[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jamie Cochran.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Life Babin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mead Wynn.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Extreme Watership Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're back from another episode of the Leadwind Podcast with Lake Babin and Carlos Mendez.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for this episode, we're gonna talk about credibility versus authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm working right now with an individual, a strategic advising atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this individual is a new leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was newly appointed to this leader's position within their organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's struggling because she doesn't feel like she's gaining some of the,
[SPEAKER_00]: credibility that she wants as a new leader who's coming to the table with a ton of past experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of our conversations recently have been around this idea of how do you actually create credibility?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because her instinct, which I think is the instinct for a lot of leaders, is to show up from this place of
[SPEAKER_00]: I am confident in my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been here before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we come down and we try to tell our teams, this is what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we're going to pivot.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we're going to move the needle.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are all the things that I want to do with maybe a sense of excitement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some bigger in this new role.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is we don't realize that in all those efforts, we're actually damaging our credibility because we're not taking the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: to understand how we can contribute to the broader mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of our conversations right now are around what she can do to actually open the door to building that relationship with people on the team, which will allow her over time to gain the credibility she needs to make changes within that organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to talk about this idea today on how to build credibility as a leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a common problem and particularly when people maybe are feeling not as confident right.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're stepping into a new role and you don't have a ton of confidence in that role, are you're a new leader in a particular industry?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know some of the biggest mistakes that I made as a leader came as a new junior officer in the sea of teens with no experience whatsoever and trying to establish some credibility with people to show them that I was a competent leader and to prove to people that I knew what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I didn't know what I was doing at all and everyone knows that you don't know what you're doing So the best thing that you can do is don't try to pretend because everyone could see right through that The most confident leaders are going to come in there and not saying it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They just listen learn be humble Show other people respect listen to their ideas lean on them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know for to come up with plans and strategies and take ownership of things And it's actually the opposite.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of times of what we actually think
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think when you think about the first 30 to 60 days is a leader, those matter so much and how you conduct yourself in that timeframe matter so much for what your long-term reputation is gonna be within that organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to your point, our instinct is leaders is to come in and show everybody what we're bringing to the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to that humble approach of, hey, I'm new here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been here for a lot longer than I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me learn from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me understand what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me observe and get your perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that does for us is a leader is it actually puts us in a much better position to make changes and help and support the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we take that back seat, which is in our instinct, we take the back seat to say, let me learn from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And through that, we gain a ton of information, a detached perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it's time to make some changes, we've earned a little leadership capital along the way to actually then come in and say, here's what we're going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the path forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only do that when we build a little bit of that credibility which starts with listening first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I came across this a lot when I went into investment banking.
[SPEAKER_01]: So post-NBA, you started the bank as an associate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would see a lot of these new associates freshly minted MBAs that quite frankly went to some of the fancy schools in the country.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they would come in and they would immediately start bossing these analysts around acting like they knew more than them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And quite frankly, these analysts, I got to be honest with you, I was tremendously impressed with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their knowledge was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And instead of going in there and leaning on all this knowledge that these young analysts had, which by the way, they're like 23, 24 years old, but because they didn't have humility, instead of leaning on that knowledge, you just immediately went in there and started bossing around, tell them what they thought as opposed to, I was definitely not under the impression that I knew more of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that I was in way over my head, which is why I went in there and I started asking them questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, what do you think about this?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the best way to format this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, what about this shortcut?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any tips on me when I'm doing this particular financial model?
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I'm picking their brains and asking them, what they don't realize is I'm gaining influence over them as well because I'm letting them influence me first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we do that, when we start with listening, what that allows us as a leader to do is to get some quick wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm going down, I'm new to an organization, new to a team, I'm a new leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best thing I can do is to ask those earnest questions, to listen,
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you get little pieces of information of something that they could use that would make their lives easier, or a resource that they could use to help in their role, or something the team is maybe even asking for advocating for that they haven't gotten yet, that allows me in that moment as the new leader to actually deliver on something quick, and those quick wins, they build trust fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we should be focused on as a new leader, not coming into put our way in motion, but to actually figure out how we can best support them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was this, uh, the VP of a construction company that I was working with not that long ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he came in there and he said, hey, I just joined the company not that long ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I settled these SOPs down and I don't understand why I'm getting so much resistance.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of the form and want to follow my SOPs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's going on and on about how nobody's listening to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out he's he's been in that role less than six months.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my first question to him was, well, let me ask you this, when did you start implementing all these SOPs?
[SPEAKER_01]: They said, almost immediately.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you ask for any of the four men's feedback?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it kind of shocked me when he said, no, why would I?
[SPEAKER_01]: That and itself shocked me right because I've been in the teams for so long where I'm always picking my subject matter experts brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, these form and they've been there a long time and kind of what you said, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just go in there, hey, what are your guys' biggest frictions?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you dealing with?
[SPEAKER_01]: And just finding those little small things where you can help them out as opposed to, hey, I just came in here, I'm brand new.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really don't know a whole lot about this, but here's the new SLPs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, what did you think was going to happen?
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course they're going to resist.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a common thing, though, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the misconception that so many people have about leadership.
