Hello, welcome to another episode of unlocked. Today, we've got a lovely, lovely interview with a man named Martin G. Moore, and I say Martin G. Moore, because that's where you're going to find his information. Go to martingmoore.com. Find out more about him there. Martin is a performance coach for leadership, for CEOs, and for those individuals looking to up their game in that realm. He just launched a new book last fall and has a podcast, alone, 2 million downloads at this point in over 100 countries. He is making some ripples in the space, and we are going to get some insights from him. No Bullsh!t Leadership, title of the book, title of the podcast guess, and yes, I said that because he doesn't mess around.
The title of his book follows the mentality of the way he thinks leadership should be. There's a lot of fluff in that space. Trust me, I'm there as well. There's a lot of content out there, and there's a lot of value that it brings, but there is also a lot of fluff. Well, Martin, he doesn't beat around the bush. He cuts to it and tells us exactly what he thinks the core problem is with leadership. We talk about that a lot in this podcast. Go ahead and listen up because it's important. What we talk about here is important, not only for you, but the people you lead, and not only for you at work and the people you lead at work, but the people you lead at home and leading yourself. I am super stoked for this interview. Let's go to Martin. Martin Moore, this is a really, really great opportunity. I hope that everybody indulges in this as much as I'm about to because I'm ready. Let's do it.
Martin G. Moore:
Thanks, Skot. Great to be here today.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah. Welcome. It's a pretty monumental occasion for you. You've had this book out since September, and I want to start out talking about that. How did you come to writing the book? I'm always interested in the journey story of how you even came up with this idea, why you wanted to get this out, because there's a couple leadership books out there, so I didn't know if you knew that, but there's a few. I just wanted to know, why yours, and why'd you come up with this idea?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, Skot, let me go back and talk about the genesis of my little business, Your CEO Mentor, that I started with my daughter, Emma, who's now 32 years old, in Australia in 2018. "Going into business with family, what could possibly go wrong?" I hear you ask. We figured that probably the smartest thing to do was to go into a business in the most crowded market on the planet with no barriers to entry, which is leadership development. But I'd had a career in Australia as a corporate executive and CEO, and I'd got to the point where I was feeling as I needed to do more. I needed to have more impact on the world because my primary driver is impact. I'd been thinking for a while about doing something, and I'd mentored Emma through all of her trials and tribulations as she started her career in advertising and marketing.
She'd been on me for a while saying, "Come on, Dad. You can do more with this." As I was getting to the end of a particular CEO role, which was winding up in 2018, after five years, we had the conversation. I said, "Well maybe I'll get another CEO gig down here. I've always thought I might write a book, so maybe I can write a book." She just said, "Dad, that is so 2010. You're not writing a book. We're going to lead with a podcast." That's how the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast actually started. This is sort of interesting, right? Because when she said, "We're going to start a podcast," I knew nothing about it at all. I think the first podcast I listened to, Skot, was one of my own. Funnily enough, the concept of giving away your best content for free was something that was completely foreign to me.
When I look back on how she convinced me to start the business, she said, "Right, here's what we do. We get our best content, and we put it out there." I said, "No, no, no. No, no. I've been around a while. I know how business works. It doesn't work like that. What you do in your marketing phase, you show a little bit of ankle, and if people are interested, then you'll show a little bit of calf," and I spoke about bringing people through that journey. But what she explained to me very effectively was that in this current day and age and in this digital world, people's attention spans and the amount of other content that you're competing against demands that you hit people with the very best stuff you've got straight away. Now, it's not everything, but it is really high-quality content.
We started with the high-quality content in the podcast. My view was, "We are in the most crowded market on the planet with no barriers to entry. There's a lot of noise here. We may not go anywhere with it, but if it doesn't work, in 12 months, hey, I'll go and get another CEO job." We went through that process, and the book was always a planned part of this evolution. You can tell from my accent that I'm not actually from the US, but we decided that the US market was where we needed to be to have the sort of impact that we wanted to have, so a very long answer to a very simple question, Skot.
SKOT WALDRON:
The title of the book then, it comes from the title of the podcast, right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
It does.
