E102 – Preparing for Leadership featuring Craig P. Anderson

I’d like to begin this episode by acknowledging the land that I am learning and living on is the traditional un-ceded, un-surrendered territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin People.

Craig P. Anderson's journey from an aspiring high school teacher to leading a national sales team at JPMorgan Chase is a testament to the unpredictable paths leadership can take. His story of becoming an "accidental leader" reveals the complexity of emotions faced when stepping into leadership roles, highlighting the crucial balance between excitement and fear. Craig's insights emphasize the importance of recognizing leadership potential and preparing for the challenges that lie ahead. Through personal anecdotes, we explore the significance of learning from mistakes and the role of coaching in fast-tracking leadership capabilities.

Many organizations underestimate the value of sustained mentorship, viewing it as an expense rather than a long-term investment in effective leadership. We delve into strategies that can bridge this gap, advocating for ongoing support and structured programs to nurture the skills of young leaders, ensuring they are well-equipped to navigate the complexities of their roles.

Through compelling examples, including a cautionary tale from Canadian military history, we underscore the necessity for clarity and precision in leadership instructions. Emerging leaders are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and understand team dynamics, all while maintaining a clear focus on outcomes and priorities. By fostering intentional leadership and continuous learning, we aim to inspire leaders to pursue their roles with the right motivations, driving both personal and professional growth.

In this episode we'll discuss the following topics:
• Challenges that new leaders encounter in their roles  
• The gap in formal leadership training provided by organizations  
• The importance of investing in leadership development  
• Practical strategies for emerging leaders to build confidence  
• The necessity of mentorship and coaching in leadership  
• Understanding individual team members and tailoring support  
• Setting clear goals and expectations to improve team alignment  
• Continuous learning as a cornerstone of effective leadership

Chapters

• 0:07 Leadership Challenges for Emerging Leaders
• 8:47 Effective Leadership Development Strategies
• 14:41 Navigating Leadership Challenges for Emerging Leaders
• 23:54 Clarifying Expectations for Emerging Leaders
• 36:00 Navigating Challenges for Emerging Leaders

Transcript

Simon: 0:07

I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honoured to live and learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Glen the Narrator: 0:24

Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front produced by iGlenn Studios, a show for emerging leaders from all professions To hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs and are still learning along the way. And now here's your host, simon Cardinal.

Simon: 0:52

Hello and welcome to another episode of Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front. You know, feeling prepared for leader roles. Feeling, you know, feeling prepared for leadership roles, especially that first time as the leader. It can be exciting, it can be frightening, nerve wracking and full of elation, and it can be all of those things all at the same time. But before we can really prepare to be the leader, we need to know what the challenges are so we can learn how to work with them, and so in this episode, you'll hear from Craig P Anderson, a fellow podcast host, a leadership confidence coach and president of Clear Path Coaching. Craig will talk about his experiences and what he's seen as the biggest challenges to ensuring emerging leaders are prepared to take on that mantle of leadership. Craig will then offer advice and practical tools to help emergent leaders be prepared for these challenges, allowing them to be as effective as possible.

Simon: 1:49

Before we get into that, though, I would like to do the visual representation, and, as always, I'm wearing my black golf T-shirt with the red Trench Leadership logo over my heart, my glasses are black rimmed and I have gray hair on the sides of my head Far too much gray hair for my liking. My blood, my logo. In the background is a stone wall with the white trench leadership logo and highlighted in purple. Craig has a blue sweater on, looks like a light blue t-shirt, he's sitting in a chair high back, he has a black headphones, also wearing glasses, and I think he's got about the same amount of gray hair good or bad, I don't and it looks like he's got a bit of a gray wall in the backgrounds. So there we are, with that Now, as always, I try to be quiet and let the guest in on this. So now that's that opportunity for me to basically shut up and welcome Craig. Hey, craig, how are you?

Craig: 2:41

doing. Hey, good, I'm doing well, simon, thanks for having me today.

Simon: 2:45

Oh, I'm happy to do this, you and I. We've been doing this for a while and I mean we actually were all the way back in episode 30. That's really saying something. So thanks for coming back to the show and having a really amazing conversation.

Craig: 2:57

I think there was a little bit less gray hair when we did that first episode, Simon.

Simon: 3:01

I think most certainly there was definitely on my case, what can you do? And my beard's got a little more weight in it, but fortunately it's enough weight. It's almost hard to tell, so it's it's all good. Before we get into it, though, do you mind taking just a couple of minutes and tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey time, how we got to this point?

