The Better Leadership Team Show
The Better Leadership Team Show
How Leaders Create the Very Problems They Complain About
In this Mike on the Mic episode, I unpack the five biggest blind spots that cause leaders to unintentionally create the very problems they complain about.
From blaming others and silencing honest feedback to confusing activity for results, I reveal how these hidden habits quietly undermine trust, accountability, and culture. You’ll learn how to recognize these patterns, model ownership, and transform your leadership approach to build a stronger, more aligned team.
If you’ve ever wondered why your team isn’t taking more ownership or why the same issues keep showing up again and again—this episode might hit close to home.
Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach
Stop making excuses yourself and your team will stop making excuses. Now, that doesn't mean you're not gonna miss a deadline every once in a while. That doesn't mean you're not gonna screw up on something you committed to, but own it yourself and you will see your team start to take ownership.
Mike Goldman:You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.
Mike:I see this recurring pattern with CEOs, gonna say CEOs. It could be leaders if you're not a CEO, but I see this recurring pattern that many of the problems, these CEOs, these leaders have that, that we have, I'll count myself in there. is kind of like the very thing we are fighting is the thing we're modeling. Leaders tend to create the very problems that they complain about. Mike, my team won't take ownership, or, you know, I wish people would speak their minds more around here. Why? Why do people wait for me to solve the problem? You know, why can't my leaders. Figure out how to, pull themselves out of the business so they could spend more time working on the business than in the business. Many times these problems are caused by blind spots that CEOs and leaders have. These blind spots are kind of the hidden ways that leaders unintentionally create the very issues. That frustrate them most. So in this episode, I'm gonna share five of those blind spots that I tend to see. It doesn't mean those are the only ones, but I share five of those blind spots. And if you are a leader, if these issues sound familiar to you, it may. Sting a little. Even if they don't, you know the issues may sound familiar, but you might say, I don't have that blind spot. Well, you may wanna dig in a little deeper. You may want to ask some of the people around you because understanding that you may have one or more of these blind spots just might save your team or just might be the thing to. Help you get more sleep at night and have less frustration and, and just have a better team and a better company. So it may get a little uncomfortable, but let's kind of get uncomfortable together here. Blind spot number one. Let's dig right in. Blind spot number one is the Blame Game leaders complain about victim culture, but victim culture starts from the top. So the definition of this. Blame game, blind spot is the idea that people on your team are not taking ownership. They're blaming the market, they're blaming other people on the team. They're blaming the client, blaming the vendor. So a number of years ago I worked with the CEO of a, a flooring retailer, and. Started them off with a two day strategic planning session. just a great two days. they had some difficult discussions. they made some important decisions. They created a plan for how they were going to move forward. One of the things they. Agreed to do one of the things the CEO agreed to do, within two weeks after that meeting. And that meeting was just the CEO and the leadership team. The CEO, agreed that they would, have an all hands meeting and communicate the new vision, the new plan, the new priorities. To the rest of the organization because one of the things that came out of the meeting is, that people don't really always understand what's going on throughout the company. Well, for the next two, maybe it was three months in my coaching calls with the CEO, when I do monthly coaching calls with most of my CEOs, the CEO would spend. The first 10 minutes of every call complaining about the rest of the team. We have this plan. Why are people not doing what they say they're gonna do? They have every excuse in the book. How do I hold people accountable? What do I need to do? Fire everybody. He was frustrated and I get it, but I asked him on each of those calls. Hey, one of the things you were accountable for was to schedule the all hands meeting schedule, the all hands meeting, where you are going to communicate the vision, the plan, the priorities to the rest of the organization. And by the way, I knew he was, for a number of reasons, sort of uncomfortable. Doing that. He had never had an all hands meeting before. He wasn't sure how the organization would, you know, rally around or would they rally around this new vision they had created as a leadership team. It also took some convincing during the meeting that he even had to do that, but his leadership team convinced him that he needed to communicate this vision, this plan, that these priorities to the rest of the organization. Well anyway. Right after he would get done complaining about everybody else, I'd say, Hey, you know, I know you told me you were scheduled last Wednesday to do that all hands meeting. How did that go? Oh, a big fire drill last Wednesday. you know, we rescheduled it. I'm