Start With A Win - 3 Leadership Failures

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, Adam shares with us the 3 ways he has found that leaders fail, and the ways to avoid or adjust these behaviors:Becoming a “me” person rather than a “we” person – This issue ultimately stems from an unhealthy ego that values personal gain over the good of the team. Leaders must remember that one of the main sources of their success is the contribution of the members of their team and their mentors along the way.Ordering people to do things rather than influencing them – Ordering your team members to do things results in lower quality and forced results, but influencing them brings them into the process, allowing them to buy in and want to do the tasks or projects before them, which means better results for the team as a whole.Burning your bridges rather than your boats – Work together to solve problems and face challenges and your team will have the commitment necessary to “burn their boats” with you, but be sure to avoid destroying relationships (“burning bridges”) in the process.Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

Atop of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With A Win with CEO Adam Kantos. Hey everybody, how's it going? Adam Kantos here with Start With A Win. We've had some fun conversations lately. Yeah, this has been a great, great show. A lot of great interviews that we're going to be taking part in. So make sure you subscribe because you're going to be in for a treat. Oh, Mark, I'm subscribed. Perfect.

Right on. We're there. So, hey, today's podcast, Mark. Yeah. What are we talking about today, Mr. Contos? So, I love getting into the leadership persona. Some of the things that make you successful, but also a lot of things that make you not successful as a leader. And I've pulled out three of them. There's a lot of different rules in leadership, but three that really kind of get under my skin when it comes to how

leaders really kind of, I guess, lead, deal with the people around them, things like that. Well, and you interact with a lot of leaders. I mean, I think about all the different brokers and stuff that you interact with, the people that you're around. And then I'm sure you've done tons and tons of research on leadership as a CEO of a major brand. You have to be a good leader. I'm excited to hear what you've got to say today. It's kind of fun.

It's always kind of being redefined. There's always this new leadership principle. You go all the way back to Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Those guys, they talked about human nature, leadership, things like that, and what causes effective leaders and ineffective leaders. And these are three that I've kind of benchmarked against some good and bad leadership that I've seen lately, not really in the company here, but just kind of in society. You watch the news and you observe leaders doing different leader things. You watch like there's some hurricanes going on and things like that. And how do the local political leaders stand up to things?

How does law enforcement? How do business leaders react to different situations and lead the people that they lead? And of course, yes, it does transcend through our industry, through franchising, real estate, things like that as well. So ready to jump into this? Let's do this. What do you got for us? Right on.

So the first thing that I've noticed that leaders need to reflect upon a lot, a lot, because people just by human nature get caught up in this. And that's that a lot of times people become a me person over being a we person. So you're a leader. You're a we person. You're not a me person. The me people out there are short-term leaders. They're trying to have personal gain at the expense of their team. So if you're a leader, you're typically leading more than just yourself, but you're leading a team of people, maybe one, maybe 100, maybe 1,000 people, something like that. But you've got a team.

And if you are self-centered and you are into you, you're a me person. It's all about me, me, me, me singing my praises, things like that. You lose track of the fact that somebody else got you there. And that's your team. That's your we. So it's something that I've seen a lot of, and it's tough to get over because you feel for that team. You go, wait a second. It's about the people.

It really truly is. And you look at our network of 123,000 amazing real estate agents. I didn't get this company there. They got the company there. They're the ones every day that go out and work hard. And the brokers, over 7,000 of them in over 100 countries and territories, they're out there working on their businesses and helping further the brand and the real estate, the homeownership cycle out there in society.

So this is their success, and we're super appreciative of that. And we can't take our eye off that ball. This is a we thing. It's not a me thing. And nobody in this building feels that way. This is a team effort throughout the world. So that's one of the key components. I believe that leaders kind of fall off the tracks every now and then

when that ego gets playing. Yeah. And they lose track of the fact that it's about your team. It's about your team. Yep. Number two. Number two. This one is interesting.

Think about kind of growing up and you're told what to do all the time. And then you get to this point where you go, oh, I'm influenced what to do all the time. And then you get to this point where you go, oh, I'm influenced what to do. So there are two kinds of leaders. There are those that order people to do things and those that influence people to do things. So influencing people is getting people to do things because they want to do them.

Ordering people to do things is telling them and making them do them. Ordering people to do things is telling them and making them do it. So people intrinsically perform at a higher level when they want to accomplish a task instead of just being told to accomplish a task. And sometimes you hear that called management. We manage tasks. We lead people.

So you have to influence, not order. And that makes a huge difference both for, you know, obviously the leader wants to be influencing people because you can get more out of those people that you lead if you influence them instead of order them. They're going to give you what you ask for if you order them. They're going to give you what they can, all they got if you influence them. So going to give you what they can all they

got if you influence them so such a big difference well yeah the quality i think too the quality of work right when someone's working for something because they want to there's just a higher higher quality product that they're going to be able to deliver so as a leader if you're motivating your people and they're inspired and they're putting in their efforts and time because they want to, not because they're told to. It's better for everybody. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

So third one. Yes. This one I think is really, really important. And that's burn your boats, not your bridges. Burn your boats. So you've heard the term burning your boats on the shore. Okay. You've got to commit to something. I've heard of burning bridges too burning bridges yeah that's ruining relationships that's right so you want commitment but that commitment cannot be at the at the cost of

destroying your relationships okay and it's it's kind of interesting when you cross those over each other, because I mean, they typically are used separately. Don't burn your boats or don't burn your bridges. And then you hear people go, burn your boats, be committed. But think about both of them together. So if you burn your boats, you get commitment from your team and you maintain those bridges. You work together to cross over with those challenges and achieve things. So you're committing together to those things, to the challenge that you have. And that's a big part of a team winning is the leader of that team, the leader of that group needs to be so committed that they said, hey, we're all in on this. We're burning our boats.

We're doing it. Let's go. And if you've burned your bridges in the meantime, you're not going to get those people to follow you. Yeah, so true. You got to kind of play those things together. I truly believe that it's about building that relationship and that influence and getting those people to have the level of commitment that that leader has. That leader better be committed.

Otherwise, you're not going to get there. Yeah, so true. All right, to recap. Recapping. All right. You want to be a we person, not a me person? Be a we, not a me. That's it.

Be a we, not a me. So it's about the team. It's not about the individual. A Super Bowl team is way better than a Pro Bowl team, man. That is true. So a bunch of prima donnas, a bunch of people who want to do it for themselves, nowhere near as powerful as a group of people that wants to do it for each other. So be a we, not a me. Second one, influence, don't order. Let's inspire these people. Let's get them to do it together instead of telling them to do it.

And they'll always perform more when it's influence, not order. Third one, burn your boats, not your bridges. So be commitment, be committed, be commitment-based, and keep those relationships going in order to get the accomplishments done as a team. So three leadership lessons. Simple, short, and sweet.

That's it. Love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure to head over to startwithawin.com to get more great content. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Adam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And remember, start with a win.