Start With A Win - 5 Deadly Leadership Mistakes EVEN EXPERTS Make

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In today’s episode of Start With a Win, Adam Contos dives into key leadership challenges and strategies for overcoming them. Adam explores how personal mindset, clarity in communication, team development, and humility play vital roles in successful leadership. He underscores the ripple effect leaders have on their teams and organizations, emphasizing the importance of starting each day positively, communicating effectively, fostering growth in others, and managing ego. Packed with relatable anecdotes and actionable insights, Adam provides a thoughtful perspective on self-reflection and growth, encouraging listeners to embrace these lessons in their leadership journeys.⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadershipWant weekly leadership content? Go here ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

Maybe you got up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe you just had an argument with your significant other or with an employee or who knows what's going on. And if you allow that frustration to continue to build, here's what you do. You build up that bucket of emotion that you're carrying around with you every day and you start spilling that negativity on other people into other situations. You have to do a reset. How do we do this reset? Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With A Win headquarters, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. I get asked these questions a lot, or I stumble across

these questions when people are making mistakes in their businesses. What are five big leadership mistakes that are made in business? As a business leader, you should know these things, but we miss these things quite frequently. So I want to review these with you today, and maybe we can walk away from this going, I got a little bit better. I was able to hold up the mirror to myself and go, huh, all right, I made that today, or maybe I made that this week. I need to fix it, or I need to pivot away from what my habit was that I was forming there. Might be a training scar, as we call it in some of the businesses where we're learning the wrong way instead of the right way. But let's dig into these five, starting with number one.

This is super important because a lot of times we show up at work this way. Number one is not starting from a good place yourself. Here's the reality. A lot of leaders show up at the office, at work, in their business, maybe in front of a customer carrying some emotional baggage from home. Or maybe their last meeting was a mess. Or maybe the last play, if you're in sports, was a mess. There's a big key component here that you need to think about. Coach K, who was the winningest basketball coach in college basketball history, always said, next play. And what that does is that resets your brain. When you don't start from a good place, you don't end up in a good place. And when we're starting from a losing perspective,

when we're on our heels in life, we can't move forward. And the reality is maybe you got up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe you just had an argument with your significant other or with an employee or who knows what's going on. Maybe the dog made a mess on the rug. I mean, I've had all those things happen. Believe me, it doesn't begin your day well. And if you allow that frustration to continue to build, here's what you do. You build up that bucket of emotion that you're carrying around with you every day. And you start spilling that negativity on other people into other situations. Maybe you walk into a meeting and people are like, how's it going? And you're like, oh, it sucks. I mean, that should be a red flag to everybody if the boss walks in and says that, but it should also be a red flag to

yourself. If you're not starting from a good place yourself, you're not going to deliver any sort of positive movement or momentum in your business or in your relationships that day. You have to do a reset. How do we do this reset? It might be just reading something inspirational. It might be meditating for five or 10 minutes. I mean, for crying out loud, put a meditation app on your smartphone and use it and clear the calculator, clear out your mind so that the next thing that you're doing is positive. It's in a good place. The reality is we will infect others with our attitude, especially as the leader. Here's a good example. If you sit in a meeting and you're so frustrated with life and somebody brings something up because what do we do in meetings? A lot of times we solve problems

and you start pounding the table and cussing about something. Your employees are going to walk out of that room and think that that's how you want that solved. So when they go to solve that problem, they're going to be pounding the table and cussing because they're going to mirror what you're doing. You're delivering that negativity to others and they're going to mirror that in order to solve the problem the way that they think they're supposed to because that's what you're doing as the leader. So how do we start from a good place? Get your systems down. Get your routine down. I start my day with a cup of coffee. My energy drink, which is a pre-workout drink, has a little bit of caffeine in it. My coffee, by the way, is decaf. But my workout drink has

a little bit of energy in it. And I go to the gym. And I hit it hard. And I push myself beyond my limits. And it hurts, but I grow and I feel satisfied from that. And that satisfaction catapults me to a new level. It allows me to begin my day from a positive point because I've had a huge win. You know what? You should always start with a win. That's what this podcast is called, Start With A Win. And it's called that for a reason, because we want you to start from a good place. That's number one. Number two, this is important, folks, not delivering clarity through your communication.

