Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris'm Lorenzo, and Lorenzo. On this
episode, I want to talk about an article that I saw in the Harvard
Business Review, and we'll post a link to the article in the podcast description.
It's called how to make leadership positions more enticing to primary care Physicians.
And I know what you're thinking right now, what do you mean primary care
physicians? Like this? This isn't necessarily normally what we talk about here on
this show, but you know, we've often maintained and we believe that the
leadership is leadership in terms of the skills needed to lead people, regardless of
the industry that you're in. And there are a lot of tie ins in
terms of the the expectations here compared to the expectations in roles that we would
typically talk about on the show. You know, I think about the first
time that I was in a leadership role at all, and it was kind
of like what you would consider to be like a key carrier, like a
glorified key carrier, right, And the the the job itself consisted of things
that were that would be largely kind of like babysitting, administrative, like I
you know, making sure people are doing what they're supposed to do. And
you know, there were oftentimes where in my mind I thought, I have
no real authority here right, Like, I have responsibilities and I have accountabilities.
I have to get done, but if something needs to needs to change
or needs to happen, I'm not the one who gets to like tell somebody.
And that was really shortsighted because if I had looked at it the correct
way when I was nineteen years old, I would have said, well,
no, this is this is a stepping stone and a way for me to
demonstrate that I can have interactions with people that go the right way. I
can have interactions with people where I'm trying to get them to change their behavior
and therefore change, you know, potentially over a long term the culture of
a place in a way that gets them to say, oh, I like
what Chris has to say, and now I'm going to change my behavior.
Not because Chris has any authority over me, but because I trust Chris and
I want to follow what he has to say, and I trust him to
kind of like make make good decisions on my half. And I think when
it comes to these types of roles, there can be a lot of people
who who don't want these roles because they see it as just that they would
rather do, you know, the kind of the tactical things that they want
to do as opposed to step into these leadership roles. And so I think
this is a real problem is getting people who are talented, quality people to
want to step up into these roles that have a potential to positively change organizations.
Do you do you see this where you are, well, yeah,
And I think there's also an element of this where it's like you for many
like I think the key hold the role that you're talking about in in retail,
Like there's this element of like, oh, now I have this responsibility,
there's more trust, there's more kind of like what I'm being asked to
do. But it's also it's it's it's another level of responsibility. And so
like, if you're doing what you're doing and enjoying it, are you raising
your hand to say I'm going to continue doing this? But also I want
more work? Right like like and then as a leader, I now want
to be accountable not just for what I do, but also for those that
I lead. And so, you know, people tend to really want and
feel sometimes pull towards leadership, Like I like, I know I can do
this, I know I can make change. I know that that I have
ideas that may be helpful, But then it becomes okay, but do you
also then want to take on all of the responsibilities that comes with leading people?
And so again I think that this is a good article and good for
us to talk about because there are there are roles that you're going to take
in your career that are going to be the kind of the to your point,
the roles that help you shape how to like influence without authority if you
look at it that way. But many times these roles are at a time
in your career where you're not thinking about it that way. You're just like,
oh, you're gonna pay me an extra seventy five cents an hour,
and like I can unlock the doors. Cool, sign me up, right,
And but but again but you're like, but you're I don't really have
any authority here. So it's just you know, I like that this article
is like again about kind of a different industry than we normally talk about,
but we talk a lot about leadership across all industries. Also, just real
quick shout out to Mike Shannat he's in EMS and he has some leadership development
stuff that he does and s H A N A T. But he is
constantly talking about this around leadership lessons that apply across industries and things that we
can take and apply to the roles that we have or the industries that we're
in. So I'm looking forward to kind of digging a little bit deeper into
this and thinking about what are they talking about, and then how would that
maybe apply to the worlds that we work in every day right right? I
think the way I think about this is that is that even though the skills
of doing a job, whatever that job is, like I'm talking about a
non leadership role a job, the skills that it takes to do those jobs,
part of the things that make somebody successful at those jobs or not is
are things like conscientiousness, the ability to think outside the box to solve problems,
the ability to not just you know, kind of like be focused in
one direction and say go and then you walk into you hit a wall until
somebody turns you around, but to be able to look three or four steps
ahead and make rational and conscious and intelligent decisions based on the context of things
that might not be in part of your role or part of your purview,
and those skills and abilities will lead you to do whatever that job is well
versus somebody who doesn't have those skills. A person who does those things well
is more likely to be successful in a leadership role than someone who doesn't have
those skills. But oftentimes people who have those skills, they don't necessarily want
to do the job, the role of leadership because they view it as a
