Changing the paradigm on leadership

Changing the paradigm on leadership with retired Navy Seal Larry Yatch

Incorporating leadership processes from the military to the corporate setting

I'm excited that you are joining me. I have an interesting interview for you. If you've been reading for a long time you might remember an interview I did with retired Navy SEAL officer, Larry Yatch, which was episode 29, published back in September of 2018. It's been quite a while. I have Larry back on after doing over 100 interviews. Larry is my first returning guest, and you will see why when you read this interview. He's got such an interesting perspective on leadership, management and business operations.

Larry is a retired Navy SEAL. He's a US Naval Academy graduate and a ten-year veteran of the US Navy SEALs who lead and plan the largest special operations missions in US history. During his career, Larry was honored with the Combat V for valor and battle above and beyond the call of duty, the achievement medal for innovation and Navy SEAL combat tactics, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and the Humanitarian Service Medal for relief efforts in East Timor and Sri Lanka. His greatest accomplishment is not on the SEAL, however, rather is the fact that he has created an experiential, exceptional performance formula for individuals and teams that integrate all the elite processes, structures, mindsets and skills that previously only a select number of special operators could assess.

Larry has taken his training and knowledge from the Navy SEALs and has been working with companies for many years. I had the opportunity to meet him. I first heard him on another podcast a couple years ago and he blew my mind. I ended up getting connected with him and his wife, Anne, who runs the company with him, and went through a course that they designed on achieving and defining your desired end state, and putting together goals and executing. It was great. We have built a friendship since then and talk regularly. It was great to have him back on.

Larry Yatch is going to completely change the paradigm and you're thinking about, “What is leadership? What is management?” He's completely challenging what most of us in the corporate world think about what is leadership and what is management, the differences between the two and why you will want to be seen. Most people want to be a leader and most people don't strive to be a manager, but by the end of this interview, you're going to flip that. You're going to see why it's better to be a manager than a leader. I won't blow any of the surprises, but he walks you through exactly what it means to be a manager and to be a leader from a Navy SEAL mindset, and why that paradigm needs to be shifted in the working corporate world.

Before I get started, I want to point out a couple of things about the show. First of all, the show and the network has been growing. I want to thank you. For everyone who has been reading, especially if you are subscribed to the show, if you've been sharing it, I appreciate that. Especially to those of you who have been leaving reviews on iTunes, those reviews help us grow. If you haven't left a review yet, take two minutes and go leave a review. I appreciate it. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, please go and connect with me. I'm sharing content almost daily on LinkedIn. I would love to be connected and hear what you're working on as well. That's all for announcements. I want to shift back over to this interview that you're going to love or, at least, be intrigued by with retired Navy SEAL, Larry Yatch.

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Larry Yatch, welcome back to the Talent Development Hot Seat.

It’s good to be back, for sure.

I was looking at my notes. I've conducted, at this point, 105 interviews. You are my first returning guest. Welcome back.

That says something, either you ran out of guests or I did well the first time.

Leadership Versus Management

I haven't run out of guests, that is for sure. I have tons of people lined up, which is cool. I have a wealth of connections and growing every day. We did have a great conversation last time. I had a lot of great feedback from the interview you did. I hope people will go back and read that about planning, setting a desired end state and the steps towards that. We're going to talk about something related. You and I had a conversation and people reading may not be that familiar with your background. You’re a retired Navy SEAL officer and spent many years running missions in the Navy SEALs. After you retired, you got into doing corporate work. You were saying to me how people lead and manage in the corporate world is completely different from how it's done in the military and particularly, in the SEALs. I thought it would be interesting to share some of those lessons so people reading have that perspective as they think about leadership in the companies they work for.

On the experiential level, it is about the actions, the way that they lead or manage. Ultimately, the real power is in the change in the paradigm of how they see leading and managing. That's where that big shift occurs.

It almost starts with the perspective of how they even perceive what leadership means. Let's start with that.

