Welcome to Leadership
Episode 5
Welcome back to Welcome to Leadership! Today, we're gonna talk about something that I don't think is talked about enough in our leadership circles. How do we earn, I mean, authentically earn more respect in our circle of influence?
It is important. It's not just an ego metric.
Because if the people in your circle of influence both at home, at work or socially — if they don't respect you, it's going to be very difficult to influence and have the impact that you want to have.
So how do we make sure we're earning respect consciously, effectively and ethically?
Well, you're going to get four tips today. They're each going be very simple, very actionable, but they're very relevant and powerful actions to take. So let's jump right in.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (00:00):
What we want to make sure we're not doing is creating a culture and an environment where we only appreciate those people and the work that they do when things are working out, we need to make sure we're appreciating those people and the work they're putting in. Even if things aren't going exactly how we wanted them to go, we can always adjust. But if we fail to recognize work, just because we didn't get the outcome, we want, we're setting a stage where we're going to lose the respect of the people, because they're going to realize that you don't respect them and what they're doing.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (00:35):
Welcome back to welcome to leadership today. We're gonna talk about something that I don't think is talked about enough in the leadership circle. And that is how do we earn, I mean, authentically earn more respect in our circle of influence and it is important. It's not just an ego metric. If the people in your circle of influence at both at home and at work or socially, if they don't respect you, it's gonna be really difficult to influence and have the impact that you want to have. So how do we make sure that we're doing that consciously, effectively and ethically? Well, I'm gonna give four tips today. They're gonna be very simple, very actionable, but they're very relevant to this conversation. So let's jump right in. The first thing is what I call the three to one rule. Meaning for everyone, answer comment opinion that you give to someone, make sure that you are asking at least three questions, relevant questions for everyone opinion or answer that you give.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (01:42):
And the reason for that is this people tend to respect those that respect them. And when you ask someone relevant questions about their opinions, their perspective, how something may be affecting them, what their challenges are, what their wins are. You begin to show that you are as much interested in them or more interested in them than you are interested in your own thoughts, your own perspectives. And that makes a massive difference. There's an article in the Harvard business review called the five dimensions of curiosity. And among the many things that were discussed in this article is the fact that curiosity tends to enhance intelligence. Uh, it increases perseverance or grit, uh, leads to deeper engagement, superior performance, and more meaningful goals. And what you'll see happen is, as you ask people questions about, for example, if there is a decision that you're thinking of making in the workplace, when you go to someone or a group of someones and you authentically ask like, Hey, if we do this, how's this going to impact your day to day activity?
Aaron Keith Hawkins (02:50):
How's it going to impact your ability to perform? How's it going to impact you? Is it gonna be better? Is it gonna be worse? Does it not matter when you ask questions about what someone's biggest challenges have been in the past 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, when you ask these questions that are relevant to them and what their experience is like, you're sending a message and you're sending a message that says what's happening with you. It's just as important as what's happening with me in my role. And there begins to be a mutual passing of not only information, but a passing of back and forth respect, because now instead of just having a traditional, I'm going to tell you what's going on type of relationship. You're having a back and forth dialogue, which is so necessary and mandatory in today's workplace, but unfortunately it still doesn't happen enough.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (03:44):
Number two, be a connector. When I think over the past few decades of my professional career, especially starting early on, when I think of the, the leaders that I had in my life that I respected the most, if I'm honest, one of the things that becomes a trend is 100% of those people that were on the top of my respect list are people that found ways to create opportunities for more connection, not just with me with them, but me with my peer group, me with other leaders and having the habit of creating situations formally and informally to connect and collaborate and share ideas is a extremely important aspect of your leadership journey because you become the person that provides these venues for connection. Some examples can be scheduling after work events. So, so your team and their peers can connect outside of the work environment and just socially interact and talk about what's going on with them personally and professionally having meetings in the workplace, informal meetings, where you're not just talking about something that you have to pass us on related to work or something they need to do more or less of, but having meetings, where's a dialogue and people can discuss what's happening.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (05:00):