SKOT WALDRON:
The podcast launched first. Congratulations, standing out, because it stands out, but I'm interested in the title of the podcast and then why it became the title of the book. I get the brand continuity. I love that your daughter was an advertising. I too come from the marketing-advertising-design world, so I get that quite a bit, the consistency aspect. Tell me about the title of both the podcast and the book and why that was the focus for you.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
When we started the podcast, we thought the title pretty much encapsulated what we were going to do. There's a lot of fluff out there in leadership development. Don't get me wrong. I will not be critical of any content that's out there because someone somehow is getting value from it. I'm a massive believer in supporter of markets. If you've got anything where you can find a market and that market supports you, then, hey, you deserve it. It doesn't matter what it is. But I feel a little bit frustrated because so my much of the leadership stuff today is about virtue signaling and about desirable leadership attributes. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it just sort of doesn't help you to work out how you might improve your leadership. We've got this state today where almost 400 billion US dollars are spent annually on leadership development globally.
If you look around the world, there is still a real dearth of great leaders, I think, in pretty much every field we look into. There's something clearly wrong with that. The concept of No Bullsh!t Leadership was, "Well, okay. Well, let's cut through all this stuff. Let's get to the practical things that really make a difference." Our goal with the podcast was that in every episode, and 95% of the episodes are just Martin monologues, but in every episode, we want a short, sharp piece of very practical stuff that someone can take away and implement that day in their organization or their team. That's born out because of the number of emails and DMs we get from people saying, "Hey, this was fantastic. I listened this podcast this morning. I decided that when I went into my office, I was going to do something different. I did this, and it worked really well. Thank you so much."
This is the sort of thing we wanted to do. Now, the book name was interesting. There was already a book with the same title published by a guy in the UK about 80 months ago. We went to our publisher with half a dozen names on the chalkboard, all of which he rejected because none of them were No Bullsh!t Leadership, and he said, "I love the title of your podcast. I want to call the book that." Given that he was obviously a US-based publishing house and we wanted to obviously do that, we thought, "Well, this is awesome. It's consistent with our brand. We're happy to have the name out there, and we think it really clearly describes what it is that we do and what we offer."
SKOT WALDRON:
And, as you mentioned to me earlier, it acts as a filter.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
It absolutely does act as a filter. Yeah, a lot of people will look at that and say, "That's a rude name. I don't think I can support that," and they won't partake of the content, which is great because the content is challenging. It isn't comforting at times. It's challenging. It says, "Okay. Well, if this is the way you're leading, that's not going to work. It's not going to be good enough for you. You need to do these things." It's hard. It's disciplines. It's habits. It's the things you need to step into that actually go against the grain of what you would naturally want to do based on your DNA programming. It's not an easy thing.
SKOT WALDRON:
Fair enough. Yeah. I love that angle. I love that angle that it presents there as a filter, that it sets the premise for what you're about to get into. Okay?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Yeah, totally.
SKOT WALDRON:
We're not trying to cushion the cover, we're not trying to cushion the name, and we're not going to try to cushion you as you go throughout this journey because it's going to be hard, right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Yeah. Absolutely. Look, thanks to people who've written great works going before me, like Mark Manson, the word that we use on our cover is pretty tame.
SKOT WALDRON:
That is true. That is true. That is true. Tell me a little bit about the content. What makes it tough? What's that journey, or what's the principle, or what's the angle that you take that makes me sit there and go, "Maybe I should listen to this guy," because there is no shortage of books, there's no shortage of podcasts, no shortage of blogs?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
Why am I going to even pick up your book?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, I specialize, Skot, in what I like to call the pie-in-the-face moment where none of this, of course, is entirely original, but if I have one superpower, it's being able to take very complex concepts... All of leadership is complex because it's about the almost infinite permutations and accommodations of human behavior in interaction. The issue with a lot of the leadership content that's out there is that it's just too simplified to be useful. It's oversimplified. There's an old Monte Python sketch, a parody of a children's show called How To Do It, where they teach kids how to build box-girder bridges and split the atom and so forth, obviously, in a very oversimplified way. But my favorite is when they're teaching kids how to play the flute, and what they say is, "Well, kids, you blow in one end, and you move your fingers up and down the outside."
