How to Build Confidence as a Leader w/ Bill Lennan
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with leadership and performance coach Bill Lennan on understanding and embracing confidence for leaders.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is the founder of 40 Percent Better, helping leaders improve their team’s performance. His background includes launching multiple start-ups, many focusing on improving the skills we need to become better leaders and running software teams for more than 20 years.
Connect with Bill, and learn more about his work…
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“Confidence is knowing what to do, knowing how to do it, and having done enough reps that you’re not afraid of the outcome, that you can predict the outcome.”
Bill Lennan
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Bill Lennan, and here is why he is. Awesome. He’s the founder of 40 percent better helping leaders improve their team’s performance. His background includes launching multiple startups, many focusing on improving the skills we need to become better leaders.
And he’s also had a lot of experience running some software teams for more than 20 years, two decades for those counting at home. And he’s here to help us with our confidence. Welcome Bill.
Bill Lennan: Thank you. Thank you.
Russel Lolacher: I have so many questions about the confidence thing.
Bill Lennan: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Especially with what it can be confused by. Oh, but we’ll get into all that. Before we do, I have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, Bill, which is, sir, what is your best or worst employee experience?
Bill Lennan: I’m going to go with best. And, and I’ve had multiple. So this is one that actually kind of set me up for a bunch of things. In college, I worked at a very, very high end restaurant. At the time that I started working there, I didn’t realize how high end they were, and it wasn’t until after I had left there that I actually went back and looked at the math and said, Oh my God, this was the most expensive restaurant in town. But the management there was super focused on taking good care of the employees as a way to take good care of the customers. And they talked about that as part of the interview process. And they said there’s a few things to know here. First of all, we believe in taking amazing, good care of our customers. And we know that if we take good care of you, you’ll take good care of them. So, anything that’s friction for you, tell us. We want to know, because we always want to improve our processes, and if you see something that’s friction, bring it up and we’ll, we’ll talk about it, right? And I was like, that’s really cool.
And, they said, by the way, you’re going to be expected to coach. So the day that you start, everybody starts at the bottom and someone on the team will be coaching you about how to do your job. And as time goes on and you move up the ladder, you’ll be coaching the new people and people across the board will always be coaching you because someone’s going to know more than you about something.
And we expect you to coach other people as you get better at different areas because everybody learns differently. And so this really cemented this. Idea of coaching at work in my head, which I then took and completely ran with every place else I ever went. And you know working I worked there for a couple years, we had amazing leadership. I, I look back on that as as Really one of the best work experiences that whole time I was there. It was it was phenomenal
Russel Lolacher: How old were you?
Bill Lennan: 20. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: And not many 20 year olds get that introduction to what leadership is supposed to look like, especially in restaurants.
Bill Lennan: Yeah. Yeah,
Russel Lolacher: I worked in restaurants for like 20 years and I remember training is literally like, I’m going to spend as little time as with you as I need to so that I can leave you alone and go do my work because I’m busy and want to make tips.
It was purely dog eat dog, turn and burn as the phrase usually is, but they did that with the tables, but they also did that with their employees. What, what was the retention of that restaurant?
Bill Lennan: You mean customer or employee?
Russel Lolacher: Employee.
Bill Lennan: We had very, very low churn, like nobody left. What happened was people didn’t make the cut in the first month. That was the thing was when you came in, I don’t know what metrics they use as, as their filtration, they were really clear that if you made it, you made it.
And if you didn’t, you would know within the first 30 days. And when I got past my 30 day mark, I was like, woohoo, I’m in. And, and then away we went. But there were people that had been there, there was a guy that worked there three nights a week. His day job was being a dentist. And he, he loved the the people and the work and, and to kind of put in frame, I did the math a little while ago. Dinner’s there today would have been, for two people, inflation and everything else, like 400 bucks.
Russel Lolacher: Okay.
Bill Lennan: Yeah, it was expensive, and we had a lot of repeat customers, and we did not spend a dime on marketing. It was all word of mouth, and the restaurant was in an industrial park, and you would never find it by accident.
The Waikiki crowd, this was on Oahu, by the way, in Hawaii, you had to know about the restaurant. And, and there was a lot of word of mouth, like a lot of people just knew, Oh, John Dominus. Yeah. That’s the, that’s the place.
