Sherpa Leadership Podcast
Welcome to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, where we help you climb higher in life and leadership. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or leading a team, this podcast is designed to give you practical leadership tools, frameworks, and real-world insights to help you grow.
Sherpa Leadership Podcast
Episode 7 - Struggle Creates Strength: Why Great Leaders Don't Rescue
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The most profound leadership paradox might be this: your desire to help others can actually harm their development. In this thought-provoking exploration of engaging and developing team members, Reed Moore and Chase Williams unpack why well-intentioned leadership behaviors often backfire.
When you consistently solve problems for your team, you're unconsciously sending a devastating message: "I don't believe you're capable." Similarly, when you remove struggle from their professional experience, you deprive them of the very resistance that builds strength. Think of it like weight training – if someone else lifts the weights for you, your muscles never develop. The same principle applies to professional growth.
Today we explore three common leadership pitfalls: fixing problems for others, removing necessary struggle, and micromanaging. They contrast these with empowering approaches like being genuinely present, creating ownership opportunities, and allowing the right amount of struggle. One particularly powerful insight involves reframing stress as "stretch" – recognizing that appropriate challenges build capacity rather than diminish it.
The conversation culminates in a compelling vision for leadership: "Don't be a hero; be a guide. Share your lessons, not just your outcomes. Create a culture where learning, failing, and trying again is normal and celebrated." This philosophy doesn't just develop stronger team members – it creates future leaders who understand how to develop others in turn.
Ready to transform how you engage and develop your team? Visit SherpaConsultingGroup.com for action guides and resources to help you implement these principles. Remember, leadership is a journey, and every step matters.
Disempowering Leadership Habits
Speaker 2If your heart is to empower, encourage, develop, other people, but your actions show up as disempowering, you have an issue.
Speaker 3Am I okay with people making mistakes in my organization? Am I okay with the people that I lead making mistakes? And, by the way, the answer needs to be yes.
Speaker 1Absolutely. You're listening to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, your guide to climbing higher in life and leadership. I'm Reid Moore and, alongside Chase Williams, we're here to help you break through obstacles, scale your potential and lead with greater clarity and purpose.
Speaker 2Hey everybody, welcome back to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, reed Moore, along with my co-host, chase Williams. What's up, man? Hey, man, it's good to see you again. Glad to be back. Yes, so, as always, guys, we're here to help you climb higher in life and leadership, and we're so excited to be able to be on this journey with you and to talk about today's topic, which is another part of our I Serve Leadership model. You'll be able to find all the information in the action guide to be able to help you go along with us in your leadership journey. As always, like, subscribe and share this with somebody that you care about who is on a leadership journey. All right, chase. What's the? What's the topic of the day?
Speaker 3Well, today, as part of our I Serve model, we're going to be talking about engaging and developing others. Right, and the keys to doing that well, some of the things to avoid in order to do that well, because, as you might imagine, leadership requires succeeding through others and working along with people. So we have to engage with those people and we have to develop those people, and I think we want to do that well. That's my hallucination, yes, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2So let's start. Let's start with, let's start with the things that maybe we don't want to do and they can be a little bit counterintuitive, right? So my deepest passion probably in leadership is this one, which is engaging and developing others. I love it, and one of the things that I've experienced over time is a lot of things that we can do as leaders with the best of intentions can disempower people, can disengage people and actually can really inhibit their development, right.
Speaker 3So we want to talk about that as things to maybe look out for. So you're saying that there are sometimes negative consequences to how we might engage and develop others that we want to be careful around Absolutely.
Speaker 2Absolutely so. One of those items is actually fixing things for them, right? So what happens when we're in business with really talented people is talented people. They want to solve problems, they want to have a challenge, they want to make an impact, and one of the things that I found in my leadership that's not the prettiest of things is that if I want to help and empower somebody, I have a tendency to try to take things off of their plate Right, or try to get up in the mix, and there's always the mix of our own personal leadership dysfunction whenever we engage any of these items in the ISERV model and one of mine happens to be this desire to help, yeah, right, yep, and as a result, it creates some negative consequences.
