Welcome back in your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo on
this episode, I want to talk about Taylor Swift. It's about time.
I know how many years that it takes us to finally get to this point.
I know I'm ready for it. Are you a swifty I would say
that there are certain songs of hers that when they come you just you can't
help us up with to sing along. Sure, I am more. I
would say I'm more of a swiftye. And I think some of the way
that she shows up for her fans and kind of supports supports the overall movement
of music and musicians. Yeah, I've never seen her in concert. My
my daughter has Id. I did get tickets for my daughters here once a
couple of years ago. And the reason why I want to talk about her
on this is because, you know, there's a leadership podcast and there was
an article that was released on Forbes talking about Taylor Swift through the lens of
leadership, and I thought this is interesting, like I want to read this,
and it was. It was a good article. We'll post a link
to it in the podcast description. But the reason I want to talk about
it is because there are there are things that Taylor Swift has done over the
last few years, call it the last five years, that I think are
are important leadership lessons that a lot of leaders in any realm of business could
take as a kind of tutorial on how to move forward. And they're not
easy things. They're difficult things, which is why their leadership issues to begin
with. And so that's kind of what I want to talk about. It's
not about you know, her music, although I do sing a long too.
Yeah, no, I agree with you, Like I think that the
article the interesting thing. A lot of decisions, Like there's a lot of
things that you see in headlines where you say, oh, like that person
is doing the right thing here, or that person is you know, using
their voice for good or helping to shift the way things are happening. And
when you start to have influence over I think policies, procedure, you start
to have influence over how other people do things, that is leadership. And
of course, like at the end of the day, she's a leader.
She has an entire you know, company, she has family members, she
has friends, but she also has like like things that are that have to
do with her and her brand and what she does, and she's making decisions
every single day that are leading, you know, outcomes in regards to concerts
and merchandise and fan interactions and albums and songwriting and producers. Like every day
she's making these decisions. So she's clearly a leader. But I like that
we're having this conversation because I think there are very specific things that she has
done that I think really highlights some elements of leadership that we talk about all
the time in the context of work and leading people. So like, I'm
looking forward to us to kind of dissect some of this because I think that
it will resonate with a lot of people when you start to understand, you
know how sometimes these decisions that are being made can be risky and can be
outside of the norm, but are absolutely the right things to do as a
leader when you're looking to influence the change that you want to see around you,
right right. There was a documentary that she put out a few years
ago, and there's some behind the scenes footage and one of the scenes it
shows her talking with her staff and I think her father's in the room too,
and she's talking about wanting to speak out on a political issue. And
she has been almost known for not speaking out on political issues for the longest
time. And she said that there's something that came up that was important enough
to her to where she felt like she was her time to speak out.
And there were dissenting voices in the room. There were some people who were
saying that, you know, that's how you, you know, turn off
half the audience and you know, get you half your people to not support
you anymore. The one that I resonated with a lot was just as a
father. Her father spoke up and said that he was worried about her safety,
you know, speaking out about something that is political in nature, even
regardless of the money situation. Just what could happen if someone just felt like
they didn't like that stance enough to do something that was, you know,
more more than just speaking out against her, but actually violent. And and
she said that it was important enough to her to not even be dissuaded by
that. And and you know, like we don't get political and hacking your
leadership. But what the decision was was around her values, meaning she regardless
of what the political issue was, it was something was important enough to her
from a value standpoint that she felt like she had to say something about it
and regardless of whatever the consequences are. And that's leadership. Leadership is making
decisions that are rooted in what you know to be right in your heart,
something that is values based. Assuming you have good values that are rooted in
history of kindness and great relationships with people that you've cultivated. If you have
that kind of history, then you're values are more likely on the positive side.
But I could there are a lot of leaders that I've known over the
years who I consider to be good leaders, but when it came to making
tough decisions that were values based, it's not that they made the wrong decision,
it's that they wanted to make no decision. They wanted to do nothing.
And that was largely the voices in the room weren't, oh, no,
you should speak out a different way. It was you should speak out
at all. And sometimes leadership is speaking out, not just taking the vanilla.
I'm saying nothing. We have plenty of politicians to do that. They
get elected year year, year after year after year by just saying nothing,
and that because they don't want to turn off anybody, and what do they
really stand for? Nothing, and so you know, being a leader and
standing for something even if it means there might be personal consequences. I think
that's really a strong element of leadership. Yeah, we had an episode not
too long ago where I talked about being having courage and being decisive, and
exactly what this is an example of is like having the courage to stand up
for the values, whatever they are, and what you believe in and saying
something. I'm going to say something about that. I'm going to speak up
in this meeting. I'm hearing something that doesn't resonate with me, or or
it's maybe you know, adverse to my own values, and I want to
share that because that's the value of having perspective and diversity in a room,
as people are going to be able to share those types of things. And
then the decisiveness actually make a decision, actually make the decision to go do
something I think is really important, and to kind of those things together.