gonna be doing it next Thursday. That happened once. That happened twice. The third time that happened, and it's now I said two to three months. Pretty sure it was three months later. Three months after he said he was going to do this. He had yet another excuse as to why he didn't do this all hands when he said he was going to, and my challenge to him was. You are gonna have a bitch of a time holding your team accountable, getting your team to stop playing the blame game. If you are doing that, they're modeling it from you. They're seeing from you. It's okay to say, oh, there was a fire drill. I didn't get that done. You are modeling the very thing you don't wanna see in others. So I will not help you fix the problem in others until you fix it in yourself. Teams follow the leader. That blame becomes contagious. So what are some tactical actions you can take if you find yourself or your team blaming? And not really taking ownership, letting things slide, but always have an excuse first. Own your own issues first, and own them out loud and start problem solving with not who's at fault for yourself, for others. Start problem solving with, you know what did I miss here? Or what did we miss here? Ban the word they, each time they is used, clarify exactly who they is. Is it really we, the team, the vendor gets specific, you know who is, they don't let people say they. Publicly, own yourself a recent misstep. Show a little vulnerability. Let them know you screwed up and what you're gonna do to fix it. And when you do that, I promise you your team's language will shift. Reward, root cause honesty. Praise people who raise system misses, process misses, and make kind of ownership moments a ritual. Spotlight the team and personal examples of where folks have taken ownership. Model ownership, demand ownership of your team. Stop making excuses yourself and your team will stop making excuses. Now, that doesn't mean you're not gonna miss a deadline every once in a while. That doesn't mean you're not gonna screw up on something you committed to, but own it yourself and you will see your team start to take ownership. Let's go to blind spot number two, muzzling the messenger. Let's talk a little bit about how we as leaders might kill that candor that we say we want so much. You know, CEOs complained, you know, why don't people tell me the truth? But meanwhile, when they hear the truth, they react. Defensively, they dismiss questions. They almost punish honesty. So I worked with a C-E-O for a number of years, a super smart guy, super talented, CEO, who had one major issue, well probably had more than one, but one major issue relative to this podcast, and that's, he was. A little too smart for his own good, and when he was with his leadership team, he would tend to state his opinion pretty strongly. Then if someone challenged him, and I remember one specific instance that he had a very strong opinion and he was challenged on that opinion by a member of the team, and he treated this poor guy like a hostile witness on the stand. So are you telling me that if we do that, it's gonna result? You know we're gonna get the result we want. Tell me one other time. You give me one example and just went at this guy. Now people quickly decided around that table, it's not worth arguing with the CEO. Now, he did two things wrong. Number one, he spoke first. And very often as a leader, when we state our opinion first, it shuts people up. People don't take it as a soft opinion, which may be the way we mean it. They take it as a, as an order, as a dictate. Second thing, obviously he did wrong, was got really defensive and whether he was right or wrong doesn't matter. When you push back and try to win the argument in that way, people are just again gonna say it's not worth it and they're not gonna open their mouth next time, which means candor, starves issues tend to fester. People don't tell you the truth and don't challenge you. So number one, don't talk first. Wait to hear other opinions first. You don't have to agree with everyone. You are allowed to get passionate and emotional about things because you're a human being. Of course, you're allowed that, but try not to state your opinion first, or that in, in and of itself may shut others people up when you are challenged or when you're given bad news. Thank people first and react Second. Thank you for telling me, and then figure out what to do about it. Number one, that's just the right thing to do even if you don't agree with someone. Thank them for being honest. Thank people for modeling the behavior you want. It also allows you to take a breath. If you're feeling kind of emotional and passionate about it, you're about to go back at that other person. Thanking someone first allows you to take a breath and think about it. Model a no retribution culture, kind of like I said before in the first blind spot. Share publicly about a time you were wrong or what changed because you were corrected by somebody else. Ask for dissent regularly. Ask, you know who disagrees with me on this? And I'd love to hear why. Now you could say that with the wrong attitude, right? Who? Who disagrees with me? I'd love to hear. Why? is another way of saying if you disagree, you're a moron. But saying, Hey, you know, we're all coming to kind of a quick decision here and I just wanna make sure you know who, let's talk, you know, who around this room disagrees with this, and lets, let's talk about why. Stop trying to win the