Now, that is absolutely true, but it's completely useless. It's too nebulous and too general to actually do anything with. A lot of the leadership content is like that, where we nod and we go, "Yeah," and we identify with it, we feel motivated and inspired, and we feel warm and fuzzy, but then we can't do anything different about how we actually lead. The whole premise about what I do is to say, "Okay. Well, if you want to lead better, here's the things you need to focus on." I've got seven things that are requisite to becoming even a competent leader, let alone a great leader, and it starts with value. Because of all of the virtue-signaling content that's out there, I think people have tended to start thinking that leadership is about being a better person or being someone that other people aspire to.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and those are good things, but what are you actually going to do to be a better leader? Because while you are consuming the content and feeling warm and fuzzy, the people in your team are going, "I wish I could work for someone else." This is sort of bridging this gap and saying, "Here's some practical tools. If you're in this situation, here's the questions you should think about asking. If you want to become better at this, these are the disciplines you need to follow." It's about developing good habits and disciplines, which sometimes go against the grain of what's programmed into our DNA. It's tough.
SKOT WALDRON:
You've got seven things, and I got to hear one. You got to give me something. Give me the-
MARTIN G. MOORE:
I'll fly you over the top of all seven, because I can do it very, very quickly.
SKOT WALDRON:
Beautiful. Love it.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
The very first thing is deliver value, right? That's number one. That's why you're there as a leader. Forget the other stuff. Deliver value first and foremost. Handle conflict, build resilience, work at the right level. Stop doing other people's jobs for them. Do your own. Master ambiguity, make great decisions, and drive accountability, the key to successful execution. Obviously, the object of the exercise is value. Then the next four things are about you as the leader, conflict, resilience, working at the right space, and being able to handle the ambiguity, and then the last two are about actually getting things done, great decisions executed well through accountability.
SKOT WALDRON:
Good. I like the format. That's powerful, and it's simple. You've kind of chunked it out, narrowed it down to those core ones. Which one's your favorite
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Mine's actually drive accountability.
SKOT WALDRON:
Is it? Okay.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
The reason for that is because, Skot, I used to think I was so good at it. I used to think I was the best executive at execution on the planet. I used to pat myself on the back something shocking. I would've maybe said I was overconfident about it. Then a couple of things happened a number of years ago where I realized that I had an Achilles heel in the way I was doing things. I had a couple of not-so-favorable results that came from that, where I'd been blindsided. I had to completely deconstruct what I thought was the perfect approach and rebuild it to something that actually did work pretty much flawlessly. To be able to execute single-point accountability, as I like to say, one head to pat, one ass to kick, they both belong to the same person, but to execute that in complex organizational structures is really tricky. Learning how to do that was one of the keys to actually getting better execution. As I say to people, if that was the only thing you did as a leader, if that was the only thing you did differently, your results would improve tenfold.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well said. Yeah. That realization thing's a real kicker, isn't it?
SKOT WALDRON:
Owning an agency for 12 years, as I did, in that advertising space and working through communication... because that's what I did. I communicated. I helped companies communicate with the world for a long time. Somebody came to me one day and said, "Hey Skot, I want to trade some services. I need some brand strategy work. You can be in my leadership cohort." I said, "Leadership? I don't need that. Communication training? I help people communicate every day. I don't need that." Then two months in, I was like, "What? I kind of suck at this." I had great retention. My employees loved me. I loved them. Everybody was awesome, but I realized that I was not very clear in my communication and that it undermined my influence and that I had a hard time executing because I had so many ideas going off all over the time, that people didn't understand me well. There was an execution problem for sure. It took me that journey to realize that. It was just like, "Wow. Okay."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. I think, Skot, there's even a more fundamental, foundational thing around this as well, which is as a leader to always remain curious, always remain open to the possibility that you are wrong, always remain open to the possibility that there are better ways of doing things than you've experienced so far, and for me, that's what diversity's about, is getting the most varied and competing opinions onto the table as you possibly can and sifting through them to push each other and wrestle with issues to find out where the best path lies. Sure, diversity's fun and interesting and morally very important to us, but more importantly is inclusion.
