In this episode, Tim Pecoraro discusses the importance of leadership and how it starts with leading oneself. He emphasizes the need for clarity, raising standards, and calling oneself to more. Tim explains that leaders should define what it means to be a part of a team or organization and set clear expectations. He compares leadership to a sifting process, where leaders separate the wheat from the chaff and bring definition to non-negotiables and standards. Tim encourages listeners to create clarity, raise their own standards, and recognize their calling to more.

Takeaways

• Leadership starts with leading oneself
• Create clarity, raise standards, and call oneself to more
• Define what it means to be a part of a team or organization
• Separate the wheat from the chaff through a sifting process
• Recognize your calling to more and unlock your potential

Chapters

00:00 Leading Oneself in Leadership

05:02 Creating Clarity, Raising Standards, and Calling Oneself to More

12:58 Defining Expectations and Setting Clear Standards

20:02 Recognizing Your Calling to More and Unlocking Your Potential

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Welcome to Blank Pages, the podcast, the podcast for people who appreciate the new beginnings of a clean slate, but strive for the courage, willingness, curiosity, creativity only available on blank pages of new possibilities. So the potential to move forward and to move beyond where people are willing to make new decisions from fresh perspectives and are ready to write in a much better way. So the world is waiting and nothing listens better.

than a blank piece of paper. So welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you are here today joining me. I'm in the studio. I just had a great conversation with my good friend, Ted Fajeto. Some people know his name is Ted Peten, Faten, but it's Ted Fajeto. For those of you who really want to know. Modern Man, I mean, he's a great guy. I just can't wait to tell you about it. I'll share that with you, my audience.

when that episode comes out. But we had a great conversation. So Ted is someone who I love the work he's doing. I love how he is just continuing to grow as a human, as an individual. And he's just he's just an all around great, just wonderful guy. I just yeah. So it's enough about that because you'll be able to hear that podcast, hopefully in the very, very, very near future.

So before I jump into today's episode, I want to first say thank you for those of you who have been listening to the show. And if you have not done so already, click on that like and subscribe. If you're an Apple podcast, it's simple. Just hit subscribe to the show. If you're in Spotify podcasts, click like the show. If you're in Amazon music, click like the show. And if you are obviously trying to find more information, more content, other things that I have to offer, you can jump into my bio section in.

Instagram and there's a Linktree link there and you will be able to find my books, well the book I've written, it's a kid book, my first book. I have other ones that'll be coming. You'll be able to find free resources, things that I give away to help that are useful and they have a value and a purpose that you can put to work and they have purpose in your life if you wanna put them to work and add value. And then also just I give updates and recaps on.

the podcast episode itself and finishing up what I've been doing on those episodes, kind of like a snapshot, then also things that are coming forward and then near near future. So without any further delay, I want to jump into today's topic and I have been working on this and I'm going to keep building on this idea of around my three nouns. So I can't spend the time today going into all of it, but I will.

help you all understand where my motivation is coming to do what I'm going to do. So in blank pages, you know, it's all about new possibilities, new beginnings. How do you do this? How do you make it from a fresh start? And so I'm big into leadership, communication and creativity or artist artistic stuff. Okay. I'm an artist. I'm a leader, communicator and an artist. Those are my three nouns in my number or my one word is people. So you will know that I am trying to always be involved with things that

need my leadership or I can give leadership as influence, even if I'm following other people, it's me being a good leader by following well and inspiring other people to do the same. Or if I'm in charge of the thing, it doesn't matter. It's just leadership. And then communication, how we communicate, when we communicate, what we communicate, how communication is. There's a story, but there's a message in your story. And then also I'm an artist. So I like to tell the illustrate things with stories and pictures and how is this similar to this and how do you liken that to this and

So that's all important to me. So as one of those areas that I'm going to focus on today, which is leadership. And as I get into that, I want you to know that this is always because I'm always going to be talking about these things. Typically, always something around those areas, leadership, communicating, or something artistic or creative period. So for me right now, I'm running into so much with just leadership. Obviously, we're in a political climate that is kind of crazy.

