Ep: 021 - Cracking the Leadership Code: Your Blueprint for Mastery

Welcome back Bridge Builders to Bread to Lead, the podcast transforming healthcare leadership. I'm your host Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobson. I'm thrilled that you're here. We're currently ranked as the 30th top business and leadership podcast nationwide, and it's all thanks to listeners like you. Bridge Builders, if you haven't already, grab a copy of my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon. It's packed with strategies to elevate your leadership game. If you got questions or ideas for the show, visit us at Bread2lead.com. Now what are you waiting for? Let's dive in. Let's dive in. Let's dive in. Welcome back to Bread to Lead, episode 21. As the intro said, my name is Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobson. I haven't been here in a while. I've been traveling and I was sick last week. So it's been a while since I posted another episode of Bread to Lead. I'm actually excited about this podcast. And this podcast means a lot to me because I'm getting real people coming to me telling me how much of an impact it's making in their leadership journey. And the thing that I want to bring up is... I'm actually extremely happy with where we are with our podcast. We're ranked number 30 in the country for business and leadership. But I love the fact that people are appreciative of the simple fact that this podcast is not for entertainment purposes alone. This podcast is for those that truly want to be somebody. And they're looking at this podcast as a way for them to truly be able to develop as leaders. And I take that extremely seriously. Extremely serious. I'm sorry. And I take it serious because I wish I had a podcast that I could listen to when I wasn't with my mentor. That gave me actionable steps and strategies that can ensure my success. So those of you that are new to tuning in to Bread to Lead, I want you to take away something. If you're looking for this podcast to entertain you, to have cool stories that you just like to listen into to kill time, this may not be the podcast for you. But if you truly want to become a change agent, a bridge builder, a developer of other top talent, if you truly want to become somebody great, this podcast is for you. This podcast is going to give you actionable steps for you to implement from week to week into your arsenal of leadership development. So as long as you stay here and you implement, you will see changes happen within yourself, within your organization, in ways that you cannot imagine. The last couple of episodes I've been heavy on healthcare, the space that we're in and I had some people reach out to us and let me know they say, hey, Dr. Jake, we love the analogies, especially with healthcare. But we would love to hear your stories in general, the general stories of your podcast, meaning they like when I expand past just healthcare because they want to get more value from it too. And that is something that I'm excited to hear. And the reason why I'm excited to hear that is because we have even people in healthcare saying, hey, Dr. Jake, like I'm in healthcare, but I got a business on the side too. I have other things that I have and I want to see how what we're learning and what we're building and what we're growing is actually beneficial to me in other areas. So you guys will hear me bring up healthcare analogies here and there. There will be some podcasts that are specifically focused on healthcare leaders directly. But I'll do, I'll continue to do my best at diversifying the content and ensuring that you're not left hanging when it comes to the development that you are receiving. So I'm very appreciative of everyone. If you have not had a chance to share this podcast, please share it. This podcast is a very important podcast to me. And I hope that it becomes a very important podcast to you. And I just want to say so far, 21 episodes in. Thank you. You don't have to listen. You don't have to tune in. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to participate. You don't have to do any of those things yet in steel. You do. And for that, I want to say thank you because this podcast is absolutely a podcast. That will ensure your growth. If you work with me. Okay, so I sit out to say this. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. I was speaking at a conference in Delaware. And to close the conference in Delaware. I was talking to leaders in the room and I said, and soon to be leaders. And I said, there's a lot of you that want leadership roles but haven't mastered where you are. A lot of you. Where we're playing the promotion game or the scale game, but we're not taking the time to master where we are. And I use the example in scripture. Of David. David as a young boy was. Anointed to be king one day. But David didn't wait and sit around. Or try to get promoted fast to become king. He went through his journey 20 plus 30 years from the day he was told he would be great. To the day that that prophecy was realized. A lot of you that are listening to this podcast. You're listening. You're listening to the podcast. Because you do want to be great. You're listening to the podcast. Because you do want to be somebody. But the issue that you're having. Is that you're putting the cart. Before the horse. We're going to talk about that today. And what I mean by putting the cart before the horse. In an effort to try to become