The FractionX Podcast
Leadership is Hard. We're here to help.
The FractionX Podcast
Is bad leadership the most expensive thing on the planet?
Have you ever felt the effects of bad leadership? Or, have you ever caught yourself leading poorly and thought, I can do so much better than this? On today's episode we encourage leaders to step into the tension of working on your business when the pressure to stay working in your business is overwhelming.
And we're off. Welcome back to the Fraction X podcast how you doing.
Speaker 2:I'm wearing the same jacket from last week. You think people will know. I think they're probably assuming that we recorded these at the same time.
Speaker 1:I was listening to a leader who asked us great question. His name is Andy.
Speaker 2:He asked us a question You've got to figure out, you're not on first name basis with Andy Stanley. You call him Mr Reverend Stanley.
Speaker 1:He asked us a question what breaks your heart? And I don't always have a great answer for that. For some people it's like, oh my gosh, it's kids suffering in Africa from food insecurity or AIDS crisis whatever. And sometimes for me, I think bad leadership breaks my heart. You know I think bad leadership is one of the most expensive things in the economy Period. That's right. People capital, actual capital, brand degradation you name it Bad leadership sinks businesses.
Speaker 2:Why is that for you? Because I know that to be true and I know this is kind of like an epiphany for you because you are. You're an enneagram. You're kind of a tough, like tough exterior type guy, but you're a very empathetic person. That's one thing. Like people might have to get to know you a little bit the finance side of you but you have a huge heart for people. But working with you for so long I that when you said that to me, I was like that makes sense, like incompetence, but not from a pride standpoint, but just from like an efficiency standpoint. Let's not waste our time, let's get things done, let's move things. Where did? Do you know where that started in you? Because I'm glad you came to that realization. It's not that you don't care about people in other countries, but that's not the thing that gets you up in the morning. What gets you up in the morning is helping leaders be successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish I knew, I wish there was this moment where I experienced bad leadership and it's like, from this moment on, I'll always be a good leader it wasn't that simple. I wish it was that linear.
Speaker 2:It goes on to trauma induced. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I think if anybody's gone to the trouble to create an organization and you're responsible to lead people, it just matters, because if they are showing up and giving you 40 hours a week, that's their livelihood Right. And if you've got a product or a service that's actually important to somebody's life, for that product or service to go away, if they're dependent on it, that could be really traumatizing. So it's not just the people you're responsible for that work, for the company or the product or service you have. Bad leadership just really frustrates me. It just does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I'm going to. I think I'm in a similar boat, maybe from a different angle, but I have just seen over the last couple decades of leadership now, how isolating, how difficult, how challenging it can be to be a leader. You know, and it's not. This is not a sob story. Leadership is a gift, right.
Speaker 1:It's an honor to lead right.
Speaker 2:So I'm not on that, on that train of like oh, what was me? Leadership is so tough. It's like most of us choose it, sign up for it. Great leaders fill gaps when there's not leadership. So it's like we're calling our own number a lot of times or we're, we're, we're moving in that direction, or we're leading in such a way that it's being noticed and being you know, being promoted or whatever. So I'm not crying about it, but I also. I also. The reality is that it's tough. Like leadership is really hard and I think there's a sense of which. A lot of times, leaders don't realize the impact that their decisions have, and I only say that because I've been that leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was about to say the most frustrating part of this is I'm that bad leader a lot. Yeah, exactly that Gellman, like I'm passionate about this and I still can't get it right. Sure, and I think one way I've noticed my bad leadership is there are just some things I have to be responsible for in my businesses. That man I just like push it off to the side and like I'll do that later, I'll do that later. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1:Like, I knew I needed to kick back off this podcast a couple of years ago. Yeah, no-transcript, I didn't want to do it because I don't love the marketing and social media and the selling part of what I do as a consultant. Sure, if I could just sit with clients and give them perspective and thought, challenges and ways to help improve their business I mean, saw me up for that 60 hours a week, right, right, but all the work on it stuff, you know, drives me nuts sometimes, yeah, and so it's like, okay, my bad leadership is resulting in worse outcomes because I won't deal with it.
