“Leaders build leaders. As a leader, get out there and help build leadership in others.” – Jacquelyn Nicholson & Mike Simmons in today’s Tip 1764
How does poor leadership impact your team?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip features both Jacquelyn Nicholson and Mike Simmons in another of their joint tips. Here they are:
Mike Simmons: What do you think about leadership, specifically sales leadership?
Jacquelyn Nicholson: I think we have a crisis of leadership today. Poor leadership is the norm. It’s the rule rather than the exception. And that’s a sad thing. Sales is such a wonderful profession. You and I are big fans of sales because sales is about serving. It’s about helping people. It’s about solving business problems. And that’s why we do it. It’s to help people be successful. And that’s why I’m in sales. I’m in sales to help people solve problems. And so when you have this crisis of leadership, it’s really frustrating. And I had asked the question in a community we’re part of a while back about what was the source of this really bad leadership. And I think it’s things like short-sightedness and selfishness, it’s unmet expectations or unwritten expectations. There’s a whole host of reasons why it’s happening. I’d love to know your perspective on why it’s happening, and then talk a little bit about how we solve it.
Mike Simmons: There’s a huge void in leadership. And that void in leadership, I believe, is because people are looking for leadership from others. They’re looking for leadership from others, and they’re not taking the time to lead self. So one of the things I want to be known for is looking for leadership, question mark, start with a mirror. Let’s look at the reflection first and figure out how are we leading self. One of the cool things about it is if we get everybody to start thinking about how am I leading self better, the opportunity to lead others will start to reveal itself in the confidence and questions that come up. So I think the biggest challenge is we’re looking in the wrong place. We’re looking for others to lead rather than starting and leading with self first.
Jacquelyn Nicholson: I absolutely love that. And that is something that my coach taught me a long, long time ago. In order to lead others well, you have to first be able to lead yourself well. And I agree with you. We can’t be looking to others for leadership. We have to exhibit it in ourselves. But the part that’s difficult is when you are working for a poor leader. Those of you who are listening might find yourselves in a situation where you’re working for a poor leader. We’ve all worked for poor leaders before. You have to have a strategy for how you’re going to deal with that. Because If you don’t have a good strategy for how you’re going to deal with that, it can really mess you up. But you’re right.
Mike Simmons: So what’s an example of a strategy? What’s a good strategy to help work through that?
Jacquelyn Nicholson: I think it’s having a good mentor or community or a coach around you is one surefire way, and here’s why. So you can bounce ideas off of people who are outside of the situation. Sometimes it’s hard to see clearly in the midst of the situation and get some good advice. And a lot of times, poor leadership it may not necessarily be something that’s a lack of integrity or a true character issue. It could just be bad behaviors or people who don’t really know how to lead. And so there are ways to help manage or manage up with a person who is a poor leader. So if it’s somebody who’s rather controlling, one of the ways I always solve for that is over-informing that person. So giving a lot of information and making sure that those people feel seen and informed. So like, Hey, here’s what’s going on in the accounts. Here’s what’s going on with the deals, et cetera. So oversharing additional information can be really helpful with a controlling person. A person who literally everything has to… They have to have credit for everything, that’s a little bit more difficult to deal with. I’ve dealt with that before. And it’s really just a matter of when you’re in sales and you have great success, you give the credit away anyway, because it’s the team that helped you get the deal done. People are going to recognize what you’ve done no matter what, if somebody else is trying to hog the credit. The worst part is dealing with somebody who truly has a real character or flaw in terms of a lack of integrity, if they’re sabotaging you, if they’re gaslighting you, if they’re lying to you. All the things that we know as bad behavior, that does happen. People get harassed in jobs, and those situations are serious, and you have to seek support for that. But Those are just the things that come top of mind. What about you?
Mike Simmons: Yeah. So in that instance, I’ll work backwards. So in that instance, that is going to be one of those things where you’re not going to be able to change the person on the other end, and you may not have the patience to let the organization change things on the other end, meaning it may not be your perception of what’s happening there. It might be different than how the organization is perceiving things. That’s a clear opportunity for you to exit the situation. You get out of the situation. Sometimes you just have to let go because you’re not in control of those things. So if you feel like you’re in that situation, you feel like you’re trapped in that environment, identify ways to exit. On the other piece, this whole leading up and leading through, this is where that leadership of self really comes in. So you create an opportunity to overcommunicate, to set expectations, to validate your understanding of expectations, and then execute against those expectations. Constantly asking questions and working through the process of being able to say, What are you looking for? How can I help? What are you struggling with? How can I help? Where can I help? So you take on the leadership role, which is really powerful because the person who’s in that role might be running into a situation where they’re a first-time leader. It’s their first opportunity.
Jacquelyn Nicholson: And they’re overwhelmed.
Mike Simmons: Or they’ve never been around what good leadership is. So they’ve either been promoted to a level of incompetence, I think that’s called the Peter principle, or they are thrust into a role and they don’t feel comfortable asking for help because they believe that everybody expects them to know the answer. The most powerful statement that you can make as a leader is, I don’t know. It’s the same thing on the sales side of things. I don’t know. I don’t know. But let me look into that. Let me figure it out. I forget, what was the first one that you had brought up?
Jacquelyn Nicholson: I don’t know.
Mike Simmons: Oh, the community piece. The community piece. Surround yourself with a group of people who are in the same operating environment that you’re in. They’re in that role because when you start to share information with them, they can ask questions. And those questions might actually help you shift your perspective, reveal a blind spot that you might have, and start to shift the way that you think about how that person is leading and where they’re going. So I think those are three really good strategies to overcome the leadership challenge that exists in the marketplace. One of my favorite quotes around leadership comes from James Kerr, who wrote the book Legacy, which is about the New Zealand rugby team. Leaders create leaders. Now, I’ve reframed that for my purposes, which is leaders build leaders. It’s not that we’re creating these things, we’re building it up, we’re empowering, and we’re enabling people. So leaders build leaders. As a leader, get out there and help build leadership in others.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with both Jacquelyn and Mike, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1764. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!