Speaker 3Yeah. So this can be a little tricky, as you said, because the heart is helping someone, it's adding value to someone, serving them, guiding them to a different level of success, whatever that might sound like. And what that can cause us to do occasionally is kind of jump to solving someone's problem or telling them what they should do in order to solve their problem, and on the surface it's like, well, what's wrong with that? So tell us, if I'm leading you and I'm constantly like I'm fixing your issue or I'm giving you the exact method or options for solving your problem, why is that negative or why could that be negative.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think there's two things that make that kind of a negative experience for somebody that you're leading. Number one is just flat out, what it communicates. What it communicates without intention is you're not capable, and so we can communicate this to people in our organizations and we can also communicate this to our children. Mel Robbins wrote a book called Let them Theory, and my wife, rebecca, has been helping other ladies specifically around this. But when parents come to the rescue of their kids over and over and over again and that could be something like them dealing with severe anxiety, it could be them dealing with sleep issues, it can be dealing with things on like an athletic field when the parent comes to the rescue, what they're telling their kids are I don't believe that you're capable of solving this for yourself yeah Right, yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2Right and um, and that's a. That's a real problem because in kids they don't necessarily have the the frustration with the leadership, so for them it shows up just purely as stunting their growth. Yep, right In in leading capable people. It can show up as both yeah Right, which is very, very disempowering. And so if your heart is to empower, encourage, develop other people, but your actions show up as disempowering, you have an issue.
Speaker 3Yeah, and so there's a couple of practical things to consider here, right, because, like you said, you can accidentally be stunting someone's growth and development by answering their question all the time, solving their problem all the time, and so what I would encourage you to do because, by the way, like when, uh, add value to someone or you answer someone's question and you become the source, there's a little bit of dopamine hit that happens, it feels so good, it does feel so good, right, like it literally does right, like physiologically even right. So you. So you want to be aware of that, because the idea is, if you thought that you feeling good was legitimately stunting someone's development, it might cause you to pause just for a second, right, right, and that's what I would actually encourage you to do before you solve someone's problem, before you answer every question they have for you, before you rescue a situation they might be in or something that they're struggling through, just pause for a second. And the second thing you can do is ask a great question. And the second thing you can do is ask a great question, and sometimes the question can be hard to ask because it's ultimately like putting the ball back in their court.
Speaker 3Yes, right, so if you come to me and say, hey, chase, I have this problem, what should I do? And my urge because it's going to feel good is to be like oh, reed, I know what you should do. I've experienced this before. You should do this, yes, what I want to do is pause and ask a question that might sound something like well, hey, reed, let me ask you first what options have you considered? Yes, right, yeah.
Speaker 3And and here's the tricky part about this, I want to be candid um, it might feel to the other person at first, like, uh, you're withholding from them, right, because they, they, they might think you already know the answer and you might absolutely. And so there's this little bit of tension that can occur. That's like I came to you with a question, I know you know the answer, and now you're answering me with a question, yeah, like why don't you want to be my easy button, right? And so there's, there can be a little tension there that you just have to, like, navigate through, because, again, the idea is we're empowering someone, right, we're helping them think differently, we're helping them continue to own that this is their challenge, that we want to support them in working through, right, but we don't want to work it through for them right, yeah, so from from like a coaching perspective, when you engage in that moment, there is there's, there's an opportunity to to, to actually take more time, which is very, again, counterintuitive.
Allowing Mistakes and Failure
Speaker 2Because the issue is is that, if probably the second issue with this is, as a leader, I keep finding myself sucked back into other people's jobs, and I can't tell you the number of times I've heard leaders complain about having to do things for other people. The harsh reality of that is is probably 80% of the time is actually not that person's issue, it's the leader's issue of being ready, willing and able to jump back in. Yep, so when you have this moment, you're going to have to slow down, to speed up, and that looks maybe something like being unwilling to answer that question and being willing to ask at least three to five questions to try to draw them out. Now, there are times where the person can't put the two things together. Sure, right. So kind of a pattern that's easy to follow is I'm not going to answer this until I've asked three to five questions and I've told a story or a parable, yeah, right.