argument. There's a wonderful book named Conversational Capacity, and they talk about this idea of that there's two different extremes when you enter into a debate, a discussion, even an argument, there's two different extremes. One extreme is minimizing. Minimizing is when you say things like, well, you probably know this better than me, but I'm kind of new here, but. The extreme version of minimizing is you shut up. You don't say anything. Now, muzzling, the messenger. This blind spot is more about the other extreme, which is winning, which is we enter into a debate, a discussion, an argument with the goal of winning. And again, when you are the leader, when you are trying to win, you shut people down. What we need to do is we can, we shouldn't minimize, we shouldn't try to win. As weird as that sounds, winning sounds natural, but what we should do is debate with the goal of gathering the information we need to make the right decision. Now again, that doesn't mean you can't feel strongly about something, but if you feel strongly and you know there's people around the room that disagree, you might say, Hey, I feel really strongly about this. You might even say, it's hard for me to see the other argument, but I know there are a lot of smart people around this table. Somebody help me out. I know I must be missing something here. What am I missing? The other thing you can do to stop muzzling, the messenger to improve the candor on your team is debrief. After a discussion, after a tough meeting or a tough discussion, ask, you know, did anybody feel shut down and address those patterns? The last thing I'll say, the other thing I do is I like to use flip charts and post-it notes. Everybody's idea goes on a post-it note up on a flip chart, and this way we hear from everybody, not just the strongest people in the room. Blind spot Number three, I call accountability theater confusing activity with outcomes. As leaders, we need to hold people accountable for results for outcomes. You know, and I hear CEOs complain, you know, people don't follow through, but they accept status updates as progress. They tolerate vague promises. You know, I think I'll get back on track within the next two weeks. They let missed commitments slide if it seemed like the person was putting in good effort. One of the things that I often do with my leadership teams, in fact I have this on my schedule to do with one of my clients a little bit later today, is I listen in to one of their weekly accountability meetings. Now notice I called it a weekly accountability meeting, not a weekly status meeting in a weekly status meeting. It's a whole lot of talking. And a whole lot of people looking at their watches saying, I've got real work to do. While someone is saying, I did this, I did that, I didn't do this. I'm waiting for a callback on that, who cares? And I'll get to more about the weekly accountability minute, meeting in a minute. But I sit through these weekly meetings and I hear just excuse after excuse. I hear the CEO going around and saying, you know, how are you doing on your rock, on your quarterly priority? Well, you know, there was a big fire drill with, you know, our top client last week and, you know, just really fell behind and I'm gonna do my best. and the CEO says, yeah, I get it. It was really busy. And then the next person goes is, well, you know, two of my team members are on vacation, so really couldn't get to it last week. And the CEO says, yeah. Just accepting every single excuse. Now, the effect on the team and the effect on culture is people show up and people talk a good game, but nothing changes. I find the people that talk the most about their quote unquote status, the people that talk the most are the people that have done the least, but they're trying to cover for that by talking about every little detail. I called this person, I emailed this person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The end of the day you achieve nothing. So what are some actions there? Number one, demand, clarity, turn every activity, you know, we're working on this, we're working on that into a specific outcome. This will be done by X. In fact, when my clients come up with their quarterly rocks, which is my word for quarterly priorities, they come up with their rocks. I really try to push them to not say things like, this quarter I'm going to design a leadership development program. That's a whole lot of activity. And not a lot of results. I would rather hear something like this quarter we're gonna improve our talent density indicator from 10% to 25%. Challenge people to get clear about a result, not just a set of actions. Next, use job scorecards for yourself, for your team. Job descriptions are typically vague, not very helpful documents, but a job scorecard has specific measurable results on it. Make sure that everyone on your team understands what outcomes they are responsible for. And the greater the frequency of that target and measuring that target, the better. Someone having a target, you know, a result that they're accountable for a measure of success they're accountable for. If they're accountable for achieving something by the end of the year, it's very hard to hold them accountable throughout the year. The higher the frequency is better. Quarterly is better than annually. Monthly is better than quarterly. Weekly is better than monthly. I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but kill status meetings. I can't stand status