departure from the things they love doing. They love doing the actual job they're
doing, and they think that stepping into a leadership role means I'm gonna lose
the you know, I don't want to say the autonomy, but the you
know, kind of the ability to kind of like just put the put the
bag of bricks down when I leave for the day, Like I'm I don't
want to be thinking about this twenty four hours a day. I want to
do my job and I'll be conscientious about it. But but being responsible for
what other people do and how they do their job is just not enticing in
me. And I think where where that becomes short sighted for leaders who are
trying to kind of like get people to fill these roles. Is that when
you have a culture is not something that is self sustaining, you you have
to maintain it, Like effort has to go in to doing this, and
if you have a shortage of people who do those things well in your leadership
roles, then the culture will deteriorate wherever you are and it will become a
place that those good people no longer want to work at. So so getting
those people to kind of step up a little bit and take on more responsibilities
is the role of a leader. The role of a leaders is to figure
out how to make these people want to take on some of these responsibilities in
a way where they don't They don't view it as a departure from what they
love doing. They look at it as as an addition to what they're doing,
or as a positive thing. They can they can pull positives, positive
things out of this is it. It's a tough dance too, because sometimes
it can look like you're trying to sell something to somebody. But but you
can't do that either because it will come off as disingenuous. It has to
be something real, but you have to be able to word it in the
right way to make people actually want to opt in. Yeah, I like
that, and I like kind of it breaks down a great example here in
the article around like providing the on ramp, which really like, how are
you positioning these types of roles that will resonate with the people that would be
interested with them, but to your point, not not lie about it.
Like if I said, Okay, hey, I'm going to make you a
key holder. You're gonna have keys and codes, You'll be able to unlock
the door, you'll be able to alarm the building, and then you're gonna
go in early before everybody else is there, and then do all the administrative
work that nobody else wants to do. And then you're also going to do
that on the other three shifts at night. Right, you're gonna hip,
that's leadership, right? Or or are we gonna say, like, look,
this is an opportunity to gain some experience through repetition of the security protocols,
the things that we do, and you know, take take on the
accountability around operational excellence and some cool terms that we go out there. And
then the real answer is, look, you're gonna you're gonna get up early,
you're gonna unalarm a building, you're going to count cash, You're gonna
do this type of work. These are things that you're going to get better
at over time. But this is not the best part of the gig.
The best part of the gig is you're gonna have a lot of dedicated time
working with the team to then be able to provide them an element of informal
leadership and influence of the relationships that you build and because you have some some
additional responsibilities, you're going to learn and grow through how do you navigate these
relationships personally and professionally to learn from your team, but also to teach your
team to become more efficient. So like there's there's a way in which you
want to talk about this and then also and it's different I think in retail
because we get the time to position these things with the individuals many times and
they get to see it. In others, I think in an industry like
this where the job description is really important and people are like applying based upon
what they read than what you have in writing has to be reflective of of
what you know, what you want them to get out of the job,
and how you want them to show up and not make it just some like
arbitrary. This is the same job that you get everywhere, that type of
thing. So I think that that's the that's the challenge in some industries,
But I think in retail we have a little bit more of an opportunity to
kind of build in the context of why this would be good for somebody's career.
I think in a lot of industries and a lot of companies, they
are shortsighted in terms of how they frame these these roles. They frame it
very, very matter of factly, like these are the actual responsibilities of their
role. And and that's because these are the things that you're held accountable to.
Meaning if you don't take it and run with it from a standpoint of
building relationships with people and demonstrating that you can lead without having an actual title
and that you can kind of influence people to get better work done, you're
not being held accountable in these roles to their performance. And so it's not
going to be in the job description. But if you just do what's in
the job description, then then it is what it is you will you will.
It will become a self fulfilling prophecy of your doing exactly what you thought
it was going to be. So there's an element of you having to take
this as a This is an audition, it's a it's a springboard, it's
a way for you to be, you know, taken out of what you
would do every day for a little bit of time or a lot of time
to demonstrate how you are able to impact positively the rest of the business.
Because if you're doing a role that is not one of these, if you're
just doing an individual contributor role, chances are you don't have a ton of
time to influence people and train people and coach people and help them get better
at their jobs because you're doing your job. You might have a little bit.
These are the roles where you are given a lot of time to do
that. And if you focus on, you know, the counting of the
money and unlocking of the building, then that's what it will be for you,
and that's all it will be. And if you don't like doing the
leadership aspects of it anyway, then then maybe you'll fit right into this.
