A Book with Bubble Tea (波！） - Give you a different cultural perspective in parenting, business and life

[EP12] How to be a leader at home and at work? |《Replicable Leadership》by Deng Fan

• Meara He • Season 2 • Episode 12

Share episode

What comes to your mind when you think about leadership? If you think leadership is only for concern of those great national or business leaders, and it's a skill that you're either born with or without, then think again. Because leadership is a skill that can be learned and we can certainly improve on, not just only in business, but in every walk of our life. So whether you want to manage your business better, or just want to get your kids to listen to you better, listen in.

Show Notes

Book Title in English: Replicable Leadership
Book Title in Simplified Chinese: 可複製的領導力
Author:   Fan, Deng  樊登


Chapters

(01:33) East Asia this week - Hanshin Tigers
(05:29) Replicable Leadership
(09:53) Author of book - Deng Fan
(12:19) Four most important disciplines that each leaders need to consider
(14:45) Two most practical leadership tools that will transform our leadership quality
(27:55) Three Stages of Effective Leadership



News about Hanshin Tigers: Taipei Times , The Japan Times


Follow us on IG abookwithbubbletea
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@ABookWithBubbleTeaWithMeara
Would you mind giving us some feedback? Click HERE


Music Credit
Composer / Writer / Author: KROTOV VLADYSLAV, IPI: 378003660, MoodMode.

Speaker 1:

What comes to your mind when you think about leadership. If you think leadership is only for concern of those great national or business leaders, and it's a skill that you're either born with or without, then think again, because it's a skill that can be learned and we can certainly improve on, not just only in business, but in every walk of our life. So, whether you want to manage your business better or just want to get your kids to listen to you better, listen in. Welcome to a book with Bubble Tea With your host, mira Hee. Here I share takeaways from East Asian books on parenting, startups and self-growth. Seeking insights beyond the typical English shelf, want to be a better parent and achieve more in life? You are in the right place. Grab your bubble tea and let's dive in. Hi everyone, welcome to a book with Bubble Tea. This is Mira. I hope everyone is having a good week so far. Well, this week my sister told me that I sounded too hyper in my show, which probably is because I'm just overly too excited, but I'll remember to tone it down a little bit more. All right, today we'll be sharing a great book on leadership, but before that, let's just talk about East Asia this week, and we're going to talk about baseball fans.

Speaker 1:

Baseball might not appeal to a lot of European sports fans, but let me tell you it's huge, huge, huge. In East Asia, apart from North America, taiwanese, koreans and Japanese fans are all crazy about baseball. However, when it comes to zillionaires for baseball, no one can beat the Japanese fans of the Hunching Tigers. On November 5th and 6th, 37 fans jumped into the stadium. They jumped into the Tottomboli River in Osaka to celebrate the Hunching Tigers winning the 2023 Japan Series national title. It's being a tradition for Hunching Tiger fans to celebrate their baseball team success by jumping into this Tottomboli River. But don't mistake this river for those like clean rivers flowing down from mountains. No, this Tottomboli River is an artificial canal traveling through the major commercial area of Osaka, japan. When I told my producer about this, she was shocked because she used to live near the Tottomboli River and she was like well, that river clearly is not the cleanest to jump in. So you know, it's not some, it's not a place where it's pleasant. I mean, in my opinion, okay to jump into it, but you know, to Hunching Tigers, that is their tradition, that is how they celebrate their team success. However, you know fans jumping into the Tottomboli River didn't happen too often because Hunching Tigers didn't have that many national titles.

Speaker 1:

This is actually the first time in 38 years that the Hunching Tigers have won the national championship again. Considering the Hunching Tigers is actually the second oldest professional baseball team in Japan, established in 1936, 38 years is an awfully long time. I mean, the last time they won this national title was back in 1985. There's even an urban legend saying that the Hunching Tigers were cursed by the colonial of KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken, because last time, when they won the national title in 1985, zilean fans threw a statue of the KFC colonial into the Tottomboli River because they couldn't find a crowd member who looked like the foreign player on the Hunching Tigers team, randy Bass. So the closest looking one they found was this KFC statue, so they threw it into the river instead. It's widely believed that this disrespectful act cursed the Hunching Tigers from winning another national title. So when the Hunching Tigers finally won the Central League, which is like a qualification to compete for the national series this year, on September 14th, 26 fans jumped into this Tottomboli River over joy. And when the Hunching Tigers finally won the national title again on 5th of November, 37 fans jumped in as well. So O'Shucka Prefecture actually sent around 1,300 police to stop people from jumping in, and then they also tried to rescue those who have jumped into the river. Well, so if there is no police stopping it, clearly there will be a lot more fans jumping in. We'll include the news about Hunching fans jumping into the river in the show notes, if you're interested. You can check it out. All right, that's East Asia this week. Let me know how do sports fans usually celebrate for their team success? And now let's move on to the book today. Today I'm going to share about a book called Replicable Leadership, authored by a Chinese author, den Fan.