There's just a lot going on in the world. And what we need more than anything, I think is just people to understand leadership, not just leaders that they want, but leading themselves first. And so I like to check leadership level. And so today's topic is all around leadership. And I'm going to just talk to you. It's about sifting the sifting of leadership, S I F T I N G sifting. You could say sorting, separating, however you want to, but it's a sifting process. And I'm going to

Just I want, I want to kind of paint a picture so that you could check your own leadership level. How are you in this area? So how I'm going to go into this. I mean, I'm trying to find this like immaculate way to do it, but there's really not because again, I'm going to continue to talk about leadership throughout my life. Always talking about this because it's so important to me, but leadership. I want to tell you the three ways I focus on leadership. Obviously leadership as a rule is to me influence.

But when it comes to leadership and first starting with yourself and then you take that into everything else. So if we understand that leadership is influence and then if we were to know that as a leader, it's important for you to know, I mean, you're called to many things, right? So, and right now that's what we have in a world. We have the world in the world. Everybody's trying to say what everybody else should be talking about. And so we're trying to like tuck all these things in. So you have

these things that are components of leadership, right? All these ideas. And so we're trying to elevate. Sometimes you need to elevate more of a certain component of something to bring attention to that. You have to elevate it, to pay attention to it, to look at it. And so I get that. But what we've done is we've turned leadership into a lot of things that I'm not sure. I'm just not sure it's really what leadership is about. You know, especially when it comes to, I don't know.

just people not understanding who they are and how they show up and how they impact or move or change your room. But if I could just say for myself and what I want to encourage other people to do, because I feel like it's easier to do life when you learn to lead yourself. And and just so you know, as a believer, I just want to say this. So I am a believer and I believe in I'm a Christian. I believe in I believe in Jesus Christ. OK, and so him crucified and rose again and and then through him in a relationship with him.

I have access to the Father God and I'm born again. So I have this whole idea of, in me, that it may be different than others, but not just an idea, but it's my belief. Obviously that's different than others. And so I try to do my life like that, not just with that as an idea, but in a relationship. So if that's true and I know people who, and I'm saying this as an example, okay, because you don't have to believe like me. So don't disconnect because I'm sharing this thing.

What I'm trying to say is there are people that are even in the way that I believe about leadership that what I say that I say after first learn to lead myself, they go, well, there's a problem with that because God needs to lead you. Yes, God does lead me, but God doesn't take away my choice. And I think we need to get down to that level when it comes to leadership first. Get with yourself, getting with yourself and understanding. It starts with you. You have to choose. So no matter how much God directs and leads me, I still have to choose to follow. So let's just go there.

And that's just for people, that's me dealing with objections that I know can come out. So I don't know how everyone else's will object to what I'm going to share, but that's just me helping to set the stage for people that I know can be very resistant to what I'm going to share. So there are three things that I feel as me, these are my rules for leadership for myself, that I feel that I say, these are the things that are going to determine whether or not I'm good at this or not. So number one, creating clarity.

Number two, raising standards. And number three, calling people to more, calling myself to more. So I want to create clarity in my life. I want to raise my standards and I want to call people or call myself to more knowing that there's more to me. And so equally so if I'm doing that, I also have the same charge to do that with people. And so why world and leadership? I'm always looking to help people find clarity, raise their standards.

and to discover more in their life. And so as you're listening to this, yes, this is a whole, I have a whole course, I have a whole leadership thing that I'm putting out into the world all around this. And I'm not, once again, I am not telling you about this so I can get you to get on this course. I'm telling you about this because it's that important to me. And with all the chatter and talk out there on leadership and what's going on in the world, it's so amazing how everything we're looking at, yes, it's the result of failed internal work on people.

So if you don't like the leadership that you see that all began inside the individual themselves and what their understanding is on who they are and how they show up and what are the things that are at the foundation of who they are and how they became who they are and what they're doing and the relationships they have and how they interact with those folks and so forth, so on and decisions they've made, all of that, all of that. And there they are. But if you don't like them, you don't like that person, you can't control that.

If it's in politics, you can vote, I get it. But I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, what if we could just get down to the, to me level, start there and learn for yourself, are you clear? Create clarity, clarity on the type of person you're gonna be, who you're gonna be, how you're gonna show up. Second thing is how do you raise your standards? Because the irony of everything is we need more standards in our lives and we need better standards or we need to maintain the standards we have, kind of like laws.