Russel Lolacher: And last question on that. How disappointed have you been since you were 20? Because I mean, that’s not normal.
Bill Lennan: So I get that it’s not normal. I totally get it. Cause at the same time I was working on another job and leadership wasn’t, wasn’t nearly that good. It’s, it’s actually helped me in the interview process to figure out if this is somebody I want to work for or not. And there’s been companies where I’ve interviewed that and I’ve walked out and I’ve said, wow, you know what? Like I’ve gone back to the recruiter and said I’m really sorry, but I don’t think this company is a good match for me. And it’s, it’s because of the way they talked about things. And, and I got that that kind of coaching approach that I find so helpful just wasn’t part of their game.
Russel Lolacher: I like that. You’re looking at it as an empowering in the fact that you had enough knowledge to know what it should be like, and that you wanted that again, enough that you would say, you know, I, this is not a good fit for me. I can get better coaching from a restaurant than I can from this corporate gig would.
Bill Lennan: A hundred percent.
Russel Lolacher: Huh. I have so many questions on that, but we got to move on. Cause we’ve got a very interesting topic today, which is all about confidence. Now I struggled with this of how to introduce this topic because I always start every episode with defining things because I think it’s super important that we define things because we never seem to, and I mean that as in diversity leadership and all those things and I was like do I ask about defining confidence?
I’m like, you know what? Yeah, because It’s different for different people in how, what they think confidence is in the workplace. So I’m going to start with that Bill. How would you define confidence?
Bill Lennan: There’s a couple parts. One is knowing what I know how to do well. One of them is knowing what I know how to do, but it’s not the best. Like I’m, I’m, I’m, I really understand that. And a part of it is. is knowing where and how I absolutely want to go take risks to advance my career. And I see those risks as very smart.
And, and also it’s in that, in that same kind of context where I know it’s I don’t know anything and I need to go and learn and I need to not be afraid of people saying, you don’t know anything about this. And just like being straight up I have no clue about this thing, but I really want to learn it. What’s the best avenue, right? Because at the end of the day, I know that I can bring value to an organization, in multiple different ways. And, but I can’t bring value to organizations in every way. And so I I’m pretty confident about that. I’m pretty comfortable. I’m… what’s that called when you use the… circular reference there. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Sure.
Bill Lennan: I’ve done enough things for enough companies that, that I know that I can, there’s something I can do at every company to help them operate better.
Russel Lolacher: But you mentioned in there that it’s about being comfortable, not only because of what you know, but also in your curiosity about what you don’t know.
Bill Lennan: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: I love that. So why do leaders need to be more confident?
Bill Lennan: So there’s a couple of parts to that. One of them is if you’re afraid to expose your ignorance, you’re You’re going to lose credibility with your team because they’re going to know, right? And so you have to be able to say, Hey, team, here’s this area. I don’t know anything about it, right? I know we need to go in that direction.
And I hope that somebody here knows more than zero because I’m right around zero. Talk to me. I need data to be able to think about this. And so we can have a collaborative conversation about what the heck we’re doing, right? I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. I don’t want to be perceived as the smartest person in the room.
I want my team to be really bringing ownership of here’s how we understand the problem and here’s how we solve the problem to the, to the best of their ability, because when they own it, they work better, right? Cause it’s theirs, right? It’s, it’s an intrinsic motivation. I don’t want them to be doing it.
Cause I said, so, I always want the intrinsic motivation. I try very hard to never say. Because I said so, and I’m the boss, right? I just, I don’t want to ever say that. And so being upfront about my ignorance and saying, Hey, you guys got to help me. I don’t know this stuff. Tell me. And as a leader, you gotta have the self confidence and the vulnerability to say that.
And if you’re, if you’re stuck in a place of, I’ve got to be the smartest person in the room, no one can see that I’m ignorant about this stuff? Then, you’re not going to ask smart questions, number one. You’re not going to get the people on your team to take ownership of stuff. And you’re going to be telling them what to do rather than them saying, Hey, I think we should do blah, blah, blah. And then you going, Oh, that actually, yeah, okay. I like it based on the data we have that’s a good idea. Let’s go that way. And so it’s you have to recognize within yourself how valuable you are and what you can do and that the team operating really really well is the game not me looking good as their leader. Like I in the grand scheme of the world I don’t care on a day to day basis if I look good as a team lead because I know that in the long run the executives are gonna notice that my team is crushing it. And then they’re and they’re gonna go okay, but what like this is awesome and do you want to do this other thing?
