Humility in Leadership
Episode 982: Humility in Leadership, with Scott Miller
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Humility in leadership—Unlocking organizational success through humble leadership, collaboration, and growth. Discover the power of humility in leadership
Humility in leadership is a difficult trait to demonstrate, because many people equate showing vulnerability to showing weakness. However, humility in leadership can be a powerful part of your company culture, because it can build trust and can open the door for your employees to express their own vulnerability. Scott Miller is a 25-year associate of FranklinCovey and serves as the executive vice president of thought leadership, as well as being a bestselling author and the host of the world’s largest and fastest growing podcast devoted to leadership development, On Leadership. Scott recently appeared as a guest on the Onward Nation podcast, where he discussed how showing humility in leadership can build trust, empower your employees, and become a key part of your company’s culture.
What you’ll learn in this episode is about humility in leadership:
- How Scott’s varied career path taught him key lessons about humility in leadership that served as the backbone of his newest bestselling book
- Why Scott titled his book “Management Mess”, and why he wanted to write a different kind of leadership book that teaches people to own their mess
- Why Scott’s eagerness to talk about his own struggles and to demonstrate vulnerability and humility are key pieces of his book
- Why humility in leadership can be a powerful trait for any business leader, allowing you to focus on what is right rather than your desire to be right
- Why Scott believes “trustworthy leaders declare their intent”, building trust and creating clarity through their behavior
- How to offer a genuine apology that builds trust, doesn’t make excuses, and demonstrates that you recognize the mistake you’ve made and what you need to do to correct it
- Why leaders are responsible for the culture they create in their business, and how Scott defines “coaching continuously”
- Why a leader’s job is to build capability in their team members, and why continuous coaching is a powerful way to show that you love your people
- Why whether your team members stay or leave after the pandemic will be determined by how you treat them during the crisis
- Why a great leader makes commitments they can promise and keeps the commitments they make, and why it takes courage to say no
Resources:
- Learn more about leadership in humility, and you can find Scott here
- Elevate your understanding of leadership in humility by reading this book from Scott: Management Mess to Leadership Success
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scottmillerj1/
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/franklincovey/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/scottmillerj1
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/FranklinCovey/
- Twitter: @scottmillerj1
- Twitter: @franklincovey
Additional Resources:
- Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
- Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
- Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
Humility in Leadership: Full Episode Transcript
Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.
Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation. Before I introduce our very special guests today, I want to share a few data points with you regarding the trust and influence that you create when you plant your flag Authority with intentionality Onward Nation because you came to your audience with the goal of being helpful so they could become more successful last week. My research partner in ISE. My research partner is Susan Baier, the brilliant founder of Audience Audit. She and I released our 30-page executive summary of the ROI of thought leadership studies in our research to produce a number of key findings.
And one of those is the impact of thought leadership on customer choice. The data showed that when your clients and prospects perceive you to be a thought leader, they trust you even more deeply. Because of that trust, they are more likely to buy from you, continue working with you, and recommend you to others. Our research also sheds some light on the characteristics of thought leaders. The respondents felt we were even more compelling. There are many, but I want to share a couple with you now, and those are number one, the person is somebody like me, meaning that you, as their thought leader, have a similar life experience and maybe come from similar places and may be working in similar industries.
If you have similar shared values and they also have a depth of expertise in your industry. Again, all of those things combined reinforce the power and importance of Trust. Well, we are going to put a link to that executive summary in today’s shows. You can download it for free, but now let’s take a look at other characteristics that match up with that research in those come from the Edelman 2020 trust barometer or the people who are building the highest amounts of trust and authority with their audiences or not. The people who have a million social media followers know that trust in authority is built mostly by a person, such as an industry expert.
And when someone looks like the audience, someone who has a shared experience as someone who gives and shares generously for the betterment of the audience, whether our audiences are internal or external. So Onward Nation, if you’re looking for strategies to grow your audience by being helpful, growing your audience and capability, and demonstrating your expertise as the thought leader, ultimately build trust and inspire Trust. Then, the conversation that I had today with our guests is going to be super helpful to you. So let me introduce to you Scott Miller, executive vice president of thought leadership at Franklin Covey Scott hosts the world’s largest and fastest-growing podcast devoted to Leadership called On Leadership, and he’s the author of amazon.com.
