The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #3 Enabling the Action Plan: Show Notes & Transcript

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re discussing the third principle of Vigilant Leadership: Enabling the Action Plan. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

• Episode Summary & Player
• Show Notes
• Strategic Counsel Summary
• Transcript

The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #3 Enabling the Action Plan

Now that we’ve covered the first two, it’s time for the third principle of Vigilant Leadership: Enabling the Action Plan! Note how we said “enabling,” not “doing.” That means we’ll also be talking about letting go of control. Enabling the action plan means assigning the right people to the right roles, creating foundational operating principles for success, building capability and setting expectations, letting things go, and practicing self-awareness. Put it all together in this episode. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• Why leaders need to practice self-awareness
• Understanding your responsibility as a vigilant leader
• When is it appropriate to micromanage?
• Understanding the difference between a thinker and a doer
• The 5 points of enabling your strategic action plan

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

• The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #3 Enabling the Action Plan
  • [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
  • [1:29] The 5 points of enabling your action plan
  • [2:37] Assigning the right people to the right roles
  • [5:32] Think about what skills the team needs AND what mindsets will move you forward
  • [7:12] An example for small to midsized orgs
  • [11:43] Understand the difference between a thinker and a doer
  • [17:01] What does it look like to create operational principles for success?
  • [18;46] When do you actually need to get granular?
  • [21:25] Get calibrated with your team about where the gaps are
  • [24:08] How to build capability and expectations to make the team effective
  • [27:54] How well does your team function towards your definition of success?
  • [29:20] A Super Bowl ad campaign example
  • [31:55] Remember your responsibility as the leader
  • [35:00] When is it time to let things go?
  • [39:35] How to practice self-awareness?
  • [43:07] What is the personal brand that you want to cultivate inside of your company?
  • [46:12] How your team’s actions reflect on you, especially the failures
  • [52:42] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • [52:50] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: transcript not 100% accurate.

00:03

Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business Podcast.  If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead  and operate in business,  you are in the right place.  In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking  to reveal a fresh perspective.  This unlocks opportunity for you, your team  and your business. Now let’s get to it.  Welcome to the Strategic Counsel Podcast. I’m Anne Candido.

 

00:32

and I am April Martini. And today we’re gonna talk about the third principle of vigilant leadership and that is enabling the action plan. Now, if you’re not listened to the first two principles, the landscape reality check and strategies for getting unstuck, what must be true action planning, you may wanna do that before as they build on each other and we will talk about what must be true again today. Now, specifically,

 

00:57

The episode today is going to be talking about how do you take that action plan that we talked about in the second episode and how do you enable it? Note that I said enable and not do, which means we’ll also be talking about letting go of control, which is going to be hard for many of you probably. But essential enabling the plan is building a highly effective team. So you don’t have to micromanage. You don’t have to get into all the details all the time. Right. So what does that look like? Here’s the five points.

 

01:27

The first one is assigning the right people to the right roles. The second is creating foundational operating principles for success. Next is building capability and setting expectations, followed by letting things go, a personal tough spot for me.  And finally, practicing self-awareness. And we’re gonna dive into all of these today as we know building highly effective teams can be a bit of a struggle or a big struggle many times.

 

01:53

But also as a side note, if you want more on this topic, you can revisit our episode with Tim parking, which was focused on how to build a highly effective marketing team. And that’s a really good supplement and contextualization for what we’re going to talk about today. Right. And of course we’re talking about any kind of team here, but that is a really good way of providing some focus or some outlet or some context for a lot of the things we’re talking about. as you can tell, as April alluded to, we’re probably going to tell on ourselves a lot throughout this episode.

 

02:23

It’s the only way.  So don’t be surprised if you get some vulnerability throughout this episode. So with that, let’s dive into enabling the action plan. So the first one is assigning the right people to the right rules or what me and April more informally refer to as having the right butts in the seats.  That can be difficult. As many managers lead a team, from their choosing, they are leading a team that they inherit or already have. And that’s like,

 

02:52

If you think about when a new coach comes in to an existing sports team, they kind of have to work with the players that they got until they can  make the team and customize the team according to their own set of principles. So this is likely  most of the people that we’re talking to, although  hopefully you have some flexibility in order to kind of rearrange things. We’re going to talk about that in a second.

 

03:18

So the first thing you wanna do is to really start and identify what your action plan demands and determine if you have the right skills and capability to deliver. So that means like looking at each one of the actual goals and then the actions assigned to that goal and being like, hey, do I have a person who has the right skills, the right capability, the right experience, the right expertise in order to go do that work? You can even ask yourself that question if you feel like that may be a no.

 

03:46

of what must be true to get that skills or those skills and that capability. So maybe you, like I said, you have to rearrange people. You have to put a forward and a guard spot. You know, if you’re using a basketball analogy and everybody’s probably like, and nobody does that, but you know what I’m talking about.  Or maybe you need to train. I get that one. Oh, well, thank you, April. Again, it’s probably like the biggest like, no, nobody does that in basketball. could tell, you know, people can tell I don’t play basketball, but anyway,  metaphor there.

 

04:17

But you could also train people up, right? That’s all about getting them that and building those skills.  You might need some external expertise, which can be very  trying for a lot of people, because they’re like, I have all these people here. Why should I have to go hire somebody else? And really it’s a supplement. It’s helping your team grow that capability that they need or getting that right skills and expertise for those moments in time so that you can move and progress forward. And maybe it’s even to train the people that you have.

