Leading with Humility: The Unseen Power in Today’s Business World

0:00You got to be a leader. and then all the things to be a good leader might include humility. You can definitely be a better leader if you're humble, decisiveness. I don't know about hunger and I honestly don't know about smart because I think those are nice to haves, but are you thinking strategically? Can you adapt to changing circumstances? Because so many companies that go under go under because they couldn't adapt. They couldn't pivot. They're not able to be agile. How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who shared their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success?

0:44Grab your seat at the table because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice.

0:53Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com, www.businesslunchpodcast.com. And you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

1:28Hey, everybody. Back with another episode, issue, and print edition of the Business Lunch Podcast with Ryan Dice on the other side, not speaking right now. On the keyboard. How are you doing? I'm doing excellently. How about you? I'm doing fabulous. and I am Roland Frazier, your co-host. What we're going to talk about today is something that you have found that I think we'll have some interesting discussion about. You want to tee it up? Yes. So what is the number one trait, number one character trait that CEOs need right now? That was the question that was proposed. It was this Inc. Magazine article that states that this is the number one trait that CEOs need right now.

2:14I want to state at the outset, I don't typically read a lot of ink magazine articles. I feel like most of these publications, it's just kind of bleh content. It's fluff. It's like seven things you need to do this. And then you read it and it's like, strive for more. Think positive. There's nothing useful in 95 % of the articles that I see on there. Yeah. And I feel like this one is kind of in that same area. And that's why I want to discuss it, not because, you know, I think it's a particularly great article, but just as a no value issue of the Business Lunch podcast, you will get absolutely nothing from listening to this.

2:54Exactly. Yeah. What we're doing is we're taking something that was worthless and we're going to really expound upon it. Yeah, we want you to totally regret subscribing to this podcast, listening to it. And no, that's not it at all. I think there's a couple of things at play here that I want to get into, but I did want to start. I mean, the basic premise of the article is that the single most important character trait today for a CEO is, wait for a drumroll, please. Humility. Humility is the most important character trait that a CEO must have, particularly today, because a lot of things are changing and life is hard and all this other stuff.

3:33And so I just wanted to say, like, just kind of I got thoughts and feelings about this. Apparently, this came out of, you know, a study and some comments that some big muckety mucks at PricewaterhouseCooper made. I'm just curious, like, how does that hit you? We're hiring for CEOs, like humility being the most important trade co. I guess it depends on important to whom, because I have actual data that says somewhere around 85 to high 90s percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are males who are above six feet tall. And that apparently is the most important characteristic if you're trying to get a CEO job at one of those companies.

4:15I refer you to Tim Cook. Um, but anyway, uh, no, man, like if, if we're looking at CEOs, I think that humility is a, is a great quality to have, and it certainly can help you make good decisions. But, um, but I think there's a lot of core skills that are far more important. You could be very, very humble and a terrible communicator. You could be very, very humble and terribly incompetent or short-sighted or difficult to get along with or not listen to what other people have to say. And God forbid you also know how to run a company and have experience and history in the industry and taking a company of that size to whatever the next level is.

5:06So it's, I mean, very, very nice to have and helpful, certainly to be a better person and a better leader. But I don't think if like if I've got only one skill or three that I have to pick for our next CEO to have, I don't think that that's going to be one of them. Yeah, so the overall meta message that I think is worth mentioning is stop turning to this type of content for any advice whatsoever. Now, I do think it's worth having a conversation about what are some of the traits that make up a good CEO. I think that is something worth doing because I know a lot of the folks who are listening are either investors who are looking to hire CEOs for their companies.

5:54And so they're out there doing it. And I also know a lot of folks who are listening or entrepreneurs who want to be, you know, amazing, amazing CEOs. So I do think that humility is important. Have you read the book, The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni? I have not. So Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni. Great book. Love it. I think anybody, if you're doing a lot of hiring, it's a it's a phenomenal book to read. And he basically says that an ideal team player of which the CEO should be one of those two possesses three overlapping traits. Humble, hungry, smart. Humble is one of them. Like we define that, that is important.

