MBA1611 Why Candour Is Essential To Growth

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And it's your job as the founder to enforce this. To enforce that people are candid, that people are honest and share openly their opinions. If your teammates are holding back, if they feel like things are not as good as they should be, whether it's your product, your service, your design, whatever it is you're holding back, the growth of your business, the success of your business. When your teammates think that not rocking the boat equals success, instead of giving honest feedback, you're on a path to mediocre results. Honest conversations create innovations and allow you to be at the cutting edge in your field. Why is this so important? How can you implement it in your business and in your team? That's what we get into in today's lesson. So let's get into it now. Let's get down to business. If in your team meetings you don't get opposing arguments, disagreements or different point of views, then you should be worried. This means people are just not being honest. They're not being candid in these meetings. They're not saying what they really believe or mean or feel about a certain topic. Just think about relationships that you're a part of, where there's always open honesty, whether it's a best friend, whether it's your sibling, maybe your partner in life. How long do do you last without disagreeing on something? Not very long, maybe a day or two. And disagreement and different opinions is not a bad thing, especially in a company. One of the things that we really talk about at our company, Webinar Ninja and the hundred dollar mba is that we encourage disagreement. We celebrate our differences and different opinions because that's how you come up with creative solutions. But we always do it with respect. We always do it with the right tone. We always do it and make sure that people understand that we're all trying to achieve the same thing. And in this discussion and disagreement, we're coming up with a solution together. No one believes they have the right answer or the right solution. They believe that we can do this together. But it doesn't happen if everybody's like, yep, that sounds great, and we move on. And no one really opens up and honestly says what they think. This is so important because your product, your service, your whatever you're offering, your customers will never improve if it's not criticized, if it's not being met with honesty. You want to get to a place where when you meet with your team, when you discuss matters, people can say things honestly with a smile on their face. They know that they're not going to be reprimanded. They know that they're doing it respectfully, and they know it's for the better good of the company. You as a leader and everybody else in your team needs to be receptive to that. A lot of us as founders of companies, it's hard for us to hear criticism because we put our blood, sweat and tears to get to the point where we can hire teammates. So when somebody kind of picks on our, our baby, we feel a little defensive. And that's natural. But you got to fight that urge. You got to understand that that criticism, that honesty, that honest opinion, whether you agree with or not, whether you think you're going to go with that direction or not, is helpful in producing better results. One of the things I learned recently is that Pixar, when they launched their first major movie, Toy Story, they actually spent five years creating this film. And it's not because it took five years to actually produce one draft. They had hundreds of drafts. They had so many iterations. And that iteration process only happened because they had a culture of candor. They had a culture where people were honest and really said, you know what? This is not what it could be. It's not the best version of the movie. I don't like the way this feels, I don't like the way this looks. Let's come up with some solutions. So how do you actually do this in your meetings, in your team? One is you simply praise honesty, openness, and even criticism. So when somebody says, I don't think we should do this, we should do that, I don't think that's right. I don't know why, but I feel like we should go this direction. When somebody makes statements like that, your job as a leader is to reinforce that behavior by saying, thanks for saying that. Thanks for bringing that up. We need this so that we can figure out if we're doing the right thing or not, if we're moving the right direction or not. What do you guys think about that? And you open it up for the rest of the team members on that call on that meeting to kind of say, yep, I agree, or maybe I don't, or I think this. This shows that you're welcoming honesty, you're welcoming this, and it's not shot down and you're not being defensive. And it helps with innovation. The other thing is that don't have hard and fast rules when it comes to honesty or speaking up. Many people say, hey, don't say anything unless you have a solution. Don't point out problems unless you actually know how to solve that problem or you're going to present a possible solution. That's not always a good kind of rule to live by in a company, in a business, especially when you're trying to create something exceptional for your customers. It's okay for somebody to say, there's something about this feature, there's something about this page on the website. There's something about the way we're wording this headline that doesn't feel right. I'm not sure what it is, but it just doesn't feel perfect. They don't have a solution, but they're pointing out something that is kind of registering in them. Your response needs to be at that moment. Well, thanks for bringing that up. Let's explore. Why do you feel that way? Does anybody else feel this way? What are some