We have a, our nation is just aggressive at just coming up with new laws instead of enforcing the ones that we have. It's just an example. So how about get some standards, raise your standards, lift them up, make sure you first identify them, then lift those suckers up to where they're at a very, very visible level where you have to lift your head to see them and you have to deal with them every day. And then that way you'll really, really know whether or not you're violating them. Okay. So yeah.

and then you wanna call yourself to more. You have to know that you were built for more. Same thing with capacity. Like a lot of people, I don't have time for that. Well, that's a capacity question, right? And that capacity is gonna be determined by how you manage yourself. So it's not that you don't have the time, it's are you using the time that you have wisely before you can say you don't have capacity? And a lot of people don't take themselves through capacity exercises to find out whether or not they have capacity or not. And are you in order?

Are you organized? You have things in store? Or are you just flying by the seat of your pants? So this is why it's so important for me to say, no matter what's out there, I still need to come back to myself because if I can work on me and then if I have a family and I'm at home working with my family or I go to work and I can take that same mindset of clarity, raising standards and calling myself to more. And if I could go in and demonstrate that to helping people create clarity, helping people to raise their standards and calling them to more.

Wow. That will give me the confidence and courage I need to not be afraid to define what it means to be a part of my team or my organization or for us to be a team. See, we need to get to the point where

We have to bring definition to non -negotiable must haves to standards, to what we're actually doing to the purpose, all those things. And that's what leaders do. They should do that. So here's what I'm going to, and I'm going to build on this probably next week. I'll add more and get more into the detail. I just want to set the idea up because here's what I'm experiencing or I have experienced and I'm experiencing less because I just don't want to do that too many times.

In my world and the work that I do, people want a leader will hire me and say, look at my people, something's wrong. And so I say, okay. So then, you know, I think they want what they're wanting me to do is go. So I want to hire you to go in there and do that with them. And so what I'm finding is the issue isn't really them. The issue is not them, the people, it's the leader or the leaders group or what the leader's doing or

Maybe the message the leader's trying to convey or maybe there's, yeah, there's just not clarity. Like, I mean, just all the things I literally just talked about. So I call it a sifting process. So what I want to do is give you this image. There's, there's what companies do a lot. And so when, when you define things, so first of all, okay, let me back up. Let me fix this. Let me get this in order. So leaders, right? I say lead myself and I want to view leadership as you create clarity.

you raise standards and you call people to more. In order to do that, you have to create clarity for yourself. You have to raise standards within yourself and you also have to call yourself to more. Okay? So, and then if you can do that in yourself and you take that into the world you live in, the work you do and all the things, you know, at the workplace, whatever, that when you're doing this, it's because you're not afraid to define what it means to be in relationship. If it's at home or on a team,

at, you know, whatever or at work if it's with their with a group of your engineers or maybe your software developers. I mean, I don't know what the world is that you're in, but those three things matter when it comes to leadership. I think by and large more than anything else, because if you look at it, clarity is going to be about function, right? You can't function if you're not clear roles, responsibility, raising standards is going to be about the ethical part of things.

Right? Moral conduct, stuff like that. And then calling people the more is going to deal with vision, unlocking potential, investing in them. You can't just call them and not invest in them. Right? So, I mean, there's a great opportunity for you to understand, but when you bring definition to the things like that in your world, it sifts things inside of you. And that's what I want to talk about. It's the sifting.

So if you could imagine if I was holding in my hand like back out West, what they would do back in the way they'd go across the country, they come to the United States or to come to America, they'd go West and they'd go out West and they'd get, they'd go and they'd go out into land. They heard about gold and they would, they would go dig up dirt and rocks and everything and put them in and they would put water on there and sift and shake and sift and shake. And then they would sort and separate. It's like wheat and chaff. You want to separate the wheat from the chaff in order to get to it. You want to get to the good stuff.

So there's always a sifting and leaders have a natural sifting process when they're willing to bring definition to what it is to be a part of the team, the organization, to be in the midst, to whatever it is, to work together. When leaders do that, when it comes to say, we're going to be healthy, we're going to define what healthy means, we're going to define what it means to be ethical, we're going to define what it means. And we do this together and we set that tone and that precedent. We bring clarity to it.