Craig: 3:18

Sure, simon I. I had a long unexpected journey. I called myself the accidental leader. I graduated from college with a degree in English, with aspirations to be a high school teacher and suddenly found myself a few years later the head of national sales for JPMorgan Chase's student loan business. I didn't really set out down that path, I didn't set out for a leadership role and in some ways it kind of happened.

Craig: 3:42

But through that journey there were a lot of struggles.

Craig: 3:45

I learned a lot of lessons the hard way and was better for it.

Craig: 3:50

But I will say there were a lot of sleepless nights and there were a lot of stress and no small amount of this gray hair came as a result of those escapades.

Craig: 3:59

So when, through a few more businesses after that, got to the point where, after the last business was sold, I realized the real joy that I was getting from work was helping to develop other people, helping to develop future leaders, and saw some commonalities of a lot of people didn't see themselves as leaders and see themselves having that potential. And even if they did, they didn't quite know what the next steps were. So I launched my business, clearpath Coaching and Consulting, to really help leaders grow faster so they don't have to learn the lessons. I did the hard way and that's really been the basis of both my coaching practice and my leadership training practices. Let's get you the skills that you need so that you can get out of the gate that much faster and really help your own team, start to grow and build your own career. So that's been the journey, and it's been a lot of unexpected surprises even through this aspect as well.

Simon: 4:57

Thanks so much for that. It's funny how these things roll out, because when you and I were chatting, you were a guest on my show and then you had another podcast with a co-host and stuff and that's since moved on to something else. Now you're doing this and it's funny how these connections through through these little weird worlds all bring us together and it's a little bit of what we're going to be talking about later on. So I just I like how these things work themselves out.

Craig: 5:19

Oh, me too. No, it's. It's funny how interconnected we are and how that's one of the joys I found in this is just finding different people with great stories and really learning from them and then taking those lessons and communicating them out. So it's just been fantastic.

Simon: 5:36

Oh, I completely agree. And with all of that, I'm just going to bash right into it and I'd like to ask you the question why do you find that leaders are unprepared to start in those first roles? It's.

Craig: 5:50

I think a lot of times what happens is we see people who are doing well strong individual performers and I see this a lot. I came up through a sales side of an organization and it's endemic in sales, but it's throughout other organizations as well. They see people who are great individual performers and they just assume well, they're great at that, so they're going to be great at leadership, Even though being a great leader is a completely different skillset from being a great salesperson or a great individual performer. Companies throw people into those roles and then they just kind of leave them to the wolves.

Craig: 6:27

There's not a lot of leadership training that companies put on the more experienced leaders. They kind of learned it the hard way. They didn't have somebody mentoring them, so they just kind of figure well, they'll figure it out. And the new leader was used to being incredibly successful on their own, so they don't want to ask for help and look like they shouldn't have been chosen for the role. So you have this confluence of events that no one is intentionally doing it with malice, but we're just not preparing leaders, and so you run into the problem. You know a bad leader or a bad manager is going to run people out of your organization, and that has a huge cost. So companies just aren't putting the effort there. It's mind-boggling to me why they don't. They'll do sales training, they'll do all kinds of other HR-related trainings, but when it comes to investing in leadership training, there just seems to be a gap.

Simon: 7:27

Yeah, and that gap is only getting worse.

Simon: 7:30

It's interesting that in 2012, a study had been taken or survey had been taken, rather and it found that the majority of leaders are not receiving their first formalized leadership training or education until the age of 42.

Simon: 7:42

The irony is, most people are entering the workforce in their early to mid 20s, so that's like 12 to 15 years of time that they're not getting any training, but have very likely at least achieved two to three tiers in whatever their organizations formal and I'm thinking in a military term so their formal chain of command. However, in 2021, the same survey was done and what they've found is actually gotten worse and turns out that it's more like 46 in the national average, and this is the United States, but I hazard a guess that Canada is very similar to that. So now we're talking about people that are already at the point they're thinking about retiring and now they're getting their first education. And I don't know about you, but I do know that if I've had a lot of time to create a bunch of bad habits or habits that feel familiar and are the easiest path, I'm probably going to take those ones, and that probably stands to reason that that's the case with many leaders. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Craig: 8:35

Well, it's so interesting to me. I have a son who's a naval officer young naval officer and he has received so much leadership training through his Navy ROTC program and getting in. They really are intentional about teaching people to lead leaders. Then I look at people who are graduating from the same colleges with business degrees, who have had no formal leadership training, and so we somehow have this disconnect where business just seems to think, well, they'll figure it out, but the armed forces look at it and say we're going to have 23-year-olds leading teams of 20 people. We better teach them what they need to know. And so business just seems to have that disconnect and I think business really believes that, because it's been so bad, everybody just figures well, I figured it out, they'll figure it out, and all you have left are kind of well.

