Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo.
On today's episode, I want to continue our discussion on the Forbes article from the Coaches Council. This is advice that coaches would give to their younger selves. We've been talking about this for a few weeks now, and there's a lot of good content in this article and a lot of great advice that coaches that really do this for a living, if they go back in time and say to their younger selves, hey, make sure you do
these things too. This is the list of advice that they would give themselves, and it's put together by a lot of people who are, you know, kind of really top of their field when it comes to the game of coaching, which is becoming more and more important from a standpoint of whether or not you're an effective leader. A lot of that comes down to whether or not you're an effective coach. On this episode, I want to talk about the second to last item in this article,
which is about trusting yourself and trusting your instincts. And you know, this is an interesting one because you know, I've come across people who, you know, they they trust themselves so much and their instincts so much that they stop listening to those around them, and it kind of steers them in the wrong direction because they, you know, haven't really taken the advice of those who are experts
in their field. But for every one of those people, there are many more people who, for whatever reason, they just don't want to move forward with something they know kind of is the right way to go. They have the instincts, they have the knowledge and the know how to get something done, and they just don't move forward with it. It's almost like they have to have a fire lit underneath them to make something happen. And those are the people that don't trust themselves or trust their instincts.
I think as you move further along in a career, you know, you you gain knowledge. And a lot of times people can be in a situation where they have the knowledge and they have the skills and they have the abilities, but for some reason they just don't think they do and that caused them to.
To not move forward when they should. Yeah.
I think it's you know, it's interesting because I see it pretty often and not not in like not in like this big idea of leaders that take no action at all. But like the leaders that may like I look at sometimes as like second guessing or they're they're not sure, they're looking sometimes for validation on a decision
or permission to make a decision. When but when you start asking questions, they give you all the right answers and they've thought about all the right things, and they're down this path of like that's exactly what you should do. Your intuition is telling you that. And you know, I think that intuition is based upon experience over time, So it's like you experience these things and then over time you kind of understand what the right move is that you need to make.
There.
I think sometimes this this kind of gets tossed around into like imposter syndrome, and I think that these are different things, like like I don't, I don't I've experienced imposter syndrome. You've experienced imposter syndrome. I think there's times
when we all do. But when it comes to like the context of a role that you have responsibilities that you have you are either the decision maker or a big part of making a decision, and then not maybe you know, taking the action to make that decision, there's something else at play there, and that's in my opinion, it's like it's not it's not the imposter syndrome piece of this. It is really coming down to, like, you know, what is slowing people down or stopping them from from
taking action on something. And I think some of this is is around like the the need to to feel validated by those around you, the need to check in on ideas or actions. And I think like in the context of this article, the idea here is like you got to just go do the thing, like trust your instinct,
trust your intuition, go do the thing. Because if you truly believe that, like life is lessons, then you're going to make a decision in a call and it's gonna be the right decision call and you'll kind of keep it moving.
Or you're going to make a decision or call.
Where there either is not the right thing or could have been done differently or better, but you don't know that until you go and make that call. If you get caught up in not taking action or waiting for others to give you that permission or that that that validation, then you're going to build that into the way in which you make decisions. Which is going to slow you down into the future.
I think that's part of it for sure.
I'm trying to think about the times when I didn't move forward with a decision when in hindsight I should have. Like in hindsight, I can look back and think I knew how to do that, I didn't have to wait for someone else to jump in or help me. I think part of it can be, you know, wanting to you know, not not take on the potent consequences or you know, take on the burden of the consequences.
Of if I get it wrong.
So it's it's a matter of you know, like if someone else kind of makes the decision for me and then it goes wrong, I can blame them. But if I make the decision it goes wrong, that I have no one to blame about myself. And we're not talking you know, life changing decisions here, just not wanting to look at myself in the mirror and say, yeah, I got that one wrong.
You know.
And I think I think in a lot of situations when that's happened to me and I've successfully been able to kind of you know, pawn off the decision making process onto somebody else. And then they make the decision and then we move forward with what.
They want to do.
In my mind, usually it ends with me thinking, well, crap, that's exactly what I would.
Have done anyway.
And and now I've I've gotten rid of the risk of making the wrong decision, but I've also gotten rid of the reward of making the right decision on my own,
you know. And so you know, if you if you, if you're not wanting to take on the risk of making the decision from the wrong perspective, you'll also lose the ability to get the I don't want to say the credit, but you know, kind of the feather in the cap of of going through something and coming out the other side having made the right decision, and then your peers and your colleagues and your coworkers can kind of watch how you act.