I talk a lot about the role of a leader in bringing those things out of the diverse team you happen to build to actually get the power of that harnessed, because great teams aren't easy to manage, mate. I hear people talk about high-performing teams and they say, "I had this high performing team. We all got on well. We had a great time together. There wasn't much dissent. We delivered stuff. We kicked goals." That's not a high-performing team. High-performing teams are hard to run. Sometimes they're a nightmare because you've got these strong personalities that are saying, "No, no, no. We need to go this way," and, "No, no. We need to go that way," and you're trying to harness the very best of everyone's ideas when you have strong views all on the table that don't align. That's where you get the best outcomes, but it's not easy. Sometimes it's not pretty.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. That's the refinement process, right? That's that kind of kicking against it, shedding out the crap that's just not working well, and then getting down to that core essence of, "Okay, I can see where you're coming from now. I can see where you're coming from now. Now we've got this refined idea."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's a process, and then, like you said, it's not always pretty.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Yeah. That's where humility comes in to leadership. It's the ability to swallow your pride and say, "Yeah, okay. Maybe I wasn't right about that," or, "Maybe there is a better way to do it," or, "Maybe I can build on that more." You've got to constantly countenance the possibility that you don't know everything, and that's a great place to start from.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Adam Grant wrote that... his Think Again book, right? It was just about idea of always being open, treating things like science as a scientist to test your theories, test your theories, wonder, curiosity, "What is the one thing that could cause me to change my mind?" Right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
"If I hold myself to a belief so strongly, what is the thing that could change my..." Being open to the idea that I could change my mind if this one thing were to present itself, that's the beginning of curiosity.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Completely, completely. As I often say, the older I get, the less certain I am about practically everything.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yes. Well said. I like that. From one leadership guide to another, okay, what's the problem with leadership today? We've got millions and millions of leaders on the planet, billions maybe, right? We get into that realm. What is the core, fundamental problem? There's so many books, so many podcasts, so many problems still, and we're going to continue to have them. What is the core essence of the problem right now?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, I think the core essence, Skot, is that we have too many people who are prepared to believe their own BS, and particularly as you get some success in organizations and you get promotions and you go up through the levels, you start to think, "Well, I must be doing something right," which you are. There's a very clear distinction in my head between a capable and competent executive and a great leader. Through my career, I've worked with hundreds of incredibly smart, capable, experienced, competent leaders with great strategic judgment and everything else, but I can count the great leaders I've worked with on one hand, and I don't need all my fingers for that. The distinction between what makes a good corporate executive and what makes a good leader, I think, is something we need to pay a bit of attention to.
The problem with leadership stuff is that a lot of people gauge themselves on their own intent, not their own actions. They do the checkbox in their head, "Yes, I'm this person." For example, ask any leader what values are important to them, and I bet that somewhere in their top three, they're going to say, "Integrity. Integrity is so important to me." Go and talk to their teams. Go and talk to their teams about, "Do they have integrity? Do they do what they say they're going to do? Are they consistent and reliable? Do they uphold the values that are printed out on the glossy brochure on the wall of the corporate foyer? Is that what you see when you think about that leader?" More often than not, the answer is no.
Now, in the individual's mind, "Yes. I have high integrity. I listen to podcasts, I read books, and I identify with those aspirational virtues, but my habits, my disciplines, the way I do things are dominated by self-interest. That stops me from doing what I say I would naturally do." You've really got to be prepared, in terms of solving this, to not just skirt around the symptoms, but to get to the root cause of problem, which is, "Stop kidding yourself. There's ways to measure this stuff. Stop kidding yourself. Look at what you're doing critically, ask other people how they perceive your leadership, and do the work. If you don't do the work, that's fine, but don't kid yourself that you're a great leader, because you're not. You're never going to be."
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Call it like you see it, right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love this intent versus actions, because I think that a lot of people live their lives like that in their personal life and in their professional life. Like us all, we are blind to what we're blind to.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's a problem.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Don't get me wrong, Skot. I'm not standing on the moral high ground lecturing here. What I'm saying is I'm just a guy who decided I was going to work on this stuff. I put myself to task on it. I held myself to account. I didn't give myself wiggle room. Now I was kind on myself when I made mistakes because that's part of the process, but I'm just a guy who said, "I'm not going to do this anymore because I can see the impact it has on my people. I can see how me not being good at this thing, whether it's having a hard conversation, giving feedback, whether it's making judgments in a certain way that actually balance the different stakeholders' interests as opposed to just doing what's best for me..." All of that sort of stuff, you've just got to decide to do it and work on it. It just takes time. You want to learn to ski better in powder? Just miles under the skis. Just keep doing it until it feels comfortable. Very few people, I think, make that choice or even admit that there is that choice to make.