Craig: 9:30

This is probably an overstatement that you have people who've kind of figured it out a bit and the really bad leaders have washed out. But I think that's an overstatement because there are a tremendous number of bad leaders, bad leadership being they don't know how to motivate people or they're very focused on kind of a well, I have the title, so do what I say kind of leadership which is not leadership, one that the millennial generation and Gen Z are even going to respond to for the most part, and companies just don't seem to see it there. And I think the other piece is, as they're driving towards profit, they're looking at that training not as an investment but as an expense, and it's hard to see the ROI of it. It's almost like what you really see is the negative ROI when they're driving people out of your organization. So they just seem blind to it.

Craig: 10:19

And this is across all levels, right, this is company businesses with 20 people and businesses with hundreds of people, and I just I'm kind of, I guess for me I saw that as an opportunity, right. So where can I come in and help you learn how to lead? The other thing I think they'll do a lot is just a workshop and then call it a day. So we gave you a workshop. What more do you want? We took you to disc and told you what you needed to do. So what's your problem?

Simon: 10:47

And you're absolutely right. There's always the the it's the expect, expectation of the quick fix. Oh, I gave you one day course, you're good to go. Or I gave you a three day course, you're on your way to have a good day, and now you're a leader, go forth and later you have been ordained. That's the way it's going to be and that's not ever the case. It takes time and quite often it's about that marathon and it's and it's the journey.

Simon: 11:10

When I was going through the military leadership training programs and stuff like that, it very much was they, you know, but this is what we're going to teach you to do for this trade and your rank position and the next one, uh, and it was very strong and very well built for that. It's quite robust, but it was also the blinders were on specific to what they needed me to do, to lead in certain ways, and that was fine, but then when I saw other opportunities that existed, honestly, that's how this podcast came about. So to help people see opportunities and options, I tried to combine those words at the same time. It did not work out well, so, and it's a challenge.

Craig: 11:52

I think it is, and it's actually I can't speak for how it is in Canada, but at least in the States a lot of big corporations love to hire retired military because they've already had leadership training and they don't have to invest in them. Now, as you noted, the way you run in the military is very different than the way a corporation runs. So even that's not a perfect transition and is going to take some adjustment. But to your other point that you made, the once and done training doesn't really work right. I mean, you're going to pick up something I think any training program. For the most part you're going to pick up one thing that you can use.

Craig: 12:26

But leadership is such a path and it's such a twisting and turning path that I think to be successful as a young leader, you really need somebody in your court who's there to help you along that path. You really need somebody in your court who's there to help you along that path, be that a mentor, be that a group of you know other leaders that you talk with and work things through with. Be that someone like me. You know a leadership coach. If you don't have those pieces in place to help you when you're running up into the real jams that you run into as a leader. It's going to be a tough road. It's, you know, and you can do it. You can probably come through the other side, but it's going to be a lot of sleepless nights. You know and I have this little crease right here that I, you know up to the center of my forehead that I'm convinced I got from one job. So it's, it's really it's such a disservice and I think we can do better.

Simon: 13:20

I completely agree. I also believe that the little gray line of hair that I have on the side of my head you can definitely tell the amount of stress I'm experiencing at work by the how high that white line is going up, and it's getting pretty high right now. So I totally get that. It's an interesting way to go about it.

Craig: 13:37

Yeah, oh yeah.

Simon: 13:39

I'm curious though so when we're talking about how new leaders are not really set up to succeed and stuff like that, and we're talking about the challenges, how can we help them get through some of these challenges?

Craig: 13:51

Sure. Well, that's where I see, as you know, one is let's get mentors, let's get our more experienced leaders in the organization, the ones who want to help, and get them out there on the front lines helping these leaders grow. The other thing I think we can do is put together either you know, I work with one company and it's just amazing to me they have a huge investment they make for kind of their mid-level managers, their early kind of the first really big leadership role they have kind of their mid-level managers, their early kind of the first really big leadership role they have, and they provide access to coaches for all those leaders where they can meet twice a month for an hour of leadership coaching and they get the coaching that they need when they need it right. So, as these issues are real and live, they are getting coaching all throughout the year, and this could be a six-month engagement, it could be a couple of years. It really just depends on where they're at, and what I find in that situation is one sometimes it's just looking at hey, what are my goals and how do I start moving along this path, but very often it's hey, I have this challenging situation or I have to have a difficult conversation how do I handle this? And they don't really have the life experience to really frame it. So having that coach is that sounding board is a huge piece. So I personally think one you really need that person in your life who's only goal is your success. They don't really care about anything else, about any other people. They want to see you succeed, and that's what their commitment is.

