I Answer AI’s Questions On How To Be An Effective Leader.

Summary

In this episode of the Earn Your Title podcast, Danny Dumas explores the challenges of leadership, particularly in the context of empowering teams, navigating middle management, delivering feedback, embracing change, balancing individual and team goals, and mastering communication. Drawing from personal experiences and insights, he emphasizes the importance of empathy, adaptability, and clear communication in effective leadership.

Takeaways

• Empowering teams involves allowing individuals to learn from their experiences.
• Setting clear expectations is crucial for team development.
• Leaders must be open to learning from their team members.
• Being a buffer between management and staff is a key leadership role.
• Delivering feedback with empathy can foster a positive work environment.
• Change is inevitable, and leaders must embrace it.
• Understanding individual goals helps align them with team objectives.
• Effective communication requires clarity and repetition.
• Assuming misunderstanding can improve communication effectiveness.
• Leadership is about guiding individuals towards success.

Chapters

00:00 Empowering and Developing Teams
04:07 Navigating Middle Management Challenges
11:55 Embracing Change and Technology
19:53 Mastering Communication in Leadership

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Transcript

0:02

Check one, two, check one, two, check one, two. Welcome back my friend. you are new here, let's start over again. Hey, welcome back my friend. Thank you for coming... Sorry again. Hey, welcome back my friend or if you're new here, this is the Earn Your Title podcast and my name is Danny Dumas. You're in the right place if you want to become a better husband, father, and leader. Today we are talking about leadership. This is the third part of a three-part series where I ask AI what its biggest challenges as so far I've done parent and I've done husband and today I'm going to do leader. So I reached out to Google Gemini and I asked it. I said, you're a middle manager, you are leading an organization or a group of people. What are your biggest challenges? And these are the answers. And it was interesting, the first time I said, you're a husband who is a leader. And when I added the word husband and leader, it gave me almost the exact same questions as I did for husband, leading a family. So today I'm going to focus on leading at work or inside of an organization. But it came up with a few things that are very common. So this is my take on what it takes to be a great leader in a workplace. And so one of the first challenges that the uh AI presented to me was, how do I empower and develop my team? How do I balance the uh need to give support, but also to allow individuals to learn from their own experience? Great question, Google Gemini. The way I do this is I I find the people in my organization and I have a very fairly small organization that I'm leading. It's about 13 guys. ah It could be up to 30 guys depending on the role for the day. But I'm looking for someone and I'm looking for the guy who's wanting to go to the next spot. He's wanting to take the leadership role. And so for us, that's going to be a lieutenant. I have a firefighter who's supposed to become a lieutenant or a lieutenant who wants to become a captain, is my job. So like my replacement. And I think it's really important that even you have to let go of the ability to have things done perfectly and you have to give someone else the chance to try and to realize that it's going to be different than what you did. And in your mind, it probably isn't going to be as good and that's okay. Now you have to set expectations of what is okay. can't like in my role, it can't be dangerous, right? I can't let these guys make dangerous decisions that potentially without practice, right? in my role, we're gonna make dangerous decisions, but I don't wanna put someone new in a position. So it could be leading a training, it could be helping to write a policy, something along those lines. And then I think it's really important that you communicate your expectations. Hey, I'm gonna have you run this training, by the end of the training, I want you to, I want the guys to be able to do this, this, and this. I don't care how you do it. And by you removing the pass or fail of doing it my way, I think you give the encouragement, the motivation to be successful. And then I think there's something that doesn't get talked about very much is when they're done, a compliment, however it turns out, hey, that was good. maybe if you have, depending on the type of relationship, I'm like, hey, that wasn't terrible. Letting them know there's room for improvement, letting them know how I would have done it differently in the sense of. you you got to the same, you got to the same goal. I would have done it differently, but you did this. And then I'll ask sometimes like, you know, why did you decide to do like that? Teach me, because maybe they've got a way that they're going to do something, a way that they think through the process that I need to adapt. And I think as a true leader, one thing that you need to know is that you don't know everything. And that they're in, not only that you do not know everything, but there is 100 % guaranteed chance that something you're doing is inefficient, maybe not completely accurate. And to know that, to go into all these situations going, I can learn something from this new guy. I can learn something from the way they do that. And that I can't be right 100 % of time. Anytime you've done a job for a significant period of time. challenges of doing a job for a long time is that you definitely have a way. And that way is obviously produce results and those results have gotten you promoted and put into position of leadership. But you do need to realize that you could be wrong or maybe that you could be better. And I just think having that open mindset is super important. So that is one way ah that uh I think I just go about leader and supporting that next generation. Now, many of us will find ourselves in the middle management