spot corrections: the skill that separates good leaders from great

Summary

the #1 mistake I see young leaders making is avoiding confrontation. they don’t do the spot correction, so they don’t build the team they want, and the culture drifts to something they’ll regret in a year.

here’s what most people miss: inaction is action. you are either building the culture you want or building one you didn’t ask for. there is no neutral.

how to do spot corrections the right way:

1. immediately. not at the quarterly review with a list of 15 things. not at the next 1-on-1. when it happens, address it.
2. privately, by default. in public only when the behavior was public and the standard needs to be visible.
3. specific. name the behavior. don’t generalize.
4. explain the “why.” the standard is not arbitrary. the team needs the principle, not just the rule.

if you can’t have these conversations, you cannot lead at scale. the company you’re building right now is built out of every conversation you didn’t have.

confront the team. set the standard. try harder.

Transcript

the #1 mistake new leaders make

The number one mistake I see young leaders making today is that they are afraid of confrontation. So they won’t make the spot corrections that are needed to build the culture that they want, the team that they want, and ultimately be the leader who they need to be. So I was a military officer for over 8 years and since then I’ve been an entrepreneur uh for over a decade leading teams throughout my entire career. It’s been a big thing.

Leadership is something that happens behind the scenes. I don’t always talk about it as much as I should on podcasts and YouTube, but I definitely want to start talking about it more because it’s where I’m getting a lot of questions. Within PT Biz, our mastermind, I run a leadership call every single month. I’m helping mentor and guide young leaders and leaders in general who are looking to shape their leadership ability. And what you have to know about leadership is it is what scales your company.

You know, I’ve never run into a business that I’ve been working with, you know, who gets to multise seven figure range.

leadership is what scales your company

I’ve I’ve never heard them say, you know what, I’m just out of marketing tactics. I don’t know the next marketing tactic I need to grow my business. By that point, they know those things. They have the nuts and bolts of business down. Where they’re running into trouble over and over again is leadership. Leadership is what scales your company because you need people to scale the company and you need to lead these people well to be able to grow your business.

And the biggest thing that I hear in the leadership calls that I do, the people I work with is that they are letting things slide. They are afraid to do the spot correction. And so what happens when you’re in any kind of environment as a leader, you’re you’re kind of responsible for everything, right? You’re responsible for the tone, the culture, all things that are happening in the company, in your team. And what happens is something will happen that you might just have a gut feeling about.

how letting things slide shapes bad culture

You might be like, “I didn’t like what that person said or that rubbed me the wrong way or that is not in line with our mission or our core values.” These kind of things happen and sometimes it can just be a feeling uh something a little bit more nuanced. Sometimes it could just be straight up they didn’t do the thing on time. They didn’t do how they were supposed to. They didn’t do it to the quality that you were expecting.

And what happens when you don’t communicate these things to your team? You’re starting to build a new company culture. And it’s the company culture you’re building through inaction. A lot of people don’t think about that. A lot of your company culture, a lot of the people you’re leading are growing or not growing through your lack of action. It’s the inaction that is growing the culture. It’s the inaction that is developing what your company is becoming. And once you realize that there’s not just there’s not I’m either going to take the action or do nothing and things will stay the same.

It’s kind of that either you’re growing or you’re dying approach. And that’s how leadership works. If you aren’t taking the actions to improve the team, the team is actually getting worse or you’re building a company culture that you do not like, you do not enjoy. So if any of these things come up, you see them coming. someone didn’t do something, you need to confront them. Or, you know, something rubbed you the wrong way, the feeling, the nuance thing, anything, you need to do a spot correction.

And here is how you do it immediately. Okay?

action vs. inaction in leadership

Immediately. Sometimes I tell people like, “Hey, you need to correct the behavior.” And they have this meeting with their employee at their quarterly review. And then when they get to their quarterly review, they have this sheet of paper with 15 things on it. It sounds like you’re just whining and complaining about the employee and you’ve been keeping this list for 15 for 3 months or whatever with 15 things on it and you’re just telling people what you did and didn’t like and like why did you let that stuff slide for a full quarter?

You need to do immediate correction. But when I say immediate correction, there’s also some nuance to that. If I am in a team meeting of seven people and one person said something that I do think they shouldn’t have said, I have two options. The nuclear option is to immediately correct that person in front of everyone else. This is a very bold uh option. You lose a lot of leadership, social capital in doing so, especially with a person because you’re basically embarrassing them.