Russel Lolacher: What are the actions of a confident leader? Like, so I’m on the outside looking in going, okay, that person is a confident leader. As opposed to just, you know, masking.
Bill Lennan: So, so there’s a few things that I think are really important. Number one is you’re, you’re building trust with your team. So I do one on ones with my team every week, 15 minutes. I schedule 15 minutes of their time, 30 minutes of my time. And I want them to, this is their chance to complain.
I don’t care what it is either it’s to come and bitch about whatever. Maybe I’m not writing good enough detailed stuff on, on work they’re supposed to do out of our backlog, or there’s I screwed up when I did a presentation, I said the wrong thing, and whatever it is, I don’t care, right?
Computers are slow. Networks are slow. Sales team’s pitch is technically erroneous. I really don’t care what it is, right? They could complain cause it’s hard to get their kids to school on time in the morning. Like whatever it is, I want that time to be, they get to complain and I get to figure out how to fix it.
And I, I literally, I don’t care what the problem is. Like, I’ve, I’ve gotten computers, I’ve gotten vacation, I’ve gotten hotel rooms, I’ve gotten food. I’ve gotten time off. I’ve got one guy to travel around the world and keep his job and work for us. I’ve found therapists. I’ve found tutors for people. I’ve changed meetings so people could pick up or deliver kids, all that stuff, right? When I remove friction, they operate better. The ROI for me as a team lead and the amount of productivity I get out of it is a big win. And, and a good leader is going to be having consistently improving team performance.
That’s like they have to have confidence to be able to step into that place. The other thing is talking to strangers within the, within and with an outside of the company. And so being really proactive about networking all over the company is important because now I know all these people, I understand their problems.
I understand how the work that we’re doing either benefits or maybe detracts from their day to day experience. And I want it to benefit, so if I find out that it detracts, I’m going to want to figure out, wait a minute, that’s not, how do I adjust, right? How do, how do we change stuff? And my team’s and, and really if they’ve got a problem and I think we can fix it for them, we’ll do it as a side project.
Like I’ll tell my boss, but then I’m like here’s why it’s a good thing to do. And usually my boss doesn’t even know about it because there’s not enough conversations horizontally inside organizations. Over the years, my teams have… we’ve helped with implementing marketing systems, we’ve implemented CRM software configuration changes. One time we spent two months making sure that everybody got paid because they couldn’t get the right payroll data out of our, of our time tracking system to the payroll guys, like there was some screw up in whatever we’re supposed to the middleware. And so there was nobody in finance that knew how to do the data translation. And I had a bunch of people on my team who did. It took us like five minutes every pay period to, to go and get the data dump, get it properly, send it off. And that made the CFO my best friend. Whatever I went to knock on his door, he was like, yes. Yes. Whatever you want. You can have it. And so for a nominal amount of effort for my team, I got this amazing ally every time I ever wanted anything ever again.
But I also got to hear about business problems and all these other parts of the company and build better product, right? And since I’m in the product building business, as a team lead, you need to do that. Like to me, that’s the confident thing is being able to do that. And then by the way, full disclosure, I used to have horrible social anxiety and I was a super shy introvert.
And so anybody who says, Oh, I can’t do that cause I’m a shy introvert. I’m going to call bullshit. Because I used to be in that place, I learned the skills, I learned the habits, I learned the behaviors, the emotional regulation to go from that place of not talking to strangers to loving talking to strangers, and I even enjoy public speaking now.
Russel Lolacher: I want to dive into something you said there and I want to be a little clearer about it or at least I need to be a little clear about it. It sounds like confident leadership and how you’re describing it is putting out fires. It sounds like putting problem solving a bit and maybe I’m reading it wrong, it feels very, that feels very reactive.