6:31Hungry, that you have a general drive. And then smart, he said, yeah, I mean, there's an aspect of basic competency, but that's kind of permission to play. Really what you're looking at there is like people smarts, having some emotional intelligence, the ability to communicate with others. And then it is the combination of those three things that makes someone an ideal team player. And he talks about how, you know, if you're lacking one, like, let's say you're humble and you're smart, but you're not hungry. You know, he calls that person the lovable slacker. Right. And that's where to your point, like you can have people who are humble, but if they're missing one of those areas, then they're not going to be ideal.

7:09So I think I'm going to I'm going to tell you, I don't think that's any more helpful. I think that's just more marketing stuff. And that's why I can't. that's why I don't read his books. Cause I've tried, cause I know that you, you and, uh, and a lot of the guys over at scalable, um, like them and have gotten something and I've tried, and it just strikes me like John Maxwell and so many other ones that I'm reading. And I'm like, you're, you've come up with a, with a thing to market. That's a, you know, a framework and that's good, but it's how helpful is that? Because like, like when we talk about the five exits, We talk about moving from doing to delegating and delegating to leading, right?

7:55So you move from you're working the line, then you become a manager. And then the big difference between a manager and a CEO is none of those things, right? You can be a stupid CEO that follows a great playbook. You cannot be hungry, but dedicated. and you can be an arrogant son of a gun, just look at most of the big CEOs of successful Fortune 500 companies. So it sounds good. And then you can do this, well, if you have three, but you don't have two, a two-legged stool can't stand. You've got to be a leader. I mean, I think you have to be a leader, right? And so to me, I know one of our business partners, Richard Lenders, very big on leadership culture.

8:39You got to be a leader and then all the things to be a good leader might include humility. You can definitely be a better leader if you're humble, decisiveness. I don't know about hunger. And I honestly don't know about smart because I think those are nice to haves. But are you thinking strategically? Can you adapt to changing circumstances? Because so many companies that go under, go under because they couldn't adapt. They couldn't pivot. They're not able to be agile. They're not able to make decisions even. Certainly not the hard ones. I love Steve Jobs kept getting hit with, but if we release the iPhone and we put on the iPhone, the iPod things, we're going to cannibalize the market for our iPod.

9:29So we should not release the iPhone. And he's like, screw that. We should always be cannibalizing ourselves. We should always be ever improving. And he made the hard decisions And he was an arrogant son of a gun, you know, asking anybody that worked with him and not humble at all. Right. And and certainly very smart. So he was a one legged stool for for for the book you're mentioning. So I just feel like it's you got to be able to adapt and communicate and lead and make decisions and and hopefully be strategic. I think those are, you know, like actual important things. Like you said it, if we were hiring for CEO, what would we ask for?

10:08Would we interview them and say, okay, I don't know if you're gonna tick the humble, smart and, you know, hungry boxes, but let's see, convince us. And then you're hired. It's not gonna ever happen. So I feel like if we're gonna be delivering useful value for people, we ought to say, screw all that stuff. None of that's gonna help you. It's all nice to have. It's great book selling stuff, but you really gotta find somebody can actually lead and make stuff happen. Yeah. And that's kind of where I was going with, I think that it, I think it's a good book. I think it's helpful, especially when hiring.

10:38I don't know that it's necessarily helpful for hiring the top level execs. I think it's a decent enough framework, but I was going to say even there to, to, to pretend like you can sum up somebody's ability to do a job like in three areas, even if you're going to say they have to have experience and be generally competent, right? This notion that, that these three things, if we can identify them, that even that is enough. It's just not that simple, right? It just doesn't work that way because there are times when, yeah, you need to be humble. And there are times when you kind of need to be a fricking jerk and you need to drag everybody kicking and screaming.