The only time I would ever do that is if it was something that was egregious, something just like really not okay for them to have said or done. And to be honest, there they were flirting with whether or not they were going to have their job or not have their job by having said that thing. So maybe that maybe it was a a joke that borderlined on sexual harassment, something of that nature. It’s an immediate and public action.

Okay, that is that’s when I would do it in front of other people because what I’m doing is I’m setting the tone in the standard for the team of like under no circumstances is what you just did okay. But that is the like I said that is the nuclear option. Very infrequently would I ever have to exercise that option. I have had to exercise that in the past but it is very infrequent. Now how you actually should do it.

Say I’m in this meeting of seven people. someone said something they shouldn’t have said or they didn’t do something they should have done.

the right and wrong way to do spot corrections

Whatever the case is, make a note in it because I’m always taking notes during meetings. And then I’m going to pull that person aside. Even if this is Zoom, if you’re virtual or in person, I’m going to ask for an offline uh meeting with this person if it’s virtual.

when to go public vs. private with feedback

And I’m just going to immediately do it. Be I’ll wrap up the meeting. Then I’ll be like, “Hey, so and so, can you can you uh stay on the meeting or can you meet me in a in a different meeting room or whatever?” pull them aside and you make the correction right then and there. Right then and there. You don’t let these things fester because like I said, they did it. They’re going to think that it’s okay and they’ll continue to do things like that or not do things if they didn’t get some work done or whatever.

So, you need to correct it immediately like, “Hey, you know, John, uh you know, what you did in the meeting or what you said definitely not okay. Uh you know, we don’t do this. Here’s why.

how to make immediate, effective corrections

here’s the big reason why behind it’s not in line with our core values. Uh so, you know, let’s just not have that happen again. Or if you’re like they didn’t do some work like, hey, I don’t know if I didn’t communicate this properly, but I needed this done on Thursday. And the reason it need to be done on Thursday is cuz these reports go out on Friday. I need to be prepared for that Friday meeting. I need to have all these reports done so, you know, we can look at it as partners.

So on and so forth. A big part of these spot corrections is not just firing off. you did something wrong, you suck, don’t do it again. It’s explaining the why behind the reason they need to do the thing or why they can’t do something or why there are rules in place, whatever the case is. Explaining the why behind it, like why is that our stance as a company? Why is that my stance as the owner of the company?

And why do they need to do these things? When you explain the why, now we’re having communication. And communication is one of the biggest uh you know ways to be an effective leader is to master your communication style with your team. Explaining the why is one solid move in that direction of honing in your leadership and being a better communicator is making sure you explain the why as opposed to just being the person who has the rulebook and tell them the rules and they can’t do something.

But the biggest part of the entire spot correction aside from communicating explaining the why is the fact that it does need to happen immediately. So again, doesn’t have to be right there on the nuclear option immediate, but like within that same time period and if you’re crunched for time, definitely make sure it happens by the end of the day. Worst case scenario, the beginning of that next day. Even then, that’s getting a little stale for me.

I would want to correct it faster than that. So this is a very easy thing to do. It is a very well, it is a very simple thing to do to spot correct an employee. It is not easy. And the reason it’s not easy is because confrontation is not easy. And this is what I think people fear the most. They don’t want to rub someone the wrong way.

why explaining “why” is leadership gold

They don’t want to have this dicey relationship cuz they think the person is going to quit. But you have to realize that’s what people are looking for in leaders. Leaders set boundaries.

confrontation fear and leadership standards

Leaders have values. Leaders hold people to a standard. That’s what people want. If they don’t want that, cool. They can go work somewhere else. But that’s how you step up as a leader is you implement. You don’t just say, “Yeah, yeah, we’re all in this together.” Like, whatever it goes. Because the biggest thing if you’re struggling with confrontation or having the difficult conversation or doing the spot corrections, the biggest thing you need to be thinking about is, okay, by me not doing that, what company culture am I fostering and growing?

Cuz it’s either growing one way or the other. Like I said, you’re growing or you’re dying. And when it comes to your company culture, you’re either setting the standard and you’re building the company culture you want or you’re not doing that and your company culture is just becoming something. It’s becoming something that you’re not going to want in one 2 3 years down the road when other people running the show when all these off-color jokes are being said and all these things are happening.

closing: fix issues fast…build the culture you want

People aren’t sticking to deadlines because you never held the standard in the first place. So look, I know it’s hard. I know it’s difficult. Like I said, it is simple. It is not easy. But you have to have the difficult conversations. You have to confront the team. You have to do the things that are required as a leader. Don’t let it slide. Be the person. Step up. Try harder.