Before I say what it is in between, I want to talk about what most people think it might be. John Jantsch: Now we’ll go to the person that is clearly has the title that people associate us with a leader. Lolly Daskal: I think the best leaders, lead from certain virtues. If you stand for respect and loyalty and trust and confidence and courage and candor then people will say, yes that’s something that I find compelling.” I’ve never ever heard an organization, oh wow! Lolly Daskal: Yes, they have to get the most out of their people. But there is a leadership gap in the rebel who’s confident because the leadership gap is the person that feels like an impostor who have self-doubt. So these are the 7 leadership archetypes of greatness and then the leadership gaps that will lead you to having a kind of business or leadership where you’re not successful and you get stuck and you feel like why am I not as successful as I want to be? John Jantsch: Talk a little bit about that because as you identified the archetype and then the leadership gap, what you’re suggesting is that rebels have that certain gap and when you see rebels not succeeding it’s because they’re leading from that gap? But for every single rebel that I have ever met in my life through coaching, everybody that said, “Oh, I want to make a difference”, 99.1% of those high successful individuals have said to me, “Lolly, I feel like I have an impostor within me. And that’s very different because most people and I don’t know if you know this term, but I read a book a day and most of the leadership books and business books talk exactly about what you just talked about – how to run the business?
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Transcript
John Jantsch: Great leadership is increasingly about great self-awareness. This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, a visit with Lolly Daskal, author of the leadership gap and we discussed the different archetypes, the different values that great leaders lead from and how understanding their weaknesses in those values is actually the secret and the key to really living in their greatness. Check this episode out, everybody leads everybody needs to listen on this one.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Lolly Daskal – a global leadership coach and business consultant and author of The Leadership Gap. What gets between you and your greatness? So Lolly, thanks for joining me.
Lolly Daskal: John, thanks for having me. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while. So I’m happy we’re doing it now.
John Jantsch: Yeah, I was hesitating getting into how long people have been doing thing. But I’ve been doing this for a couple decades at least and you’re somebody that I’m certainly bumped into over the years. So it’s amazing we’ve never actually chatted.
Lolly Daskal: Alright, I’m doing it for 3 decades and I’m proud of it, because I feel like I’ve paid my dues.
John Jantsch: So when it comes to the title of your book, I was like to start with the obvious, what is the gap?
Lolly Daskal: This is interesting. Before I say what it is in between, I want to talk about what most people think it might be. So some people think that when you talk about the leadership gap, you talk about weaknesses. Most people only want to talk about their strengths. Many people just want to hide behind their weaknesses and what I have done is I have unmasked, I have revealed all the dark secrets that you might have that might be leading you from your leadership gap and I’m telling you in my book, over and over again, leverage those parts that you’re shameful of, that you don’t like and learn to leverage them in order to stand in your greatness. I think, that is the most best message that you can take from this book.
John Jantsch: Well, it runs a little counter to a thread that’s out there and has been out there for years where people said, no, prop up your strengths don’t worry about your weakness so much. Everybody spends time on the weaknesses but you got to spend time on the stuffs that’s already working for you.
Lolly Daskal: Right, in every chapter, I talk about one of my clients who were hiding because exactly what you just said which was so brilliant. Most of us read books and we have coaches and mentors that tell us go from your strengths. And leaders that I coach are like these are my strengths. And then I tell story after story, how they were blind to the weaknesses that they had and I always tell my clients what you don’t own, owns you. You’ll hear story after story, how their weaknesses were showing and they didn’t even know it.
John Jantsch: So there was are a tremendous twittable moment there, that’s brilliant. Lot of people think of a leader as that that’s the person that runs this company or that’s the person that is head of this department, but to a large degree, doesn’t everyone lead.
Lolly Daskal: Absolutely and I’m so happy that you said that because when people ask me usually from stage and conferences and in workshops and one on one coaching – who is a leader? And I always say if you are influencing someone, if you’re impacting someone’s life, you are a leader. It’s apparent, it’s the coach, it’s someone that’s important to you, it’s someone who advises you. So it’s not only the title or the position. If you’re impacting someone and you’re advising someone, you’re making a difference in someone’s life; you are a leader.
