EntreLeadership - The Top Leadership Wins and Fails of 2022

Starting point is 00:00:05 On today's episode, we're looking back on this year's top leadership wins and fails from the news and pop culture. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. We've got a special episode for you today. We're taking the entire episode and highlighting some of the top wins and fails in leadership and business this year as we could scour the internet for. And so joining me now is Casey Maxwell, executive director of marketing for Entree leadership. Casey, welcome. Thanks. Glad to be here. Glad they're not talking about my wins and fails. I needed to make it clear. This is from the news,

Starting point is 00:00:51 from the internet, not from Casey Maxwell personally. Yeah, we only have 30 minutes. There's only so much time in the day. Well, we thought we'd get your color commentary as we go through some of the top ones that you and I hand-selected because it points to a deeper principle, a deeper value, either on the good side or the one you want to avoid. You ready to dig in? Let's do it. All right. First up, we have a fail.

Starting point is 00:01:15 I thought we'd just start with some bad news here. This is an article from Forbes, better.com CEO, who fired employees during a one-way Zoom call says he squandered $200 million. This just started crazy and just kept going downhill as you keep reading this headline. Yeah. So he fires everyone on a Zoom call that's just a one-way street. and lets them know that he squandered $200 million and you're now unemployed. Yeah, let's actually play the clip and then we can talk about it.

Starting point is 00:01:43 All right, let's see it. My decision. Okay. Yes. Where do we start, Casey? Well, there's so much wrapped up in this video. The first thing is, let's address layoffs in general. So we as a company, some Ramsey Solutions, are pretty anti-layoff, right?

Starting point is 00:02:39 We've never laid off a single team member in the whole history of our company. and we've been around for 25 plus years, and we have over 1,000 team members. And when it comes to layoffs, there's really three things that often drives layoffs. It's short-term thinking, right? I've got to make my bottom line look better before the end of the year.

Starting point is 00:02:58 The second is when you look at people as a line item, it's easy just to slash them, and the other is just poor planning. Like a lot of people say, oh, this was unforeseen, right? Right. That's the way business happens. you can't see everything in the future, but you're not planning to have that emergency fund

Starting point is 00:03:17 for the what-if goes wrong, and then you're taking it out on the team. So I wanted to kind of put that out there that there's a lot of stuff going around about layoffs, and we have a very specific opinion around that. But some of the things that the CEO was trying to do, he just did it really poorly. Like the first thing he was trying to do was take responsibility, right?

Starting point is 00:03:38 He said, this was really hard. It was his fault. But the first thing is, if you see the video, his posture communicates that it is not as important to him as he's saying it is. I mean, he's like, he's leaning back. He's a little too relaxed. Yeah. He's kind of like leaning over the table, like six feet back. You can't even...

Starting point is 00:03:59 Yeah, visually, he was very far away from the actual camera. Right. Which feels like if you're trying to create an authentic, intimate thing happening over Zoom, being 10 feet away and just talking super-capital. casually leaning back in your chair, probably not the message you want to send. Exactly, exactly. And then he just completely forgot what empathy was, right? So he starts off and he goes, guys, this is the second time in my career that I've had to do this. The first time I cried, this time I hope to be stronger.

Starting point is 00:04:32 And I'm trying to think, like, in his mind, does he think that everybody listening on this call is like, oh, we're cheering for you, man? I hope you're stronger too, man. I mean, I would have loved to see some tears to actually see that this was something that was difficult for him to do. But the problem is that he was focusing on his feelings and emotions, not the feelings of the people that are getting laid off on this call, right? It's not a big deal to have emotions. There's another guy. Have you heard of the crying CEO on LinkedIn? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:03 So this guy, he was a startup, and he had to fire two people. and it really affected him in a major way and to the point where he cried and that's great i'm glad that people are feeling emotions but what he did was he took a picture of it tears running down his face and then posted it on his lincoln and said this is the most vulnerable post i've ever done it was so hard to do this i'm wrecked and he just got roasted and it wasn't because he cried and it wasn't because he had emotions. It was because he made it all about him, and it wasn't about the people.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Yeah. It feels like, you know, when I was in high school and a girl breaks up with you, and you're supposed to be the one who's sad, right? But then, like, she's crying, and she's like, this is really hard for me, and then, like, you're consoling her and you're just confused.