SKOT WALDRON:
Progress is a process.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right? You have a pretty ambitious goal, that you want to shape leadership globally with everyone everywhere. That's what we call a vision. For those of you who don't understand what vision is, that is vision, to have that kind of impact on the global economy and what we can produce. How do you plan to do that? This book is great. I imagine it's fantastic. But honestly, the book isn't going to impact every leader in the world globally, and today, and they're going to change, right? What's your plan? How do you plan to do that?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, funny you should ask, Skot. You're right about the book, right? That'll get into a bunch of people's hands, not enough to shift the dial in any meaningful way. What we've seen though is that the opportunity provided by our digital world is phenomenal. After only three years, we've had over 2 million downloads of the podcast in 100 countries. Now, that's making a little ripple, just a little one, and there's a lot of leaders who are doing things better because, as I said before, "I heard this this morning. I worked out how it was going to help me with this problem. I went and put into practice. Now I've got a bit more confidence that I can change some things for the better." Now, this is making a difference, and it makes a difference, not just to people at work as they lead, but to how they are at home.
The number messages we get talking about how, "Okay. Yes, I'm a better leader, but I'm also a better father. I'm a better husband. I'm a better friend." This is making a difference. To change, as we say, to improve the quality of leaders globally, we are not going to get the people at the high-end. We're not going to get the people who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies necessarily. We'll get a few, but not enough to make a difference there. Our main audience that we strike is in this mid-career layer, just where they've got to the point where they go, "Okay. Well, leadership is... It's harder than it looks. When I was 28, I thought I was going to be a millionaire by 35, retired by 36, all that sort of stuff. It didn't happen, and now leadership looks harder than I thought it was going to be. I'm struggling with it." This puts tools in their hands at the time that they're most ready.
Now, those leaders, as they come through and go through the ranks, because they will, because this is all about performance... This is not about feeling better about yourself. This is doing better by your organization and your people. It's results-oriented. They're going to get results. They're going to get promotions. They're going to end up in higher positions. Those leaders are the ones that are going to change it. This is a generational thing, right? It's not a, "We've been going for three years, and by year four, we've got world domination," right? Yeah, that's just our view, and it's a longterm vision. It's all about coming back to the impact thing. I realized that even if I was CEO of a top 10 Fortune 500 company, how many people am I going to impact directly? Maybe 100, and 50 of those don't want to be impacted. Instead, we're reaching tens of thousands of leaders every week with this content, and we've only just started.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's powerful. That's powerful. Don't sell yourself short there, Martin. By next year, we could all have tattoos of No Bullsh!t Leadership, and it could be incorporated into everything we're doing.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
I'll have to design one up. I will share one tattoo story with you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Yeah. Do it.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
I don't have any. I'm not going to go weird on you here, Skot. Don't worry.
SKOT WALDRON:
Dang. I thought you were going to show us, but okay. Go ahead.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
No, no. No. Emma and I did think of getting a company tattoo, but it wasn't going to be a logo or anything else. It was going to be the symbol for grace under pressure. When I talk about and teach resilience, I talk about achieving this state of grace under pressure, which is... It's basically the state where not only are you able to manage the stress and put your game face on and appear to be in control and calm, but it's that deep resonance where what you feel inside is the same calmness and control that you try and portray externally. There's this complete congruity with how you are when the shit hits the fan... I'm sorry, when things go bad, so the grace under pressure... I don't know if you know. There's a Canadian three-piece band no longer together called Rush. I don't know if you remember Rush.
SKOT WALDRON:
Really? Who? What? Yeah. No, totally.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Exactly. Well, they released an album called Grace Under Pressure where the little logo was P over G. We said, "If we were going to get anything tattooed, it would be P over G for grace under pressure." We haven't done it yet. Maybe I'll do it for my 60th birthday. Who knows?
SKOT WALDRON:
Hey, it could be a marketing tactic.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Who knows? Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's a great idea. I love that. I agree with you. This is a generational play. This is the first time in history we've had five generations working in the Workforce. They're all trying to learn and how to work together. They're trying to learn how to lead, and at their level, into this digital age of what we're doing now versus the industrial age and how those two styles are meshing. Our day and age is, I believe, blazing new trails for how we can do things. As we learn to collaborate more and not to think in silos of, "You're old school. That's done. We don't do it that way anymore," and then the new school will think... Right? Of, "No, no, no, no. You guys don't have any idea of experience." If we bring those worlds together, there's some great things happening, but there's also some things holding us back, right? What do you believe is holding us back from becoming great leaders?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, I think it's the choice, for a start. I think it's the expectation that the position brings with it a certain amount of power that you can leverage, and it does. Everyone has a title. Everyone has the opportunity to use that for good or for evil. But I think the recognition of what true leadership is like, that strong leadership that gets results, that stretches people... I'm a massive believer in the fact that the whole concept of happy workers being productive workers is simply untrue. It's just not true. It's easy to make people happy, right? Double their wages. Give them Fridays off. Fill the fridge in the break room full of craft beer. You can make people happy, but it's not necessarily going to result in performance. It's certainly not even going to result in the long-term happiness of those individuals.
