#1: The "Undertaker" Performer

(upbeat music) Greetings, Dave Anderson here with the Game Changer Life Podcast. I wanna talk about four types of performers today. You know, in any organization, I don't care if it's an athletic team, a church, staff, a for-profit business, doesn't matter, L-A-P-D, doesn't matter. We work with all these types of organizations. You got four types of performers in any organization. You got undertakers, caretakers, playmakers and game changers. And usually you're a blend, quite frankly. There's no one, hopefully, that's just always the undertaker. And rarely does someone have the energy, focus, fight, mental toughest, always stay in that game changer mindset 24/7. You're usually a blend. But there's normally one of those that will dominate. It dominates your work life, it dominates your personal life. And the objective is to get to the point where the game changer mindset, the game changer performance, the game changer results, is what's dominating your workday. It's what's dominating your practice if you're on a team, your game, if you're on a team, it's what's dominating, your time away from work. You're the game changer spouse or mom or dad or community leader. But it doesn't just happen, there's a process to follow. So I wanna talk about the undertaker. And I wanna talk about the undertaker a little bit here, because when I mention the term undertaker, everybody thinks I'm talking about somebody else. But the fact is, most all of us can have some undertaker tendencies from time to time. All right, where we're not as productive, we're not working as hard, we're not as focused, we're not as unifying as we could be. And so this really isn't about anybody else right now. It's kinda looking in the mirror here. If you wanna live a game changer life, you gotta look in the mirror. And you gotta find some flaws. Now you wanna rally around your strengths, but you gotta find some flaws that you have and your own thinking, right? Your own behaviors and correct them. And so we're gonna take a look at exactly what an undertaker is, because it may not be all that you think it is. There are two really different versions, totally different versions of the undertaker. All right, so we'll talk about what each happens to be. We'll take a look in the mirror, we'll see if there's some things we need to clean up a little bit. But then we're also gonna spend some time talking about undertakers you may have on your team. All right, you may have some. Hopefully you don't have some if you have any. Let's just hope you have one, max, right? But you may have more. But again, as we will always do in these podcasts, first and foremost, this is about us getting better, working on us, right? Everybody tries to change everyone around them. Let's change us first. And then we'll use the same type of filter in criteria to evaluate others. So that's really what we're gonna be talking about today. We're gonna be talking about the undertaker. Traits that might be within us and in others and what we can do about those things. But for just a minute now, let me take care of a little business, then we'll get back down to business. I have a new book coming out in mid-September. Estimated to be mid-September 2017 called unstoppable. It's all about how to become a game changer. And it talks in depth about these four different groups and really gives you steps that you can follow to develop that dominating game changer mindset. And it applies to anything. It doesn't matter whether you're still in school, whether you're a CEO, whether you're playing on a basketball team, whether you're in sales, you will find these principles very applicable. Keep your eye out for them. It's called unstoppable. You'll be able to get it everywhere. Amazon Barnes and Noble Airport bookstores. You'll just anywhere the books are sold unstoppable. We'll keep you posted on it, but it can change your life and help change people's lives that you care about. And it's coming in mid-September 2017. All right, let's get back to talking about the undertaker. One of my mentors, Jim Rohn, who's now deceased, I have a library in my house. And in the middle of my library, I got Jim Rohn's library, everything he's ever done. I mean, some people are just a big impact on your life, right? Well, Jim Rohn was that type of impact on me. When I say Rohn, it's R-O-H. And you can still go to his website. You can still subscribe to his newsletter. Great tips, get his materials, right? But I heard Jim say one time, anybody that does less than they can eventually becomes less than they are. You diminish yourself. And really, that's part of what the undertaker's problem is. The undertaker is really in two categories. As I said just a minute ago, let's talk about the first one. The first one is they do sub-baseline work. At least the caretaker, which we'll talk about some other time. Okay, at least that one will do baseline work. Now, it's not heroic, all right? We're not going to name the building after the caretaker, all right? We're not going to pin a metal on the caretaker. But it's a step up from the undertaker. But the undertaker does sub-baseline work. Basically, they don't want to work, they don't want to