Mastering the Tech Leadership Walk

Leadership from your butt just doesn’t work! The most effective leaders do more than just fill a seat in an office.

If you want people to be following you, you need to be going somewhere. You need to be walking. Yet your walk also has to be productive and effective; there is an art to it. In this episode, Paul Simkins talks about the keys to making the most of your leadership walk.

Plus, a great recipe for Ozark Winter Chili from The Geezer’s Cookbook.
And if you have a favorite outdoor cooking recipe you would like to share, send it to paul@BoldlyLead.com. If we put it in an episode we'll let you know and give you credit for it on the show.

You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.

Join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
Learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.

We happily work with Buzzsprout for our podcast. See how they can help you and get a $20 Amazon Gift Card after you pay your second invoice!

https://vurbl.com/station/95YvXaxkEIl/

Transcript

Producer: 0:00

The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the bully LEAD program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees, so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at night.

Paul Simkins: 0:22

Hello, and welcome to the tech leaders toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow. This is Episode 53 of the podcast. And I'll be blunt leadership from your butt just doesn't work. If you want people to be following you, you need to be going somewhere metaphorically and often physically. Today, we're going to talk about how you can master walking like leaders walk. Plus, I have a great recipe for Ozark winter chili that I got from the geezers cookbook, are you ready? Let's go. Leaders walk. It's that simple. You can't possibly lead effectively sitting in one place, you can't be secluded behind closed doors or huddled behind your desk. Now, let's be real though there are times where a little enter uninterrupted office time is necessary. We all need to do that we need to leaders need to spend time visioning the future, planning the day determining how to best navigate for your team. And you may even have a little bit of paperwork that needs to be done here and there depending on the role you play. But in the long run, everyone is more effective. When leaders walk, the organization is better off the team, individual employees, and even the leader is better off. But it's not just a matter of walking. It's a matter of where you walk. It's a matter of how you walk. Who do you walk with what you do while you're walking. All of that makes the difference between idle walking around and leading. Being where your people are is critical. In their flagship book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman popularized the term management by wandering around. And by the way, if you haven't read it yet, you really need to add that book to your leaders must read list, along with Tom Peters latest book, the excellence dividend. Both are excellent books. Now the whole concept behind the term management by wandering around is that managers can best lead their people when they are where the people are. The managers are accessible, they see what's happening, it's easier to spot problems. And more to the point, it's a very effective way to discover what employees are experiencing. You see what their day is like, instead of simply reading a summation on a report. If you want to navigate for your team, you have to not only see the horizon, but you got to know where the ship is. Now. numbers don't tell you that your people do. In addition to wandering around, leaders also choose to walk along. Now you may have the vision as of a leader is someone who walks ahead of others, they're always looking behind them and urging others to catch up and keep moving. But they're always ahead. After all, if you're leading them then you're out in front, right. But the reality is that a leader is most effective when they're walking beside others, or inviting others to walk along with him. Shouting instructions or encouragement from further up the road doesn't make people feel like a part of the journey. And in fact, often it's quite the opposite. Instead of getting them to close the distance, it actually makes them feel the distance more acutely. They don't feel a part of things. Instead, they feel like they're being dragged along for the ride. like a little kid having to go along to great and Anna's house where she kisses you on the cheeks and leaves smears of lipstick and smells like licorice. years ago Stanley ot wrote a book called The joy of discipling. Now it's a faith oriented book. And if you're a faith oriented person, I highly recommend it. It's not a long book, but it's definitely a powerful book. And in this book Stanley talk describes the premise of discipling as teaching or guiding others It's through a with me approach, bringing them along with you, but also walking along with them. For the journey is not for one person. But for both of you. And along the way, both of you grow. And that's what leadership within an organization with a team is all about. You are walking alongside people. And as a result, they become better. They, the organization becomes better, because all of the individual team members become better and are able to work together more effectively. And you become better as a result as well. So it's the ultimate win win situation. So as a leader, your objective is not to be out front. It's to be beside others. It's not to say I have all the answers, it's to say, let's find the answers together. See, it's the challenge to bring them along with you on your journey, yet at the same time, exploring their journey as well. And we've talked about this in the past that it's all about understanding their journey, helping them get along in their journey of where they want to be what they want to be able to do, that's going to help them grow. And it's going to help them be able to be more and do more for the team. And that last part is critical. If the relationship only