Episode 9 - The 5 Principles of Successful Leadership

So that was a great takeaway. Come back over the red eye flight landed bit of jet lag, but now I'm glad that we're coming up towards the weekend. What about you, Matt?

So yeah had I had a really interesting conversation actually, again, on the leadership piece with a with a client and they've got all the sort of right ideas. It's just how to put that into practice. And sometimes it's all balancing the process with the people. And I know we're going to talk a bit about that later today, but just really interesting. They're like, we've got all this in place, but why are we struggling to. Are we struggling to get it moving?

Yeah, I did some prep work with another colleague on how we're going to help them in in tackling that challenge. So it's great. So in terms of today's conversation, Jonny, I think, the topic for today is what are the 5 principles of successful leadership? And I think it's, yeah, this is a really interesting topic to dive into.

I'm sure people listening will have their own perspectives, maybe even have their own principles as that they've delivered in different organizations that they've worked in the past. But, obviously we take these principles or we created these principles based on the thousand clients that we've worked with, all that SBR have worked with over the years and many of those on leadership programs. So it's great for us to bring that.

That insight and that experience to the table and share that with everyone on the podcast today. So what I thought might be good is if we just highlight what those principles are, and then we can dive into it. And as usual great to get your perspective, and we can have a bit of a conversation about it.

So I think that's really critical that we want people to also critically analyze these principles and think about their own.

So our first one being leadership is everything and making sure that you're recruiting the right people and how you recruiting the right people into leadership data is the second looking at people versus metrics of balancing, having good analysis, good data that you can analyze and understand and identify trends within, but also balancing that with the individuals.

Operational rigor, how you create consistency and effective habits in, in leadership commercial alignment, that client centric approach, making sure everyone's going in the same direction. I think it's really important. And then finally, to wrap them all up is that underlying coaching culture. So providing the team with a real track to run on, having a supportive view of leadership and focusing more on the carrot than the stick.

So Jonny, I think those are the five that we've come up with, I'd love to get your thoughts Jonny on the first principle that leadership is everything. What's that mean to you?

Now, I know it's contentious talking about politics. So please do forgive me. But the the crucial part here is that when we're thinking about leadership, who are you recruiting into that role? And do they have the capacity and the capability to be successful? Also thinking about that ability to role model and I made an alignment towards Boris Johnson. Now, if you think about Boris Johnson 2016, the best sales professional in the whole of the United Kingdom, what did he do? He sold the dream.

He took us on a journey, helped us think about Brexit then continued to become the prime minister. And again, sold the dream about how great of a leader he would be. We all bought into that. Let's not talk about the pandemic. My point being is that not all great salespeople are great leaders. So the first principle is that leadership is everything, but making sure you've got the right leader in the right position.

And recently, as I stated in Toronto, they have this kind of have Actually gone out and not bought product specialists. They've brought leadership specialism in and that has been a profound change in terms of their performance. So that is leadership is everything is principle one.

The people and focusing on the individuals in the team, and then what the numbers are telling you. And I think that, there's a starting point here. I know we talked about, we've talked about this previously balancing what data you're capturing, why you're capturing it, but more importantly, how you're using it, what you're looking for. What's your perspective when it comes to data?

What would you say is the most important aspect of that in terms of finding the right balance between focusing on individuals and then focusing on what the data is telling you.

A colleague of ours this week, we were building out a maturity model, which highlighted the right appropriate dashboards at the appropriate level. So within that, what you've got then is the metrics that you're currently tracking inputs and those outputs. That is just one story. That's the important part of what we're saying here is people versus metrics.

Once you look at the metrics, then what you want to be able to do is overlay the people, the quantitative, the qualitative stuff that you can see, right? And that is where I see time and time again at the moment, Matt. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm super passionate about this is that people look at a dashboard, they make a judgment, they go and then try and change the course.

Okay. So question is how often are you spending shadowing, spending time observing, looking at the right behaviors and measuring against competency framework time and time again, at the moment I'm hearing Oh, I don't have time, I would imagine if you overlaid some of the data metrics that you've got to some of the observations, you'd have a fantastic story.

So that principle is all about balancing the difference between spending time with the people, but also using data that is valid, what's your thoughts on that, Matt, and what's your view on the principle?