work. They go to work like they're serving a sentence. They do less than they could, all right? It's the guy he's got 10 calls he's supposed to make, all right? Well, he'll do eight, lie about the other two, all right? Scratch it off the list. Does sub-baseline work? This is the person someone's having to bail him out, all right? They got to clean up their mess. They've got to pick up their slack. They got to do the damage control. Following the undertaker around, you know, doing a damage control under wake, all right? So this is the person who is basically still on your payroll, but they're unemployed, all right? That should be, by the way, that should be one of your concerns from time to time, the high number of unemployed people you may have on your payrolls, as we speak about this topic. And so that could be one version of the undertaker. Now, again, you're probably thinking of somebody else. You may be thinking of some moron you have worked with in the past or are suffering working with now. And you're thinking, oh, God, David's describing that guy. No, I'm talking about you right now. All right, we're still talking about us. We're still looking in the mirror. Are there parts of your job where you don't do well? You can. Where you could do more. You could do more, but you choose not to. Okay, I could do more. I'm making a deliberate choice not to. I'll tell you what, that's undertaker tendencies. Why would you do less than you could? Could you answer me that question? Here's a thought for you. The objective of going to work is to work, right? The objective of being at work is to work. You don't rest at work. All right, rest on your break, rest at lunch, rest at home, but when you are at work, you fully engage, you get in your zone, you give it all you have, you work. And if you are capable of doing more, but choosing to do less, and it is a choice, by the way, you've got undertaker tendencies. And you don't need to be thinking about anybody else right now. You need to be looking in the mirror and figuring out where you could step up, where you're doing less than your best. Where, whereas Jim Rohn said you're doing less than you can, and okay, you're becoming less than you are, because you can fool other people, but you can't fool yourself. And you start to respect yourself a little bit less, you regard yourself a little bit less when you give a little bit less than you could. Quite frankly, you may think this sounds too harsh, but I think it's fairly accurate, right? Is if you're capable of doing more for your company, if you're capable of doing more for your team, and you are making a deliberate choice not to, that's a form of stealing. All right, you're a thief. You're a thief. You're stealing from your team. You're stealing from your organization. If you could contribute more, if you could do more, but you choose not to. How is that anything less than theft? It's a subtle form of embezzlement. It's just to sneak your form of embezzlement, really. So where are you capable of doing more that you're not? And how can you step up there? How could you respect yourself a little bit more? Set the bar a little bit higher, right? Bring a little bit more energy and focus and effort. And quit pacing yourself. I, people come to my seminar. Some of you know, I speak 120 times a year. I've done this 19 years. I've spoken in 17 countries. And every time I talk about this, I ruffle some feathers and I'll have somebody say, well, you know, I just, you know, I kind of do pace myself because I don't want to burn out or, you know, that type of nonsense. Oh, it's hard to, it's hard to listen to that. I got to tell you, it's hard to sit there and try to act professional and listen to somebody that opens their mouth and stupid sounds like that fall out of it. You know, I do pace myself because I don't want to burn out. You just want to tell them, listen, how could you burn out? You've never been on fire. Look at your life. You're in no danger. You're not going to burn out, okay? Nothing, nothing bad's going to happen to you if you'll just go out and work a little harder. Focus a little more, getting that zone a little bit more often. Give it all you got. Be totally used up at the end of the day, right? I mean, that's the objective of a game changer. Be totally used up at the end of the day. You know that you left it all out there. You gave it all that you had. That's the game changer life. No regrets. No regrets. Totally used up at the end of the day. Totally used up at the end of my life. I've fulfilled maxed out my potential, but that happens one day at a time. So this is the first type of undertaker, all right? The person who does sub baseline work, they could do more. They choose not to. And I just think that undertakes results, that takes under morale, that takes under momentum, that takes under your own potential, that takes under the brain, that takes under the customer experience, it takes under the team member experience, And it just takes under the leadership credibility of those you're reporting to because you're not honoring them by giving all you got. It takes under a lot. That's where I used the term undertaker. You take it under. It was a little embarrassing