 

04:46

maybe you need new tools, new tools to help process and synthesize and  take some things off people’s plates that maybe are more of like the to-dos and allow them to have space in order to be able to think about strategically  what the business needs or what their function needs. And then maybe you do have to hire. That might be, and for a lot of people, that is  a definite reality. And again, it gives that cringey face because people are like, oh, now I have to…

 

05:14

for usually fire somebody and then go through the whole hiring process, but sometimes that’s what you need to do. And the big thing to think about here is though, one thing that April and I talk a lot, which is about skill versus aptitude. So a lot of times when people are trying to think about butts in the seats, they’re thinking about what specific skills I need, but you also want to think about what kind or type of people do I need.

 

05:36

Now, if it’s something that you might be in more of a startup mode, you might want somebody who has more of growth mindset. You might not need necessarily the skill that fits that exact action, but you need somebody who’s willing to go learn what that skill is or willing to develop themselves within that skill. we like EOS uses a really good document for this and EOS is a system you don’t have to…

 

06:02

buy the whole system, the whole system, the user tools, you could just go to the EOS website and you can pull this thing down.  But this helps you to really provide a filter for how to think through the people you have and the people that you might wanna put in those seats. And they ask three important questions. They ask, do they get it? Do they want it? And do they have the capacity to do it? And I think that’s a really good framework for really trying to identify and define if you have the right butts in the seats or what butts you need in those seats.

 

06:30

And I know April has some good examples. I’m going to turn it over to her to give some, additional thoughts in those examples. Yeah. And I mean, I think all of this sets up really nicely for ways to think about teams. So I just want to reinforce  that point too, as well as the fact that there’s not a single way to do it. So  plug for our testing and learning strategy here as you get through, we are trying to give  contextualization and also different options of things to think through.

 

06:59

And hopefully as you’re listening to it, you can see and hear like,  ah, like the EOS thing, right? Makes a ton of sense that framework will work great for us or the skill versus aptitude, right? So we’re trying to give you pieces and parts to go and do the doing that we always talk about. But from an example standpoint,  one of the…

 

07:18

the examples that I often think about is,  we focus a lot on small to mid-size B2B service-based and nonprofit businesses. And so what does that mean? That means that their teams are often running fairly lean and people are wearing a lot of hats.  And so to the point about right butts in seats versus, you know, are there other ways to get things done versus  in this example, it will be outsourcing portions of things and filling a seat with a different type of person.

 

07:47

One of the things that often comes up is specialist versus generalist. And so the example that I’m going to give here  is we’ve had this in several actually of our clients where they have some sort of creative practitioner on the team, whether that be a videographer  or a designer  or a person that’s only responsible for managing the website, like those very siloed type of jobs.  And what ends up happening sometimes  is that

 

08:17

There’s a rub because those people are practitioners of specific things, right? They are specialists. But when you have a lean team, you typically need majority generalists, meaning people that wear different hats.  They really want to do things outside of their role. They get excited by the prospect of having their arms around or their hands in lots of different places, all of that. And so we’ve actually had across several clients situations where

 

08:47

there was a designer on staff  and at first it would be like, well, that’s not the right person, right?  And so then we fill the role with another one. Well, that didn’t work either. And so the solution across many of our clients has been to take a step back and say, it’s not that person, it’s not the job that they’re doing, it’s the fact that they are specialized  in doing these specific things. And that’s not what your team needs. Your team needs someone that can maybe do some of those things.

 

09:16

but it’s more important that we hire people that can do a broad array of things.  And so flipping that job description to focus more on,  know, we need a marketing professional and it would be really great if that person had some experience in social media that could build posts, right? Or  creative writing skills or,  you get the unicorn that loves photography so can get out on  with clients and take pictures at sessions or whatever that looks like, right?

 

09:43

But we flipped it to be generalist with hopefully some specialty things sprinkled in or the aptitude to learn some of those skills. So in one client, it was someone that fancied themselves to have some creative skills. put Canva in their hands,  you have a toolkit, bam, they can do that, but they do all these other things too. And then the other side of that is outsourcing the things that do need more of that creative lens,  heavy diligence in that specialist way.

 

10:12

Right. And sometimes we do get pushed back here where it’s like, well, you told me to let go of that person, but now I’m having to spend money outside of here. And the push we always bring back in one of the specific examples recently was, well, if I don’t have a designer on staff, we have many really super highly polished creative projects that go out every year. And I was like, okay, well time out. How many are there? And we ran the list and there was two to three.  And then it was like,  okay, well give me the description of what those are.

 

10:42

And what we end up getting to is the cost to outsource those things is a third or less of the cost of the employee that was sitting in that seat. And actually, because we ended up hiring a hungry junior person, and one of the examples I’m thinking of, it was a wash. Right. And so these are some of these examples of, hopefully you hear me saying, where if you think differently, if you take a look at

 

11:10

the way that you’ve done it historically and why that might not be working in the fact that it’s not about the person, but about the position they’re being placed in, what’s actually needed across the board from an organizational development perspective and making sure that there’s somebody to cover all the pillars or buckets of things versus, well, we do these really nice things and if we don’t have anyone with that skillset, there’s no way that that’ll ever get done. That is the limited thinking that we’re talking about here. Yeah, and if I was gonna drill down in…

 

11:38

pull out one of the points I think is super, super important for everybody to really internalize is this difference between the thinker and the doer.  Yes, really good point. Right. So a lot of people hire based on wanting both. Yeah. But then they want to hire  somebody very junior. You guys, if you’re going to hire somebody very junior, their thinking skills aren’t really developed yet.  They don’t have the experience. don’t have the expertise. They haven’t had the coaching. They haven’t like…

 

12:06

They just haven’t had enough life yet to be able to  be a thinker. Now they might still be highly creative and that can very much be again an aptitude thing that can be developed, but  really based on what you need, if you need somebody to be thinking, they’re not there yet. Now, on the other side of that, if you want a doer, that’s very appropriate too, and you just want them to go do things, well, who’s doing the thinking to lead the doing?

