Leading by Fear or Respect

Business Brain, the show for entrepreneurs episode 495 for causal Wednesday, October 25, 2023 Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three and we run it through the wringer. We analyze it, we dissect it, we compress it, we expand it so that we can each learn and tune our business brains together every single episode here in Durham, New Hampshire. Tuning my Business brain. With you all, I'm Dave Hamilton and.

Out here in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. I'm turning this giant knob, tuning my brain and I feel like the knob has gotten bigger, as you know, over the years.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

I gotta, I gotta learn this and I gotta learn that. And you know, I saw a comment today, I thought it was pretty amazing on X somebody said, hey, have the courage to suck at something new. And I thought that's pretty good. You know, trying something different, tuning your brain every day, trying to take on something different and know that you're, you may be bad at it to start.

But sticking with oh, that's I, I, I think that's really valuable because I know this is true for me sometimes, although I feel like I've gotten a lot better at it in recent years. But it's certainly true I see in other people. And that's probably why I've gotten better at it is, is that, that, you know, fear of failure, the avoidance of failure. And it's like, well and again, this is a question I asked myself for probably, you know, 45 years of my life but you know, or I should have asked myself for 45 years of my life is if you've never done it before, how in the world would you expect to be an expert?

Exactly.

Like it's. But I think as we, but yeah.

But as you kind of move up and let's, you know, in our topic to business world.

Yeah.

It, you, you do have to remind yourself that like yes, you know, I'm trying to grow my, my, you know, quote, personal brand on X and you know, on some platforms, e commerce stuff that I'm involved in. I have like 300,000 followers and X, it's like 260.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It's pretty good though. That's way up from where you were a month ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started at you know, 25 or something. It's like 10x. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's, it's, it's fascinating and yeah, I thought it was producing but I want to talk, I want to start the show off, before we get into our main topic, which I'm also very interested in talking about, I want to talk about productivity. And I'd like to throw out a productivity quick productivity tip that you and I, I think both use and then talk a little bit more about productivity with an upcoming, Upcoming. Some upcoming news that we're going to share.

Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. What's your productivity tip?

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So this is, It's a very basic. And I, as I started thinking about it for the show today, I wanted to remind people that sometimes productivity tips are physical. You know, it's not just use this software, do this, change your timing, you know, whatever. But I have a piece of equipment on my desk that increases my productivity dramatically. And it's so simple. But it's called a quartet. We've talked about it on the show before and it's a. It's like a little whiteboard, but it's glass, which makes it much more pleasant to write on and erase on.

Yeah.

But it sits between my keyboard and my monitor, so it's a little rectangle. And it's amazing because it's just, it's about.

Imagine it to be about the same size and shape as your keyboard, but slightly higher up so that when it sits between your keyboard and your monitor, it's a. It's smooth flow from the top edge of your keyboard up this quartet. You know, I, I don't even. It's just a glass pad. Like I, I love this thing. I've had one for years. I don't remember if you told me about them or I told you about.

So I got it, I bought it. Well, I don't know. Whatever it is.

Yeah, I don't. As soon as one of us found out about it, the other one was like all in. And yeah, I, I use it. I found. I get distracted it. And what happens is I wind up interrupting my co host, as I have done and am literally in the middle of doing as I'm speaking right now. What I normally try to do and clearly just failed at is use my quartet pad. I grab the little thing when I have a thought, I write it down on that. That way I don't interrupt you. But I also don't forget about it. And I'm not obsessing about remembering it because I've just written it down and therefore I can listen to you. So I want to listen to you.

Gives you a much wider bandwidth.

Yes.

And so I, I've talked about this thing so much, they actually sent me a one of their easels. This Agile Quartet, Agile glass dry erase easel. It's. This thing is beautiful and you know, and it.

So this is like your height.

Yeah, it's nice. You stand in front of it. But I mean if you're doing presentations, this thing just raises the scale of it and I love it. And this is not a commercial. But I went to their site to make sure I was pronouncing it correct and they have a 10% off coupon up there@quartet.com but that's not why I'm listening it because my quartet on front of my keyboard is covered with stuff we talked about right before the show.

Yes.

And then I will go delegate that stuff and make things happen and then I will erase it and be ready for the next thing that pops up on there. So check it out. Quartet.com It's. It's amazing.

