Surprising Leadership Mindset – Zero Tolerance for Deviation (TMS Insights)

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Last Updated on December 5, 2024 by Bill Truby

What’s the secret to keeping your team on track? It starts with a powerful leadership mindset: zero tolerance for deviation—just like an airplane’s autopilot keeps it on course. Discover how staying aligned—without punishment—can transform your direction and results.

*This video is a full video training of one of the tools in the Truby Management System. It’s a sample of the quality, commonsense teaching, and non-time-consuming way Truby Achievements trains its members. The Truby Management System (TMS) is a training program developed by Truby Achievements, Inc. To explore the full curriculum and enhance your leadership skills, visit https://TrubyAchievements.com

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Video Transcript

You know that we teach over and over again how important it is to think differently instead of just doing things differently.

Because how you think really determines how you do, and this particular teaching, this tutorial is about a mindset that initially sounds a little weird, but it turns out to be something that is a powerful leadership tool.

I believe that if you have a direction you’re going, I believe if you ask somebody to do something, I believe if your company is going towards a certain vision and direction, you need to stay on course and have zero tolerance for deviation.

Now, that almost sounds punitive, doesn’t it? It almost sounds fearful, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s a mindset of alignment. It’s not a mindset of punishment.

I was riding in an airplane once in the cockpit of a friend of mine’s small plane, and we were bumping along ’cause it was a little bit bumpy in the air, and a big gust of wind kind of pushed us off course.

He didn’t do a thing because the autopilot took us right back to where we were to be.

That is zero tolerance for deviation.

What can happen with us as humans or as us as leaders, a team, a business, we get blown off course and we go, oh dear, I’m off course. What’s gonna happen next? Instead of just taking corrective actions to say, no, let’s get back on course.

We don’t have to punish, we don’t have to complain. We don’t have to beat people over the head. We just say, wait a minute, this is our direction.

Now, when you as a leader have the mindset of zero tolerance for deviation, and you practice the principles that you already know that are important when you are a leader—being others-centered, leading accountable people, and managing by agreements—then you use all of that dynamic, all of that information, all of that mindset to just stay on course.

If you are not having that kind of mindset, you’ll fall into a trap. You’ll start going this way and you’ll say, oh, well, we’ll get back on track later. Oh, well, oh well, oh well, and you just get way off because you get so busy with the fires that are coming up or the things that you’re dealing with.

So the teaching here, is don’t let that happen. Know where you’re going. That’s a premise, by the way. Know where you’re going. Know where your team member is going, and have zero tolerance for deviation. Never say, oh, well, we’ll take care of it later.

The autopilot in the plane—if it had an “oh well” feature, we would not have landed where we were going to land.

Don’t “oh well” anything. Stay on track.

Zero tolerance for deviation. A great leadership mindset.

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