Starting point is 00:05:55 Right. That's kind of what this feels like. If you get to keep your job as the CEO, you can't be the saddest one in the room when everyone else just lost theirs. Exactly. And so you kind of have to read the digital room there. But there's a lot of poor communication here, a lot of false humility that no one on the Zoom call is buying.

Starting point is 00:06:13 No. No one believe this guy. Poor team connection. So all around, this was just a cluster. It was just the best example of the way to fail at having a hard conversation. Exactly. So key takeaway, don't do a one-way Zoom with thousands of people to give really hard information to. All right.

Starting point is 00:06:32 That's a fail. Let's move on to a win. We need a win right now, Casey. Yeah, so let's talk about a win. So we all know in February of this year that Russia invaded Ukraine. That conflict has been going on for a long time. But the win here has been Ukraine's President Zelensky. He has taught a master class in how to communicate as a leader. There's a couple things that he's done over the course of this year that just every leader should look at and say, how does this apply to me and my? business. The first thing he does is he over-communicates. If you look at the amount of information that he is putting out on the situation, he is constantly sharing. Which leads to the second thing is how he's sharing it. He is on social media. He's constantly posting. If you go on his

Starting point is 00:07:21 Instagram, which is one of his primary ways, about every three hours, he posts another update. And it's not super buttoned up. He's not in his... Not at the podium with a full suit. No, he's not. He sometimes has t-shirts on, sometimes with his family. He's showing what's going on in the front lines. He's not sugar-coding anything. He's not saying, oh, we got this covered. Everything is great. He's not trying to create this smokescreen. He's just trying to be as real and authentic as possible. Yeah, and this is from an article from Fortune. They say, less than a day into Russia's attack, the Ukrainian president had galvanized the planet through social media by presenting himself as humble, humane leader who could inspire his countrymen. into a seemingly no-win fight, Zelensky instantly rallied the West to his side. So it wasn't just about his people. It was the whole world was now cheering for this guy

Starting point is 00:08:11 because of the way he presented himself. Right. And if you think of it, I mean, it said right in there, this is a seemingly no-win situation. Like Ukraine's not strong enough in and of itself to fend off Russia. And so he could have done one of two things. He could have dug in and said,

Starting point is 00:08:25 hey, we're never going to win this. Let's just figure out how to just give up. And instead, he said, This is a no-win situation. Like he communicated how detrimental this situation was, but then he also brought hope. And he led with that hope that inspired not only Ukraine to go above and beyond what it could normally do,

Starting point is 00:08:45 but the world to start listening and now start taking some action. It's just amazing to watch him. And it's a great reminder to leaders out there to be constantly communicating, constantly rallying your team around whatever the mission is, and the fact that you do need to inspire them. and your authenticity, your humility around it

Starting point is 00:09:04 will be contagious to the team. And so I love the way he's done this and there is a lot to learn from it. I'm calling that a win. Yes, agreed. There was not a lot of wins out there, Casey, we could find. Yes. If it bleeds, it leads in the news.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And so therefore, not a lot of celebrating great leadership in the news. Yes. Yep. And that leads us to a fail. So what is our next fail in this segment? Well, Elon Musk. Elon Musk gives Twitter employees an ultimatum this is from an article from NPR. Here's the ultimatum he gave the employees.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Stay or go by tomorrow. So he just came in and just cleaned house. And we're not here to bash Elon. There's a lot of things that he's done that we would say, yeah, that needed to be done from a leadership standpoint, a business standpoint of where Twitter was at. But the way this was handled of coming in via email and being like, here's the new Twitter, like you need to go if this ain't for you.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Yeah. What do you think about that? Well, I've been a new leader and a team many different times. And one of the things that I've done wrong is I've come in, I've seen the things that are wrong or broken or the things that need to change. And I've got the vantage point of I haven't been in the day to day of everything going on. And when I come in, I have that sort of unbiased perspective, right? And so I want to come in and I want to change it. and the problem is how you do that, right? That's what creates the issue. So I agree. All the stuff that Elon is doing at Twitter may make Twitter a more viable business in the future. And there are things that the previous leadership team did to not set them up to win. But the way he has gone about it is really sort of bull in the China shop, sort of like coming in and saying, hey, all this is terrible. We're going to change it.

