The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 188: Sydney Finkelstein - How To Be A SuperBoss

Starting point is 00:00:00 And what he said, by the way, it's very telling, as he escorted me to the door, he said, Sidney, why would I want to lose my best people? Why would I want to let my best people go? And just think about the verb in there, to let my people go. Is it the case that any one of us, as leaders, as managers, even CEOs, can control where the people, where people go and do what they do in their lives? We are all able to make our own choices. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed. With the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities for the self-employed. To meet this end, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly.

Starting point is 00:01:20 The All-New Fresh Books is not only easy to use, it's also packed full of powerful features. Like, create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners to claim it. Just go to freshbooks.com slash learning and enter Learning Leader in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. I absolutely loved this conversation with my featured leader, Dr. Sidney Finkelstein.

Starting point is 00:02:11 He's a professor of management at Dartmouth College. He's also the faculty director of the Center for Leadership. His specialty is business, leadership, and strategy. His latest best-selling book is called Superbosses, How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent. This is the result of a 10-year research project. Superbosses, profiles, leaders who all have one thing in common. They helped spawn some of the best talent in their industries. Love it. A few of the topics we got into.

Starting point is 00:02:42 What are the qualities that make up a super boss? How to build a giving culture while simultaneously driving internal competition like Lauren Michaels does on Saturday Night Live, followed by specific tactics you can implement immediately to become a super boss. And without further ado, it's Sidney Finkelstein. Sydney, thank you so much for being here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you, Ryan.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Great to be on. Question to get us going. You have done an incredible job of studying what the best of the best do, some of the actions of the greatest leaders and or bosses in the world. I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the common characteristics that the greatest bosses all seem to share? you know there's a bunch of things but i'd say curiosity is going to be near the top of the list they are always looking for for answers and and they keep asking questions that keep taking them further and further and you know this is a this is a trademark of great entrepreneurs as well that's where entrepreneurial ideas come from by asking questions by having that curiosity so i would put that

Starting point is 00:03:57 one right right at the top of the list i think i'd also add courage the courage to go after your your opportunities, the courage to take on conventional wisdom, the courage to say, you know what, we do need to change. We do need to do something a little bit differently because what we've been doing the date is not working as well. And the third thing I would say is, and this is at the heart of a lot of my research on leadership and super bosses, of course, is that these leaders, they understand that to be successful, the best path they can possibly follow is to help other people actually be successful. And by doing that, they actually end up surrounding themselves with tremendous talent. And as a result, they're going to do well. Others are going to do well.

Starting point is 00:04:42 And so they have this kind of expansive broad view of what success really means. And it's not just about them. It's about lots of other people at the same time. Interesting. I love it. My dad has told me from a young age that in order to be successful as a leader, that your success can only follow the success of your people. So if you have a constant focus on that very moment or those moments creating success for them, hiring and surrounding yourself with high quality people, you're going to drastically increase your odds. On the flip side, what are some of the common themes you found in people who think they are good bosses or think they are good leaders, but actually are not? You know, these are people that very often have an incredible sense that

Starting point is 00:05:29 they've got it figured out that they've got the right answer. It's almost the opposite of the curiosity thing. They're not that curious because they got the right answer. So why do you need to learn anything new? And that's a killer attitude. That's kind of the attitude or the mindset that's behind lots of failures in terms of career derailments, but even for companies as well. So this inability, this maybe a better word is even unwillingness to learn new things

Starting point is 00:05:55 is at the heart of weak or fear. failed leadership. And you're studying for, why are you preparing to write your book? I know you did a study for roughly 10 years, 200 plus interviews, looking at some of the super bosses in the world. I was particularly interested in Alice Waters. Could you share the story of Alice Waters? Yeah, of course.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Alice is now a legendary person if you follow the foodie business at all. But she graduated from college, I think it was in Berkeley, several decades ago and moved to France and live the French lifestyle, which is where food is central to your life, food and good eating and good wine. And if you go to the local markets and experience what's like to have great food, locally sourced food, sustainably grown, natural, organic. Kind of farm to table, a lot of the words that are very common today, she saw that in France. They were not at all ideas common in America. Came back to the state. States and had and really understood what her calling was going to be in our life. And that was to build a

Starting point is 00:07:03 restaurant that would become not just a restaurant, but a platform to help America learn how to eat differently, how to respect food in a different way, and how to elevate our healthiness through food. And today when you see in so many places around the country, farm to table restaurants and organic ingredients and all the rest, you know, and when they say what's the farm or what's the, where the, where the, where the, where the lab come from and where did the egg plant? Where was that grown and all this? She's the reason that that's happened in America. She brought that back and it really has taken off.