one time I was holding this seminar and I had people from a memorial park, dear customers of ours that were in the room, you know, Fruner home. Great place. Very professional. But I start talking about undertakers. It's like, okay, there were literally undertakers in the room. So I had to clarify that this was a figure of speech. It's not the actual position. You could have some undertakers that are absolutely game changers. You may have undertakers, but really our undertakers. But you know what I'm talking about. So that's the first type. Is that you? Where do you need to step up? Where have you been slacking? Maybe you've been there a long time and you think you've paid your dues. Let me tell you, you pay your dues every day just so you know, you don't get to pay your dues aren't a lump sum payment, I've been here 25 years, I've paid my dues, no, you pay it every day. It's an installment plan. You don't pay it once. You don't get to cash royalty checks from who you were once upon a time. You don't get to borrow credibility from what you did way back when. That's undertaker mindsets. You gotta do better. You gotta do better. Do it for yourself, for the team, for the company, for your family, for your future, for your potential. There's a lot of stake, right? There's a different type of undertaker as well. This is the person I call the toxic achiever, okay? Toxic achiever. Now this may be a high performer, it may be the top performer on the team. But they don't follow the process. They violate the values, they're selfish, they're divisive. You see them in sports sometimes, you see them in business, they create all the drama in the locker room, they have the disease of me, they whine, they palp, they don't get enough credit, they don't get enough attention, they don't get enough this or that. And they may be a really high performer, but they are toxic. And they take it under two, man. They take under momentum, they create distractions, they take under morale, they're not worth it. You can probably think of them. Some of them are so well known, I mean, I'm not going to mention any of them. But if you watch sports, that's probably where the highest profile toxic achievers are. They may be the most talented, high statistic person on the team, but they fit that description of being divisive, dramatic, selfish, they just suck the energy out of a locker room. How many of those poisons, how many of those poisons does it take to destroy the chemistry in a locker room? How many? You know it just takes one, all right, and your team is no different, you're no different. So the undertaker is really a two different spectrums of the performance skill. They may be the person who's doing sub baseline work, but maybe you're the top performer on your team. But sometimes you do get a little bit selfish, maybe you're the one that cares more about you than the team, all right, you're the one that as long as you had a good game, it doesn't bother you that much that the team lost as long as you had a good month, it doesn't bother you that much that the team missed their numbers, right, because you look good, that selfish, that's pathetic, that's undertake or tendencies and you got to do better than that. It's not all about you. You got to understand, it's not all about you. It's like if you are, if you are selfish or if you don't follow processes, maybe you cheat, you're corrupt, or maybe you're a little lazy, you could do more, but you're not. Okay, you either won't use or will misuse whatever talent you have, and I believe that makes you entirely expendable to the team in the process. You see, you hear people say sometimes when you can't argue with success, of course you can argue with success. If you're getting it the wrong way, if you're violating values in the process, if you're stepping on the backs of people as you get success, of course you can argue with success. Success isn't just about what you get, it's about how you're getting it. Even if you're getting it by cutting corners and cheating people and leaving other people out and making it all about you and lowering their morale, then that's not the right way to get it. You bet you can argue with success, not just are you getting it, but how are you getting it? So again, you may be thinking of a toxic achiever you have on your team, you may be thinking of a toxic achiever you see in sports, but again, you're missing the point. Most and foremost, this is about who, this is about you. I mean, Tolstoy said everyone thinks it's changing the world, no one thinks it's changing himself. So don't let that be you, all right? How often do you hold the meeting after the meeting? How often do you put your own agenda ahead of what's best for the team? Game changers don't do that. Game changers lift teammates. Game changers have a bigger picture. Game changers don't just make it about them. To a game changer, it's not just enough to cross the finish line. The real game changer measures their success by how many people they bring across that finish line with them. That's the game changer mindset. Is that your mindset? Or is it all about you? You see, you may be an undertaker and I'd even realize it, well, I'll just tell you