Bill Lennan: It’s, so some of those, some of those are just, oh, there’s kindling over there, right? That could become a problem in the future, we can see it, I want to get ahead of it. And, and part of what happens is I’m creating communication channels in the company where people will start reaching out to me and going, Hey we’re thinking about blah, blah, blah. Is this possible? Could you guys go back? And so now I’ve got early warning systems, of what might be coming down. And I’ve now I’ve got different collaborations. And, in a way, if you’re in business, your, your day to day is there’s going to be problems and someone needs to solve them.
And it doesn’t really matter if if you’re the local pizza place or if you’re Walmart, like there’s always going to be stuff going on. And if you get comfortable with as early warning system as you can get, then you don’t have nasty surprises. And, and I want to avoid the nasty surprises. I want to get rid of the kindling so that I don’t have a forest fire.
And so I get all this early stuff in the process, of, of talking to people and they’re like, Hey we’re thinking about whatever. What, what are your thoughts? Can we do it? Is this, is this doable? And, and that way I can go back to my team and go, Hey sales team wants to know if we can build blah, blah, blah. What do you guys think? Oh yeah, that’s easy. That’ll take us a week. Like, how big is the win? And I can go back to the sales team and they can be like, well, that’s $20 million. If you can put a week in and we can make $20 million, that’s a good time investment. And so to me it’s always, it’s just, it’s just gathering data and figuring out what to do with it.
Russel Lolacher: So let’s flip that a bit. What is a lack of confidence do to work relationships to team building?
Bill Lennan: Yeah. So the, the problem with lack of confidence is that you lose the trust of your team because you, you become disingenuous and you’re not super authentic because you don’t want to be criticized. And you don’t want to be questioned because you don’t know and you don’t want to say you don’t know, right?
And I’m a, I’m a huge fan of building trust with my teams. And so I tell them, Hey, I have no idea. This is the end of my knowledge of this stuff. You guys got to fill in all the blanks. Help me understand it, right? Why? And, and so my willing to be vulnerable is a role model for their ability to be vulnerable. And if I don’t have self confidence, I’m not going to be vulnerable, right? And so I have to know that I’m a, I’m a valuable human being. irrespective of the context, right? Like it’s completely okay for me to be in a room where everybody knows 10 times more than I do. Awesome, when I get to learn. I like to raise my hand and go, I don’t get this.
Can you explain it? Like sixth grade level, right? Oh, okay. Wow. Okay. Now I get it. And people with people who don’t have confidence often say things like, well, that’s above my pay grade. And I don’t see anything as above my pay grade because, well, if I can see a way to solve a problem and it’ll benefit the, well, it’ll benefit my team first, the company second, then I should go do it.
And I might need to get executive approval, but I should still do it anyway, because my team will operate better. And it’s, and I think one of my mental models is that my job as team lead is to help them all operate better. And as long as I’m doing that, and I can see consistent improvement in the team, I’m a happy camper. That’s yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Agree. I think one of the things I really feel from a confident leader is not just the team, but also protecting the team.
Because there will be so many asks that are BS that come from out of left field that are unreasonable, unsubstantiated, and it’s up to that leader to go, no, and be able and protect their team so they can be more productive. So they can focus. Unfortunately, it’s the lack of confidence that will make you go say yes. It’s the yes people that say yes to everything.
Bill Lennan: Yeah. 100 percent yeah.
Russel Lolacher: They don’t have the grounding. They don’t have the confidence to know where and when to push back.
Bill Lennan: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s totally right. My philosophical perspective is that they get all the accolades. I get all the arrows. If there’s ever a complaint, that’s my it’s my fault. And it’s, it’s my fault because I’m managing the team and I’m leading the team. And if any, if they did anything wrong, it’s because I didn’t do it right. And so I’m the, I’m the shield wall. The flip side to it is whenever anything goes well, it’s all because they did stuff because they’re the ones that are writing the code, right? And so I give them all the kudos. I get all the arrows. Again, while, while for some people that may sound scary, the, the reality is the CEO and the C suite and the CTO, those people all recognize what’s happening and they appreciate it. And so, and frankly, so does my team, which at the end of the day, that for me is the big win. I want their performance to improve and I want them to feel happy. I want them to trust me, whatever it takes to make that happen is what I’m going to do.