somebody. You end up being nobody. I'm talking to somebody today. In an effort to try to prove that you are indeed. Valuable. Getting promoted too fast and moving too fast actually puts you in positions. That exposes. The very thing that you may not be ready for. Which is. There's a big difference between. Huge difference between. Having the position of leadership. And being a leader. And today we're going to dive into the four things I told them to master. Before they're asking for any promotions. The four things. These are four phases you must master in this order. If you want to truly be considered one of the best at what you do. The highest pay position in the world is not a title. The highest pay position in the world. Is not a position. The highest paid position in the world is an attribute. And being a leader is an attribute. So write this down. Take the notes. Classes and session. The four phases that I mentioned. The first one was mastering skills. The second phase was mastering people. The third phase is mastering the business. The fourth phase is mastering skill. Now here's what's fascinating about these phases. Bridge builders they build upon each other like a pyramid. You can't effectively lead people without first mastering the technical skills of your domain. Your domain meaning your industry, your department, your product, your business. You may say Dr. Jake I work in a company. I would say business. I would say I beg to differ. You may not have a company. But whatever position you're in is your business. That's your domain. You must master it. You can't master the business aspects without understanding how to lead people. And I brought up David King David earlier because he was the best at what he did in every position that he was in. He was the best sheep herder. Then he was the best heart player. Then it was the best warrior. Then he was the best leader of warriors. Then he was the best number two to the current king. Then he was the best number. You see what I'm saying? He began to master every phase because every phase that you're in is the development of the next phase that you're going to have to sit in. You can't master the business without understanding how to lead people. And you certainly can't scale your leadership across multiple units of organizations without first mastering the business fundamentals. We're going to break each of these phases down so that you can understand why they're crucial critical to your leadership journey. The first phase mastering the skill. This is where every great leader starts. No matter what industry you're in, you need to understand the core technical aspects of your domain. This isn't just about being good at your job. It's about having such a deep understanding that you can do five things. One, identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement in a heartbeat. Two, make informed decisions about processes and resources. Three, train and develop others effectively. Four, earn the respect of your technical teams and five, innovate and drive meaningful improvements. I've seen many leaders try to skip this phase. Skip those five things needed. Thinking their management title means that they don't need to understand the technical details. That's a big mistake. Without this foundation you'll struggle to make informed decisions you'll struggle at. Earning credibility from your team you'll struggle with. Identifying real problems versus symptoms you'll struggle with. Driving meaningful innovation and you also will struggle with developing effective solutions. I see so many people saying, oh, if I got the management degree and certification of leadership and management, I can now manage people in this domain. This is where bottlenecks happen. When you are not a practitioner in that domain and don't take the time to learn how that domain works, that's where mistakes happen. Because how can you know that that person isn't bsing you if you haven't sat in the seat before? And I'll tell anybody running an organization, I know how to sell, I know how to build proposals, I know how to build websites, I know how to run social media, I know how to edit photos and videos and create products and buy and sell products. I know how to write books and articles and case studies and do domains and market and advertisement and hire and fire and build policies and HR. Understanding financial analytics and predictive analysis and financial projections. projections, I understand auditing, I understand accounting, I understand every aspect of my business, so much so that no one can play me when it comes to running my company. And in the areas that I am weak, I find a subject matter expert and I hire them to not only do the job but also to teach me while on the job. So by the time they are dismissed from me, I now have that skill set in my belt. I'm going to share with you a little story. I worked with a leader, let's call him Mike. He was brought in to run a manufacturing division. Mike had a great management credentials from another industry, but he hadn't taken the time to truly understand the manufacturing process he was overseeing. When his team came to him with technical challenges, he couldn't differentiate between minor issues and serious problems that could affect product quality. The result, his team stopped coming to him with problems. They started working around him, creating their own informal leadership structure. Mike's lack of technical mastery