this, my friend, if you don't face it, you can fix it, if you don't acknowledge it, you won't change it. So once you evaluate, you know, this is about you first and foremost. You kind of evaluate. All right? Do you hold the meeting after the meeting? Do you spread seeds of discontent? Do you do the whispers that say, hey, man, this is never going to work? We've tried this stuff before. I don't see what all the fuss is about. The boss has lost their mind. Coach is going crazy. If you're doing that, I don't care if you're at the top of the charts, you're an undertaker. You got to stop that nonsense. You're making yourself expendable, okay? You're making yourself expendable. I got to tell you one other thing, and then we'll take care of a little business and I'll come back and wrap this up. Let's talk about the undertakers you might have on your team. This has all been about you, but I said you can also use the filter to look at others. So I just got to tell you, if you've got toxic achievers, if you've got high performers who threaten to leave because they don't want to live your values, they don't want to follow your process, they don't want to go by your rules. Hey, let me tell you something. Let them go. Let them go. It's kind of like the trash taking itself out. Let them go. Don't let them, the door hit them on the way out, right? I want to take a quick pause, and then we'll come back and finish our business here. We have, I talk about these things, undertakers, caretakers, playmakers, game changers, performance, accountability, culture, and our elite center. We have an elite center, by the way, if you ever want to come and hear this stuff live, we have an elite center that's a training center, we have near Los Angeles. We have select classes here during the year. Get a lot done. We keep them in them it. We don't put a lot of people in there, so you get attention. You get to come up with your action plans, get to have your questions answered. If you go to our website, learndeled.com, take a look at the classes that we have during the year that are public. Public class means anybody can come to it. And check out the ones we have here at our elite center. It's a great experience. You won't leave here the same as you come in. And we can get some of this stuff right in your life, work life, and personal life as well. Alright, let's finish here with a little business. You know, we talk about living the game, change your life. Let's just wrap it up at this, and we'll talk about undertakers and how to get rid of them, turn them around, get rid of them, and how to fix it in yourself in other sessions. But let's just come up with something that's going to help us think the right way. Because really, here's what I can tell you. An undertaker can have copious amounts of talent. They can have a lot of talent. They can have a lot of experience, great skills, extreme amount of knowledge. They just don't apply it the right way. Their mindset is wrong. Alright, so it's not a matter of talent that separates somebody from an undertaker versus a game changer. In fact, an undertaker may have more talent than a game changer. The game changer just applies it relentlessly, which is what makes them unstoppable. They just focus and bring the energy and bring the effort every day. So it's not a matter of talent, it's a matter of mindset. And if you want to live the game changer life, if you want to be a game changer, it work on your team and in other aspects of your life. Here's how you have to answer the question, how much is enough? Because sometimes people say, well, how much is enough? Here's the game changer life mindset, all I can. All I can. The answer to how much is enough is all I can. If it's not all I can, it's simply not enough. How many calls can I make all I can? How many doors can I knock it all I can? Alright, how many shots should I take today? All I can. Alright, how many laps should I run? All I can. Alright, why would I do less than I could? And also, I'm going to do it the right way. I'm not too big for the rules, okay? That the rules, the rules are there to protect me. The process is there to help me grow. I'm going to follow the process. I may not like it, but I like where it's going to take me, okay? So I'm going to follow the process because it's the right thing to do. I'm going to live the values because I'm out above them. Because ultimately I get the fact that listen, this is about the team, it's not about me. I got to get over myself, everybody else has. You got to embrace that mindset. The answer to how much is enough is all you can. And it's not just a matter of effort, but it's a matter of living the values. It's a matter of bringing positive energy and lifting teammates all you can day in and day out as well. And I'm going to tell you something, that changes everything. That changes the way you see yourself, it changes the way others see you, it changes the opportunities that are going to cross your path, it changes the way you think, it changes the way you behave, it changes the results you get, it changes your potential. It raises the ceiling for you and your potential in your life. Let's get after it. We'll talk again real soon. (upbeat music)