Speaker 1:

When we hear someone say, oh, he or she is such a great leader, usually the image we have in our minds were someone like the Iron Lady, magrithatcher or Gandhi, winston Churchill or Steve Jobs. Those people who have very prestige positions in a society were in a business and have gone through a lot of hardships for their nations, were to really transform their businesses, and most of the time they're already dead, because great leadership is such a scarce quality that we only consider dead people can't ever be great leaders and there is always a mysterious fail surrounding it. It's like something you're either born with or without. And when we talk about great leaders, we often go into details of their childhood and then we would say, oh, you know, he did something like that when he was young. It manifests that he was a born leader, like if you read Steve Jobs' biography you could see that he had this reality distortion field kind of skill to talk people into doing things and believing things. That was impossible from a very young age, and then you could be easily convinced, like, right, steve Jobs had that natural talent that made him a great leader afterwards. So it seems like great leadership possessed some qualities, that you're either born with it or without. And this stereotype that leadership is something you either have or don't have from your birth is even worse in East Asia, and often it's believed that leadership can only be trained through hardship and time and there's no formula to really make someone a great leader. It's like you either have it or you don't have it, and even if you do have it, you have to go through a lot in order to refine that quality.

Speaker 1:

In today's book, replicable Leadership, you can clearly see that the author does not subscribe to this line of thinking, thinking leadership is something we are either born with or without is just a bunch of bologna. Right, the author didn't say bologna. Okay, I did, but you get what I mean. Right, it's like saying the only reason that Michael Phelps could be the most decorated Olympian in history, winning all 28 medals, purely because he has the perfect body for swimming. I mean, that might be the reason why he is the most outperforming swimmer in human history, but it's not what made him a swimmer in the first place to be able to compete. You know, same with leadership. There are some natural gifts that make someone an outstanding leader, but there are more foundational elements that we need to learn to even make us a functional leader in the first place.

Speaker 1:

In this book, replicable Leadership is all about how leadership can be learned. The author says leadership is just a toolkit. There is nothing mysterious about it. How to talk to people, how to praise someone, how to critique someone, how to delegate work, how to run your meetings, how to bring innovation. There are tools for all of these. The better we understand them, utilize them, standardize them, the better leaders we can become. And if you ever think, well, I'm just a mom, I'm not a leader. What does this have to do with me, boo-boo, Think again. You may not have staff to lead, but you certainly have your kids to lead, right? You will find that a lot of leadership toolkits are very similar to what we come across in parenting books. After all, whether adults or kids are humans, humans are governed by our human nature and, in fact, the author did say in the book that he also tested the leadership tools he practiced on his son as well, and he's happy with how his son has turned out. And this book Replicable Leadership is all about the key foundational skills with tools that everyone who aspires to be a good leader needs to know and should do.

Speaker 1:

Well, the author of this book is Dun Fun or Fundon Immendering. He is a successful entrepreneur. He has an app. His app is called Fan Book and on the app, he reviews books and teaches business know-how. And by 2023, this app has reached 60 million users, and many of the users are actually senior management or business owners. I mean 60 million users. Can you imagine the scale? It's just beyond me. And it's worth mentioning that he achieved this success while working remotely from his team. He's based in Beijing and the team is in Shanghai, so they actually work from different locations. Prior to his successful entrepreneurship, he was a TV host on China Central Television, which is a TV network owned by the Chinese government, so it's like the most highly regarded TV channel in China.

Speaker 1:

Now let's move on to the question of is leadership possible to learn? And I think we all know the answer. The answer is absolutely yes. The author in the book repeatedly mentions that. You know, having a team and business is like having a team in sports. The objective of the team is not to have a cozy family. Let's enjoy the time together. No, we are here to win right, and in sports, it's the job of the coach to bring out the best quality in each player, you know, to attract the best players, to retain good players and then build up the team and then give them this undivided attention so that the whole team can reach the goal together. And the coach in sports is equivalent to the coach, which is the leader in business.

