavior you should shut down. You delay decisions because you don't want to upset someone. You carry people longer than you should because you're trying to be liked, and slowly, without realizing it, you stop leading. You start managing emotions instead of managing standards. That's where your culture starts to break. And here's the reality that no one wants to say
out loud. Leadership is not about being liked by people who are temporary. Leadership is about doing right by the mission the team in the stand even if some people don't like it in the moment, because five years from now, when those people are no longer around, the decisions you made today will still be echoing inside your organization. Your culture will remember, your systems will remember, your reputation will remember. And that's the part leaders forget. We spend so much
energy trying to keep things easy. We avoid hard conversations, we avoid accountability, we avoid setting the line clearly why, because we're thinking short term. We're thinking about how someone will feel today instead of how the organization will perform tomorrow. Let me give you a simple leadership filter you can start using immediately. Ask yourself, will this decision still make sense in five years. If the answer is no, don't do it. If you're keeping someone on your team who
is dragging everyone else down. That decision will not age well. If you're ignoring bad behavior because it's uncomfortable to address, that decision will not age well. If you're saying yes to everything to avoid conflict, that decision will not age well. But if you hold the standard, if you protect the culture, if you make the hard call when it matters, that decision will age very well. Because strong leadership compounds over time. And now we can take this one step further. This
idea is not only about how you lead others. It's about how you lead yourself. Think about how many times you've said yes when your gut said no. Think about how many times you've shaped your decisions around who might be disappointed. Think about how much energy you've spent trying to maintain approval and for what for people who may not even be part of your life a few years
from now. That's not leadership, that's approval. Management and approval is one of the most expensive things a leader can chase, because it costs you clarity, it costs you time, it costs you credibility. The best leaders understand something very simple. You were not here to be liked by everyone. You were here to lead something that lasts. That means you're going to make decisions that not everyone agrees with. That
means you're going to have conversations that are uncomfortable. That means you're going to draw lines that people push back on. That's part of the job. And if you avoid that, you're not protecting relationships, you're weakening your leadership. Now here's where this gets powerful. When you stop trying to be liked by everyone, something interesting happens. Your decisions get cleaner, your expectations get clearer, your team gets stronger. Because people
don't need a leader who can keeps things easy. They need a leader who keeps things clear. Clarity builds trust, Consistency builds respect, standards build culture, and none of those things come from trying to please everyone in the room. So here's your seven minute leadership challenge for today. Take one situation right now where you are bending your standards to keep someone comfortable, and ask yourself one question. If this person is not here in five years, would I
still make the same decision. If the answers know, you already know what you need to do, make the call, have the conversation, reset the expectation. Because leadership is not about holding onto people. It's about building something that stands strong, whether people stay or leave. That's how real leaders operate, not based on who's in the room today, but based
on what still matters five years from now. Five years from now, your team will look different, your organization will evolve, people will move on, that's a guarantee, but your leadership decisions will still be there, shaping the culture you leave behind. So lead with clarity, lead with standards, lead with the long view in mind, Stop chasing approval and start building something that lasts. That's how you lead in a way
that actually matters. This has been the seven minute Leadership podcast, and I thank you for listening.
For more, Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.