But if you are looking at this from a standpoint of being able to impact
culture and impact people and help people accomplish the goals they want to accomplish and
move up within their career. If this is something that is that is appealing
to you, you need to look at the roles as something broader than that,
as a way to give you that platform to say, hey, you
know what, a lot of this is blank slate stuff from a from a
time standpoint. How you make the most of it is on you, and
and and you are being tested in that same moment by people who are watching
going let's see what Chris does with this. Let's see what Lorenzo does with
this. We've given him a platform. Yes, he knows how to unlock
a building, but anybody can do that. How does he influence people?
How does he impact people? And if you if that is what's appealing to
you, then it becomes significantly easier to let go of whatever you were doing
in your day to day and the monotony or the boringness of the of the
administrative stuff becomes I think, less boring and less monotonous. Well it's funny,
yeah, I think even in the in you were talking about kind of
like the job description thing and talking about uh, just just what is the
role and is a list of accountability things? And it's so funny because the
other day somebody has sent me a job description they wanted me to read over,
and that's exactly what it was. It was like eighteen points and it
was just like, you know, lead a team of approximately x amount of
employees. You know, be responsible and accountable for the profitability bob. But
like it was all these types of things. My initial thought was like,
why can't we be radically honest about this? Like, what I would love
to see is something that says this job is hard and requires a lot of
hours, right, because we have big dreams, right, we know that
we don't have the staffing that a larger petitor would, but what we do
have is a commitment to do amazing things and the grit to go do them.
If you have if you have a life where you can only dedicate forty
hours per week, this job is not for you. But here's what you're
going to get. Right. We are competitive with our pay. We are
looking to bring in people that want to help us like kind of define what
we do. And we want those that want to want to be able to
have an influence on the things that we offer and how we offer them.
And then so it's like almost like completely flipping it upside down and just being
like, that's really what we want to say, right, But then we
feel like we can't or we feel like this job description has to be this
or that, like and and I'm like, but there's definitely a middle ground
in there somewhere. And I think even in this article, I don't know
anything about, you know, the primary care physician. I have like nothing,
like I avoid the doctor right right, but I had nothing here.
But I know that if everybody else in this industry is doing it this way,
and you come out and say, hey, we know that we're asking
you to take on additional responsibility, we like, like, basically in the
article it talks about these are the three deterrens. Right, take those deterns
and put them up front and be like, we know what we're asking you
to do. Yeah, don't gloss over them or pretend they don't exist,
because you're in the minds of every applicant for every person looking already, you
got it. We know that this is what you're thinking about this job,
or we know that this is what you're kind of giving up for a move
like this. So what we're gonna say is like, you're giving up this,
but this is what we really would like for you to help us do.
Like so like just being that, you know, kind of like that
clear. I think people read that they go like, well, well damn
if they're honest about this. I kind of like the vibe here, you
know what I'm saying, Like, I feel like I'm gonna walk into an
honest culture with people who get it, they understand what's going on, and
they're looking to do something different. And because it's different, I I have
a little bit more interest now versus everybody else who's approaching in every other single
way. So I think it's something to kind of call out in general when
you are not only like talking about roles from a leadership standpoint, but then
also like having to put them in writing right, And no one wants to
do that because they they want to put their best foot forward. So what
they do is they they glorify the things that are not glorifiable, Like they
try to make things bigger than what they seem for the things that are kind
of like the tactical, you know, boring things, you know, kind
of put the lipstick on a pig, so to speak. And and and
then and the same breath. They want to pretend there is no pig to
begin with, So you right, So they don't talk about the negatives of
it at all or even acknowledge it, and they think that a person reading
it will go if we if we don't, if we don't talk about this,
they won't know that these are the hard things, like yeah, right.
If they're in the industry already, they know what those things are,
and that's the first thing they're thinking. So you're right. If you're the
if you're the kind of person who's writing these job descriptions, or you're talking
to potential applicants and you acknowled all things up front, all you're doing is
showing that you are committed to transparency. And if you're committed to transparency when
things are not fun to talk about, then you are you're going to be
talking to applicants who will at least view the process differently. And I believe
more open to the idea of thinking, all right, let's give this a
shot, because I'm not going to be lied to here, like we're going
to be upfront about all this stuff, and if I have an issue or
if I need help or assistance or things aren't driving with me on something I
can go to somebody clearly because they're going to be real with me and they're
not going to say, well, this is what you've signed up for.
