1st Lead U - Leadership Development
This podcast, now in Season 3, is dedicated to self-development, self-awareness, and learning to lead oneself so listeners can lead others well. If someone cannot lead themselves well, it will be difficult for them to be an effective leader of others. This podcast will help listeners understand what it means to 1st Lead U and build confidence in themselves and their leadership ability. Personal Growth Coach John Ballinger has spent 35 years developing the knowledge and material he shares with individuals, business owners, and leaders from a variety of areas.
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
Commander: CHARTing a New Path to Leadership
Most commanders and this is not a play on words but they throw grenades around. They walk into a room and they can just toss a grenade out and holler something or say something and it literally stuns the team and it can disrupt the rest of their day.
Announcer:Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
John Ballinger:Hello America and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.
Announcer:Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
John Ballinger:Hello leaders, welcome to First Lead you. I'm John Ballinger. I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Good afternoon, john. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Good afternoon John. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. I was kind of listening to the lead in self-awareness and emotional intelligence. How much do we say those words? A lot.
Douglas Ford:Us A lot yeah.
John Ballinger:It was like what can I do? What can I do Be aware? What can I do? What can I do? Be aware, be aware of what you need to do Most. Intelligence is a huge factor in leadership growth and I know, I know there are books being written about it and people talking about it, but doing it is a completely separate issue.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, it's. It's the discipline of doing hard things, right? Yeah, We've been talking about that a lot lately.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I believe in maybe one of the last couple of episodes we, we, we talked about. One of the most difficult things to do in becoming disciplined is being disciplined to become disciplined.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, we talked about that with Clint last week.
John Ballinger:Yeah, so that's, that's a tough uh. Yeah, so we got yeah, that's a, there's a, there's something to be said for either having a coach or a mentor or someone to help you with your need to become disciplined. Your, uh, I hope you want to become disciplined. So we're working through the chart, we're working through chart and we've I think've done two c's. We've done coach and cop correct.
John Ballinger:Today we're going to do commander all right yeah, and just for those who are tuning in, the chart is actually going to be. It's actually four letters to each letter. That describes what a leader needs to do and be in order to function as the leader that's needed in today's society.
Douglas Ford:And they can get that on our website.
John Ballinger:They can. They can download that on our website.
Douglas Ford:Firstleaducom.
John Ballinger:That's one.
Douglas Ford:S-T-L-E-A-D-Ucom.
John Ballinger:The letter U. The letter U, commander's tough.
Douglas Ford:Yes, it can be the balance, for sure.
John Ballinger:So most that have been listening to the podcast know that we give a? Uh assessments to see where our leaders at personality, what their genius is. We use uh Patrick Linsoni's um, uh working genius, and then the emotional intelligence 2.0 test and we look at those three assessments and it gives us a good benchmark for who that leader is. And I actually happened to have two assessments that both came out as commanders, and one person is 28 and one is 78.
Douglas Ford:Oh, wow. So this should be interesting to see how they compare and contrast 28, 78.
John Ballinger:But I want to read to the, to the listener, the personality profile, or just the general thought process, of a commanding type personality. They can be efficient, energetic, self-confident, strong-willed, strategic thinker and charismatic. Now that's their strengths. Are you ready for the weaknesses?
Douglas Ford:Oh yeah, there's always a um, uh, a pro and a con, right to every, to every personality type stubborn and dominant, intolerant, impatient, arrogant, handles emotions poorly, can be cold and ruthless yeah. That'd be a tough person to work with, and ruthless, yeah, that'd be a tough person to work with, or for.
John Ballinger:Yeah, so you can say well, there are strengths, you know being all these things, but man were there weaknesses not overshadow those strengths pretty quickly oh yeah, absolutely.
Douglas Ford:I mean, you're talking about working genius and they do talk about that a good bit of like every genius. They call it the dark side. Right, every genius has a dark side. That you know. If you approach it in the right attitude, with the right frame of mind and uh right perspective, having a certain genius or a certain personality type is super beneficial. But if you lean too far in the other direction, all those negatives can really devastate the positives.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I can't. You know, when we think about what does what does a leader look like? That someone gravitates to or wants to be led by? I do think that people want someone that is focused and strong-willed and has the ability to make tough decisions and move the organization forward the ability to make tough decisions and move the organization forward. However, in conjunction with that, the team doesn't want someone that's intolerant, impatient, arrogant, emotional and cold and ruthless. So when we're talking about the need to have the four C's, the reason we are is because if your natural bend is to be a commander, you've got to realize that you're really not going to lead the team. Today and today's society post COVID, the way that team needs to be led. They're looking for someone that is more well-rounded and is not ruthless or cold when they lead.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and even in the um kind of unscientific survey that we did uh a couple of years ago and we've talked about it before, uh, where what character traits were people looking for in their leaders? I mean, one of them was to be be indecisive or be to be decisive in times of uncertainty, which is certainly the commander type of leadership profile.