Starting point is 00:10:58 and we're changing it right now, and if you're not on board, get out of here. And so there's a very strategic way that you need to think about getting people on board. Now, if you just want to come in and you don't want anybody there, this is your playbook, right? Go start doing this in your organization.

Starting point is 00:11:16 Yes, and then you want to hire all your own people. Sure, go do that. But if you want to take the people that are there and say, hey, I actually want to get you on board, it's going to take a little longer. it's going to be things like creating a vision and then rolling that vision out and getting people to opt in or opt out of that vision.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Vision is very different than ultimatum. Yeah. Right? And so if you lead with an ultimatum that kills trust, that gets people to say, I want to leave. And maybe if that's your goal just to get everybody leave, do what Elon did.

Starting point is 00:11:50 Yeah, it feels like it was a first date and instead he just took a hostage and went, this is how this is going to go. Yes. And so let me read the, email it may help flavor it and so the email subject line was a fork in the road and Elon said Twitter would need to be extremely hardcore to succeed those who choose to stay should expect long intense hours of work those who leave will receive three months severance pay and so that's the

Starting point is 00:12:14 ultimatum and I think a lot of people are like I don't like this future he didn't really paint a picture of the mission the vision here the values here's where we're going to take this thing it was just hey, you're about to be working 80-hour weeks. If you don't like it, you can kick rocks and pound sand. Here's three months severance. Get out of here. Yeah. So that's his prerogative as the new owner. You know, if Dave has emailed us all, which he won't do this because he's a better leader

Starting point is 00:12:39 than that and said, hey, all 1,200 of you, we're going to be working 80-hour weeks for the next three years. And if you don't like that, this place ain't for you. Yeah. He has every right to do that, but he should also expect most people to just be like, I'm out. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, since we're kind of light on wins, let's say he had a win on clarity.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Yes, right? It was very clear. It was very clear on what it was going to be. It was more on the delivery, the speed, and how he really kind of just, it was my way or the highway. Yeah. No one wants that kind of dictator style leadership. You have to be winsome as a leader, and that's something Elon has not been doing a ton of. No.

Starting point is 00:13:16 You know, for all the things that he's maybe done right, winsome is not, I think, a word I would use to describe him if you are. our employee of Twitter. Agreed. So, all right, we're moving on now to a win, because we need another one. You know, with every down, we need a little up. And this one is a fun one, article from Fox Business. Here's the headline, Dolly Parton awarded $100 million from Jeff Bezos to give to charities of her choice.

Starting point is 00:13:46 There we go. Yes. A story of wealth and generosity. Yes. I thought all rich people were evil, Casey. That's, I've heard that somewhere. I don't think it's true, right? Yeah, I mean, now, there's a lot of thoughts about Bezos out there.

Starting point is 00:14:00 Sure. But you got to respect the guy for going, here's $100 million. Yes. That's a lot of money to Dolly, who is, you know, just a national treasure at this point, especially here in our hometown, Tennessee, to give to charities of her choice, which Dolly's already been known for her generosity and how she's rallied around her community to the world now with the Dolly Library, so much good stuff she's been doing. Yeah, I can't say enough good things about Dolly, not just because she is kind of like,

Starting point is 00:14:27 We are the hometown. She's our hometown hero. But I remember when I first had my first kid and I started getting books from the imagination library, which is what she started. And it sends books to every kid in Tennessee, right? Up until the age, I think it's five. She's done so many things to kind of prove that she's really good at philanthropy, right? Of really helping other people. And so this is a great win for Dolly of being that type of leader that people.