Starting point is 00:07:38 It's become popularized. And the thing that's really remarkable about what she's done is that she really has used that restaurant. It's called Chez Panisse Restaurant, Berkeley, California, and Oakland. And she's used that restaurant as a platform in just the way that she wished. And the platform is not only teaching the. the world or teaching America about food and the quality of great ingredients and the relationship with the land and with farmers.

Starting point is 00:08:06 But actually by helping develop almost an entire industry of other people like her around America that have become, you know, other chefs, open up their own restaurants, have become bakers, are in the restaurant business. I work with chefs and people in the restaurant business on occasion on various. projects or have opportunities to speak with them and doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what part of the world it seems like you're from. Everyone knows Alice Waters and almost everyone spends some time going into a restaurant either working for her or just even spending a week to see what it is she's doing because that's that's kind of the power and the

Starting point is 00:08:45 influence that she's had and so you have a great example of a person I call her like like some of the others a super boss someone who's helped many many other people get much better open the doors for other people. And at the same time, has had this expansive vision that was just so compelling, so powerful that it motivated people and changed the country, really, when you get right down to it. You also talked about Bill Walsh. And so my background, I have a history of Sydney. I grew up playing football, played in college, play a little bit after. So I'm certainly I've studied Bill Walsh from a leadership and a coaching perspective. And basically the fact that not only was he incredible and innovative, changed the way the game was played,

Starting point is 00:09:28 detailed practice down to the minute, but what might be more impressive is the fact, and probably is certainly more impressive because it had a more lasting impact, was the fact of the impact he had on other coaches. His tree is essentially bigger than any other coaching tree ever, possibly, meaning the people who worked with him went on to become other great head coaches. Could you share more about that? Yeah, absolutely. It was one of the, you know, we looked at in the Superboss's research, 18 different industries and the foodie industry, high-end foodie industry, was one of them, as we were just talking about, but professional football was another. And I was interested in knowing which head coaches have had the biggest impact on the development of other head coaches.

Starting point is 00:10:12 And the good thing about sports in general in the NFL in particular is there's a lot of really precise data. So what I did is I looked at the head coaches of the Super Bowl teams, the winning team, the losing team each year in the Super Bowl and did this genealogical study of them, which is to say, obviously, not who their parents were, but who they work for. And as you say, created these trees of talent. And Bill Walsh stands out far above everyone else. He's a factor of two or three times as the second place head coach. It was that influential, that big. And the question is, so what did he do? I mean, how did he do this?

Starting point is 00:10:52 Again, you go to some of the things we've already touched on, whether you want to talk about change or creativity or curiosity. He was the first head coach to see a tremendous opportunity when it came to talent. And the opportunity he saw was, well, there are these ex-NFL players, former players, that are very smart, very talented, have the interest and the capability to potentially become a head coach. But they had not been given that opportunity to date. And the reason they hadn't been given the opportunity was probably because they were African-American. And he saw that and he said, well, that's crazy. Why wouldn't we want to tap into this hitherto untapped talent pool? And that's what he did.

Starting point is 00:11:33 He developed the first development program for high potential ex-NFL players that were African-American and had that interest. And I think the reason why we have the number of African-American head coaches in the NFL even today is because he, he was really in the vanguard of looking for that talent, developing that talent. And so it's just, I mean, it's a really big example, but it's one example of kind of the mindset that he had. I mean, I'll tell you one other thing that really when I learned this struck me saying, boy, that's unusual. And that is when he thought that he had an assistant coach that was ready to become a head coach

Starting point is 00:12:12 and there was a head coach opening in the NFL, he would actually pick up the phone and call the owner of that team and say, you know, my assistant, Mike Holgren, or, you know, whoever it was, he's ready and you need someone and this is the guy you need. And you think about that for a minute, Ryan. He was going to take one of his best assistants and give him a job, help him get a job in another team so that he becomes a direct competitor with him. Very, very unusual. But yet that's what he did.