Russel Lolacher: So here’s where I have a challenge with confidence is because there are a lot of leaders that have it, but it’s more arrogant assumption or it’s unfounded confidence, right? It’s… so where did that line get understood? Because there is obviously some hiring problems because they’re hiring those people in leadership positions who aren’t confident leaders.
They’re just telling you what you want to hear. The yes people get promoted to those roles. And as you’ve just, we’ve just defined, they’re not the confident leader.
Bill Lennan: So the confidence is, you know what to do. You know how to do it, and you’ve done enough reps that you’re not afraid of the outcome, that you can predict the outcome, right? So, as an example, if if I go talk to a bunch of people and I’m like, Okay, what’s 7 times 3? Everybody says 21. And that’s because everybody has done that math in their head, or some version of that math in their head, a million times. And nobody has a panic attack when I ask that question. Because they have the reps to know that they can consistently, predictably spit out the answer to that question. There’s context… if you told me to do brain surgery right now on somebody, I wouldn’t have any confidence. Because I don’t know how to do brain surgery, right? I don’t even know how to use a scalpel. So I’d be starting off very nervous. And so, part of confidence is, I’ve done this, or I’ve done something that’s mostly like this, lots and lots and lots of reps. And lots and lots of reps depends on the person.
I got comfortable starting conversations with strangers at the very beginning of getting rid of my social anxiety. It took me two weeks and maybe 15, two minute conversations. For me, that was enough. Now, what’s funny is both of my kids had social anxiety after Covid, it took them a couple of days and about a dozen conversations to get over their social anxiety. They were much faster than me, right? It all scales differently at a time when they were really comfortable with public speaking. I was terrified of it And I still had a lot of work to do to get over that fear. So I didn’t have confidence about public speaking until I did the reps and and was comfortable that I could predict the outcome. And so, so part of confidence, I think is being able to predict an outcome and go oh, yeah, you know broadly speaking, I know how this is going to go, right? I’m not i’m not I don’t have any confidence about doing brain surgery because I have no idea how that would work know, even if you were walking me through every step along the way i’d still be really nervous.
Russel Lolacher: What we’re talking about a lot here is self awareness because a lot, but you need to understand that we have to have that in order to go down any path that we’re talking about today. Because there will be people that don’t recognize that they’re an introvert.
That they’re a neurodivergent, that they’re, they just think they’re different or other or whatever have you. So it’s not only under having that self awareness, but able to label it so you know how to go down that path. So that leads me to my next question, which is how do you shift a mindset? Because you, you talk about mindset models a lot.
Bill Lennan: Yeah. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: And you talk about frameworks but you have to start somewhere. How do you even know you have the problem of confidence?
Bill Lennan: I often ask people about behaviors because ultimately the behavior is the outcome of your mental model and so I’ll ask them about a behavior, a place where they’re struggling. And when they talk about their struggle, then I’ll ask some more questions. And sooner or later, I get to their mental model.
They’ll just say it out loud you can’t, you can’t go to your boss and ask them a question. That’s a mental model. And I’m like, actually, you can. And so what I find is that people don’t question their own mental models. We don’t walk around thinking, my beliefs are all flawed. I know I have them, and I know they help me operate on day to day basis, but they’re all flawed in some way, shape, or form.
Which is probably what we should be doing, but I don’t even do that myself, right? Even though I can say that out loud. I wish I could be like that all the time, but I can’t. And so, what I try to do is figure out, where is there an emotional challenge? Because when your mental model has a conflict with the real world, you have an emotional response.
For me, I knew I wanted to start networking, but I was terrified to go to networking events because I had social anxiety. And so, I want to go to networking events, but I’m sweating bullets, and I can’t get out of the car. That was my experience, right? And this is a problem, because all those other people are walking into that networking event, and they’re having a good time, and, and I’m, like, locking the doors, and in my car, and not able to get out. This is a problem. And so, when I talk with people, that’s what I want to find out, is where do they hit those places? And then I’m like, oh, have you ever considered there’s another way to do it? The people that are successful in this arena where you’re really struggling, they look at it very, very differently.
Here’s another way to look at it. If it’s something I’ve done, I’m like, here’s how I look at it, right? And then they go, oh, oh, I never thought about it that way. And, and that opens the conversation to, but how do you make that happen? What does it take to make that happen? There’s, there’s an analogy that I use all the time about the water.
