šŸ’Ž The Corner Office #1 - From Manager to Leader

The Corner Office

Where the coffeeā€™s strong, and the insights stronger.

Read time: 7 minutes

Hey yā€™all,

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Corner Office! Nothing great happens in the world without great leadership. That's the core belief driving this newsletter. We're here to fuel more greatness in the world, one leader at a time.

Every Monday, we'll deliver a powerhouse mix of insights, tools, and frameworks directly to your inbox. Our goal? To supercharge your leadership journey, elevating not just you, but also your team and your entire business.

This weekā€™s insights come from Adam Bryantā€™s (author of Leap to Leader) appearance on The Dov Baron Show (Part 1 & Part 2).

The harsh truth? Most companies fall short in providing timely, if any, leadership training. Add to that that many people find themselves in a management position for all the wrong reasons. The result? The destructive impact of a bad boss: creating stress and undercutting value. But here's the silver lining: becoming a great leader and a great boss is within your reach. It starts with self-awareness and a conscious effort to shape your leadership identity, which in turn can propel your team to new heights.

Everybody knows thereā€™s a big difference between a manager and a leader. But how would you define it? And considering people often leave managers, not companies, how do you bridge the gap from being a good manager to a great leader? This week's insights are your first step towards unravelling this challenge.

 Insight of the Week  

šŸ’Ž How do you make the leap [to leadership]? Take one blank sheet of paper and put three questions on it.

The first question is: what, to you, is the difference between management and leadership?

Second: do you really want to lead and why?

Third: who are you as a leader? What are the three values that are really important to you for driving success. How and why are they important to you?

(25:32) Adam Bryant

Stephen Covey noted, ā€œleadership cannot be taught, it must be learned.ā€ To me, that means not only learning by consuming content, itā€™s about active learning through doing. If you stop reading here (I hope you donā€™t!) and do this exercise, Iā€™ll chalk that up as a win. Want to make it more impactful? Hit reply and send me your answers.

Personal Excavation

šŸ’Ž Do you really want to lead? A lot of people say: ā€œI want that job,ā€ without really pausing to find out what their motivations are for wanting it. And they get into the job and they say: ā€œI had no idea it was this hard. I had no idea I would just be solving people problems all day.ā€

I ask people to be very clear about [their] motivations.

(12:00) Adam Bryant

Reflecting on my nearly decade of management experience, this caught me off guard. In hindsight, my journey into being a manager wasn't as deliberate as I thought it was at the time. It was more a casual drift, riding the waves of my mental models of the world and my boss's direction. However, true leadership requires challenging the status quo, something that is often done externally but is more difficult to apply introspectively. It took me a few years to do this work and uncover my own identity as a leader. This insight is a reminder that leadership starts with questioning and defining our own motivations and choices.

šŸ’Ž People donā€™t spend enough time thinking about how they would answer the question: ā€œwho are you as a leader?ā€ Youā€™re going to be a lot better off if you know the answer.

(13:30) Adam Bryant

Who am I as a leader? A seemingly simple question. You might be surprised how long it takes you to write out the first words of your answer. It never ceases to amaze me how simple questions often yield the most profound answers.

šŸ’Ž What are the three values that are really important to your personally? Itā€™s not enough to come up with the words or phrases. You have to bring them to life and make them real. What are the values, why are they important to you?

Tell me the story of how they became important to you.

What does that look like in practice?

How would I experience that if I worked with you day-to-day?

If you really wrestle with that question and come up with an authentic answer, itā€™s going to make you a much better leader.

(14:03) Adam Bryant

Values can often mean many things to many people. What I consider integrity might differ from your understanding. Thatā€™s why itā€™s crucial to not only define your values but also to clearly articulate what they look like in practice and how they resonate on an emotional level. Share this clarity with your team. Itā€™s common to see companies list values without a deep understanding of their implementation. Remember Enron? Integrity was one of their core values. Go figure.

Living your values is a cornerstone of trust. Publicly committing to those values can be intimidating but it serves as a powerful forcing function. It compels you to uphold your values, especially when it is challenging. To truly earn your teamā€™s trust, you must consistently demonstrate your values through actions; walk the walk, donā€™t just talk the talk. Your behaviour should always reflect your proclaimed standards.

Manager? Or Leader?

šŸ’Ž If youā€™re a manager, your boss is probably giving you some project or projects and there is a little bit of an expected outcome already. We know what we need you to do. Thatā€™s the managerā€™s mindset.