In the moment and and get something done when there's you know, a level of ambiguity.
And if you have brought somebody else into the process to kind of de risk it for yourself, then you know, you you kind of you eliminate all ability to have those moments happen, and it's not worth it in the long term, you know, Like if you can get caught up in it every once in a while, and that's okay, But if it becomes your mo you're you're not gonna do well by yourself when it comes to, you know, moving up in your career.
Yeah, and not even the credit of the dission.
But I think what I heard what you're talking about is the confidence that you have gained in the answers right, accolades, just.
You know, the because because it's it's a cycle, you know, you do it, you do it right, and then you go, oh, I can do that, and you have more confidence to do it again the next time.
If you never start, you never get that exactly.
Yeah, And I think that that to me is where where I've seen you know, tremendous kind of growth and capability with leaders is like when when when they have to make that decision when you're when you're a part of the dialogue as a leader, especially when you're leading leaders, but to say, like, well, what what do you think here?
Like what do you what are you considering? What might be?
You know, you you ask these curious questions, what might be the impact of that decision? What would be the positive things that would happen? What what would be the negative things that would happen with that? You know, who have you talked to about this? And you're asking these curious questions, And again it's not to be like you're not trying to catch anyone. You're not trying to get
like a gotcha moment. You are simply asking questions to number one, under stand like their thought processes and make a decision, but also finding those points where they've made the right call, they've done that thing, and you can give them that recognition in the moment and say that like you know, hey, like okay, so it sounds like you've really put a lot of thought into this, and I appreciate that you've thought about a lot of different
angles here, you know, the positives and the negative. So like what is the call like end of the day, Like if you had to make a call right now, what would that call be? And they say, well, this is what I would do in that And you say, like that's great. I agree, you've nailed that one perfectly, Like go go do that thing and guess what we might learn something here. It might not be the most
perfect call. There might be some things that you've already talked about that could be a negative impact to this, but like we're prepared for it, we've thought about it, we've considered it, but like you're absolutely making the right call, Like you know, take that step, you know what I'm saying, And like, the next time we come across something like this, what I want you to do is come to me and let me know what decision you made and then what was the learning you got out of that, whether
it was you know, validation and recognition for right making it right call, or did you make a call and then hey, there's something that you had to learn here, like like you know, bring that to me next time. So it's kind of like this space of doing that I think for leaders is really important and for this to be a topic in this context of things to
like you know, talking to your younger self. What it tells me is that there's not enough leaders in that space thinking about how they're building that level of confidence to then say to then somebody to say, like, I've got enough confidence now that I know that I can make these decisions, I can push harder, I can I can you know I can. I can trust my instincts and intuition to go do this and if it's not
how I want it to land. I'm gonna at least learn something from it, but it's not going to be like endgame.
Right right.
So it's funny you mentioned it in that context because the verbage in the article says, you are born with good natural instincts, but society and many workplaces tell you
not to trust yourself, and they're not wrong. Like the it goes back to childhood and that the times when when you know, you stop your kids from doing something dangerous because you don't want them to get hurt, and and it's a it's a tough kind of balance because you know, if you if you stop them from running out in the middle of the street, that's probably a good thing because the getting.
Hurt part would be pretty catastrophic.
But if you stop them from you know, walking along you know, a thin little wall where if they fall, you know, fall off it's a you know, a foot or two feet to the ground, then maybe that's a bad instinct to go and try to stop that from happening, because the worst case scenario is that they fall and then they injure themselves, you know, you know, not in a major way, and then they get through it and you dust off and you put a band aid on
you and you move forward. And you know, from from the very beginning, we do things.
Like this to people.
We we we tell them not to trust themselves, don't don't walk along that wall, you'll fall off.
And it's like, well, what if they wouldn't fall off? You know what? What if instead everything was.
About what what could you do to make sure that you you you lifted the level of trust and and and self confidence in things that a person was going to do. If every interaction was one in the spirit of lifting that self confidence all the way from childhood up through school and into the workplace. If you're the first day of your first job, your your boss has said to you, yeah, trust trust yourself. I trust you. You should trust yourself. You were hired for a reason.
Get it done and if it and if it goes wrong, we'll talk about it together.
But it's not gonna be into the world. We'll get we'll get through it together.