And then the next thing you do is you're going to raise the standards of that thing. And then you're going to call people to more of it. That's where I want you to start. And we're going to continue on this in the next, in the coming week. So if this is true and we can say that we can start with this and use that as a three, these are three, these are things that are in my courses and stuff that I do, but I'm putting this out here for you right now, because I want you to stop trying to sift people and understand that.

People are gonna come and go, not everybody's gonna work with you, not everyone's gonna want to be a part of your world and a part of your life. And that's all right. If they don't want to, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with them. But by way of you being clear with yourself, raising your own standards and knowing that you're called to more, that is a natural sifting for you to get rid of the junk in your life, right? Stop bad behaviors and things that you shouldn't be doing and realizing that what you're doing, you are more than you've become. There's more to you and you are capable of.

And if you step outside yourself now and you start connecting that to other people with the same principles, knowing that's offered and afforded to them, you can really do some extraordinary things. And what's interesting is, is as you're meeting people and introducing them to the work you want to do, the business you want to build, there's a sifting that happens because every hand you shake isn't the gold or the rock you're looking for. So you, they may be more Ruby and you're looking for more gem.

They may be more this and you're looking for more of that. I mean, I don't know, but once again, it's the sifting and it happens based upon the clarity you're creating on your mission and vision based upon the standard that you're raising, right? And based upon being called to more. So that is where I want you to camp out. I want you to first check with yourself and, and we're going to build on this later. So here's what I want you to do today. I want you to think about this and I want you to work with these three things. Number one,

Ask yourself, do I create clarity in myself? Am I leading myself well? And do I create clarity? And meaning instead of sitting there with a question mark on something, do I go and pursue and get answers? Do I, do I get clear on what my intentions are? Why am I doing what I'm doing? That's how you get clarity, leading yourself, decisions that you're making, the ways that you're doing things.

Then your standards, think about your standards, right? Because here's the thing, none of us want anyone else to violate our standards. But it's amazing that we will violate our own. So, and it's okay, it's kind of like you can't be mean to the people I love, because I don't want to be mean to them either. But if anyone's got, I can do it, but you can't, right? That's kind of how we are. We will violate our own standards sometimes. And we need to be careful not to do that. So instead we need to be raising standards. And then you need to maybe question them and ask yourself, are your standards, do they have enough teeth?

Right? Do they have a bite? Are they do? Are they noticeable enough? Are they heavy enough? Do they have enough weight to them in gravity and impact where I know that they're there and they're real? And if not, you need to create some, write some down. And then the other thing, do I realize I'm called to more? And if so, what? So question one for leading yourself is how do I am I creating clarity and how you know in what areas and if you're not get started, make some clarity.

Second one is raising standards. What are my standards and can I raise them? If I don't have any, make some. And then the third one is recognizing and know that I'm called to more. There's a calling on my life for more by design, more, not more possessions. That's not what I'm talking about. More, more self -actualization, more difference -making, more you getting into the quality of the person you are becoming.

through latent potential and you unlocking what's in you and learning from what's outside of you. So that's the opportunity that's there. It's my hope that you'll just take a little time, think this through, ask the questions, because we'll get into this sifting. Like I said, I don't wanna be the person that says,

Let me look at all the people. Let me get you to go through there and then you go through and sort them out. No, you sort yourself out first. You get sorted. You sift. You sift and check yourself and your leadership. And then you go and then you bring that into the world. And so right now, this week, today we're talking about you. Because then I'm gonna talk about how you take this out to learn to be a leader that doesn't go through sifting people to create separation and segmentation.

and disenfranchising people and stuff like that. No, this is through natural life and the process that comes with it when you're a person who's very clear in and of yourself and yourself, you work on getting clarity and creating clarity, raising standards and knowing that you are called to more. So keep that in mind, answer those questions. Please like, subscribe to the show, Apple podcasts, Spotify podcasts, Amazon music. Follow me on Instagram at Tim Pecoraro.

and let's engage and do more there. So, hey, until then, we'll talk soon.