It's like, no, we're not duping people here. We want the right
people in the role, people who aren't going to burn out, and people
who want to make positive change. The only way to do that is to
make sure that you're up front and honest with them as opposed to trying to
like, you know, trick people into applying. Absolutely, and with that
it brings us to this episode's one minute hack. But first off, your
words from our sponsors, all right, for this episodes one minute hack,
here is I want you to do. First click on this article in the
podcast description and read it. There are two sections in here that are really
important to talk about around designing and defining roles and then the support that those
roles get once you know people are in the role. And the reason why
these are important is because you know you may or may not have authority or
responsibility over designing and defining what a role is from an actual you know,
corporate or legal standpoint, whatever the printed definition or responsibilities are. If you
do have control over that then by all means, make sure that you're defining
it honestly and clearly. If you don't have, you know, kind of
responsibility or the ability to make those changes, what you do have is the
the responsibility and the authority to figure out what tools and training and mentorship you
give people who are potentially applying for the role once they're in role, and
how you frame it in a way that says, this is what I'm committed
to doing for you if you want to take on the responsibility of this role,
if you want to move up into one of these leadership roles, I'm
committed to giving you these tools that are not listed in the job description,
and I'm giving committed to you this training and this mentorship, and I'll be
real and honest with you and transparent about what the potential pitfalls all here.
I'll be honest with you about what I saw when I was in the role
and the mistakes that I made, and how you can avoid making the exact
same mistakes. These are all things that can make these roles more enticing to
people, because they can they feel like they have allies that will allow them
to do a lot of what they love doing as opposed to you know,
kind of just looking at it as these these roles that take them out of
what they love doing. Uh, do this the right way, and you'll
have people who are applying for more roles on their own because they see what
kind of support that you are to people who are are currently in the roles.
Yeah. I think it's a great woman to hack and you know,
continuing to consider how we think about roles, how we communicate these roles,
how we how we support these roles. I think it's really important, especially
this day and age, where we're continuing to see you know, this kind
of movement towards kind of transparency, radical honesty, whatever you want to call
it, and everything that that we're doing. And I think that we have
to meet that that movement, uh, in a way that shows and shares
that that we are very understanding of exactly what people are considering and thinking about
feeling about movements in their career and next jobs, next roles, those types
of things. Like I think sometimes we just we we have this projection that
everybody wants to move forward, and that you know, because maybe we didn't
get to ask a bunch of questions or because it was kind of like,
well, if you want that job, like you just got to deal with
the things that you like and then deal with the things that you don't like
and whatever that that that we have to maintain that same kind of approach when
it comes to the roles now and in the generation now that's working, and
I think that they're gonna they're asking for something different, they're asking for something
more, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think that that being upfront
and saying like, yeah, this is exactly what the job is, and
this these are the things about the job that you know are are you know,
maybe monotonous, These are the things about out the job that we just
have to do. But you said this earlier in the show, and I
liked it. It's kind of like when we say things like well, like
you kind of like this is what you signed up for, but in fact
that's not what they signed up for, Like we have to get we have
to get better at that, We have to get better on closing that delta
and being upfront with the things of the job that are just a part of
the job that we all have to do. This sometimes we don't enjoy,
but then spend the time talking about what you're getting out of this over time
and now it's shaping you know, the work that you want to do to
get the future that you want to have. Right, And the last thing
I want to say about this, I think it's it's really important too,
is that you know, you don't get to be in a culture that is
good, that you enjoy coming to work. You know, at every day
you get to do your job, and this is something that allows you to
work life balance all all the positive things that you see about your current role.
This isn't a This isn't something you're just given without any responsibility. If
you like the way that culture is, you should feel a responsibility to kind
of help maintain that culture, to kind of put something into the culture.
And this is where those things happen. If if nobody in if nobody talented
and committed and you know, good at these skills ever stepped up, then
companies would be very short lived. You start out with great culture and it
would decline very quickly because no one wanted to move into these roles. So
I don't think there's anything wrong with saying to somebody, hey, you know
what you you you get a lot out of this organization and out of this
out of this role, and you clearly enjoy it here. There are other
people who would benefit from maintaining from this culture being maintained, including yourself,
meaning you will continue to want to come to work here if the culture is
maintained, and if the leadership is maintained, and if it remains an enjoyable
place to come you you can, and you should feel a responsibility to help
maintain that as opposed to just you know, letting it benefit you, you
know, pay it forward a little bit and see what it does for you
at the same time. Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the
end of this episode. This is Hackeging leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris,
and we'll talk to you all next time.