How My Attitude Towards Leadership Held Me Back For Decades

[BizyDad]

I remember growing up my school had two or three shelves of biographies. I read them all. Those books deeply impacted who I wanted to be in life at a very young age. I remember many lessons. But this one lesson I had forgotten, until just recently:

All my favorite leaders got shot.

Growing up a child of the '80s, leadership looked like Bill Parcells or Bobby Knight. Coffee's for closers. Anger and cussing in your ear. I didn't want to be that guy.

Growing up, I didn't want to be a leader.

In my teenage years I saw a lot of things that reinforce this attitude. I felt like real great leaders don't have a life. Parcells and Knight were fat. It's like a prison of their own making. Almost like being famous. I didn't want all eyes on me.

When other people would talk about how cool it would be to be President, I would think how cool it is to be Vice President.

When other people would talk about how awesome it would be to be the Godfather, I always wanted to be the consigliere.

I'd rather be Ben Franklin than George Washington. (In my adult life I learned I appreciate just how great a leader Ben Franklin was.)

In early adulthood, I think others saw leadership potential in me. Even if I didn't. I probably frustrated a mentor or two.

When I was 24 I managed a restaurant in Sedona, Arizona. I hated it. 19-year-old servers arguing about tables and tips. I just wanted them to act like grown-ups. The Bobby Knight in me welled up. I didn't last long in that job. I didn't care.

As a kid my dream job was to run a Wall Street type office for a year. I've been blessed enough that I accomplished that dream by the time I was 34. I was the second youngest person in the entire company, and I helped to open up an office here in Arizona. For many reasons, it was a dream come true. For many reasons, it was a nightmare.

Here I was managing people older than my father. Investment bankers. The height of professional, white collar America. I almost lost my mind the day I had to settle a dispute between a 62-year-old man and a 65-year-old man about who's client was who's. I kept my cool in the meeting. I thought I'd come so far since the restaurant days. I was wrong. I tell people that Madoff and Lehman Brothers are what caused me to leave that industry, but the truth is I hated managing. I held out a year to the day, just so I could check the box that the dream had been accomplished.

I think my poor attitude towards leadership also led to my divorce last year. I'm really not ready to discuss that here. But it's a life lesson I'm learning.

After I left the investment banking gig, I landed at the company I now work at. I started in sales, then built up the marketing division, and now I'm a full partner. But almost the entire time I've considered myself the junior partner.

I took on the consigliere role.

My business partner is the kind of blond haired, corn fed Iowa boy that people look up to. Literally. Former college football champion, has great stories, can relate to just about anybody, and he can code. A man of his word. Usually keeps his actual thoughts to himself. Calm under pressure. I've only heard him raise his voice twice. And never to yell.

Me? I'm a fired up Latin man from Jersey. My normal excited tone is considered yelling by some people. I tell it like it is, and I can cut people by being too honest. And I live in the West. My default leadership style doesn't play well out here. At all.

We have a good dynamic between us. He runs the website/software side of out business, I run the marketing agency.

Every January for years I'd walk into his office, wanting to sit down for a strategy session. We'd talk for a few hours. I always looked to him to set the direction for the company. He is the founder after all. At the end of this meeting, he would always wrap up the same way, "I don't know man. I have to think about it." Years passed.

I started hiring people a few years back, for the marketing side of the agency. I made a lot of mistakes. I would get angry whenever things didn't go right. Bobby Knight came back out to play.

The strange thing is these people are still my friends today. They call, they visit, they check in, we hang out. I love these guys. They respect me, they appreciate me.

They just couldn't work for me.

In January of 2019, with my divorce in full swing and my depression kicking in, I went into my partner's office and said, "this year we're not going to do the usual meeting. If my life is falling apart, I need this business to be successful. So this year I'm just going to tell you what we're going to do, and you're going to say okay."

And do you know what he said?

"I've been waiting 4 years for you to say that man."



I told you he keeps his thoughts to himself...

Anyways, in an effort to not fail my kids and my business, I have dedicated the last 14 months to being the best leader I can be.

Here's what I've learned so far:

A Leader Shares A Vision

Part of why people left was they had no idea where we were going. A lot of the feedback I got from those guys was that we were always spinning our wheels.