things that we can do to kind of change the way you feel about that? What are some possible solutions? Let's work together. It's not the responsibility of that person bringing up the problem to come up with a solution. It'd be great if they have some suggestions, but if they don't, it's still valid. And as a team, you can come up with a solution. Another strategy I recommend is to let your team members explore and experience being candid, being honest with you and the team first, let them have a few goes at it before you unleash your candor. Right? And of course, when you do, we always do with respect, and we always do it with the intention of trying to make the business better. A lot of people say, hey, we have a culture of candor here. I'm going to dish it out, so you got to be ready to take it. No, you should be sensitive to the fact that this is maybe not the environment they're used to from their past employer. So get them used to it by them going first a little bit, because it's a lot easier to be candid than to receive candid information sometime or candid opinions. And then once they kind of get the hang of it, then you can kind of say, hey, this is my honest opinion about this. The next tip I want to share, and it's more like a warning work, especially for founders, for people that have started this business for leaders, is a very passionate topic. It's something that we really feel strongly about. So often everything we communicate is high energy and quite intense. Sometimes I'm like that. I'm going to be candid right now and say, I'm like that. I'm very passionate about some things when I'm in meetings and I have to check myself and make sure it's not coming off too aggressive or too forceful because it could shut down the conversation. I have to kind of remind myself I'm going to deliver what I want to deliver the information, my opinion, but try to tone down the emotion, because sometimes you're like, I really have a lot of conviction about this. I believe this. And I think we should go this direction. As the leader, as somebody who's a founding member of the company, they're going to tend to kind of fold sometimes because they're like, hey, no, he's feeling very strongly about this. I don't want to rock the boat, so be careful of that. Be mindful of that. And one thing I like to try to practice is I like to save my turn to share my honest opinion until last. I'm the last person to share. I want to hear from everybody else first so I get a chance to think a little bit and really consider. And then it really allows me to, you know, really just simmer down a little bit and really allow me to have a little bit more of a measured response given hearing everybody's perspective. We talked about on Tuesday's episode about how to prevent an employee from being fired. That Having honest conversations when people are not performing is very important too, to let them know, hey, I got to give you the clear, true picture of where you stand right now. You are a few steps away from being fired. Warning alarm bells. Let's make sure that you course correct and reverse that. Honesty is very important, especially when it comes to leading to major decisions, especially when it comes to your employees and their future. But one of my final pieces of advice when it comes to this topic is this is not normal. This is not the kind of baseline that most people are used to at companies where they work. So they're going to have to take some time to learn this. It may take months, it may take time for you to build this culture, but you have to constantly chisel at it. And I want to say that a lot of people talk about this. We have open, honest conversations and they talk a good game, but they don't really actually encourage this, enforce this, really make it a regular practice in their company. So you got to be mindful of walking the talk and making sure that if you say this, you got to make sure that you train and get your team used to being honest and giving honest feedback.

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The February 2025 Nielsen report. To wrap up today's lesson, being candid. Being honest is a principle your team needs to practice to carry on to have an innovative company to constantly be polishing your product. And it gets more subtle every year you're in business because your product gets better. And the little scratches, the little nooks, the little things that you didn't see before you start to see. Because that's all you see now, because everything else looks great. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 RMBA show. If you love the show and you want extra bonus content, you want to hear the Latest from the $100 MBA clips from our episod More amazing content and information. Go ahead and follow us on instagram over@instagram.com the 100 MBA Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This stuff like reinforcing being honest and candid in your team, building that culture. This is a lot of work. This is actually quite tiring as a founder, as a leader, because you have to exert a lot of emotional energy to hold yourself back, to remind yourself what's right and wrong, to do a lot of reminding and reinforcing. And you just probably want to get down to business and start working and just cut through all that stuff. But that stuff builds the attitudes and the values of the company, and it's just as important as whatever the meeting is about. This is something I have to remind myself constantly of because I'm the kind of person just like, let's just get into it. Let's just go through the agenda. And I forget that, hey, part of my job is not just the what, it's the how. And it's building that environment that fosters great innovation. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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