undermined his ability to lead effectively and eventually he was replaced by someone who understood both leadership and the technical aspects of manufacturing. What's the lesson? Technical mastery isn't just about doing the work. It's about building the foundation for all of your future leadership capabilities and capacity. I can ask a lot from my team because I ask a lot from myself. I've never asked the team member to do something that I haven't been willing to do myself. Never. And I haven't asked anyone to do anything that I wasn't the best at. Every single thing I've touched, I've strived to become top three. Within my organization, top three as a leader in executing something. Why? Because people respect someone who has battle wounds. And in healthcare, I see it often. I see people overseeing departments and not ever having to be made to be in the department to understand it. If I'm going to create a director of periop and I want them to oversee SPD as a leader of leaders, I will make that director of periop go and spend a quarter, three months in the department that they're about to oversee prior to the promotion so that they can understand the everyday interworkings of what they're asking people to do. And what happens is you find leaders who have never led in a department or in an industry coming in making subject matter decisions most often to cut costs without understanding how the cost was created. Which takes me back to not understanding something that's a symptom versus something that's a problem. So you cut a program, you cut a product, you cut a system, you cut a person thinking that they were a problem when in fact it's just a symptom. And if I understood the organization, I would in fact be able to diagnose where the real symptom is, the real problem is, fix the problem and then the symptom will relieve itself. These are elements that we must master, especially when it comes to mastering the skill. How can you want to be a manager of people when you don't like people or you can't communicate with people or connect with people? These are things we must understand. How can you want to be an overseer of people running tasks when you're not even the best at doing a task? I know what you're saying, Dr. Jake, there are coaches in the NBA that weren't the best at being a basketball player, but they're a great coach. The difference is, but they played basketball before. You cannot find me one professional coach that's running an organization that did not play that sport at some capacity at some point, at some time. And if they did not play the sport, you can't find me one great coach that didn't inundate themselves in that industry or in that profession so much so that they know every aspect of the game. This is what true leadership is. Understanding that at every level I am promoted, the question I must ask myself is, what skills are needed to run this position and how long is it going to take me to master these said skills that are needed? Most of us want to get promoted or we want to run a company or we want to run a business and just scale up, just keep promoting up. I say promotion for everybody because if I'm running a company, if I want to go from zero to a million dollars, I'm promoting my way up. I'm promoting up my revenue or my success, whatever. In an organization, I'm promoting my way up. And most people want to play the scale game, the promotion game, but they don't want to play the mastery game. And this is where so many people are missing out. And this is where a lot of people are getting exposed. Because yes, you can play the promotion game, but when you get in that hot seat and you can't perform, you get fired. You go to the next place, you get fired, you go to the next place, you get fired and before you know it, you can't have a career. While you have somebody else that's slow and steady, but as they're continuously growing and mastering every step, it's not about getting to the position. It's about getting to the position and staying in position because you were ready for the position before you got it. And most people want to promote to the position, but they're not ready to stay in the position because they were not ready to even run the position. They just wanted the title of the position, not the responsibility that comes with it. Oh, I'm teaching today. But before matter of fact, let me give myself an applause. I'm about to give myself an applause. I'm about to give myself an applause. That was some game. In case you didn't know, you're in Leadership Church at this moment. We're going to go to a quick break and we'll be back. Are you ready to transform your leadership journey? Get my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon now. In it, you'll discover the proven frameworks and strategies I've used to help leaders across industries master each phase of their leadership development. Don't just lead, be bread to lead. Get your copy today on Amazon. Go and get your copy of Bread to Lead today on Amazon. You can go to bread to lead.com and click the button there and it'll take you to the Amazon. The reason why I don't sell independently like I used to do is because I want you to get your books quick and I don't want to, I'm not in the game of being a publisher. I'm in the game of writing amazing, valuable content that gets disseminated all across the world. Okay, so go get bread to lead. Matter of fact, here's what the book looks like. Go and get a copy