[SPEAKER_02]: They watch a television show or movie about the military.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they see the leader who stands up at front of the room, tells everybody what the plan is, dictates every aspect of the plan to other people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is what people picture a leader is being.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some like the stands up at front of the room, barks orders, as all the answers,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and people follow them without question, and it's just not the reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: We know that their leaders that try to do that in the military, but they certainly don't do that effectively.
[SPEAKER_02]: The most effective leaders let their teams step up a lead.
[SPEAKER_02]: I figured that pretty quickly on my very first appointment to Iraq, my first combat missions that I was ever tasked with running.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were supposed to go out and support the first infantry division in the city of Samara, and I'm the officer in charge
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're looking at me as the officer, I'm a brand new guy on my very first appointment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're looking at me to say, hey, all right, Lieutenant Babin, what do you want to do in this situation?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you think you should best support?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm immediately turning my senior listen.
[SPEAKER_02]: My chief, Steve Ward is now a member of our excellent front team.
[SPEAKER_02]: And who was outstanding?
[SPEAKER_02]: He had a ton of experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, hey, Steve, what are we doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is what you should do as a leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: and Steve tells me what the plan should be.
[SPEAKER_02]: I go back and tell them the plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though it's coming from me as a senior person because I was the officer, it's Steve that's coming up with the plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's what good leadership should actually look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I had just told Steve that he didn't know he's talking about it, I was the one that should have the answers as the officer, I'm a charge, that would be a disaster, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have no credibility whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody knows that's not true and the plan would have been terrible and I would have had a team that didn't follow me at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is what good leadership actually looks like, unlike this misconception that everybody has, you should be listening to others, learning from others, empowering others, step up and lead, letting them come up with ideas saying, here's the goal, how do you want to accomplish it?
[SPEAKER_02]: And we see that so often that just the situation you just described, I was thinking of a training program that we were encouraging
[SPEAKER_02]: One of our clients to come up with in order to develop their leaders at every level of the team and And so they said hey, that's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll come up with a training program and they came up with a training program And so we we followed up with them a few weeks later about how it was going and they said would there's really some resistance to this So we asked some questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: How is a training program being implemented and was the same thing you just described?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they came up with this with a vacuum at the corporate office.
[SPEAKER_02]: They came up with a plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: It got shoved down to everybody's throats.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't something that anyone had ownership of.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there was a whole bunch of resistance to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of establishing credibility by leaning on their most successful front line leaders to come up with a training program for the front line.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are the best people in the best position to create that training program and to create that by and generate that credibility for the program.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once they actually took that tack, it was it was successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: People often think they're creating credibility by just driving it from the top and forcing it on people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes people try to leave with a resume as well, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm, I'm stepping in this role.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to leave with my resume and talk to you about all the things that I've done.
[SPEAKER_02]: And rather than creating credibility, you're actually losing credibility by doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, your actions speak so much more than your words for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is a really interesting conversation around what we talk about all the time in Ashland front, which is ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your ego can be a really good force in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wants you to win.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wants you to succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It pushes you to move past potential barriers to make things happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's typically what allows people to put themselves in a position to be offered new leadership opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the balance that we strike is that you go should push you to want to win, but at the same time when you get into those news roles, you have to implement humility immediately and have enough self-awareness to realize how are you showing up in front of this team.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your ego might be wanting to push you to win and succeed, might have gotten you there.
[SPEAKER_00]: but the humility piece is so important when you're dealing as a new leader in an organization when no one knows you.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one knows you, they don't care about your resume, they don't care about your background, what they care about is how are you going to show up for them?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this going to look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this going to mean for them in their day-to-day?
[SPEAKER_00]: So as a new leader, the best thing you can do is have enough self-awareness to recognize, you don't have all the answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't know what's going on and the best thing you can do is get the people around you who have been in these roles, who have been delivering at this level and get them engaged in the next step for how do you actually create some change within the organization?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and listen, one of the things about credibility that I always say during my workshops is if you don't have any credibility, you don't have any influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what leadership is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have that credibility, you have zero influence over people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you need that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how then do leaders create that credibility?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do they have to do to create credibility?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think taking ownership of the fact that they may not have all the answers and leaning on their team using that decentralized command once again, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the tenants of leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm using that decentralized command.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm asking my team to come up with a plan and here's something that I say about decentralized command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why I say it is so difficult about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another word that I like to use for decentralized command is empowerment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to use empowerment because they can go up the chain of command and down the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when someone says, oh, that's a delegation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not really, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But can I empower up the chain of command?
[SPEAKER_01]: I sure can.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the other thing about the word empowerment.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I'm empowering someone, what am I doing with that power?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm giving it away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we like to do that as human beings?
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically, no, we don't like to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's what we're asking you to do as a leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're asking you to give that power away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let your team come up with a plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if it goes wrong, it doesn't go well.
[SPEAKER_01]: who's taking ownership of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are as leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really difficult thing to do to say, hey, I want you to come up with a plan, but if things don't go as planned, guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the burden of leadership, and that's what makes it so difficult to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But part of that is is taking an iterative step in that direction, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think some people misunderstand decentralized command is like, okay, I need to empower cartless to step up a lead.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm cartless as boss, I'm going to empower him to step up a lead.