To have courage when you make a decision means that there's some risk involved,
whether it's whether it's personal risk, professional risk, you know, just overall
just the risk of your brand or what people might believe or think of you.
But I agree with like it's at the end of the day, that
is leadership, and you know what, and sometimes it is okay to say
and do nothing sometimes right like like where where it's not against your values,
it's not something that is you know, really even having an impact to you
were your team. I think sometimes you know, saying too much can also
cause a problem, right or stir up thoughts or ideas that did not exist
previous to that and really didn't need to happen. But I do appreciate kind
of that type of approach and that willingness to go out there and say which
you believe is the right thing. Right. Well, we see that with
celebrities all the time too, the ones who are speaking up, you know,
seemingly at every turn, you know, and it's like, there's no
way that every one of these issues can be so important to you that it's
worth speaking up, And so you lose some of the credibility and the impact
of speaking out if it seems like every issue is important, because there's no
way that every issue can be personally important to you. But when an issue
is personally important to you and you speak up, if you're if it's rooted
in what those values are. I think that's the right thing to do,
and we see it with companies too. You say it's possible to speak up
too much. Sure, if something isn't actually important to you and you speak
up, it can look like what's important to you is speaking up, right,
and the value can't be speaking up. The value has to be something
else, and then that leads you to speak up. And if that's the
thing that you're doing, that's great. That's what you should be. That's
what leadership is. Otherwise it's just it looks watered down or like maybe you
feel like you have to say something and so you do, and that's when
you end up. That's when it ends up landing the wrong way because people
see through it when whatever you're saying is not rooted in value. So you
know, when when she chose to speak up, whether you agreed or disagree
with her stance on whatever it was, there's no you had no question as
to whether or not she actually believed what she was saying. And that's the
point. If you believe what you're saying and it's rooted in values, then
it is the right thing to do to speak up, even at personal or
professional risk. The other thing that I want to talk about in terms of
her decisions is you know the concert that that I sent my daughter to.
The tickets were they're about one hundred bucks apiece, and they were just kind
of middle of the road tickets at the Rose Bowl in southern California, probably
in twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen. And I noticed that at the time of
the concert, the tickets were being resold for sometimes like five, six,
seven times more than what I bought the tickets for, and we didn't We
bought them on the website, so we didn't have to pay those prices.
But it was crazy to see those resale prices on those tickets. But in
the follow up concert that happened recently, the ticket prices went up precipitously,
and there were some people who said, that's ridiculous. You know, she's
asking too much money for her tickets, that's greedy. But what was happening
was, you know, her team and her saw that the tickets were going
for so much more than face value for the previous tours, and all that
money was going into the pockets of the scalpers who were reselling the tickets.
None of it was going to the people who were putting on the shows,
and so she raised the prices of the tickets. Even the oh, the
public said, this is greedy, this is ridiculous. Why would she think
she could sell a ticket for five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars or whatever
it is. But then she went out and she spent fifty five million dollars
to give to her staff. She gave bonuses to her staff, and in
some people cases it was a there were six figure bonuses. This was life
changing money for them. And so she actually put the money in the hands
of the people that needed it. And she didn't say, this is what
I'm going to do. She just did it and then trusted that the values
that she exuded throughout throughout history and the way she treated her people, that
that would be what was looked at, not whatever the clickbaity media headline of
oh, you know, artists, you know, raises ticket prices two hundred
percent or whatever it is. And she was right. She did the right
thing, and it paid off in the long run because now the tickets were
going for closer to what the actual retail value was or the market value was,
and the money was going to the people who were actually putting on the
shows to people who just you know, south there on a computer with a
bought buying up tickets and then reselling them. Yeah, I think it's a
super interesting, you know approach, and again I think understanding what's going on,
seeing the impact that it's having, realizing that you have fans that are
willing to spend this much money on going to see you. At the end
of the day, it's it's going to be like, like, people are
going to appreciate the fact that you did the right thing and you took care
of those that are working on these shows like that. That's going to be
the thing when you have true fans like that, and there's kind of this
established trust that you have with your your fans and those around you. And
as a leader, you know, there are things that as a leader that
you can do that that are not normal, that are against what common sense
might be, that that have have been a certain way for a really long
time, and you're kind of like challenging status quo here and you're pushing back
against you know, what's always happened that way, and you're able to do
that because of the equity that you have from those that support you, and
that that those that that that know you, know your values, know your
integrity, they give you a lot of grace to do those types of things
because they have a belief that it's for a reason and that the outcome is
going to be beneficial for those that need it. Like, that's just kind
of a that's what you get to have when you when you're a leader,
that you have that that type of relationship with your with your people around you.