Number one New Release Management Mess to Leadership Success as well as the Wall Street Journal bestseller. Everyone Deserves a Great Manager, so without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Scott.
Humility in Leadership: Scott Miller’s Introduction
Stephen, thank you, man. Thanks to the platform today. Looking forward to our conversation. Suppose you forward our conversation to my friends. So, thank you very much for taking the time. We dressed similarly today. What were the odds of that? Right? I mean, that is Onward Nation’s pure coincidence, but it’s kind of awesome. Right.
Would you say that you said a thought leader looks like their customers in such a way that I was trying to emulate you in some fashion for them, if not intellectually, at least on our pullover?
No, no, that’s awesome. So before we dive in, Scott, with what I’m sure it’s going to feel like a litany or a barrage of questions around trust and some of the other key takeaways out of your recent book, which I’m very excited for us to talk about. Actually, it gives some additional context. Take us behind the curtain here and share a little bit about your path and journey. And then we’ll dive in with the question.
Well, thanks. So, my name is Scott Miller. I live here in Salt Lake City with my wife in our three sons, that are six or eight and 10, and they all have my personality and energy, but you know, my wife’s whore originally from the East Coast, from Florida, I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida lived there until I was 26. I worked for the Walt Disney Company, and for four years, they invited me to leave, which was kind of how they do it in a Franklin club. You don’t get fired from visiting this fight, and you have to leave. So where does a single Catholic boy from Orlando move? Well, of course, Provo, Utah, right? Because that’s where the Catholics are. So I find myself seven years old, living out in Provo, Utah. This is a joke that there are no Catholics at all. Have you taught 25 years ago and joined the Franklin cubby company?
Of course, co-founded by the eminent. Leadership mind Dr. Stephen R Covey passed about 10 years ago. Of course the author of the book, seven habits of highly effective people. I have been at the firm for 25 years. I was the chief marketing officer for eight of those years. About two years ago, I became the executive vice president of thought leadership. Ah, I’m a published author, writing up a column in Inc. magazine to speak on the Leadership circuit. Quite frequently, I had three books coming out in the next 12 months. I’m a host for a book club.com and do a variety of things in the leadership space, kind of two steps forward, three steps back every day in my career in every aspect of my life. So, I’m honored to join you today.
Humility in Leadership: Embracing Messes for Success and Trust in Leadership
Stephen, to talk about the concept of trust in the nature of trust, what does it feel like? It looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Thanks for the invite.
You’re very welcome. And I’m glad that we were able to connect. This is going to be a very valuable conversation. I think for Onward Nation business owners, let’s dive into the title of your book because I love it. Management Mess to Leadership Success, which is awesome. So why did you choose the words Management Mess and then they will take that into the Trust piece that some of the other big takeaways, but when they started off with such a provocative headline,
No, no, I think that there is no shortage of leadership books published every year, right then, but the number is staggering. And, like, you have a podcast that I host, and I read several hundred of them a year to prepare. We publish a few hundred ourselves over the course of 40 years. Literally, I’ll be a hundred, and I wanted to write a different kind of book. I wanted to write sort of a real, raw, relatable leadership book, not a book from an academician or a professor who may or may not have ever met a payroll or actually had to fire someone. And they didn’t want to write a book like just from the C suite. Although I was an officer in a public company, I didn’t want to write a Bob Iger-type book. By the way, his book is extraordinary. I wanted to write a book that is very relatable for people in the trenches, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and people working in an organization that is the leaders of people.