Speaker 2So if somebody is stuck and you're just trying to figure out, like I can't believe internally you're, you're having this moment of like. I can't believe you can't see this or figure this out. What you're going to do is you're going to step out of the issue and you're going to draw a parallel. You're going to tell a story from your past. You're going to tell some sort of a compelling story that has to do with these things, because their brain most likely will actually put it together in the story, and then you come back for the next question and say, okay, so how does that apply to this? Yep, right, that's kind of a an easy pattern to be able to slow down and just, you know, like, hand behind your back, you're, you're counting, you know three or four times.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think one of the things that you want to establish right as you're navigating, this desire to engage and develop people, this skill of not solving their problem for them, is that you're kind of a safe place for these conversations and you might even you might even give someone some legitimate rationale for why you're responding this way yes, right, so that they don't feel like this is odd, like Reed doesn't want to help me. It might sound something like hey, reed, listen, I'm so glad that you came to me with this and I'd love to help you with it. But I'd like to ask you a few questions first, because I want you to know like my deepest passion is to help, continue to develop and grow you in this role, your ability, your skill, etc. Right, it's OK giving someone rationale for the process you're about to go through. It adds color to what they're going to experience. So let me ask you a few questions first. Right, it could sound something like that.
Speaker 2Yeah, and one of the things that you did there that I think is so powerful is you did the first part of this, with which is I engaged. So, um, when, when we're talking about not giving answers, one of the mistakes that we can make is to not engage with them and not be fully focused and fully present, because that tells a different story. It doesn't tell the story of I'm engaging or, excuse me, I'm going to develop you. It tells the story of I don't have time for you.
Speaker 3Yeah, if I said something, if you brought me an issue and I said something, like Reed, that's not really my problem. That's why I hired you, fix it and let me know what you did. Okay, maybe on occasion that's appropriate, but that's demonstrating that, like I'm not here to engage and develop you versus. Okay, I'm glad you asked. Yeah, let me ask you a few questions. First, let's think through this together. Yes, engaging, yes, right, but then putting the ball back in their court, right?
Speaker 3Another kind of skill or technique maybe you can use here is help them get out of their own headspace of the challenge that they're in and get into someone else's headspace. Right, it might sound something like this hey, reed, let me ask you, if you were coaching someone brand new on this same challenge, what would you say to them? Absolutely, it kind of removes them from, like, the weeds of what they're dealing with, and we all have this. This is why leadership and mentorship and coaching is so valuable, because someone can see it from a different angle. Right, help them see their own challenge from a different angle. Yes, because all of a sudden, when they're like, well, what would I tell someone else about this, they start Coming up with some of their own solutions. Yes, so a technique like that can actually be really supportive of that person without you solving their problem.
Speaker 2Yeah, so the second piece of this kind of it comes right in line with this, and one of the things that we can do is to actually remove their struggle, right? So what about that? What's so disempowering about?
Speaker 3that. I think it's. Again, it's counterintuitive, right, like when we see someone struggling, that we care about it. It's painful, yes, like it. We see them hurting and we start hurting, sure, right, and so our reaction, or our, our heart can lead us into like, rescuing them, absolutely right, like, oh, let me make that easier for you, let me remove, remove that struggle, that roadblock, that obstacle, right, and there's times when that can be appropriate. But the reason it's disempowering is if people don't learn to navigate struggle, they can be crippled in life, they can be crippled in their role, they can be crippled in dealing with challenging things which we all know are sure to show up. Again, that's just life, yes, right, so that's the part that can be disempowering is, if people don't learn to work through that and carry the load and navigate some certain level of stress or anxiousness around a problem, then that can continue to grow and build in them because they're not developing skills and tools to work through that?
Speaker 2Yeah, and I was talking to a buddy about this yesterday actually, and we were talking about, you know what, if you went to the gym with somebody you love and you saw them bench pressing and you looked at it and it looked heavy, so your response to that is that you started lifting the weights for them.
Speaker 2That would be so weird, yeah Right, and it would be so counterproductive, right, and there's there's a difference in the struggle between, uh, they're, you know, they're pushing up the weight and they're struggling, and the weight starting to go back down because they, literally, they hit their limit. Now, now, you're going to go and you're going to help them, yeah, right, because it's no longer struggle. It's no longer struggle but, um, the the little things in leadership and the nuances from day to day, they don't show up as clearly as they do, you know, with somebody you know, uh, benching, uh, or something like that. But it is the same thing as what is. The reason this person is putting themselves under a heavy load intentionally is to build their future capacity, is to build their future capacity, it's to build their future strength, it's to actually get all of the hormones and everything else they get released from that yeah, right, um, and, and we want to do the same thing for people in our life and in business yeah, this again, this is a tough one.