Starting point is 00:12:44 And that's why his legacy is really unrival. in the NFL. I love that so much because he's playing the long game and thinking about having the right mindset when it comes to helping others, knowing that the best measure of success, I believe is the impact you can have on other people. And also, from a recruiting perspective, if he wants to recruit the best coaches to his staff, if they see that they know the head coach is going to pick up the phone when he feels the person is ready and make a call and say, You need to hire Mike Holmgren or whoever it may be. I mean, he's going to have his pick of the best of the best,

Starting point is 00:13:21 and then he works to develop them. And that's how this beautiful tree is growing. Yeah, you said it exactly right. The benefit of doing this, it's not just helping other people, but the best people will seek out these types of leaders that help others get better. You're going to want to work for a Bill Walsh or for an Alice Waters because they open doors for you.

Starting point is 00:13:42 They change your life. You know, when I do lectures about super bosses or keynote speeches and they're young people in the audience, college students or people early in their career, they all have one question for me or one dominant question, and that is, how do I find one of these? I want one for myself because they could see that if you work for somebody like this, the opportunities just are accelerated for your career. And don't get me wrong, if nothing's handed to you, you've got to produce, you've got to be great. You got to work really, really hard. And you have to have the talent and the capability and the person. severance. But if you're willing to do that, the opportunities really are fantastic. Why are these people so rare? It's a couple of things I'll say about that. First, not everyone thinks, it's counterintuitive in some ways, isn't it? I mean, if you're going to say, let's keep, most companies will say, most leaders will say, a lot of CEOs have said this to me. In fact, you know, talent retention is what's critical. We need to keep our best talent. People say that all the time. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:46 I completely understand that. Of course, you want to retain your best talent. Who doesn't? But what is not understood is that, in fact, you cannot control where the people, people that work for you, you cannot control whether they work for you or not. They're free to go work anywhere they want. And so you have to create an environment where it's in their interest to stay and work with you. and so if you actually create opportunities for others to get to get better and inevitably some not all but some will move on they're they're going to jump at that but many people think and I've come up against this a couple of times in fact I was even thrown out of a one CEO's office when I was explaining to him you know what what I was up

Starting point is 00:15:31 to before you know the super boss's book came out and I and I said you know I think your focus on talent retention is probably misplaced. That was the end of the conversation. He couldn't fathom a world where that wasn't a good idea. And what he said, by the way, it was very telling as he escorted me to the door. He said, Sidney, why would I want to lose my best people? Why would I want to let my best people go? And just think about the verb in there, to let my people go.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Is it the case that any one of us as leaders, as managers, even CEOs, can control where the people, where people go and do what they do in their lives, we are all able to make our own choices. And as soon as you realize that, it's a switch and talking to people and doing a lot of consulting on this topic and working with teams on this. As soon as you start to explain it in this way, there's a, there's often, I won't say always, but there's often a switch that goes, that goes on. And they start to see this. So it's counterintuitive, I think, is the biggest, and it challenges some conventional, quite a bit of conventional wisdom. And that's why we probably, we, we probably don't see it as much as we like. But I do want to say this, I've discovered in going around, you know, different groups and doing a lot of book signings and what have you, there are, there are a lot of people out there that are very much super bosses that are in the middle of big companies or, you know, could be a volunteer organizations, could be teachers, could be anywhere.

Starting point is 00:17:00 I don't know who they are for my own research because, you know, they're just regular people. But I found many people asking me to sign the book over to their bosses, you know, a middle manager in a, and I never heard of the person. He's a middle manager in a company of barely new existed. And that's because there are super bosses, people with some of these characteristics, I believe up and down every organization. We just haven't had a word to describe them. We haven't gone out of our way to look for them. and I think it's a really underutilized greatly underutilized asset if you think about it. Somebody who has this ability and we don't even know about them and they're having an impact on some people,

Starting point is 00:17:41 but we're not celebrating them. That's not a good way to run a company when you have something that's so valuable, so useful. And yet we don't even pay any attention to it. And so I've discovered that there's a lot of people like that. So that's the positive side to it. So when you ask, why is it so rare? Yes, there's the counterintuitive story. but maybe it's not quite as rare as we might think.