How do you determine humility in leadership? The fact of the matter is that I think every one of us has messes. We all have a mess going on. Everybody knows our Mess: your vendors, your clients, your funders, your banker, your spouse, your kids, your neighbors, and your employees. They all know what your messages are. I think there is a great liberation or just owning your mess. Frankly, for much of my career, even though I’m a leadership author and a leader in a Leadership company, we’ve had a lot of messes. So I liked this idea of owning your mess because, as a leader, when you own your mess, you make it safe for others to own their own. So when I say that, I don’t mean to license bad behavior and wallow in your message to acknowledge them, to use them as teaching experiences, your team members, to call them around, hey, let me tell you about a doozy.
How do you determine humility in leadership? I did 10 years ago. Here’s what I learned from it. And the hope is to prevent people from falling into your own messes, right? But to learn from them. So I wrote a book that is quite confessional. You’d expect it from a Catholic, but it really was just talking you through the 30 Challenges that every Leader is going to face in their career, formally or informally. I messed up most of them. Here’s what I said. Here’s what I did. Here’s what I thought. And here’s how you might think about it differently as you approach the same challenges, and it’s done extremely well. If that had done so well, the publisher would have signed me to a nine-volume series in the message of Success brand. So, marketing Mess Two brand success is available at Amazon.
Humility in Leadership: Leading Through Messes with Authenticity and Connection
Now comes out in May 2021. I’m writing job Mess to career success. There will be communication. Mess parenting, Mess sales, Mess a whole series. So, I appreciate the ability to talk about the messy side of my career.
Well, so what I love about that piece is, aside from the great success that the book has had an intern into a series, which is uncommon, by the way, Onward Nation. So for a publisher to do that with you, obviously you’ve got some great track record with, with Management Mess, so that’s huge, but it also, when you mention that you wrote something, this real world that, that tells me that your readers have really identified with you as the author, like, like through you and your experience, as they can identify with what you described. Right.
How do you determine humility in leadership? That’s exactly right. I think that in my 30 years of dedicating my career to the leadership development industry, I have been a salesperson for five or six years. I was a senior sales leader, managing a 12th state area, living in London, living in Chicago, and here to Utah sales and marketing my entire career. What I learned is that as people want to relate to their Leader, people wanna want to be able to connect with their Leader gone, or the days of this chasm of hierarchy, where the leader is the expert in the room. They’re the smartest person. That was a genius. None of it is true anymore, so the leader isn’t the one who has all the answers.
How do you determine humility in leadership? The leader is the people, that person who creates the culture, where they recruit retraining people who couldn’t find the answers. And so, for me, I think vulnerability is a leadership competency. Renee Brown, as you know, of course, I’ve read extensively. I like to let it hang a lantern on my troubles. I am more tactical than I am strategic, and I have a strong stutter. I am a stutterer with decades of speech pathology, speech therapy, braces, and headgear. I’m very comfortable talking about my old Challenges, my own limitations, in my own imposter syndrome. You know, they think I’ve done it in a vulnerable way.
Humility in Leadership: The Cornerstone of Authentic Leadership
And to me, I think it’s going to be done by the book, which did so well. And so fast. It was because people were done with the untouchables. People want to be able to relate to their leader. You can still be competent. You can still have a high character. You can be trustworthy. You could not be grit to go to sleep confessing all of your sins. But by talking about what’s working and not working in your own life, people clique to that now more than ever.
Okay. So let’s take that into one of, in my opinion, the big takeaways of the book because I think this is a nice bridge to demonstrating Humility, right? And because of what you just said in, and being so open with one’s vulnerability, I love how you said that it’s a leadership competency is so, why did you describe to me humility as a key piece of the book?
How is humility in leadership achieved? Sure. And in fact, for those who’ve read the book or attended my speeches. You know, I actually created a card deck that I use in a lot of my live and virtual speeches. If anyone wants a car deck, you can connect to me on LinkedIn, send me your address, and I’ll mail you the actual card deck. Awesome. Demonstrate Humility as the first challenge because I know it’s such a challenge for me. I am not a naturally humble person. I am not a naturally arrogant person, but I think humility is necessary. Leadership humble leaders are more concerned with what is right than being right. And that’s not a common paradigm for me. I like being right. And so I have to be thoughtful. Am I trying to be right?
