132. How to become a better boss

Transcript – Episode 132: How to become a better boss

Joe: We’ve had a saying around here for years. Commitment comes from better bosses. If you want a workplace where people join, stay, care, and try, it begins with you.

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Joe: Hello again, folks, and welcome to the Boss Better Now podcast, sponsored by Boss Hero School, where we teach leaders and business owners how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. All right, this week’s question, how to become a better boss, is a big one. It’s a little bit like asking, “What is math?” There’s a lot that goes into answering this question, and it’s tricky to figure out how to answer this question within a 10-to-15-minute podcast episode. And as I thought about how to answer this question in a succinct way and in a way that has utility for you, I had a couple of ideas. I did think, well, maybe I should frame this whole episode as a set of habits, right? Great bosses embrace a number of habits. Things like stay interviews or working in the trenches with their employees or committing to asking questions more often than they give answers or making sure that they always accept blame for failure and share credit for success. Or I also thought what if we frame this around some of the employee research that we did and specifically the factor of being a great boss. We analyzed more than 200 studies and articles on why people stay long-term with an employer and part with effort on their behalf. And we did note that the person who supervises my work and the degree to which they trust me, coach me, and advocate for me has a lot to do with whether or not I view that employer as a destination workplace. That’s certainly a conversation worth having. But then I thought, well, what if we zoom out a little bit and we have a conversation that’s more philosophical where we talk about the true definition of leadership, which for my money is creating the conditions necessary for people to thrive and talking about how important it is that as a leader, we’re always thinking about that balance between challenge and support, right? That creating an environment that is too nurturing and that doesn’t have enough accountability in it just results in middling performance. But creating an environment that is too harsh or too demanding just leads people to shut down or burn out. These are all different ways that we could go about answering the question, how do I become a better boss? But as I thought about it, I decided that I would best serve you by giving you a blueprint for how and where you can continue working on yourself as a leader over time to keep growing and improving. Because learning how to be a better boss isn’t something that you’re going to do today. It’s a commitment that you have over the course of your career. And one of the things that you might know about me if you’ve been following me for a while or if you’ve read any of my bios on the website is that I’ve spent a lot of years teaching leaders how to be better bosses and was previously the head of learning and development for the outpatient division at a top 20 US health care system. And after leaving that enterprise and starting my own practice, I’ve spent a grand total of almost 20 years designing and delivering leadership development programming for organizations of all shapes and sizes. And what I have come to believe is that leaders grow and develop and improve when they make time for learning in four specific areas: self-awareness, knowledge, skills, and relationships. If you can learn to excel in these four areas, you’re going to become a better boss and get all of the wonderful benefits that come with that. Let’s dive into each of these and we’ll start with self-awareness. Leadership begins with self-awareness. It’s knowing thyself before you can serve others. There were a couple of years where I used to do leadership training uh in a residency program here in Pittsburgh where I live. We would have all of the third-year residents for this particular specialty join me for a day of leadership training at the end of their third year because the fourth year of residency is a leadership year. Those folks in the fourth year have responsibility for the other residents in the program for directing them, for mentoring them, especially those first-year interns. And without fail, every time I would get into one of these days with the third-year residents, and I would ask them what their approach to leadership was going to be in the year ahead, I would always hear the same answer. Every year somebody in the group would say, “Well, I’m going to really focus on being the kind of boss that I would want to work for.” And the intention is good, right? That sounds like something that is an admirable way to approach the work. But here’s the thing, that approach is only going to work well if you are supervising people who are just like you. And this is what I would tell the residents in that program. The truth is though that nearly every person you supervise isn’t going to be exactly like you. Each of us as a leader has unique preferences for how we take in information, how we like to make decisions, for example, how we organize our workdays, and those may not always align with the people that we supervise. Think about the introverted leader and the extroverted direct report or flip that around the other way. The truth is that as leaders, we need to learn to flex our style. And we’re not able to do that until we gain insight into ourselves, into some of those unique preferences that we have, into our style. And so, my advice to you is to think about some tools that are out there that you could use to better understand your own unique style and preferences. Whether that’s a tool like the Myers Brigg type indicator or strength finders from Gallup. When we turn the mirror inward and we understand ourselves and our preferences and our style, that’s when we first start to understand where and how we can flex our style with others to be more successful. Feedback is an important ingredient here as well. Make sure you are finding ways to source feedback from your peers, from people who work for you, and from your mentors and supervisors on ways that you could become more self-aware and flex your style. The second part of this is what I refer to as knowledge. There are just some things we need to know and understand as leaders. And one of the deficits that we see in the workplace is that most leaders and business owners don’t understand or engineer the conditions that lead employees to part with effort and stay long-term. We need to know what they are. We need to be able to say, “These are the things that I have to pay the most attention to most of the time.” And we have to understand that knowledge acquisition is a big part of ongoing performance as a leader. And that knowledge acquisition may be around big things like what those conditions are, but it’s also around little things like how do I onboard an employee effectively? How do I run a meeting? How do I write a performance review? The truth is that when we promote leaders into a leadership role for the first time, we usually do it because they have years of experience or they have a lot of technical expertise or they have institutional knowledge and success in a prior role. But then folks get into those roles as leaders, and they figure out very quickly that the problems they’re asked to face every day