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Episode 887 · Dec 8, 2023

10X Leadership: Building Trust and Empowering Your Team

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George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, opens this episode with a message aimed at anyone who wants to grow their life or business at an exponential level: you will not get there on effort and control alone. Leadership is the missing lever, and the kind of leadership that creates 10X results is built on trust, not management.

The episode draws from concepts in *10x Is Easier Than 2x* by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, but George goes further by offering his own take on what it actually means to lead in a way that multiplies your impact through others.

Why Trust Is the Foundation of 10X Leadership

The core principle, as George frames it, is simple: trust and transformation. Before your team can perform at a high level, they need to believe you are invested in their growth as individuals, not just in hitting your numbers.

"True leadership is a real abundant mentality that allows you to help people to grasp the vision of what you want to do and help to build and leverage and grow exponentially what it is you're working on."

When people feel trusted, they show up differently. They take ownership. They solve problems rather than wait for direction. That shift is where real leverage comes from.

Who, Not How: Rethinking the Path to Growth

One of the most practical mindset shifts George offers in this episode is moving from "how" thinking to "who" thinking. Most entrepreneurs and managers ask: how do I get to 10X? The better question is: who do I need to put in place?

"You need to figure out who it is you need to put in place, not how you're going to get to 10X. Because the people, the scalability of people through leadership is really going to be a huge, huge factor in your growth."

Scaling yourself is limited. Scaling through people is not. The moment you stop trying to figure out every process yourself and start identifying the right people to lead those processes, your ceiling rises dramatically.

How to Let Go of Control and Build a Self-Managing Team

Letting go is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur or manager to do. George is direct about this. If you are micromanaging, you are limiting growth by design. A team that cannot make decisions without you cannot grow at 10X speed.

The shift requires giving your people autonomy: the freedom to make decisions, the permission to make mistakes, and the trust that you will not pull the rug out from under them when they take a risk. That kind of environment is what allows a company to self-manage, and self-managing companies are the ones that can scale.

Why Culture Is a Leadership Tool

George points to culture as one of the most underused levers in leadership. The policies you have in place, the way your team communicates, the collaborative environment you build or fail to build: all of it sends a message about what you actually value.

A culture of trust and respect does not happen by accident. It is built through consistent behavior. When you invest in your people's growth, reward innovative thinking, and recognize those who pursue solutions over problems, you are actively constructing the culture that makes 10X possible.

How to Reward Innovation and Creative Problem-Solving

One of the clearest signals you can send to your team is how you respond when someone thinks outside the box. George encourages leaders to actively reward that behavior, not just tolerate it.

If someone brings a creative solution, recognize it publicly. If someone pursues a passion project that aligns with your mission, support it. These signals communicate that your culture is one of growth, not compliance. That is the kind of environment that attracts and retains the people you need to scale.

Action Steps

  • Identify one area where you are micromanaging and consciously hand it off to someone on your team this week.
  • Invest in your people's growth by sharing your vision and asking what they want to accomplish.
  • Build systems that give your team the autonomy to make decisions without requiring your approval at every step.
  • Recognize and reward creative problem-solving publicly, consistently, and specifically.
  • Audit your culture: do your policies and communication style reinforce trust, or do they signal control?

Leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room or working the hardest. It is about creating an environment where others can grow, make decisions, and move your shared vision forward. As George puts it, it is learning to step back so that attraction can do what effort alone never could. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Listen, guys, I apologize for not getting today's episode out earlier. It has been a crazy day. Unlike a lot of individuals, I actually run several businesses, others I say that do podcasts, but I'm really excited to kind of talk with you. I'm at my office late tonight and I want to be able to talk with you a little bit about leadership. You know, all week we've been talking about this idea of transforming your life towards the end of the year and into next year. And the concepts we've been talking about are around this 10x is easier than 2x, which is a great concept, great lessons and strategies provided by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. But I'm going to start you out with the quote of the day as we usually do. And if you're not getting these images over on our Daily Mastermind Facebook or TikTok or Instagram page. I highly recommend you do it. They're just great ways to get yourself motivated and inspired every day. And the quote of the day is, a life of ease is a difficult pursuit. A life of ease is a difficult pursuit. And sometimes I jump in there, I'm doing different quotes, but the bottom line is this. You've got to learn to make a difference in your life by analyzing and becoming aware of what it is you're focused on. You've got to get rid of this 2X mentality. You've got to shed the idea that you can just double your growth and you've got to get out of the box and truly grasp your vision again of what it is you want to accomplish. And so we talked a little bit about three core areas you're going to have to transform. One is your identity. The other is your time. And the other is the one I want to talk to you about today, which is leadership. I'm going to share a couple of ideas from the book, but really I just want to talk to you about leadership in general, because whether you're running a company, you're a CEO, you're an entrepreneur, or whether it's a family, an organization, whatever it is, what you're going to learn very quickly is that if you want to have a 10x life, you're going to have to learn principles and strategies and characteristics of a leader not a manager Most of us think of leadership as something that we can instill in other people But true leadership is a real abundant mentality that allows you to help people to grasp the vision of what you want to do and help to build and leverage and grow exponentially what it is you're working on. And you can't do that without leadership. So in the book, Dr. Hardy talks a little bit about the idea that the core, the real core principle of leadership is trust. trust and transformation. And the idea here is that I think you've got to really think about the idea. Do you trust, not just yourself, because you have to trust in your abilities, but does your team trust you? Do you inspire in them the things that they need in order to truly transform as individuals rather than just your company? See, a lot of times as line level workers or builders or entrepreneurs, as well as managers, we're kind of looking for a way to grow with the team and have them contribute towards overall growth of the organization. And what you really have to do is you have to look at individuals as individuals that you have to instill trust in, trust that you're going to help them to create their best possible potential, that you're going to help them to become someone who can follow their core talents and become better in their own right. And when you do that, as you start to motivate people on your team, you're going to gain trust. And, you know, the idea of gaining trust also involves all kinds of little details like instilling motivation. And motivation is going to come from individuals that feel that they have some sense of autonomy. You've got to be able to help individuals to figure out, you know, how they can empower themselves to go to the next level. And to do this, you have to have the right people, but you also have to figure out how to put systems and culture in place that are going to allow people the autonomy to grow. And so I always talk about leadership in, you know, typically, you know, your John Maxwell 101 characteristics of a leader, but I want you to think a little bit differently. I want you to think about how you can change your filter and your perspective on what it is it going to take to create more leaders in your organization not just yourself being a leader It goes back to this concept of most of you to get to a 10x in your life you need to figure out who, not how. You need to figure out who it is you need to put in place, not how you're going to get to 10x. Because the people, the scalability of people through leadership is really going to be a huge, huge factor in your growth. And transformation is going to come from progress and it's going to come from progress that's developed by leaders. So I'm going to give you a couple of practical things. Learn to cultivate trust and let go of control. It's one of the toughest things to do when you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to get your organization growing or you're a manager, you're trying to get your results. You've got to learn to cultivate trust and let go of control because trust is going to be that cornerstone of self-managing companies. And if you want your company to be able to grow at a 10X level, it's got to self-manage. You have to allow your teams to make decisions. You've got to allow them to make mistakes. Just accept the fact you're going to have mistakes. And so as you allow your team and you let go of control, you give them trust, then you've got to invest in their growth. You've got to find ways to invest in your people to help them create new skills and perspectives and share what it is you want to accomplish, but find out what it is they want to accomplish. In addition, cultivate this culture I talked about. You know, the way you do policies, the environment that you have, the collaborative and communication efforts, all of those things will create a culture of trust and respect and involvement with the people that you're working with. Also, encourage innovation. Find ways to help people to think out of the box. Find ways to reward people for thinking out of the box. Innovative thinking and innovation is going to be a key to you 10x in your life and your business. Really, really reward creative problem solving. Reward and recognize people that look for solutions, not just focus on the problem. Reward and recognize people that are following their passion and that are going the extra mile. Leadership is going to be all about, like I said in the beginning, building trust And to do that you got to learn to let go stop micromanaging and move towards empowerment empowerment of your people because you will need that leverage to 10x things that you doing And this leadership role is going to be huge, and you've got to create the culture to be able to take it to the next level. So of course, there are many, many ways that I've talked about developing characteristics of leadership, but the one I wanted to really highlight for you in a short moment today in the podcast is just the idea of focusing your leadership on developing trust in the people that you have and transformation in the people that you have. When you do that, you're going to find so many things are going to change. It's like law of attraction 101. You think all the effort you put in is what's going to grow you, but what it is is it's that action followed by stepping back for attraction. It's learning to let go. And that's a great segment into tomorrow because tomorrow we're going to talk about, besides these three ideas of transforming your identity and in addition to your identity, time, and leadership, the real core message between 10X in your life and why it is easier is you've got to learn to let go of about 80% of what you're currently focused on because 80% of what you're currently focused on needs to be replaced with 10X ideas. The 20% that you're doing really well with, you can 10X, but you've got to learn to get out of the box and replace 80%. So letting go is going to be a tough thing. Letting go is something that a lot of you will not have very much success with unless you can learn to build your vision, unless you can learn to identify the real benefits of it. And so that's my message I want to share with you today on leadership. But tomorrow we'll kind of pull this all together in the 10X and we'll talk about what is the 2X, what is the 10X mindset? How do you focus on more quality and less quantity. And then, you know, what can you do to kind of get rid of the 80% and move and pivot into an area of the seemingly impossible, but ultimately things that you know is going to take you 10X. So that's my message for today. I hope you have a great night and I'll look forward to talking with you tomorrow. Once again, my name is George Wright III and this has been The Daily Mastermind. Share that show.