meetings. If I have to sit through one more status meeting, I'm gonna scream, replace them with accountability meetings. In a weekly accountability meeting, you are holding people accountable for their KPIs, their rocks, their quarterly priorities. And for whatever other tasks I call them who, what, when they committed to, and those weekly accountability meetings should happen by exception. If someone's in the green on their KPI or on their rock, then we don't have to talk about it unless there's something they need to communicate to the group. But if someone's in the yellow or the red, they better come with a plan. It's okay to not be on target a hundred percent of the time. This is real life. But coming in and just saying, yeah, I was really busy. I'll see if I can get to it, is not good enough. Coming in and saying, I've been thinking a lot about this and here's my plan. Here's how I'm gonna get back on track and here's when I'm gonna get back on track. That's what happens in a weekly accountability meeting. Blind spot number four, culture by accident. The silent power of your example. You know, here's where in this blind spot, a CEO says, you know, I don't recognize our culture anymore. Our culture is not strong enough. People aren't living our core values, and that's HR's job. what leaders need to understand, including the CEO, is that. Culture is the leader's job in a company. The CEO owns culture, not HR. HR may own a lot of activities that help to drive it, but the CEO owns culture. The CEO owns people living and breathing those core values because they have to model it. One of the things I do with my clients that if you've listened to a number of these podcasts you're probably already aware of, is I have a quarterly talent assessment meeting where we use my talent density system framework and the leaders assess the performance of all of their direct reports and they assess them based on productivity and culture. And I had one CEO that. Was very upset that their number one salesperson. Who was not living the core values was blatantly and repeatedly violating many of their core values. They were making the people around them worse, not better. they were very productive in and of themselves, but they were hurting everybody else's productivity. The CEO was livid that as a leadership team we were talking about. Making a decision on whether it was time to coach this person out of the organization, the CEO said, wait a minute, and he looked right at me. He said, Mike, I know what you're doing. I get it, but I will not fire my number one salesperson because they're being disrespectful to the customer service team and respect. Was one of their core values. Now, they didn't call it respect. They had a more detailed name for it, but it was basically non-negotiable that you needed to treat the people around you, your coworkers, your clients, your vendors, with a great deal of respect. So the CEO said, I don't care. This is our number one salesperson. not only am I not firing this person, but I'm not gonna waste their time and talk to them about it. I need them out there. Selling my message back to the CEO was certainly, Hey, this is your business, not mine. You need to make the decision that you believe is right for the company. But my coaching to you is if this is the decision you're gonna make. Please take all of the core values, posters off the wall, or at the very least, stop saying respect is one of your core values, because when you let highly productive people get away with not living your non-negotiable core values that you know, they become a joke. They become a hammer you use to hit, unproductive people over the head with. But it's okay for your highly productive people to not live those values, to hurt the people around them. You're modeling the very thing you want to create. You want a strong culture. But you're letting highly productive people getting away, get away with screwing your culture up. And while you're looking at that one person and how productive they are, you are not seeing the impact of everybody else around them. So what do we do about it? First is, as a CEO, don't delegate culture. Be the first to live the values. Be the first to own up. When you've done something against those values. Values, be the first to coach someone or maybe even coach them out, or decide to coach them out if they're not living the values. Be the first to live the values when there's a tough decision. There are three tests of a core value that I use with my clients. One is that it's a fireable offense. It's not a fireable offense. It's not a core value. Are you committed to firing anyone, even your highest, high productive people, even someone on your leadership team, even yourself? Are you committed to firing anyone who blatantly and repeatedly violates a core value? That's the first test. Second test is are you willing to take a financial hit to uphold the core value? Are you willing to lose a good client or a good employee to uphold that core value? The third test is that core value alive in the organization today? Something can't be non-negotiable and aspirational at the same time. And when I say alive in the organization, you as the leader of that organization need to be living it. Second thing you can do. To deal with that blind spot of culture by accident is to enforce the core values in hiring decisions. Make sure in your interview process, you are only hiring people that are already living your core values. Don't think