of Bread to Lead right now. Go get a copy of Bread to Lead. Pause the podcast right now and go get a copy of Bread to Lead at bread to lead.com. That will take you to Amazon. You can go straight to Amazon, type in Bread to Lead, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs. It'll take you directly to the book. Go and get it. Read it because this podcast is an outward expression of the information that is inside of this book. So we talked about the first phase, the importance of mastering skills. The second phase is mastering people. Once you've mastered the technical skills, it's time to focus on the human element. This phase is about understanding how to lead and manage people effectively. In this phase, you have several skills you must master. You must master motivating diverse teams. What do I mean by diverse? A lot of people think just because they look like you, that you'll say in color, you'll create or you'll grow up in the same community, that y'all are the same. Diversity is not about diversity in color of your skin. It's color of your environment, your upbringing, your mindset, your dialect, your viewpoint, perspective, vantage of the world. That's what motivating diverse teams is. Managing conflicts, developing talent, building high performance cultures, effective communication, emotional intelligence, mastering change management, mastering performance management. Don't ask for no higher raise of manager, director, executive VP if you haven't even mastered leading people because the higher you go up in leadership, it's no longer about you well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known and well-known that are motivating the people to do the task. Then the higher you go up, you're motivating the people that are motivating the people that are motivating the people that motivate the people to do task. And so your leadership strategy has to be so concise and people buying into it that six levels down to the lowest person in your organization, they're buying into the strategy you're putting up at six levels up. But you can't do that if you don't know people. And this is where many technical experts, and this is what I call subject matter experts, you have a lot of people in healthcare that have mastered the skill, but they have not mastered people or mastered the business. So this is where many technical experts struggle. They've built their careers on being the best at what they do, but now they need to shift from being the star player to being the coach. And this requires a completely different skill set. In this phase, you'll need to learn how to motivate different personality types, the art of delegation, effective feedback techniques, conflict resolution, team building, performance management, change management, emotional intelligence. Here's where many leaders get stuck. They try to lead everyone the same way, not understanding that different people require different approaches. They might be great with people like themselves, but struggle with those who have different working styles or personalities. Let me show you a story. Sarah was a brilliant technical expert who was promoted to leader department. She knew every aspect of the work inside and out, but she struggled with the people side of leadership. Her approach was my way or the highway. And while this had worked for her as an individual contributor, it was destroying Team morale. We worked together to develop her people mastery skills and she learned to listen more than she talked. Adapt her communication styles to different team members, provide constructive feedback, delegate effectively and build trust through empathy and understanding. The transformation was so remarkable that within six months, her team engagement scores had doubled. Turnover dropped dramatically and productivity increased by 30%. The key to learning, technical expertise might get you into the leadership role, but people mastery skills, mastering people skills are what help you succeed in it. Bridge builders, developing transformational leaders is crucial for the future of healthcare. At Sympt Healthcare Solutions, we offer comprehensive leadership development programs designed specifically for healthcare professionals. From executive coaching to immersive workshops, we can help you cultivate the transformational leadership skills your organization needs to thrive in today's complex healthcare landscape. Visit sypshealthcare.com to explore our leadership development offerings and take the first steps toward transforming your organization. I know most of you are not used to a straightforward podcast such as this. You know, usually I'm extremely talkative, talkative or communicative. I talk a lot, have a lot of antics, but I think this podcast is really straightforward. You master skills first. The second, you master people. This third phase is you master the business. There are so many people that wanna be VP's, directors, run a company, you wanna be a big boss CEO, and I actually have a book that I wrote called, You're Not a CEO Yet. Right here, You're Not a CEO Yet. It's a pretty thick book and it's teaching people how to stop thinking like a passive founder, a subject matter expert and how to start thinking like an executive, okay? So many people wanna be in leadership roles that sway an organization but don't understand the business of the organization that they want to be a VP of. This is where many leaders hit a wall. They're great