And so often you walk into and as a lead, you walk into a, an exec briefing and maybe get a bit of a kicking on pipeline or a kicking on on closed sales and that then when leaving the room that sort of carried with you and that, that can guide the way that you then behave with the team is that why are we not there? And it just, it doesn't foster a productive conversation, in my opinion. And I think it's just, how do we, again, to your point, take the right metrics, look at them in the right way.

Coach the team on how to understand them and how to adapt their own, their own well, their ability to talk to those numbers, but also what they do that impacts those numbers and start to create that across the different layers within the organization. I think that's key. And then, like you said how often, how much time are they spending shadowing?

How much time they're spending actually in one-to-one coaching sessions, or how much time are they spending in an Excel spreadsheet and using that as a, a big sort of dirty stick to beat people with.

And this talk, this principle talks to how operationally and as a leader, you are maintaining the right cadence with your team, but you're maintaining the right consistency and habit in the way that you coach, in the way that you deliver in the way that you operationally run your team, how often are you reviewing key metrics with your team? What are you, how are you using that to then guide the team forward? It's interesting. I am in a previous life.

I picked up the nickname, Matt Best Efficiency. I had you to my focus on operational rigor. So it's something that's very close to my heart. What does it mean to you, Jonny?

So I can see that within you as a consultant, what operational rigor means to me, quite simple is about discipline and you've got to be aware. If you're a middle manager or a leader that some of the work that we do is monotonous. So be conscious around how you did, deal with monotony because, every day. Every week, every month, it's the same thing. Check the stats, check your people, check your process, use your tools and technology to help you.

And every single week, what we want to be able to see is that you're doing your one to ones. You're doing your activities and it should be all about inputs, drive the outputs. And importantly, if your operational rigor is successful, your employee net promoter score should be fantastic.

Attrition in terms of the people being regrettable should reduce and ultimately productivity, i. e. revenue should improve those three clear metrics should be the basis of all of that great operational rigor and discipline. What about you, Matt? Best Efficiency?

I think the important thing to say here as well, though, is that whilst, you might have some repetition coaching, your team and having really great people conversations should feel it should feel really engaging. If you really if that's something that you want to do, as part of the, as a leader it's a fundamental skill. And it's something you can continue to hone. And I think as ever with.

With the sort of monotonous tasks, it's always challenging yourself to think about how you can make those more efficient, how you can automate. But at the same time, realizing to your point that it is an ongoing recurring thing and you can't leave it alone for three months, expect to come back and it's still working.

Okay, so you're thinking about if targets are being set for businesses for 2024 at the moment, they're likely to be an elevation of growth targets increase, but we know that comes with that is some of the key principles like operational rigor. If the target's going to increase in a business by 10 percent each year, what, why is operational rigor so important for you to continue to hit those 10 percent growth goals each year? Yeah.

And that needs, and that requires discipline, it requires the right habits and it requires for a lot of practitioners on the ground, the support of their leader and being able to execute against that. So moving on to our fourth principle and looking at commercial alignment. And this is you've got a lovely quote that you shared with me previously. I'd like you to share again about rowing in the same direction.

And I think, as part of a part of commercial alignment and a client centric organization, and we've at SBR here, we've recently published a or coauthored a white paper around a client centric approach and everyone in the business guided towards the same outcome. I had a similar conversation with a leader in a customer success. Function of a managed services client just earlier this week, who reiterated to his team that.

Customer success is all about joints is a responsibility of the entire business to make our customers successful. And that really aligns to that same, we talk about here commercial alignment, which is understanding the need for everyone to have that sort of commit to look at things through a commercial lens, but it really starts with that client centricity.

So yeah, Jonny share with us that quote that you shared with me just before our recording here today, would you, and then I'd love to hear your perspective and your take on a commercial alignment.

So how do you drive the awareness of marketing, producing the number as, as well as sales, rather than this sort of finger pointing emotion. I think for the last 10 years, that's been been thought of but but businesses have tried to deal with that, with the evolution of CROs. But I guess what we're talking about here is commercial alignment. How do we align all key functions together? And the quote that you talked about there is actually from one of my favorite books.

And if you've never read it or ever been on a training course, it's called, it's from Patrick Lencioni the five dysfunctions of a team. And this was also shared in the keynote as I was talking about before. So I shared to the audience, if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry in any market against any competition at any time. As I said, that was by Patrick Lencioni. That's a pretty profound, pretty punchy statement.

