Great Manager or Good Leader? The Hidden Difference That Breaks Teams

Nick [00:00:00] People's intention is good, but people will take the path of least resistance when they're not intentional about how they're thinking about it. Excuse me. When they're not on purpose, when they're not really clear about the approach they're taking.

Nick it's the awareness, the flow, the drift that we get in our day,that we miss that things. Great manager or good leader, like where is that on the hierarchy of things? This is what I've seen so much just this week with advisors. The cadence of communication with people in your team and thinking through the lens of managing people versus leading people is such a significant difference.

Nick Management is constantly a drag 'cause you are the person that's always having to go and get things from the people in your team. And if you don't follow up and if you don't, if you don't show up one particular day, something's gonna fall through the cracks. And then yeah, you are gonna be the one that comes back and has to deal with it.

Nick But that means you can't go and do the things that only you can do, and it's the same story over and over again. So let's get really clear around, make sure [00:01:00] we're setting up our team for success and the language here. We've gotta get pedantic, we've gotta get precise. We've gotta get really perfect on knowing exactly the way that we put this together.

Nick Now, the per perfection, of course, like in when you set it in a frame, it's a low standard because you can't get more than that. What I'm talking about is. Perfect in the approach to the progression we wanna make here. Just a quick example just from this week is a checklist, a COO has for people in our team that says to check advisor's calendar.

Nick and it precisely says, check advisor's calendar in the morning and at noon. And so the intention for that was really great except to say that you could tick that box. if you look at it 1159 and then at 12:00 PM and not to say that people in the team are trying to get away with things and going, oh, cool.

Nick I could be sneaky and not do this because I could. There's a loophole here. That's not what people were trying to do. People's intention is good, but people will take the path of least resistance when they're not intentional about how they're thinking about it. Excuse me. When they're not on purpose, when they're not [00:02:00] really clear about the approach they're taking.

Nick it's the awareness, the flow, the drift that we get in our day,that we miss that things. And so just changing the language to set them up for success. Not call them out, make them wrong, but to set them up and to set you up for success as well. and we just changed that language from being, one, one checkpoint to make it two checkpoints.

Nick And the first checkpoint says, check advisor calendar for the week at 10:00 AM to see anything, any meetings have changed or been added. And then underneath that, there's a zero to infinity in terms of means that, so if it's a zero, then they put zero, and then the other one says same thing, except it says now 4:00 PM and then they've.

Nick Communicate with the advisor to say, if any meetings change after 4:00 PM and you look at it before 10:00 AM the next day, the likelihood is we wouldn't have updated it. And just creating that level of clarity makes a big difference. And by having someone put the zero, if the meetings haven't changed, they're really saying, did, am I really sure that's the case?

Nick Rather than just [00:03:00] saying, yeah, I checked it. You create that level of accountability. I know it sounds pedantic. I know it kind of sounds almost silly, and these are grownups doing grownup things, but ultimately we wanna catch the bottom line. We wanna change the baselines available, right? This is where it comes from being a great manager is just being good at catching up people rather than being a, just a good leader.

Nick A great leader will come back to that, but just a good leader is setting up the systems so people can be successful every single day, and to make sure that you are having the communication that is open as well. Because next version of this is advisors that perhaps bring on an assistant for the first time, or it's a new person in your team and maybe there's busy, then things have slipped through.

Nick Come back and reset the communication because here's what I heard this week as well. So think about this for your practicing specific in specific specificity. That,a relatively new assistant and team is doing a good job following up as well. And, they're keen to do better and learn, do more, but because of that, maybe [00:04:00] they're overstepping a little bit and following up a little bit too much with clients on their service request without coming back to the advisor for checking in to make sure that what they're giving them is their appropriate thing and sitting within the boundaries of what is appropriate for their role.

Nick Now you don't wanna kill the spirit, right? 'cause that person's trying to do better and add more and more value. But you also wanna give them fair boundaries to make it super clear. So the question becomes, whilst that person is saying, oh my goodness, why are they doing this? I've had some client issues that I had to deal with this week.

Nick The question becomes. Does that assistant know in absolute clarity, if I ask them right now, like, what are you supposed to do when client requests come in, will they say, I don't,I take them in and I push 'em to the advisor and I don't do anything in terms of back feedback to the client until I get their feedback directly as I'm in learning.

Nick And if they don't say that exact thing, we have an opportunity to lead better, to create more clarity, to set our team up for success. It feels like we've done enough. and it often feels like we don't need to say the thing that's obvious, [00:05:00] that's what leadership is. It's saying the thing that's obvious.

Nick And look, you might be, you might feel weird about saying it. Oh, I don't know. I don't feel like about saying that. I don't wanna undermine 'em. I don't wanna feel like I'm talking to 'em like a child. don't do it that way. Around. Say something like, just so I'm super clear. This is the approach I want take, just so I'm super clear.

Nick When anything comes in, please let me know what it is and I want an email, with this in this way at this time. To do that, you can also go back to 'em and say, look, I just wanna be really clear about this process to make sure we set ourselves up for success. What are you recommending and how you wanna do this?

Nick Have you done something like this before? Or how did you do this before? Go from it from that perspective, be curious. Be open, but be clear. That's leading.