Speaker 3You have to kind of pause and understand, like, why this can actually be counterproductive to engaging in developing others, because the natural reaction can be to rescue someone, save them, take away their pain, take away their struggle, take away their stress. So I would encourage you to maybe reframe how you think about some of these words, right? I've done this before with other leaders. I say, hey, instead of stress, use the word stretch, right Now.
Speaker 3Here's the thing Like, if you stretch a muscle too much, that's still harmful harmful but you have to stretch it to a certain degree in order to build future capacity. So if you see someone that is experiencing stress, you can help them navigate the amount that they may be experiencing. But some level of stress is a positive thing for building capacity, not a negative thing. So if it's positive for you a certain amount of stress and I remove it from you, I'm taking away something. It's positive for you a certain amount of stress and I remove it from you. Yes, I'm taking away something that's helpful for you, yeah, and so I need to reframe it for myself, and I might even be able to help you frame something that you're dealing with that's difficult, whereas you start to understand like, yes, it's still difficult and that's not necessarily a bad thing because of the muscles, the muscles or the skills that it develops yeah.
Speaker 2So, as a leader, if you find yourself surrounded by people who don't have enough capacity for their role, right, the first place we always look because we're accountable is we look in the mirror. Am I causing people around me to not have opportunities to grow their capacity? Because I'm removing the struggle, because I'm doing these things? Because if, if I ended up surrounded with people who are, over the course of time, not capable, I can go as a leader, into kind of victim language and victim mindset as opposed to accountable mindset, which is did I bring the right people into my world? Now, the interesting thing is, if you brought people that have the level of drive and the behavioral alignment with what they've done, either before they worked with you or currently working with you, there was somebody in their life, most likely that was removing struggle, that was answering questions for them, and so it doesn't have anything to do with what their future capacity could be. It has to do with the environment that you or somebody else created to stunt that capacity.
Micromanagement vs. Development
Speaker 3Yeah, let's talk about a third one, and that is kind of this idea of over-controlling the situation. It's commonly thought of as micromanaging. Yes, those that you lead right Now. Micromanaging is an overused term, I think.
Speaker 2Overused and under-defined. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3Because you say it and everyone's like oh, that's bad, oh, it's bad, I don't want that. I don't want to be led that way. I definitely don't lead that way. And yet this happens all the time. Yes, why do you think that is?
Speaker 2I think that micromanagement can be shorthand for accountability, right. I also think, depending on the leader's behavioral proclivities, that it can be a lot in alignment with the first two that we talked about. I'm just getting involved in everybody's business. Ultimately. Maybe I don't trust their capacity or I'm not actually in the process of believing that engaging and developing is important at a core level.
Speaker 3no-transcript wanting to be accountable. Yeah, it can be that. It can also be the leader actually afraid of the failure that might happen if they don't have their hands on everything. Yes, Right, it's this idea that, like, you're not doing it right and that's going to cause something to get broken or go wrong, or right, like, provide the wrong experience to the client, and I just can't accept that. Right, that's going to be damaging to my ego, the company's reputation, our revenue, et cetera. So I've got to get my hands on it and make sure you do it exactly right, right.
Speaker 3Problem with that is, if I always have my hands on it, number one, I'm not going to experience the leverage that I'd like to, as a leader in business at least. And number two, I'm not allowing you to learn through the process that sometimes failure helps with right. Sometimes making mistakes is actually helpful to your growth and development. And if I'm, if I'm desiring to engage and develop you, I have to actually allow you to fail, allow you to make mistakes right and let you learn through those right. We don't want to make the same ones all the time, over and over again. That's a whole different conversation. But never making any is probably because I'm not giving you enough to learn on yes.
Speaker 2Yeah, so how does somebody do that appropriately? How does a leader facilitate the tension between quality control, client experience and the growth of their staff?