with the technical aspects, they may even be excellent with people, but they struggle with understanding how to navigate the business side of the organization. In this phase, here's some things you're gonna have to master, financial management, resource allocation, strategic planning, performance metrics, market dynamics, organization politics, stakeholder management, risk management, especially organizational politics. It's not as black and white when you're dealing with so many people that believe that they're just as valuable as you are. It's a give and take, compromise, give me a little, I'll give you this, let's see what we can do to work together. This phase is about seeing the bigger picture. It's not enough just to run your department well. You need to understand how it fits into the larger organization and industry in context. The key areas of mastery, we talk about financial metrics and management. Do you understand how to read P&L statements? Do you understand budget management? Do you understand resource allocation? Do you understand cost-benefit analysis? Do you understand ROI calculations? Let's talk about strategic planning. Do you understand market analysis? Do you understand competitive positioning? Do you understand long-term planning? Do you understand risk assessments? Do you understand innovation and strategy? Let's keep going to organizational dynamics. Do you understand corporate politics? Do you understand stakeholder management? Do you understand change management at scale? Do you understand cross-functional collaboration? Do you understand corporate culture? Let's go to the last one, business operation. Do you understand supply chain management? Do you understand process optimization? Do you understand quality management? Do you understand compliance and risk? Do you understand technology integration? Everybody wants to be in a position to call the shot, to sign the contract, to be the leader running the organization. But the question that I have for you is, do you truly know the business that you're trying to lead? Or do you just know the task and the people in your department? And you think that you're right and ready for leadership role of multiple departments, operations, people across the board? This is when I teach people, tenure alone doesn't matter. When your tenure and experience has been limited to your vantage point. The higher you go up, the broader your vantage point becomes in your house currently. If you're looking in your house or in your car, the vantage point you see is what you see. But if you go 100 meters up in the sky, what was once a big deal to you now becomes a small deal because you're looking at a larger landscape. These are things that you must develop along the way. I worked with a leader, we'll call him David, who was struggling with this phase. He ran his department effectively, his team loved him, but he couldn't seem to get by in from important initiatives from senior leadership. The problem, he couldn't translate his department's needs into business terms that resonated with C-suite. He was talking about technical improvements and his team satisfaction, while they wanted to hear about ROI and market share and strategic advantage. So he's talking from passion from his department. Senior leadership, don't care about your passion from your department, because in their broader view, everybody feels the same way about their people in their department. Everybody thinks that their department is the most important department in the organization, when in fact, one watches the other and everyone needs each other equally as important. So the only thing senior leadership wants to hear is ROI, market share and strategic advantage. So what we did, we restructured his proposal, his business acumen, we worked together to develop that business acumen, and he learned how to present the proposal in his business terms, link department goals to organizational strategy, understand and use financial metrics and effectively navigate corporate politics productively and think strategically about long-term planning. What was the result? His next major initiative was to approve with full funding because he could clearly articulate his business value. Just because it's not your company doesn't mean it's not your business. And there's a lot of leaders that are running a business with a multi-million dollar budget, thinking like a subject matter expert. And when you're communicating up, you got passion, you have vibrato, you have emotion and none of what you said told your senior leadership how much money it will make or save, the value of it, how it helps the hospital or even helps them. This is the difference. When you understand the business, business gets done. When you don't understand the business, your senior leadership doesn't give you rights and access and signing ability of that business. Because yes, you're asking for more funding, but what else does that affect within your organization? If I don't know how we were making the money as an organization, and if I don't understand the dynamics of my hospital or my business or wherever I am, me asking for something will show them I only care about what I want and not the overarching value of the hospital. Therefore, they're not gonna trust you with any decisions or anything. This is why you have so many directors, executive directors and all these titles that don't have any signing ability or anything. You wanna