Brian Gubernick uses Eric Hatch's drowning metaphor to argue that overwhelmed team members don't need tactics or plans, they need empathy and reassurance. Great leaders pause coaching to offer emotional oxygen first, then strategy. Identify someone drowning and give them a breath instead of a fix.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off Podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to share something powerful that a good friend of mine, Eric Hatch, fellow real estate entrepreneur, something he had said the other day at this awesome conference he had held up in Fargo, North Dakota. What he shared actually kind of stopped me cold. It got me thinking quite a bit with respect to how it applies and shows up in my world. Here's what Eric said. Eric said, if someone is drowning, they don't need you to tell them which direction to swim. They just need a breath. If someone is drowning, they don't need you to tell them which direction to swim. They just need a breath. Now, let that one kind of sit with you for a second, just like it did with me. Because there's this, there's this leadership reflex. If you're, if you're like me, and I think a lot of our audience here, you are in fact like me, you are, you are leading a team, you are building businesses, you're raising kids. If you're like that, you probably have a strong bias for fixing. Someone comes to you and they're struggling and your immediate instinct is to solve or to instruct or to point them toward land and say, hey, swim that way. Hey, pick up the phone and make X number of dials or hey, work your sphere or hey, get your sales scripts right and here's the process to do that or block your time better, and here's the time management schedule, and here's how we do it. Here's the problem with that though. When someone's drowning, when they're overwhelmed, or when they're anxious, they're afraid, they're spiraling, the direction doesn't actually matter. What matters is oxygen. It's just oxygen. Like picture this, right? Just play along with me. Picture this. You've got a, you're running a sales business, Many of our audience are in the real estate space, but let's just say, you know, broadly speaking, you're selling widgets. You've got an agent on your sales team. They're super talented. You believe in them. You believed in them when you brought them onto your team. But as of late, they're kind of falling apart. Their deals that they have in the pipeline are falling through. Their pipeline's starting to look weaker and weaker. You see that maybe they're starting to ghost some of their contacts and their leads. Their energy is out of whack, it's off. You can even see some self-doubt maybe creeping in. Now, your gut might say to you, hey, let me show them what to do. Let me walk them through the plan as to how to turn this thing around or how to start building right away. But here's the truth. When you take a step back and think about it, they already know the plan. They know the plan. They've heard you say it. You've worked with them one-on-one on it multiple times. They already know the plan. They probably just can't access it. And they can't access it maybe because they can't breathe. When I think about breath, I don't think it's all that complicated. What's breathing? What's a breath? I think it's empathy. It's presence. It's maybe reminding them that they're not alone. Maybe it sounds like, "Hey, I've seen you do hard things before. You'll get through this too. Hey, you're not broken. Hey, right now, I don't need you to perform. I just need you to come up for some air." What do you think that looks like? Sometimes, The breath is maybe just sitting with them, hanging out with them, having some personal conversation, not giving advice, not giving tactics, just actually being there. Other times it's maybe reminding them of their wins, the success that they've had, maybe helping them take just one small next step, like calling one person, not calling via the entire plan, just one person. I think that as a leader, you know, your real role is to not just build people. I think great leaders actually from time to time rescue great people from drowning, but specifically without making them feel weak for needing air. They know that that direction matters. The best leaders out there, they know that direction matters, but only after the person they're trying to influence and lead is breathing again. The best leaders know the difference between strategy and CPR. And they know how to pause the coaching and offer some degree of humanity first. So, for all of the leaders here listening to today's episode, I want you to do something today. I want you to identify the one person on your team or in your company or in your world who might be drowning. And I want to challenge you to stop giving them swimming directions right now. Don't email them the plan. Don't forward them a video or an article to read. Just call them, text them, sit with them, and give them a breath. Because once they can breathe again, I think they'll start swimming towards the shore on their own. Makes sense. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better, so let's get after it.
