Lessons - Bad Leadership vs Good Leadership - The Truth | Alain Hunkins - Fortune 100 Advisor

In this lesson's episode, explore why poor leadership rooted in control and fixing problems often fails to inspire lasting results. Discover how shifting focus from numbers to people transforms performance and culture. Understand why self-awareness and wake-up calls are critical for leaders to evolve and uncover strategies for managing up by aligning with shared goals and delivering feedback with tact. Let's discuss what bad or poor leadership is before we talk about what's good leadership. So people may be trying to understand if the not everybody knows what the command and control structure is. So what is bad leadership? How does it display in 2020? Sure, I'll tell you a story that really brings us to life. This is about a guy named Matt. Matt is a district manager and he works in a pretty traditional industry, works in the fast food industry. He works for a fast food franchise. Now what I met, Matt, was one of 100 district managers in the whole company. He happened to be ranked number one out of all 100. So I asked him if he was always a top performer. He said, no way. When I started I was like 84th on this list and I was struggled for a while. So I asked him what changed and I think Matt's story is really indicative. So the way he described it is that when he started he described himself as a fixer. He thought his John the district manager and my job is to fix what's wrong and make sure things were working right, which seems like an honest enough thing to do. So every morning they would get a printed out report with their key performance metrics. They called it the hot list. And so he'd scan the hot list and the first thing he'd do is look for what was in red, what wasn't measuring up. Then he'd go, as he called it, into firefighting mode. He would hustle from one store to the other and he'd basically go around and say, this is wrong. You need to fix this. You need to fix this. You have to fix this. Go do this. Do this. And he was struggling. He was doing this way for years. And he said, and I sucked. He said his eyes sucked it. Like things were not getting better. I was working my tail off and things were not getting better. And finally, he had a mentor. He said, look, Matt, people don't want a fixer. They want a leader. So Matt changed his approach. So instead of going in with the hot list and saying, you need to do this. He stopped and he went, okay, when he goes into stores now, he actually builds relationship with people. Hey, Scott, how are you? How was your weekend? What you're up to? And so he would listen and talk with you and ask you about that and build personal relationships with the people before he had seen everyone as these employee worker bees where he said, literally, people would turn over in the stores and he didn't even know their names coming and going. So disconnected from what was going on because he was so focused on the tactics of his hot list. So he'd start with that build relationship. The next thing you do, he's pull out the hot list. But instead of saying, this is wrong. You need to fix this. He would show people the hot list and say, here's the data. What do you think we should do? So very different approach, right? Suddenly, he's now communicating and seeking to understand their point of view. And then together, they'd figure out a game plan for what they needed to work on. So they would collaborate. So he said, the shift for him was I stopped thinking about trying to make the numbers by focusing on the numbers. He said, the shift for me was I started focusing on the people because surprise, surprise, it's the people who make the numbers. And he said, the coolest part about all this, he said, when I was number 84, I worked so much harder and I was so much more stressed out then than I am. And I'm delivering number one results now. So not only are we delivering great results, we're having so much more fun. So I think Matt's story is a really good example of that shift from kind of old school mediocre fixer mentality. I'm the superhero too. No, actually, you're facilitating the work of other people. I like that story a lot. It shows the dichotomy or just the juxtaposition story that's probably the better word between the old school mentality and what you should be doing and how you should be enabling and being that servant leader, not being that task master, you know, cracking the whip. It's just it's such a better way to lead and it's probably the way that I see a lot of forward looking leaders strive to lead and enable because you don't want to be and I think that I'm actually curious as to your opinion on why you think that that command and control fixer mentality is still so prevalent in many industries, not all, of course. But in many, it's still quite the status quo. Yeah, it's interesting. Great question. So you know, we like to say, you know, what gets measured and rewarded is what gets done. And the fact is, unless there is a compelling reason for people to change, change is hard. And if what you have been doing, if you think it works for you, now your people can think your crap. But if you think it's good enough and I have the job and there's no compelling thing that's going to make me change, you'll stick with what you know, you're not going to be an evolved person. You know, my colleague, Tasha Yurk has got this great book called Insight where she talks about the number one skill we need is to be self-aware. And her research has found that literally only like eight to 10% of people are self-aware, though like 70% say they are, which is pretty scary. And one of the things that she suggests is that one thing we need to do to become more self-aware is have these, what she calls these alarm clock moments, these wake up calls. And unless you have that wake up call that hit bottom moment that holy crap what I'm doing is not working, you'll stick with it. And I think so many industries and I've had conversations with many, many, many, mid-level managers that you know what, we kind of try to change things around here, but the people at the top, they're all happy with it and they're not going to change. So if they don't, things around here won't change. And so there's got to be that sense of urgency, you know, John Kotter talks about, you know, the first core to leading changes, you need to have a deep sense of urgency. If it's not important to the leaders in the organization, it's not going to happen to the extent that it can't. Now, yes, can you do things in your own sphere and with your own teams? Yes. And ultimately, I believe every organization is limited by the level of the self-awareness of the leaders at the top of the hierarchy. And in following up on that point, is there a best practice to manage up? Let's assume that it's an optimal circumstance and there could be some change, but how would you suggest somebody manage up to leadership? And when we say leadership, I really want to clarify that it doesn't always have to be in a corporate setting either. It can be in a community setting, it can be in a sports team setting, like there's so many different ways that you can apply these principles to be effective in your specific instance. So, of course, most of this is going to be in business contacts people that are trying to understand how to manage and lead, but there's a lot of other ways. But still, how do you manage up? So how do you, because I've always been told, and I also agree that managing up is probably the hardest part of a leader's or a manager's job, getting people above you to change their mind. Yeah, it is, and it's funny, I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday who was asking, she's actually on a school board and talking about the head of the school board, and that they weren't particularly open and open to change. So same question. And it's interesting because what it takes, it takes a little bit of gymnastics and flexibility to do it, because you can't just go direct until like, hey, you know, you're sucky at this and you change, because that doesn't really work. You have to align yourself with what is our mutual common goal. And so you need to step back and see the big picture. What is that leader who is up above you? What are they trying to achieve? So starting from that place, and then figuring out how can you position and frame what you're going to tell them in light of, this is going to help you help us to be better. So that takes a little bit of, you know, like Ikeeto, right? It's like that Marshall Arts be using their energy to get them there. So if you can get them to agree that we are a line I want to get there, great. Would you be open to some feedback on some other alternatives and see if they're open to alternatives about how we can get there. And then they have now open the door to see that the feedback is actually going to help them in some way. And then can you deliver feedback around, I think if we do things differently, this is all of those great political skills of how do you couch your message in a way that people can hear come into play, which is why I think what you're saying this is why it's such a difficult thing to do because it does take a level of tact and finesse to notice what's working. How do I have to slightly adjust and change my approach so that the person really hears me and that they know that I'm on their side? Certainly some things that we can do in advance is if we have demonstrated that we have done what we can to make our leaders look good and support what they've done in the past, that's going to go a long way to building our credibility as opposed to us coming out of left field and saying, hey, you know, I've got some feedback for you. So that's why I think there's an art to managing up. Check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.