How is humility in leadership achieved? Or am I trying to get to right? Am I concerned with the right solution rather than winning the solution? So, when I grew up, Stephen, I thought that great leaders were loud, charismatic, and high-energy people. Suppose you don’t, politicians and mayors and CTOs. And the facts of the matter is, if you know, Jim Collins, of course, a friend of mine, wrote about this and level five leadership is good to great that most level five leaders, as he calls them are quite humble. And that humility is born out of confidence. Confident leaders are capable of being humble leaders. If the arrogant leaders are incapable of demonstrating humility, it doesn’t mean they’re shy or retiring or are necessarily quiet.
Humility in Leadership: A Leader’s Journey to Empower Others
How is humility in leadership achieved? It just means that you understand that you aren’t always right and you aren’t always the genius, and the room to quote my friend, Liz Wiseman, who has an amazing leadership book called Multipliers, strongly recommend your listeners and viewers by Multipliers has literally changed my leadership journey to talk about how a leader’s job is not to be the genius and the room. That would be the genius nacre of others. Are you the genius maker of others in the room? And if you demonstrate that humility, you are always in the spotlight. We’re not trying to create the face, but you have an abundance mentality, and you’re willing to metaphorically or sometimes literally turn the spotlights off of you on two of your team members.
I’ve had to grow into this one. It’s a struggle for me. Right.
Wow. Oh, okay. So, let’s take that piece of genius maker and see if I can hook that into the trust piece. Because when, when your audience, when you’re Team, when I say audience could be internal or external, when your audience sees that you are trying to make geniuses out of them being a speaker, as Liz described it, doesn’t that inspire trust because they know where your heart is at that it’s about them, but not you. Right?
How is humility in leadership achieved? Well, it does. And I think it’s a component, right? I love to debunk HR outages and no offense to HR. They saved me from myself all the time. So I’m a huge champion of people who are surfacing, right? But leaders don’t create engagement. You hear this all the time: leaders create engagement. We hear about engagement all the time. It’s not true. A leader does not create engagement. They create the conditions for others to choose their own level of engagement, which is high or low. So if you think about that and okay, a leader’s job is to treat the conditions for engagement. What does that look like? It means that I am a humble leader. It means that I demonstrate respect by acting in a trustworthy manner.
Humility in Leadership: Declaring Intent and Modeling Trustworthy Behavior
How is humility in leadership achieved? It’s that I declared my intent. It’s an important phrase. Trustworthy leaders declare their intent Because apps and people will make stuff up. They will ascribe an agenda to you, but I encourage your listeners and viewers to use that phrase. When you have a high-stakes conversation, is there an opportunity for confusion for someone to suspect your motives, or do they not trust you? You used that phrase. Stephen, I’ve called you into it because I wanted to have a bit of a high-courage conversation. My intent is to help you see some of your blind spots so that you can build an amazing career year inside of our agency. My intent is not to railroad you, not to embarrass you.
You would not capitalize on you. I want you, like all of us who have these blind spots, to be better and aware of them. So, you build trust with others through a lot of behavior. I gave a keynote speech recently, back in the olden days when you could do that, live in a person, do a lot of them on Zoom. Now, multiple dailies, where at the end of the keynote speech, I asked for the lessons learned that a gentleman was here. I remember saying my goal was to behave myself into a reputation of being trustworthy, and that’s it right there. Because when I give a keynote speech, I’ll say, raise your hand. If you’re trustworthy, 7,000 hands go up in the arena. And I say, Nope, put your hands down. Who decides if you are trustworthy? If the other person writes based on their experience with you, have you behaved yourself into our reputation of being trustworthy?
That’s a great, great culture. That’s brilliant. Well, Central, but it’s a profound, right? I mean common knowledge. Is it always coming to practice? You’ll have to really be thoughtful. I had someone I had to see. You all have a major German company. I keynoted last week. Ask me how you get people to receive feedback from you. And I said we have to model it. You have to model having your people see you accept feedback, right? The only way you develop trust with people is to have them catch you being trustworthy. You can declare yourself trustworthy. They have to recognize that if they tell you something in confidence, you won’t disclose it.
