Happy 7th Birthday to DX – Here are my key learnings from the last year. I make leadership mistakes, so you don’t have to!

Happy 7th Birthday to DX – Here are my key learnings from the last year. I make leadership mistakes, so you don’t have to!

Growing up is not easy! Remember when you were seven years old? Here’s me when I was seven! 

After 7 years of being in business, we are just starting to find our true north. We’re becoming more self-aware. Along the journey, we have been experimenting, rebelling against our parents, trying out new things, and working out who are best friends really are! We’ve lost a few friends, gained some others, as we find out what we really value. We’ve fallen down a few times, cried, even ran away from home! We got back up though. Stronger. We came home, apologized to our parents, and had a few tough conversations.

The best way to learn and stimulate the growth mindset is to fail.

I say this every year around this time: “I make mistakes, so you don’t have to.”

As angelic as I look in that picture, hidden underneath was some pain. You see, my Mum loved my hair so much that she never cut it. She thought I looked so cute! It was a well-meaning decision, yet it led to me being heavily bullied at school. Kids called me the “giant hair stack”, threw stones at me, pinned me down and stuffed my hair full of dirt. My Mum never knew. I never told her. Yet, amidst the childhood pain there is a lesson... a leadership lesson. 

This is THE platinum rule of leadership and is at the heart of everything we do:

“Treat people how THEY want to be treated. Don’t treat people how YOU want to be treated.”

Knowing is not assuming. Ask those you serve what they want. Don’t assume what they get is what they need.

Ask your kids if they want a haircut and make sure they get the haircut of their choice, not yours. Maybe a few boundaries, but give them some autonomy. Don't 100% steel it.

Now that we’ve learned a leadership lesson from my childhood, time to learn a bit from my own mistakes as an adult...

Let’s start with the end result of making all those mistakes, learning from them, and celebrating getting stronger! Talking about strength. we are now on Training Industries 2022 Watch List of Leadership Training companies. That puts DX as one of the top 40 leadership training companies in America. There are A LOT of leadership training companies, and we are one of the best. We are maturing fast as a 7-year-old! This was a proud day. The culmination of 7 years of hard work and the creation of a great culture, and a great team. 

First, I want to thank my team for making this happen as well as our customers, suppliers, fans and friends. This one is for us as a collective. We are working hard together to wipe out bad leadership, and every day at least one more person sees the light and turns their leadership around for the better.

Change 1, change 100. We change the trajectory of 10,000’s people every year. When a leader returns to the office after one of our programs and leads in a more people-first way, their team doesn’t leave work more stressed than when they came and we complete our purpose of making a difference through leadership training that works.

Remember, culture is a mirror of leadership. The shadow you leave behind you from how you think and behave, creates the mirror of how others will think and behave. Do not underestimate your influence.

Leadership is like cooking and golf; you can never perfect it, only improve.

So, like me, you do things right, you do things wrong, you keep on learning and you always seek to improve.

While we are seeing deserved success, that success comes from many mistakes I have made. Here are my top learnings from our past year in business. 

1. The need to have tough conversations – don’t let the courtesy bias or compassion get the better of you

Like many of you, I do my best not to be an asshole! However, on the flip side, I struggle with conflict. I struggle with having the difficult conversations that need to happen. It has haunted my past and reared its ugly head again this past year. I have a strong courtesy bias for my team. Funny, not as a facilitator! I have no issues telling the CEO of a Fortune 100 they suck, but I do with my own team!

It's better to be kind than to be nice.

Being nice and not telling team members what they need to know about performance issues all the while hoping they will just get better is not good for them, for you, or for the team. A tough conversation that could have happened earlier was delayed due to my own niceness. It's so important that information flows through a team effectively and efficiently. Everyone deserves the right to know what is working and what is not so they can do more of the good stuff and less of the bad. Also for others on the team to be honest with each other, the leader first needs to be honest. Psychological safety is compromised when the leader does not demonstrate the behaviors they expect of others and what is expected of them. Don’t hide opportunities for improvement from people because of your own issues with being truly honest for fear of how the person will receive what you have to say. More damage is done by holding back the truth. People will respect you more if you do and it’s just right. We are in a great position now and I will continue to work hard at this one.

A little advice on this one. Remember to ensure what you do say is the truth and not perception.

If you didn’t see it, NEVER give it. That is the rule of feedback.