 

12:37

Right? And so I think that tends to kind of get people confused because they  hire doers thinking that they could be thinkers and that doesn’t necessarily work. Or they hire thinkers then who might be more mature experienced and want them to do. And those guys are like, wait,  I’ve gone through that. I don’t do the doing anymore. I’m the thinker. And so you need both, I think is what I’m saying. And then what April said is there’s multiple ways of solving for both, but you need to think about what’s the most beneficial to have internally.

 

13:05

Like as April said, if you have an external thinker, like an agency or somebody’s thinking, maybe you just need the doer. Again, if you don’t have that thinking though, maybe you need to hire a thinker and then outsource the doing.  Or maybe you need to hire two people internally that do both. mean, so there’s many ways of solving for this, but I think you need to think about it from a, that there is a difference between the two and really consider what that butt in that seat looks like and what the business needs in addition to what the culture needs.

 

13:35

in order to make  what you guys are doing, your objectives, your business goals really come to fruition. Yeah, and I’ll build on that with one really glaring example from my agency days. It became very apparent to me early on that the organizations that would say you were going to be an account person and a strategist in the same role.

 

13:56

was completely at odds. so I remember the very first agency I went to, we actually didn’t have a strategy department at first and I was an account person and then we brought that in and it worked so beautifully, right? Because then actually I ended up, I’m sure no one is shocked moving into the strategy team,  but it was so good because the thinkers  were the strategists, right? They would go off big ideas, do the research, look at the consumers, all that digging, right?

 

14:25

The account people were responsible for answering to the clients, making sure we got the brief, bringing the teams together, making sure we’re delivering, all of that. In other organizations,  after that one, I knew I wanted to be a strategist. So the next one I went to, I was like, I want to be on the strategy team. And they were like, well, it’s account team and you can grow into a strategist. But what it became was responsibilities on both sides. And so the fail there was,

 

14:53

I never had the space to go and do the heavy thinking because it was one of those organizations where you jumped as soon as the client came, right? Doing all the doing all the time, doing all the doing all the time, taking all the calls, scheduling all the meetings, all the logistics, all the doing stuff. so, but then I would get dinged on both sides, right? Because it was like, if I didn’t answer the client call immediately, I got dinged. But then if my strategy work wasn’t strong enough, I got dinged  and

 

15:20

it just became this like self-fulfilling prophecy that this is not a single role to the point you made. And it’s like, you need both in the agency, quite frankly,  but they can’t be the same person for sure. You know, there’s just no way to make that work. It’s at odds with each other all the time. Yeah. It’s kind of like we talk about how it’s very difficult to think in your business and on your business and on your same time. It’s the same thing. Your brain just can’t manage that  in the way it’s  like, rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. You just, it’s

 

15:49

I mean, I could go on and on, but I won’t. April, why don’t you talk about some creating  the second one, the creating foundational operating principles for success and what that looks like. That’s like an April, please stop talking about the first point where however much it was not at all. was it was and it’s like the cutoff because I could have gone on forever. Like, you know, walking and chewing gum at the same time. had a whole list  planned, but I think I mean, I don’t I don’t need to beat a dead horse. You see where I’m going. OK.

 

16:16

Well, I actually have to toss this in because I was in a coaching session this morning and I heard one that I and I was going to tell you this in any way, but I’ll just tell everybody now one that I’ve never heard before. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. You’ve never heard that one. No, that’s a that’s a famous boomer wine. I have  never heard that.  I always like the blind squirrel finds a nut like, you know, again, we could keep going. But I heard that and I was like, wait, wait, say that one more time. I love that.

 

16:44

I’ve never heard that before. Yeah. I’m surprised. I’ve heard that a lot. My dad’s favorite was, you’re as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

 

16:55

I heard that one a lot.  Oh, well, you know, tough love is that generation. Yeah.  Building character by breaking you down or whatever.  Such a boomerism. I’m surprised you didn’t hear that from Pedro, like all growing up. No, didn’t. Yeah. All right. Anyway, we digress.  OK, so back to creating foundational operating principles for success. That’s the second one we wanted to talk about today. So to start this one out, this must, must, must be rooted in your team’s purpose, presence and culture.

 

17:24

So these are the deeper thinking things. Why do you even exist? What impact do you want to have? Questions like that and making sure that that is well set  and defined, socialized, understood, and then put into practice within the organization. This also sets up the rules of engagement. So how will the team behave and engage with each other and other teams and all of that? The point we always get to with this as well  is that

 

17:52

you don’t need to  like the people that you work with every day, but you do need to respect each other.  And part of setting up operating principles helps with that  because it shows people objectively how they’re supposed to be working together. And I’ll use Anne’s part she always brings up is when you can tell people and explain to them and show them how they’re part of a pie and a bigger picture and what their role is in it versus

 

18:18

help having them believe that they can do the job as a one man show and they don’t need everybody else and all of that. These operating principles set the foundation for how to make that work and then put an objective lens on things so that it doesn’t become overly emotional and people aren’t leading from that place because that then is where the breakdowns start to happen and things like, I don’t like that person so I don’t want to have to work with them. All of that kind of stuff comes into play. So.