area where maybe we're not the CEO, we're not the junior manager, we're in between. And so one of the challenges of being a leader is being an effective buffer between leadership and the support or the working force. And I really, like for me, I really enjoy this part because we have a mission, we have goal, we're driven. And for us, our bosses are chiefs. And there's a lot of respect there. And so in the business world that are the CEOs and they have a vision and they have a direction they're going. And some of the things that they want us to do are wrong and or maybe not the most effective. And you know that. So you get to stand between these two forces. And, know, I like to think that I buffer or maybe even translate what the what the upper management is telling me. And I like to convert it or translate it so the worker understands. So there's two things that I think you can do as an effective leader. One is truly understand the intent of your CEO or your boss. And then sometimes the directive that you're giving is not actually what they're saying. you know, it could be, you know, for us at work, we have a dress code, we wear a uniform. And we as firemen, like to wear t-shirts as much as possible. We want to be comfortable. And the chief has a look that they're going for and they want us to wear, you know, some departments wear button-up, almost like dress shirts. Some of them wear polos. And if you give a fireman a choice, he will wear a t-shirt every single day. And in the winter we're going to wear a sweater every single day. And the chiefs want something and the firefighters want something else. So you go to the chief, chief, what is your, what is your goal with? mandating that we wear these poles because you know in my opinion was I've never showed up to a house to do CPR or your house is on fire and I go hey underneath that bunker gear do you have a t-shirt or do you have a pole so I totally understand the you know the fireman side but I also understand the chief side he doesn't want his guy showing up to go grocery shopping or to a public event with a ratty t-shirt with a hole in the armpit like I get it so by getting being able to translate chief are you really saying that every single where we go you underneath our gear when no one can see it. You want us to wear a polo shirt? Are you just saying that when we go out in public I want you to look good and so that's when we should be wearing our polo or dress blues. And so you go to the guys listen the chief really doesn't care what's underneath our bunker gear. Wear our t-shirt, no big deal. The problem is is you push it and you go to the grocery store and you go to public events with that nasty t-shirt. Well, throw it away. So how about we just make a conscious decision as professionals to look good when we're in public and look like we're ready to do the job, even if that's in a t-shirt, it's clean, it's not wrinkled, you so you get the chance to be that buffer. And I think I want you to always be thinking what's best for my guys and what's best for the organization and how can I align both those so that we're going in the right direction. And that's the power of leadership, you know, is to truly think of both sides and really to understand both sides. And it's really helpful. It's a skill that's challenging. But I totally think you can do it. One of the uh third challenging thing as a leader is delivering difficult feedback with empathy. This is challenging. If you're a leader, you're going to experience a moment where your group fails, they violate a policy, something they do, and you're gonna have an uncomfortable conversation. Step one is if you are angry about it, that is not the time to have the conversation. It will be bad. Guarantee it even if you're right even if you're within your rights of management, you know if you feel like your Your anger has got to a level where you just can't control it and you want to be mad angry yell scream You have to stop and do it another time You know this goes with leading your kids if you're if your kids ever make you mad that is not the time for discipline It's not the time for the conversation. It's the time for you to walk away. So we can't discipline We can't have hard conversations when we're mad. That's step one Step two is to try to understand what they were thinking when they did what they were doing and try to understand the reason. Now maybe there isn't one. Maybe they were just being lazy, but you need to understand that. Is it because they're, you know, they're lazy because they've got a six month old baby at home and they're up all night and they're exhausted and they're tired and maybe there's a little room for grace. Maybe there's a, you know, understanding, hey, what if you gave an extra hour in the morning, something to help them. get through the problem they're currently having, I want you to understand it before you give the discipline. Now, this probably needs to come from conversation, but it's something that you can do. And then when it's time to have a difficult conversation, and so for us, for me, that would be disciplinary action, like we were writing somebody, getting them in trouble and putting it on paper. You directly say, you violated this policy, or you did this wrong, or I gave you these instructions and you failed here, failed to perform, whatever it is. You say, you ask them why again, even though you probably already had this conversation, and then you say, this is what I want. I'm not mad at you, but this can't happen again. Be very forceful. ah If it's a policy, show them the policy. Do you understand the policy? Give them very simple consequences. If you do this again, and then you explain, listen, discipline. can be a really good thing. It's the only way that I have to officially help you know that you're going in an opposite direction from this organization. And if you don't want to continue going in the opposite direction from this organization, no big deal, but you don't get to stay inside the organization. So for me, a lot of times it's the safety thing. like, man, my job is to make sure you go home to your family safely. That might mean