A short talk (YouTube) by Cameron Herold advising entrepreneurial CEOs/COOs to take personal ownership for problems in their companies rather than blaming others. He emphasizes hiring/onboarding accountability, treating criticism/feedback as a gift, observing team responses during meetings and operations, and continually seeking self-improvement (quoting “feedback is the breakfast of champions” and Ray Kroc).
Chapters
So I've been asked for years, how do I be a better leader? In fact, I even created a course called Invest in your leaders to help CEOs grow leaders within their company. The problem for most entrepreneurial CEOs is they only work on themselves being a leader, but they often don't work on the growing the skill set of the rest of the company. But let's talk about the entrepreneurial leader, the CEO or the coo. How do they become a better leader inside the organization? For first and foremost, it's about actually showing up every day and wanting to grow, right? Wanting to become a better leader and not externalizing the problems that you have inside of your company. So one of the things that I notice about many leaders is they tend to play the blame game. They either point fingers at the economy or they point fingers at the customer. They point fingers at employees. They might even point fingers at the leadership team instead of pointing fingers at themselves and saying, what's my contribution to, to this having gone wrong? And I'll give you a good example of this. Oftentimes when an employee quits or gets fired, the entrepreneur or the CEO will say, oh, I'm glad they're gone. To which I actually respond, but you hired them, right? You hired that person, you onboarded that person. You were coaching that person. You were really happy when you brought them into your company. What was your contribution to the fact that you're now happy that they're gone? What did you do wrong? Or what could you have done better in the onboarding or in the coaching or in the day to day operations? It could have had a better relationship or that could have helped that person excel in their job. And I think if the leader, if the entrepreneur or the CEO points the finger at themselves, looks in the mirror and chooses to grow, they actually will. But it's too easy to blame the other person, to play that blame game and kind of put the onus on the, on the other individual instead of putting the onus on yourself. So one of the key ways that you're going to grow as a leader is, is to blame yourself and always look for areas to grow. Now another thing that I've noticed about not only entrepreneurs and COOs, and this is more true of the entrepreneur, is we tend to be starving for praise. We also tend to be working 100 miles an hour and really trying our best. And so anytime that we struggle or trip or fail, we don't like that criticism, that we're getting the criticism from other people. But we need to Actually receive that criticism as a gift. Right? It's really hard for any of your direct reports, your employees, your customers, or your suppliers to tell you where you're screwing up as a company or where you're screwing up as a leader or where you can get better as a leader or company. So receive that feedback as a gift. As one of my old mentors, Greg Clark from College Pro Painters, used to say, feedback is the breakfast of champions. So look for that feedback, embrace that feedback, and look at that as a way that you can grow your skillset. Another thing about growing as a leader is to really kind of pay attention to everything that's happening around you and look for the responses. So when you're running a meeting, as an example, don't just be so focused on the objective of the meeting, but watch some of the ripple effects that are happening around you. Watch the people in your organization and how they're responding, how they're reacting, how they're connecting with each other, or how they're responding to questions that are being asked or how they're actually adding, you know, in. In the meeting, adding your ideas in the meeting. And I think if you as a leader are watching kind of with both eyes, so you're watching the business with one eye, and you're watching the responses with another eye, that's going to allow you to see what's happening. It's also going to allow you to grow. And it's almost like you're needing to examine yourself at the same time as you're operating, right? So after you send an email, ask yourself, what could I have done better there? Or after you run a meeting, ask yourself, what could I have done better there? Or after you run a strategic planning event with your team, ask yourself, what could you have done better? Or ask your team, what's some of the feedback that you wish that I knew? What's some feedback that you would like to be able to give me that you haven't really felt safe to? Please give that to me now. And if you're searching for that feedback, if you're searching for ways to grow, and if you're examining your own contribution to the problem, then you will grow. And those are some of the best ways to grow as a leader, is to really care about it and really be searching for it and always be working at it and remembering that we can always get better. I think it was Ray Kroc who built McDonald's that said, when you're green, you're growing, and when you're ripe, you're rotting. We don't want to be ripe. We always want to be growing.