All right. Hey look, while we're here, I want to take a minute and talk about a fantastic podcast recommendation that we have. Leo Laporte hosts a show called this Week in Tech, one of the longest running tech news shows in the world that launched in 2005 on Twitt TV. In the 18 plus years since, they've covered every major tech story with some of the biggest names and smartest people by doing a deep dive into the biggest tech stories, a different panel of experts join Leo Laporte every Sunday, bringing expert analysis, helpful advice and entertaining discussions. You'll listen to every episode knowing more about what's happening in the tech world around you. And they deal with some of the biggest issues in the world today. Not just computing, Windows, Mac and Linux, but also AI, Twitter, cybersecurity, privacy, search, and so much more. Visit TWiT TV TWiT to subscribe to this Week in Tech. And thanks to Leo and the team for doing the swap with us. So last week, Shannon, we were talking about leadership styles and leadership in general. You had some more thoughts about that. I want to tug on this particular thread with you.

Yeah, I think there's two significant types of leadership and there's lots of them. But you can lead fear based leadership where everybody's afraid that if they don't do something right or you know, you're going to get upset or something bad is going to happen or leading out of respect where people want to impress you because they respect you and they're doing it for more internal intrinsic type of value. Right. They get a bigger and so I want to break them down and talk about each type and I'M sure you can figure out which type I think is more powerful. But I, I think it's worth, you know, digging into a little bit more.

Yeah. I mean, we've certainly all seen examples of fear based leadership. I'm, I'm not good at that. I, I think there are times where, and I, I say that maybe we're.

Wrong, then maybe you're wrong.

That's what I mean is like, I don't say that judgmentally about anyone except me. You know, I see people who use fear and be very productive, have very productive teams and be very successful with. Is not how my brain works. I am a lead by example person. I'm a lead with, I guess you'd call it respect based leadership. But it's more, yeah, it's more just like, let's do this together. Teamwork.

Your style.

It's just my style. Yeah. I'm not. But I suppose if I, if I use fear in my leadership, it is at times when, if I get frustrated by someone not being able to do something that I think they can do and then showing them, hey, look, this is how it's done. Go do it. I can see how that would instill fear in people because it's like, oh, crap. My, my boss thinks, my boss thinks this is easy. Right. Like, but it's not. I'm not threatening them outwardly explicitly by saying, if you don't do this, I'm going to fire you. But there's still fear there. So I, I think I probably do use it unintentionally. Yeah. But I'm aware, I'm aware of those moments. Yeah, yeah.

Anytime you're involved with someone's livelihood, meaning you sign their paycheck or whatever, issue their paycheck, there's probably some fear in that. Right. That, oh, if I don't perform, I could, this could be a big problem for me.

Yes. I might not be able to have the opportunity to do it again. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I, I think that I have the similar style that you're talking about is trying to get people to do things because they want to make me happy.

Right, right.

I, that is, if you can pull that off, it really makes up for so many other problems in. And I'm only speaking to myself because I don't, you know, listener, I don't know your business, but in my business, you know, I was pretty good at some things, but I was terrible at many things. I still am, but if people are trying to do good during the day and trying to show, show you how good they are at their job and they're getting things done. It makes up for a lot of other mistakes in my experience.

Yes.

And because I think it builds a connection and credibility and trust when you tell them I'm not good at, you know, hey, I don't, this isn't my wheelhouse. I'm not that great at this. So this is going to be a little bumpy, you know.

And I think.

That building that respect over time, it's just such a better system than having people be afraid.

