Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership.
I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo.
And Lorenzo on this episode, I want to talk a little bit about keeping.
It real, keeping it real.
Let's let's take it back to the nineties on a throwback here.
Yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah for sure.
I'm picturing the motivational speaker coming into the auditorium at the high school and flipping the chair around backwards to make it seem like they're, you know, gonna relate to us.
You know exactly, They're gonna keep it real. Yeah, Okay.
I want to talk about keeping it real from the standpoint of personal brand because I had an interaction with someone recently who who came off differently than I know them to be. And it wasn't a big deal for me because I've interact with this personal lot and it
just was a little out of character for them. But there were two other people with me in that room who didn't interact with this person very often, maybe not ever before for one of them, and then one maybe have been several months or a year since the last time they interacted with them. And I found myself thinking that's interesting that that they would do this, they would they would kind of react to something in this way.
It just seemed it seemed a little kind of off the cuff and more of an emotional reaction than than it should have been. And I said something to them after the fact, but after the other two people had left the room around this idea of how important it is that people see you in the way that you want them to see you. And and and I don't
want to confuse this with being inauthentic. I want to make sure this is in the in the context of being authentic, but then understanding that no matter who you are, you have days where you are you're you're out of character a little bit like where either you're something's bothering you or on your mind, or you having a bad day anyway, or whatever whatever it is, reactions to things are different than they would be ninety nine out of
one hundred other times. But what that can do to people who happen to just be around you for that one time can be really detrimental in terms of your ability to lead people and form relationships with people. And so I want to talk about this a little bit because I think there's a lot of people out there who think that, oh, you know, I'm on ninety nine percent of the time. I'm on nine hundred ninety nine point nine percent of the time. What's up with the every once in a while.
Kind of thing.
It's like, well, it depends on who's around, right, and it can be a big deal.
Yeah, I think especially the context of leadership, you know, the reality is like, and we talk about it all the time, it's like you're you know, you're always on stage, you know, and again, just because you're on stage doesn't mean that you have to not be yourself or act like a different person. It does mean though, that people
are always watching. There's you know, there's conversations you're gonna have, there's comments that you're gonna make, there's things that you're going to do unintentionally many times because of the role that you have and the responsibility that you have and in many instances like the authority that you have, and
that's really important part of that work. I think as you're talking about it though, like in a personal branding standpoint, there's also a really big important thing around consistency and you know, making sure that you are showing up in the way that you know you not only want to for the role or the responsibility of the job, but so that people can get know who you are actually right,
and and and being authentic I think is important. But you know, I think showcasing and and and making sure especially with audiences like you pointed out, like the two other people, when when you're around people that you're meeting for the first time or that you don't get a whole lot of time with there are, that's a really important thing to make sure that you're intentional with who you are and with and with what you're talking about,
the energy that you bring, the things that you're discussing, you know, all these things really really matter because that's a limitted amount of time that that individual or those those people might have with you, and that's the things they are going to take away, right, And so I think that it's it's it's a really important thing to always consider because again, you could walk in and maybe
be slightly out of character. If if I know that you're slightly out of character to your point, I'll just kind of like yeah, like you know, I'll just kind
of like write it off. But if that's the only is if somebody else's first time meeting you, or those small elements of time with you, that's who you are to them, yep, and that could that can cause you know, that can cause some some some potential harm or conflict in the future if they are operating under the belief that that's who you are or how you lead in those types of moments.
Right.
I think where leaders get tripped up on this is it's less about the people who they're around constantly. Like you think about the ten people you interact with most in your in your day to day and and you and these are people you see at least five times or more a week interacting with them.
It's not those people.
And actually I don't think it's people that they that you meet for the first time. I think a lot of people are very cognizant about putting out the kind of the ara they want to put out to the world when meeting somebody for the first time. I think the danger zone here is in people that leaders interact with very infrequently but often enough. Where in there in the leader's.
Own mind, it's it's often right.
So if you interact with a person you know once or twice a month, then you know the what that person believes of who you are is just kind of the aggregate of maybe the last ten or twelve interactions that they've had with you. And if you happen to have, you know, two of those, let's say two out of the last four are not the brand that you want to put out In your mind, You're thinking, oh, yeah, I interact with this person all the time, but do you like, do you really interact with this person all
the time? And when I say interact, I don't mean standing in front of a group of people they happen to be in.
I don't mean, you know, sending an email to them.
I'm mean a one on one interaction that that exits the context of getting a specific agenda item done on work. Right, So if you're if you're talking about a specific thing for work, then that doesn't count.
This is the the outside of that.
