leaders who skip this lose their team

Summary

would you rather be feared or liked as a leader? wrong question. the answer is respected.

after roughly $1M in annual revenue, the company stops scaling on hustle and starts scaling on people. leadership is the lever. it never gets easy. hard conversations, tailoring your style person by person, continually upgrading yourself. that’s the work.

the two traps:

1. too liked. common when your first hires are peers and friends. you can’t give honest feedback to a best friend. tough conversations get avoided. standards slip.
2. too feared. I’ve done this one too. standoffish, withholding, hard to read. people don’t bring you problems. they hide them.

the answer is the middle: respect. respect comes from trust. trust comes from telling the truth, having the tough conversation, and having integrity over time.

three ways to earn it:

• vulnerability. let the team see the real version, not just the boss version.
• integrity. do what you said you’d do, even when no one’s watching.
• tough talks. when something is out of line with your mission or values, address it. not at the quarterly review. now.

lead with truth. earn respect. the team scales the company.

Transcript

feared or liked? the real goal is respect

Would you rather be feared as a leader or would you rather be liked? Well, the actual answer is you want to be respected as a leader. So, let’s talk about how to gain the respect of your team so you can be effective leader and you can have an effective team. So, the real way to scale a company is leadership. After about a million dollars per year, you have to learn to succeed through people. And it is one of the hardest things to do.

It will never be easy to have difficult conversations to tailor your leadership style to a specific person to continually better yourself so you can continue to be a good and wellrespected leader. It is a very difficult thing to do but if you were on this path of becoming a leader then ultimately it’s what you need to do. Okay. So let’s talk about some of the biggest mistakes I see people as they develop seeing people as I you know they develop as leaders.

The first thing is they do want to be liked too much. They want to be best friends with their team. So when your team is small and you’re first building them up, this is what happens. Especially if you’re hiring peers, people who are very similar to you, similar interests, likes, dislikes, you end up being friends with them. Now, I think it’s okay to have a relationship with your teammates, but being someone’s best friend is a whole different area of relationship that I’m not interested in if you work for me.

And the reason being is because it becomes very difficult to give someone feedback. It becomes very difficult to have the hard tough conversations. It becomes very difficult to be an effective leader when all you’re doing is trying to be liked. Now, on the other side of that coin, there is being feared. Now, I’ve done this and I’ve made this mistake. It is more easy or it’s easier for me to be feared as a leader because I can be very standoffish.

I won’t really let you in the door. I won’t tell you certain things. And so, when you come on my team, it’s easier for you to fear me than it is to be uh, you know, to like me, right? And I don’t like that either.

why leadership gets hard after $1m

It’s a mistake I’ve made. So what I land on in the middle and what I want to be for my team is just respected. I want to be respected as a leader. And if you are respected as a leader, that means when you make a decision, people respect it. They understand that you are the person making the decision. You’re the leader. Hey, let’s go. So ultimately, how do you earn someone’s respect, right? You don’t just get it because you’re the boss, right?

You have to earn respect. And the best easiest way to do this is to get someone to trust you. And trust comes just how you think it would come. Just like if you have a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a husband, a wife, a best friend. How did you learn to trust that person? Well, there’s multiple things at play there. One is time. Two is vulnerability. Three is just integrity, difficult conversation, showing up, being the person that you need to be.

the trap of wanting to be liked

So, you know how to gain someone’s trust. So once you realize like, hey, I just need to be a good human. I just need to get this person to trust me. And the more they trust you, the more they will respect you. When they know that you have integrity, that you’re making the right decisions, that respect will come. But I’m going to give you three concrete ways cuz ultimately, if you want to gain someone’s trust, you need to tell the truth.

Okay? There are three ways I want you to start telling the truth to your team so you can start to earn that respect. Way number one is be vulnerable about your decisions and your plans. So when I say be vulnerable, I’m saying about your decisions and your plan. So be vulnerable means be okay telling the staff, your team like, hey, I don’t know the best way forward, but I have decided it’s this based off of this research, based off of what I’ve seen in the past.

Here is what we’re going to do to tackle this problem that’s in front of us. I am not certain if it will work, but this is my best guess, and I have put a lot of time, effort, and energy into coming up with this plan. Boom. Here’s the plan. As a leader, you are responsible for the plan. That is a big one. Making sure that you have the plan and even if your plan’s not perfect, being okay and being vulnerable about the plan.

So, the reason I’m saying very specific about the plan and being vulnerable in that area is because I’m not saying you have to be vulnerable about all of your shortcomings. You don’t have to be vulnerable about everything in your personal life. Again, you don’t have to go down that road to tell the truth and gain someone’s respect. You just ultimately have to be a little bit vulnerable in your plan. And if you are 100% confident in your plan, then don’t make up false vulnerability that you’re not confident in the plan.

Be like, “Look, I’ve done this a thousand times.

why being feared doesn’t work

This works. Let’s do it.” That will also earn somebody’s trust and just by you telling the truth. So be vulnerable when it makes sense. That is one way that you’re going to tell the truth and gain someone’s respect. The second way, I shouldn’t have to say this, but do the right thing always. One thing that I think entrepreneurs do that people can start to lose respect for their boss is when they see the boss starting to make dollar decisions over the human beings.

how to build respect through trust

Like they’re getting a little too much into the marketing and sales category where it’s like a dollar at all cost. And a lot of people I work with don’t make that decision. But ultimately, you need to make sure that you are doing the right thing always. Not screwing over customers. Not doing things just to keep an extra hundred bucks in the bank account. not screwing over your employees, right? Doing all of these things will be a great way to tell the truth.

You’re doing the right thing and they see that integrity. Integrity is the biggest thing that you need as a leader over anything else I can possibly talk about because that will earn someone’s respect. That will earn the trust that you ultimately want is if they see that you have a high level of integrity in every interaction. If they can kind of see part of your personal life with your spouse or your kids and they see integrity there, they see integrity in the office with your customers, they see integrity with them, within the team, they see that integrity, they start to really respect it.

They can emulate that. They want to they want to be like you. And so I think if you have that integrity, you can start to have a trust, very trustbased relationship with a teammate. Now, the last thing is you have to be willing to have the tough conversations.

the 3 ways to earn respect: vulnerability, integrity, tough talks

This is a big part of respect. Just being uh you know someone who gets pushed over, being a pushover all the time, that is what people don’t respect. And some people, you’ll run into some personalities who are really going to challenge you. And whether it’s intentionally or unintentionally challenging you, they will challenge you. And you have to have the tough conversation. You have to set the boundaries and you have to make sure that the standard is set that you are the boss and you are in charge.

And you do that by having the tough conversations when they are required. If someone does something that you don’t like, let make sure that they know it. If it’s not congruent with your mission or vision or your values, make sure that they are aware of that. If they’re saying things that they shouldn’t be to the team, have those tough conversations. And the more you can do these things, the more you will be the respected leader. Having a tough conversation doesn’t make you liked, doesn’t necessarily make you feared, but it will make you respected if you are having the conversations that are needed to be had.

Right? If you can do this over and over again, you will start to earn the trust of your employees. So, just know when you are a leader and you’re building out your leadership style, you’re trying to become a better leader, you need to be focused on getting the respect of your team, not being liked, not being feared. Just think to yourself, how do I earn respect in this situation? And you do that by always telling the truth, doing the right thing, and ultimately having the tough conversations.

If you can do all of those things, all three of those things, you will be on your way to scaling a [music] company through effective leadership. Try harder.