11:15So I just don't know, especially when you're thinking about a CEO that trying to identify, because there are just so many examples of people who don't fit that mold and yet it works. And so I don't know that there is a classic quote unquote mold of like, this is the perfect CEO. I certainly don't believe you can distill it down to three traits. And I definitely don't think you can distill it down to one. That to me is the most absurd of all. so I would I would ignore it and to their point like they said well the whole the whole reason you need to be humble is because you need to be able to be flexible and respond to change but that doesn't necessarily require you can have a humble person who still doesn't do that because they're just incompetent right you can have someone says I am the best person in the world at change I am the best person in the world right you can that arrogant person also can make that stuff happen.

12:13Yeah. So I was, as I was reading this, I thought to myself, okay, let's get away from like personality traits and character traits and those kinds of things. Cause I think the, I think the biggest problem is that they're, they're tough to measure. And you know, again, somebody who I think is humble, somebody else might be like, that person's a fricking jerk. So it's so subjective. So I was trying to think about what I believe is the most important skill of a CEO? Like what is the thing that a CEO must be able to do on a daily basis that kind of most overlapping kind of defines the CEO role? And I think I've got it.

12:56I wanted to run it by you though, just to have you kind of check my logic. Feel free to tell me you think I'm a total idiot. Okay. But when I think about what must a CEO do, I think the primary job of a CEO, Because like Paul Graham talked about how, wrote an article very famous that CEO has three jobs. And it was to set the company vision, to hire, train and retain the best people and don't run out of money. Right. And I think that's that's fun. And there's there's plenty enough there true to be helpful. But I think all that really can be distilled into the CEO's primary jobs to figure out what is the next right thing for everybody to be doing.

13:36right what is that next right thing because today should be taken care of by the functional leaders right but here's what we're doing now then that should be taken care of by your systems and by the people who are executing it the examples that you gave you know steve jobs the next right thing is to disrupt ourselves and to roll out the iphone damn the torpedoes right the next right thing is to go raise capital right now because this the next right thing is to do that and when i think about the CEOs that I have seen perform incredibly well. And even when I think about when I've been when I've been sitting in that role, when I've succeeded versus the times when I've absolutely failed, the times when I've succeeded, it's when I could clearly identify the next right thing and then align the resources to move towards it.

14:21The times when I failed, it's when I just didn't know. I didn't have a clear picture and I wasn't able or willing to make a call. And I just kind of sat there and allowed everything to languish in ambiguity. So that to me, if you're going to say, what does a CEO need to do? What's kind of their number one thing? I think most of it could be distilled into that, even going back to Paul Graham, right? Hire trained, retained about, okay, is the next right thing to make this critical hire? Because at some point, all of those things you should have other people doing. You should have functional leaders and managers who are hire training and retaining the best people.

14:56You should have a finance department that is primarily tasked with ensuring you don't run out of money. The setting of the vision is going to should be done in coordination with other members of the team. But I think that is the one that that most kind of speaks to that. I don't know. That's kind of my thinking. What do you think? I was going to look up the definition so I can see. I don't know how to spell it, though. CEO. There we go. No, look up the definition of CEO, but you can't spell CEO. That's too hard. So let me find something else. Now, I think that it's really to proselytize because I think that those functional leaders are really executors of vision.

15:44A CEO should have vision that gets approved by the board. But really, it goes beyond leadership. People need people to follow towards wherever the company is going to go. So I think that they do need to make that next decision. I agree with you. They need to make that right decision. But in the absence of everything else, really what I believe a CEO needs to do is lead. And it's more than lead. It's convert almost to a religion of the company for whatever the vision is. If the vision is the religion of the company as to where we're going, the CEO's job is to sell it and to take the company in the direction of that vision.

