Talking Is Not Overrated

I’ve been listening to a book series by Vince Flynn on my drive to and from work. The series is based on a CIA agent named Mitch Rapp. I’m about five books in to the 22-book series and I find myself enjoying the books so much that I’m excited for the drive. Rapp is a non-nonsense agent that is the CIA’s most effective and lethal agent.

In one recent book, in the middle of a discussion with another agent, Rapp made the comment, “Talking is overrated.” When I heard him say this, it brought me back to an interview I participated in last season with Channing Frye of the Phoenix Suns.

For the past 15 years I’ve worked part time for the NBA’s Utah Jazz. On January 18, 2019 after the Utah Jazz beat the Phoenix Suns, I was in the visiting locker room doing postgame interviews. It was near the end of the interview session and I was just about to leave when I heard a booming voice. I turned to see who was talking and it was Frye. It’s not uncommon for players to speak in a low voice, but Frye spoke so everybody could hear him. Once I joined the fray, one reporter asked him how his teammates respond to his mentoring and the feedback he provides. He was quick to respond, saying.

“… My biggest thing that makes me upset, more like furious is, and the only thing that I pretty much yell at is we don’t talk to each other. I think that’s the most frustrating thing for me because you know, as a shooter, you can have nights where you’re just not making shots and I think, let’s be real, we’re not the best defensively whether it’s because we’re too small, too hurt, whatever it’s a lot of excuses, but at the end of the day if we talk it’s going to solve a lot of problems. I know I talk a lot and I try to talk a lot when we’re out there and it solves a lot, it slows the game down. Good teams talk. Their team (the Utah Jazz), we call a play, all of them relay that play and then everybody’s like send it this way, this guys gonna roll and then boom, boom, boom and so like we need one guy within the group, maybe two, shit, maybe even three that know their plays, that’s studying that film and that’s going to help us out there. I know some of this stuff, but I’m only out there two times, three times a month so we need guys to become good defenders and just know guys plays and tendencies. That’s what a good defender is, just take percentages. So, I think that’s the next step for us…”

There were other questions during the interview and I remember walking away so impressed with him and thinking that I wanted to be friends with him. If he never hit a basket for the team that entire season and just talked to the younger players about the finer points of being a professional, he would easily eclipse the value of his contract.

I’ve thought about what he said ever since that Winter day.

Good Leaders Communicate

I recently read an article previewing the NFL season, specifically the Green Bay Packers and the relationship between their star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers and their new head coach, Matt LaFleur. The article highlighted how well things are going between the two and how the relationship they’re building now will benefit them and the entire team during the upcoming season.

The two met in the Spring to discuss expectations and get to know each other better. Recalling that meeting months later, Rodgers said there were two important things to getting their relationship off to a good start.

“What I’m expecting from him and what can he expect from me,” Rodgers continued. “What kind of approach do I have? What do I like? What do I not like? What has worked for me in the past? What maybe hasn’t worked as well in the past and just what kind of guy I am.”

Good Communicators are Also Good Listeners

I have a friend that is an incredible listener. When you talk to him he makes eye contact, and hangs on your every word. Others may try to interject and he never wavers. If there is an interruption, when it’s time to pick the conversation back up, he always knows exactly where you left off. He’ll often come back to the conversation and say something like, when we got interrupted you were saying … and he’ll repeat the last sentence or few words where you left off.

Going back to the article I read about the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers said: “Two things I think are really important: listen and communicate. Everybody, in general, wants to know that what they’re saying is important and that people care about what they’re saying, and the best way to do that is listen. I wanted to get to know who he (Coach LaFleur) is and what makes him tick and what’s important to him.”

Good Communicators Get What They Want

A friend of mine always says, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never get what you want.”

I’ve found that to be true. It’s just as true in your personal life as in your business life. The most effective communicators are straightforward, direct and quickly get to the point. Their ability to ask for what they want often allows them to get exactly what they want, when they want it.

Contrast that to poor communicators that are passive in their communication and lack the confidence to come right out and ask for what they want. As a result, they struggle to get what they want.

Communication Slows Things Down

In my experience, good communication is an effective way to make things slow down. When you’re trying something new or that you’re not experienced in, things seem to move fast. Once you gain experience or start to feel comfortable with a situation, things slow down and are easier to handle.

In my interview with Frye, he was asked why his team doesn’t talk?

He said, “I think the game is moving very fast for everybody. Like I said, it takes a long time for the game to slow down. It took like three or four years for the game to slow down…”

So often, when a problem arises, you hear the people involved say something along the lines of, “It was due to a lack of communication.” That’s more fact than it is an excuse. Effective communication will eliminate the frustrations and anger when communication is lacking.

Fear + Intimidation Does Not = Leadership

Several years ago, while I was directing the public relations (PR) activities for a Utah based PR agency, my boss came in and asked me if I thought my team was afraid of me. I gave her a quizzical look and quickly replied that I sincerely hoped they weren’t.

She proceeded to tell me that the team wasn’t afraid of me and then tried to explain to me why that was a problem for me. She rationalized to me, that if the team wasn’t afraid of me, they would never get things completed the way they needed to be done.