You know if if if you think about if leaders across the board, whether it be parents or coaches or teachers or bosses, operated in that way, it like the human race would be unstoppable, right like it would just be the the amount that would get done by people who have those amazing instincts.
I think, uh, I think people would surprise themselves.
Because a lot of these things are not you know, you're not trusting yourself because you know, you haven't gone to school for twenty years and studied something. It's not trusting instincts from a more basic level of I just kind of have the life experience and the common sense to get something done, you know, not necessarily the formality
of education around something. Sometimes those are the things that matter most that they're getting done, those things that you didn't have to study for, go to school for for a long time, but just something that you accumulated through life experience making those decisions correctly. It's not something that gets validated unless you actually go through it and do it and come on the other side.
Now, let me ask you, like, is there a time you can think of in your career where a leader did that for you, where a leader helped you to gain some confidence in a decision that you wanted to make or needed to make, but maybe you were unsure of or you know, maybe you went to them for validation or permission and you know, you walked away with confidence and clarity on what you needed to go do.
Yeah.
Of course.
The the first job that I had doing where I was in charge of of of hiring people, of screening interviews and hiring people, and the my boss at the time noticed that the the people that I was sending up like to the next level were all good people and that there were no no people were being sent through that that they would have to you know, come to me later and say, hey, uh, why did that
person get through? Right, Like it was never any of that for you know, a period of not a long time, like it was only I'd only been the job a couple of weeks. And then when I started, you know, putting people through from like a request standpoint, eventually my boss came to me and said.
You don't need to you know, screen through me anymore. Just put them through like.
If you if if you like it, I trust it, you know, go go put it through. And and that was a it was a moment where I thought, no, no, I don't want to do that yet, Like I didn't say that, but in my mind, I was thinking, no, I don't want to do that, Like there's a reason why you were here to kind of make that final
call before a person gets gets put through. And it was it was his way of saying at the time, Yeah, I know, it's my final call, but I've noticed a track record over the period of a few weeks or a month here, and and it's a good, good enough track record where I don't I don't feel like I need to do this anymore.
I feel like you can kind of take this on.
And you know, the first maybe a dozen or so people that I put through without that kind of approval process, I was very worried the whole time. I was worried that that would be the first time that I did something wrong, that the first person I put through where I didn't do a good job of screening, and and that never happened. And you know, the the first time that you know, I was ever even talked to it all about a person that got through that shouldn't have
gotten through. It was actually a moment where in my I was thinking, I don't know if that person should get through, and I kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt. And and that was another one of those moments where in hindsight, I should have trusted my my natural instinct was to say, no, don't put this person through. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and I should have trusted myself. I should have said no,
maybe not on this person. So you know, my my boss had the the you know, kind of the forethought to put me in charge of the situation, and you know, my my you know, kind of batting record on.
It was was almost perfect. But but yeah, it helped.
To know that I had his confidence in making those decisions because after a long enough time, if I had been putting through people that I were I was one hundred percent sure were great, and I did get that confidence, but I never got that reciprocation from him to say, yeah,
go ahead and take it on yourself. If every single person he was still wanting to screen also, then I would have eventually kind of lost, you know, kind of lost pass around the job to begin with, because I'm thinking, why am I even here if this person's gonna approve everything else too, And so it's kind of this fine line between you know, you have to give people the confidence by putting them in situations where they could possibly fail, and sometimes force them to do it, because if you
wait too long, then they were ready a long time ago, and then you maybe have lost the relationship as an employee. Yep.
I love that example. And with that it brings us to this episodes one minute hack. But first a few words from our sponsors.
All Right, this episode's one minute hack is about you as a leader and whether or not you validate your people's instincts to make decisions on their own, or if you are validating your people's instincts to come to you for help as a decision maker. To be a good leader, you need to empower your people to be able to make decisions that don't require your involvement, because if your involvement is required, you are not growing and grooming them into being or leaders themselves.
You are just kind of.
Growing them into being, you know, compliant employees who will always need you as a leader. And if that's the way you go about it, you have to really think about, you know, who are you in this for and and what's the ultimate goal here? Is it to you know, to make yourself indispensable, which means you can't move up, or is it to grow people underneath you to become better enough at their job where they.
Can take over your role? And help you move up in your career too.