Speaker 1:

Why is it important, then, to learn about this leadership? Well, because leadership has a lot to do with management, management, task management, your products and management of people. Right, because the essence of management is getting things done through others and involves a lot of skills if you want to do it successfully In country to the general practice of leaders often focus on getting things done. The essence of leadership actually revolves around people management. It's all about people.

Speaker 1:

According to the author, there are four most important disciplines that each leader needs to consider. They are first, building trust in the team. Second, building a delegable team. Like a team, you can delegate things to them to get done. And third, building a system to manage the team. Fourth, building your team's culture. And each and every single one concerns people, if you think about it. Why need trust in the team? Because trust is the most valuable social capital between people, right. If you want to ensure any smooth interaction with anyone, you need to have trust as your social capital.

Speaker 1:

Why building a delegable team? Because if anyone any leaders ever want to get things done through others, they need to have a dependable team that can execute things when it's required. Right. Why building a system? Because we, as human beings, we need people to guide us to ensure that we are doing the right thing. Everyone in the company is doing the right things and do things correctly. And why build a corporate culture matters? Because culture guides people's action at a subconscious level. It makes the team act together in sync, as one. So, if you think about it, managing people is really the centerpiece for leadership. The better we understand human nature, the better we will be at managing people right, because we will be able to identify the correct variables that can truly make a difference in the team and pushing the team forward to reach the desirable outcomes.

Speaker 1:

In terms of how to identify the correct variables, this is not the topic of this book, but I just think this is quite interesting and when we read into different leaders' biography, we get a glimpse of their thinking behind their leadership styles. Like what do they truly care about? Like for Elon Musk, right In his five-step design process, you can really get a sense. His perspective is all about getting to the core, getting to the bottom. Do not believe in whatever people tell you. Really test it, challenge it until it's proven true. So I think that shapes his leadership style. But you know, this is something for us to continue to further improve ourselves. But for this book it's about the foundational course, and now we are going to talk about two most practical leadership tools covering the book that will instantly transform our leadership quality.

Speaker 1:

The author discusses many useful and practical tools in the book. Some are internationally recognized, like David Allen's GTD, get Things Done and Edward the Bono's Six Thinking Hat, so they are great stuff. Definitely recommend anyone interested to check out more. And here I want to share about two tools from the book and that really make me think and feels like I learn a lot from it. The first one is actually about how to give feedback.

Speaker 1:

You might think like what, what did you just said? Giving feedback? Is that any important? And the answer is yes, of course, giving feedback is very important. Why is that? Because human beings, right, talking about human nature again, we, by nature, we value what other people think about us. We care about others' opinions about us. Doesn't matter whether we're in Stone Age or in the modern day. We are still the same, right. We naturally care about others' opinions about us In work, at home, in society, in neighborhood, doesn't matter. However, knowing this, companies usually are really suck at giving feedback, right. We often make these mistakes. The companies often make these mistakes, right. The companies often just don't give feedback at all. Don't know why. Probably just no one care, right.

Speaker 1:

Or companies do give feedback but give it very late, like once a year in your annual appraisal, or you know the feedback you give are often skewed towards one type of it, like it's either too many positives or too many negatives, right? Anyone fancy working for the devil wears product right so harsh. Or finally, when you know when the leaders, where the companies, actually give their staff feedback but no one knows, like what is that feedback for? Because it's so unspecific. You think your staff knows, but actually they don't. And I definitely understand this well because my husband is a master of this right. Like when he criticizes me, I know, like why he's upset, but when he says like oh, I have the best wife in the world, it often makes me think, like what did I actually do to deserve this? Because I have completely no clue. If I don't have a clue, I don't really know how to do it again, how to repeat the same positive feedback loop, right, I don't know. So he just very good at leaving me wonder.

Speaker 1:

Given feedback effectively is crucial. The author emphasized that if you want to build each staff member's confidence, ignite their drive to excel and foster a team to really strives towards the common goals and excellence, you must master the art of feedback and the habit of giving too late, too little, too skewed and too vague is sabotaging our team's potential. So how do we give feedback correctly, then? Here are the author's tips. Tip one feedback needs to be instant. Instant feedback is the best way to build mutual trust between you and your staff. It makes your message very clear to them and then avoids your staff feeling confused and it gives them instant gratification, and it's a best way to pump them up.