This is one of my favorite stories about communicating a vision:

In 1983, Jobs was looking for a new president for Apple. Even though he was a co-founder, he was considered too young and inexperienced for the job of running day-to-day operations, so he was recruiting someone successful who he thought he could work successfully with. He targeted Sculley. It was a crazy idea to try to get the head of one of the country’s most successful companies to come lead a small computer company, but Jobs went after what he wanted. Sculley later remembered how Jobs finished his pitch:

“And then he looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said, ‘Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?’ And I just gulped, because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed.”

Source: 'Do you want to sell sugar water ... or do you want to change the world?' - David McElroy

So as the leader, set the course for your company. Communicate your why. Communicate your goals. Communicate the problem you are taking responsibility for.

A Leader Shares A Culture

A leader not only shares where we’re going, but a leader imparts the values we are going to use on the journey.

There are entire books written on this subject that can communicate this better than I can. The best I could do is tell you about my culture, and maybe I'll just write a separate thread about that.

A Leader Empowers His/Her Team

I used to think a leader had to make all the decisions. Then I thought the leader had to make all the tough decisions. But I don't think any of that's actually true.

I can't possibly make every decision every day. In order to get to where we need to get to, I had to find a way to empower my team to make decisions. So I came up with a framework, a manifesto, a set of rules to live by.

First, my team knows that our goal for every client is to implement targeted tactics to profitably acquire customers.

Here are our "house rules":

1. Never say anything that isn't accurate
2. Be persuasive
3. Be better this month than you were last
4. If you don't know, find out
5. Don't over promise
6. Don't use seven words when three will do
7. Don't let computers do our thinking for us

As long as my people make their decisions with that goal in mind and within this framework, I can live with what they come up with.

A Leader Takes Responsibility

This was my turning point. When things used to go wrong, I used to question the persons whose job it was to make sure it didn't go wrong. Interrogate would probably be a better term. They would take on a lot of blame. I'd probably use some harsh language. I just wanted to get to the bottom of it to make sure it never happened again.

Now, when anything goes wrong, I remember as the leader, it's on me first and foremost. My first question is what did I do wrong? Did I fully communicate what needed to be done? Did I have unreasonable expectations? Did I fully train this person to handle the task?

So I approach the interaction with a lot more humility. Mistakes still happen. But Bobby Knight hasn't shown his face around here in 14 months.

My most recent addition to the team told me in our first week that the reason she took the job was because she wanted to work for somebody like me. She's now been here almost 3 months. I asked her last week how she felt it was going. She told me that that morning she had told her sister she loves going to work. She smiles on her way into work. We're helping people and she's learning so much and we handle our business. We're all just so peaceful. She loves it.

We're all just so peaceful.

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My friends, I'll leave you with these thoughts.

"You can do anything you put your mind to".

So if you're harboring negative attitudes towards leadership, I'd ask you to explore that. Are your underlying assumptions actually true? Or are you just coming up with more excuses to hold yourself back?

I can't tell you how much time or money I've lost waiting for someone else to lead. But I'm not going to fret about it either. We all have our paths to walk, and it happened to take me this long to learn this lesson life was throwing at me. Over. And over. I'm by no means a leadership expert. But hopefully some of this will help you on your journey.

Practice being a better leader. You'll make mistakes, we all do, but you won't start getting better until you first believe that you can get better.

And I believe you can get better. After all, you're an entrepreneur. Getting better at things is what we do.

Now that you know a little more about me and where I'm coming from, I'd appreciate any leadership advice you have to give. Thank you.

 

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[million$$$smile]

Great write up.

My only lesson I would share with you is one I've learned working in the steel industry most of my adult life.

Steel loses its strength when it loses its temper.

 

[Andy Black]

I remember the story of the business owner who had a note in his desk that he took out whenever people were looking for someone to blame.

It said:

“It’s my fault.”

They could then get on with solving the problem so it didn’t happen again.

...

My favourite management tip is to “Explain what needs done and why and empower your team to figure out how.” (Blaise Brosnan)

...

My favourite leadership tip is that “People listen to experts, they follow leaders.” (Doberman Dan)

...

My favourite business leadership tip is that “The biggest reason for business failure is lack of clarity of purpose”. (Blaise Brosnan)

...

And my favourite parenting tip is to “Be the man you want your sons to grow up to be”. (Craig Desorcy)