Having said earlier that I'm really unsure about most things, I've got a really strong belief that all self-esteem in humans comes from achieving difficult things, period. That's it. Anyone watching this, think back to when you last felt absolutely bulletproof, invincible, indestructible, walking a foot off the ground. I will guarantee it was just after you'd done something difficult and achieved at something you thought you couldn't do or something that really scared you, and you got it done, because that's what builds self-esteem. Now, as leaders, unless we stretch our people and put them under pressure, they will never feel that. In my view, the strong leader gives that gift to people by stretching them beyond where they would naturally stretch themselves.
Let's face it. Your very, very best people are going to give you 80%, maybe 85% on any given day, and they're your stars. Stretching people as a real art, you've got to know them individually. You've got to be connected to them. All of this gives you superior performance in your team and organization, and it's also good for the individual. I believe this isn't different in different generations. I believe it's the core of human nature. If you can actually pull that off with any of these different generations in the workforce, you'll do okay. I could be completely wrong. Let's have a look in 10 years, right? I could be, but I just have this firm belief from having led for many years in large companies that this is when I see people to be at their best and their happiest, not when we've given them Fridays often put the ping-pong table in the break room, right? That's that's not what's driving people and making them feel better.
SKOT WALDRON:
You said the biggest mistake that companies are making... They fail to enforce stated values and desired behaviors, so enforcement of those things, self-interest dominates, and path of least resistance is the one most chosen. That's kind of a list, three things, right? They fail to enforce those values and behaviors, self-interest, and the path of least resistance is really the one that gets chosen. It sounds like, based on everything we've been talking about, I can see why you believe that those are the things that are creating ineffectiveness and holding us back from making progress.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure, even if we just look at the micro-examples that come from self-interest. Now, if I'm a leader who's focused on self-interest, not knowingly, but unconsciously, I might see a team member who's reporting to me who is not performing to the standard I'm trying to set. I've got two choices. I can succumb to my fear, apprehension, and anxiety and rationalize why I don't really need to have the conversation with them, "Well, they're pretty good at this. They're okay at that. I don't want to make them unhappy because that might demotivate them, and then they won't be productive," and all of the things that we tell ourselves to rationalize so that we don't do something. If I truly thought about that individual, I'd say, "What does this person need to hear right now in order to improve, in order for their performance to be at the acceptable level, and to give them a fair crack at having some career advancement?"
I got to tell you, Skot, one of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw as a leader was to see people who were in the twilight of their career, 50 years and older, who... They'd just never been told. I could come in and just observe something where I'd go, "Well, that's an obvious fatal flaw, but it can be fixed," and I'd give them feedback. It was the very first time in their long career that they'd ever heard these words come out of someone's mouth because the leaders they had previously just didn't have the guts to sit down and tell them the truth. Ironically and the sad part about this is that if you do take the effort and emotional investment to have that conversation, they look at you skeptically as if to say, "My last 20 years of performance reviews say I'm doing an awesome job. It's not me. It must just be you."
That's heartbreaking. People have been robbed of the opportunity to grow and improve. If you are driven by self-interest, you will succumb to your fear, apprehension, and anxiety, and you'll rationalize why you don't do something. If you're driven by someone else's best interest and you can put that aside, you can be of service to them. You can be a true servant leader. Now, the concept of servant leadership is a tricky one because a lot of people thinks it means they have to hand the keys over to their team. That's not what it means. But to be in true service of others, you have to be a strong leader who can have those conversations when they need to be had, who can help their people to where they need to get to while also having some pretty serious expectations about behavior and performance.