Leaders fail when they fail to be clear. And being clear means you have to communicate regularly. So not delivering clarity through communication is a huge landmine in the leadership path. If we sit down and we ask somebody to do something, but we're thinking something else, we open up this game. I call it the game of guess what I'm thinking. And you don't want to try to guess what your boss is thinking. You want to know what your boss is thinking and you want to know what they expect. What do they expect? How do they want it done? When do they want it done by?

And do you have permission to check in with them along the way to make sure you are on that path correctly based upon their expectations? This clarity is important for everything in life because when we start living in doubt, we get fear and overwhelm that fills in that doubt and people stop performing at a good level. If you have a leader that gets in front of people, maybe they're in the press or maybe they're in a meeting of some sort and they are unclear on what they're doing or what they've done or what they're going to do, everybody starts to lose trust. Clarity provides trust because it provides a good, clear, that's the word clarity, direction that we are going together as a group. Lack of clarity is lack of leadership. Okay. Let me say that again. Lack of clarity is lack of leadership. So the quickest way to lose your leadership

is to not be clear. What else does lack of clarity do? It builds distrust. When we have clarity, we have trust. Lack of clarity, lack of trust. People need trust in order to take chances for you and to bet on you as that leader. So when they're picking their leader, because people do pick their leaders, you might not

realize that leaders, well, I'm the leader of this business, you might be thinking. But the reality is they're going to go to their leader that they have picked for clarity and direction. If it's you, great. You have control as the leader. Not that leading is controlling, but leading is influencing to get things done. That's a form of control. And what we want them to have is that desire to go do what your clarity is stating as a leader. So think about this. Be clear. Give regular communication that has that clarity

in it. Frankly, it should be consistent also because you don't want to keep getting them to change direction, but they need to know where they're going, what they're doing, how they're going to get there, and that you back them on that. And there's no question about it. There should be no question because when there's question, again, we lose trust. So that's the second one, not delivering clarity through communication. Hey, it's Adam. I love this episode here because I also have a free gift for you. I'll be giving that to you at the end. So make sure you listen to the whole episode. Also like and subscribe, please. A lot of our leaders that listen to this are not subscribed, but they still join us here every week. So please like and subscribe to this, and I'll see you at the end, and I have a special gift, a download for you to help you grow your leadership. A third big mistake that's made by

leaders, lack of growth and development in your people. Hello, why are we leaders? We're leaders because we should be growing other leaders. Our desire as a leader is to replace ourselves. That's right. I said it. Your job is to put yourself out of a job. That's hard to swallow. But the reality is that that is how you become a better leader, by helping people become great leaders themselves. Your job is to replace yourself with somebody better than you that you've been developing. That seems really counterproductive, doesn't it? But it's the truth. And the reality is, here's what that allows us to do. It allows us to stand on the shoulders

of these giants that we are building. There's a philosophy about standing on the shoulders of giants. When we build giants in our business, these people who can do amazing things, we get to stand on the shoulders of them because we help build them. And it allows us to see further than we could see by standing on our own two feet. It's amazing. Build leaders. A great mentor of mine once told me, to be a great leader, you need to be a sponge. What does that mean? Well, leaders are always learners. Leaders are learners.

Learners are leaders. And as a sponge, you're soaking up this information. You're getting better every single day. And by the way, leadership development and growth is not just going to a leadership class once and being done with it. Leadership growth is growing every single day. every single week for that matter. That's why we put out all of this content about leadership all the time so you can continue your growth and you can share it with others. But what you want to do is continue to grow yourself. Soak it up like the sponge. But what does a sponge do? It soaks it up, right? Well, that's only half of the job of a sponge.

The reality is the other half is give it back. So a sponge will soak up a liquid and then you squeeze it and it gives that liquid back to wherever you want that liquid to go. That's the purpose of a sponge. So think about this. How do you build a sponge in yourself and in your business of soaking up leadership information and development? How do we get better? And then how do we give that to the people in the business in order to make them better?

And their job? You got it. Be a sponge. When they soak up the information, they can give it back to the people in their charge that they lead. And it's this cascading waterfall effect of the leadership growth that the top key leader gives makes it all the way down through the organization. And you're building a ton of leaders. How exciting is that? People want to get better. One of the top reasons why people work for a business is because they want that business to help them get better. Nobody wants to get worse. Wait a second, how do they get worse?