 

18:45

I will give an example that actually I hate when I have to suggest this, but it’s a really good foundational starting place because we’re not micromanagers, as you know.  But one of the examples that comes up here for setting these principles is sometimes you do have to get really, really granular.  We have episodes on accountability. We had one that launched  a couple of weeks before this one. If you need help really deeply there,  you can revisit that one. But this goes to that point of

 

19:13

If people don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing, it can be really hard, obviously, for them to all work together. And so one of the exercises we will talk about as we’re starting to set these principles is doing an evaluation  of what people think they’re supposed to be working for at the level of seriously day to day. And so we will set up this assignment of

 

19:32

All right, every person on the team, again, this is a micromanagement activity. We’re not gonna do this forever and ever, but we’re trying to get a foundational assessment of where everybody is and what people perceive to be what they’re supposed to be doing and what we actually want them to be doing.  The exercise is at the beginning of every day, send me what you’re gonna work on. At the end of every day, send me what you got done. And within there, there needs to be the specificity of you can’t just say, I’m gonna work on social media posts two hours.

 

19:57

It’s like, no, no, specifically, okay, these three businesses each need three social posts for this week,  so I’m gonna do that and that’s what’s gonna take the two hours.  And then at the end of the day, it’s how much of that list did you get done? Did you meet the things you said you were gonna do? If other things came up, put it in there, put the explanation. And that helps the team then be able to pull back out and up  to say, okay, this is where some of the breakdowns are happening. So.

 

20:23

For example, if those social media posts were the most important thing in your mind for that person to get done that day,  and it fell to the bottom of the list and didn’t happen because they got asked to do 14 other things and they did that, but they thought, oh, I did the 14 other things that people asked me to do and I can get to that tomorrow. That’s one of those breakdowns, right? So the operating principles need to be set of.

 

20:45

All right, this person’s role is this. We need to set them their priorities. We need to help them assess how much time it should take. Sometimes we see things where it’s like someone spent three hours on some internal banners and it was like, well, I thought that was gonna be a 15 minute exercise, know, those types of things. And so  just one of the many examples we talk about in ways that we start to get back into, okay, what principles do our teams need  that then helps everybody again align and understand.

 

21:12

what they’re supposed to be doing, why that’s important and how it fits into that bigger picture. Yeah, I I think it’s really an exercise of calibration, right? Calibration, good. Yeah, that’s the word. Yeah. Yeah. And so what it does is it gives you the visibility to what you are going to be vigilantly leading.  So like April said, this is not a practice, an ongoing practice is to really understand.

 

21:35

Where do you think the slips are gonna happen? Where do you think the gaps are gonna happen? Where do you think you’re gonna need to keep an eye on?  It helps you get calibrated with your team about  how you’re going to engage and what your expectations are of them. And we’re gonna talk about expectations in a second. So it really is an exercise of calibration so that your team can align about how it’s gonna operate. Because what tends to happen the most is two sides of the coin. One is a leader is gonna be like, well, I’m

 

22:03

I’m just going to kind of let my team operate and they can go do what they need to go do. mean, and so they’re very loose with regards to what the guidelines are, because they don’t want to be overly prescriptive. But here’s the secret guys. People need guidelines. They want guidelines. They need to know what their lane is. And so they know it. No need to know like where they’re supposed to swim. Where can they expand? Who do they who’s in the other lane and they need to go go talk to how they’re supposed to interact with that person? What’s the expectation for collaboration with those people?

 

22:33

So you can start to then to build all of this, me and April call it culture, which is really establishing how you’re going to be a highly effective team. What’s essential to be a highly effective team. Because if you’re too loose and your team does not have guidelines, what happens on the other side of the coin is there’s missed deliverables. The deliverables don’t meet the right quality.  There’s something that happened that you don’t know about that you should have known about.

 

22:59

All these  missed communication pieces and then also missed opportunities to really  deliver work in a way that’s going to exemplify the impact that you want to deliver. So  put up the guardrails, be very clear about what the engagement looks like.  What’s really important? What are the values of this team? What’s very important for how this team  operates that’s going to really maximize  the output and the value?

 

23:26

a lot to go into here and it doesn’t have to be a lot of things. You can operate on very few principles frankly, but they have to be clear because once they’re clear and people know how to behave or what your expectations of their behavior and actions are, they can start to be more proactive. They can start then to really be able to kind of predict what’s gonna happen and be able then to self-correct or then you get that interaction ahead of time.

 

23:54

So this is very, very, very important because it is going to allow you to be a vigilant leader. If you don’t do this work first,  it’s going be very hard for you to then to pass down how you want to be a leader to a team who doesn’t really understand what these principles even mean. Really good points. Exactly.  So a good segue into the I was just going to say, you set yourself up very nicely for this next point, but here we go. It’s kind of like off-connect or something.

 

24:23

Yeah. It’s like you wrote this episode. I’m not sure. I don’t know.  To that point, the next point here is building capability and setting expectations, which I got into it a little bit. this is, mean, you see the connectivity, you see why all of these things need to work together in order to create a highly effective team and they’re not mutually exclusive and that’s by design. So you can hear some of the overlap, but

 

24:47

That’s why you need to kind of absorb it as a ecosystem to some extent of how all these things kind of develop together in order to really  infuse into your team and to make it highly effective so that you can be that visual leader. I was going to say it also kind of serves as different lenses and checks and balances. sure. Yeah. Because  one of the problems we see when visual leadership isn’t happening is that it’s a one trick pony, one size fits all. It’s very flat.