I think the leaderā€™s mindset is to first of all be a very good manager. Youā€™ve got to nail the core job and nail the core outcomes. But itā€™s the topspin of: Iā€™m doing what you asked me to do, but Iā€™m also trying to figure out how to transform my role. Iā€™m trying to transform my teamā€™s contribution. Iā€™m scanning the organization and the industry to find what do we need we do that we arenā€™t doing. Constant transformation, always searching for opportunities, things that go above and beyond your job description.

(23:30) Adam Bryant

There are many ways to differentiate between management and leadership. I love this one because itā€™s simple to implement and to identify.

šŸ’Ž Managers execute pre-existing playbooks. Leaders write new playbooks. The challenge for new managers in so many companies is that the playbooks donā€™t work anymore.

(27:10) Adam Bryant

New managers should use playbooks. Theyā€™re a great tool to build the basic foundational management skills. Transitioning into leadership means embracing the challenge of tackling tough situations and running a play that has a high risk of failure. Managers will accept how things are done and execute, while leaders will challenge the status quo and blaze their own trail.

Putting it into Action

šŸ’Ž Moving into bigger leadership positions thereā€™s going to be less and less data [to make decisions]. Youā€™re very often looking at tough decisions where there is no obvious right answer, whatever you decide is probably going to upset somebody or some group of people. Thereā€™s a higher risk you are going to be wrong because there are fewer guarantees. And you have to be comfortable with that.

(4:20) Adam Bryant

Reflecting on my early management days, making decisions was easier because I usually had access to ā€˜enoughā€™ data. Looking back at my evolution into a leadership role, I can trace when I started to get comfortable with making decisions where itā€™s all grey areas, with no right answer. Itā€™s still not easy. And I still struggle realizing that my decisions are going to piss some people off. That is hard, but essential. To make it in leadership, you canā€™t be paralyzed by the desire to be universally liked.

šŸ’Ž It would be more constructive to get rid of ā€˜strategyā€™ from all business conversations and replace them with ā€˜betā€™.

(5:42) Adam Bryant

From Vice Presidents to team leaders, many managers Iā€™ve worked with are confounded by strategy. It seems, to them, a fancy and complicated concept, beyond their grasp. Yet, the idea of reframing strategy as a series of calculated 'bets' is nothing short of brilliant. This perspective has already reshaped my approach. As I write this, I'm strategizing ā€“ or rather, planning my 'bets' ā€“ for 2024. Based on available data, Iā€™ll crafting a hypothesis of what the future might look like, and my bets are how my team can leverage these forecasts. Making good bets is the essence of being a good leader. Moreover, presenting these strategic choices as bets to your team fosters transparency and builds trust.

šŸ’Ž You have got to figure out this compartmentalization game. Some people have so much empathy and have got so much feeling that they overthink things and they are really bad about compartmentalizing. At the other extreme, Iā€™ve seen bosses that are so good at compartmentalizing that they have no empathy and no compassion.

You canā€™t be beating yourself up. You have to give yourself a break.

(11:20) Adam Bryant

Adam shares a poignant example of mentorship in his company. When hearing a young CEOā€™s negative self-talk, his mentor pointed out: 'if you talked to your friends like that, you wouldn't have any.' This story resonated deeply with me. The ability to separate work from home life, to move from a failed initiative to planning the next, requires a unique skill: compartmentalizing. To me, tucking away thoughts in a specific corner of your mind, allowing for restful sleep, and revisiting them with a fresh perspective in the morning is a superpower.

šŸ’Ž You canā€™t be a great leader if you donā€™t have the ability to simplify complexity and say: This is where we are going. This is how we are going to get there. This is when weā€™ll get there. This is how weā€™ll measure progress. And these are the challenges weā€™re going to face.

(15:52) Adam Bryant

The most impactful piece of sales advice I ever received was: make it incredible easy for your prospects to say ā€˜yes.ā€™ This principle doesnā€™t only apply to sales, it is just as relevant to leading a team. Business environments and internal company dynamics are always shifting. For your team, thatā€™s all noise and distraction. A leaderā€™s job is to cut through the noise and create the a clear path to success. Like a well-designed highway on-ramp, we need to construct simple, straightforward pathways for our teams to succeed.

Tiny thought

If two keys to successful leadership are simplifying complexity and trust, which is your strong side and why? What is one thing you can do today to improve your weak side?

Let me hear it. Whatā€™d you think of this email?

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