John Ballinger:Yeah, and a coach should be able to do that. Right, the coach should be able to. When you get into the counseling type, maybe the cop can be in that decisive, but they may have to think about the, the uh, I guess the process of does what does the company policy say, or the rules and regulations? They may get caught up a little bit in that. But I tell you what you have to learn to be decisive, and I call it shift gears. I mean, for those of you in the audience that have uh, driven a manual transmission, you know what. Remember what those were? Yeah, I drove a manual transmission. Yeah, there's not many of them left out there, though.
Douglas Ford:If I said three on the tree, do you know what? Remember what those were? Yeah, I drove a manual transmission. Yeah, there are not many of them left out there, though.
John Ballinger:If I said three on the tree, do you know what that is?
Douglas Ford:Yeah, my dad had a truck with a three on the tree, did he really?
John Ballinger:Yeah, I never drove that one, but that's the first uh vehicle I drove was a three on the tree, a 64 Chevrolet pickup truck. So anyway, uh back, I digress, uh back to uh reality. But the gear shifting goes on because in first year, what's the vehicle doing? Just getting started, just getting started and it's pretty high revving, like if you don't push the clutch in and go to second gear, that thing's going to be screaming very quickly, yes, and, and so forth and so on, as you go to second and third and fourth and then ultimately fifth. But then at fifth gear, if it's a five speed transmission, at fifth gear it still has an RPM level that don't exceed this Right.
John Ballinger:And today's commanding type personality has got to realize that just running in fifth uh first year is not going to be good for leadership and your people around you are going to hear you screaming quotation mark screaming because they need you to get into a better flow and understanding of what's going on and get that thing in fifth gear as soon as possible so it gets to a steady state. Most commander and I was a commander, by the way my, my initial personality profile was a commander profile- Okay, so that's interesting.
Douglas Ford:So you said your initial, so that indicate there's been some change over there. Oh, absolutely.
John Ballinger:Can I, can I read my change? Yes, please. So I have changed. I have progressed, uh, over time, and so my personality profile that I recently took I think in 2022, it seems like 22 or 23 is when I retook the, whenever I took the working genius. We started using that two or three years ago. I took that. I became an advocate. That was my, that was my personality profile, and let me read the strengths and weaknesses of an advocate. It's actually I didn't I didn't make this up, douglas. It's actually the rarest form of personality.
Douglas Ford:Of course it is.
John Ballinger:I promise I did not make that. This comes straight from the website. Idealistic and principled people with advocate personality profiles aren't content to coast through life. They want to stand up and make a difference, and they want to do it for people that can't stand up for themselves. They have lofty goals and ambitions. They shouldn't be mistaken for idle dreamers. Their personality type cares about integrity and is rarely satisfied just with doing the normal. They're conscientious to the core. They move through life with clear sense of values and they aim to never lose sight of what truly matters, and that's caring about people in society. Now you know me. What does that? Does that sound?
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I'd say that's 90% plus.
John Ballinger:So if I started out as a commander, I had to be less caring. I had to be more about probably me and I'm and I hate to say this about the commander profiles, but a lot of times they're selfish. Their, their ambitions are really self-generated more than they are about the mission of the people and the people themselves. That's why they're cold and ruthless. Um, in the world of CEOs we've talked about this in the past there's the, the slash and burn, where the board calls a man and says you know what cut, and then the growth and heal that's going to come in behind it. Two totally different personality styles. Who has the most difficult job?
John Ballinger:oh, the growth and healing yeah, because that that slash and burn they really don't care right, and they probably moved on to the next slash and burn, right, right, um, now the the uh challenge with the weaknesses of a advocate. Are sensitive to criticism. I used to be. I will say this. I was very sensitive to criticism because I tried so hard to do it right First time, reluctant to open up. You could say that when we met I was really still or more closed than open.
Douglas Ford:Correct, I would say that's true.
John Ballinger:Uh, visionary sometimes can be seen, or there was really looking way out there. You know, come back here a little bit, I can prone to burnout yeah, definitely true yeah. So you, you know, you can start sensing you'll say you're getting ready to hit a wall or you all right, you know, because you know I go and I go, and I go, and I go, and I normally hit a wall and need some some time or space. So I'm saying this because you can change your personality profile, because you change your habits.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I was going to ask so you, so you started off as commander whenever you took the first 1989. Okay, and then from 1989 to 2022, we'll say, uh, you, you moved to become the advocate. So what did you have to do to make that change? What, well, what sparked you to even start that move? And then what did you do to kind of move in that direction?