Speaker 1:

Tip two golden ratio four to one. If you want the ultimate team performance with harmony, you cannot skew too much towards one type of the feedback. You need to strike a balance between the positive feedback and the negative feedback. The author says the best proportion is four positive feedback to one negative feedback, because every time when you give a negative feedback, it's like withdrawing your social capital of trust from the piggy bank between you and your staff. You need to make sure that you have enough balance if you want to do so effectively. Otherwise, people might feel you are being unfair or too harsh, or you don't understand the situation. You don't get them. Once people think you don't get them, they may misinterpreted your intention or what you have to say, and this will cause disharmony in your team. So before you say anything negative, make sure you have enough balance left in your piggy bank.

Speaker 1:

Tip three positive feedback builds confidence, whilst negative feedback grows capacity. These two types of feedback work differently and you cannot ignore one or the other. You need both of them if you want to build a strong team. You give positive feedback to build their confidence, proactiveness and believe in their ability, and then you give negative feedback to challenge them so that they continuously to grow. You need both to work together.

Speaker 1:

Tip number four feedback needs to be specific. We talk about it already, so don't make the same mistake like my husband. Be specific about why you compliment them or why do you criticize them. Okay give ambiguous feedback causes confusion and might make your staff attribute the wrong cause to it, which is not what you intend to do, right? Tip number five feedback time is the best timing to realign your staff's objective with the companies. Seize every opportunity to give feedback to also realign your staff with the company's vision. Reinforce why certain actions are beneficial or why certain actions are detrimental, so don't waste it.

Speaker 1:

Tip number six nothing can replace your personal feedback. It's a good idea to incorporate a structure way of feedback giving like you know, commission system or a KPI matrix, you know to give instant feedback, but to any staff, nothing can replace a personal acknowledgement from their superiors. So don't let your system design in fooling you, thinking you don't need to give any personal comments anymore. That is not true. Your feedback still matters a lot to your staff. Tip number seven give negative feedback smartly.

Speaker 1:

Sandwich method is the common practice, but it might not be the most effective one, according to the author, because people often miss the point. They either focus too much on the positive side you say and forget about your true intention, or they focus like too much on the negative side and just push out whatever positive you want to say to make it a nice sandwich. According to the author, there is a better way to give negative feedback. The author shares his four step negative feedback process flow in the book. It makes giving and receiving negative feedback more constructive and easier. So now we're going to talk about this four step negative feedback giving process flow.

Speaker 1:

Step one get your facts correct. Giving negative feedback it's all about being factual. It's never about that person but about what happened, what's been done. So make sure, before you have your conversation, collect your facts, okay, and when you are stating it, make sure it's not about your opinions or your perspective, but about the facts. Like if you want to say to someone, hey, why are you being late, you do not say hey, you have been late often, but rather say I've noticed you've been late on Wednesday for 10 minutes and on Tuesday for 15 minutes. Do your homework and be factual. Step two message to conduct the actual talk. How do you have the actual conversation with your staff about something they didn't do so well? Remember to use the BIC method.

Speaker 1:

Bic stands for behavior impact consequence. So you start with their behavior. Right, like I mentioned in the previous example, be factual about it. Next impact Be clear about how their behavior impact others. For instance, being late disrupt the meeting and then you disturb the participants and the host of the meeting. Right, and they themselves also missed out important points of discussion. So it wastes everybody's time. Last is the consequence Discuss the long-term implications of their actions. Like colleagues might view them as unreliable, which could affect their reputation and annual appraisals, bic lays a groundwork for a constructive conversation about what happened, what are the impacts and what might be the consequence. Right, and after your BIC, now it's time to discuss methods to change their behaviors and get your staff to brainstorm how they can possibly change, to make a different behavior, and encourage them to try out. It's them having to desire to make a change to foster that change.

Speaker 1:

Usually for small matters, you can end the process of negative feedback given here. You don't need to go further, right. So, after your staff has thought about how they can change their behavior, that's good enough. But if it's something that concerns the entire company or it's at a larger scale, then you want to do the following two steps too. So step three make an actual action plan to make the change happen, and you need some planning, some proper discussion about that. And the last step, step four, is to follow up. Leaders need to follow up frequently, otherwise your staff will naturally abandon it without you even noticing it. So here are the points on feedback Make sure your feedbacks are instant. Make sure you strike the right ratio between positive and negative feedbacks. Use both type of feedbacks wisely, be specific about your feedback and, you know, realign your staff's objective with the companies during the time of feedback giving and do not let any system design to fool you in thinking you don't need to give personal feedback. Your personal feedback still matters a lot. And last but not least, give your feedback, especially negative one, smartly. Okay, these are the tips on how to give feedback. And now, moving on to the second useful tool, which is also the last tool that I'll be sharing in this episode, which is to transform obligation into your staff's personal desires.