Speaker 3Well, I think, first of all, you have to identify areas of your business that are going to be really important for there to be quality, and other areas of your business where some learning and failure can be just fine, right, like. In other words, if we hit a little bump, we're okay, we don't want to end up in the ditch, sure, right. And sometimes these are decisions in business, right Like. The kind of illustration that I've heard before I really like is like a tree, right, right, is this a decision that's going to impact the leaf or the branch or the trunk or the root? Yes, right like. Very little room for error, that's right. If it's the root, I I might need to control it a little bit more and I there's not as much room for failure because it's so critical to the tree if it's like, hey, are we going to order one ply or two ply toilet paper? That's not going to harm the company overall, and so, like I like two ply, but you ordered one ply, like great, no big deal, we can have a conversation about that, et cetera. Right now, I'm being funny, but you get my point. Yeah, yeah, leaf, branch, trunk, root. So that's one way to think about that. Yeah.
Speaker 3The other is, when someone does make a mistake, right, you just have to. You have to ask yourself internally versus leader, am I, am I okay with people making mistakes in my organization? Am I okay with the people that I lead making mistakes? And, by the way, the answer needs to be yes, absolutely Okay With it is different than you're comfortable with it. You might be uncomfortable with it, but you need to be okay with it, otherwise you'll actually never develop people. Yeah, so that when you get okay with some mistakes being made again in certain areas, then you can come and have a conversation with that individual. That's safe, post-mistake Not if they are going to make mistakes. When they make mistakes, because everyone does, including the leader yeah, then we can have a conversation around going to make mistakes. When they make mistakes because everyone does, including the leader yeah, then we can have a conversation around what you learn from it, what we might do differently next time, et cetera. And that's actually what developing someone looks like.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it was in the book how to Win Friends and Influence People Great classic book. I want to say it was a story about either Rockefeller or Carnegie and they had an executive come in and they had just lost the company a million dollars and this is a long time ago, so we'll just call it 10 million dollars, sure and handed him their resignation and he took it, look at and threw it in the trash. He said why would I accept this when I just paid a million dollars for your education? Right, I gotta get out of my office.
Speaker 3Yeah that's brilliant, yep, because obviously that person felt terrible, oh yeah, but they clearly had to have learned an immense amount that can now be valuable to the company, etc. And that's the beauty of failure, matter of fact, sometimes, especially in parenting these days, reed, this is just an analogy of leadership Sometimes we have to manufacture failure for our kids or manufacture scenarios where they may fail. Yeah right, because, uh, if we don't, they never learn how to learn from mistakes because they don't, we don't let them make any right.
Speaker 2They never learn how to pick themselves up after some level of failure and and it weakens them later on in life yeah, right, I think that one of the hard things about that I think jordan peterson talked about it and that is you can't, as a parent, prepare kids for a utopia that doesn't exist.
Speaker 2You have to prepare them for the real world that they're walking into. And so, inside of a business, inside of a family, you have the ability to create scenarios that there is a level of control, there is a level of protection, so that the failure is not as catastrophic. Right, right, I think one of the one of the things that we can kind of along this, this line, one of the things that we can do as leaders, and maybe something that we see far too often I see it in myself is that we might be more prone to control or have input on things that are more leaf and branch level, and then we may let harder things like trunk and root level things actually go. So this shows up when somebody has embezzlement in their company because they're not paying attention to their books. Right, because a leader wakes up and it's so easy to like, control this, this, this, this situation, the toilet paper the toilet paper, like I can, I can do that right, like I want to be all involved.
Speaker 2But then you look at some of these really core root business issues and you see an excessive lack of oversight and control. So be careful, because some of the things that do need this additional oversight, they're they're just harder and you might, you might not want to do that yep, that's right.
Being Present and Teaching Mindsets
Speaker 3Okay, so we talked about a few things we want to try to avoid so we don't accidentally, like, disempower those that we lead. What are some things that work well in engaging and developing others being present?
Speaker 2I love, uh, I love teaching, I love doing classes, but the reality is so much in parenting and leadership is caught, not taught, and, as a leader, if you're not present, if people can't experience watching you lead and experience the way that you go about do things and doing things and just kind of almost get it through osmosis, you're handicapping, um, the way that they grow. So sometimes, without you know, without talking about like private things, I will have hard conversations in the open, around other leaders or other developing leaders. So I'm on the phone, I'm having a hard conversation and it's not something that is going to, you know, be be something that's that's personal, on the other end of the line, not confidential.