I think it works in both directions. And what I mean by both directions is we're talking about the one direction with your team, your employees, the people that work for you. But it also works outwardly with your customers. Right. Where your customers, you have interactions with them and they have the opportunity to perform for you or not. Right. Like, I know that that seems like an odd thing to say when in general people are paying you, your company to do a service or provide a product for them, but the customers have their part in that. Primarily in terms of paying for things, right. But also in terms of when they come to you and ask for support, help, whatever that, the version of that is, that applies to your business. There is a two way street there. And customers will sometimes make mistakes. They will sometimes take a long time to pay if, if you've given them terms, right. They will sometimes ask for help and ask, you know, for something that they in theory already had the information to solve. Right. And so now you're, you're there showing or they complain, oh, this doesn't work. Right. And it's like, well, yes it does. And you walk them through it and those kinds of things, you have the opportunity to be a hard ass about it or a kind sort of, you know, softer personality with them. And I've seen companies take it both ways. I always, almost always take it the much softer way. I, I'm generally if someone owes us money, right. Customer owes us money, right. I'm pretty soft about it, especially if it's a customer I'm working with over a long period of time. There's red tape can crop up in any business of any size. Now if it's a habitual thing, an habitual thing because I'm a grammar nerd too, that's, that's, that needs to be addressed on its own. But if it's one thing where the rest are, you know, they, they've paid regularly over time, they have one thing where it's like there's some hiccup in the system, for whatever reason, they can't pay in a timely fashion like they normally do. I kind of let that. I don't let it go. I make it known that we're aware of it, but I don't give them a hard time about it because that, to me, is a perfect opportunity to build trust. And it's the same way with your team. Internally, you're building that trust when they're making mistakes. You're allowing them to make mistakes, you're allowing them to learn. And I don't know, I think that works. I think there's fear involved in both of these things. Right.

Because yeah, there is.

The customer is afraid that you're going to come after them for the money that they know they owe you and your employee. In theory, there's some level of fear, like, if I don't do this properly, well, then they're not going to continue to employ me, and that's bad. So there is fear there, But I almost intentionally don't leverage that fear. I let it exist in their world more than in mine. Right. Whereas I want to be the person helping you through it. I know the fear's there it is.

And I think on the flip side, when you're kind of this friendlier leadership style and trying to connect and build trust, some members of your team, they get it and they respond just like we're talking about.

Yep.

But there's others. And I've had this experience a number of times where I've had to remind people, don't take my casual attitude or my friendly demeanor as a sign of weakness, because we are going to get this stuff done.

Oh, yeah.

And we have a system and a plan. And if you're not on board with that because you think there's no accountability or that we won't make hard decisions, you're very mistaken. Yeah. So there are people that really do well in the kind of environment that we're talking about here. But there's other folks that are just maybe used to someone being that hard ass on them a little more. And that's, oh, I got to get this done. Because my supervisor is so mad or the boss is so upset, uh, and they get it done at the last minute. Right. Or, you know, the other people are like, great, I own this. I'm accountable.

I'm going to make it happen. Oh, yeah. The people that are getting it done at the last minute, they don't last in my world. I just can't. I can't have that. Right. Like, you're, you're absolutely. No, but you make a really good point that like, in order for this, you know, trust based leadership to work, I think, I think that's what we're talking about is fear based. Trust based. Right. In order for trust based to work, that trust needs to go in all directions and, and there does need to be respect there where you understand that there is a standard that we will hit. And if you don't hit that well, then that doesn't fit into this realm because I don't want to be a hard ass with you. I've said it on this show many times and I've said it to my employees and team members many more times. If either one of us ever notices me micromanaging you, that is the first symptom of a much bigger problem. And like, let's address that right away. So, yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, I would love to hear back, you know, are you, are you using. Which, which do you prefer in your business? What's. Or maybe you adjust based on the employee?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. We're, we're missing out on the fact like, well, no, you just have to. With this guy, you or this person, you have to be a hard ass. And with this person you can use the soft thing. So maybe it's a leadership lever, if you will, that we don't lean on maybe like we should. So I'd love to learn how you're doing it. Feedbackusinessbrain show. Before we go, I want to definitely remind you to come back for the Friday show because we're going to roll out out a productivity course, our first in a series of business brain courses that we're developing and we're going to talk a lot more about it on the Friday show.

I'm really excited about this. We've.

Me too.

Everybody here has worked really hard to put it together. Sadie especially led the charge on this talk about a team member that just like goes and does what needs to be done. That this course is absolutely. That it takes content from our shows here and other things that we've put together and really packages it into a very efficient productivity masterclass. So, yeah, I'm really excited about this and I'm excited to see what you folks think of it as well. So come back on Friday, we'll talk more about it. We might even have some few ways for you to kind of try it out, give it a trial run and yeah, keep living that charmed life. We'll see you on Friday.