And so if you if your people are coming to you, think about things like, are you are you validating their decision to come to you by coming up with some you know, piece of wisdom or coaching or schooling that you can impart upon them that that kind of makes them think, oh, this is this was a good decision to come to Chris. I need to come to Chris more often? Or are you asking you know, curious and empowering questions like what would they do in that situation?
What what do they want to do? What are the what are their genuine thoughts about it? And getting them to think outside the box about how they would move forward, and then when they tell you what they would do, saying that's exactly what I would do, like I love it, go forward and move forward with it and building that confidence because eventually, if you do that enough times, they'll stop having to come to you. They'll just people to
make the decision without needing you. And you've done your job as a leader to kind of grow that within a person because it's natural for them to want to come to you at first when they're trying to figure out what their relationship is. But oftentimes when your people come to you, they're not coming to you because they
want your advice on what to do. They're coming to you because they're testing the waters of what kind of a leader you will be and whether or not it is going to be okay to make decisions on their own or if you want them coming to you and if your actions validate their decision to come to you, all you're doing is teaching them, Okay, all right, this is the kind of leader who I'm not going to be able to make decisions on my own because they're
trying to validate themselves and they need to be involved.
And it is what it is. But those are the people who move on from your organization if they're talented.
Yeah, no, I think it's it's a great woman to hack. And again it's it's just kind of the idea around these these interactions, these opportunities when it comes to those that you lead and when they come to you, because that's going to happen, Like there are definitely there are things that you, as a leader you have to make the decision on, Like those things absolutely are going to happen.
It's in those other things where they your team can absolutely be the ones who make a decision on something that if they continue to come to you for that, either validation or permission, it really slows a lot of things down. And that should be kind of a you know, a little bit of your own personal red flag about how much of my day am I making decisions that I don't need to make that can be made without
me being involved? And if you're seeing a lot of that, which may happen sometimes with new teams or new employees or somebody in a new role, being really con of not only what you're doing in the moment to help them build confidence, but also telling them upfront, Hey, I want to talk to a little bit about confidence and capability here, and what I want to make sure that you understand is that, like you know, to be in this role to do this work, there's a lot of
trust that I have in you to get this job done. And I believe and through our conversations that you're making a lot of the right decisions here.
But you continue to come to me for that. So let's talk about that, you know what I mean.
Let's talk about how we can how we can make sure that you feel great about the support that you might need or feel that you need, but also feel better about making these decisions on your own and feeling good about knowing that sometimes there might be a learning lesson here, you know. So like those are things I think that leaders have to be a lot more intentional with.
Yeah, I think you're right, I think kind of the last thing I want to say about this, I think is important is that you know, oftentimes you know the people who are coming to you to ask and asking for help. You know they again, it'll start out with them testing to see if they're allowed to. But if you're doing the right things and telling them this is what you expect out of them, and they're still not doing it, then you might have to dig in a
little bit and find out why. You know, is it possible they had a boss in the past who chastised them when that boss was not involved, and that's what they're kind of their their instinct is is to make sure they're taking a partner to de risk the situation and get validation before they move forward. But again, you know, just because it might take a little extra work to kind of coax a person out of that shell, it's the right thing to do. And it might take some
examples of it happening over and over again. But the major progress that gets made is not in validating of the good decisions. It's in how that employee sees you help them get through a wrong decision, and so you can validate all you want to and make sure that they are you know, they understand that, yeah, that was a great decision. Good for you, that's exactly what I would have done. You know, more power to you. Keep
making those decisions. That's all great and that's important. But the first time the employee does not make the right decision and you have to coach them on it, that is going to be the moment where you truly validate their decision to come to you or not come to you on things. Because if you've told them over and over again, don't come to me, I trust you, And the first time they make the wrong decision, you chastise them for making the wrong decision.
That will never happen again.
They will always come to you forever, and so it's about how do you help them get through it in a in a way that shows you have compassion, that that lets them know there was a better way to do it. But without making them feel like they shouldn't have made the decision on their own, like it's it's it's things like I can totally see why you made this decision. These are these are the things I liked
about it. These are the things that you should think about in the future going forward in order to help you know, inform that a little bit better.
And and and I got you, and let's let's move on now.
And the the more that you can kind of force yourself into that box of making sure that the important thing is not about you know, coaching them up on what they did wrong, but about using it as an exercise to validate the trust that they have.
In you to continue making decisions on their own.
That's where those moments matter and where you really kind of define the relationship between you and the.
Employee absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end of this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.