16:33So that means they need to make the next right decision and they need to be good communicators and all of those other things. But like if I'm thinking about if I can only have one thing and I'm hiring for that position as an owner or as a portfolio manager or as a director on a board of directors, I want somebody that can actually convert people to everything that we want to happen. So I like it. I think it's part of that maybe bigger thing. But identify and proselytize then because proselytize, I mean, there's has a largely religious connotation to induce someone to convert to one's faith, but someone to join one's party institution or cause.

17:25cause. And I think that, yeah, and I agree with you because invariably as a CEO, if your job is to figure out what is the next right thing, if you're growing very rarely, the next right thing is to, and oftentimes it is, but typically if you want to scale, the next right thing can't always be just keep doing what we're doing. Sometimes it is. Yeah. Sometimes it is. Which can be a hard decision sometimes. Like it's as hard as it is to keep doing what you're doing when everybody says this is the next thing as it is to make a change from what you've been doing. Right. And the difference is knowing which is the right decision for sure.

18:06Yeah. But when you make that decision, who's going to lead the army of the company into the battle to have the cause happen? And I think the distinction is to make the non-obvious call on what the next right thing is. Because if it's obvious, everybody's already doing it. And so the job of the CEO is to make the non-obvious call of the next right decision. And then proselytize, align the team and resources towards that decision. Which sometimes, because it's non-obvious, is the hardest thing in the world to do. And if you ever as a CEO find yourself, you know, going in a direction nobody's behind you, you're by definition not a leader.

18:49And so what we have, I believe, identified for everybody here and for ourselves is none of us is going to hire a one skill CEO. It's just like one skill. Sign them up. I read a magazine article. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Done. Hired. Hey, can you run this company and make things happen? I don't know if I can do it or not. Hired? No. That's so humble. That's so humble. Should it be on the box of things you're going to tick? Yes. Should it be the most important? I think it's, you know, maybe in the top 10. Yeah. So I think, I mean, as I look at here, a couple of lessons, a couple of takeaways. Number one, please don't look at really large websites who have to publish a certain number of articles a day to maintain a certain number of impressions to hit their ad unit targets.

19:45Don't look to them for real actual business advice that can sound self-serving. I do think places like these are far better to come to for like real life business advice. Also, if it seems overly simple, if somebody has distilled something down to its kind of core essence, that either means that it's true genius or it's absolute worthless, logical lie crap. And discerning between those two can be very difficult, but more times than not, it's the latter. Like more times than not, it's just overly distilled, watered down, and it's not helpful anymore. I think that's a no takeaway. And I do think the third thing is, if you're a CEO, or if you're an investor, if you're on a board, know if you're a CEO, like making that call, that non-obvious decision, that's your job.

20:35And then getting everybody else to follow, that's your job too. And if you're unwilling to make that decision, if you don't know how to make that decision, then it's possible that you're out of your depth and you need some additional insight and help from some peers. Because you probably don't want to go to your board and say, I have no idea what we're supposed to do next. Because if you're on a board and you're hearing that from a CEO, I would say they're failing at their core role, which is not to merely sit there and be humble, but to make the non-obvious next right decision. So I agree.

21:08well shall we uh call it a job done i think we shall thank you guys for listening today i hope this was helpful um i hope that we if you took the time to read that and actually to me as an overarching thing what ryan said i think is true is is when you're looking to move fast through the world and make decisions you have to be careful about the information sources you have we try to be one that provides you with practical actionable proven experience lived and learned in the trenches stuff. When you've got writers who are hired to write pieces and have quotas of what to turn out and also get clickbait titles to attract people, they're very often selling you something that isn't going to actually be helpful.

21:50And so hopefully we've helped convert one such article into something that will be useful to you. And maybe even thinking when you're reading those things about, okay, well, this is an opportunity for me to think about what do I need, even though I know that the subject matter of the content of the article might not necessarily be helpful, it does give me food for thought. And now I can think about the specific things. So if you enjoyed this, we hope that you will share it. If you did not, please keep it to yourself and we will see you next time on Business Lunch. Ever wonder how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines?

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