[SPEAKER_02]: So hey, cartless, you go take charge of that thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm going to be way over here with no oversight whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're still, I'm still responsible for everything that happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I need to do is say, hey Carlos, here's the goal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you come up with a plan and tell me how you would ask you to do it?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you briefly on the plan, I could say hey that plan sounds good, go ask you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm looking over your shoulder, make sure that it is executed correctly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm making sure that the plan makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm making sure that it fits within the time constraints and resource constraints.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or that it actually accomplishes the end state that we're trying to achieve.
[SPEAKER_02]: All those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can make adjustments to that plan if I need to.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the idea that I'm just giving you part blanche to go run with things with no oversight.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to go spend my time with the golf course, while you actually get the work done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's, I'm actually losing massive credibility by doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can't blame you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually responsible.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to make sure that it's an iterative step in that direction, that we can build up trust and confidence in each other, that you're going in the direction that you need to, and I'm helping you in supporting you, where I need to, as well, I need to provide more guidance to resources, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's a way to be able to do that and mitigate the risk in decentralized command.
[SPEAKER_02]: by taking iterative steps in that direction.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as you demonstrate more competence, and I've got greater trust than you, I can let you run with more things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe now I don't have a good relationship with Jamie.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know who is well, we haven't worked together very long.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I can let you have a little more rain to do things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can spend more time with Jamie to make sure that she's doing what she needs to do and that her plan makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that way I can prioritize an execute on who, on where I'm actually focusing my time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm still allowing you to execute with decentralized command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, something that I took from Jockel, when people asked me that question, how much decentralized command should I give someone?
[SPEAKER_01]: And something that I took from Jockel is, well, I give them just enough responsibility where it makes them feel just a little bit uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also give them enough where it makes me feel just a little bit uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what that does is, if we're uncomfortable, we're growing.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, for comfortable, there's no growth there, and then going back to the decentralized command that you were talking about, I want to just go back to what we were talking about in one of the earlier episodes, whereas I, in order for this decentralized command to work, my team needs to understand those four things that we talked about earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: They need to understand the mission, what does when you look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: They need to understand why, why are we doing this?
[SPEAKER_01]: They need to understand what's expected of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: not only performance-wise, but behavior-wise, and finally, you talked about it, they need to understand their parameters.
[SPEAKER_01]: That needs to be communicated in a very simple clearing concise manner, and once you've done that, now you can start carrying out that decentralized command in iterative steps like you were talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about decentralized command all the time about how your role as a leader is to try and give your people the widest parameters in which they can make decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And oftentimes what that looks like in the beginning until we earn in that trust and credibility essentially is that the box in which they can operate is fairly small, but our goal is leader should be to make that box as wide as possible and give them as much freedom to make decisions at their level.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're starting out as a new leader, you may not want to make that box as small as it possibly can because you don't even know what's in the box, you don't even know what they're currently handling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So part of our effort as a new leader is to go in just observe, just get a sense of where the left and right limits and which they're operating now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we can decide at that point what those expectations, what those parameters are, and we can better align the team around the mission when we've observed it for ourselves and we understand how we can contribute to the broader goal.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even when you have to make changes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's say I'm a deservely something and I say, maybe that's not the most efficient way to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We could do it this way and said, instead of me saying like, hey, Jamie, yeah, that delay doesn't make sense do it this way because I've done this before and this is way more efficient.
[SPEAKER_02]: you're going to push back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's so much better to take the indirect approach to come in and say, hey, Jamie, is zero, do you think there's a more efficient way of maybe doing this?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, have we thought about maybe doing it this way?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm taking an indirect approach, you can be like, oh yeah, we'll we will consider that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There may be a reason that you're not doing it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Number one.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if I can allow you to reveal the truth to yourself, just from asking some earnest questions, and you say, oh, you know what that makes sense?
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we should try that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it's your plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't dictate the plan to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't force that plan on you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we can make those changes using the indirect approach without expanding leadership capital.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that helps build our credibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And suggesting changes within an organization is far easier when you've got that leadership capital and you've got some earned credibility, which comes first from being consistent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not coming here with this is how we're doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the changes we're going to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being consistent and being open minded to other people's perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: gaining a really good understanding of what the team is currently doing, and from that detached place, as you build in that leadership capital, you now have the opportunities to suggest changes that the team is going to be more open-minded too.
[SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to, oh, she's the new leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's coming in here to change everything up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That creates friction, which doesn't allow our team to actually focus on what's next.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that brings us to our immediate action draw for this week, which is to identify one quick win that you can execute this week that will build trust with your team.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you're taking on a new role or introducing yourself to new people, don't lead with your resume.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't be the person that's talking about all the things that you've done and what your experience is and trying to gain that respect through listing off all these things that you've been a part of instead.
[SPEAKER_02]: gain that credibility through your actions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be humble, ask questions, listen to others, let run with their ideas, let them step up and lead, and when you do that, you will gain the credibility that you need to lead and win.