SKOT WALDRON:
I call it fighting for that highest possible good of the people you're leading. Right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Totally. Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's the principle of, "I'm either for myself, or I'm for you, or I'm against you. As long as you feel like I am for you in some way, shape or form, that trust leads to productive conversations, hard conversations." I even say, "Remember that coach you had back in school when you played sports that made you do hill sprints over and over and over and over again? Don't tell me you got excited when the hill sprints came up. Nobody got excited about that, but you knew that the coach was doing it for your best possible good. He was fighting for you, helping you improve. It sucked, but it's something that you needed to do to improve." As long as you feel like you can have those conversations, and that's the thing, that, "Hey here comes my boss again. I know he's going to make me do hill sprints, figuratively, but I know it's for a good cause." That's that thing that you're talking about that's so critical. A lot of leaders come in, and they're just like, "I'm really good at my job. You're not as good at the job as I am."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
"Just listen to me, and it'll all work out." Right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
That's exactly right. Yeah. One of the interesting things about the wind-sprints analogy or the hill-sprints analogy, I love it, if you take that to its natural conclusion... Now, if the only thing you focus on is the work, doing the hill sprints, "Here comes the coach again," yeah, you're going to drag your feet. There's no doubt about it. That's got to actually be connected by the leader to that last five minutes of the game where both sides are exhausted, but because you've done those extra hill sprints, you are the ones that have the stamina to last out and win. Yeah, do the work, but there's got to be that connection that says, "And here's the result because you did the work. Let's not drag our feet next time we're doing hill springs because you know why it's valuable." That's the beauty of being able to have that impact.
SKOT WALDRON:
That goes back to what you said, where strength comes from doing the difficult things. Right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
It may not even be realized until the last five minutes of that game or that next project comes up where you're really struggling. You come through, and then your boss, manager, leader can come back to you and say, "That's why I'm having you do these things."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
They go, "Okay. I get it."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
"Okay. I hated it..."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
"... but I got it."
MARTIN G. MOORE:
They've got to feel the victory. Doing anything that's incredibly difficult, like giving birth to a child, running a marathon, in retrospect, the pain dissipates quickly. You forget the pain. You never forget the feeling of the victory. You never forget. That feeling lives with you long after the feeling of the pain has gone.
SKOT WALDRON:
On top of that, as a leader, one of the other critical pieces of leadership is celebration because it's really easy just to say, "Cool. Did it. Next? Cool. Did it. Next?" instead of going, "Yes, team. Yes. We did this. You accomplished it. We won. Victory. Let's celebrate. Hey Janice, great job. Let's pull this in." That celebration piece, taking a minute is okay.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
It is okay, and I got to tell you, Skot, I'm rubbish at that bit.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Me too. I will say I am too. I am too.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, the thing for me and Emma and I, in running our business now, we don't get too excited about our big victories. We don't get discouraged by the things that don't work. We just, "Yep. Okay. Got that. Let's learn and move." Yeah. We've got to remember ourselves to do that and say, "Actually, this is sort of awesome. This is sort of awesome to have a podcast that's going like at this, because God knows how many million podcasts there are out there at the moment on leadership, and ours is differentiated. It's making a real splash. That's cool." Right? We are more prone to say, "Okay, that content's great. What are we going to do next week?" because we're constantly looking to be better and to put better content out there and to always have something that's going to really hit our audience in a way that makes them feel as though they can do different things and build their confidence. Yeah. It's a trap. It's a trap, for sure, to not celebrate enough.
SKOT WALDRON:
It is. It is. I use that, and it was almost this conscious effort where I was focusing a lot... I think a lot of us have this perfectionist tendencies as leaders too, is that we focus on the 10% that didn't go so well instead of the 90% that was awesome. Everybody else is like, "That's so great. We nailed it." I'm going, "Yeah. But what about this? But what about this one little piece?" Right? I even made it a conscious effort because I'm not so great at it. I put a calendar reminder on my calendar on Fridays at 9:00 to create a Slack message for my team and just say, "Hey guys, win of the week. This is what went awesome this week." Right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Right. Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
To take a second, be intentional, focus on that victory to help everyone else know that I saw it, and to recognize what the victory does for us as a team.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Emma and I are both much better at giving other people that feedback. When something good happens, we'll just... feedback, timely, relevant, specific, targeted, et cetera. We'll do that straightaway. "Hey, great job on this. I love the way you've actually put this social-marketing plan together. It's really good. It's exactly what we wanted." We are much better doing that for others than we are for ourselves because we're just all about, "We're changing the world. Let's get on with it. Have we done it yet? No, let's keep going."