make sure that you stay tuned? We have a leadership summit coming up that's going to be talking about here pretty soon, that's gonna be talking about how to get buy-in from your upline, your senior leadership. And we're gonna be really navigating these things so I can be able to help continue to expand it, not on this podcast though. Phase four, mastering skills. So after you mastered people, you mastered skills, you mastered people, you've mastered the things you needed to, people, your skill, people and business, now we can talk about skill. This is the ultimate challenge, learning how to effectively manage multiple units, departments or organizations. See, even when I coach small business owners, they're like, man, I wanna keep growing my company. I'm like, yo, you're making the product and selling the product. So it's technically like two departments you're overseeing, and you're the department. The more your business grows, the more people that you hire, the more departments that you're managing, the more tasks that you're managing. So if you haven't mastered the business and you haven't mastered scaling people, how can you manage people that have different functions, different objectives, different milestones, different KPI's, different skills, different KPIs, different purpose, different focus, different goals, different department, different objectives? How can you manage that at scale if you haven't mastered the first three? And this is the ultimate challenge. Do you know how to create standardized systems while allowing for necessary variation? Do you know how to develop and empower other leaders? Do you know how to manage complex organizational relationships? Do you know how to implement change across multiple units? Do you know how to maintain quality in consistency at scale? In this phase, it requires you to build scalable systems. Learning how to standardize those processes, quality control mechanisms, performance measurement systems, communication frameworks, training and development programs. The second thing you must master out of the four of this phase, developing leadership teams. Can you identify and develop talent? Can you create leadership pipelines? Can you build autonomous teams that don't need you? They want you around, but they don't need you. Can you establish clear accountability? Can you foster innovation at scale? Most people in leadership positions want to be the man or woman, and they want to be the person that everyone knows is a man or woman. So they failed at learning how to develop other people to not need them because they feel like if people don't need them, then the organization won't need them, which in fact is opposite of the truth. The more you can develop successful organizations or departments within your domain or within your oversight that don't need you, the more credible and the more exposed you become to senior leadership that says we may have somebody who can sit at the same table as us. I'm sorry about getting extremely passionate. I just, when it comes to leadership, I just feel a way about it. Number three, can you manage complexity? This is what operating at scale looks like. How do you balance competing priorities? You got seven departments within your hospital, and everybody thinks that their needs are the most important. How do you balance competing priorities? You have to learn how to manage multiple stakeholders. How do you coordinate across multiple departments and units and make them all work together cohesively? How do you maintain consistency? How do you drive large-scale change? And the fourth thing, strategic thinking. Most leaders are so short-sighted because they want a promotion and they're looking to go somewhere else. That's why you don't have signing ability. Senior leadership wants to know what's your game plan here? Do you plan on being here a long time or just a good time? Long-term planning. Market positioning. How are you positioning your department to look the best in the market that the hospital's competing in? Resource allocation. Are you aware of the resource allocation or does your department keep going over budget and you keep blaming everybody else? How are you mitigating risk? How are you showing innovation through strategy? Because the challenge at this phase is learning how to let go. You gotta stop being in control at this phase. Trust and empower others. Now, if you fear trusting and empowering others in the position that means you did not develop the right people along the way. At this level, you focus on systems rather than individual actions. You think strategically rather than tactically. You build capability rather than solving problems. You lead through others rather than direct action. Let me show you my final story. Jennifer was excellent at running her division. She mastered the technical aspect. She was great with people. She understood business thoroughly. But when she was promoted to oversee multiple divisions, she struggled. The problem? She was trying to manage each division the same way that she managed her single unit. She was getting involved in too many details. Trying to make every decision and burning herself out in the process. We worked together to develop her scaling capability. She learned to create systems that could run without her direct involvement. Develop strong leaders who can operate autonomously. Establish clear metrics for success and build communication channels that kept her informed