They get worse by not trying to get better. We don't live in this state of equilibrium. We live in either growth or we live in a diminishing capacity. So we're either getting better or we're getting worse in life and in business. Because tomorrow offers new challenges. Tomorrow creates new opportunities for us. And if we're getting better, we have the ability to embrace and go after those opportunities and overcome those challenges. Whereas if we're not getting better, those challenges will build up on us and they will take us over and we will get worse.

And at some point, we will fail. It's the law of diminishing returns. build up on us and they will take us over and we will get worse. And at some point we will fail. It's the law of diminishing returns. So what happens here is you are either growing and sharing that growth with your people or everybody gets worse together. Or worst case scenario, somebody else in the organization is growing and they see the organization is not, so they're going to leave and they're going to go to an organization where they get growth themselves. Very important. That's number three. Lack of growth and development in your people is one of the key mistakes of a leader. Number four, inability to lose the ego. Whoa, what is that? Well, what's an ego? To begin with, an ego is an emotional barrier to feedback and growth. It's where we feel that we are better at something, we know something,

or we can do something and nobody else can tell us about that, and we get defensive about it. We're judging ourselves by lashing out at others, essentially, is what our ego is. So what we need is we need this humility, this ability to accept feedback and not be defensive or judge that feedback. But to take that feedback as information and say, how can I learn and grow from this information? Because regardless of how poorly or amazingly well that feedback was delivered, you should accept it as data. Think about that. Next time you receive feedback from somebody, how do you take that information as data and listen to that data so that you yourself can grow from that data? Here's a great example. Let's say you are in a

meeting and somebody doesn't like how the project is going that you're in the meeting discussing. Well, that's okay that they don't like it because there's a reason that they don't like it. But don't push back against them for this project because it's your baby, this ownership of project philosophy. When you own a project, it means you need to explore all the opportunities with the project. But a lot of times in this meeting, we get defensive about it and we lash out. I'm guilty just as much as anybody else here is. So when you lose the ego, you can say, tell me more about this because I'd love to get your perspective on it. And if they give you their perspective on it, what's the proper answer for their perspective?

It's not to counter their perspective and debate the situation with them. Here's a simple answer that helps you lose the ego. Thank you. People are going to be like, what? Thank you for that feedback. I really value and appreciate your opinion. That goes a long way for a leader. Because when we thank somebody for their feedback, we're giving gratitude to them. That's a gift. Gratitude is a gift, by the way.

So how do you give that gratitude to somebody and then take that feedback, that data and information, and get better from it. Maybe that data information can give you the ability to notice that you're lacking one of the earlier pieces, number two, clarity and communication. Or maybe it will give you the ability to grow and develop and understand, oh, I have a gap here. I have a blind spot. When you lose the ego, you open the door to so much amazing growth in yourself and in others. Because here's what happens when you lose the ego. You build a culture of no egos in your organization. Because you are kind, and calm, and listening to what's going on, and you're willing to accept change and growth.

And the reality is that when you accept change and growth, you can expect those under you in the organization to expect change and growth also. We can hold each other accountable to that. We can provide clarity around those expectations so that that is the value chain that we deliver to our customers and our employees at the same time. We're open to feedback because we have no ego. We love to hear the opinions, impressions, and thoughts of those on our team and those that we serve. So that's number four. Big leadership challenges is the inability to lose the ego. Number five. This one I really love because this helps wrap in, it wraps in

all of the people on our team and it gives everybody ownership and value. This key leadership failure, I would say, is big. This is relying solely on your own perspective. Now, what does that mean? It means that you don't value other people's opinions or angles of approach. What do they feel about this project, this idea, this philosophy? If you only rely on your perspective, you might as well not have any other employees because essentially you're telling them that they don't matter. You might as well not really have any customers because you're telling them that you don't care what they think. They're going to either buy your product or service or not buy it, but it's the right way. Here's a reality. We're all flawed. All of our own perspectives and ideas have flaws in them. And that's how we discover how to