Starting point is 00:14:57 people would be able to rally behind and know that they're going to do a good job. But I think one of the things that I'd love to call out is this is actually a great leadership win for Bezos. So, again, whatever you think about Bezos, like, he gives a lot of his money away, right? And he realized that there might be somebody out there that is better at giving away my money than I am. And so he created this award. So this is not the first time this award has actually gone out. Like, it's gone out to different recipients. Yes, it's called the Courage and Charities Award. Yes.

Starting point is 00:15:32 And she was the 2022 recipient. Yes. And so he acknowledged this person who has really good integrity and knows how to do this would be better at spending $100 million than I am. So he created this thing to delegate the responsibility of giving away to charity to somebody who's more qualified than him. And that's something that we as leaders need to think about, like how can we delegate the things that there is somebody that is better than us at. Like maybe we have to bring in somebody,

Starting point is 00:16:02 right? We don't delegate necessarily things outside of our company, but who in the company would be able to do this better than I am so that I can focus on other things, right? I just love that. I love that example, and it's such, I wish more people would think of that to say, man, this person's better than me. I'm going to have them help me. Yeah. Well, and if you're out there listening, you're going, well, how do we know she's going to actually use that for charity? Well, the article goes on to say, while the funds she acquired do not go towards her personal fortune, which Dolly has plenty of, don't worry. They will and can go to any organizations of Parton's choice. And I think we can all speak to this and say it's in good hands with Dolly.

Starting point is 00:16:42 But it's also a good reminder as a business owner to be generous. And it may start with your team. It may bleed into your community. It may bleed into national mission work. Who knows what it be, but be thinking about that. And it's some of the best ways to create a culture of generosity on your team. One thing that stands in my mind is when Ramsey Solutions, just a few years back, we paid off $10 million worth of debt of just strangers out there around Christmas time. And we had all of our team members making phone calls to those people to let them know their debt has been paid off. This is outstanding medical debt or a car loan that had been sitting out there, and we just wanted to bless a whole bunch of people. So we bought a huge book.

Starting point is 00:17:23 cadet and paid it all off. And it was one of the most fun moments. And yes, there was some PR, publicity things that came out of that because the news organizations wanted to cover it. But more than that, I think it created such a cool moment for our team to all be generous together. Exactly. It was so great. And even, I think it was the year before that, or maybe it was the year after it, we were given a set of some money to go out and bless people individually. Right. And so, Dave and his foundation gives away a lot of money to charity, but he was able to empower us as the employees to go out and give. And so the more of that spirit that you can put in your organization, the more bought-in people are going to be, and the greater impact you're going to have just

Starting point is 00:18:09 on your local community. Yeah, and we always say that generous people are, they're more attractive. We're attracted to generosity. And the same goes for businesses. We're attracted to generous businesses. Think about all the companies out there that have done the one-for-one, you know, Tom's Shoes, Warby Parker. We're attracted. We want to spend our money with the companies that are doing good in the world.

Starting point is 00:18:28 And so think about that as a business owner, as a leader. What are some ways I can do that even on a small scale? Great reminders. All right, moving on to a fail because I can't stay positive too long, Casey. You know, here's a fail.

Starting point is 00:18:40 Article from CNBC talking about Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is continuing to derail Facebook, says Harvard expert. He's really lost his way. And a lot of this stems from his new venture called Meta, which is kind of now encompassing all of the companies. But the whole Metaverse thing, and he's, I don't know, Casey.