Speaker 2Not confidential, nothing like that, but I will let them hear me going through the struggle and navigating a hard conversation. Or with the kids. If we're dealing with something, something at home, we'll have an open conversation about what the issue is and how we're navigating it, and if they see me navigate it poorly, they learn. If they see me navigate it well, they learn. But those are experiences that you can't really teach in a classroom, and so being present is a huge part of engaging and developing others.
Speaker 3Yeah, I couldn't agree more right? Like we've heard, it said speed of the leader, speed of the pack. Well, if someone's going to see your speed or your methods or your skill or how you handle these tough things, you need to be present in order for them to experience and get that through osmosis. There's another thing that's important here, too, and that is staying present. Yes, here's what I mean by that right, like when, when you lead people, inevitably there'll be some that are harder than others to lead.
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely what, like a word that, like I'm working on probably forevermore, is this idea of patience? Right, and so it can be easy to be present at first, but if someone is really like maybe they're not making the progress that they want or you want, maybe this person's a little more difficult to lead, maybe you've given them great advice and they never seem to take it or change anything, remember that, as long as you're leading them, you need to lean into that relationship and being present with them, because the tendency can be to get frustrated and lean out. Yes, it can be to meet with them less or avoid these conversations with them because you think it's probably going to go like last time, which wasn't amazing Right and, quite frankly, like as a leader, you opted out of the right to not lean in and be present with them as long as you're leading them. Yeah, yeah, maybe, yeah, right, and so like yes, be present, but be present in those challenges, don't when, when you're feeling like you're leaning out, whether it's frustration or whatever I encourage you to intentionally lean back in to either solve that or you know worst case scenario you at some point come to the realization together that that it's not the right relationship. But as long as you're in it, you have to be leaning in and present.
Speaker 3Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2One of the other things I think is important to do when you're engaging and developing others is is to teach and to do some of the maybe more classroom, more structured things. And you can teach to technical skill, which is valuable, especially depending on what vertical you're in. But a lot of times you're working with people who either have technical skill or that's happening inside the organization that's being developed. But teaching mindsets and more broad terms or broad things that create a foundation of understanding and how to navigate hard things I found very, very helpful.
Speaker 2So if I can teach core mindset principles and I can help somebody understand how to navigate hard things not because they've been taught how to navigate that particular hard things, that hard thing, but they've been taught how to navigate a myriad of hard things by using mental models and ways of thinking about things, I'm going to be able to get a lot out of uh, out of the development, the development of my people. Because if I teach you know five, six, ten models or three models and that solves 50 different things for them and we and we teach that, then I have two things. One is I have the ability for somebody over time to move into mastery and just solve those things for themselves easily. The other thing I have is I have a shorthand, for when they come to me, they come to somebody else in the organization and they're trying to navigate a struggle. They have a concept that they can anchor to and quickly think through what applies and what doesn't apply and then get back to it.
Speaker 3Yeah. So I want to come back to this. This word struggle right Cause we talked about how removing their struggle can actually stunt their growth, disempower them. So how do we let them struggle well, or how do we create opportunities for them to struggle well, in the right amounts?
Speaker 2Yeah, so there's something we'll put in the action guide called the growth control graph. It's great, it's a very, very simple model. But fundamentally, when we first start working with somebody, or when somebody's maybe younger or newer in their trajectory, I'm going to let them know right out of the gate that I'm going to have a high level of oversight and what might feel like a high level of control. And, as they grow, my goal is to hand this off to you over time and my ultimate goal is actually for you to have all of the control through growth and for me to relinquish control to you. That's the goal, and I had somebody show me this before, and that is some of us. I'm like, hey, here, take the pen, and I just throw it to you, and that's that's the goal. And I have somebody telling me, showing me this before, and that is some of us like I'm like, hey, here, take the pen, and I just throw it to you and I'm out, right, right, that's not good. Uh, you have other situations where I'm like, here, take the pen, this is yours and I will not let go right, right, that's a problem. What I want to be able to do is I want to have an appropriate amount of tension which, like chase, this is yours, no, this is yours, this is yours, this is yours. Okay, you gotta have it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so this is easier said than done, of course, and typically, when you're the one who is uh, in the place of uh, of control, you are going to have, um, you're going to have maybe a propensity towards not thinking somebody is growing as fast as they actually are, and the person who's growing is going to think they're growing faster than they are, yep, so the tension comes when the two lines cross, and this is a great place for conversation, for engagement, right, and this happens with kids. Right, your kids, you know, your boys, hit 12, 13, 14, they're in puberty. They believe a hundred percent that they're a man and you believe a hundred percent that they're a child. Right, and you're both wrong. Yep, you're both wrong, you're both wrong.