innovate and evolve them into something better. They might be the best thing right now, but they're not the best thing forever. So if we only look at our perspective, we never get to see outside of our perspective. We never get to see other people's impressions of who we are as a leader, what we're doing, what we're saying, how we're doing that. Here's a good way to understand if you're looking outside and listening to other people. Do a 360 review. Download called What's Wrong With My Leadership. This contains number five specifically. It has what's called a 360 review in it that I just mentioned. And what that does is allows you to ask these questions to other

people and say, am I doing anything that I can do better as a leader? It asks their opinion without judgment. Really, anonymously, frankly, a lot of people don't believe 360s are anonymous, and a lot of times they aren't. But you have to treat them as anonymous as a leader in order to actually get more than one of them ever done. Otherwise, people are going to think that you're judging their answers. The reality is, this is a gift to you. A 360 review for you from somebody is them putting their job on the line and their ego on the line for you. So download What's Wrong With My Leadership. Take a look at that and don't rely solely on your own perspective.

Understand where other people are coming from. What does this do? This gives you the ability to grow. And frankly, it allows you to grow really quickly because you can very quickly and succinctly identify your gaps, your blind spots, and your opportunities in leadership growth. So take a look at that. But I really can't stress this enough that if you rely solely on your own perspective in business and in life, it is a hindrance to your growth. The founder's dilemma is a dilemma where you only rely on your own opinion in order to grow your business. And anybody who says something about it is wrong.

They're patently wrong because it is your idea and you're the founder. But the reality is, this is a way for you to grow your business. If you listen to the feedback that people provide, get out of your own way and stop preventing your own growth as the founder. A lot of times when a company's bought, the founder is immediately eliminated or kept on as a consultant of some sort, particularly because the founder has done everything that they can in their own head. But once you get them out of the way, the company thrives because they're like, all right, we took the founder's great idea, which you get credit for.

It was a great idea. And they grow it like crazy because they saw other ways to grow up besides what the founder was doing. But it's within the founder's framework of the business that they started. One of the other things you'll notice a founder does, or a key leader in a company, they try to solve all the problems. Don't do this. Ask for opinions instead of trying to solve all the problems yourselves. I've gone into businesses and I've seen businesses run this way where if there's a question or a problem, they walk into the founder's office or

the CEO's office for that matter. And they say, here's what's going on. And immediately the CEO or the founder says, here's what you need to do. This person turns around and walks out of the office and does it. Well, what just happened there? That person did not learn problem solving skills. That person was disempowered by that founder or leader because that person relied solely on the perspective of the founder or leader in order to answer that question. They're not solving a problem here. They're answering a question because the question is being answered by that founder or leader. Let's teach problem-solving skills to the people in our businesses. And here's what happens. They come up with new ideas, new ways of doing things,

probably ways that are going to be far more efficient or effective than the way you're doing it right now. This is how businesses grow and evolve. There are many business cases out there that talk about this. I mean, you could look at Blockbuster. You could look at Amazon. You could look at Netflix and how they took over Blockbuster. You can look at the Red Solo Cup and how that has evolved. You can look at Stanley Thermoses turning themselves into this massive insulated cup company now instead of the old school Stanley Thermos that construction workers would take coffee to the construction site in. There are so many different ways that a little bit new perspective will change the paradigm of a business. So think about that. Number five is relying solely on your own perspective. Now, these are just five of the

multiple mistakes that leaders make. We all make a lot of mistakes. We are flawed as human beings, but that is the key to our success, is our ability to adapt and change, get over that ego, to provide clarity to people, to get better ourselves and help others grow. These things build better leaders. So go back and listen to this again. Make sure you also download my What's Wrong With Your Leadership download. Go to adamkontos.com slash myleadership and download that and see what you can do to grow. How do I start my day with a win?

Because I ask everybody that. Here's my process. I get up first thing in the morning. I review a little bit of leadership information. I love to see the CEO daily, the different aspects of leadership growth that I've subscribed to. And I go to the gym.

I spend an hour working really hard. And my wife, Kelly, love you to death, babe, holds me accountable to giving it my all. I also spend some time, my dog goes to the gym with me also. So it's a nice therapy slash workout situation. I go home, I have my protein drink, and I head to the office to hit it hard. That's how I start my day with a win. Adam Contos here with Start With A Win. Thanks for joining us today. Think about these five things that I talked about in building your leadership. See you next time on Start With A Win.