Starting point is 00:18:02 Well, again, the best seem to play the long game. They're not thinking short-term, which I understand the pressures on leaders, especially in big organizations that need to show immediate results and results this year. And if they don't, they feel like they might be fired. And so I think it starts at the top of understanding if you've made the right to hiring decisions to be patient and to play the long game, that you can better afford to be a super boss. to think in that manner. But as you've also said, confidence is a prerequisite to greatness. And so if you

Starting point is 00:18:35 don't have the confidence in yourself as a leader, you might act out of insecurities. And insecure people just want to try to hang on to whoever they have. They want to try to retain those employees, as you said, or employee retention. Let them go. That type of talk comes up. So speak to me about what you learned when it comes to confidence being the prerequisite to greatness. confidence really is a critical component to success and and it has to do really with how so many people are are insecure and as a result they don't they're they're not going to make room for other people they're they're not going to be able to really feel like you know they can pick up the phone and call somebody and say look I have a great person I have a great person for you confidence

Starting point is 00:19:22 is tricky though you can have too much confidence at the same time right if you have too much confidence we start to talk about arrogance and people that are not good, good listeners. And this is really remarkable when you think about it. I've found over the years that some of these really critical leadership capabilities or attributes in small doses are really, really valuable, but in large doses could become toxic. And confidence is a good example. You've got to be very, very confident.

Starting point is 00:19:53 But you could become so overconfident that you shut out alternative points. of view. So there's some balance there. And if I could, you know, say something else about confidence that I found really interesting in my own research and many others have done research on this question as well. And that is a difference between men and women when it comes to confidence. It's well established from a variety of different studies that men will be much more likely to take on new challenges or responsibilities. So men are much more likely to say yes to any job opportunity that their boss gives to them. And women are going to be, you know, more, more thoughtful. They're going to weigh the pros and cons and think about it a little bit more. And it's that little

Starting point is 00:20:34 bit of hesitancy that actually can hold back women because most bosses want someone who's going to just go after it. But the irony is that that thoughtfulness is actually a good thing. And so confidence is critical. I've had just the other day I had a conversation like this with one of my great MBA students. A young woman is fantastic. And she's about to go through her interviewing for an internship. And she said, she acknowledged, you know, that, you know, she's self-deprecating. And she kind of says, you know, kind of plays down her skill set. And I said, you know, you know, there's a time for taking a back seat. And there's a time for making sure people know what your capability is and what your, what your interest is and what your confidence is. And you can't go, you don't want to go too far.

Starting point is 00:21:23 But most of the time, or I don't know about most of the time, but very often, women are not going far enough. And so when we ask, you know, when we ask, you know, it's confidence really, really important to success. The answer is yes, you can go too far, but I think you could also go not, you might not go far enough. And I think that's something that women in particular need to be alert to. Is that changing, do you think, does Cheryl Sarnberg and her movement, is that helping change it a little bit? I don't know if that's changing it dramatically. I think there's more discussion about it. I think more people are talking about it, and that's good.

Starting point is 00:22:01 The question really is, well, why is this the case? Why do women react that way and men react the way that men react? And if it's a cultural norm, it could be changed, but that's difficult. Is it something innate when it comes to DNA and personality? and then you can't change it. I think it's probably more cultural. Having role models like Cheryl Sandberg is fantastic, but why do we always mention Cheryl Sandberg?

Starting point is 00:22:31 They're not enough of them. Right. That's the problem. I could tell you, you know, we can reel off 15 names of men that have had big influence on how people think about business. We're going to have a much harder time coming up with that list for women. One of the other points of Super Bowl

Starting point is 00:22:49 is they create master slash apprentice relationships. Talk to me about that. The way in the way in which people learn their craft or their trade literally for centuries was through an apprenticeship approach. I mean Leonardo da Vinci started in the workshop of Virokio. Everyone learned whatever it is they they were doing in their careers in their lives through a workshop and through an apprenticeship. And what what has happened to that? If you think about it, you know, know, it's extremely, it's really rare now. Very, very few people really have an apprenticeship. And I'm talking now about management, leadership, corporations, even entrepreneurship. It's just

Starting point is 00:23:31 not that common. People go to school now. People are educated. And sometimes we make the assumption that because you have a degree, you're ready, you're ready to rumble and you can go. And I'm an educator, so I have obviously a ton of respect for what we and others are doing in universities. But it's not nearly. enough that that one-to-one relationship with your boss is just unbeatable and so if you're if if if you're a younger person or earlier in your career and listening to us you want to you want to look for somebody who is going to be willing to invest the time to to be that that master to you as an apprentice and you want to be looking at your job whatever your job is going to be

Starting point is 00:24:16 you want to be looking at your job as this is all about learning. Yes, I got to do what I need to do and I got to produce. That goes without saying. But my number one priority has got to be learning and learning new things and always going out of my way to look for those opportunities, asking those questions. And that's what you see with super bosses on both sides. And the thing that I found really remarkable about super bosses when it comes to this master apprentice, relationship is is how they constantly are delegating and creating big opportunities for the people