benefits you, then the other person is going to lose interest. A leader brings others along to help the team get where they're going. Yet they also perform the vital work of showing the way to where the person is going. So it means you have to care for them. You have to know their story. You have to get to know where they've been, and want to know where they want to go and be willing to help them get there. And at all times, being a leader requires having someone with you. Otherwise, all you're doing is taking a lonely walk. One of my mentors, john Maxwell says if you think you're a leader, and there's no one behind you, then you're just taking a walk, or in this case beside you. So the objective is to always have someone with you, even as you learn discovery as a team or a group is so much more productive, and so much more rewarding. So, does this mean that you spend all of your time walking with everyone would really leave you much time for anything else would it? Not only that, but you know, not everyone will want to take that walk. You won't always have a team filled with people with great attitudes, tremendous work ethic, camaraderie, and ambition. And that's a thing. Yeah, a lot of times with what we hear with people presenting, building elite teams and everything else and and the thing you got to remember is is that in a perfect world, yeah, you can have an elite team that's filled with nothing but high performers. But we don't live in a perfect world. And you're not going to have it. So understand that your team is going to be filled sometimes with people that are okay performers, as well as high performers. And sometimes you're going to have people that are underperforming. And even more realistic, especially if you didn't have the ability to pick your team. You're going to have the slouches as well. So if your job as a leader is to walk with people, does that mean you'll walk with a slouches as well as the stars? Well, of course, the answer is no. As a leader, you've got great demands on your time you got a lot you got to do. You know we talked about that earlier, you're spending time visioning. You're spending time looking for where the team needs to go. You spending time navigating for them. You have a lot of demands on your time. walking alongside others takes energy. It takes time. It takes commitment. So you opt to invite people to walk along with you who will benefit the most from it. And notice I didn't say that you would benefit the most from you invite people to walk along with you who will benefit the most from it. You look for people that have the right mindset to be a good walking partner with you. So here are some of the signs that you want to look for, to identify those good walking partners. First of all, you want somebody who has what we call a teachable spirit. What does that mean? That means that they need to be willing to learn along the way, they need to be willing to understand that the way they're doing, it may not be the best way. And they have to make changes. So along with that, it means they also have to be open to discomfort. growth happens when we are uncomfortable. In fact, I would venture to say, you can't grow and be comfortable at the same time. You can't settle in and then learn and grow, it just doesn't happen. So anybody that you want, as a walking partner that you want walking along with you, they need to be open to discomfort, not they don't have to like it. Nobody likes being uncomfortable. You certainly don't, I don't, nobody likes it. But you have to be willing to endure it and open to it. So they need a teachable spirit, they need to be open to discomfort, they also need a desire to pass it along. Because ultimately, as a leader, you're not looking to build followers. followers are easy, you can find them anywhere. There's always somebody who is willing to follow somebody along sales along and do whatever they you tell them to do, because it saves them from thinking and it saves them from the effort of having to grow. But that's not what you're looking for. You're looking to build other leaders up. So they have to not only be open to their own growth, open to discomfort, but they have to have a desire to pass it along to others. Because what you're building is a network of leaders, not just a group of followers. And finally, they need to have a passion for service. If someone is looking to walk alongside you, just for their own personal gain, they're not going to be very helpful in meeting your goals or the team objectives. They have to be willing to be of service, as well as open to being served. And that's one of the things I think is, is a big challenge today because a lot of people really look towards their own achievement and their own personal gain. Being part of a team just means that there's other people you hang around with while you try to get your way. And real elite teams are the people are full of people that look to serve everyone else. And are open to being of service. So where all of this fits in, is in the execution. By wandering around, you're able to discover these people who meet the requirements for a good walking partner. You'll find out how they can best serve the team, you'll find out their goals, you'll find you'll learn about their personal goals. And you'll find out how they can best serve the team goals. And once you find them, you can then invite them to join you on the journey. So a couple of questions I want to leave you with to think about here as we close up. Who are you bringing beside you right now? Are you helping them on their journey? Or are you just dragging them along on yours? leaders walk I'll be back in a moment.

Producer: 14:30

While you're here, take a moment right now to subscribe to the tech leaders toolbox podcast and leave a review. That way, you will always be up to date on the bold and innovative leadership principles we are sharing here and come join the tech leaders toolbox Facebook group as well, where you and other leaders discuss these concepts in more detail. And we answer your questions. Subscribe today and share this with your friends.

