How to Be a More Effective Leader with Gene Hammett

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Talking Too Loud. Today, we'll be breaking down how to be a more effective leader. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Gene Hammett and to EO Fire Studios. Gene is an executive coach, speaker, and author with over a decade of experience and has worked with more Inc. 5 ,000 companies than any other leadership development company in existence. In today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about why leadership matters more than ever, what effective leadership is, how to accomplish it, having tough conversations, and so much more.

0:41And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Gene and our sponsors. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point. Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.

1:12Gene, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Really excited to be here, John. And a lot of people think that we focus on strengths. I work with a lot of leaders that are looking to be better leaders and more effective in their work. And you've got to focus on your weaknesses too. And a lot of people don't think about that in terms of leadership. I think it's really important to figure out what your weaknesses are and have self-awareness and really address that as you grow as a leader. Fire Nation, that's why we're talking about how to be a more effective leader today.

1:53And Gene, you believe that leadership actually matters more today than it ever has before. Can you discuss this? You know, I think we're all feeling pressure from inflation or uncertainty. And there's lots of, you know, things that are going on in our world. And a lot of my clients are experiencing a lot more pressure than they did two years ago in terms of continuing to grow and hire the right people and really get everything's moving. And all of that requires better leadership. And so I think it's more important now than ever because we're going through some turbulent times, and personally and professionally, probably in all parts of the world.

2:30It's so true. And effective leadership, it's just really hard for most people to accomplish. So can you take a minute and talk to us, Fire Nation, about what seems to get in the way of effective leadership? A big part of it is ego. But also with ego, it's being self-aware. I think we don't take time to truly look at ourselves and really define some of those weaknesses that we need to get better. I'll give you an example. I was talking with, we do 360 degree feedback on leadership with CEOs of companies that we work for and talk to their employees. And one of the things that came back out of that was they're not always on time.

3:17And I mentioned this to the CEO and he's like, well, you know, I'm busy. I'm like, well, when you're not on time, what is the signal to everyone else? That little bit of self-awareness around how other people are perceiving him was a wake up call. And I think since then, and maybe it's just with me, he's never missed a moment. He's always on time, not even two minutes. And he's just made that a new practice for himself to be on time. And the signal that has within the company has been profound. And that's just one example. And I think that that kind of gets into what exactly ineffective leadership can cost.

3:50When you're being an ineffective leader, not showing up on time, you're sending the signal to everybody that's below you in the chain of command that, hey, it's okay to be a little late. And of course, and that bleeds into everything. And then there's just these situations where people think it's okay to not be on time, to not deliver topics on time, to not get things done on time, wherever that might be. Like it can really just bleed over into so many different things. So let's get even more specific and maybe talk about a couple examples about what ineffective leadership can cost us as entrepreneurs.

4:26I've been an executive coach for more than 10 years, and it's really a hard thing to measure leadership. And so one of the things that we've done is create seven dials. I could walk you through them if you want me to. But those seven dials are pretty basic elements of leadership within an organization. Let's walk through those seven. So the first of these seven dials is vision. And the short version of that is just like a three-year perspective of what the company will look like and the market will look like when we get there. The next one would be values. I've interviewed, you know, with the help of you, JLD, becoming a podcaster has changed my life.

5:05but I've interviewed over 600 CEOs of fast growth companies and they talk about the importance of values within organizations and so you want to measure how aligned are we as an organization of living those values the next one would be communication we all know that communication is kind of the cornerstone of how we work together so that's the third one fourth is accountability the ability to see if work is the quality and is it is it the right is it We hit the right deadlines. A lot of people struggle with accountability, so you definitely want to measure that. Empowerment is the next one. Do people feel like they can make decisions?

5:43Do they feel supported? Adaptation. We're changing so fast. Are we adaptive enough? And then the last one is EQ, which is our ability to manage our own emotions and the pressure that comes with leadership. And so those seven dials, vision, values, communication, accountability, empowerment, adaptation, and EQ, give you kind of a little bit of more of an understanding of how to actually look at leadership across your organization. the big measurement piece here if you really want to take this to to to understand it is take your top 10 employees look at the salary that you pay them add it all up get an average and then get an average across you know from one to ten on each of these seven terms of leadership effectiveness and you can start to to calculate what's the cost of us not optimizing not having optimized leadership.

6:42You'll never be 100%, but you could shoot for 90 % and feel pretty confident that would be a good place for us to be. But what a lot of companies are coming in at like, we're performing at 60%. Well, what's the difference between 60 and 90? 30%. 30 % of that number becomes a real hard, you know, the cost of ineffective leadership right now. Choose one of the first four dials, go into a deep dive on that and share with Fire Nation, just in more detail your thoughts when it comes to that specific dial? I get a lot of conversations with my clients and with potential clients, and we look at these dials every time.

7:20And communication is one of the things that they know that they need to work on. And it's probably one of the easier ones to work on because we're all communicating all the time. But you break it down into components like listening. I know we shouldn't have to talk about listening. We're all adults at work, ideally. But we should be able to look at, you know, how well are we listening to people? How present are we in meetings? Are we distracted? Do we have the right mechanisms to make sure that people understood what was just said? Are we speaking in a way that can't be misunderstood is one of the things we do, because we do a lot of leadership development with managers becoming leaders inside of organizations.

