Build Your Leadership Council — Part 2
The five people you need to innovate
This article is the second and last part to help you grow your network of experts. In this part, I want you to think about what you do and how you do it.
The American Dream, the pursuit of happiness via making a lot of money, is closely tied to another American concept, rugged individualism. One reason, I think, that turns managers into horrible leaders is this myth that says we must do it all on our own. Instead, we must develop the skill to gather information and then filter suggestions objectively.
I’m sure your parents and friends are perfectly nice people, but you need to be picky with from whom you take business advice. And just because someone has a title, doesn’t mean they have put in the work to become an expert. Lastly, our egos also like to give helpful advice, but their focus is usually not on a holistic, long-term solution.
Many of us have had the displeasure of working with people where, as soon as they have a title accompanied by a bit of power, they fancy themselves an emperor. How dare you question me!
What they miss in this line of reasoning is that emperors are raised by the best-educated teachers in the land, and they keep a bevy of ministers at their side. After long training of shadowing their family, they are trusted to make the final decisions on battle plans and to settle quarrels over rightful chicken ownership between villagers.
The key word is trust.
When your employees and colleagues sum up your contribution, would they say they would have been better off without you as their decision maker? Leaders of today benefit from an energized team, a healthier society, happier customers, fewer meetings, more time with family, so please learn how to make the right decision, even if it stings in the short run.
Having a mentor team (online or in person) is different from the team you delegate work to. You may have a superstar at closing sales, the person who makes sure your data is safe, the person who negotiates the best prices, and they all will have their opinions on solving business problems.
It’s your duty as a leader to listen and judge what will create the path of least resistance that will impact your market.
Company culture advisor
Have you or anyone else in your organization caused superstars to quit? What is the system you have in place for a supportive environment? Does senior leadership get too caught up in trendy buzzwords? What was the last risk you took?
Innovation.
Everyone wants it, but no one wants to put in the hard work to think from outside of their own worldview.
I once had a client who worked for an organization that wanted to make it into the WEC’s Global Lighthouse Network, which recognizes manufacturing companies for innovation. He said they really needed to upgrade their data system, so that’s what we mostly talked about.
I told him that nowadays, the person who leads this team will have to be an expert on choosing tools, and if they are looking for innovation, he should hire people from outside of the manufacturing industry. So they can do that trendy buzzword: disrupt.
Long story short, he couldn’t get past the idea of hiring someone outside of manufacturing. And after a few more questions, I realized that they don’t have the environment for any innovation to thrive.
Innovative people need a few things: no office politics and gossip, no arbitrary decisions, a shared purpose, room to take risks, autonomy, and most importantly the feeling that their colleagues have got their backs. Be ruthless at providing a good support system and new ideas will flow.
Coach from afar: Seth Godin
At first I had him as a Market Advisor, but I realized his secret sauce is in building systems for thinking outside of the box. And then being successful because of that. Something that I like about Seth is that he does what he feels is right for his purpose in the world, and his focus is always on the audience. I think we can all learn something from this sort of courage.
By the way, it looks like he just launched a $20/week community for creatives and leaders on a place called purple.space. My wallet says ouch, but it probably attracts great people!
Creativity coach
How do you walk the fine line between hare-brained ideas and being too cautious? Are you making decisions from a rich interior world? What other resources have you yet to explore?
Goodness, this is a tough one. In the data field, I’ve worked with a lot of people from academic backgrounds who either have no creativity at all or a little too much of it. For example, they choose to apply an inappropriate statistical test because it was used in a similar situation. Or perhaps they want to display time-series data in a visualization that’s typically used for categories.
Although my default setting is “it sounds crazy, but let’s give it a try”, I still believe things need to make logical sense, especially for the end user.
Where things go wrong come in two ways. First, they don’t know what to do when their strategy starts to fail. A strategy is a series of experiments, so we need to be able to diagnose and repair as quickly as possible. The second is when decision-makers don’t know when to declare a sunk cost and then move on with their lives.
Choose the first right step that’s best for your clients and the path will become clearer as you move forward. Instead of “fail fast”, have a plan in place to “fail fast and iterate quickly”.
Coach from afar: Adam Grant
His book Originals is one of my most recommended titles. The thing about creatives is that they, we, you need a large variety of input to let ideas come together. Kind of like repurposing things that already exist to create something exciting and novel. When I meet someone whose creative insanity astounds me, I definitely notice how they are a nerd in at least one esoteric subject that’s miles apart from their field of work.
Professional growth coach
Are you regarded by your peers as being in the top 10% in your field? Do you know what you’re not great at doing? What’s new in your industry? How often do you repeat the same mistakes?
There is hardly anything more frustrating to a talented worker than having to explain, for the fourth time, why they are doing their job exactly how it should be done to a superior who doesn’t understand the related nuances.
I once had a person, completely untrained in data analysis, review my work. Why this was a good decision, I have no idea. At any rate, I had to take time out of my day to explain why boolean fields are better than strings for our clients, why we had to de-identify data for our clients, how to use Jira to leave her dumb comments, etc.
All she had to do was ask for help, instead of relying on her uninformed assumptions. We should be working in a collaborative environment, so I didn’t understand why she felt the need to compete with me, rather than learn from me.
Bruce Lee once said that the value of a cup is in its emptiness. Humility combined with resourcefulness will add more to your cup, but also make that cup larger.
Coach from afar: K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues
These people have laid out the blueprint to professional excellence with what they call deliberate practice. It requires 10 years of a lot of work, external and internal coaching, learning and unlearning, and getting out of your comfort zone consistently.
A coach to find your inner mentor
Are you really that good at what you do if you can’t teach what you know? Do your employees see you as someone who can guide them to make the right decisions? Are you paranoid in thinking someone else will steal your ideas?
It’s a beautiful feeling to help people break out of their shells and unlock a new achievement. The keys to learning how to teach lie in being undeniably great at what you do and being comfortable in knowing that other people can excel further than you, by doing something you can’t even imagine.
I remember after a year in a job, one of the senior leaders asked if I learned anything from my boss. I thought for about three seconds, and responded, “No.” At that moment I realized I never want someone else to answer the way that I did — I would be a failure if either didn’t know how to do my job well or I was too paranoid to share what I knew.
Coach from afar: Ocean Vuong
If I were a petty person, I would write off this great talent as yet another upstart crow. However, this man is probably the most thoughtful voice I’ve ever heard, and I have to confess, I feel more than a tinge of envy.
Although he’s known to the public as a writer, he takes pride in his profession as a teacher. Without a trace of arrogance, he describes how he thinks outside of his own limited worldview to understand his students and guides them to their own idiosyncratic next right step. None of this “what I would do…” nonsense.
The friend who will slap you back down to earth
If you have this sort of person in your life, a person who will tell you what you don’t want to hear because they genuinely want to see you succeed, then count yourself lucky. After licking your wounds. These types of friends can be described as intelligent, resourceful, and understanding.
Sometimes our egos, or enthusiasm, can blind us to reality. As leaders, we are making decisions for others, not for our self-preservation. Get yourself a friend who is on your team and believes you to be someone who will leave the world a better place.
Do whatever you need to do to make sure they always feel comfortable being truthful with you.
Does this mean you have a daily standup and let these people make your decisions for you? No, of course not. Having the voices of a council of diverse thinkers in the back of your mind, can be the key to making sure each step you take is on a purpose-driven path.
With your real-life mentors, get together for the occasional one-on-one coffees or group mastermind dinners. Remember: ask for help when you need it and show generosity to the people helping you.
Check out part one to get the right people in your life to build mental toughness and strong relationships.