And so for her to do that and then for her to turn around
and to give that kind of money to those working on her shows, like
guess what, I bet you there's a lot of people that want to work
on her shows now, right, And I bet you there's a lot of
fans that are like That's why I'm a fan of hers, That's why I
appreciate her. She does things like this that other artists maybe they do,
maybe they don't, we don't know, right, but but the way that
she did it was in such a way that I think it speaks to the
values that she has, and it speaks to the gratitude that she has for
those around her that are helping her have the success that she's had, Right
right. She she wrote five hundred thank you notes to all the people who
worked on her tour, like personally wrote them to each of those people.
You know, I think of you know a lot of organizations. Most organizations
have less than five hundred people. Like just the quantity of companies out there,
most of them have less than five hundred people. But I don't I
know very few CEOs of companies who personally write thank you notes to their employees
every year. And and at some point you have to figure out what's important
to you, and if your people are important to you, you find ways
of showing them that and not just saying it. And I think, you
know the it's easy. You know, my wife always said to me that
I picked a flower for her once that was on the side of the road,
and she said that meant more than you're going to the store and buying
hundreds of roses. Like buying something at the store is one thing, But
the gesture of thinking about doing it and going and stopping and picking a flower
on the side of the road that met more because it's the thought that went
behind it. And this is the exact same thing. The money was not
the the grand gesture was the money that she paid her people, but what
was behind it was a genuine care for her people. And that's what those
think you notes say, So the you know, of course they're going to
take the money, even if the boss is not a nice person. But
the fact that they're a nice person also shows that what was behind those bonuses
and that money was a genuine care for them and not just you know,
trying to sway public opinion. It was this idea that she believed that the
money should go into the hands of the right people who were putting these shows
on. And then she just made that happen, not with a press release
or fanfare, but just quietly doing it and then knowing that it eventually the
right information would come out at the right time, and that the values that
were exuded throughout the throughout the organization, and throughout the years would be what
is viewed as rooted in these decisions and not just you know, some type
of you know, a play for pr or something like that. Absolutely,
and with that it brings us to this episode's one minute hack. But first
a few words from our sponsors. All right, for this episode's one minute
hackers or wants you to do, remember that good leaders help their people become
better employees, but great leaders help their employees become better people. Anything you're
doing for your employees that helps them become a better employee, that will be
an inherent ulterior motive to that, because the better employees they are, the
more it helps you as a leader. But anything you can do for them
that helps them become better, more happy, more fulfilled, well rounded people
as a whole, those are the things that will show your values as a
leader of people, and they will actually be the things that will lead to
them being better employees anyway, because people who feel like their leaders care for
them as human beings and as well rounded people, not just as employees,
are the ones that will go to the ends of the earth putting their best
efforts and bringing their best sells to work in order to become the best employees
they can be. Yeah, And I think going into another holiday season here
in retail and another you know, busy season for certain industries that are out
there is a great reminder that there's going to be a lot of busyness.
There's gonna be a lot of work to do, It's going to be a
lot of things going on and taking the time to connect with your people,
you know, personally and individually, taking the time again to Taylor Swift's credit,
you know, write the handwritten note. If you can leave the handwritten
notes think people show up and shock them with surprises they weren't expecting, you
know, let them know that you care about them, support them, and
show them what it looks like to be a leader who lives by values and
appreciates people for the work they put in. Because at the end of the
day, you know, to kind of pull it back to your quote like
role modeling, these types of behaviors are the things that make others want to
do that and kind of pay that forward. It helps to inspire and kind
of light the fire of values that people have as they kind of grow into
the leaders that they're going to be in the industries that they're going to be
in. So take that responsibility as a leader to have that impact today and
tomorrow and throughout these holidays and going forward and show the next generation of leaders
what that type of engagement, gratitude and thoughtfulness can have as an impact on
them, so that they know what they can do to impact others in the
future. Right, the busier it is the more likely you are to feel
like there's no time for this work. But the busier you are, the
more needed this work is. And so it's a little bit of a conundrum
here that a lot of leaders will find themselves in over the over the next
two months here. But you know, this is the time of year when
your people need the humanity side of you as a leader most so whatever you
can do to kind of slow things down a little bit when it comes to
them understanding what's important to you, the better work and more productive work you're
going to get out of them, and not just for the holiday season,
but coming out of the holidays. He's in the long run too. People
who trust their leaders will work hard for them absolutely, And with that it
brings us to the end of this episode. This is Hack your Leadership.
I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.