Craig: 15:20

I think that's a piece of it, and I believe too and this is why I created my training program is you do need some entry-level training. You do need kind of 12 weeks of training of just kind of the basic nuts and bolts of what leadership is, ranging from things like, you know, mindset. You know how do you maintain a positive mindset as a leader so that you can be a positive influence for your teams? How do you do things that everyone thinks like delegation is just giving people what to do, and it's so much more complicated than that. How do we build in for people, how to delegate effectively, how to set goals, how to have one-on-ones, how to have accountability conversations with people, and then how do you wrap all this together so you can create common visions for your teams and common missions that they can all get behind.

Craig: 16:08

We've done so much work over the last 15 years around employee engagement, and the number one predictor of employee engagement success is that the team is aligned with the vision. If the vision is not clear, they can't come along and nobody thinks about that necessarily as part of their leadership role. So where we can get the basic blocking and tackling in, along with an ongoing mentorship or leadership coaching practice, that's where I think they can really start making great strides and maybe avoid some of those mistakes. You know you, you turn around and make one bad decision that's avoidable or create a situation where one good teammate leaves because your leadership style is just too smothering and the company now has huge expenses to replace those people. It's a real financial investment. It's a financial detriment if they don't make these decisions. Investment if they. It's a financial detriment if they don't make these decisions.

Simon: 17:01

Oh, absolutely, and understanding, like you said, it's it's an investment and how on in their, their people, and I also think that there's other add-ons in that. That builds loyalty in the company and the team and and the individual say, okay, the, the company, the organization is willing to invest in me. Maybe, maybe I should stick around for a while. Maybe this is worth sticking around for a while, because right now it is definitely the, the, the workers environment to to get the jobs there. There are plenty of opportunities out there and people are less inclined to stay at a job forever.

Simon: 17:31

Gone are the days where you, you, you go to high school, you go to college, go to university, get your job, state your job until they kick you out or you're 65. And then you just kind of go to Florida, go to Florida or Arizona, depending what your preference is, and that's it. Like those days are over. People will very happily bounce around jobs and not worry about sticking it out for 20 or 30 years. The security is important, but it's not one of the top priorities Most often. I don't want to. I'm generalizing. I recognize that.

Craig: 18:04

Yeah, I think there's from when you some of the research I've read around, kind of the younger generations and how they're viewing things. There's kind of it seems like there's two camps right now. There's the one camp that has just seen all the upheaval in the world over the last 20 years, from the 2008, 2010 economic messes to the layoffs we're experiencing today and they're looking at the workforce and saying, hey, look, I just want security, I just want something where I know I'm going to be there for a while. But then, on the other hand, you have another group in there that looks at it to say, hey, look, in this world of remote work, I can change jobs at a fairly low cost. Right, I'm still going to sit in my home office three days a week and I can kind of do what I'm still doing, but I can do it for, you know, a thousand dollars or $500 more a month. I can do it because I just can't stand my boss. Making those leaps is really easy for them, so they're going to find the company that maybe they will provide me some additional resources for me to learn and grow.

Craig: 19:02

And I do think, on both sides of that equation, that investment in someone, someone investing in them to learn and grow is a huge desire for that group. They want to know that you're investing in them. You know they want to get the certificates. They want to get the certifications that they can put on their LinkedIn page, and so they're looking for companies that will invest in them. They want to get the certificates, they want to get the certifications that they can put on their LinkedIn page, and so they're looking for companies that will invest in them.

Craig: 19:24

And there's been a lot of investment over the last several years and I think that investment an employee, knowing they're being invested in for their own growth, professional development that's almost as good a salary for some of them. I mean, it probably wouldn't replace it. Everybody wants more money, but knowing that you're investing in them and you're teeing them up for the long haul is going to give them a little more tackiness, a little more stickiness to your organization when times get tough and that is again. Replacing somebody is a huge expense in time and lost productivity, so why don't we just work a little harder to keep them around?

Glen the Narrator: 20:02

Oh, hello there. It's Glenn, the voiceover artist, and if you're hearing me, that means we're at the midpoint of this episode. Do you have an idea for an episode that you feel is vital for emerging leaders? Leave the idea in the comment section and, if your topic is chosen, you will have the opportunity to join us as a co-host during the recording session. So drop us a note and let's talk. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you, and if you feel we've earned it, please tell your friends and leave a review to help us grow our following. And now back to the show.