Humility in Leadership: Behaving Yourself into a Reputation of Trustworthiness
How is humility in leadership achieved? If they share something with you as vulnerable, you won’t capitalize on it and keep your promises. You keep your word. You make in-QI commitments. These are all key competencies of building a trustworthy brand. Don’t call yourself trustworthy. They don’t tell anybody they can trust. You. Let them decide that you are trustworthy because of your behavior, and that’s you. When you don’t, you’ve acknowledged it, you offer an apology, no excuses, and you own up to it. And then you demonstrate in your behavior. You’ve changed because all of this will break. Trust will all will break in. Not intentionally, typically, but will break it. If you could also earn trust, which is more difficult, but you can be your interest.
Well, I can’t even begin to describe how much I love what you just said there. And let me make sure that I get this quote into my notes correctly. I think it was really profound what you just shared in, in, in, I think I heard you say is I want to behave myself into a reputation of being trustworthy,
Right? And that’s what a participant is. One of my courses set up his key takeaway. Wow. Perhaps I gave them some insight on that, but he realized that you have to, you can’t talk yourself out, and you have a problem that you behaved yourself into. You can only behave yourself out of it. But as a leader, if you’re trying to build a trustworthy brand, you have to behave yourself into that brain over time. It was going to happen in one speech or one setting. So, it’s over the course of multiple interactions. If someone says, I trust my trust to give me feedback in my blind spots, I’d trust her to tell you the truth. I trust her to keep her word.
I trust her not to overcommit, but more importantly, I trust her when she breaks that promise to make it right. It might be owning up to it and apologizing, like I said before, with no attachments, or it might be making restitution. It might be apologizing and publicizing in lots of ways that might be right for the other person. It can make it a break for them.
Humility in Leadership: The Art of Building Trust Through Genuine Apologies
Then that comes back to the Humility piece, right? If somebody can’t apologize, like you just described, because they’re seated in arrogance or whatever else is going on there, that erodes trust immediately. Right? You know,
How is humility in leadership achieved? Please be it beautifully said. I think one of the most powerful ways to build trust with others is not to do this. Stephen, I’m sorry. If I offended you, you were in last week’s team meeting, you know what? It was crazy. It was election day, and Deb just talked nonstop, and she drove me insane. It so much going on. That’s not an apology. That’s protecting me at all costs. What is it? What is an apology, Stephen? I’m sorry that I offended you last week. I was wrong. I used, I used words. I should not have used it. I was completely wrong. I’m embarrassed. And I won’t do it again. And I hope you will accept my apology. Wow. There’s a huge difference there. I didn’t have to have a text myself.
I didn’t blame anybody else. I took full responsibility, and he noticed I didn’t say the words. I’m sorry. If you were offended, I said, I’m sorry that you were offended, or more importantly, I could say, I’m sorry that I offended. You still blamed it on you. And I said I’m sorry that you were offended.
So when you said that, even though you didn’t say the words in a tent there, I still felt the intentionality of the apology right there. Right? So I offer a lot of apologies. I’ve gotten good at it.
Joking aside, though, it’s a skill that, oftentimes, you don’t see leaders and business owners make. I mean that they get too rare. It’s littered in the excuses, or it wasn’t my fault. It was a compressed day. That’s going to be here to there or whatever. And in that first example of the field, apology is really actually dismissive to the person that you’re trying to.
Well, yeah, it basically is. It cleans your own conscience. Right? I checked it out. I did it while I apologized to her, but it all blows down to the kind of culture you want to create. As a leader, people don’t quit their jobs. They quit bad bosses and corrupt culture. We know this to be true. People don’t quit their jobs. They quit bad bosses and corrupt cultures. So as a leader, whether you’re the founder, the entrepreneur, or whether you are a team leader or a division leader, whatsoever big or small, your company is going to be thoughtful about the culture you want to create because the culture is simply how the vast majority of people behave is the vast majority of the time. If people don’t apologize, if they gossip, if they are backed by it, if they get picked, if they’re late, if they offer excuses, that’s their culture.