Starting point is 00:24:54 that work for them. And this gets the discussion about confidence as well. You better, you know, if there's opportunities they're coming to, you've got to grab them. You can't say, I don't think so. I don't think so. And so super bosses create those opportunities, sometimes very big opportunities. And they're a little scary because, you know, when you're younger, less experience, you might, you're not sure if you can do it. But, But the best of these bosses, they won't just kind of give you the big opportunity and say, you know, come back in a year and let me see what you've done. They're going to be much more hands-on. And it's another counterintuitive thing that we found.

Starting point is 00:25:30 Many people talk about their boss and says, well, you know, my boss, she's a big delegator. She gives me a lot of rope. It's great. And somebody else might say, well, my boss, she's a micromanager. The reality is that what super bosses do is a little bit of both. I won't say micromanager, but I will say very hands-on. they don't just delegate and forget. And very interesting, if you think of, you know, Teach for America has been around for a number of years and it's a big organization.

Starting point is 00:25:56 And there was a study done of Teach for America to see which young people were more successful, what accounted for success. And one of the primary things that determine the success of these young teachers is whether they had the ongoing support of the principal in the school that they were assigned to teach. in and and and when they were just given the job and you know go figure it out the result was very often not nearly as good as it was when they had this the support and the the teaching and the really the apprenticeship going on with with a principal in a school and so it worked in that situation it worked in so many the corporate examples you know the Bill Walsh world you are you are an apprentice absolutely to Bill Walsh when you're there you're watching him

Starting point is 00:26:42 you're learning from him and he's pushing you at the same time This is true for, you know, all kinds of other people that we looked at that we looked at as well. So I think that that's something that anyone, I believe, anyone can do, anyone can recreate this, this master apprentice relationship. Any boss, anyone has people, any manager has people working for them, no matter where you are in an organization. You really want to ask yourself, do I, have I really thought through what motivates and energizes each individual person on my team, even if it's one person or it's 25, people and and am I trying to customize a learning a set of learning opportunities while they do while they're doing their work while they're accomplishing what they're doing and and the big payoff is you're going to be helping these people on your team become more accomplished more capable

Starting point is 00:27:32 how could that not help you accomplish your goals in a in a greater way so there's tremendous benefit to it it's just something that we've we've let go in kind of modern management and I think And I think there's a movement underway in part because of super bosses towards more discussion and more attempt to bring back this apprenticeship logic to business and to leadership. Another aspect of this. This is something I personally think about a lot. We talk about the cohort effect, meaning you write, super bosses strongly encourage collegiality even as they simultaneously drive internal competition. I'm thinking specifically of a sales organization and a leadership role where you want. to create a giving, teaming, helping each other type environment. However, fully realizing that

Starting point is 00:28:22 in most sales organizations, there are stack rankings. There's competition. In most salespeople, the successful ones, have some form of competitive drive to them to want to be the best. So how do you live on that delicate edge of wanting them to team, be together, help one another, as well as compete at the exact same time. The example in the book you use is Lauren Michaels at Saturday Live, but I'm very curious personally of how to do this. Yeah. So the Lauren Michaels' SNL example in a nutshell is that to get on that show,

Starting point is 00:28:59 if you're a writer, a performer, people in costume design or what have you, it's not a stand-up comedy show. It's a skit. And so it's an ensemble. You need multiple players to do something together. That is, of course, the definition of collaboration. you've got to work together to get any airtime on the show. But at the same time, because of the way the Lauren Michaels manages SNL,

Starting point is 00:29:22 he ends up with something like two or two and a half hours of skits and content for a show that's only an hour and a half. And so as you get closer to Saturday night, they're forced to cut back on and make selections across these different skits to pick the best, which, of course, is competition because you have a scarce resource, in this case, airtime. and you have a greater, greater demand for it. And so he's created a situation where to be successful, you got to work well with other people.