As we debated this topic and I defended my position that fear and intimidation didn’t always equate to effective leadership or improved results, she said she could prove her standpoint. She proceeded to have me follow her down to the office managers office. Our office manager was a retired Marine Master Sargent. He ran the office like he ran his teams in the Marine Corps for 26 years and was a no-nonsense guy that said what he meant and meant what he said.

When we got to his office, my boss asked him if he thought my team respected me. He quickly responded that, “Yes, the team loves working for Jeremy.” Deflated, our discussion ended temporarily. I say temporarily because as I recounted the experience to my wife later that night I told her that by tomorrow, my boss would come back with a counter argument so she could prove her point.

Sure enough, as I arrived at work the next day, my boss greeted me with round two. This time she said she had personally interviewed each member of my team and it was unanimous that they weren’t afraid of me. Later that day as I talked to various members of my team, it became evident that she hadn’t talked to anybody and had made up her one-on-one discussions with them. In fact, a couple of them caught wind of what she had said from other sources and without prompting from me, volunteered to let me use them as an example and help my cause.

I appreciated, but declined their offers. This experience served as a good reminder of the leadership characteristics I look for in a leader and that I feel have made me an effective leader over the course of my career.

Build Trust

I believe in getting to know each individual member of my teams on a personal level. It’s not something I force because I’m their leader, but something I like to do. I enjoy getting to know new people and understanding what their interests are outside of work, their career goals and what makes them tick. It sounds cliché, but everybody has a story and I love discovering these stories.  Doing this is also a highly effective way to build trust.

From a leadership perspective, knowing these types of details can help you gain a deeper understanding for what motivates them and know how to work with them more effectively. In one instance, I knew a member of one of my teams was deeply committed to his young daughter. In talking to him, he told me that he wanted to be there for certain events and activities. He explained that growing up his father worked such long hours that he wasn’t able to attend many of his activities. He wanted to be different than his father and make it so that his daughter would never be wondering if he would show up or be in attendance for activities she thought important.

Knowing this, I made it clear to him that as these events came up, if he let me know in advance, I would make sure he had the time he needed to participate in and experience these activities with his daughter.

Set the Vision

If nobody knows what the vision is, they’ll have no way of knowing what their role is or how they can contribute to success. An effective vison will help identify goals for achieving the vision and establishing roles for each team member to contribute to the success and realization of these goals.

In my experience, once the team buys into the vision, they’ll start to take ownership of their role and find creative and innovative ways of getting to where you want to be. In one memorable example, when I first started working with FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, we knew we needed to educate the media and general public about what a fan convention like this is. The vast majority of media had never heard of a comic con or fan convention of this type and as a result were uncertain about how to cover it. Similarly, the general public were unfamiliar as well.

Understanding the vision of the founders, I took the public relations component and recommended something that had never been done before to our knowledge. I arranged for celebrity attendees to do pre-event interviews over the phone and in person a few days before the convention started. I also recommended we do a kickoff press conference and invite celebrities to attend and do media interviews. I told the founders it would be much like Super Bowl media day. Both recommendations were incredibly successful.

Lou Ferrigno who played the Hulk on the original TV series The Incredible Hulk came out a few days in advance and did interviews with every local media outlet. After the show he told FanX founders that in more than 20 years of doing these fan conventions he had never had a more successful event or made more money than he did at FanX. The following year, the agent for Barbara Eden, the actress that played Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie called and asked me to do for Barbara what I had done for Lou the previous year.

Similarly, the kickoff press conference was a smashing success. We had more than 150 media attend and 12-15 celebrities that did interviews for an hour before the show opened. Word spread among the comic con circuit and now just about every comic con in America copies FanX and does a kickoff press conference.

Trust and Empower Your Teams

Nobody likes to be micromanaged or have every decision and move they make questioned or evaluated by their boss.  I had a colleague years ago that I assigned to work with the agency owner on a number of accounts. I placed him on these accounts due to previous experience that tied in nicely with these accounts.

After a few weeks I met with him to catch up and see how he was transitioning into the accounts and the agency. As we met, he was excited about the agency, specifically his colleagues and the culture. As we discussed the accounts, he had some concerns. It turns the agency owner told him to take the lead on these accounts and to just run with things. He told her what his strategy was and she gave him the green light. As he began executing on his strategy, she lurked in the background constantly questioning him and second guessing his work. The client was excited by results but the agency owner clearly didn’t trust him. As a result, he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder and doubting his every move. He was miserable.

Check Your Ego At The Door

I worked for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic Winter Games of 2002 (SLOC). I was fortunate to work closely with Mitt Romney. I learned from Mitt that you don’t have to know everything to be the CEO or a true leader. He used to say all the time that he wasn’t the expert or most knowledgeable person in every aspect of the Olympics. He was however, smart enough to hire the best and most talented people.

He would ask questions to understand people’s recommendations and challenge them in an effort to poke holes in or find weaknesses, but he wasn’t concerned with being right all the time. His main priority was finding the right answer, not proving his answer was the best. He was confident in himself and his role that he didn’t need to prove himself the smartest person or the one that always came up with the best idea.

These four leadership characteristics have served me well over the course of my career. What qualities do you like in the leaders in your life?