Speaker 1:

The author says you can never wake up someone who is pretending to be asleep. It's so humorous, but it's so true. How do you wake up someone who doesn't want to be woken up in the first place? It's impossible. But the author says so many employees are like that. They only perform because you push them to right. The company pushed them to do so. And even if they do perform, they either do it very slowly or very unwillingly. This lack of internal drive just means they won't move until they're being pushed, and it's just so frustrating. The only way to truly solve this issue it's not through having more rules, having more incentives. These do not address the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is they don't think they're working for themselves. They don't see the benefits for themselves working in that company. As leaders, we need to find a way to really ignite that spark with them them so they know why they are doing this things, for they are doing it for their own benefit. How do we do that? How can we achieve it? The author came up with what he called a three-stage rocket management system Four, five, four, five, five, four, three, two, one shoo. My son is so addicted to a rocket these days. All right.

Speaker 1:

Stage one as leaders, we need to strengthen the notion that each staff member is working for themselves. The knowledge, the experiences, the network, the game through working at this company is all theirs. No one can take away from them. But how much do they utilize this opportunity of gaining things for themselves? It's up to them. We need to make them realize that and then make sure they are encouraged to optimize the opportunities they have in hand. Stage two manage under one common objective. Motivate your team so that they see the company's objective as their own Companies. Realizing goal is like them realizing their goals. If you want to know more about objective setting, it's recommended to check out episode 11 on OGSM. There is more detailed explanation about criterias for setting objective for your company or for the things you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Stage 3 Delegate your power. If you aim to boost your team's motivation and drive, you must give them the appropriate amount of power to make decisions and do their things right. You cannot expect them to take ownership while micromanaging everything for them. It's like telling your teenage kid now you need to own up, now you need to take responsibility because you are an adult, now you need to decide things for yourself. But you also tell them like oh, but then I want to decide what clothes you should be wearing today. Oh, you need to listen to me, you know, you need to wear a skirt, you need to wear this color? Boo-hoo, that doesn't make sense. That's just ridiculous. Right? If you want them to step up, then you need to provide them with the right amount of autonomy, right amount of power to get things done. The author says that this three-stage rocket management system is the most effective way to wake up a sleepy step and truly to transfer your mediocre team to an 8++ super power team. The author further says everyone has unlimited potential. The key is how you unlock it. It's under the job as leaders to unlock and ignite in each single step of ours. Now we are on the conclusion.

Speaker 1:

For a long time, I actually had no clue of how to be a leader at all. I mean at all. I either tried to do things like by myself or you know, I was just completely clueless about setting up rules or systems to manage my team's performance. I didn't even know how to check profit and loss. The concept of getting things done through others was so foreign to me, and I certainly had no clue that this captured the essence of what management is all about, and the design of the entire management system should be revolving around these two concepts, right, these two core aspects of it, like how to get things done and how to do it through other people effectively.

Speaker 1:

However, let's not confuse management with leadership, because management is just a part of the leadership. There is another important element of the leadership. That is on how do leaders win hearts of their subordinates and gain their loyalty so they are willing to follow the leaders voluntarily. The author also touches on this, actually in the book, but due to the time constraint of the episode, I didn't have time to cover it. Plus, I think it's a bit advanced for a leadership beginner like me, so if you're interested, you should definitely check it out.

Speaker 1:

But nonetheless, I think it's still very useful for me to think about this gaining trust and winning loyalty thing from the analogy of piggy bank. Right, we talked about it, even though I don't know what exactly I should do to win the loyalty from my subordinates, I can always think about what I should do in order to deposit More trust in the social capital fund with my staff right? Am I withdrawing it or am I saving it? Am I depositing it? And how much balance I have left in my piggy bank. I think this will really stick with me for a long time, not just only at work, but at home as well, with my kids. You know I can almost hear my daughter telling me like mommy, do you want to check your piggy bank before yelling at me.

Speaker 1:

I hope the inside share today can help us all become better leaders, whether at work or at home with our children. You know we are all leaders in our respective domains and we can all help those who are on the same boat with us to unlock their maximum potentials and to achieve outstanding together. That's it for today. I hope you enjoy it. Please do subscribe to our podcast, leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us some comment. We would love to read them, and we have also included a feedback form in our show note. So if you would like to let us know more about you, which we would really love to do that. Please do fill up the form and don't forget to check out our Instagram as well. We have some biteable size take away from each book. All right, that's for today. Let's continue reading, learning and sip our bubble tea together, and I will see you next time. Bye.