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Welcome to the Success Architect, where we don't just build homes, we build legacies. I'm your host, Jake Lewendal, custom home builder and coach. Each week, I sit down with builders and entrepreneurs who are ready to 10x their business, their health, and their mindset. This is where blueprints become breakthroughs. Let's get to work. Alright, what's up, guys? Welcome back to the Success Architect. We've got day four of our leadership capsule. Today we are talking about the law of balanced leadership. Now, the idea here is that leadership is living in the middle, not the extremes. Now, I'm not saying that being a leader is living in the middle and being a chameleon and being wishy-washy and not making decisions. It's not sticking to extremes. And here's the uh examples. So looking at yourself, are you a leader who's maybe too intense or a leader who's too soft? Are you too controlling or too hands-off? These are great things to look at personally for each of us because they're they're very simple, but I see it all over the place that a lot of people don't live in the middle in these. So uh an example that I want to give is on a past project. We finished a uh about a two-year project. It was six cabins up in the woods, and um, very high-end, very high-end architect. They had a very special bathtub in them that came from across the world. Be honest, I can't even remember where. Came from Thailand. Thank you. Uh, these bathtubs came from Thailand. So they took, I think, like 14 weeks to get here or more. We had to pre-order them, and unfortunately, they came with scratches, cracks, things like that from the shipping process. So we found that the best way to fix these tubs was to install them first and fix them in place, especially because they had to get installed at Rough In and go through a ton of the construction process. So inevitably, they got some more scratches. They just they weren't as beautiful as they needed to be. And fixing them in place was a bit of a difficult process. But my superintendent had gone to a uh couple hour training to understand how to fix them. And overall, the process seemed pretty easy. So I took kind of both sides of the extremes here. But really, what I did is I was two hands off. If I look at myself and take ownership about how the situation went, I was two hands off. Leading up, about four months before the end of the job, I kept asking the super every single week, hey, are you good on the tubs? Are you good on the tubs? I'd really like you to press forward on those sooner than later in order to get them done ahead of time so we don't have surprises. And he kept telling me, absolutely, it's no big deal. It's gonna be really easy. I will personally be able to do it, and it'll take me an hour or two for each of the six cabins. And so I said, Okay, great. I left it. Now, come down to the final week. It was actually like three days before delivering the cabins. This had still not been done. And as soon as my super jumped in and tried to start working on these tubs, it did not go how he thought it was going to. Uh all of his efforts were in vain. It actually made them worse the first round. And we were on such a tight deadline that I ended up calling the entire team. Uh, I actually called my wife to come up. We had a couple extra people come up, and I think we had eight people uh on site that afternoon in order to help with the tubs. And to be honest, we had no idea what we were doing, so we had tons of different supplies to test stuff out. So my super was pretty embarrassed about the situation because the whole team had to come to his rescue. And that's what teams do. That's what we're here for. We are a team for a reason, and one of our core values is being nimble and helping out where we need to. So everyone was happy to jump in. Unfortunately, it doesn't get rid of the embarrassment, but that's okay. But the big piece of this is yes, we ended up getting the tubs done. We had to extend our duration a little bit. But what happened here is I got to take ownership for being two hands off. I just assumed everything was good. I did have a result. I stated exactly what winning looks like, but we did not talk about how to get there and the mission of why it was critical to do it earlier than later so that we didn't have this issue at the last minute. So the ownership for me as a leader is that I did not go through the whole process of setting up the win, setting up the guardrails and the standards, and then giving and delegating the trust to my superintendent. I left some of that out. So the big thing that we take away from here is the law of balanced leadership. Are we being too hands-off or are we being too controlling? No one wants to be micromanaged, but no one wants to be left without someone to communicate with and without support. So for you as the leader, I want you to choose a couple things to think about and maybe journal about this week. First off is picking some dichotomies, and I have a couple examples here for you. Are you caring and demanding? Are you confident and humble? Are you decisive but also not reckless? Now if the statement that I just said is a but instead of an and, then uh I think uh you need to look at yourself and consider working on that specific thing. If it is an and, such as caring and demanding, that is good leadership. That is balancing leadership in caring for your people, but also being demanding for results because we are a results-driven business. The next step that you can look at is understanding the stress defaults that I talked about. Are you too intense? Then the counterbalance to that behavior for this week might be ask a question first before you react. Are you too soft? The counterbalance may be one direct correction daily. So you are applying a direct correction to one of your team members daily. This is like practicing a habit. It's probably gonna be super uncomfortable at first, but it's gonna get easier after a couple days if you do one per day. Are you too controlling? Find out how to delegate one decision. And don't forget, go back to the last couple days and look at the ownership, look at the standards, look at setting up that win properly so you can proper properly delegate that decision and know it's gonna get done and not be micromanaging. Last off, are you too hands-off? The counterbalance might be check your scoreboard daily. So how's everyone doing? If you want to be hands-off and you're on vacation in Mexico, do you have a dashboard where if you're on vacation in Mexico, do you have a dashboard where people are submitting their metrics and you know exactly where they are daily? That is a way to keep a pulse on exactly where everyone's at without micromanaging them. Because by having metrics, you have set up what winning looks like, you have set up the standards and the guardrails on how to get there, and you have given over ownership to the teammate in order to succeed. Take a look at yourself this week. And the challenge is when you figure out which one of these stress defaults is you, why don't you try the opposite default either today or for the entire week? Just give it a shot. Let's see what happens. I hope you enjoyed this, and I would love if everyone jumps into the challenge. Give it a shot because this one is about character. This one is actually a little bit more difficult. It takes some inner work for you as a leader to look at what your default is, take ownership of the default, and consider what the opposite might look like and try to put it into practice just as a test and an experiment. Give it a shot today. Hope you guys have an awesome, awesome day, and look forward to seeing you on day five for the leadership capsule. See you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in to the Success Architect. If today's episode helped you lay a stronger foundation for your business or your life, subscribe and share it with someone ready to do the same with theirs. You can follow me, Jake Lewendah, on social for daily tips on health, wealth, and building success that lasts. Until next time, keep designing, keep building, and keep leveling up.