John Ballinger:I would say that the self-awareness was the biggest thing that I did. I started looking introspectively at me instead of what I wanted to accomplish. You know what was the mission? What was I doing? Um, I started looking inside of myself and said, no, what am I doing? Who are you? Why do you react this way? Why did? Why is your temperament like it is? A commander normally has a very strong temper, which does what to his team.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, it destroys the team. That's because they're operating out of fear. A lot, yeah, I want to. I want to upset the person, and so a lot of things they do are to appease and to try to keep the temper from flaring yeah, I call most commanders and this is not a play on words but they throw grenades around.
John Ballinger:They walk into a room and they can just toss a grenade out and you know, holler something or say something and it literally stuns the team and it can disrupt the rest of their day. And sometimes there's an awareness of that, but a lot of times there's not, because they think I'm the boss, I'm in charge Whatever I do. Say go, just do it and don't ask no questions. That tends to be off-putting to people, typically. Yes, especially in today's post-COVID work environment, and we keep we talk about that, but I don't think people realize how much awareness took place with the worker after covid yeah, and I think that's the key word.
Douglas Ford:I mean, it's not that people made this dramatic difference or leadership should have been dramatically different after covid as opposed before covid. It's really the awareness, the kind of the awakening, so to speak, of the working population that weren't in the leadership position, that were being led improperly, like we don't have to take this anymore, and they became a lot more vocal and realized like hey, I can actually enjoy work, or I can not be in a toxic environment or I can stand up for myself, where I think that wasn't always something that people considered, probably prior to COVID, and it's interesting that that timeframe created that, that shift in thinking.
John Ballinger:It was there. You and I have talked about it. We started looking at the numbers and the discontent of people and and things like that and with the trend was there the COVID. Uh, timeframe actually just brought it all by accelerated what was going on. Yeah, and it's kind of like an underlying disease that all of a sudden now it's there and it was a triggering event, so to speak.
John Ballinger:Triggering event yeah, so, um, I want to go to break and we come back for break. I've got some more character traits of a commander, a story about two prolific commanders, and then we're going to talk a little bit about these two assessments of commanders that are 50 years difference in age.
Douglas Ford:Hello First League Youth listeners, douglas Ford here. I want to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode you find some bit of information that will help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, like Apple, spotify or any other platform where you listen to First Lead you. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead you. Expand the message of First Lead you and please take time to visit the First Lead you website. That's the number one S-T, the word lead and the letter U dot com. First Lead you dot com. Number one S-T the word lead and the letter U dot com. I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to First Lead you. Welcome back to First Lead you.
Douglas Ford:Today we are talking about one of the C's in the chart. Previously we've covered the coach and the cop. Today we're talking about commander and then, lastly, there's counselor. That is left for us to talk about. But focusing on commander, today, we've talked a little bit about the personality type of the commander, some of the strengths of the commander personality type, some of the cons or weaknesses of the personality type. But the one thing that we kind of keep talking about is we need balance across all of these. And John, you've got some other traits about the commander and we're going to talk about those in just a minute and review some profiles of commanders, but also speak a little bit more into the balance issue.
John Ballinger:Right, yeah, and I had to ask myself do I, do I want to be seen as a balanced leader, someone that the team could be, uh, could go to be approachable so that they could come to me and guess what, when I was doing that, I was listening to them and they ultimately gave me better information to make good decision. Because when you're a commander type personality, you're not listening Well. That's one of the, it's one of the weaknesses of a commander you don't listen well and so most of is just information going out. I learned that, wow, when I listen, they can give me some good information that helps me with my decision-making and, and once I started getting that good information, it made me work harder to be more approachable. Still understand I need to keep boundaries with the team, but I really started progressing and looking at myself and everything that I thought could be a potential detriment to creating the relationship with the team. I started working on myself and that's that balance you're talking about. Now you can have a commander type personality and be kind of two different commanders types, and I'm going to talk about that real quick.