What's most important to them today or that week or that month. And you begin to have feedback, not just from your, not just from your team to you, but from teammates to teammates, having that extra space for connection and dialogue among the, amongst your team and you being the person that provides that space, that's gonna go a long way. People will remember that they will appreciate it. The more that becomes a routine part of what you do. Number three, apologize, but apologize appropriately when necessary. Here's what I mean by that. I don't know about you, but I know in my experience sometimes getting no apology at all can be better than getting a bad apology. I wanna dive into this a little bit, um, when it comes to apologies, some of the most important things to remember is to number one, be direct. Uh, don't be passive, for example, I'm sure we've all heard those apologies where someone says, I'm sorry, feelings were hurt or things got out of hand and there's this vague discussion kind of a blanket.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (06:08):
I don't want to talk about type of apology. Don't do that. Be very specific. I am sorry for a, B and C, because when I did those things, it caused this level of discomfort. And that was not my intention. Number two, explain what you did, but don't make excuses about it. Be candid about the decision that you made, even if ultimately it wound up, it wound up impacting somebody negatively, then number three, articulate an alternative action that you could have, or should have taken and what you would do in the future instead, knowing what you know now let's face it. Sometimes we need to apologize for things that we didn't truly did not ahead of time know, was going to result in a situation that required an apology. Sometimes we just to do things kind of on autopilot. And then we find out later that, Ooh, maybe we shouldn't have done that.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (07:01):
It's okay. It's gonna happen to all of us. It will continue to happen. Just make sure that when it does you have this discussion appropriately, number four, time your apology, right? What do I mean by that? Uh, there's a book called wait, the art and science of delay. Um, the author is Frank Partnoy and I wanna quote something. He said in his book, we feel like we need to apologize right away in the same way we feel we need to respond right away to text or emails. But if someone commits a serious transgression, it's best to apologize. Only after the victim has had chance, uh, had a chance to yell and vent. Now, what does that mean? What it means is there's gonna be times where an apology might be appropriate, but apologizing immediately, meaning right away, isn't always gonna be the best solution.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (07:53):
100% of the time. Sometimes it will be, but sometimes it won't be. And this comes down to some situational awareness. What was the issue? How upset is that person? Are they in a state where apologizing right now, uh, is the best thing to do or do you need to allow them to kind of process, uh, the ramifications of what happened, maybe process their emotions, settle down for a minute and then approach step in and ask is I would really like to apologize for what just occurred and what I caused is this an okay time to speak with you and have that discussion with you. And if it's not, that's okay too, set a time in the future. And if it is okay, then go ahead and get right into it. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, don't overdo it just because it's important to apologize.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (08:45):
Doesn't mean you need to go around apologizing for every single thing and every single decision that you make, because then it just becomes white noise. It becomes awkward. Nobody wants that because then if there really is a situation that truly warranted in an apology, if you've been apologizing six times this week, it's kind of gonna fall on deaf years. It's gonna sound like the same old discussion and that's not the point of this. Okay. So let's see where we've gone. So far. We started with using the three to one rule, being a connector and apologizing appropriately. Lastly, number four, publicly applaud actions, not just results. Here's what I mean by that. Let's say for example, that, uh, in the third quarter of any given year, the goal in your company was to hit X amount of dollars in sales revenue that quarter. And let's say you fell short by about 20%.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (09:40):
Now a common reaction to that kind of situation might be to kind of critique and see what went wrong and why we did not hit our numbers, but that can be a big mistake. And here's why there are going to be times that your team, the people that you're leading are committing the correct actions. Let's say, for example, part of the expectations for them in their job is to make 20 cold, cold calls a day, or to do five demos per week on your product. They may have metrics that they're supposed to do, actions, uh, key performance indicators that they're supposed to be doing to help meet the goals of the company. There's going to be times where your team is going to meet and or exceed those goals and still not meet the target for the company. Now here's where it gets tricky.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (10:33):