that you don't go home from this job. because it's too dangerous for you because you're violating these policies and I care for you. I've had to write up some of my closest friends at work. It's a strange atmosphere because we live with these guys. We experience really bad things. There's some trauma-binding going on. And then on a day I'm gonna have to phone my office and tell them they're messing up. But I want them to know that I care about them. And I'm writing them up because I want to give them a plan towards success. I want to give them a plan towards moving. in the right direction. And that's what discipline is. If you're doing these hard talks, you're, you know, maybe it's not even formal discipline, but they, they kind of dropped the ball on a project. Like, listen, I think you're going in a great, great direction. I think you're, you're going to do great things. This was not it. This is, and then this is how I'm going to help you. We're going to have more meetings. We're going to have, you know, I want you to send something to, for, for me to review it. Realize that if you go back to, if you ever read the book, Extreme Ownership by Jack O'Willing, If they messed up and they're your subordinates, you should take a little bit of responsibility or maybe all the responsibility. Let them know, hey, I didn't communicate my expectations clearly enough. I will do better. And if you can take that humble approach with these conversations, most of the time they're apologizing way ahead of time. They feel bad if they truly are following you that they let you down and you don't have to have it very often. If you're consistently disciplined somebody or having these really hard conversations, there's two things that happen. One, they don't care at all and they're not gonna change and they probably don't even be part of your organization. Or two, you're not truly leading. They don't see empathy in your life. They don't think you actually care. So you need to reflect yourself. You're talking to someone more than once or twice a year. You need to reflect as, am I leading? And the way you know you're leading is if you turn around and they're following you without you pushing them. I know every organization is different. There's some jobs where you really are just a supervisor and you don't have an opportunity to lead. But try your best. I think there is room in just about everything to be a true leader, not just a supervisor. And that's definitely the better way to go. Another challenge you have as a leader, and this is not necessarily with your organization, but it's with you and your mindset, is that you're hesitant to change. I get it. Life is coming at us so fast. know, and we'll talk about technology because I think it's easy to verbalize, but I work with some leaders that work at my position or maybe one below that are so hesitant to change when it comes to technology. AI, using a smartphone, all these things. And I'll ask them like, know, why? Like, I just don't know how it works. These are smart people. These are people who, you know, they've figured out very complex things in their life. They are good at their job. And so if this is you, One, want you to realize that no matter how much you hate change, it is going to happen. It is happening today, it will continue to happen tomorrow, and on into the future. And it's not an awesome life to live where you are constantly afraid of change. And you guys, I'm not afraid of change. I just think it worked better before. It doesn't matter if it worked better before, because we're moving on. You know, I go back to the phone analogy. I've got a friend, he has a flip. He refuses to use a smartphone. But what's funny is because he doesn't, I'm pretty sure it's because he doesn't want, he wants everyone to know that the old ways were better. He has a work phone with a smartphone. And he actually has a side business. He has three phones. He's got an Android, an iPhone, and a flip phone. The flip phone is his phone, but his work phone is an iPhone, or Android, and his side business is a work phone. Or excuse me, is an iPhone. But he's like, I just don't know how to use it. if this is you, if you're the holdout to technology I want you to know and I'm going to be kind critical with you here there's four year olds that know how to use an iPhone you know why? because there's people with PhD's that have designed the user interface to make it logical and intuitive and if you can't figure it out it's because you're not trying and you don't have to do this but then you're going to probably get it Frustrated for the rest of foreseeable future if you're gonna stay in the workplace Where you're required to communicate with people to interact with the outside world through the internet You need to learn how to change and if you can learn how to change you can learn how to use anything any piece of technology You know AI is scary, but I heard a great statement that AI is not going to take all of our jobs What AI is going to do is the person using AI is going to take your job It just, is what it is. And we have to learn to embrace change in general. isn't, I'm talking about technology because it's easy to focus on, but it can really be anything. And I think one thing that's helpful when you start thinking about change is to don't think of it as like, I'm good or bad at this. Think of it as I'm experimenting with this. An experiment, you can't get it wrong. If the outcome is, is negative, you just learned it in some way that something doesn't work. You didn't fail. So, Don't be so hesitant to change. The next topic is managing, excuse me, the next topic, managing individual needs within a team's goal. This is a tough one because you obviously have the larger goals of the organization, but then you have the smaller goals of the individual. And the first part to being a successful leader when it comes to team goals versus individual goals is one is to understand truly what the individual's goals are. You know, are they, in this job to move up as far as possible? Are they in this job to provide a good income for the family so they can go home? And if you can find