John Ballinger:There were one of my favorite stories and I know I've mentioned on the podcast because it's one of my favorite leadership stories. But here's two different type of commander personality traits. It's general Eisenhower and general Pat. And in this particular story, uh, in our history books, uh, dwight Eisenhower who was in the rear, so he was behind the scenes, he was back at command post and he would have the big table set up with the tanks and the planes and those soldiers on it and they would try to figure out like which is the next move, or the troops to take over which city and the and the theater and the European theater. And he made a, he made some assessments on the next city and so he wanted to send a communication to the general on the ground, which happened to be George Patton. And he tells Patton, stop, don't take the city of tri-year. We've surmised that you're going to need four divisions or there'll be thousands of casualties. And so that was a communication that went to the field commander. The field commander, in return, sent a message that said stop, city of tri-year, taken with two divisions. What do you want us to do? Give it back. Now.
John Ballinger:Those two guys had known each other for a long time. Eisenhower knew the brashness of Pat, pat knew that there wasn't a lot of brashness and Eisenhower, he was more refined, more of a sophisticated person. I say you know, eisenhower was that presidential type of leader. He did speak softly A lot of times. He did was thoughtful. I you know, patton, he would say something for he even thought about it Like he'd just do it instead you know, which ultimately led to Eisenhower removing one of his stars Patton stars you know and you think about.
John Ballinger:These guys were close and they were friends. But, as the history book says, you know, eisenhower knew who Patton was and he knew how to use Patton for his strengths. But he was keenly aware of his weaknesses, and a leader needs to know the strengths and weaknesses of their team. So I think that's a good story. If you just look it up and want to read the whole thing, I encourage you to do it. It's a city of Trier, t-r-i-e-r and it's a good story.
John Ballinger:The commander personality style also is very impulsive. So I want you to think as a leader. If you're a commander and you're impulsive, you come up with this plan. You tell the team to the plan. So, mr Ford and team, here's what we're going to do. And you spend the rest of the day and you're having your meeting, and and you give the team all right, team, here's what we're going to do. And you spend the rest of the day and you're having your meeting, and and you give the team all right, team, here's what we're going to do. And tomorrow morning you come in and the commander says we're changing directions. What have you just done to the team?
Douglas Ford:Well, frustrated them significantly for one Um and any other number of words that you want to use disrespect, you know, I mean there's all kinds of things that go along with that because you're you're kind of thrashing them back and forth.
John Ballinger:Right, what's it? What's it done to the payroll dollars?
Douglas Ford:I probably increased them significantly because of time needed to shift gears.
John Ballinger:Okay.
John Ballinger:So during a four week period I've seen a lot of commanders shift gears and change directions multiple times and at the end of the quarter they'll sit down like why are we out of balance on our P and L, why are sales down, why is payroll up, why things seem disorganized and unstable?
John Ballinger:I can tell you there's times I just held my head in my hands thinking how could you not see what you're doing? If you're, if you're continually throwing grenades into your team and you're changing directions without giving them even any inkling of a turn signal or saying you know, all right, my team is six. You two continue down this path because we need to get that done, but I need you four to start down this path. At least you've give some communication to them with some clarity to it, so that the team isn't just paralyzed by what's going on. Because if I come in three days later from the direction that I've told you to go and you've done all this heavy lifting and I tell you to stop and don't worry about that, we've got a new direction. It's going to take you a while to disassemble the mindset of the people, because now the person, especially in charge of the department, where it's a VP level, a director level, has got to go to the team and say I don't know world. I tell them this Right.
Douglas Ford:Well, and it's going to create at some point students start creating, uh, an apathy in what's being done, because like, oh, if we just wait a week or two, it all changed.
John Ballinger:So we don't, we don't really have to do this and you know that's going to change tomorrow, so why do we even do anything?
Douglas Ford:Exactly.
John Ballinger:Yeah, so I've got these two personality profiles that I said that are 50 years in age apart. They're both commanders and they were taken probably within the same week.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, a week or two of each other, yeah.
John Ballinger:Here's what's interesting about the personalities is that they're virtually identical and percentages, with the exception of about 10% on the older gentlemen than the younger gym. So, for example, the extrovert versus introvert percent is almost 10% off, but still heavily extroverted on both sides, the command, which means what heavily extrovert.
Douglas Ford:Well, they do a lot of external processing. Like to be in the center of things.
John Ballinger:Yep, don't mind talking, come in and tell you their opinion Right Right, you their opinion right Right. On the intuitive side, the 28 year old is 73% intuitive and 27% observative. Observative observance Excuse me, pardon me Audience. On the uh, 78 year old commander side 63% intuitive, 37% observant. Almost identical again, thinking. On the 28 year old is 74, feeling, and this is the decision-making process. Do you use thought in your decision process or do you use feeling to make your decisions? 74, 26. On the 78 year old, it's 68, 32.