Simon: 20:42

Yeah, absolutely, I completely agree, and it is a challenge to for some organizations to see that I think, more often than not, we're starting to see. Well, I will say I think that when COVID happened organizations at the higher levels there was a realization of the importance of everyone in the team and how, you know, everyone has a job to perform and it needs to be there. I was hoping that would stick. It looks like, just based off some of the articles I've read, that people are starting to remember the way things used to be and things are starting to slide back and forth. I hope it ends up into a middle ground where it ultimately works out to be some type of symbiotic relationship that works for all parties as best as possible, recognizing that getting everything perfect for everyone is very challenging at times.

Craig: 21:29

Yeah, we've definitely seen the big companies are kind of looking at it already and saying, all right, well, I'm a little less desperate than I was. So you know that pendulum is starting to swing back towards an employer side no-transcript, but we're going to see. I would hope we're not going to go all the way back to where we were and you know, with any luck, just as an aside, we won't go back to the fully open office space either. So we'll try and get some things a little right. But I think we're going to see a little more equilibrium instead of this heavy weightedness towards the employee side that we've seen. And it's all cyclical, it comes around right. So we'll hopefully we'll get to a happy middle and let that exist for a while, where we're investing in the employees, putting a little more accountability on them to kind of be present and to show up, but on the other hand still trying to find some ways to give them some flexibility.

Simon: 22:46

And that flexibility is absolutely vital for a new leader to keep in the back of their pocket when they are being faced with challenges, because quite often, a lot of the challenges are the fact that they just don't know what's going on and, partly because it's new, they're new to a role partly because the emerging leaders aren't given the whole picture, because there might be an impression Well, who knows, it doesn't matter why they're not given the whole picture or don't see it, it doesn't matter. But to be able to get through those challenges, my perception is that it's about being flexible with finding out how to go forward, how to resolve the challenges and even the speed that that's going to take. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Craig: 23:23

Well, I you know, one thought from what you said there is, I think, new leaders, when they're struggling through leading a team, right, they, they're going to, they're going to lean into control. They're wanting to, they're going to want to stay on top, be kind of that helicopter boss, because they're a little bit afraid. Hey, I was this independent performer, I did it this way, so that's the only way. So do it my way, and then I'm going to sit on top of you to make sure you do it. That's another one of those skillset opportunities for that leader to understand. You know, what we're really trying to drive through, especially today, is it's not about, it's not about how many hours you sat at your desk, it's about what are you producing. Now, old guys like me may still say, geez, I still would expect you to work 40 hours a week, but I don't think that's the world we're in. And right now we're looking to say, all right, let's tee up what the outputs are, what the outcomes are, and give people the ability to do it. And we have to teach the new leaders to say hey, where can you give the flexibility? Going back to, how do you create the vision for what the output looks like. If I can tell you when I need it what I want it to look like on the back end, how much do I really want to care if you're doing that at nine o'clock in the morning or nine o'clock at night, as long as you're focused on it when you're doing it and you hit my deadline and you hit my standard that I set for it. So you think about that. One you have to give some leadership confidence to realize that's the mindset piece of learning to trust people to deliver results, because we hired good people and we did the right thing. Two, it also gets to the ability to communicate clearly. What your vision is is the leader. These are the end games we're trying to get to. These are the outputs we're trying to get to. So those are two core skill sets that we need to teach those new leaders around having that mindset of how to get deliverables. And then two, how to communicate, exactly what it is we want A quick example.

Craig: 25:16

I had a person, a client I was coaching, who thought he was really all over it. He he said to his employees, you know, when he started out, he said all right, here's my number one rule I don't like surprises and he thought, nailed it. I've told them I don't like surprises. Go Right and yeah. And then found out they kept getting surprised.

Craig: 25:39

Well, no surprises has a lot of ways that it can be interpreted. No surprises could be. You better cover it up and fix it as fast as possible, before it hits my desk or when things start going awry. Give me a quick email and let me know what's going on. What's the scale of a surprise, right? Is a surprise that three workers were late today, or is it a surprise that we missed a huge we're going to miss a huge deadline?

Craig: 26:03

So one of the things we had to work with them on was we need to build more clarity into what we mean by I don't like to be surprised, which, honestly, was even a bit of an opportunity for them to get it fixed in their mind what a surprise is. And then, once they knew that and they were clear in their head, then you're communicating that out to the teammates. That's the real trick. So a lot of times, I think the leaders think they're being really clear because it's locked in in their head what they think it is, but if they haven't communicated it effectively, they're going to end up looking around going. Why are you guys not doing what I asked you to do?

