Ep 483: Strategic Leadership for Business Growth with Tony Harris

Sean: What are some leadership principles that you learned there that you still practice today and you teach it from time to time with some people that you mentor?

Tony: Well, interestingly in the book a lot of it is quite nuanced. There's a lot of overlap between some of the observations. There are 101 of them, but there are some overriding themes, and those are things that I kind of keep coming back to.

The first of them is always remember that you are more often than not 99% of the time you're a leader on merit. Somebody somewhere thought you could handle the responsibility or the situation demanded that you were the best person. But whatever it was, you're there on merit. And a lot of you may think that you're not right about that.

A lot of people have doubts. Churchill used to talk about his black dog because, you know, he became angry and doubted things Lincoln did, lots of great leaders do. And actually, one of the first things is if you're not having doubts, that's when your problems start.

That's a theme that I kind of keep going back to. You're there on merit, and even if you doubt it, remind yourself somebody thought you were good enough. The other one is really about protecting the team dynamic. The team dynamic is important, there is a difference between culture and team. You have to make sure you have to protect your culture but you have to protect your team as well.

That means you need to listen a lot more than you might. A lot of leaders think that their job is to talk all the time. It's not. It's to listen to what's not being said. You then need to do that and involve people.

So make sure that the team always feels that you're bringing them into play. You know, there's an old phrase, why have a dog and bark yourself? You don't. You brought people in to be experts. Let them do their job. Keep checking in and keep listening.

Take the sting out of confrontations. That's another major one to do. And if you have to, you have to remove difficult participants, however skilled they may be. If they're not helping the team, they had better be doing something incredible and I doubt they ever are. Those are the kind of things that I sort of keep going back to. So the one about doubt listening to the team, it's all interrelated.

Sean: Amazing, I remember another saying. If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together.

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Tony Harris

Website: https://strayrhino.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-harris-8ab54a91

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-101-Tony-Harris-ebook/dp/B09WXR9Q2N