Douglas Ford:So so explain that again. So if you're hit, so if you're hit, if you're heavier thinking you're doing what now?
John Ballinger:you're. You're using more facts, figures, statistics, um data. You're not using much. I don't and I'm saying I don't care. You're not putting as much emphasis on the decision I'm getting ready to make and how it impacts the team. Like it's, the data is the data, the numbers of the numbers. If it means that it's going to lay these people off or going to stop this project or whatever, it is just the way it is. You don't put much emphasis on the feeling aspect of your decision-making which, if you listen to us earlier talking about the kind of the coldness of a commander just driven by data, driven by statistics, driven by what are the results.
John Ballinger:The reason we talk about the four C's is there has to be a coach and a counselor aspect that comes out of the process of leadership in your decision-making. If, if there is a hard decision has to be made, you should already start beat. You should be thinking about a plan how this is going to impact this group of people, this department in the organization. You know what's going to happen. You know you're going to have to give some bad news. The stats are the stats, the sales are the sales, the profits are the profits. But how do you let them know that you care about the decision you made because you've already thought up some process with which to address who's going to be impacted. I think the pure commander doesn't think about that. Thought up some process with which to address who's going to be impacted, I think the pure commander doesn't think about that.
Douglas Ford:Make the decision moving on.
John Ballinger:Yeah, move on to the next one. But what it does in the on the back end is it leaves a wake behind you like a boat going down the water very quickly. And the people that are left what do you think it does to them?
Douglas Ford:Oh, it unnerves them. I mean that makes them very uncertain about what might happen in the future.
John Ballinger:Yeah, cause they don't know, am I next Right? Especially if you don't clearly communicate like, yes, we had to let go of six people and this is what happened and why we had to let go six people. But we're safe If we do these things to move things forward and communicate that clearly. If we don't, we may have to make some other tough decisions, and that's not a threat, it's just the reality of things. But those that loose survey that we did, those those uh people said they wanted to be communicated with because a lot of times they can help with whatever the challenges that are going on.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, well, we were talking to this morning and slightly different context, but still holds true today or in this context, that communication during the time of transition is the most important, because if you don't communicate, you leave people to come up with their own assumptions and ideas and make decisions that may not be based on the best information. So the more you can communicate and be open, that's what best serves the team, although you know there's also times where you have to hold back information because the team may not be ready to hear that or receive it.
John Ballinger:Yeah, the team may not be ready to hear that or receive it. Yeah, um, just thinking through that, can you imagine going into the team and telling them something and just walking out? I've seen that happen before.
Douglas Ford:And I think there's a few CEOs who sent emails similar to that.
John Ballinger:They have.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, they've just sent an email out tomorrow, you, 2,800 people are no longer needed.
John Ballinger:Yeah, and and then the the C. There was one CEO that did that, and then they he got on one of the social media platforms and was crying because he'd got so much backlash over it. I'm thinking.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I think he was more upset about the backlash than the action that he took, right.
John Ballinger:Yeah. So it's very important. The commander personality trait I want you to hear me commander traits you can't change. You need to change. You need to look at yourself internally and learn the balance to getting the job done, leading the team forward, but doing it while listening, having some empathy and compassion, as well as coaching the people along the way to get the most out of them that the team needs to move forward. So I think it's important for the commander type to do that self-assessment and, as we go into the final C, uh, that's, that's really probably one of the toughest leadership traits that most people aren't born with. You know, this is really you have to work at it. And that's the counselor.
John Ballinger:How do I take myself down from CEO commander type? Let's get it done. Or even the coach Come on, I can get the best out of you. Cop, where we got to make sure we hit all the the rules and regulations and say you know what, we just need to talk. You just need somebody to talk to to help unpack some things from, let's say, the c-suite to vice president level, to ensure that you're maturing that person. It's hard to come from there. You know kind of the hard charging to. Can we just talk?
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and I think it's also difficult to go. If that's your kind of your natural state, it's hard to leave that sometimes because you are very caring, you are very nurturing, you do want to. You know, make sure people understand that you care about them and when it comes time to make the tough decision, or you need to enforce rules, or you know make sure people understand that you care about them and when it comes time to make the tough decision, or you need to enforce rules, or you know you really need to inspire somebody through some tough love, so to speak, it can be hard for you to move out of that position as well. So, yeah, it is certainly very difficult. I think we can fall into some of those other roles a little more and, quote unquote play the role a little bit more than we can if we're either naturally bent toward counselor or not. That way, right.
John Ballinger:Well, audience, thanks for listening today. And remember in order to lead your team well, you must first lead you, you, you.