Be kind. Don’t be nice. Say what people need to hear, not what they want to hear. 

Thank you Tanmay Vora for this sketch note on Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety.

We need to move our teams to the learning zone. By not being transparent and leading by example in being open and timely with feedback, teams can linger in the apathy or comfort zone. What can you do to move your team to the learning zone?

2. Balance – being present both at work and at home

If you are talking, thinking about talking, thinking about anything, writing, multi-tasking, what are you not doing? Listening. If you are not listening, how can you be present and connect with those you are with? 

Great illustration from CCL. We need to get below the surface to truly understand what is going on with those we serve.

I remember a time when I had balance. The first year of DX. It was only a friend of mine and I running the business. Life was simple. Ever since deciding to grow the business, a millisecond barely goes by when I am not thinking about something I need to do. As CEO, Head of Sales, Head of Marketing, Head of Design, CFO and lead facilitator, it’s too many hats. How can I be present when there is so much to do, so much to think about? Each one of those roles is a full-time job. I know what you are thinking and want to tell me! But we need significant resources to hire those positions. We are close. So, in the meantime my family has suffered. I am not present for my kids when they need me. Or for my wife when she needs me. I struggle to find time for non-work conversations with my team. I don’t speak to my friends as much as I did. I have a plan, and it starts by slowing down and being present for a few hours a week for my family. From that, I can grow. I received some great coaching on why I feel I must do everything: it’s based on a belief that if I don’t do it, we won’t make payroll. It’s an assumption that I am continuing to test as I learn to let go. Eventually, I’ll find out how wrong that belief is. Do any of you suffer from the same assumption?

I also am learning to say no. To say no, you first need "focus" and what you can say no to. We had lost our focus and what DX was all about.

We aspire to be the best leadership training company in the world.

We do leadership training that works. Due to how good we are to work with, clients had asked us to do things that were off this topic. We did it. I find it hard to say no! But that distracted us from our core purpose. So, as we return to our focus of being the best leadership training company in the world, I am happy to say no to anything that distracts us from achieving our purpose. My team now have the clarity to hold me accountable to that.

Be present. Find time to listen to those you serve at work and at home by not swaying from your core focus and learning to say no to anything that does. That will give you more time for the human stuff. Its the human stuff that we need more of.

3. Perspective – doing things alone will bite ya

“I made my decision; we are going with this supplier.” I will never forget the looks on people’s faces when I came out with that sentence. Luckily my team do feel they can speak up about important issues, and they did. They rejected my decision, told me I was wrong, and together we made the right decision. It can take a millisecond to lose the trust of a team you have spent years building. It took me a while to build back that trust.

A better way to go about decisions like this is to start with something like...

“My intention is to make a decision today on this supplier. While I have an inclination of which one is best, I would like to hear your opinions first.”

Versus

“I’ve spent the weekend thinking about this, and I’ve made my decision. We’re going with……”

This is best practice I learned from reading the book, “Turn this ship around”, by David Marquet. Highly recommend watching this video from the author.

Hero leadership is dead.

Stop trying to do it all yourself. You can’t, and they don’t want it either. This was a great reminder for me of what is modern leadership. Teams are full of IQ. The question is are you leveraging it? Being curious and leading with questions and not answers is what it takes to be a great leader. I led with an answer and not a question. I’ve taught myself to always try and be the last to speak. If I go first that anchors the team with my solution and might prevent better ideas from flourishing.

Just being curious makes you a better person, period.

I am lucky to have coaches, mentors, and a team whom I ask lots of questions. No ego here. I recently went to an annual retreat with many of our competitors. The CEO’s and leaders were so open. We wanted to help each other out. I came back with more ideas than I could implement, but it’s the mindset of “what can I learn”.

As Bill Nye once said, “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t”. The question is, are willing to find out. 

Be curious. Lead with questions and not answers.  

DX is thriving. Part of that success is staying humble. Being open to the fact I am imperfect. Taking time to reflect on my successes and mistakes. I am open to feedback and have a thirst for continuous improvement. I believe this embodies the growth mindset which leads to more success.

Stay humble. Let ego go by reflecting on your successes and failures and sharing those with those you serve. It’s a great way to....

stop trying to be interesting and start being curious and interested.

I'm working hard to

1. Be more honest
2. Be more present
3. Be more humble 

What are you working on? Please leave your answer in the comments and share the learnings with your network.