you're gonna hire someone who could be really productive and then teach them your core values once you onboard them. Of course, in your onboarding, you ought to be talking about core values. But you need to find ways in your interview process to find out if people are already living those core values. Because coaching someone who's not living your core values to live your core values is like coaching someone to become someone they're not. Can they do it if you put'em on a 90 day performance improvement plan and threaten them with job security? Of course they can. But then after 90 days, they go back to who they really are. Which, by the way is not a bad person, but might be a bad fit for your organization. Lastly, solicit feedback on your behaviors from others. Where might you be modeling or violating the tenets of your culture, your core values. One of the things I like to do. With my leaders is have what I call a peer accountability session or do the peer accountability exercise, and that's an exercise where each leader goes around the room and gives each other feedback. Here's something you do that really helps the team. Here's something you do that really hurts the team. Everybody gets that feedback, including the CEO last blind spot. Number five, I call the firefighting fetish. That blind spot is one where you as the leader are the first to leap into the trenches, the first to jump in and do somebody else's job. I was with a leadership team and we were talking about measures of success for the leadership team. And the CEO went last. Everybody went through, you know, the head of customer service, talked about their mission being, you know, wow, experiences for their clients. And the way they were gonna measure it was through a net promoter score and churn. and the head of sales talked about revenue and gross margin, and head of finance talked about net cash flow. And then we got to the CEO and the CEO said, well. Guys, my job is to help all of you. That's what I do. You tell me what you need. My job is to help all of you. Well, that's not a CEO's job. And as a leader, stop thinking about your job as helping everybody else on your team. Of course, that's part of what you do. But your job is not to do everybody else's job. And if you jump in and do that, you are modeling that for your team. You wind up with a lack of ownership. You wind up with a team that's expecting you to swoop in. You wind up with a team that's afraid to make a decision. They're waiting for you to swoop in and make that decision. So what do we do about it? Become a better coach. Stop giving advice all the time. Ask people questions, let others own their problem. Don't take the monkey off their back. Give them their monkey back. Coach them. Ask them questions. What's the big challenge here for you? What have you already tried? What does success look like here? If you say yes to this, what are you saying? No. To model a way of thinking for them by asking questions. Don't jump in and solve the problem. And I think sometimes leaders jump in and solve others' problems'cause they're not sure what else they should be doing in their job. CEOs do everybody else's job because they're not sure what the CEO ought to be doing. I mentioned a job scorecard earlier. Create a job scorecard for you as the leader of the team, or for you as the CEO. As the CEO. Your job is culture. Your job is to be that internal ambassador, the external ambassador. Your job is probably vision and big strategy for the organization. Your job is making sure you have a strong leadership team. Now each CEO is different. Each leader is different, but you have a job that's different than just helping everybody else do their job Block time in your week to work on your job. It's too easy for you as a leader to get caught up in helping everybody else block time just for you to work on the business block time where you're not gonna jump into other people's day to day. And again, you are the model. If you do that, your leaders will model it. If you start coaching, your leaders will start coaching. If you stop jumping in to solve problems, your leaders will stop jumping in to solve problems. And the result of that is you all have time to work on the business instead of just in the business. So we talked about five blind spots. The Blame Game, Muzzling the Messenger, Accountability Theater, Culture by Accident, and the firefighting fetish. Which of these blind spots might you have? And I say, might you have, because the definition of a blind spot is you don't see it. So talk to others. And find out which problems are you having? Are you having problems where people are blaming, where people aren't being honest, where people are giving status instead of accountability, where people aren't living. The core values, where people are jumping in and solving other people's problems. If they're doing those things and that's a problem, there's a very good chance you're modeling it from the top. These are habits. That keep even great leaders stuck and some of these like jumping in and solving other people's problems. We think that's what makes us a great leader, but it's actually what's hurting our team and our company. Now, you are probably guilty of at least one of these, but the good news is the power to change it is in your hands, the problems you complain about most. Are often the problems you are quietly enabling, but that also means you are the best person equipped to solve them. Go make it happen.