Humility in Leadership: Not Everyone Should Lead, But If You Do, Own Your Mess
If your culture is one in which people offer excuse-free apologies, They are vulnerable. They’re raw. They are real. They own their Mess. That’s your culture. It all starts with the leader, which is why not everyone should be a leader. It’s why I wrote the book. Management Mess to Leadership Success because I think the Leadership industry has been a major disservice to their clients. Not everyone should be a leader; they should have people. Yes. You can leave a project. Yes. It can lead you to keep it. Not everyone should be an anesthesiologist. Not everyone should be a commercial airline or pilot. Not everyone should be a leader of people. What happens is that too often, we promote the top individual producers, right? That is the most efficient dental hygienist, the most creative digital designer, or the top salesperson at the top salesperson.
It becomes a sales leader, and they are wholly unqualified. So, as for the whole of leading people, not everyone should be a leader of people, but if you are, then these 30 challenges are going to come your way. So you better understand how you are going to head them off of the past and not make a mess out of them. For most of my career, I have to have books. Why funny? I mean, if you actually read it, you can see a lot of horrifying things. You wonder, how are you still employed? Well, not that he was illegal, unethical, sometimes close, but I’ve written the book as a gift to people to say these are going to be issues you are going to face. So, if you’re trying to build a high-trust culture, it all starts with your huge responsibility.
Onward Nation. I wanted to take a quick break from the episode to share a practical and tactical Resource with you. When we first released our book profitable podcasting, it became a number one New Release on Amazon in less than 18 hours. Well, that was nearly three years ago, and we’re still getting great feedback on how helpful the book has been to business owners, just like you, as they launched a podcast to build their business. When I think of strategies that you could be applying right now, during these challenging times, having your own show, which would be a conduit that you could use to teach and share your insights with your community, launching a podcast, or growing your existing show really should be at the top of your list.
Humility in Leadership: Building Capability and Achieving Results Together
I want to help you get started by giving you access to a free chapter of my book. Just go to PredictiveROI.com/resources, and you’ll get the chapter where I show you how to confront and overcome your three biggest obstacles to success. S Predictive roi.com/resources, and then we will send it right to your inbox. So let’s take that into coaching in coaching continuously, as you would like to say. And maybe at some of our listeners, we’ll say, okay, I need to coach coach continuously. I understand what that means. Conceptually, maybe, but let’s take a deeper dive into that because I know that there’s a recipe there in a frequency and a cadence and all of that.
So when you say coach continuously, what do you mean by that, Scott?
So this is Challenge 18 of the 30 Challenges. The first eight or so are organized loosely around leaving yourself, the next dozen around leading others. And the last 10 are, so are around, getting results in the middle of nowhere. You know, we hear a lot about coaching right now; telling reinforces dependency. Coaching develops capability. So, as a leader, you need to recognize that as a leader, your mindset needs to be, my job is to achieve results with and through other people. As a leader, you need to achieve this mindset that my job is to create capabilities in people is to create capacity of people.
My job has to achieve results with and through other people. And when you believe that Stephen, when you bleed at your job, it was to build capability in others, in the developed capacity, and other things that your job is not to save the day is to have all the right answers, the Russian and fix it. Your job is to build capability in others. You realized how important it is for you to coach continuously. Sometimes, there is redirecting Coaching. Sometimes, there is reinforcing Coaching right. We are directing less of this and more of that reinforcing. Excellent. Do more of that. If they require you to move outside your comfort zone, if you are required to discuss the undiscussable, you may be required to give feedback to someone on their blind spots.
