10 Signs You're Afraid to Lead
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
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Toxicity
7
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Hate speech
2
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Summary
As a leader, you have to call the shots. It doesn t mean all your shots are good or bad, but your team is going to respect the fact that you called the shot, you executed, and you took the responsibility. Eventually, your percentage of making better decisions will go higher. But if you re afraid of actually calling the shot and your decisions could be a bad decision, you re never going to be leading a big crowd.
Transcript
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All right, we're going to talk about 10 different signs that you're afraid to lead, not whether
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you're ready to lead or not, because you're never fully going to be ready, but 10 signs
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Okay, so fear number one, you are afraid of making a decision that the sole responsibility
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And God forbid if it's your decision that possibly goes wrong.
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As a leader, the shot caller, you have to call shots.
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It doesn't mean all your shots are going to be good or bad, but your team's going to respect
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the fact that you called the shot, you executed, and you took the responsibility, and you're
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Eventually, your percentage of making better decisions will go higher.
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But if you're afraid of actually calling the shot and your decisions could be a bad decision,
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you're always afraid of that, you're never going to be leading a big crowd.
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Sign number two, you tell a different story, meaning you spin the story a little bit of
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So for example, your boss is going to ask you, your CEO is going to ask you, yeah, we
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need you to go do X, Y, Z, and have this conversation with the client or this employee that's reporting
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And you go in and you don't say anything that you were supposed to do.
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And you actually took the side of the vendor or the customer.
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You're like, yeah, I agree with, well, you know how it is sometimes when you're dealing with
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them, they're kind of tough to work with, trust me, I see it as well myself, and you
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know, so I understand why you guys are so upset.
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I'm also upset sometimes when I deal with them, and you're not the only person, other
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people are also upset, but let me go back to talk to them.
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Then you come and you say, so let me tell you what I told them.
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I told them this, and I said, if you don't do this, we may not do business with you.
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Oh, wow, what an impressive, you know, person that you're going out there.
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But you spun the story, because you were worried of having the real conversation, and you're
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like the guy that said, I went in there, I got into a fight, dad, you'd be so proud.
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But that's not what happened, you got a black eye, and you came back, and they won, and
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you lost, because you were afraid of actually telling the real story, so the person you're
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reporting to can give you feedback, so you can improve.
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Sign number three, you are too concerned to please everybody in your life.
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So, to me, in business relationships, you have three different dynamics, okay?
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You have a dynamic of those above you, you have the dynamic of people at the same level
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as you, and you have the dynamic of people below you that report to you.
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Too often, people that are too concerned about pleasing everybody, they are good with the
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They're good with co-workers, but they're not good up here.
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And that's a sign that you're never going to end up being here, because you don't have
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So, rather than saying, well, you know, if there's a score, we all please people, by
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I want to please you, you want to please me, you want to please your wife, your husband,
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But if the goal is to please 100% of the time, you're not a leader.
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Sometimes, instead of saying, well, yeah, you know what, you really didn't do your thing.
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Everybody in the company knows you have a reputation for being late.
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You keep saying you're going to improve there, and you don't.
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You just undermine the person that is saying, we got to raise your standards.
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Listen, everybody's above budget, and no one's hitting their budget numbers.
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That's kind of like stealing money from the company because you're afraid of telling people,
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He's tough to work with or she's tough to work with.
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Instead of saying, hey, they're bitching about the boss, and you are the leader, and
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I think that guy's got a very hard job and a hard responsibility.
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I don't want his job, and he's doing his best, and I think we got to have his back a little
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Quite frankly, you don't have his back all the time.
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You're not that person because you want everybody as your co-worker to like you.
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Point number four, this one's going to be tough.
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When issues are your responsibility, say you've got five direct reports or five customers
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or five projects you're managing, three projects you're managing, and a conflict comes out.
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Rather than it getting stuck right there or it getting addressed with you and no longer
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coming up again, you create work for four other people.
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Meaning, yeah, well, listen, you know, Patrick said no.
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Oh, because those people said no or these people said no.
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So now that customer is going to say, let me talk to this person.
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Your job of handling that, you could have squashed it right there.
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You just got three additional people that have to do a 90-minute Zoom with that same individual,
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and you cost a lot of money for the company and a waste of time because you're afraid to lead
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We have a person in the company, in my insurance company, Tikrin.
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Becky, I'm going to give him a quick shout-out.
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This guy is extremely good at leading and processing the issue there so it never rolls up.
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Not like it's kind of like brushed aside and, oh, so why are you complaining?
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And he handles it, and it doesn't roll up to me.
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It used to be a time 10 years ago where 7 out of 10 would roll up to me.
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Now it's 1 out of 10 because it's a crisis, and I have to be a part of it.
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But that's a sign of somebody that is not afraid of leading because he processed the issue right there,
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You want to take credit for all the great ideas or the work that people on your team do to you,
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We had a person that we were working with many, many years ago.
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He would come to meetings, and he would present an idea, and I'm like, oh, my God.
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He says, oh, I came up with all these ideas myself.
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So every week, he's coming up with these ideas.
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All of a sudden, one of the guys, one of the ideas I said no to, I'm walking out,
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and one of our employees comes and says, hey, Pat, can I ask you a question?
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One of the ideas I put a lot of time into, and I heard you rejected the idea.
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I didn't throw the other guy under the bus, but I kept it here.
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Two weeks later, another person told me about an idea that I gave to this person.