Speaker 1:You know, and then I think what's what's so great about our partnership is? I think your bad leadership is the stuff that I'm actually pretty good at, exactly, and so I just know, as we were talking to leaders, you know, and doing pitches for our services, leaders are often really reluctant and pretty slow to come to the table with the things in their lives that represent gaps.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah Well. Yeah, that's a great point, and I'm a little offended that you went towards the negative side of my leadership and not the, not the positive way that I balance you out. But no, it's exactly true and you know, you reference it. There's working in it, there's working on it, yeah Right, and you have to as an entrepreneur or a leader. Both have to exist Right. And so you're going to build something in. At first, your first few months, or even a couple of years, you're going to be working a lot on it. Yeah Right, you're building it.
Speaker 2:And then I think a lot of leaders get the point a few years in where they're like I'm not having fun with this anymore, why don't I enjoy this. It's like, well, you stopped working on it. You've been working in it so long. You're miserable. And that's me. Yeah, I'm that guy. I'm probably the guy that needs to do two to three years of something build it, sell it, hand it off, whatever. Start something else, that's probably it. Or like what we're doing. I love that we can come in for a season and help leaders, help organizations, build, and that's fun, that's exciting. But I think you have to learn which type of leader are you, are you naturally working in it or work on it? Probably, if you're an entrepreneur, right, you're going to start something. Yeah, you're going to be a work on it person. You're probably not going to love that, but you know, a lot of people have inherited leadership or stepped into leadership roles at what it doesn't excite them to start something new. They just want to keep something going and grow it and build it or whatever. So they may be very much a work in it person. But to your point, as an example, you're exactly right. I mean, I don't know how many times before we started this business and podcast that I reached back out to you, to Matt, why aren't you doing?
Speaker 2:Because I love this format for you, because you've got such great things that I've been in rooms and meetings with you around. Man, you just you drop gold on this stuff, but someone to push you I'm like man, I can, I can help you get it out there. I just need you to sit down in a room with a mic and let me ask you some questions, right? And so I'm wondering what does that look like for the leaders out there? And here's, here's a question. That is the tough question how do you know when to do which. Right Because even for me as a leader, if I'm being honest, that's tough. Right Because I'll build something. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, well I'm, I don't have anybody to hand it to, I don't, I can't afford a staff, a team, right, whatever. So I've been working on it, I've built. You know, at one point my wife was like stop getting more clients. She's like we have to serve the ones we've got. And I'm like, well, that's no fun, I want to keep getting more right.
Speaker 2:You're like well, you're not going to keep the ones you got if you don't work. That's good, Help us with that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Matt, because that's a tough tension. I mean to go back to the top of the podcast. The thing that breaks my heart is bad leadership. One way to not be a bad leader is to put people around you that are different than you, that you actually listen to. I think I do this in my life. You probably do this in your life.
Speaker 1:It's easy to surround ourselves with people who do things the way we do.
Speaker 1:Them think the same things that we think, and you want to have a tribe who's like all collectively going the same direction.
Speaker 1:But I think where bad leaders can make good leadership decision is like let me surround myself with a couple of people who are pulling in the same direction. They understand their vision, but they think about this thing a little differently than I do, so they're going to be biased towards working in it if it's a work on it, leader or vice versa, and so I think one of the best things you can do is bring people around you. Now the challenge is, if you're one of those small to mid-sized businesses, you're like dude, I can't afford leadership with perspective, experience, who understands my vision, to come around the table and do this, and so I think that's why companies like ours exist where it's like okay, you might be leading poorly right now because you don't have anybody who thinks differently about your problems than you do, so hire us at a fraction of what your C-suite might actually cost. Let us come bring some different perspective and ideas to the table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean and it's why not to not to be a commercial here, but it's, it was a dream and hope and why we started Fraction X, because there is a you know, back to your original question there is an actual heart to serve these leaders. Right, it's like it's not. We're not trying to fix them, we're not trying to say you're a bad leader, let's come in and let's fix you. It's like, no, you're a great leader that needs help and you need some perspective. You need some people around you and chances are you're lonely in leadership. You don't have people or the people on your team. It's not a safe place to bounce these ideas off, to dream with.