Humility in Leadership: Effective Coaching in Leadership
Most definitely, it will, in a way that is both an imbalance of courage and consideration. A lot of employees and leaders will give coaching feedback, and they’ll just verbally eviscerate someone and think they have done their job. Know you’ve just destroyed. Someone’s self-esteem we had balanced your courage with diplomacy. So I think it’s also recognizing that you can treat people differently and still treat people fairly. Some people like coaching at the moment, some like it privately, some get an email, and some like it in front of everybody. And so, like it in front of nobody, like you can come up to me in front of 15 people and call me out. I have no problem. Right? I’m 52 years old.
I’ve got a book called Management Mess. My message is we are out there in the world. My coach, me in front of anybody, you want to see some people, they would pull their pants. So, as a leader, I think if you love your people, you understand your job is to build a capability in them, not to rush in and save the day. Not to be a micromanager, learn how to delegate appropriately, but recognize that. When is it best to give coaching often? If it’s private and really specific, right? I liked what you said; I liked page seven of the report. I love how you took this data. If you put it into a scatter grim, we know very specific Coaching, reinforcing, and redirecting.
It can be hard to exhausting. Leadership is exhausting and often unrewarding in the short term. It can be unrelenting. Leadership’s like there are shifts, not day trading. Leadership buying a house and sitting on it for 15 years and realizing your profit later on. That’s really an investment in people. And I told you that if you love your people, you will coach them because people don’t quit leaders who love them. If you think about it right now, where the misses, this pandemic, unemployment, whatever it is, North of 10%, right now, I’m telling you to come to spring into summer right now, hostages in your firm, whether you know what, they are not everyone as a hospital and they are going to leave. When the vaccine comes, they will come in.
Humility in Leadership: Intent, Coaching, and Retention in Uncertain Times
The economy will return, right? It will boost back big Leaders. Whether it’s a VI or an SK, who knows, it will come back. However, the people will stay for a lead based on how their leader has treated them, how the leader has coached them, and how the leader has loved them during the pandemic. As soon as the recruiters start coming out of the woodwork, they will, and they are right now. If you think people aren’t being recruited through LinkedIn, you are naive. It’s those people who will stay because people don’t quit leaders who love them.
So, would you say that a leader’s ability to coach continuously, like when you mentioned Coaching developing capability and achieving results with and through other people, all ties back to intent? Your ability to be a great coach has to do with you, the recipients of that coaching, knowing what your intent is and whether they trust you.
Right. Well said. I think it comes back to your mindset, your paradigm, and your belief system because your belief system drives your intent, and your intent typically drives your behavior. We know that most people judge others based on their technique, but we want them to judge us based on our intent. But if your intent does it match your technique, most people will judge you on your technique unless you have declared your intent and you are a tip from your mindset. So, if my mindset is correct, I want to develop a culture where people thrive, feel valued, and can unleash their own creativity. My job is then to coach them, and my job is to release them.
My job is to give them feedback on their blind spots, typically interpersonal skills. I don’t know how often people are giving chemical engineers feedback on their process, right? I mean, if you’ve got a chemical engineering degree, you’re probably technically competent. You’re going to get fired. ’cause you can’t well with others because they don’t take responsibility for your mistakes, because you don’t offer apologies, because you’re not an abundant thinker. Right? I mean, very few, the Canticle engineers get fired because they can understand that the mechanisms, whatever, whenever a mechanical engineer does, I don’t know, say, Oh my Mess. I had no idea what a mechanical is in New York is a chemical engineer.
Humility in Leadership: Making and Keeping Promises
So I know you put potions together, but I don’t know. I know that our time is quickly coming to an end here, but do it with me because of my lack of left-brain skills. Thanks, Stephen. That was Scott. That was not my intent to declare it.
Well, let’s talk about making and keeping commitments and the reverse of that in how that could either build a road Trust because I’m making an assumption here that if you don’t keep your commitment, that erodes trust, and am I correct in that sense?
