Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast, helping

individuals and businesses unleash their potential.

Join us every episode as host Adam Brack

discusses what is holding us back and how

to find hope for moving forward.

Along the way, we discuss developing healthy relationships

and navigating life transitions while overcoming fear, stress,

and anxiety.

Live the life you want.

The legacy you decide.

Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast.

I'm your host, Adam Grag.

I am a coach and a family therapist.

I founded Decide Your Legacy in 2012.

We help leaders and teams and people individually

face the real issues, get aligned, and focus

on what actually matters and follow through, taking

action.

Because what I have found is that most

people don't struggle with knowing what to do.

They struggle with actually doing it.

When those conversations happen on your team and

when you start executing, decisions get made, you

face the real issues, everything changes, trust improves,

execution follows.

Today, I'm going to give you four steps

to breaking patterns that keep you and your

team stuck.

Clear, practical, and simple enough to teach to

somebody else.

What I've found is that people know what

they need to change.

Like I said, they know what they need

to change.

Whether you've worked with me, and this is

kind of a special episode here because whether

you've worked with Decide Your Legacy in the

past or you're working with us currently, I

have some content that I want you to

really let sink in.

That's what I'm talking about today.

I'm sending this to every client that I've

had the privilege of working with coaching-wise

because what I'm about to share has actually

changed my life over the last year and

it's going to help you significantly.

Here's the idea.

Every person in every business runs on patterns.

Some patterns move us forward, some patterns hinder

us and slow us down.

Some patterns are healthy, some patterns are really

not healthy.

Recognizing those patterns will have an impact.

You're having to be honest with yourself.

Before you can change a pattern, any pattern

that you have on your team, you have

to see those patterns within yourself.

That's not easy.

It's actually much easier to point it out

with other people than to name it within

yourself.

I've learned after 27 years as a family

therapist and years of coaching leaders that patterns

we tolerate in ourselves, those are the patterns

that our teams are going to tolerate as

well.

I recently recognized, about a year ago, and

I can't believe I'm saying this, that I

have this pattern of giving family advice, debating,

sharing with them my opinion rather than actually

listening.

I know that I wouldn't give that advice

to my clients when they interact with their

families, so I had to apply that to

my own life and say, I'm going to

break this pattern.

If I'm going to be able to lead

clients and teams, I have to break this

pattern.

I need to listen.

I'm done with this.

I'm going to start listening to my family.

I'm going to start asking questions and being

curious.

It's had a big impact, an impact on

the stress level of my life in those

interactions for sure.

I learned a framework from Craig Groeschel in

August, and it's one of the most practical

tools that I've ever used.

I've been sharing it with clients ever since,

and there's four steps to this pattern challenge,

pattern replacement situation, so four steps.

Number one is, the first is pattern recognition.

You can't change what you don't admit, what

you don't see, so you name the pattern

that you see within yourself and within your

team.

You name it, and it could be that

you are recognizing that when decisions get hard

on your team, you push it off until

the next week, or that every time you

personally feel criticized, you get defensive and run

away.

Naming it takes the power away.

Step two is you have a pattern disruption

moment.

Once you see that pattern, you can't just

remove, you can't unlearn it, you can't unsee

it, but you can't just go ahead and

remove a pattern.

You have to actually replace it, and that's

step three.

Step three is you're saying, and this is

where most people miss it, and I want

to go back here for a second.

The second is pattern disruption.

Once you see the pattern, you interrupt it

in the moment, in the meeting.

It might sound like, hold on, we're doing

it again.

We're pushing decisions off.

In your own life, it might be you

pause before you send that nasty email because

you recognize the pattern of emotional reactivity, and

you're saying, no more.

I'm not going to do that again.

We're not going to do this again.

That's pattern disruption.

And then pattern replacement is where most people

miss the mark.

You can't just remove a pattern.

You have to say, this is a new

way of interacting we're going to actually implement.

The old pattern is done, so you choose

something healthier.

Instead of pushing decisions the next week, the

new pattern is we decide before we leave

the room, and we name who owns it

and who's going to hold everybody accountable.

The fourth is pattern reinforcement.

You repeat a new pattern.

You celebrate that new pattern.

And then when it happens, you praise it.

You see it and you name it.

Reinforcement is what turns a good moment into

a habit, into a new long-lasting pattern.

So you recognize the pattern, you disrupt the

pattern, you replace the pattern, and you reinforce

the pattern.

That's how you make new habits stick, and

that's how you change cultures in an organization.

That's how you change systems in an organization.

You go through those four steps.

And the second tool that's shaped me has

come from my time in the strategic coach,

Dan Sullivan's strategic coach.

It's called DOS.

And DOS stands for dangers, opportunities, and strengths.

The way I think about this is if

I wake up in the morning and I

do some DOS on myself, then I'm saying

to myself, this is a danger in my

life that if I don't face it and

change the pattern in this area and work

on that, then it's going to impact my

future significantly or my business significantly if I

play it forward a year, two years, three

years.

That's a danger I want to face.

Opportunity is something that is an opportunity in

my life that there may be patterns in

my life that I'm not executing on or

I'm not changing that would help me maximize

this opportunity if I did so.