and figure out how to solve aren’t technical problems or aren’t rooted in the years of experience they have. their people problems. And so new leaders figure out very quickly there’s one of three paths for them to take. They either wash out, they say, “This isn’t the kind of work I want to do. I want to go back to just doing my own thing.” Sometimes they get stuck in management, and they just keep the trains running on time and they focus on the technical operational aspects of leadership, and they just ignore the people side of things. Or they do what we need to do as a leader to be successful. They decide there’s more learning here that I need to embrace. I need to learn how to lead. And so, they make an ongoing commitment to their own continuing education. And that’s where excelling in this area, this knowledge area, is so important. How are you engaging in your own continuing education? Are you reading books? Are you listening to podcasts? Are you going to conferences? Are you attending training? Knowledge acquisition is a key ingredient in learning how to become a better boss. The third dimension that I mentioned is skills. I just said that with knowledge there’s just some things we need to know. Well, with skills, there are just some things we need to know how to do. Whether that’s things like giving feedback or coaching employees to higher levels of performance or learning how to delegate work to people, learning how to manage your time and your priorities effectively. Again, this is a continuing education component, but it’s not just knowledge acquisition. The continuing education component for skill development, it’s practice. That’s right. You have to be willing to try your hand at the new techniques or practices that you have to acquire, the skills that you have to acquire in order to be successful in this role as a leader. And that means that you have to be willing to step into the discomfort of imperfect execution. You’ve got to be willing to say, “Okay, I learned a little bit about how to have a coaching conversation. Let me go try it now and know that I’m not going to be perfect at it the first time or the second time or the third time. Practice not with the focus of repetition, but practice with the focus on improvement, on getting better, and on learning from your mistakes is key to developing the skills that it takes to be an effective leader. Last but not least, leaders have to learn how to excel at relationships. Remember, we’ve heard for years that people aren’t going to remember what we say as much as they are going to remember how we make them feel. And that’s never been more true when it comes to working for someone or having someone be in charge of our work in the workplace. Take a minute to think about the best boss you’ve ever had. Think about what it was like to work for him or her. Think about what your interactions were like. And now think about the three or four qualities or characteristics that made them a great boss. Do you have them in your head? When I ask this question in workshops or at keynotes, I will ask the room, think of the best boss you’ve ever had. What three qualities or characteristics spring to mind that made them a great boss? And when I get members of the audience shouting out answers, as you can imagine, I could fill a flip chart or a whiteboard with the ideas that come forward. Some people say, “Well, my boss was very approachable. My boss was encouraging. My boss challenged me. Uh, my boss was knowledgeable. My boss was competent. My boss cared about me as a person. Uh, my boss uh made sure we had the resources we need we needed in our work. I could fill a flip chart with 30, 40, 50 ideas from a room full of leaders about the qualities or characteristics of the best bosses they’ve ever worked for. But here’s the thing. Whatever you just thought of, whatever three or four qualities or characteristics came to mind when I asked you to think of the best boss that you’d ever had, tell me a lot more about what you needed from that person at that time and in that place than they do tell me about the boss that you worked for. You see, when we work with leaders that we label as great or the best boss we’ve ever had, those are people who meet us where we are. If you said that the best boss you ever had was someone who was really approachable, maybe it’s because you were coming out of an environment where you couldn’t approach your prior boss. If you say that the best boss you’ve ever had was somebody who challenged, you. Well, maybe you had been stagnated in your career for a little while and all of a sudden you were working for someone who really pushed you and you it was really intellectually stimulating for you in a way that prior work hadn’t been. When I talk about excelling at relationships, this begins with you making a commitment to meet people where they are to learning who they are and what they need. And so that’s a part of what we have to do to get better at relationships. We need to get to know the people across from us. We need to understand what matters most to them. And we need to care about that as much as they do. And we need to be in it with them, man. We need to see our role as activating them. As you heard me say at the top of the episode, creating the conditions for that person to thrive, to stepping back every day and say, “Who is this person? What are they about? What do they need to be successful? And how can I fight like crazy to provide that for them?” And so, the time that we spend as leaders on relationships is just as important as the training we get or the knowledge we acquire or any assessments we take to improve self-awareness. So, there you have it. How do I become a better boss? I want you to focus on self-awareness, knowledge, skills, and relationships. Focus on these four areas and you will put yourself on a path to ongoing growth and development as a leader. and you will be of better service to your teams. One of the things that we know, and we see this over and over again in data is that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. It’s estimated that about 75% of the time when someone quits a job, their boss is part or all of the reason why. If you want to make a noticeable impact in the workplace, if you want to create a kind of place where people will join, stay, care, and try, this is the path forward. Start working on your self-awareness, your knowledge, your skills, and your relationships, and you will become a better boss. All right, what did I miss? I would love to hear from you. Drop a comment in the box below this episode here on YouTube or shoot me an email if you’re listening on your favorite podcast channel like Spotify or Amazon or Apple Podcasts. The email address is bossbetternow@gmail.com. Also, what question would you like me to address on a future episode of this show? You can share it in either one of those ways as well, and maybe we’ll tackle it on a future episode. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: Do you need to take your leadership knowledge and skills to the next level, but don’t have time for overstuffed courses or lengthy training programs? Then you want to check out Boss Hero School. This immersive 3-day leadership development experience with me is like getting an MBA in people leadership in just a couple of days. We’re going to teach you the methods and the mindset to create environments where people join, stay, care, and try. For more information, visit bossheroschool.com. [Music]