Simon: 26:44

Yeah, and that's the big trick in that I was pulling up something on the on my phone here to find an example to talk about the in what, what a message could mean, and when it's coming from a leader it's hard to cause. It can mean so many different things and if you don't ask the questions then that can be a challenge. And I think a lot of the times the challenge with that is sometimes new leaders don't even know they have a question to ask, especially if it's that first couple of steps, right from when they were a technical person, like they were strictly a team worker, and and all of a sudden you're expected to look, start looking at things from a different perspective, from that broader scope that's. That can be challenging, not necessarily for everyone, but that can certainly be challenging. And when the leader is giving vague, potentially cryptic types of statements, that has dangerous written all over it.

Simon: 27:30

And the example I was thinking of in Canada, a Canadian example that would be back in the late 90s sorry, early late 80s, early 90s the Canadian airborne had been deployed to Somalia to do peacekeeping there and it was a lawless area. It was not going well and some of the officers got got up and said okay, we're to stop a bunch of the looting that was happening in the camp. We were going to authorize you to do what you need to do to stop it. That was the order. Yeah, so we're talking about yeah. And so when the assumption had been been okay, do what you need to do, don't you know, be careful about those types of things. But what ended up happening was, uh, there had been many instances of abuse and actually one 16 year old who had broken into the camp by the, a 16 year old by the name of shidane Arone I still remember his name had been tortured and eventually murdered.

Simon: 28:29

And yeah, it's not. It's definitely a black stain on the Canadian military. I'm not telling anything that's not available on the internet. So now I'm not suggesting that is any way an example of how the Canadian armed forces operates. It's. It's a very proud, professional, strong forces, but that doesn't change the fact that this happened and when this happened, it actually resulted in the canadian airborne regiment getting completely disbanded. There were other instances of other problems as well, but that was the main thing that kind of caused the whole thing to happen. So, but imagine, had the orders been okay? If someone is is caught in the camp stealing something, detain that person and we'll hold that person there until the authorities come or do whatever clearer, crisper orders. That probably would have helped go a long way to ensuring that the soldiers, who are normally very professional in their manner, even entered very difficult, very stressful trying times, would be able to react in a way that was more commensurate with how that regiment acted. Does that make any sense? I'm kind of rambling a little bit.

Craig: 29:33

No, I think it does right. Leadership is a high stakes game and, you know, especially in times of turmoil and high stress. Again, this gets back into why we have to teach leaders how to keep their mindset focused and growing. Because if that in the moment when it's all tense and it's, you start issuing proclamations and they're not well thought through which I think is ultimately what that example is, if you even go back on the other end of severity, you know I don't remember everything from seven habits of highly effective people, but the one thing I've always retained is when he talked about having his son wanted to make some money.

Craig: 30:11

So he said well, you can mow the lawn. And so he sends the kid out to mow the lawn. He does a horrible job. He misses spots, there's grass clippings everywhere, it's just a hot mess. So he has.

Craig: 30:19

He realizes he has to go out and say to the kid this is what success looks like. And goes into this kind of clean, you know, mean and green, lean and green, something like that, and gets very descriptive about what the outcome needs to be. He doesn't say go left to right and up and down. He just this is what I want it to look like, and now you take that same lack of focus in your direction to the level that you're talking about and people are going to interpret. So that's why we have to be really clear about what the outcomes are.

Craig: 30:48

I don't really necessarily care how you do it within certain boundaries of ethics and laws and other things, but I need to be very clear of what it is right.

Craig: 30:57

We need to stop this problem. This is how we're going to stop this problem. You know, one of the things I work with with some of my business clients is laying out not just the goals for the business and the priority projects, but what are the hows of the business, how do we run the business? And to think about when we grow business, we do it this way, this way and this way, which also tells us how we don't grow business, and these are important things for us to get clear on as leaders in our own heads, and these are important things for us to get clear on as leaders in our own heads. And then we have to communicate that on a regular basis so our teams understand what it is we want them to do, how we want them to get things done, set the boundaries, set the parameters and then set what the deliverables look like and then let them go. They can probably figure out a lot more efficiencies than I can at this point.

Simon: 31:43

Oh yeah, absolutely, and that's the thing it's all about knowing. My. My advice for emerging leaders and when we are setting these parameters, is knowing, knowing what's going on and having a look. Don't maybe not necessarily rush into going and making decisions on how you want things done or start barking out orders. Take a second look at it, look at the person that you're going to be dealing with, and then make some choices and then start acting. My response to most things or try to be is to take a breath, take a step back and look at the whole picture and then move forward. Sometimes you need to go quickly I get that, but there's always time to take a breath and think about what's happening and then make some type of action from there.

Craig: 32:24

Right. I mean that's a level of discernment from the leader and emerging leaders. That's a growing skill, right? It's hey if a steel beam is swinging at you and I yelled if you hear me yell duck, just duck.