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Because I'm not afraid of conflict, I addressed it with this person, and I said, hey, question
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You sure the other one, Larry, didn't come up with the idea?
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So I'm curious, why do you take credit for the ideas that others came up with?
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What's the, you realize that's a sign of a person that's not ready to be a leader.
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If somebody's a true leader, they'll say something like, let me tell you, Larry came
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up with an incredible idea that I think we ought to consider.
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Now I know how humble you are, how confident you are, how comfortable you are in your own
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You're ready to lead at the next level because you're about building people.
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Deflecting blame rather than saying, you know what?
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Hey, Mr. Equipment, shame on you for what you did.
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None of us like to take the blame because it's not an exciting thing to say.
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But you know who takes responsibility and moves on?
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And we've all been in a position where we didn't want to take it.
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And both you and I know that's not a sign of a leader.
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You fear leading by not taking full responsibility.
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I already talked about it earlier, fear of conflict.
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You need to have a very high-level conversation with somebody.
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You delay for three days, four days, five days.
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There needs to be a high-level conversation of conflict with somebody.
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You have an issue with a partner, with a vendor.
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You have to have a conversation with somebody that keeps doing the same thing over and over again.
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Expenses, costs, late, not hitting their deadline, not finishing their project, making comments at work that you've told them to stop doing that.
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You just don't want to address it with them because you're worried.
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We had people in our office that had hygiene issues.
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You know what was one of the ways that I always engage if somebody was a leader?
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The person that knew how to have the conversation and do it in a proper way, which is my next point.
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I always knew that person was somebody that could eventually be a leader.
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And everybody else, I was like, can you go tell him he smells?
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What a weird way to get somebody ready to be a leader.
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And I'm only telling you this because when it comes down to sales, if a customer has to smell something,
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they're going to figure out a way to cancel deployment as much as possible.
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And your closing ratio needs a little bit of help.
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Can we kind of work on this together, you and I, and we keep this our little project to work on?
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Then obviously I'm giving you like a faster version of how it actually takes place.
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Next thing you know, the next day, do you know that person?
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If you do it in a gentle way, that person comes to you and says, hey, just to let you know,
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That person is ready to lead because they're able to have difficult conversations.
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So some of you are watching and saying, you know what?
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The point is stop being afraid of having conversations that could lead to a conflict.
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Because they think it's going to get ugly and it's going to get nasty and it's going
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The only reason that should happen is because of one thing, and that's the approach.
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We're at the cigar lounge the other day at the boardroom.
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One of the players, absolute stud of a guy, Haas says, which topic should you avoid
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Don't talk about religion, politics, all this other stuff.
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I said, I never followed that philosophy because I'm interested in those things and I want
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to know what people think because I don't have all the truth and I want to learn from
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I said, what I learned over the years, the problem isn't the subject.
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The problem is the approach in which you address the subject.
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Let me give a perfect scene of a movie for you.
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Roadhouse, the movie by one of my favorite actors of all time, Patrick Swayze.
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He's talking to all the security guards that they're running this bar.
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And it's one of those old acting that was the like, it's a, it's such a like a fake
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I watch this in so many times in the army and they're asking a question.
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Instead of me doing the acting, just watch this short clip here.
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Somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker.
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If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you and you'll both be nice.
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Address the conflict, but be nice and respectful.
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The only reason you fear conflict is because you're not being nice with your approach.
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So point number nine is something all of us can work on.
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Only way you can be understanding is by asking questions of what's going on.
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Sometimes we don't know what's going on in that person's personal life or their life or what they are dealing with.
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This is why having a relationship with the individual is a good thing and asking questions.
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And then you say, I've noticed certain trends lately that the numbers and the performance and the way you've been behaving is not what typically matches with your common consistent trend.
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I'm going through a difficult time in my marriage.
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And they say, I totally understand that you're going through this.
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At the same time, we have a business to run and it's challenging.
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What level of expectation can I have from you moving forward during this season of your life?
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But when we come back on Monday, I want your best.
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That's the part about having the conversation as long as you're asking what they're going through.
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And if you do that, you don't have to fear conflict.
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All the decisions you make is how it benefits you.
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If you're a leader, the decisions have to be made with how it benefits the organization first.
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When you're running a company, who has to get the checks first?
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I didn't get paid for a long time when we started the insurance company.
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And every month, my savings were depleting because I needed to make sure my staff was getting paid.
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I'm not telling you if you're an employee or executive or director, you should not get paid.
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All I'm saying to you is when you're leading your team, think about what's in the best interest of the company, of the team, of the vision.
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And if you come from that place, more people will take your counsel, your direction, and your vision.
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I got a video to recommend to you, but my oldest son, watch this video.
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Tico, I think you want to say something to everybody.
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I was actually coming over here to say the advice was good.
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And I want to hear more about it because it was pretty interesting.
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Well, basically, conflict is not bad as long as you deal with it good.
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When we have conflict, do I typically bring it up or do I wait a week or two?
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How often do I bring it up fairly quickly when we have issues together?
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So I don't have tough conversations with you at all?
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I, Patrick Gabriel Bedevich, will one day be a great leader.
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Number one, there's a video I did on how to deal with conflict.
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If you've never seen this before, there's eight ways of doing it.
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The other one is a quiz we created on learning how to drive different personalities and what
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method works with different personalities that you're driving, including yourself.
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If you've never taken a quiz before, click here to take the quiz.