I grew up swimming competitively. Did a lot of surfing, a lot of diving. For me, the water’s a playground and my kids both play water polo. For them, the water’s a playground. We went whitewater rafting years ago. Like six, seven years ago. Hit a rock. We all got dumped out. We all got sucked under the raft. We were going down the stream.
My kids and I are literally laughing about it. We think it’s hilarious. There’s a woman in the boat who’s completely losing her mind. She’s screaming. She’s freaking out, like out of her mind. We collect all the stuff floating in the water. We get over, we get her out of the water and we’re sitting on their shore. And she’s I’m going to walk home. And we’re like, well, we’re in the middle of a gorge, and the guide’s there and he’s you, you can’t walk home from here. You’ve got to get back in the boat and she’s panicking and same experience, right? We were all in the same boat. We all had the same thing happen. My kids and I think it’s hilarious. She’s sure she just escaped death. That’s mental models, right? My mental model, my kid’s mental model, is the water’s a playground. Her mental model is, it’s a death trap. She doesn’t know how to swim, right? She had a life jacket on, that’s what kept her afloat, but she doesn’t know how to swim.
And so, when you can give people a different mental model, oh, well you can take swimming lessons, right? People teach adult swimming lessons, it’s not rocket science, like it’s easy to do. Then it opens a door of possibility for them. And so, I just try to say, look, here’s a different way to look at it. And, and here’s the skills and the steps to get competent at those skills. So you can now do that thing, right? Here’s how you learn how to swim. You go to the Red Cross. They start you by holding your breath in water that’s knee deep. And putting your face in the water and then stand up. That’s the starting point of getting comfortable.
And, and everything breaks down like that. And so we just start with, what’s the baby step? How have you been a mental model?
Russel Lolacher: And that makes a lot of sense. But also I’m curious about, there’s a lot of people that feel confidence in their mental model because it’s all they know. It is… right? It’s their context, their worldview. So they’re like, no, no, don’t show me the scary world there, Bill. I like my mental model. Where I build my confidence from.
How do you break them through that? Because I hear curiosity from what you’re saying in key but you have to get them out of their comfort zone, which I’m sure is not easy.
Bill Lennan: So there’s a couple things there. That’s a, that’s a great question. One of them is they have to have motivation. If they have no motivation to move out of their current mental model, there’s nothing I can do, right? I can’t cure it or stick them to get them out because they’re gonna be like, I don’t care I’m keeping my flawed mental model because it makes me happy and there’s nothing I need on the other side. I just don’t care. Right?
In which case, you’re going to stay in that mental model and I’m going to wish you the best and that’s it. Usually people want to achieve something that requires changing the mental model. And that’s where the emotional thing comes up where they have a desire but they can’t figure out how to get there. And often times they go I can’t get there because I just can’t, right? And, and because they have this mental model and no one’s given them a different paradigm, a different mental model, a different set of beliefs to even verbalize and go, Oh, wait a minute. Here’s how that actually… here’s a way to have to be empowered in that context.
And it’s a double blind. They don’t know. They don’t know. And so for me, it’s always, okay, let me get it. Let me, let’s get the double blind out there on the table and then we can talk about it and you can go, Oh my god swimming lessons? Who’d have thought? I’d never considered that before I thought it was only for five year olds like really they teach adults how to swim?
Yeah, they do and they’re really good at it. And that’s the the the… if someone doesn’t want to change They’re not gonna change.
Russel Lolacher: I’m curious about diversity because how we defined confidence off the top, we define these things because other people have different definitions of confidence.
And I can’t imagine somebody from a different culture, a different generation, like I don’t want to go to that meeting. Who has the balls to say that, but then another person would be like, Oh no, that’s I, I’m, that’s exactly what I don’t want to do is go to a meeting and I’ll tell my boss.
And I’m like, I couldn’t even fathom doing that. So how does diversity step in here? Because you, I’m assuming have to approach it differently.
Bill Lennan: Nope, not really.
Russel Lolacher: Okay. Ok. I assumed wrong.
