šŸ’Ž The Corner Office #6 - Be a Long Term Leader

Why nailing the basics and finding your zone of genius are keys to leading for the long term.

Same beans, different grind.

Read time: 6 minutes

Happy New Year yā€™all,

Leadership is a full time job. Often, the way that time is divided is what makes the cream rise to the top. In hindsight, many of the challenging times I have experienced have been because of misspent time. This has, in my career, taken two forms. The first is shiny object syndrome. The other is spending too much time in an area that is outside my zone of genius.

I took a truck full of insights away from Matt Mochary in this conversation. Specifically, I was intrigued by several of the principles he talked about and their application to leadership in the longterm.

This weekā€™s Corner Office Insights come from Matt Mocharyā€™s (Author of The Great CEO Within) appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show.

 Insight of the Week  

šŸ’Ž Fear is almost always leading people to make the wrong decision. Itā€™s not that fear is completely irrational. There is something going on hereā€¦ something unknown, something dicey, something spicy. Thatā€™s valid. But then the amygdala goes far further.

(22:38) Matt Mochary

The amygdala has a central role in the storage of fear memories and your fight or flight response. Knowing when it is activated or not is tricky. A successful senior manager is often judged on a handful of decisions every year. To improve the quality of my decisions, I started to focus on how I make them and what is influencing me. Understanding the different types of fear and how to identify them in real time has been a major challenge.

So I started a decision journal. Documenting major decisions, my states of mind, my reasoning, and later down the line, the outcomes. I have built a bank of decision inputs and quality that enable me to identify patterns in real-time and make better decisions. If youā€™d like my decision tracker template, hit me back in the replies.

Focus on Fundamentals

Chasing new ideas can be exhilarating. It feeds our dopamine habit. It can give us a sense of motion. However, it can also lead us off course from our long-term goals.

Shiny object syndrome is where people focus on whatever is new and trendy. Dropping it as soon as the next trend comes along. The remedy? Basic blocking and tackling. Sticking to the basics consistently and at a high level seems obvious. But from my own experience, it is deceptively hard.

One of the concepts I have embraced over the past couple of years is motion versus velocity. Whereas motion is a change in position regardless of direction, velocity takes both speed and direction into account. A leaderā€™s job is to get their team from their current state to their desired state. So direction matters. Many managers get busy applying the latest trendy tool or framework to how they work with their team. They spend more time on the tool than on achieving the objectives. They achieve motion, but not velocity.

Contrary to popular belief, effective management doesnā€™t have to be complex. Itā€™s about doing to basics and following through. Matt offers a simple solution:

šŸ’Ž A good manager will say: what are your goals? What are you trying to do? What are your three priorities? Whatā€™s one next action you can take towards each of those? Great, write it down. Next time we meet Iā€™m going to check: ā€˜did you actually do thatā€™. And if you didnā€™t, weā€™re going to dig into why, what blocked you. And then weā€™re going to figure out what you can do to make sure you donā€™t get blocked that way again. Boom, done.

(13:41) Matt Mochary

Matt highlights the obvious questions a manager should ask, as well as the obvious outcome to the average one-on-one meeting between a manager and team member. But just how obvious is it? I think if you were to spend time shadowing 10 developing managers for a month, you wouldnā€™t hear these questions. And if you did, they wouldnā€™t be asked so directly. The simplicity of management is often lost in the fog of ego. The great fear of managers is to be exposed as value-less or that their job is so simple that anyone on the team could do it. Perhaps one difference between great leaders and bad managers is their perception of leadership complexity.

šŸ’Ž At the end of each meeting I say, I can do better, but only Iā€™ll only do better if you tell me what would make this better for you. And so they say: hereā€™s what would make this better. I say: great thanks, Iā€™ll do that. And then I do.

(15:00) Matt Mochary

Truly great leaders not only seek feedback, they act on it. Surprisingly, most people donā€™t do what they say. This is true at all ranks and in all businesses. Specifically, with feedback, whether itā€™s unwillingness to accept feedback, or an unwillingness to change, the result is the same: hardly anyone listens and actually adjusts to the feedback they receive. Donā€™t just hear the feedback, listen to it. Apply it. This practice builds trust, shows that you value your teamā€™s input, and most of all, gets the best out of them.

Stay in your Zone of Genius

Donā€™t get me wrong, strive to be a multi-disciplinary leader. But that doesnā€™t mean you should do everything. The greatest leaders have a wide variety of knowledge, but know where they excel and they focus there. They know, and stay within, their zone of genius. Spending too much time outside of your zone of genius can lead to burnout and apathy.

šŸ’Ž There are four zones of genius.

Thereā€™s a zone of incompetence: things you're not good at that you should outsource to someone else. Like fixing your car, you should have a mechanic do that.

Thereā€™s a zone of competence: things you can do but you donā€™t love them and someone else can do them just as well as you can. Like cleaning your bathroom.

Zone of excellence, now this is a dangerous one, this is where youā€™re really good at it. You donā€™t like it, but youā€™re really good at it, and people value it a lot and they're willing to pay you a lot of money for it, and they also want you to keep doing it because they are dependent on you to get it done. Thatā€™s the dangerous one. Youā€™re getting lots of praise and lots of accolades and lots of compensation to do it, but you actually donā€™t like it.

(32:45) Matt Mochary

Watch out for the zone of excellence. Thatā€™s whatā€™ll grind you down slowly. Easily misinterpreted as your zone of genius, you may not feel its destructive impact until far into the future. Discovering your zone of genius is easier said than done. It can take years.

Hereā€™s one question to help you on your way: ā€œWhat do I do that adds unique value and that I seem to be loving?ā€

šŸ’Ž The fourth zone is the zone of genius. These are the things that you do that you are uniquely good at in the world and you love them so much, you don't even notice that youā€™re doing them. You may not even be aware of what these things are. Because time and space just disappear, so you don't even value it.

(33:46) Matt Mochary

Working in a gaming company has led me to better understand the dynamics of gamification. We most often experience it being applied to us. Understanding how to apply it to myself was a major unlock. A frame shift that turns the mostly mundane into more enjoyable, and more productive, experiences.

Finding your zone of genius and operating within it exclusively is what Matt suggests. Great idea. Not always possible (right now). Aim to delegate all work outside of your zone of genius. For those things you canā€™t delegate, make them into a game. Have a meeting you canā€™t get rid of? Make it fun. Have a quarterly report you canā€™t delegate? Make it fun.

šŸ’Ž If [youā€™re] not passionate about it, [you] wonā€™t be good at it.

(31:45) Matt Mochary

Tiny thought

Trust isnā€™t just a feeling; it has economics and velocity. In a team where trust is high, things move faster and cost less. Trust is a multiplier. On the flip side, when there is low trust, itā€™s like incurring a tax at every step. Trust can be quantified. It is not just social, it is financial.

Kicking off 2024, look at your relationships. Where is your balance of trust lacking?

Keep your stick on the ice,

Jess

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