SKOT WALDRON:
What's taking so long? Can we please?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Well, it's testing both our patience, the concept also of that excellence over perfection, when you talk about the 90% you did right and the 10% that didn't go so well, excellence over perfection is one of the key concepts in unlocking value. You've got to be committed to moving quickly to gaining organizational momentum because momentum is so much more valuable than getting things right. As I like to say, a decision that's 80% right today is infinitely better than a decision that's 85% right next week, which in turn is infinitely better than a decision that's 90% right next month, because you now nothing ever gets to 100%, nothing, ever, nothing. It doesn't. Keep moving. Keep making really good decisions. Your decisions don't have to be perfect. They've got to be roughly right. You make them, and you move. You get momentum, and you adjust as you go, so a fundamental concept in unlocking the most value you can.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well, and that's an excellent way to kind of round this thing out, this conversation, unlocking value, not only because it's the name of the podcast, so thanks for doing that...
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
... but this concept and idea of value, you've mentioned it. One of the very first things you said was about value. You mentioned it kind of in the middle, and you're mentioning it here at the end. I can tell that's just a core principle of something you talk about. It's the first principle in your book, right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. I appreciate it, and that is what we're all trying to do, because the value that we bring, the value others bring, the value we can provide as an organization is really what's going to move us forward. If people don't perceive the value, they don't buy it, whether it's an idea, a product, a service, whatever. Right? You just got to provide that value.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate it.
SKOT WALDRON:
I'm going to mic drop here, Marty. Mic drop. I need something from you. What do you want to leave with the audience? What do you want us to remember from this?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Do the work. That's it. Anyone can be a better leader. The argument about, "A leader's born or made," it doesn't matter what you're born with. Some are more easily fitting into the role of leadership as they go through. They find it more naturally suits their style, but that's not an excuse. Do the work, become a better leader, whatever it is you need to do, and you'll feel a lot better about your life and your career.
SKOT WALDRON:
Do the hard things, right?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
Do the hard things, because you know what? That's what No Bullsh!t Leadership is all about.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Absolutely. Hard things are hard, always have been, always will be. You can't avoid them. There are no shortcuts, and there are no silver bullets.
SKOT WALDRON:
Amen. Amen, brother. How do we get ahold of the book? I imagine there's a small company called Amazon where we can get that book?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
There is. Yes. It's on Amazon, wherever good books are sold. Online seems to work really well in these COVID times, so yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you get your books, No Bullsh!t Leadership. I think in terms of me, martingmoore.com has everything you'll need to know, so martingmoore.com, and on social media, it's @yourceomentor.
SKOT WALDRON:
Brilliant. And the podcast?
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Podcast, No Bullsh!t Leadership, once again, Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, Google Play, Pandora. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, it's there.
SKOT WALDRON:
Cool. It is fantastic. I appreciate those insights, and I appreciate the insights on the show. I've been filled, and hopefully the audience has been as well. Martin, thanks for everything, man. Good luck on the book and the show and everything else you're doing.
MARTIN G. MOORE:
Thanks so much, Skot. It was great talking to you. Thanks, mate.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's all about unlocking value, value, value, value. He talked about that at the very first principle of his book. He talked about that. He talked about it at the very end. He talked about it in the middle. We talked about unlocking value a lot in this interview. There's a couple core things. Yes, it's the first principle of his book. Grace under pressure, we're all going to get tattoos, grace under pressure. Love it. Love it. Love it. Concept, that one's great. Strength comes from achieving the difficult things. That was a really interesting question to ponder. Think about the last time you felt amazing. What was happening? It was probably something that was difficult, something that was causing you a bit of anxiety or fear that you worked through and achieved it, and you felt great coming out the other end. Self-interest, that type of idea of self-interest that holds us back from building influence and trust with other people is so real. When we're acting in our own self-interest, it hinders us from making progress. That is a huge thing.
We forget the pain. We remember the victory. Most of the time, we forget the pain and we remember the victory. The victory is where we want... it's that idea. In marketing, we talk about that ideal picture of what could be. What do we want to transform into that hope and that passion that drives us to be better? That's the thing we want to achieve, and that is what's going to drive results. Thank you, Martin, for being on the show. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Good luck with everything you are doing. We have some other tools, some other assets that you can indulge in here on my website, on my YouTube channel, various other resources that I have for you there. Go check those out. They are available for free for you, for you to learn and be better. Like, subscribe, comment on my YouTube channel, skotwaldron.com, email list, blog, all that other stuff. I would love to have you there. Find me on LinkedIn. Let's connect. Thanks for being here. See you next time on another episode of Unlocked.
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