8:03And so we're actually working with them, teaching them how to communicate in a way that can't be misunderstood. And then you can't talk about communication without addressing the tough conversations, which is a really important piece to leadership because a lot of people avoid them because they're not comfortable. They avoid conflict. They want to be liked. And we also know that things get worse. You know, we're writing a book about this, John, and working title right now is how to have tough conversations. I know it's kind of right on the nose, but it's just we want people to really understand the importance of tough conversations and how to actually do it effectively as they grow as leaders.

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10:30Maybe you have an upcoming trip planned as well. While you're away, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. So Gene, before the break, you did a little bit of a deep dive in one of the dials, specifically communication. I now want to challenge you to pick one of the last three dials that you're going to do a deeper dive on and share that with us now? Let's look at empowerment. I think a lot of people are not sure how to empower people because we have different skill levels within our employees. So if you have a new employee, you're not expecting to empower them to make, you know, important decisions and to really carry things forward.

11:11But I talk to a lot of companies that have employees that are there six months, two years, five years, even more, and they still lack the kind of trust that is needed to truly empower people. And if you really look at what drives businesses, it's not just about getting the work done. It's about growing the people. And if you really want to grow the people around you, you figure out ways to empower at a higher level, empower them a little bit earlier, support them. I'm not saying there's no support here because that goes with accountability, which is one of the other dials. But you want to make sure that you as a leader are having the right kind of conversations that make sure people feel like they can make decisions, that feel like they are really part of something special there, that people value their opinions.

12:05You want to make sure that the best ideas win, not just the top leadership. And these are just some of the factors that play into empowerment. But when you get it right, you know that there's 80 % of your workforce that you can trust. They trust you. You can share with them a goal and they will take real ownership of that goal. No matter what the challenges are, no matter what comes up their way, they will actually execute on that. And they will come back to you with not only the things that they got done, but also the things that they learned in that journey. And this just compounds as you really work on empowerment across your organization.

12:43Now, you believe that tough conversations is an absolute essential part of leadership. Can you share what you mean by that and give us some specifics around that topic? I would venture to say anyone listening in right now is avoiding a tough conversation. They are faced with an employee that's out of alignment. Maybe they're not meeting values. Maybe it's a quality issue. Maybe it's an attitude issue. Maybe it's bad breath. but I appreciate you laughing at my jokes but this was actual reality a few weeks ago when a client said this is not the first conversation this is the second conversation on bad breath but any of those those moments that you realize you're avoiding something my hope is that you'll you know maybe reach out and find the work that we're doing you can probably search tough conversations in my name and you'll find frameworks that we've built to help you truly get better at this skill.

13:37I remember I was working with a manager, pretty big organization, but they needed to really activate and empower a marketing manager to build his own team. And he liked to be liked. He was, he was very likable person and he wasn't into confrontation, but I remember teaching him the framework and teaching him how to have tough conversations. And he come back and said, I've had three this week and I feel like it's getting better. It's becoming natural. And it's just part of my job. Now, that's a very big difference from someone who's avoiding it, knows that they need to have it, and they're not doing it.

14:13You want to make sure you look at tough conversations as a skill, and that you really are trying to get better at it and not just let these things fester. Okay, so Fire Nation is probably now on board when it comes to the actual importance of leadership. So how do we improve as a leader as we're scaling our companies to that next level? I'm an engineer as education. I'm not in my job. I'm an executive coach in what I do right now. We do leadership development. And what we think about improving leadership is about measuring as best you can leadership. We measure profitability. We measure impact.

14:53We measure other KPIs across our business. I would venture to say that no one's really measuring leadership. And so we have a lot of tools that we've developed, but you want to make sure you are aware of your weaknesses and you can identify what they are. By identifying, I mean being able to write them down, not like, you know, I carry some fear with me. Like, what are you really afraid of? And you write these things down so that you can work on those weaknesses, as I said probably earlier today. But you are very intentional about improving and looking back over time. I know, John, you've improved as a podcaster.

15:30Thank you. Those weaknesses. You know what this means to scale your company to the next level. You've got to take it intentionally about getting better. I don't know who said it, but some smart person, probably smarter than me, said you work on yourself more than you work on your business. And I really do believe leadership is about understanding yourself and growing with intention and doing it time after time after time. It takes time. It's humbling. but it pays off in the end. Fire Nation, it pays off in the end. That's the key. And Gene, we had a conversation about a lot of very important things around the topic of leadership.

16:08What is the one thing, the theme that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from our conversation today? That you are in control of your own growth plans. Really don't think that you're going to get to the kind of company you want to just by executing and scaling your revenue and your operations. You've got to look at leadership across the company. I think you should be measuring it. I think you should be taking every chance you can. I remember one, it was just an interview. It wasn't a client. I said, how do you measure leadership? And he had an answer. Most people don't have an answer to that.

16:45And he goes, we have 20 questions. We ask them every quarter. We want to see where they're getting better. And I said, well, why are you so organized about this? He goes, this is my fifth company. I feel like I'm finally getting it right. So those of you that aren't on your fifth company, you might want to look at this because this is what it takes to get your team right. Your culture right is the right leadership. Gene, give Fire Nation a call to action. How can we learn more about you, connect with you? What do you want Fire Nation to do after this interview today? You know, if you want to get better at tough conversations, you can go to corelevation.com forward slash tough conversations.

17:21and you can download the framework that I alluded to and you can get some details around it. The book will be coming out in a couple of months, probably April of 2024. That's my target. But I've also moved that a couple of times too. But I really love for you to check out the work we do at Core Elevation. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with GH and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Gene in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Gene, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

17:59For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to Gene and our sponsors for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment, I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams.

18:36Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point. Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.