Creating Ownership Opportunities
Speaker 3Yeah, one of the things you can think about in this process, in business especially, is create some objective measurements that define the growth. Yes, because otherwise it's just always subjective. It's like, reed, how do you feel, how do I feel? Those two things rarely align. Yes, right, and maybe, if they do, we're both still wrong. Right Versus. Like, not everything can be measured objectively, but a lot can. So, like, hey, as we go through this process read of me handing this off to you here's some key measures or metrics that will indicate to us, regardless of how we feel, that you're growing in this area, right, that can be super helpful to this, this, this challenge or this, this process, right, so the other thing, other thing that I would encourage that can be helpful for developing people, is create opportunities for ownership. Yes, right, like, if they feel like they own something in the business or things over time in the business, then sometimes it gives them an opportunity to step forward Right, it gives them an opportunity to develop new skills and it makes them feel valued and important to the whole organization. Right, now, depending on how long they've been there, their skill level and a number of other things.
Speaker 3You might start small. It might be like hey, reed, you know we have, we have a monthly staff lunch that we need an agenda for and we need to figure out what we're going to feed everyone, and I would really love for you to spearhead that for next month's meeting. Would you be okay with that? Yes, yeah, right, never done that before and right, kind of. Here's my basic expectations of what needs to happen and what that looks like. Here's some of the resources or people who have kind of spearheaded the last few. If you want to connect with them, if you have any questions, let me know. But I would love for you to lead this for us next month. It can be something as simple as that, but that's an opportunity for you to own it. Yes, not for me to own it, absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah. So there's kind of three concepts that come to mind around this. One is responsibility and job, and I think it's really helpful in developing others. When somebody is coming from a mindset of do it like, use my minutes right as opposed to oversee it, use my influence Whenever they're given a task, they might see it as an additional job, but as you develop them, you might want to use these two terms like I'm giving you this responsibility and your job is to actually make sure that that gets done and other people can do the job. But we're giving you this responsibility, so that can help just with the change from do it myself to succeed through others.
Speaker 2The other overarching concept that I love here is a concept of stewardship. I just think it's an awesome word and I got to see this as a kid. I got to experience it with my dad. He was a caretaker for uh, for property over Montana for some very wealthy people, and as a kid I remember growing up seeing that my dad cared more about what was under his stewardship than the owners did, and I can, frequently I would see him frustrated at them because he just didn't care as much.
Speaker 2And um, and when we go into business and we do these things. We can see these stupid things like nobody cares about my business as much as I do. Um, that's, that's not always true, right, right, and I have. That has not been my experience with a lot of talented people that I'm around and I think it is surrounded this idea of stewardship when somebody is given stewardship and they take stewardship, they functionally treat that as if it's their own. There's a level of pride there. There's a level of, um, you know, obsession around making it better and all of those things. And so, if you're not experiencing stewardship in your business, again first place to look is is yourself as a leader? Do you have the mindset of I'm the owner, right and like, and that means everybody else works for me, right? Or is it I own this and I want to be in business with all these people who are stewards and have a piece of a piece of play and they're they're proud of what they do and they have opportunity in what they do.
Speaker 3Yeah, a couple of practical things about this exact conversation. That I love is learn to speak into people, right, people grow into the conversations you have around them as a leader. Absolutely Right, we know this about our kids. Right, you can do anything you put your mind to. I believe in you, right, like you're smart and talented and capable. We say those things because we're we're wanting our kids to grow into that conversation. They grow into the conversation we have around them. Same with the people we lead professionally.
Speaker 3And so if I say something like hey, reed, you know like I see a lot of leadership, talent and opportunity in you that I'd love to continue to develop, how does that sound Great? Okay, so I have this, I have this project that I'd love for you to spearhead, or we have this piece of technology that we need to kind of research to see if it might be valuable for our business, and would you be willing to do some of that research? Present what you find to the rest of us, because, again, I think that you have a lot of leadership potential and I'd like to encourage that in you. Yeah, absolutely, I think you could run the company one day.