Speaker 2:I mean, we've talked about before, I was guilty of that, of dreaming with the wrong people and it really stressing them out and realizing, hey, there's only a couple of people that I can actually go on an adventure with and they're going to love it and not get stressed out by it. Right, but I needed connection. I needed someone to dream with me and bounce these ideas off of and you might be able to place your business where and it can even be a pretty decent sized business where you're like I don't have half a million dollars a year to hire a C-suite Like, but this is what I need. I need C-suite level thinkers around the table with me, helping me grow my revenue. Help me look at the pitfalls. Where are we falling behind? Where are my blind spots? I mean, we've talked about that before, but that's a huge one just to have people come around, and that's our heart for this.
Speaker 2:This company is and I mean spoiler alert if you've been listening to these podcasts long enough a lot of times our solution comes back to our why like, why we started this. The solution is if you have the right people around you, because we can come into a company organization and we can work in it. If they just do Like, hey, we'll help you hire staff, hire team, we'll help you manage, look at your systems, look at your processes, or if you're a work in it person, we can come in and we can work on it and say, okay, you keep running it, let us come in and help you look at how to scale or how to build, or this is the avenue you need to go into. And so that's a big part of why we're doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1:So if you're talking to a leader, who's why are the way you are? How would you challenge them to think differently and be more of a work in it type person?
Speaker 2:I think I would say, if you've challenged me on this, when I'm asking you for advice, you'd be like okay if you were consulting yourself. What would a great leader do? And it's like I know that's a really simple question but it helps you kind of zoom out of your own problem. You've done that to me a lot. But I think if you're a starter like me, I think there's a certain discipline of saying hey for the next two to three years, five years, whatever put at times like I'm going to grind, I'm going to get in this thing and I'm going to work in it, but I'm going to put some systems and strategies in place that have like an exit strategy for me on knowing what I'm going to give away and when I'm going to give it away. So there's a chance that if you would audit your business, especially if you're a new entrepreneur and you've got a small team, that there is a bunch of probably minimum wage type tasks that you could hand off sooner than later, I would say be willing to sacrifice some of your profit early, like be willing to sacrifice and say, hey, I'm not going to make as much right now, but I'm going to hand off some things in the short term so that I can go out and do the things that I'm really good at doing. And in the long run, you're going to be much better off doing those things because you know it's still a thing you're either going forward or backwards.
Speaker 2:If you're a work on it type person and you're working in it too much, then your business is going to start to decline and even probably before you even feel it. You're in decline because you're over here, managing, trying to, and now you're in survival mode. You're in scarcity mindset. You're just holding on for dear life. Get some people around you that you can bring in, even if it's contract to do the things, pay them and I know it's listen, I'm there now, I've been there and I'm there now. It's really tough to let go of your hard earned money. I mean this is like, especially when it's your business right, it's one thing when you're spending someone else's money and another company's money, but when this is your money you're spending, it's really tough in those early days to invest that into the things that you're not as good at, so that you can go out and do the things that's actually making your business money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and I think maybe as we wrap up here, is the world needs starters. It does Totally. New products, new services, new businesses, new ideas have to get dreamt about, wondered about, and then started and executed. The world doesn't need any more bad leaders, though. That's right, and so I think it's going back to what we've talked about with self-awareness, understanding who you are, what you bring to the table, what your gifts are, and then hiring for the things that don't really make that list. But my thing is, I would never want to discourage someone from starting something because they're not where they want to be from a leadership standpoint. We can outsource some of that stuff. If you're a starter, the world needs you. Let us help bring and backfill some of those leadership things that you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love to talk more about that and maybe this is a future episode where we can unpack a little bit more of.
Speaker 1:when you say bad leader, you're not talking about someone who's not perfect right and we probably share a lot of stories about the things we've made mistakes in Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:You can write books and books, and books, and so it's not so much about that. It's about the lack of willingness to grow and to continue to get better, and making the same mistakes over and over again, and so, for time's sake, we'll kind of stop here today. It's a great episode, matt, thank you. Thanks for all you guys that are listening or watching this, and tune in next week, because I think maybe we'll dive in a little bit more of this what's the difference between a responsible leader and a reckless leader, and how do we continue to level up in our leadership? It's great. Thanks, drew.
Speaker 1:Thank you.