 

25:17

and these things working together, like Anne said, help you make sure that you’re seeing it from all sides, and then you can pull on different things to make sure that it continues to optimize so that your vigilant leadership elevates. Yeah, thousand percent, a thousand percent. And to that point, I mean, you have to be very, very clear what success looks like, right? And your team needs to be very clear about what success looks like. And that says,

 

25:42

the root of how do you build capability? Because if people don’t understand what success looks like, they have a hard time being able to self-manage and be autonomous, which means you have to drive yourself down into the weeds all the time in order to fix  whatever is happening or direct whatever is happening. It’s also unfair  and  doesn’t set them up for success because they’re chasing their tail all the time. Well, I think that’s a really, really good point.

 

26:10

You know,  it becomes very evident when me and April start one of these strategic planning organizational development exercises  and we ask the people with a new organization, what does success look like for you today? Or what does success look like for you in your role? And they have a really hard time articulating it outside of what is really directly important to them in the moment. And what I mean by that is making my boss happy. We hear that a ton, right?

 

26:39

be here collecting my paycheck or not getting fired or  rarely is it like to get promoted. It’s all very like internalized to a very specific moment  of whatever is going on in their environment that they are trying to solve for. Checking off my to-do list, like the example you gave April, just like, I’m just going to mindlessly check off my to-do list.  Or I just want to do work that I like, you know? And so they’re just focused on those things and they don’t want to do anything that they don’t

 

27:09

particularly care for that makes them uncomfortable. The interesting thing is, is when we go back to the  leaders, they’re like, well, I don’t know why people aren’t delivering, you know, I don’t know  why they are being proactive, why they are thinking for themselves. And this is when the tendency to jump in right away is be like, well, then if I can’t count on my team, if I can’t trust my team to do it, then I’m going to have to do it myself.

 

27:33

And if, as soon as you get to that point in time, you need to call your time out on yourself and be like, okay, what am I creating? How am I setting this  vibe up or this dynamic up that’s making this happen in this way? Because I guarantee it is something that you are doing, right? If you have the right butts in the seats, it is something that you are doing.  And this is then all about thinking about, like, as we said before, the capability of the person, but then how…

 

28:01

functioning is your team, how capable is your team? And the way that you get them to the point of everybody kind of aligned and on the same page is by making sure they understand how their work ties to the bigger business goals. So as they’re going off  their to-do list, as April was articulating before, you should be able to ask them, hey, why are you doing that? And they should be able to say, well, cause it’s driving some sort of business goal or is driving this KPI or this milestone or this.

 

28:27

is doing something in order to drive the bigger picture. If they’re just like, I don’t know, then they obviously clearly don’t understand what success looks like. And then you shouldn’t count on them being able to do anything other than deliver that exact goal or the exact piece of work or the exact to-do list in the way that you’ve prescribed it. That’s the only thing you should be able to expect from that, right? So explaining…

 

28:50

the why, explaining the purpose, making sure they understand how their work ties to, as April said, the bigger pie is so critically important.  And then making sure you’re setting the overall business goals so that everybody clearly sees a role for themselves within those, right? Now they may have some specific KPIs related to some specific tactics and that’s fine,  but when you’re setting your big business goals, it’s really important to think about what the bigger audacious goal is outside of somebody’s specific piece of work. And I’ll give you an example.

 

29:19

I did a lot of Super Bowl campaigns. I know this is like a big thing,  but it has a lot of  applicability to a lot of what everybody does in this context. So for example, if we’re gonna do a Super Bowl campaign, we set a goal for that campaign, right?  And so  we could set multiple different goals. A lot of people will set a goal of, I wanna have the best TV ad, right?  That is a deliverable of  one piece of the pie.

 

29:47

If you are able to elevate that and say,  well, no, we want to be the most talked about brand of the Super Bowl.  That becomes the job of everybody. Like every piece of pie has to actually activate in order to be able to deliver that. Not only does the creative have to be good and the ad needs to be good,  media placement needs to be good, the PR needs to be good, the social media surrounding it needs to be good, the choice of who’s going to promote it needs to be good. Everything needs to work together in order to be able to deliver that goal.

 

30:14

And then people can start to see their roles, how they connect, and then you could get them out of their silos and they start thinking about those things.  Then your job is to say, then  what do I need to do in order to make my team successful?  And I can guarantee you, if you’ve set this up right, it’s not in doing the doing, it’s making sure the barriers are diminished and they’re able to get through their challenges. It might be being able to manage up or out. It may be a host of different things.

 

30:44

of what they need to be successful, but it’s generally not doing the work for them. One point I’ll make just to build  on that is when you make this ask of your people, it’s okay to be clear that they aren’t definitely going to get whatever they ask for.  Because this is one of the things that I think often comes up is, yeah, you want to set them up for success, but their view of what they need to get there versus your view, it’s okay if it’s different.

 

31:10

The first piece is to open that door, have the conversation and let them be heard and then help them either. They may be right. They may be totally right. And that makes it easy on you.  The other piece is sometimes there’s a priority of things that you can go through as well. So  when we’ve talked to managers about this piece of asking people what they need to be successful, they’re like, oh my gosh, like  they see either.

 

31:34

all the time or dollar signs or whatever. Like, what if everybody asks me for three things and it costs this and it takes this and  it’s okay. Again, you’re the leader  and you’re working toward vigilant leadership.  So this can be an ongoing conversation. The point we’re making here is that is your responsibility is to make sure that your people are set up for that. But the prescriptive asks you get aren’t demands that then need to be implemented.