So that's an opportunity I want to actually

execute on.

Then the S part, the strengths, is these

are strengths or these are patterns in my

life that I can implement even more fully

that's going to give me a good chance

at maximizing my potential in my business, on

my team.

So that's the D-O-S, that's dangers,

opportunities, and strengths.

And you can make that, you can use

that to actually have conversations with yourself to

make the most of your day, dangers, opportunities,

and strengths.

So here's how these two tools work together.

D-O-S helps you find the patterns

worth changing and then the four steps actually

help you change them.

Big deal.

Business patterns are communication patterns.

Now let's just talk about this.

In your business, when a business struggles, it's

tempting to blame the strategy or the market

or the people.

It's very tempting, but in my experience, more

often than not, an unhealthy business pattern is

a communication pattern underneath.

Let me say that again.

An unhealthy business pattern is a communication pattern

underneath.

To show up more, two patterns show up

more than any others.

Communication patterns.

The first is making decisions.

Decisions happen in hallways and they happen through

gossip and they happen after the meeting.

There's a meeting after the meeting and the

same issue gets talked about for months and

months and never gets resolved and people know

that it's not actually getting resolved.

And the elephant in the room is the

fact that we're just, we're skirting around the

decision.

We're blaming other things, we're blaming other people.

We're not actually executing by making a decision

and solving the pattern problem.

That's a communication pattern.

The second is holding people accountable.

Two teams this week, in fact, every single

team that we work with right now would

name holding people accountable as a major challenge.

And I see this with leaders consistently, this

fear of people leaving, I'm going to hurt

their feelings.

And what I have found is it's actually

about me not wanting my feelings hurt.

That's why I don't say anything.

It's my issue.

Commitments get made in meetings and then nobody

follows up.

Deadlines slide and nobody says anything.

Before long, before too long, the whole team

learns that what we say doesn't actually really

matter, that what is actually decided in a

meeting, supposedly decided, doesn't actually even matter.

And if you heard episode 201, then you

know how much it costs us when we

avoid the conversations that we need to have.

And we know, and you know, there are

some tools you can apply that will help

you have these conversations.

So when a business can finally recognize that

this is our pattern, everything starts to shift.

I've watched this happen with team after team,

naming the pattern out loud, not out of

anger, not out of fear, which anger and

fear make really bad decisions, out of conviction.

It's a powerful moment that a leadership team,

it's really the most powerful moment I've seen

as far as change on a leadership team.

They name the pattern and they say, never

again, no more.

We're changing this and it starts with us.

It starts with us.

Accountability does start with you.

And the part I want you to sink

in and hear the most is that before

you hold anybody else accountable, hold yourself accountable

first to break the patterns that you have

first and foremost.

That's it.

Your team will follow the pattern that you

live.

If you're not following the same rules as

the rest of your team, that's a pattern

that's got to change for you to have

credibility.

And I don't really see any difference.

I'm a business founder.

You may be a business founder.

You may think that you're entitled in some

level, but I will tell you that does,

and I'm not pointing fingers at anybody that

is going to be seen by your team

and work on it.

It's okay to be proud that you founded

this thing, but it's not okay to think

that you get to play by different rules.

And if you do, it's not going to

impact the way the team functions because it's

not true.

You can function that way, but if you

are just be, just be open about it.

Don't want to, you don't want to act

as if you're not following as if you

are following the same rules when you're really

not.

Your team will follow the patterns that you

set them an example to follow.

If you want a team that makes decisions,

make your decisions.

If you want a team that follows through,

follow through.

If you want a team that has hard

conversations, you go first.

So this week, take 10 minutes with a

journal and I want you to answer these

three questions.

What patterns in myself do I keep repeating?

That's first question.

What is that pattern costing me and my

team?

That's the second question.

And what will I replace that pattern with?

That's the third question.

Patterns don't replace themselves.

They don't break just because you're frustrated and

talking about them and pointing them out in

people and acting like you're going to change

them.

Patterns break because you decide that this is

not the impact that I want to have

on other people.

This is not the impact that I want

to have on my friends and my family

and I'm done.

And then when you focus on that and

breaking that pattern, the old pattern is going

to lose its grip.

So what pattern will you stop today for

the legacy that you want to leave on

other people's lives?

Not how you want to be remembered when

you sit back and dream about your future

and oh, they're going to cry about me

at Thanksgiving.

No, that's kind of a selfish way to

live.

It's saying I want to have this kind

of impact now and how is my life

aligned with this impact that I do want

to be remembered for because that's the kind

of powerful impact I want to have on

other people's lives.

So it's not five patterns to identify that

you want to break.

It's one pattern that you want to identify

to break on your team in your own

life because progress doesn't come from more information.

Progress comes from making a decision and following

through.

To decide means that you have eliminated other

options.

You're settled.

You're committed.

And your legacy is the impact that your

life has on other people.

Today, today, if this episode challenged you, share

it with somebody who needs it and make

sure you subscribe so you don't fall back

into old patterns.

Live the life today.

Take action today to live the life you

want to be remembered for when you're gone

and you decide your legacy, nobody else.

I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you

next time.