Starting point is 00:29:49 At the same time, you have to compete with them. And I think it's pretty clever how he's done in that situation. More broadly, the truth is that, and you touched on and kind of your framing of the question with stack rankings and what have you, every organization there is competition whether it's explicit or implicit in every team there's only one boss you have and so there's only one position to move up to if you're going to get that promotion in that in that team and that's there whether we want to talk about it or not talk about that and number one number two the competitive edge is a really great thing

Starting point is 00:30:30 again remember what we said about confidence you can go too far and be you know become arrogant And in this case, you can go too far on competition and end up disrupting and destroying. And that's not good either. There's something that there's something in the middle. But competition and edge and, you know, people that have done sports or worked or been in teams. And it's, it adds a lot to your, to your repertoire. And it pushes us away from complacency. So I think every team should, and every, every manager should, that you shouldn't shy away from the reality.

Starting point is 00:31:05 It's there whether you talk about it or not, and it's useful and it's helpful. But at the same time, the best organizations and the best managers also understand that a team is so much more powerful, so much more capable than anyone individual. And so you want to be pushing that and creating expectations for that. I think every situation will be a little bit different in terms of how you try to create that collaboration without denying. competition and it's a it's a balance that you probably you know you'll swing back and forth a little bit which is which is fine you don't have to kind of thread the needle on on a thing like this but even thinking about both of these goals of competition and collaboration at the same time even thinking about that as part of your job as a manager is a is a is a game changer because that's not the way

Starting point is 00:31:58 most managers think about their their jobs and it's also not the way most people and most team members think about their their bosses. And I think just having that mindset is going to be helpful. So this is, um, Sydney, directly for the person listening who is either striving to be a super boss, meaning they're an individual contributor and they want to be a, they want to be a boss and not only a boss, but a, but a great one, a super boss. Or somebody who maybe is already in that role and they're curious and they're, they're, they're seeking out ways to improve and get better. And maybe they've, they've learned the hard way by making mistakes. If they came to you and said, Sydney, I need some advice.

Starting point is 00:32:37 I really want to be a super boss. What are some tactical ways or something that I can implement into my game starting right now? Meaning so as soon as this podcast is over, they can jot down some notes and say, I need to implement this into what I'm doing. Maybe it's something new or an idea or even a tactic, something they could do. Yeah, it's a great question. Ryan. In fact, it's what I've been spending so much of my time on since the book. came out a number of months, a number of months ago, and I've developed all sorts of exercises

Starting point is 00:33:08 and that are very, very specific and tactical, as you say, that can be helpful. So some examples. Start with and start with spending a few minutes thinking about your own bosses in your own life. And when I say bosses, I mean not just bosses in a traditional sense, but teachers and coaches as well. And make a list of maybe the best and the worst that you remember. And then write down what it is that made them so great in your memory and made them so bad in your memory and what those are. And it turns out that right there, you're going to have some insight on what makes for being a great leader. Most people will resonate towards the super boss type of leader, whether we knew that word existed or not. But this is a way of kind of relying on some of your own experience, your own lives, even in school and in sports.

Starting point is 00:34:03 it's not just at work, to start to give you some insight into, okay, so these are the things that have worked for me and that have really made a difference. And these are things that I have to, that I never liked. And then ask the question, how am I doing on those? And, you know, if you really have, if you really have some courage and you have a, then you're managing a team, you might want to have that conversation with a team as well to try to get a sense of, you know, are you actually replicating some of the great things that you've experienced as opposed to replicating some of the things that you didn't like and you start to pick them up even though you don't even realize you're doing that. So I think learning from your own personal experience, you can do that. You can

Starting point is 00:34:41 have that kind of reflection in 10 or 15 minutes. You will have gotten some ideas out of that process. I'll give you another different type of thing that you can do right now. You're a manager. You have people reporting to you, one person, two people, 10 people. Make a list of those people. and then identify or write down, what gets them energized? How are they motivated? What's the next step for them? Start to customize, and that's the right word, start to customize how you are thinking about managing each person in your team.

Starting point is 00:35:18 The problem that I see very often is a one-size-fits-all. You're the boss, you're the manager, everybody has to accommodate you. They have to adjust to your style. And I get that, but that's not the most. that's not the most effective way to get the most out of people and to develop talent. Customizing it is a much more effective method. Think, for example, about the world of marketing and sales today and how customized that is. You know, we get the stuff we see on our computers, the ads that come up on our desktops

Starting point is 00:35:51 or on our smartphones, they're just for us. They figured out what it is through various algorithms that we're going to be more likely to care about. You know, and Amazon has been doing this forever. Everyone's doing this now. And compare that to how we manage people in our teams. We hardly ever spend the time to customize what makes each person tick and to come up with a set of projects, challenges, style, conversations. I mean, there's dozens of things you could think of.