 

32:03

as fast as possible.  The other piece that I want to talk about here when we get to this point, and I feel like I talked about all the other and kept interrupting Anne so I covered the other things, but I’m just going to close the lid then on this. Well, thank goodness. Okay.  When we work with people on vigilant leadership, especially people that have that servant leadership about them,

 

32:26

They tend to be the ones that jump in and  help is jumping back into do the doing, which Anne already told you is absolutely not what you’re supposed to do.  But the other thing that happens is people feel like then they’re not doing enough for their team.  But what we want to say about this is in order to  help identify what those things are to set each of your team members, and then ultimately the team up for success requires you to step up and out. And that

 

32:53

might mean sometimes like sitting with what’s going on, observing, not actively participating,  looking for trends across the team.  You can’t do any of that if you are constantly jumping back in. It’s like the example I gave before where the agency required me to be the account manager and the strategist, right?  You got to get up here and you have to stay up here. And it’s going to probably feel weird and uncomfortable.

 

33:20

And if you’ve been of service to your people and working alongside and holding their hand and all of that, it’s going to be feel even more uncomfortable.  But the thing you’ve got to put in your head is inactivity does not mean that you’re not doing anything. So when you get all of this input and you’re working to build capability and you’re resetting the expectations, right? You’re building something. And then when you get to the point of like, okay, now what do they need? So we can go up again, you’re going to have to sit with it. And that is.

 

33:48

absolutely part of your role, so I’m giving you permission right now. You don’t need the checklist of, must do these 15 things every day. If you need a checklist, break down what you’re gonna do into digestible pieces. I’m gonna meet for 30 minutes with three of my people and ask them what they need, and then I’m gonna sit and look for the patterns. Like, you can do it like that, but do not go back to doing the doing, otherwise you’ll never get to this next point. Yeah, I mean, it’s a different set of skills, and it’s the hardest thing that we’ve seen.

 

34:17

especially in the middle managers have to cope with is going from the doing to the leading and being, you know, going to be in from a manager and kind of relinquishing the doing, which means that they’re going to have to let some things go. And April is going to talk about herself in the third person for this one because that was a trial by fire for her. I am not going to do that.

 

34:42

Not that I haven’t had to have the same thing really, but anyway, it’s April’s point. I’ll let her start.  How dare you call me out. Oh yeah. I’ll call myself out. had to take a pause in the middle of episode, which you guys won’t hear and say, April’s having a tough time today. Max, hold please. So  I’m already talking in the third person today, which again, means I’m in a little bit of a tenuous position. So here we are.

 

35:09

Okay, so my point here with all the digressions we’ve had  is to talk about letting things go. So if you’ve done all the things we talked about and I just in detail went into taking a step back, when you take this step back in addition to all the things I just said about what you need to do for yourself, this is where you’ve got to let the team operate.  And Anne just talked about the middle manager, right? The hardest transition we see in people.

 

35:36

when they go  from being a doer to a manager and getting in this leadership position  is allowing things to be let go. We talk about the definition of vigilant leadership and hopefully you’re one of those people that listens to us all the time. So you already know this, but it really is the art of leading from afar. And that means you get out of your people’s business. That taking the time to sit with things. I also, the other, don’t think I said this in the previous point, but giving yourself

 

36:04

some grace, giving yourself space. It’s going to be uncomfortable. said that, but the things that need to happen will come to you. They absolutely will not come to you  if you’re constantly jumping back in. And this is where I will call myself out. I won’t say April and the third person, maybe necessarily, but  wait for it. Wait, I know I said it, say that and that might be absolutely a lie. So the hardest thing for.

 

36:33

people in this position because they’re watching, right? So I said, like, you don’t go back in, you’re observing, that’s okay, is when you see people doing things and it’s not the way you would do it.  All the things we have talked about so far, getting the right people in the seat, creating the operating principles, building capacity, setting expectations, you have put the right frameworks and tools in the hands of the people and you have decided these are the people. Let them do their job. However,

 

37:02

We are all different human beings. Many of us are control freaks. By that, I mean, yes, me. If you keep getting in their business, they will never grow, which means you will never grow. And also a really big learning is just because it’s not your way doesn’t mean it’s not a way. Sometimes it’s even a better way. We’ve been having lots of conversations lately about the tension between Gen Z and us and the older generations, right? But one of the things we’ve identified is

 

37:31

They are native to technology. They solve problems in a very different way than many of us do. But oftentimes, if you pay attention and you assign them the right things, they solve it better than we ever could because they have a whole different set of tools and their brain has been wired in that way. So for yourself, for former April, there you go, there’s a third person. told you it was coming. Younger employee April, learning from experience.

 

38:00

got to allow them  this ability.  The thing though that you must do on the other side of that, empower them, but then also tell them that you always have their back. Because the other thing that will happen and the other thing that you need to be ready for is they’re not gonna succeed 100 % of the time. Just like the conversation we had for you of entering a whole new phase.

 

38:23

and you’re doing things you’ve never done before, you’re learning new skills, you’re creating this space, you feel uncomfortable, the same thing is gonna happen to them. The comfort for you is with the right people in the right place, their quote unquote mistakes are always blips on the radar, it doesn’t matter. But you have to tell them that they have that safety net and that is absolutely your role as the leader on the team. If something goes wrong,

 

38:46

help course correct that is where you step back in all of that. But you are the person that takes responsibility for that because you believe in this team. And at the end of the day, they’ll show you all of that success as well as like I said, new ways of doing things.  And eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re getting joy out of seeing them thrive. And you’re also gonna learn things from them at the same time. Yeah, love  Richard Branson says one of

 

39:13

our favorites both April and I, says the key to his success was finding the right people and then letting them go and getting out of their way. So if you can build billion dollar companies with this philosophy, it definitely works across the board. Guys, I think that’s what the real secret sauce is of all of these things and why it’s so important about them all working together and taking them in that hole like I talked about before. I’m gonna segue into the other

 

39:42

or the fifth point, because I think it’s really relevant to this letting things go piece, which is practicing self-awareness. Because a lot of times when  we’re having trouble letting things go,  we are then projecting our own insecurities and our own issues onto the  team, right?  So the biggest thing that we see is a lack of confidence when people are moving from the doer to the manager.