without requiring her constant involvement. She learned how to focus on strategy and direction rather than day-to-day operations. The transformation was remarkable. Within a year, all of her divisions were performing better than when she was trying to manage everything directly. She had more time for strategic thinking. Her leaders were more engaged and effective. And the organization was more innovative and responsive. Now, here's what's critical to understand about these phases. They're not just steps on a ladder. They're building blocks that support each other. As you move through each phase, you need to maintain and continue developing the skills from the previous phase. So how do you know which phase you're in and what to focus on next? Here's some questions to ask yourself. For the technical mastery, can you perform or guide others through all critical processes in your area? Do you understand the why behind every protocol and procedure? Can you troubleshoot complex technical problems? Are you seen as a technical expert by your peers? And lastly, can you innovate and improve processes effectively? If the answer is yes, you're ready for the next one. If the answer is no, you need to stay mastering technical skills. For people mastery, can you effectively motivate different personality types? Do you successfully manage conflicts? Are you developing future leaders? Is your team engaged in performing well? Do you communicate effectively at all levels? If you are good at all of that, including the technical skills, you're ready for the next phase. If you are not, you need more things to master. And when I'm promoting within my organization, I'm not looking at tenure. I'm looking at these questions. Can they do these things? If the answer is no, they're the wrong people for the job. I don't care what your resume says. If you cannot perform these functions, I know where you need to be. I don't care who offered you before. Because just because they offered you something, don't mean I'm going to. Because I do know a lot of people play the salary game. I'm gonna take this position for a higher salary, so now my bottom is now this number. I know the game. Now let's move on. If you master people, you're ready for business. When you know you're ready to move on from business, do you understand your organization's financial metrics? Can you build and defend budgets effectively? Do you know how to present proposals to senior leadership? Can you link operational decisions to strategic goals? Do you understand market dynamics in competitive positioning? If the answer is no, you have more work to do. If the answer is yes, you're ready for the executive level. So the technical mastery, you're ready to become a team lead. Once you master the people, you're ready to become a manager. Once you master the business stuff, you're ready to become an executive. A senior manager. Once you master that, now you're ready for an executive, which is skill and mastery. Can you maintain quality across multiple units? Have you developed systems that work across different contexts? Are you successfully developing other leaders? Can you drive change across multiple units effectively? Are your units performing well without your direct involvement? Remember, Bridge Builders. Mastery at each phase isn't about being perfect. It's about having strong enough foundation to build the next level of leadership skills. And as we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with some practical steps for applying these phases in your leadership journey. One, assess your current phase. Be honest about where you are in your department or in your development. Identify gaps in your current phase. Look for opportunities to strengthen your foundation and prepare for the next phase while mastering your current one. Second, create a development plan. Focus on mastering your current phase. Identify specific skills you need to develop. Look for opportunities to practice new skills. Seek feedback in coaching. Build support networks. And three, take action. Start with one area of improvement. Practice new skills regularly. Seek feedback and adjust your approach. Celebrate your progress and learn from your setbacks and lastly, stay committed to continuous growth. Listen, remember Bridge Builders. Your leadership journey is a continuous process of growth and development. Each phase builds on the last, creating a comprehensive leadership capability that will serve you in your organization well. Take time to master each phase and you will build a foundation for lasting success and leadership. Don't rush through the phases. Embrace each one as an opportunity to grow and develop. Your journey through these phases is unique to you. But the principles remain the same. Master the skill, master the people, master the business, then master the skill. Each phase builds on the last, creating a comprehensive leadership capability that will serve you and your team and your organization. This is Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs signing off. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Bread to Lead. Until next time, keep growing, keep breeding excellence in everything you do. And remember Bridge Builders, your leadership journey is a continuous process of growth and development. Take time to master each phase and you'll build a foundation for lasting success. Thank you for joining me today. And I'll see you next time. Peace, be great.