Paul Simkins: 14:58

All right so we Hit the part of the show is, for those of you who have listened to the podcast before, know that I am a huge fan of outdoor cooking. I do all kinds of outdoor cooking, I love to do it. Any opportunity I can get to go out to my grill to go out to my smoker most especially, or again, when I go camping. I'm using my Dutch ovens, I'm doing all kinds of cooking all the time. And just love just something special about the taste of outdoor cooking. And I like it so much. I actually started a group on Facebook called smoke and ash. And I invited all my friends out there and me and all my friends who are into outdoor cooking as well. We share recipes, we share ideas, we usually you'll see a lot of pictures on there. People say hey, here's what I'm doing this weekend. Look what I did. A lot of them have the big green eggs. And they really love that. And I invite you if you even if you're just interested in outdoor cooking and not really a pro at it or not maybe not doing it at the level I am that's okay, come out and join us. You can ask to join the smoke and ash Facebook group we would love to have you. And so I also like on the show here I like to share some outdoor cooking recipes. So each week I'll share a recipe. And what I have this week is called Ozark winter chili. Now I did not invent this recipe. I actually got this from a book called The geezers cookbook, which was written by I'm, I've mentioned before, I'm heavily involved in the scouting program, and the geezers cookbook but was written by an adult leader in the scouting program who was really into cooking, and was always looking for recipes and adapting them for the outdoors. And this and he compiled all this into a cookbook. And this is one of his recipes. It's called Ozark winter chili. So let's talk about what you're going to need. You're going to need about a pound of hot pork sausage, and about two and a half pounds of ground chuck you know that's ground beef basically. Now as you might imagine, with those kinds of quantities, this is going to make a lot so you have to be ready for that and you're going to need like a large Dutch oven for this and need about four onions chopped up to green peppers diced up to large cans of crushed tomatoes, two cans of these rotel tomatoes, you know that's the dice tomatoes that have the green chilies in them. So you went two cans of that about a half a pound of dry pinto beans. Now if you don't feel like doing dealing with dry beans, just buy a couple of cans of canned pinto beans and that'll be fine. Just drain them first and rinse them off. You went about two tablespoons of olive oil, three cloves of garlic minced, I'm more likely to do about ooh five or six cloves of garlic. About a half a cup of chopped partially half a cup of butter or margarine, about two tablespoons of salt. Again, this makes a huge quantity. So if you're not going to be cooking for a lot of people, you want to cut this all in half. You want some chili powder about a third a cup of chili powder, one and a half teaspoons of black pepper, a teaspoon of red pepper, cayenne pepper and other words and one and a half teaspoons of cumin and you're going to want water and the quantity of water is going to be enough to cover everything basically. So again, if you're going to do the dry beans, the first thing you need to do is soak the beans in water overnight which softens them up and makes them easier to cook. If you're not going to if you're going to do the canned beans instead you can skip that and then just go to the next step which is to place the beans in a Dutch oven and just kind of heat them up and let them simmer and get heated up. And then you're going to add your canned tomatoes and let it simmer a little bit longer. Meanwhile, you're going to get a skillet and you're going to saute your green peppers, your onion, your garlic and your parsley all together in a little bit of olive oil. Then either using another skillet, either using another skillet or again take the stuff that you just saw. Take out and set aside and then use the skillet again melt the butter margarine and then brown your sausage and your ground chuck. Add your onion mixture that you previously sauteed add it back in there stir in the chili powder. Let it cook for about 10 minutes and then add all of that to the Dutch oven with the beans. Add the rest of your spices. Stir it all real well and let it sell for about an hour with the lid on. So you want it covered simmer for about an hour, then take the lid off, let it simmer for another 30 minutes. If there's any grease that is floated to the top, you'll want to skim it a little bit, and it's ready to serve. And what this would be ideal with is, uh, if you made some Johnny cake or corn bread would be perfect with this. A good salad on the side. And man, you have got a meal. Now again, I want to emphasize with the quantities that are on this recipe, this is for feeding a large group of people a whole troop like so you will probably want to cut this recipe in half for most of your purposes. Even still, you're going to love the flavor nice and warming on these cold winter days that we're going through right now. And that's yet it again, it's called Ozark winter chilly. All right couple of things. As we close up here a couple of things I want to remind you of again, the recipe by the way, if you want the recipe, you can go out to the smoke and ash Facebook group and I have it out there and you can download it from there, or send me an email at Paul at boldly lead calm, and I'll be glad to send that recipe. And if you have an outdoor favorite outdoor cooking recipe, and you'd like to get it on the show and share it with us. You can also send those to me at Paul at boldly lead.com if I use your recipe on the podcast, I will of course give you a fuse of praise and credit for it. And I would love to do that. So if you have a recipe Feel free to share that with me. And also, be sure to subscribe and review the podcast if you're listening to this on Apple podcast or Google podcast or any place like that. Be sure to give us a five star review and recommend us to others so that we can grow the group we can bring more people in to the tech leaders toolbox. That's about all we have for this week. Until next time, go out and be the leader. You are meant to be