 

40:09

in that space,  lack of confidence in the managerial space where it’s a very new space.  That is when you’re supposed to start thinking more strategically. A lot of people have not had a lot of practice in the doing in that context of being able to think strategically or creatively or however that bigger, broader on your business, in your business context works for you in how you’re processing. And so if you’re having a lack of confidence in…

 

40:35

being up there in this new space and you’re like,  I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing up here. I don’t even know if I’m having imposter syndrome and I don’t even know like what I’m doing or saying is smart or is going to be accepted or all these people are so much more experienced than I am. Sometimes I use all these insecurities start to really like pile up and so our natural tendency then is to go to something that is more familiar that we can go do. Gotta love that imposter syndrome.

 

41:03

Oh my gosh, it happens 100 % of the time guys. It doesn’t even happen with like a few. mean, it happens at every single person. You’re going to have these feelings when you’re forced to elevate where you’re like, I don’t even know what to do with my data and how do I help? Like, what am I, where’s my list to check off? You know, and so then your list of check off becomes, I’m going to stay out of my people’s way today, check, you know,  or I’m going to think about two new avenues of where we can.

 

41:28

you’ll grow our team or grow our capability or grow our capacity or grow our product offerings check. So you have to reshape your mindset or else you could become your own worst enemy for the team. All right. And so this happens a lot. And so just recognize, as April said, give yourself some grace and recognize when it’s happened to you. like, oh, this is what April and I were talking about. I get it. I get what I need to go do now. Practice some self-awareness, realize what’s going on and then

 

41:56

flip the narrative here and then think about, okay, how do I get myself out of this knowing that it’s me? Because what happens then is that your personal brand starts then to be identified based on these things and you do not want that to happen. So remember your personal brand is your characteristics, your appearance and your behaviors and actions. So for example,  if things are getting always really, really tense  and especially like if there’s a type deliverable or your boss is on your case or

 

42:24

Those sorts of things happen and your tendency is like, well, I better go in and go do it because if I don’t, then my personal brand is going to take a hit if my team fails, right?  That is your behavior in action. And then your appearance to kind of connect back to that is like, you start to bark orders at your team. You start to be very negative with regards to performance.  start to, I mean, all these things can happen. Your posture starts to change and you start to create an atmosphere of fear. Your characteristics start looking like,

 

42:54

a tyrant leader, right? Yep.  Oh, yeah. of whether you wanted that to be that or not, right? That’s how it starts to kind of transcend itself down when you start behaving and acting in a certain way. So you have to really take accountability for the fact that,  shoot, if I’m going to behave and act like this, this is the personal brand I’m starting to cultivate for myself. And this is really the personal brand that I want to have. Because  when people start to see you behave like that on an ongoing basis, they start trusting that that’s who you are. trust.

 

43:23

can be a good thing where you’re building consistency with things that are positive. It could be a bad thing where you’re building consistency with things that are negative. Consistency is the operative word here. Now, this doesn’t mean you’re gonna get things right all the time. Something’s gonna happen, you’re gonna  say something that you shouldn’t say, or you’re gonna let something go that you shouldn’t have gone, or let go, or you’re going to  be contrary to one of the values and one of the principles. That’s gonna happen too.

 

43:50

But the difference here is that you don’t just let it slide. You go back and you fix it. You  take accountability for it. You recognize it’s happened. You make it an exception to the rule. You, I’m really sorry. I burst out. That’s not the kind of person I wanna be. I’m very stressed. What must be true for us to overcome this challenge? And you invite the team in to help solve it if you can’t solve it for yourself. But that what must be true question is so powerful.

 

44:16

It’s gonna help you address a lot of these things that kind of come in and start to disrupt the type of personal brand you want to have and the type of,  and the culture you want to have for your team. I’m gonna go to one more little example of like where I think you guys can also help overcome another  aspect of this transition, which is the overwhelm. The overwhelm tends to happen a lot. And this again is another reflection of personal brand where it’s like,

 

44:42

I need to have my hands in everything, but now I’m going to get overwhelmed by the fact my hands are in everything and my personal brand is like everything’s done to perfection and I’m, you know, I’m seen as a high quality deliverable guy, but what if like, you know, April over here doesn’t deliver it the way that I want to deliver it. And then, you know, they think that that’s because I’m a bad leader and you know, this starts to kind of create an overwhelm of like, okay, now what am I going to do? And it just kind of creates like a

 

45:11

moments of inaction. So a couple of things here. One is the tighter you hold on to  the micromanagement of the things, the more dysfunctional your team is going to get. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So just keep that in mind and use that one must be true question in order to be able to kind of pull yourself out of it. The other really good tip, and I think this works really well for people, is to give the work that’s being going on or work that you’re doing a score.