How how do you interact with people when you're talking about what's important to them, or or career development conversations or or accountability conversations, all of those things are what lead a person to have to create what they believe your brand is. And the people who you interact with very infrequently but still kind of a few times here and there, those are the people I think this is this is most likely to happen with, and where leaders kind of get tripped up.
I'll tell you I had an.
Interaction with a leader very recently that I thought was I thought was really well done. This person was scheduled to run a meeting that I was to be a part of along with you know a few other PEOP people, and they came up to me and said, I'm going to have to cancel the meeting today.
And I said, oh, what happened? What's wrong?
And they said, you know, I'm just not I'm not feeling myself right now, Like I'm not feeling like I could be the person that I need to be in this room having these conversations right now, and I'm worried that I will come off the wrong way or that I won't be listening correctly. I won't be I won't be in the proper headspace to do what needs to be done with the information in this meeting.
So I want to push it by a few days.
And I was like wow, like okay, Like just from a standpoint of humility, vulnerability and kind of accepting of the situation, I think about the other ways that could have gone right, So that person thinks it's my job as a leader to be on my game all the time. I'm not allowed to have a time when I'm not on stage.
And and so I'm.
Going to go into this and then that, and then people in the room who interact with this person maybe once or twice a month, if that, they get the wrong impression about them because they weren't in the right head they weren't in the right head space. They didn't bring the you know, the proper brand to that to that meeting room. And I think it ties right back into to what you're saying when it comes to being on stage. So I think you're right, you're always on stage.
But I think that you have the ability to exit the stage as a leader if you want to. You just have to be honest and transparent and vulnerable about the reasons why, and you will be given a lot of grace by people. The failure of leaders come from thinking that either a they're not allowed to leave the stage, or that be they're allowed to be not they're allowed to be not judged by something they do while they are on stage because it's oh, it's just one time out of out of out of many.
Yeah, you know, it's a good call out because I think to your point, like being a leader and signing up for that and being on stage doesn't mean that you always, like to your point, I always have to be performing. And I actually think it's a great call because when when I think you've got it down best is when you've been able to kind of show the audience that you are the same person on and off stage.
But when you are on stage, there's a responsibility that you have, and that is to in in you know, in the acting world, that's to act and put on a performance. In the leadership world, that is to make sure that your teams are are learning and growing and
achieving goals every single day. So it's kind of like I'm the same person on stage or off stage, but I do understand that there's a responsibility when I'm on stage, yeah, and and that that responsibility can also, like you know, it can it can also pour over into when you're not you know, in in the leadership roles, I think about having having interactions with people like at work in meetings kind of in social working environments, versus those same
people at maybe like an off site event where it's like it's a meeting, it's a holiday meeting. It's fun, there's things that are going on. Like it's the same people and these are people that you work with, but there is a different element where you can be off stage a little bit more because of the environment around you and and and kind of what that comes with, you know what I mean, Like I just think of like,
am I a different person there? No, am I much more relaxed to have like more I don't know, like informal conversations, but like the intent of the time together is to connect in a more social way. So I could be more social social and no spaces, but at the same time, like I'm well aware that like I'm there and if I'm the boss or I'm in charge, like I still have to play a role in that space true a degree, it just may be very different.
So I don't know, just kind of talking it out loud, I think that I think that the closer you can get to being who you are both on and off stage with your people, that it's going to require time and effort, but I think it allows there to be a more authentic and real relationship that you can have with everyone.
I kind of like what you said there, because I think it kind of it kind of tied everything together in my own head here, it requires time on and off stage for people to get the right impression of you in terms of for people to believe that what
they're seeing is accurate. So and when I say on and off stage, i'm talking about in the context of what you said, where you're kind of always on stage, but you might have different responsibilities, right, So, so as a leader, whether you're interacting around a bonfire at the beach, you know, on a on a you know, team kind of a get together holiday celebration because you know, and not work related at all, but but but put on by word, how you interact there versus how you interact
in front of a group of people at work, it's going to be different because you have different responsibilities.
But you are on stage for both.
So they everybody's looking to you for how you're going to be acting, But what they're looking to do is validate or or throw out things they already believe about you.
So they go into these.
Interactions thinking what they know about Lorenzo. Oh, I think he's this and this and this. Let's watch him, let's see let's see if he's that still, because the interactions they get with you at work are probably far more often than the interactions they get with you not at work.
