- I really think that entrepreneurs make it way harder
on themselves based on the way they communicate,
based on the way they lead other people,
I think there's this new trend to think that
because it's a distributed team,
or transactional contractors,
that we shouldn't take the human part to it
and that's just crazy, so that's the message
I wanna share today.
(upbeat music)
Yo, what's up?
Today I'm talking about leadership in your business,
specifically around the four levels of leadership.
You know, if you've ever had somebody on your team
that you've hired, trained, and they quit,
or you're having meetings with your team
and every time you sit down and you review what they've
gotten done, it looks like they haven't made any progress
or you just feel like they're not committed
to your business, then you're gonna wanna watch
right to the end because I'm gonna share with you guys
how leadership has changed over the last 20 years
and really understand how if you do it right,
you can have people that are on that shared journey,
shared mission, that are not only loving working for you
but are recruiting their friends, the smart friends,
not the dumb ones, to come work with them
because they wanna have a bigger impact in your business.
I really learned this style leadership when I was 22
and when I worked for a guy named Darcy.
I just got hired as a contractor at a place
called Syncrude Alberta in Fort McMurray.
Yes, if you know where that is,
it's like in the middle of nowheres
and kind of north of that, and I was hired to manage a team
of 15 people and, at the time, I think Darcy looked at me,
I was a young kid, and said,
hey man, I know when we interviewed you,
I was a contractor,
that I didn't realize how old you were but you've got
two weeks to really show me that you can lead these people
or we're gonna have to find somebody else.
So that was crazy because I didn't really have a whole lot
of other opportunities outside of that job
but not only did I get a library card,
maybe you guys remember those things, those little cards
where you get books, like physical books, not Kindle,
and studied things like project management
and statements of work and Gantt charts,
don't you ever study Gantt charts, it's not necessary,
but anyways, I wanted to go all in on project management,
but what I learned more than anything over the next
two weeks was not how to manage a project
but more how to lead people and that, to me,
with Darcy as an example, really transformed the way
I show up as an entrepreneur, as a leader,
as a father, as a husband, and I wanna walk you through
exactly how people are doing it wrong, especially in places
like San Francisco where there's so much high turnover.
So the first level is a title leader,
so a title leader is pretty much like here's who I am,
I'm the the director, I'm the CEO, I'm the manager,
and you gotta listen to me, and I don't know if you've ever
worked with those kind of people, but it works for
a little bit but it does not create a sense of community,
it doesn't create a sense of team, and really,
that doesn't last, so most people that are
in those scenarios, anybody who is great, the A players,
they're gonna probably take like three months of it
and then they're gonna bounce and the people that are
leftover are usually the Cs and D players,
not the great people because anybody that knows their worth
won't put up with somebody saying do this,
don't challenge me, I'm the boss, you listen to me,
let's get it done.
That's just crazy, used to be that way,
totally doesn't work like that, it's transformed
the way leadership happens over the last 20 years.
The second level of leadership is the trader.
Now here's what you need to understand about the trader,
the trader is saying, hey, if you do this,
then I'll reward you this way,
and the challenge with being a trader leadership
is that as soon as anybody else in the world
offers that person more than what you've decided
to compensate them with, they'll change teams.
So this is what's happening in San Francisco
or major hotbeds of talent, where you see the turnover
12 to 16 months because they started this company
and they're willing to give them options and daycare
and dry cleaning and all these perks
but then all of a sudden the next company's
gonna offer them more, the trader leader doesn't scale,
it's great, it's better than the title,
but it's not gonna get you to where you need to be.
The third level,
which I believe most great entrepreneurs,
great leaders are at, is the servant leader.
The servant leader sits down and says to their team,
how can I serve you?
What are the challenges?
How can I improve your situation?
What things do you need?
What resources can I provide to help you create
a better output, be more productive, be happier at work?
They're serving their team
and that, to me, is where we wanna spend as much time
as we possibly can when we interact with people,
it's managing through questions, it's not telling people
what to do, which is more title and trader,
it's really saying how can I serve?
The fourth level, if you wanna be ninja,
if you wanna go to that level, it's gonna take years,
it's called the spiritual leader.
Now we're talkin' about people that, like Gandhi,
like Nelson Mandela, like spiritual leaders
that believed in a vision and a mission that was so powerful
that people that never met them moved through their life
obeying and pursuing that idealism, that vision for
what's possible, and that is the next level.
Some of us might reach it at our company meetings,
in communicating our vision with investors,
we might get to the point where it's almost this sense of
mission, the spiritual embodiment of what we wanna do
in our business, but to stay there, to be that,
we're talking Mother Teresa level type stuff,
but understanding those four levels,
the title, the person that says hey, I'm the boss, do it,
the trader, if you do this, I'll give you Y, so X versus Y,
as soon as somebody comes along that's willing
to give them more, they bounce,
or being a servant leader and really trying to ask yourself,
how can I serve my team, what do they need from me
so that I can ensure that they have the best experience
building and growing along with the rest of the team,
and then, finally, the spiritual leader,
where, if you pull that off, you have people that
you've never communicated with, who you've never talked to,
that aren't even part of your team,
but showing up by example,
by sharing your stories, you're gonna move them forward
and lead them, that is the ultimate form of leadership.
As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life
and a bigger business, and I'll see you next week.
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