 

45:35

So a lot of people, especially higher achievers, will tend to score everything a 10. Everything has to deliver at a 10, has to be perfect. There’s very few things that actually have to be perfect at a 10. And more of your work is gonna be a bell curve, or most of this stuff is gonna be like around a five or a six. And there’s gonna be some stuff that’s like a two or three that’s just gonna be passable. That’s all that’s gonna be. Start to give yourself score and start to rate yourself on that score so you don’t feel like you have to jump in and everything has to be perfect and you have to hold all your team.

 

46:02

to that same standards of everything has to be a 10 because that also tends to overwhelm them and burn them out. I often use the expression with people of white knuckling it when you’re holding on so tight because I picture myself with the steering wheel, right? Like, I mean, all of that 100%. And I want to go back to your point about how my team’s actions reflect on me.

 

46:26

because that is a big one that we talk through all the time, especially for those of us that are control freaks, imperfectionists, and I suffer from both. The fact of the matter is, and we’ve talked about this throughout the episode, nothing is ever gonna be perfect. Everybody’s gonna make mistakes.  As the leader of the team, the reflection on you is how you handle that. And the evaluation, both from the people on your team  and your leadership,  is your reaction and how you handle it. Because…

 

46:54

You report to someone as well, right? Or even if you’re the CEO, you report to a board, whatever. They have expectations of you. When you’re in  these leadership roles, when you become a vigilant leader, it’s all in how you handle it. And problems will come up. On the contrary though, the expectation of you is, hey, you now have this highly functioning team. You’re supposed to be out of the weeds.

 

47:20

Why are you in the middle of their business? Why are you micromanaging that mistake? Why did you jump back in there? Why didn’t you empower them to fix it? Those are the types of things. And that will negatively affect you over time. So the biggest thing is, and I was talking about this before, let the team know that you’re gonna have their back. Mistakes are gonna happen. We’re human. We test and learn. We do our best. We have a lot to get done. We use our instincts. It’s not always perfect. All of that, right? When something happens,

 

47:50

Do that,  be their person, take the fall if you need to, step in if they need assistance in how to correct, that is now your job. To the leadership, you go, it’s on me, it’s my team, it was our mistake, I talked to so and so, here’s the plan to change it, here’s what is gonna happen next time in order to make sure that that is not a repeated pattern. That is how you succeed in that role.

 

48:19

because the reflection comes in those moments, not in, I mean, if you do the opposite and you’re in their business and you jump back in, people are gonna leave over here because they’re high performers that wanna have autonomy and oh, by the way, you told them they had it. And over here, your leadership’s gonna be asking why in the world are you in this position? Because it’s duplicative and your salary is a whole lot bigger than all of theirs. So I just wanna offer the other side of that because I think, we think that

 

48:47

It has to be perfect. We, including me, I’ve been there.  And so we kind of want to, it’s like a toddler, right? You want to follow along behind and like make sure they don’t trip and fall. That’s not your role anymore. That is what you will get dinged for doing. Well, and I think that, you know, the failure piece is like the biggest one that people tend to react to. And I think that one is a hard one to manage,  but you have to realize that your leadership style has to incorporate

 

49:16

some level of failure for your team. And I totally agree with you, April, it’s how you address that failure that will define what people think of you as a leader, not the fact that your team failed. Now, if your team fails repeatedly, maybe, but  like we say, like, make new mistakes and make failure part of the way that your team operates. Again, you can  ask what must be true to avoid this failure next time, like what new processes or new  operating principles that we need to put in place in order to

 

49:46

make sure that this one doesn’t happen again. I think too, just to build on what you were saying, this also gives you the opportunity to really figure out what you’re really good at that’s not the doing, right? So if you are a good problem solver, for example, like make that your thing. Make that the thing that you build your leadership around. It’s like, I solve problems and that’s how you then socialize yourself with your team. If you have problems to solve, I’m here to help you solve them.

 

50:13

That becomes an expectation then  of how they’re supposed to engage with you. It might be, as you mentioned  before, April, maybe it’s managing people that becomes your thing. It’s like you’re really then a person or a leader of the people  and you’re able to help them through failure and you’re able to help them see how to grow from failure, make that your thing. So it’s going to be a very different set of quote unquote skills, if you will, that’s going to start to shift your identity a bit as a leader.

 

50:43

And you want that to be very intentional, but  make sure then again, according to this self-awareness piece, you are really thinking about the optics of your behavior and how that’s going to be internalized by the people who are evaluating your value as a leader, because that’s really  where the personal brand, the rubber meets the road is you will succeed when your intrinsic value  meets

 

51:11

the perception and the expectations of your evaluators. So when you guys, when that lines up, when you’re providing value and the way that they think value should be provided, you will have in a much easier path to whatever your big thing is. say that  as  a  something to internalize and to keep in mind as you are filtering through, how should I show up in this moment? Right? And use your personal brand as a guide. Absolutely. All right. So.

 

51:41

We have gone around the horn to another sports analogy. Anything else to add April before I summarize this up? No, I almost went through a whole other point and I’m like, I’m going to talk for another 20 minutes and people are going to be like, oh my God, this episode is three hours long. So no. That’s when you seek April out for personal coaching. Yeah, this is where I, this is where I’m exercising my self-awareness. Oh, well there you go. We didn’t really exemplify the point April.

 

52:10

All right, so to summarize the principles of vigilant leadership, point number three, enabling the action plan. Remember, assigning the right people to the right roles,  get the right butts in the right seats, creating foundational operating principles for success, building capability and setting expectations, letting things go. Yes, we’re talking to all of you overachievers and practicing self-awareness, specifically  making sure you’re being very aware of how you’re cultivating your personal brand.

 

52:38

And with that, we encourage all of you to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice. Remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action.  Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further?  Reach out to us through our website: ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!