It does. In fact, the challenge to your point is that I’m looking for the card here called make and keep commitments because a lot of people don’t make commitments because they’re worried about keeping them. I think leaders who move from Mess to successful make and keep commitments. I write in the book about how my batting average is about seven for 10. I’d make I am a home run on seven at a 10 things. I could get a home run, seven and 10, unlike a friend of mine, Stephen. Mr. Covey wrote the book of the Speed of Trust phenomenal book. He illustrates 13 behaviors of high Trust leaders as Liz Wiseman, a book multipliers, and Stephen Covey’s books to be depressed.
His batting average is 7% because he does not want to ever violate someone’s trust by not keeping a cup. In fact, Stephen will often I’ll call up to see you and say, Stephen, I got a Fortune magazine article for you to want to write. And he’ll say, I can’t do it. Why not? Or to a magazine, Stephen. And he said, he goes, I got four keynotes next week. And I know the amount of work I have to do to make sure that those are two home runs. There is nothing I will do to jeopardize those. So, wow. You all get an average of five or six inquires a day for $33,000 speeches. He turned down more revenue, but then he earned it because it’s so important for him to deliver on his commitments.
We know a lot of us. You were earning $35,000 a day. You’d take about three speeches a day. Not Stephen like what every other day, because of his research, his pre-consult right. Customizing it for the client, making sure that his brand is that he’s not just made, but he keeps commitments. And so for me, the big learning is I’ve got to under-commit because I tend to like the validation write, and I don’t know what’s going on with the DC and psychologically if I want to please too many people. So I take on a podcast and ink articles or write too many books and too many things. And sometimes I don’t do as good a job as I should because I’ve spread myself too thin. It requires you to be a courageous person and be willing to say no to someone.
Humility in Leadership: Final Bit of Advice and Connect with Scott
No, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. No, I can’t do that. Now. I can not make a hundred of brownies for this weekend or a block party. And I’m telling you now on Monday versus screwing you on Friday night. If something changes in the meantime, I’ll let you know. I apologize. I have already made too many commitments, and I’m spread too thin. I would hate to leave you in a fine. That takes, it takes courage. It takes some practice. It takes some role-play, but it’s better to disappoint someone to the front and point them to the back. They’ll forgive you for saying no. That would be harder to forgive me for not showing up with a hundred brownies. You promise for the Blackboard.
Brilliant conversation. Scott thank you very, very much. I know that we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye and anything that you think we might have missed, any final advice you’d like to share, then please tell Onward Nation business owner is the best way to connect with you.
Yeah, you can catch me on LinkedIn to be on it. If you want a deck card, connect on LinkedIn and send me a message. Send me your physical mailing address, and we’ll ship you a free deck of cards. I promise you I won’t come to your house deep on the last two-minute resource meeting. People are not your firm’s. Your agency is the most valuable asset. That’s not true. People are not your agency’s most valuable asset. It’s the relationships between those people because Stephen has a black belt and Six Sigma certification. I could be a road scholar from Oxford. I’ve not, but it’s Stephen and Scott can’t get along. They can complement each other. They can trust each other, or they can’t forgive each other. They can’t forgive each other because Steven’s going to say something that pisses me off.
I’m going to do something that annoys Stephen, and we’ve got to work well together. As a leader, your job is to recognize that relationships between your people are your firm’s most valuable asset because you can copy everything: your pricing, your website, your supply chain, your logo, and your proprietary go-to-market process. All of that can be copied is stolen, and it cannot be copied is culture and how people treat each other in your workplace as a leader. That is your number one job is to model how everybody treats each other in your firm. Stephen, thank you for your time today. I hope it was helpful. Oh my gosh. Scott is an amazing and onward nation; no matter how many notes you take or how often you go back and listen to Scott’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope you do, you have to take what he shared with you.
Why would he be generously shared with you? I take it and apply it to your business right away and accelerate your results in Scott. We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful to my friend that you said yes to coming on to the show, being our mentor, being our coach, and helping us move our businesses onward to that next level.
Thank you so much, sir. Honor is mine. Thank you, Stephen.
This episode is complete. So head over to Onwardnation.com for show notes and more foods to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.
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