You may have people that are doing all the right things and not hitting the target. And you may also have a team or people doing below the threshold of activities or key performance indicators and hit that target. Now you have this dichotomy. So as a leader, it's important to recognize that just because your people are doing all the right things, it doesn't mean they're going to hit their goals. It's also important to remember that just because your team has hit their goal or their metric, it doesn't mean they were doing the right things. So in terms of this discussion today about earning respect, it's important for us to recognize that we need to applaud behaviors, actions, and celebrate the actions and habits and character, the things that your people do, not just the result of what they do. I've been inside businesses that may have an amazing sales month, tons of revenue in any given month.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (11:34):
But when you look at the activity that their team was exhibiting that month, it was terrible. They just happened to have a wave of customers, come in and help them exceed their sales numbers by large amounts. But when you look at the activities that their people were doing during the month, it was terrible. So we wanna avoid the habit of just saving our praise for results, because that's not necessarily the right metric, applaud their effort, make sure they're being recognized and praised for the work that they're doing every day. Even if it falls short of what you or the company was hoping would happen that month. Because remember our companies, our organizations are comprised of human beings and those human beings are putting in a lot of work every single day. And what we want to make sure we're not doing is creating a culture and an environment where we only appreciate those people and the work that they do when things are working out, we need to make sure we're appreciating those people and the work they're putting in.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (12:36):
Even if things aren't going exactly how we wanted them to go, we can always adjust. But if we fail to recognize work, just because we didn't get the outcome, we want, we're setting a stage where we're going to lose the respect of the people, because they're going to realize that you don't respect them and what they're doing. Okay. Our bonus tip number five is this diversify, your interests wherever you can. Here's what I mean by that many times in a workplace, uh, people have a tendency to look at their leaders or the people in charge, their manager, supervisor, VP, whatever your title is and think to themselves. Gosh, all they seem to care about is work the numbers, the metrics, what we're doing, how we did this quarter, things of that nature. And hopefully that's not the truth because people have a tendency to respect people that are like them.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (13:30):
For example, some of the biggest names that we know that are known for a specific thing have other interest. For example, Dwayne Johnson, he loves fishing. That's his hobby. Barack Obama loves basketball. Denzel Washington loves boxing, Beyonce, herself raises bees and jars. Honey. The reason that's relevant for us as leaders is the more we diversify to things that we're interested in, the more we have hobbies and other things that we can talk about besides the workplace, the more we're gonna be able to connect and communicate and build rapport with the people that we're working in and perhaps a better tip title other than diversify, your interests might be remember to be human, discuss your hobbies, discuss the things that you like, the movies you watch, the foods that you eat, the places that you like to travel, the hobby that you have, that you don't think anyone else would be interested in in the fact that you have talk about those things, discuss them in your workplace because the more people recognize that you as their fearless leader are human.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (14:37):
The more respect is generated from you to them, from them to you because you have more things in common to talk about and discuss in the workplace besides just work. So let's review one more time, what we talked about. So what are these simple ways to earn more respect? Number one, remember the three to one rule for every answer that you give, make sure you're answering at least three questions. Number two, be a connector, create opportunities for people to connect and share perspectives with you and amongst each other. And number three, apologize appropriately, go back and rewind and go over those few tips we talked about from making sure that's being done authentically and in the best way possible. Number four, make sure you publicly applaud positive actions, not just the outcomes. And then our bonus tip was to remember to diversify and talk about your interests aside from just work.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (15:33):
I hope you found that helpful if you did, please make sure you share it with someone else that may need to hear it. And I will see you next time. Welcome to leadership. Hey, this is Aaron. Did you like that episode? If you did go ahead and leave a quick five star rating and review to share with others specifically what you liked about this episode. It goes a very long way in helping others realize the benefits of the show and help us continue to provide you with more helpful episodes. Would you prefer to watch a video version of this episode? Well, if you weren't aware, we have a YouTube channel as well. Just go over to YouTube and type Aaron Keith Hawkins. You'll find my channel as the first search result, click on it and click subscribe and each new video episode will get delivered to your account directly. Leave me a quick comment on YouTube when you do, we'll see you there.