Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to five minute rants guys, welcome back to THE a.m.

So today, guys, I’m actually going to talk about some leadership principles, and I want to talk about one of the hardest struggles in leadership, when leading people, and it’s this, it’s letting go of the task at hand and the goal to allow others to step in, to grow and to flourish.

And that process is very difficult for a couple of reasons. One, oftentimes in leadership, we actually haven’t franchised the work. And what does that mean? We don’t have any processes. There’s nothing tangible for the individual that we have hired or are a part of the team. We haven’t made anything for them to actually succeed. We just said, Hey, this is the job. Do it, and we haven’t set expectations. We haven’t set boundaries. None of this stuff is in writing. There’s no There’s no system to any of this. And as a result, it’s like, Oh no, I don’t want to let them do it. They’re going to fail. They’re going to fail. Well, you set them up for failure. If you’re the leader in that position, you’ve set them up.

You at least haven’t said, Hey, listen, I don’t have anything built for this. Why don’t we work together to build something to where there’s actually a system to doing this, into accomplishing goals like this. The other reason why it’s hard is because we value perfection over people. Is how I would say that we value perfection over people, well, they’re not going to do as good of a job as I am, of course, because you’re always going to do the better job. That’s how life works, right? That’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, because you’re the best rocket scientist out there. So that’s why you’re not a rocket scientist, or maybe you are, and that’s why you’re the world’s best painter. Like, let’s objectively think about this.

If you were the best and the end all be all would you be doing what you’re doing right now, or would you be leading whatever country you live in, right? Think about that. And I also think it’s very important to let people fail. We don’t want to let people fail, and we don’t value their failure. We don’t value investing in them for them to actually grow, to become the team member that they need to be in order for the whole company to succeed.

Here’s where failure doesn’t work. You let people fail. They don’t learn. They keep repeating the same mistake. That’s different, but if you have the right people on your team, failure is like an accelerator to growth. Oh, I failed. Oh, cool. Let me improve, and you’ll find out that most failures are easily correctable with the correct oversight. So you can let people be free to do the work that they can do, and that they either can do better than you or will become better than you over time if you get out of the way. And so it’s really letting go to give others a chance to really flourish and succeed.

That is one of the biggest principles in leadership that you can have and to really help people and really facilitate people succeeding and growing in life. And this is your man if you’re raising children, this is one of the things you need to do for children, let them fail. Oftentimes, we are crippling the people that we’re leading because we won’t let them fail as a human being, I need failure in my life in order to progress. I just did an episode about friction and problems and growth, you need that stuff.

There were studies done on why children from Japan just absolutely destroy us in the US when it comes to math, in the math competitions. The reason why is because teachers in Japan purposely do not give their students the answer. Think about that. They also purposely and intentionally induce hardship, problems and failure into their practice. So they’ll give wrong answers on purpose and make things up to where it forces friction in their life. And that’s what we need.

So if you’re leading people, if you are helping people develop, let them fail. And if failure is going to cause like cataclysmic like, there’s there’s times where you know you don’t want people to fail, like heart surgery, right? Somebody’s life is on the line. There’s things like that. However, create an environment where there’s safety to fail. Create an environment where failing is celebrated, but there’s also a safety net. So it’s not world ending for the individual failing, and it’s not world ending for the client, or it’s not world ending for the outcome of whatever work you’re doing. And it’s so important to do that.

And so if you’re not in a place that isn’t safe to fail cool, you can’t do that, but build that, create that, whatever that is, because failure is so needed, and teams become united through hardship, every team that I’ve been a part of when there’s real hardship, and everybody’s pushed through, whether it’s hard work, hard job, whatever it is, and we have pushed through and won together. You talk about unity coming through the team in a much greater way.

And so. I’m saying all of that because if you’re in a position of leadership, you’ve really got to let go and get out of the way so others can really flourish and grow. And failure is going to be a part of that, and it’s going to be okay

Anyways, guys, I’m out of time. Catch you later. Peace.