What's your thoughts on that, Matt?

My priority is going, you're going left and you're telling me and you're telling me your priority is going right. And we get that sort of We start to veer off down different down different sort of streams that lead off the river. It's a terrible analogy, but, to try and extend the rowing analogy there. But I think the interesting thing is how to exactly as Patrick says, how do you maintain that? And how, but more importantly, how do you maintain that as your business grows?

And I think, as you said, in the Roots and Shoots paper that we've co authored with our with one of our marketing partners. It talks to the marketing and sales collaboration. But for me, it's also really important as you go into when you look at the sales, account management, customer success to operations alignment, and how those parts of the business work together as well.

It is a hard bit of graft. And also it's going to require a whole bunch of things, but that alignment, I do truly feel can make that marginal gain improvement to enable you to reach your goals.

And that's really talking to, how to develop a rich coaching culture, a culture of support, providing a clear track to run on, for your team, aligning to those, that data principle that we mentioned earlier is it really clear what your team needs? How are you supporting your teams? Jonny, you mentioned spending sufficient time with the team in shadowing in coaching, one to ones so important. And just having that culture of support. Rather, and I differentiate this.

We think about management versus leadership, and management is we've all seen those those little cartoons on LinkedIn where the managers, shouting and pushing everyone up the hill first and the leaders at the top of the hill, dragging everyone up after them.

And I think that's a really important thing to think about when we think about that coaching culture, you want to be able to sit down with your leader and have a conversation, be a bit vulnerable, ask for support and for help without the fear of being berated or the fear of, yeah, the fact that you maybe have failed or not done as well in something that means that your managers or your leader is going to look at you differently and not support you in the way you need it.

I think that for me is \really what a coaching culture is trying, is encouraging and enabling your leaders to have really effective, coaching conversations with their team to act as a coach and into a mentor, but not as a manager, going down a list of tasks. Have you done this? Have you done this? Have you done this, right onto the next one? We know that's not effective. What? What does it? What does it scream out for you? Jonny, coaching culture?

The point being here is I see this coaching culture principle is again, a universal principle, but it wraps around the other four principles we've spoken about today. When I talk about wraparound is that we're really focusing on if that is a really great culture within your organization, that not only is the sales coaching the sales, but marketing is coaching sales. Sales is coaching marketing. Marketing is coaching finance.

Now we're starting to align the commercial piece, operational rigor, going to have a culture talks about it's living and breathing. It's in your ecosystem. Therefore operationally, it will be living and breathing in the processes that you do. The important part is that when we're thinking about coaching culture, there's lots of data to suggest that, you need to coach people between three to five hours per person per month.

Yeah, that's optimum, but for every single business, you might need to just do one hour. Really quality hour, or maybe it's eight hours. It really does depend on the business and what are the the lag indicators suggesting, because all of that input is gonna drive the output. I guess lastly from a coaching culture is that I talk about the wraparound or the barrier. Fundamentally, a great culture will make sure that you drive to succeed your strategy now.

If you have a really stinky culture and you're less likely to achieve that strategy and the overall outcomes, and that will only be, at detriment of your own goals and what you want to achieve as a, an individual contributor, sales manager or professional. So I would say that's the piece there, man.

And actually it doesn't give you the results that you want. Three effective hours is better than 10 ineffective hours. So again, just thinking about how you're delivering that in your business as well, and what you're supporting and reinforcing.

And the question I asked there is that they normally go, and what that does is then it asks the question is that, are you having a great relationship with the person that's leading you? So you get to think, Oh, is that valuable? Equally? Most leaders are then looking down and think about their team and go crikey, the sessions that I'm doing probably they aren't adding as much impact. I don't set a purpose so that coaching culture isn't being laid out.

It's a tick box exercise for many, and actually many don't even tick the box. They actually delete the one to one in the diary because they don't feel confident or capable of delivering a great session. I'll get off my soapbox, but I'm hugely passionate about these five principles. I think it would add value to both individuals and businesses achieving.

So with that, I'd encourage you to think about these and how you can incorporate some of this into your own leadership culture into your own organization. And so we very much look forward to seeing you on the next podcast and Jonny, thanks so much again for your insight and contribution in the podcast today.