Starting point is 00:19:02 I don't have a lot to say about Zuckerberg that I think we can say on this podcast. But there's a lot of blaming going around with this story. Yeah, they've been down consistently for the past couple quarters. We know all of the stuff that happened with the leaks of information. And what you continually see is that there is a lack of, of taking responsibility for the problems that are happening. Anytime something goes wrong in your organization, like let's even go back to the better.com CEO,

Starting point is 00:19:31 at least he was saying, this is my fault. I did a bad job managing this, and as a result, these layoffs are happening, right? There's a lot of that that's just missing from what we're seeing in the news around Mark Zuckerberg. He should be taking responsibility as the leader of the company. Is it all his fault individually?

Starting point is 00:19:52 No. Is it always the leader's fault? At the end of the day, the buck stops with the leader, so it is their fault. But if you're constantly blaming, oh, the reason we're firing everybody is because of unforeseen circumstances, or the reason we're not making enough money is because people aren't smart enough to know how good our product is. If you're constantly putting the blame somewhere else, it just shows that you don't even have their best interest in mind, right? If you look at, so went in and looked at what are meta's core value? And, you know, the core values really spring out of leadership. It's move fast, focus on long term, build awesome things, live in the future, be direct and respect your colleagues, meta, metamates, and me. And all of those are not bad. It's great. And again, core values. Looks good on a poster.

Starting point is 00:20:40 Yeah. Core values are something that you should be driving the internal workings of your company. But there is nothing in there about the customer. There's nothing in there about, man, we need. like it says build awesome things. There's not a so that people's lives will get better. It's just, hey, we want to build awesome things. A lot of our core values are around internal ways of doing things, but we have one called Marketplace Service. And it's if you help enough people, you won't have to worry about money. Because we're there to serve the marketplace. And that's, again, to center us on

Starting point is 00:21:14 our goal is helping other people. And if you don't have that, if you're not focused on that, you're going to have the marketplace respond by not giving you those certificates of appreciation with president's faces on it. We say that all the time, right? Which is not showing up right now, unfortunately for META. And Bill George, who's the senior fellow at Harvard Business School, who had all these comments to say, he said, in short, bosses that lose sight of their most deeply held beliefs, values, and purpose as a leader, especially in the name of money, fame, or power, are doomed to fail. And after decades of researching high-profile corporate collapses, he says he sees he

Starting point is 00:21:51 striking similarities to Zuckerberg and meta today. Yikes. Yes. That's all we got to say about that, Casey. All right, our last one. Let's end on a high note with a win. Article from Fox News, headline, Wigs for kids. Shop owner helps children overcome hair loss issues. So let's dig into this and see what this story is all about. Louisiana business owner is giving free wigs to children who are dealing with health-related hair loss and Tiffany Callix is her name. She joined America's Newsroom to discuss how she's helping children who are suffering with this. And it's just, again, a really cool story of generosity. Yeah, this is probably one that most people haven't heard about. The young woman, Tiffany, in Louisiana, she was suffering with hair loss after her third kid,

Starting point is 00:22:43 postpartum hair loss. And it wasn't coming back, right? And so she started wearing wigs. And it was a passion. She just was trying to figure out. She wanted it to look real. and as she started going, she kind of thought, like, well, can I do this to help other people, right? That's a lot of our entree leaders out there that have started businesses.

Starting point is 00:23:04 It started at something very personal that they're passionate about, and they went out and created this business to help other people. The thing that I love about this, so she goes, creates this business, it's this passion, it starts doing really well. All of a sudden, she starts hearing from customers that do you have wigs for kids? So there's a lot of kids that struggle with cancer or some other medical issue that lose their hair. And she was being asked over and over again, do you have any wigs that would fit children? And so she didn't, but she began to take that feedback and say,

Starting point is 00:23:38 man, is there another way that I can help? So not only did she start offering wigs for kids, but out of her own pocket, she's giving those away for free. Anybody with a medical-related, any kid with a medical-related hair loss, can come in between the ages of 8 and 17 and get a free wig. Now, she's started allowing donations to happen and all of that, but I love how this passion grew into a business

Starting point is 00:24:04 that then began to give back to others that are struggling with a similar thing that she had. It's such a great story. It's one that we wanted to make sure to put on here because it probably didn't make the huge news cycles, but it's something that every entrepreneur should be thinking about. Yeah, and again, it goes back to our stories of generosity, what is that thing in your business?