But I think it takes both for a person to feel more confident in believing that who you say you are is actually who you are, and because because I think it's it's probably easier for a person to always kind of put on whatever mask they want to put on for work if that's all they ever interact with with a person is at work, it's a lot harder to keep that mask on over a period of multiple hours when when you aren't in the context of work,
it becomes kind of very freeing and open. It's it's why you have the the movie and sitcom tropes of the people you know, you know, photo copying their bare butt in the photocopy machine at the holiday party. It's like, like, well, they would never do that when they were at work, but something happens at the holiday party where they think, oh, it's different. You know. It's like, yeah, it it is different. But that just means there's a different level of responsibility.
And so I think as a leader, you need to be cognizant of that fact and I like that kind of that.
Juxtaposition of it.
So you are always on stage, but you have different responsibilities, and people need to see you with the different hats on of different responsibilities and be able to leave those interactions thinking, Okay, that's a different hat, but it's not a different mask. It's not a mask of who they are. It's just an acknowledgment that they're here to do different things depending on what the context of the situation is.
Yep, I totally agree with that, and with that it brings us to this episode one minute hack. But first a few words from our sponsors.
All right, for this episode's one minute hack, what I want you to do is realize that for a person to have a personal brand that people see them by, it's not enough to just act.
In a certain way.
You have to put that brand out to the world in ways that people who don't interact with you often can kind of absorb and take in and try to validate. And that starts with the words that you use. And so what I want you to do is think about three different words that you want to be seen as.
Three different words that you would hope people would see you as that are very important to you that if you had to pick only three, and I want you to start using those words in the context of your conversations with people who you don't interact with very often. So if you want to be seen as trustworthy, then you just start saying that you can trust me.
Hey, let's talk about something. I want you to know. You can trust me.
You know, the things that you say to people and how you embody the brand that you want of yourself into words does matter because people will be looking to those words as kind of guide posts to see whether or not your actions align with them. And the more the actions align with them, the more of the brand you build with that person. But if you just give the actions and you haven't prefaced it with the words, it's a lot less likely they'll make those tie ins.
It's a lot less likely that they will think that's who you are as a person, and a lot more likely they'll just think, oh, that's who you were at that moment.
So they might think that they could.
Trust you because they told you something and you didn't violate their trust, and that's fine, But if you haven't told them beforehand, I want you to see me as trustworthy. You can trust me. Then it doesn't hit as hard and it doesn't get tied to your personal brand as much. And so whatever you decide these words should be, start utilizing them in the context of your conversations with people, and then make sure that the actions that you do
obviously follow up, because you can't just say it. You have to do it, or you will have the opposite effect of saying it to begin with. But put your brand out in words followed up by actions, and you'll find that the people who you interact with less frequently are a lot more likely to see you as those things, and those little interactions will have more of an impact in the long term.
Yeah, I think it's great women hack, and I love the idea of utilizing the language that you're wanting to build with the team because I think that as you were talking through it, I was thinking about, unintentionally, how maybe I've done that in my past because I want it to be something that's top of mind, and even more recently having some conversations with leaders about you know, if this is what you're solving for, if this is what you want to be as the leader, then you
not only have to show it, but you have to talk about it know and not not. I didn't do it as maybe as polished as you kind of just described there, But it is such an important thing that putting it out to the world because it's also an element of like kind of social accountability that if you say, hey, I I you know, I want you to trust me, or I want to build trust. I want to be
a leader that you can trust. Well, if you're not showing that in your behavior, or if you're doing things that may cause it, somebody can say, like, well, you're making it really hard for me to trust you because you're doing this. Like it creates a space where not only will people hear it and and think about that and say okay, I agree with that, Well, if they don't see you doing the behaviors, you'll probably also get challenged on them.
Yeah, that's it's absolutely a great kind of a concise way of putting it because you know, the the people who don't interact with you as often, they they need every interaction you have with them needs to be something that moves the needle in your favor, because it will move the needle. Every interaction you have will either strengthen or weaken the way that person sees you and the
way that person feels about you as a leader. Every one of them does, and the less frequently you interact with them, the more that needle moves, either positively or negatively, because that's all they have to go off of. You interact with somebody fifteen times a day, and you have one bad moment over the course of a month, it's not going to move that needle at all in the negative.
But if that one bad moment you happen to have is in front of somebody else and that was the only interaction they had with you for the entire month, you might as well think you're starting below zero now.
Like this is that's the only thing that person has to go off of, they might not ever reproach you again, meaning if that happens, you need to be self aware to know that it has happened and go directly to that person to fix the broken situation because they will likely not come to you with it unless they absolutely have to. And so personal brand is important. Kind of manifest to get in verbiage is important, and making sure that you understand that you are always on stage, even
if you wear different hats and have different responsibilities. Very important when you're talking about how you want to be viewed as a person and as a leader.
Absolutely, and with that it resists at 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.