Craig: 32:37

But most situations aren't that urgent in business. We feel that they're urgent because everything is managed by quarter and everybody's worried about getting busted for this thing or the other thing, and that could get us into a whole discussion of corporate culture, which is not a rabbit hole I want to go down right now. But we need to understand when are the things where we have to be very descriptive and very urgent? And the reality is there aren't many things that are super urgent that have to be responded to immediately. Take the time to think it through and if you've set up ahead of time here's the things that are important, here's the hows, here's the priorities and really think that through and you're super clear on it and you've given the vision to your team about what that looks like and you communicate it, by the way, a lot, then people can start making decisions. That's how you want your company to run.

Craig: 33:24

If you want a company where you're telling everybody how to do everything all the time, one is going to be a miserable place to work and two, you're going to be miserable and exhausted.

Craig: 33:34

You need to create systems and structures, to create, to clarify the vision of what things need to look like, what the objectives are, so we know what the things are that we want to, the hows of how we're going to do things, what are the rules of the road for how we act, and then what are the things we need to build to be able to act that way and to hit those goals that way. When that's clear and when you're good and clear on that as the leader be you an emerging leader or a CEO that frees up your team's ability to make decisions within those contexts, and that's what allows them to just get things done and not knock on your door every 20 minutes to say, hey, you know, you didn't indicate that when it was 82 degrees outside and the windows were open if we should turn the air conditioning on or not, so I need to know what I should do with that. Why give them the success framework, give them the boundaries, give them the box and let them go crazy in the box. They'll deliver for you.

Simon: 34:30

Yeah. So I completely agree. It's about that giving them that little bit of faith. I don't even want to say a little bit of rope. It's about giving them a little bit of faith to go and know that they can go and have a little bit of autonomy. Yes, the leader has to keep an eye on things instead, but that's the leader's role is to make sure that people are doing their things and things are going well.

Simon: 34:48

The big trick, one of the strengths of the Canadian and the US military's formalized military training programs, is that the courses help people. They set them up to go and actually fail in some type of program. For in the beginning courses the junior leadership courses quite often the coursing will revolve around small party taskings being the ultimate portion of the training, and it's go out and do this thing, and the tasking is, more often than not, laid out in such a way that it's almost ridiculous. It's not something you would actually run into in the real world, or it is, but it's you're super busy, so it's almost trying to set you up to fail. But it's that failure is to teach you how you're going to react to those moments, how to be flexible, how to understand you're going to be thinking and moving forward. That's great to do now. That's all fine and dandy in a program where we're not worried about all kinds you know, profit driven-driven margins and all those types of things. But at the same token I think that's a lot of the reasons why organizations appreciate the military's experiences, because we've had those experiences to get through them, and it's formalized and it's helpful All of that to have been said.

Simon: 36:00

The big point in all that in my very long-winded Simon way way, was to say that at an organization it's important to understand that your team will learn. They will make mistakes, and that's okay. Negligence is different than an honest error, of course, but that's okay. It's about managing when that's going to happen. And it's a tough balance, especially if 10 minutes earlier you were the person who was doing the work and now all of a sudden you're expected to oversee it.

Craig: 36:27

It is One of the things as you were talking through. That is something that got me triggered, thinking about some of the things that I talk to leaders about, and it's a little, I wouldn't say, old school, but there's a model called situational leadership which really walks through how you delegate and how you oversee people, and the axes of this model are directed behaviors and supportive behaviors, and it's how directive you have to be and then you ultimately want to get to the point where you're moving into completely supportive behaviors, because the person is just moving along and there's different ways you act depending on where they're at in the continuum from your perspective. But there's also a flip side of that some of the obligations of the employee themselves and where they're at and where their growth capabilities are. So this is a tricky thing if you're an emerging leader and the chances are if you're an emerging leader, you are overseeing a lot of task-focused individuals, so they're all going to be at different places, they're all going to be in different phases and it's it's really being self-aware and being cognizant of that and then treating everybody individually. Certainly, we all have top level goals. We all have numbers. We want them to hit, but getting them there is going to be very different based on where they're at in their cycle.

Craig: 37:43

And the crazy thing that people don't realize is it may well be I've got you all the way along on a support move to purely a supportive behavior structure on a certain task and that's great. But someday I'm going to give you a new task and it goes all the way back to the beginning. Everything in delegation is about making sure you're working with them where they are and that's how you. That's. That's a skill and it's an awareness to realize. Not everybody is like you. Not everybody picks it up as fast as you did when you started doing it. Nobody has the same challenges that you had as you were going through it and nobody can do it the way you did. Everybody has their own uniqueness and you've got to realize you have to create frameworks for them to work within who they are, but also keep them focused on where they need to be going.