Bill Lennan: Yeah yeah. The starting point like we all grew up in cultures with different mental models. I lived on military bases until I was 15. There’s a structure and a set of mental models that you have when you grow up on military bases about how everything works and when I moved into the civilian world, I had to learn a whole bunch of new mental models. Right?
And, and, and recognize that there was a whole different operating system out there that I didn’t know I didn’t know, right? Oh, wait, this isn’t how I grew up. Oh, okay, but it’s different, right?
Whatever our culture is, we learn mental models. And then the question becomes, okay, what are the new mental models in this different environment?
And how do I apply them? What do I do with them? And and really that’s the thing, is just to be as, to be, what’s the word I want to use, pragmatic and factual, and, and here’s what that looks like.
So it’s just, it’s just finding the mental model, and again if somebody doesn’t want to change because they’re really in a belief that they just don’t want to have come out, be, be modified, okay, cool, that’s fine. It’s, it may be a career limiting factor. You need to know that.
But if you want to keep that mental model, I’m, I’m not going to try and change your mind.
Russel Lolacher: So you’ve shifted mental models. You’ve helped people become more confident leaders.
Bill Lennan: Hmm.
Russel Lolacher: But I’ve met a few confident leaders. It didn’t mean they were good leaders. How do you bridge that or at least help them understand that their journey is not over yet?
Bill Lennan: So back to mental models. So the first one is to have a mental model that the most important thing they can do in their role is to help their team operate more effectively. And, and this is seeing leadership as a coaching role, not just a title. And sports coaching is a, is a great analogy. Sports coaches, their job is to make the team operate better. And that’s why professional athletic teams have lots of coaches with lots of different niches they operate in. And the best athletes in the world oftentimes have multiple coaches for different areas that they need to work on. When you’re talking with somebody who’s a confident team lead, but their team isn’t improving its performance, then number one, you need to actually get them to understand that the game is to have your team lead.
Team improve their performance and then it’s, and here’s the behaviors you have to take on to make that happen. These are the things that you need to be doing on a daily basis and, and help them understand the why of that. This is why it matters. This is why performance improves. This is why you need to change your behavior.
And someone may say, no, I don’t want to do that. Okay, great. That, that might be a problem. That might be a career limiting decision.
Russel Lolacher: So what’s success for you in your helping these or you’re helping these leaders become more confident? How do you know, you know what, you can push them off. They’re all growed up now. You can, you can let them go play on the playground themselves. Like what to you is like, you know what, now it’s up to you to figure this out. What is, what is that tipping point for you?
Bill Lennan: It’s, it’s when I start them seeing, it’s when I start seeing them be really proactive about simple things. Contributing in meetings, looking for problems to solve, talking to other people in the organization and, and expanding their mindset or in some cases just saying clearly and repeatedly to me in our one on ones, I don’t want to advance anymore from this, this job right now is perfect for me, and I don’t want to go anywhere from here. Like, I have hit my ceiling and I’m emotionally very happy and I’m making enough money and I like the work and for the foreseeable future, I don’t want to change. Okay, great. That’s fine. That’s kind of the, the, the, the, the, the not leader very possibly, or maybe they just want to be a first level team lead cause they love doing that. That’s totally fine too. But it’s that they’re solving problems on their own and they’re doing leaderful behaviors without a title.
Russel Lolacher: Leaderful. I like that. I’m going to steal that word. Leaderful. All right, Bill, let’s wrap this up. Thank you so much for spending your time.
Bill Lennan: Yeah, of course.
Russel Lolacher: Just defining confidence and, and really getting into it. But what is one simple action, Bill? I’m going to finish it up with the question I ask everybody, which is one simple action people can do right now to improve relationships at work?
Bill Lennan: Talk to strangers. That’s, that’s always the thing that I go back to is start talking with strangers and, and, talk with your team, get to know them, get to understand their frictions. Help if you possibly can. Help them unwind those frictions, whether it’s removing the friction or lubricating it either way as an improvement, but also people outside of your team, like talk to people across the enterprise, however big that is and get to understand everybody else’s. struggles and wins and what they do on a daily basis and if there’s a way you can help them.
Russel Lolacher: That is Bill Lennan, a leadership consultant and founder of 40 Percent Better, helping leaders improve their team’s performance. Thanks so much, Bill.
Bill Lennan: Thank you.
