#135-More Dumb Things Leaders Say
John (Intro): I have been on a quest to learn everything I can about leadership obsessed with what makes the best leaders so good. After running companies small and large for the last 20 years, today I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name is John Laurito and I’m your host. I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this topic: What makes the best leaders so good? Welcome to Tomorrow’s Leader.
John: OK, welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dive deep on all things leader-related, related to leading yourself and leading others. I am John Laurito, your host today with part two of what sounds to be a pretty popular episode. And that was dumb things leaders tend to say. So last week I published five of them. Today, I’ve got three more for you. I appreciate all you faithful listeners who are sending in your examples of things you’ve heard some leaders say, or maybe you’ve said them. That’s OK. We’ve all said dumb things. I’ve said dumb things before once maybe. I don’t know. All right.
John: So I’m going to give you the first one actually was and I’ve actually heard this many, many times, similar types of things. But I remember a leader coming to me and saying in a kind of casual conversation, “Hey, do you know that Bob is getting a divorce? And I don’t know if you know that. Don’t share it with anybody. It’s confidential. He shared it with me in confidence. But I wanted to let you know this.” I’m like, OK, well, thanks, I guess, for letting me know that, but that doesn’t feel very good, especially the fact that he told that to you in confidence. So why are you sharing it, if that was told in confidence? So my point being is that leaders and people in general, I think, oftentimes are way too quick to talk and share information when it’s given to them in a confidential and trusting matter.
John: Because my thought at that point is, OK, well, I know I’m not going to tell this leader anything that I don’t want to be shared because that was not even, I didn’t even ask and we weren’t even talking about Bob. It wasn’t even a conversation that comment made sense. It was almost like he couldn’t wait to share this information. He had this nugget of information and it was like, OK, I’m privileged. I’ve got this I want to share with you this special intel that I have. Well, it kind of backfired because it reduced and broke trust. So I imagine I was not the only person he shared that with. I’m imagining that Bob, it got back to him because the more people that know loose lips sink ships. So it did not bode well for the leader. It did not bode well for Bob. And honestly, it didn’t bode well for the team because trust was broken, even though it seems like in a small way, trust is trust. When you break it in one way, you break it altogether. There’s no way to kind of partially break a window, either break it or, you know, so that’s comment number one.
John: Comment number two is one that somebody sent in. And I’ve actually heard this, too. This is a crazy one. But the words: do as I say, not as I do. All right. Do as I say, not as I do. All right. OK, you got it? Capisce. OK, no capisce. That doesn’t make sense, right? When you’re a leader, everything that you do is critical. Everything you do is critical. People watch you all the time. You are on stage all the time. It does not matter if you feel like you are or you should be. You are. You’re setting the tone for how people communicate with each other and what the culture of the organization is and how people handle failures and mistakes and
how hard they work and what time they start their day. Everything. I mean, people always look to the leader for that. You set the tone. You can’t tell people to start their day at 7:00 if you start your day at 9:30. That doesn’t really set a great example. And you certainly can’t get frustrated with that.
John: If you cut corners and are willing to do things in the gray area, well, you can’t get upset when your team is doing the same thing. Well, they’re seeing you do it. They’re seeing you cut corners. So why wouldn’t they? Even despite the fact that you say, hey, don’t cut corners, it just doesn’t work that way. The leadership doesn’t work that way. So what you do is everything. How you communicate facial expressions, I mean, people watch what you’re doing all the time, they watch you walking around the office, so what, they just see you and they take note whether they’re conscious about it or not or it just goes back into the deep recesses of their brain. Their brain registers it and it helps drive their future behaviors and actions. So, yeah, it is about what you do, not only what you say more about what you do.
John: OK, number three, and we will wrap this up on this note, because this was kind of a funny one. I had somebody and I saw this on social media where somebody had posted a video. Now, this was a coach of a team where the player was being recognized for a job well done and the coach was bringing on this player kind of like the MVP of the game. And it was an honor. It was kind of positioned that way. Hey, I’m going to highlight a player every single week or two weeks or whatever. But ultimately the video, I think was ten minutes long and probably five minutes of it was asking the player to share about, you know, bad plays that he made and missed opportunities and basically his failures. And that didn’t really bode too well or didn’t really come across as a recognition video. It was more like putting this guy in the hot seat.
John: So, you know, if you’re going to recognize somebody, be authentic about it and just be true about it. I’m not saying it’s not OK to talk about failures and missed opportunities and things like that and things you did wrong. But I’m a big believer you praise in public and you punish in private. This was an embarrassing part of what should have been a really nice recognition piece that got posted to social media. And there were some, he just had to answer questions he probably didn’t want to answer and wasn’t ready to answer. He did a great job and he came across great. But I really looked at the coach, the leader, and that situation is what are you doing? Scratching my head saying, OK, if you’re positioning this as a recognition thing, it’s really not quite coming out that way.
John: So that’s my third thing or item for today will keep it quick and give you some time back in your day. I’ve got more good stuff coming up. Keep sending me your dumb comments. Leaders say I enjoy this. It’s fun and I get a lot. Send it to me. So I’ll kind of drip on you and send these in the Future podcast episode. So as they come in, I’ll share them with you. But stay tuned. Make sure you tune in. I’ve got some more good stuff coming up in the next couple of days. In the meantime, share, subscribe, like go down below, give a five-star review, give your comments. Appreciate it. Thanks. Have a good one.
John (Closing): Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. For suggestions, or inquiries, about having me at your next event, or personal coaching, reach me at john@lauritogroup.com Once again, that’s john@lauritogroup.com. Thanks! Lead on!