Simon: 38:33

Yeah, and then that focus is so challenging because quite often we're feeling a lot of stress and all the differences Talking about that focus. How might we offer a couple of points of advice to help emerging leaders deal with that focus as they're experiencing all the things we've chatted about in this episode?

Craig: 38:59

One. I want to work with these new leaders to help them build self-awareness of where their own behaviors are. They need to really start learning first how to be aware of where their reactions are coming from. What's driving them. It's so important to know how you are driven because then you can better understand why you're reacting the way you are to different scenarios and situations. So thing one, thing one is build self-awareness. Thing two is start understanding where your people are so that you know where you need to be with them. And three although I probably make this number one as I'm kind of doing this off the top of my head, simon number one is to be really clear on what the outcomes are.

Craig: 39:41

Be really clear on what you're trying to get done Now. If you're trying to get done Now, if you're an early level, low level manager, make sure you get from your boss what success looks like. Make sure you understand it from them and then take that down to the level of your team and get those visions outlined for everybody and those hows outlined for everybody so they know and what the priorities are, so everybody knows what to pay attention to. It's so easy for pet projects and rabbit holes to take up so much time if we're not clear on what those things are. So I would say it is really get clear on the vision and the hows so you can communicate that effectively. Be self-aware so you know why you're reacting the way you're reacting. And then get to know your people so you know where they are, so you can meet them where they are and help support them to help all of you succeed together. Those would be the three things I think leaders really should focus on early on in their career.

Simon: 40:36

I appreciate that. I've written those down and those will be a part of the outro, so thank very much for that.

Craig: 40:42

Sure.

Simon: 40:43

We've been having a great conversation. We've talked about the challenges that emerging leaders feel and see and, in a general sense, of course, we've talked about some of the practical ways that they can actually work within these challenges to make them as successful as possible.

Craig: 41:01

So before we move into the lightning round, do you have any types of final thoughts at all? I would say the final thought is leadership is not a happy accident. Things don't really just happen. It's about really being intentional and studying leadership. I did so much reading early on in my career on what leadership was about because, again, I wasn't getting the training anywhere else.

Craig: 41:23

So you need to take responsibility for your own development and if you're not going to get it through your employer, find other ways you can get it. Take, you know, if you see online free opportunities for leadership training, if you can get some of the great leadership books, that's another way. Read through those leadership books, develop yourself, develop that self-awareness, develop leadership skills and be a sponge for learning. A lot of times I think people rise up to the leadership level because they're like well, I want to be in charge and I want to make more money. Those are the worst kind of leaders because they're getting into it for the wrong reasons. Leadership is actually harder for what you're getting paid to do it, because now you're carrying the weight of all this responsibility. So build your own knowledge base and then build that network of support, Be that through other leaders that are kind of in your cohort, be that through a mentor or be that through a coach. Find that way so you don't feel so alone.

Simon: 42:16

Well, listen, Craig, we have had a fantastic chat Before we sign off. If people want to reach out to you, if they want to engage you in your services or have a conversation, how might they do that?

Craig: 42:28

The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. It's just Craig P Anderson on LinkedIn. Find me there. And one of the things, Simon, you know, as I mentioned a couple of times in here, I do have a leadership training program, but one of the things I really realized was the biggest challenge I find with so many of my clients is how to have difficult conversations and that accountability conversation. So I stripped it out and I just do a free workshop every month on how to have difficult conversations and they can find that information at clear path coachescom slash conversation.

Simon: 43:00

Thank you so much for that. Of course, links to all the ways people can connect with you will be inside the show notes. Thanks again, Craig, for this conversation. As always, it's a pleasure and I hope that we can have a third attack at this down the road.

Craig: 43:14

Thank you so much, Simon. It was great to talk to you again.

Simon: 43:19

Take care wrap from the front. In this episode, Craig talked about the challenges that emerging leaders could potentially face, and we also offered some of the ways that you may be able to deal with those challenges as best you can, keeping in mind that it's mostly about being flexible and communicating. These are not new themes in the podcast, or are they in leadership or any type of environment that you'll find yourself in. Thanks for tuning in and remember leadership without passion limits the depth of your vision.

Glen the Narrator: 43:52

Never miss an episode by following us on all of your favorite feeds. While you're there, please consider leaving an episode review and let us know what topics you would like to hear about. And let us know what topics you would like to hear about. Be sure to join us next week with your host, simon Cardinal, for another episode of Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front Produced by iGlenn Studios. Music provided by Ashimel of Music.