John Jantsch: Now we’ll go to the person that is clearly has the title that people associate us with a leader. Is one of the issues that so many leaders get sort of forced out of their element because, hey, you’re the best salesperson, now we’re making you the Sales Manager.
Lolly Daskal: I love that. Now you have been promoted because your competence and your capabilities were so great, now you can lead people. But that’s not true. That’s not what makes a great leader. It’s not your capabilities or your competence that make you the kind of leader that people want to follow. It’s a whole new set of skills, it’s a whole new set of rules and most people don’t understand that. They usually promote those that do well, maybe they’re talented. But it’s not your talents that get people to follow you.
John Jantsch: I like to use analogy, there are very few star baseball players that are Managers, it’s always the Backup Catcher that just was really astute at the game studied what everybody did, learned how to get along by sitting on the bench more than out on the field and I think that probably kind of equates to the person that gets promoted unfortunately, in some cases was the star, but certainly didn’t have leader qualities.
Lolly Daskal: You said something so brilliant just now. I want to talk about what you just said, you said it’s the person that sat on the bench that got to know people. That’s the leader. The best leaders of the ones they get to know others. It’s not so much about their capabilities but it’s about investing in other people’s success, getting to know them and like you just talked about, it’s a great analogy. Can I use it next time in a workshop?
John Jantsch: Certainly, certainly. I’m sure I didn’t make it up. I’m just a big Baseball fan.
Lolly Daskal: I just like it. I really like and I like using sports metaphors, people really like them.
John Jantsch: That’s right. So I talked to a lot of business owners. Our listeners to this show are certainly business owners and I will tell you that if I were sort of gut level data, I would tell you that the hardest part about growing a business, for most business owners, is people. I was fine, you know it’s me and whoever started the business we were great, we got under the hood, we made things happen and then all of a sudden we grew and we had to start managing people that now somebody who started a business has to consider themselves a leader and I think that’s probably the hardest part of growing a business.
Lolly Daskal: Absolutely, Absolutely because now it doesn’t rely so much as what we said about your skills. Now you have to learn and expand and grow a new set of skills that maybe nobody’s ever taught you before me.
John Jantsch: You started hinting at and again this is a little bit unfair because you wrote a whole book about the various elements here. Are there just a couple of things that the best leaders do, I mean you just see at time and time again.
Lolly Daskal: I think the best leaders, lead from certain virtues. Every single person that I’ve ever coached, that’s thousands, now over 3 decades, have always said to me, “Teach me the skills of leadership.” And I only say, “I’m not going to teach skills, I’m going to teach you the virtues of leadership, because if you can stand for something, people will follow you. If you stand for respect and loyalty and trust and confidence and courage and candor then people will say, yes that’s something that I find compelling.” I’ve never ever heard an organization, oh wow! He was still good at reading the metrics and dissecting the data. I’ve never heard that, that’s why I admire him. It’s always like, did you see what he did? He stood up for us. He respected us. He’s loyal to us. She spoke to us with truth and candor. Those other things, those are the stories, those are the compelling attributes that leaders have that people want to follow and people want to emulate.
John Jantsch: Yeah and I think a lot of times every situation is difference because in so many cases you’re going to manage a department of something where you get handed this mixed bag of individuals that are there for different reasons and have different skills and have different personalities. And I think that it seems like that the best leaders are those people that seem to just be able to figure out how to get the most out of all the different things.
Lolly Daskal: Yes, they have to get the most out of their people. But they have to recognize them for their uniqueness most people will come in and say, “This is my team, now let’s get it down without even getting to know the people and what they’re talented about and what their skills are.” So as a leader you need to have that virtue of really being loyal to the team and when I say “loyal to the team” is being connected to them, being engaged with them, being invested in their success that means get to know them.
John Jantsch: So you, in the book, revealed 7 leadership archetypes and probably this has come from your working with clients and being able to notice certain tendencies. So I’d love it if you’d talk a little bit about, we don’t have go into all 7 necessarily but talk little bit about that and maybe how you go…
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