that first, it makes it a whole lot easier to manage their goals inside of the team goals or organizational goals. You know, if you know someone's wanting to move up as far as possible, that's the guy that you're going to start to groom or girl to become that leadership position. And you're probably going to get much more effort out of them or you're probably going to get a better effort out of them if inside of small goals inside of the team you give them the leadership position where you might have someone that just wants to stay where they're at. That's okay. You need to have shooting stars and you need have rock stars. Rock stars are good at their job. They're going to stay there for a long time and they're going to just perfect it. The shooting stars are going to take off and they're going to leave this organization at some point. You need to put them in the right spot so that their skills, their their desires are lined up with the team goals. I think a lot of times we fail inside of team goals because we don't take into effect the individual's goals. And we're just plugging in pieces without truly knowing. So you uh need to know what your team wants out of the job they're currently doing. And I think that goes a long ways to improving overall success in the team and as the individual. Another one, and this will be the last one, is challenges with communication. I've had a whole podcast on just communication and uh I've told a story and I'll tell it again because I think it's very relevant. I once had a fire and we had most of the fire knocked down and it was an old couple who had got out of the house thankfully and they went to their neighbor's house and I knew they were over there so I walked over I said hey Mr. Mr. Smith I'm you know sorry for a rough day I know this is tough having a house fire we've got the fire out. You're not going to be able to stay in the home tonight. There's too much damage. Is there anything out of the home I can give you?" And Mr. Smith said, you know what? Yeah, actually my wife needs her medication and she also has a really hard time getting off the toilet. If you could grab her toilet seat, that would be helpful. And then he was talking about one of those that are kind of raised up above the toilet so you don't have to sit down as far. I said, no problem. Well, I had a rookie with me, a brand new guy. And when it comes to fire service, seniority is awesome. So I decided I'm gonna go get the medication. This guy's name is Brandon. I Brandon, go get the toilet seat for these nice people. So I go into the kitchen where the medication is. I grab it all. And as I'm coming out, he comes out with the actual toilet seat that was bolted to the toilet. He goes, here you go. I said, what's that? He goes, you told me to get the toilet seat. He had went in and saw the first bathroom and ripped the toilet seat off the toilet. And it just made me laugh because that's exactly what I asked them to do. I asked them to get me the toilet seat. When it comes to organization, if there's going to be failure, it's going to be in communication. And there's a few ways that I've learned that I need to communicate better. One is to assume that nobody understands what I said the first time. So I'm going to say it, then I'm going to say it in a different way. And then I'm going to say it and ask for feedback if it's really important. If it's a vital piece of information, I need to put it out there one way. I need to put it out there another way. And then I need them to tell me what they think I said. And then I need to repeat that process, especially if it's like a deadline or something down the road, if you're communicating plans for a future project, say it, say it a different way, then ask them to give you feedback. And then, you know, when you're a week out, you need to confirm, hey, we're doing this on this date, this time. What time are you going to be there? And that has been better. You also need to realize no matter how hard you try, someone's not going to understand. And that's okay. That is the challenge of communication. It's really easy to get frustrated with somebody when you've said it and you know you've said it over and over and over again. But you have to realize communication is hard. Communication is challenging. People speak just different languages when it comes to what they understand. And so I just... I just pretty much assume nobody's gonna understand what I'm saying and if I'm going to mess up in communication it's because I over communicated and communicated in so many different ways that maybe I confuse them by saying it a different way. That's what I'm going for. Because it's hard. Communication is so hard. But it's something you should practice. And just assume, I try to assume that I'm going to be misunderstood, not that they're gonna misunderstand me, if that makes sense, so that it's my responsibility. Because it's easy to put it out there and just say something and when they don't get it, just get frustrated. Why on earth would you do that? And the other thing, I was recently, I think I talked about this in podcast a little while ago, another captain talking about telling somebody to do something and then he said, he was trying to follow up with good communication, he said, do you understand? They said, yeah, and they came back and it was wrong. He's like, it was so frustrating and I am like, yeah dude, you asked the wrong question. I said, you said you understand and they did understand what they thought. you meant. But they obviously didn't think you didn't they didn't know what you meant because they did something different. You can't just say do you understand. You have to say do you understand that I want you to be at this meeting with this report at this time. That's more clear-cut communication. So overdo it. It's really important. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have I'd love a actual written review with words on it. It would be awesome. So wherever you listen to podcast. If you could do that for me, I would really appreciate it. My name is Danny Dumas. This is the Under Title Podcast and I will talk to you later. Bye.