Starting point is 00:36:17 That's an exercise that will take you more than 10 minutes, but it won't take you hours and hours. And then you could say, okay, I've got five people and they're all different. And I understand a little bit of how they're different. and now come up with some ideas on how I should be dealing with each person. You know, for example, you might need to be harsh on someone because that's the style that'll work. And for someone else, it's a hand, you know, a hand around the shoulder and a long lunch conversation or a walk around the office park just to kind of share ideas and get them, get them on board. So don't assume this one size fits all. And then go ahead and do it.

Starting point is 00:36:52 Try it. And you could do that right away. So two things that I've done, Cindy, I want maybe I'd love to get your feedback because. it's been positive. So I was very fortunate when I was fresh out of college, my first job. I had an incredible vice president who kind of mentored me, looked out for me, and I really appreciate it. I think he appreciated my work ethic and I appreciated what he did for me. And he told me, hey, keep a notebook on your manager and write down everything you like and write down everything you hate. And always keep it going to go. You're going to have multiple bosses. You're going to progress. You're going to go your

Starting point is 00:37:27 own way and just make sure you're consistently write it on a regular basis, especially when something happens that you like or you don't like or even just the day to day. And so I did that. And now I've shifted that to a Google document. And so I would encourage people to do that. So then once you become a boss, a manager, a leader, by the way, it doesn't take a title to be a leader, but once you officially become the role of a boss, continue to look at it and continue to write in it about your boss as well. And then some of the reactions of your people, people as well as what you do as the boss. That's, that's one thing that I think has helped me immensely because sometimes it's very easy to forget what it's like to be an individual contributor or to be

Starting point is 00:38:08 someone who reports to a boss once you become one. And so that has helped me in a big way. And I've said it before and it's advice I give to people when they're new. And I hope it helps them as well. The second thing is once you get a leadership role, a management slash boss job, I have this document Sydney, I created called a Get to Know You document. I actually just did it recently. And what it is is a list of questions to get to understand their mindset, how they think, what drives them, what they're motivated by, what's their favorite books, what's their favorite documentary, what inspires them, what do they like most about the company, what do they

Starting point is 00:38:44 hate, what do they want to change, ask all of these questions. And just doing the exercise itself, you should see the responses in the body of the email, not actually the attachment. That is, I absolutely love it. I highly recommend people do it because, one, it shows that you actually care. You want to know what drives them, what they think about, how you can help them, and you ask them directly. And so the response I've received every time I've done it, and I do it regularly, is,

Starting point is 00:39:15 I just think it sets the tone for a great relationship with that person, especially if you are new. And so I highly recommend people do both of those things as you're. beginning your career and then as you progress into leadership roles. Boy, I love both those ideas. And they do relate very, very closely to some of the exercises that I've been creating. And the second idea in particular, it points to a real truth about people. It's not always about, you know, liking people or happiness or what, what have.

Starting point is 00:39:48 You know what it's about? People want respect. People want to know that they have a voice. People want to know that you care enough that you're actually going to, you're asking questions and you're listening. And many people fall into the trap of saying, you know, I have a different point of view and I can't, I don't agree with that person. I'm going to let her know that. I'm going to let them know that. That's fine. That's a different story. Most people are not going to be upset too much if their argument doesn't win the day.

Starting point is 00:40:18 They will be upset if they didn't think they even had a chance to get in the playground to have. that conversation. Yeah. Well, Sidney, thank you so much for being here. I know we went a little long, but I greatly appreciate it. This is, uh, I could talk to you forever. And I can promise I'm going to be reaching back out to talk more because what you study, what you do is very important to me and very important to learning leaders all over the

Starting point is 00:40:38 world who are listening to the show. So thank you so much for being here. No, thanks, Ryan. I appreciate the invite. And please do share when, uh, when it all comes out so we can put it out on social media as well. Yeah, where would you send, uh, my listeners to learn more about you all? online? I think the website, www.com is one, and I think on Twitter is a natural. So at Sid,

Starting point is 00:41:04 S. Y, D. Finkelstein is the Twitter handle. That's probably two best ways. Perfect. All right. Well, again, thanks so much. And I can promise I'm going to, I want to continue this dialogue as we both progress, Siddy. Perfect. All the best to you, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO,

Starting point is 00:41:32 world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed. With the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities for this self-employed. To meet this end, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom-built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly.

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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 188: Sydney Finkelstein - How To Be A SuperBoss

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