Starting point is 00:24:25 I know there was a, I think it was a plumber in the UK who started saying, hey, if you are an elderly person, I'm not going to charge you to come fix your plumbing. And that caused his business to skyrocket because people were like, I want to support a guy like that with integrity, with character, who's generous.

Starting point is 00:24:41 And so it goes back to this idea that generous people are attractive and a generous business is going to be attractive. And so we don't do these things in order to, like, see the revenue go up. It's not like, well, we're going to be generous. in order to see our profits increase. But there's a byproduct that is natural

Starting point is 00:24:57 where the community sees this, the world sees this, and they applaud with those president's faces because they want to support that. Just a second ago, you just looked like every marketing director out there, sitting down and going like, oh, how can I make them think we're generous?

Starting point is 00:25:12 A lot of companies, and you can see through it, when companies are doing a generous thing just as a puff PR thing to look good. But there's a genuine difference, and you can see it in this article, I mean, she's in tears as she's saying these words of how much this means to her, how much it means to the parents. And so do something that's genuine to your business, to your community, that's personal to you, and just see what that does for your team, for yourself personally, and for your community. Agreed.

Starting point is 00:25:39 I love it. So, Casey, there was a lot of wins and fails today, and it all points to the fact that there is a leadership crisis, but there's also a lot of good in the world. And it's easy to just look at all of the bad stuff as we see on the. news and just think the world is crumbling. There are no good leaders in the world, but I know because the good ones, they're the entree leaders. So the ones listening to this, they show up at the entree events, and I love meeting them because it gives me hope that there is good leadership happening all around the country right under our noses. And it inspires me to know that they're out there doing the hard work every day in their community. Agreed. And we want to make sure to call out,

Starting point is 00:26:16 as a leader, you are going to fail, right? The more that you are getting out in front of your team, the more mistakes that you're going to happen, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, right? So leaders are going to have wins and they're going to have fails, but that's just part of leadership. And we need more and more people to step up into that role.

Starting point is 00:26:34 Yeah, and we've obviously covered 2022, but I really have high hopes for 2023 for a lot of the growth. Obviously, a new year is just another day on the calendar, but it represents something a lot deeper. And a lot of businesses, they reset their vision, or maybe some of the specific goals they have for that year. Maybe it's we want to scale and grow this thing.

Starting point is 00:26:55 We want to grow the team. Maybe you do want to grow the profits or start a new location. And so I'm so excited to see the growth that are on-ray leaders experience in their own leadership and their own business this year, hopefully and partially as a result of the work that we're doing here. Yes. So it was an honor to have you. Thanks for your color commentary. And always love having you on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:27:15 It was a blast. Thanks, George. All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation covering the wins and fails of 2022. Hopefully, we see you all in the win columns in 2023. Now, as a business owner, it sometimes feels like you're the chief everything officer. Your time is spent putting out fires all day instead of focusing on the important work of growing your business. But with Entree Leadership Elite, you can learn how to manage your time and delegate without the guilt.

Starting point is 00:27:41 The tools and resources are designed to fit into your day, not add more to it, so that you can stay focused on the work that matters. And right now, Elite is free for the first 30 days. So if you want to learn more and start that free trial, go to Entreeleadership.com slash Elite. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, be sure to follow, subscribe, and leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. And it would mean the world to us if you would share this episode

Starting point is 00:28:05 with your team, with a friend, or on social media. You can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. And if you enjoy this podcast, be sure to check out some of the other great podcasts on the Ramsey Network, like the Dr. John Deloney show. All right, sneak peek for you. Coming up in January,

Starting point is 00:28:21 we've got a special five-part series on the habits you need to develop as a successful leader in 2023. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.

EntreLeadership - The Top Leadership Wins and Fails of 2022

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