Speaker 3That's another way of speaking into someone. Right now it might not be that specific or direct, but you see my point. Yes, that way, when I'm starting to give you things that develop you, you understand why and that I believe in who you can become, versus just another job dumping something on your desk, right, like using you as an employee, right, which is not the goal. Yes, so learn to speak into people and have conversations about where you see them going in the future, because it simply just supports then the hard work that is going to be required of them to develop and grow into that person.
Speaker 2Yeah, so there's. There's another nuance to that that one of my business partners is exceptionally good at, and that is there are people in your organization that most likely are not going to step up to the plate, to to whatever this next level thing is. But there's a problem there, and that is that, as a leader, am I constantly saying no? Am I constantly bottlenecking people and I am I constantly saying no? Am I constantly bottlenecking people and am I constantly just saying like I don't see this, so like we're putting a barrier or a wall up here, so we can do that as a leader? The other thing we can do is we can, maybe even through fear, think oh my gosh, I need to provide more opportunity for this person who actually hasn't, at at this moment, earned it. And so now I promote them, you know, to the level of their incompetence, right?
Speaker 2So, uh, what annie does is she will say yes to a trial or to something really hard. That's like yes, you can do this. What do you think that that looks like? How will we measure it? How will you know if you succeed or not and what's the time frame, right, and she'll give that person the liberty to either rise the occasion maybe even surprise her right, which is can happen, so good for the whole organization.
Speaker 2It's amazing, or they self-discover that this isn't what they want, and a lot of times they, they, they just they don't announce like I failed. They just, they, they, they don't do it. And then they go back to the thing that they're great at yeah right it's really, really helpful.
Speaker 3I I realize that's not for me. I realize that's not for me. It's not your fault. I got the opportunity to find out.
Speaker 2Yes, yeah, if it's, if it's my fault, I'm the bottleneck that becomes a problem and it actually is a legitimate problem.
Key Takeaways on Engaging Others
Speaker 3Yeah, right okay, so let's land the plane. We're talking today about engaging and developing others, so there's a few things we covered that we want to try to avoid. What are those?
Speaker 2things. So we want to avoid over-controlling or actual micromanagement right. And we want to avoid removing people's struggle yeah Right. And we want to avoid fixing things for them yeah Right. If we can avoid those three things, amazingly enough we actually can engage and develop others, even if we're not really good at proactively doing it. I've coached some companies that have not the best leadership and not the best development of others, and yet their people, to a certain extent, are thriving, I. What I've seen by peeking behind the curtain is they leave the other people alone. They get out of the way, yeah, and magically that can be enough yeah, it can.
Speaker 3and then the few things we covered that can be supportive in developing others. Number one is be present. You need to be there to lead the, to actually lead the way. Be present with the team and the organization. Be present with, with people individually, even when it's not going as well as you or they would hope. Right, that's the time to maybe even be more present and lean in, not lean out. We want to make sure that we are letting them struggle and sometimes we're creating opportunities for the right amount of struggle. We can provide rationale there so they know why we can support them in the struggle. But we want to let them because they'll learn how to handle and manage their way through that, yeah. And then we want to create opportunities for ownership. Right, right, like, if you truly want to develop people, give them opportunities to own certain things and then support them in doing that and just watch them bloom. I love it, watch them, I love it.
Speaker 2So if we were going to give this shorthand kind of to wrap it up, I would say Watch them more, I love it. So if we were going to give this shorthand kind of to wrap it up, I would say here's a couple things your job as a leader don't be a hero, be a guide. Yep Right. Share your lessons, not just your outcomes. And lastly, create a culture where learning, failing and trying again is normal and celebrated. You do those things. You're well on your way to engaging and developing others.
Speaker 3You got it Well. Hey guys, if this leadership episode brought you value, we hope that you'll come back and, by the way, please like, share, subscribe and maybe send this episode to another leader. For our action guides and more valuable information, you can always go to SherpaConsultingGroupcom. Remember folks, leadership is a journey and every step you take matters. So keep moving forward with intention and we'll see you next time. Take care guys.