The place I always like to start is I can tell you my perspective. This is what I love saying, if you have had success in leading, not subjectively but objectively. Let’ say you're managing a team of 100 and you meet your objectives most of the time, you could say, “I'm good at this.” What I love to do is, people that are good at it and I've done this in front of large audiences, generally I operate on the CEO level. Working at that level, you have people that are running $30 million, $40 million, $100 million, $1 billion a year companies.

By the fact that they're running a successful company at those levels, the world is saying, “You're figuring out this leadership thing. You've got it okay.” What I love doing with those people is saying, “Everything you think you know about leading or managing is backward.” As soon as I do that, most people cross their arms and they’re like, “I'm doing this well. That's not true.” I could say, “This is my distinction. You're not going to listen.” The people that are reading are saying, “I got this. Maybe I'll pay attention to what he has to say.” I usually like to prove it by asking a series of questions at the beginning. In the end, after we reveal these distinctions, we ask the same questions. Most people, I'd say 99% of the time that I talk through this, they then agree with me at the end. I'll start there as opposed to jumping in and telling you what I think.

Let's do that. I like that 99 %. Every now and then, you do encounter a stubborn person who refuses to concede or see your side.

How people lead and manage in the corporate world is completely different from how it's done in the military. Click To Tweet

With that, they always quit before me. It does end up being 100%, but sometimes it's difficult. It takes a little more time.

Let's start with the questions.

The first one is, unfortunately, you meet an untimely demise like you get hit by a bus, whatever it is. They're burying you and your family has a choice between two headstones. On one headstone it says, “Andy, beloved father and husband. The greatest leader ever.” The alternative one is, “The greatest manager ever.” For all of you reading, you think the same thing. Which headstone do you choose?

Which do I prefer or which do I think I'm qualified for?

Which do you prefer? You get a choice.

The former, of course.

The best leader ever. Everyone says that almost exclusively. My argument is that by the end of this, when I ask that same question, you're going to change your answer. Within that, I'll ask you, when you think of a manager, what do you think of?

Someone who has people reporting to them with tasks they need to do. They're overseeing that and making sure everybody does the thing that they need to do. They're connecting the company with the organizational goals, down to the tasks that people are doing and making sure that they're aiming towards a specific target and working towards a common good.

Arguably, unnecessary evil within an organization.

They're providing accountability.

When you think of a leader, what do you think of? Same thing, same answer.

In the corporate world, they often tend to be the same, but anybody can be a leader. Certainly, you can lead your peers. You can lead the people around you. You can lead your friends. You could be inspiring, motivating, setting an example for people to improve, get better. People tend to want to inspire more towards being a leader versus being a manager for those reasons.

Why?

In my mind, it’s not as tactical and it's more admirable, at least in our culture.

That's a common understanding. A common understanding is that managers are these mid-level drones that are necessary to get things running. A leader is an inspiring figure, usually at the front, “Follow me. We're going to do this.” That's a common understanding.

Leadership Paradigm: People tend to want to inspire more towards being a leader versus being a manager.

George Washington wasn't a manager. He was a leader.

That's what you think and I'm going to prove the opposite. I'm going to prove that in reality, it's the opposite, especially in high functioning organizations. A lot of this depends on the distinctions that we use around them and our understanding of it. What I'm also going to prove is that your language, our language around leadership, managing and following is all screwed. When you say leader, you mean manager. When you say manager, you mean leader. When we talk about followers that are good, we mean leaders. It's interesting how when we start tying these titles or these words to behaviors, all of a sudden, that gets all screwed.

Within this, we'll do one more little experiment. I'll ask the people reading to do the same thing. It’s easy. You’re going to do it in your head. I want you to think of the best leader you've ever worked with or for. Think of their name. I want you to come up with two things. The name and then one specific action that they did that had you assess them as the best leader you've ever been with. In action, something specific that they did and then, one word to describe how they made you feel. Take a minute. Write this down.

I've got it.

Famous Leaders In History

Name some action that had you attribute them as being a great leader. The more specific the action, the better. The last thing is one word as to how they made you feel. I bet I could tell you what's on your paper without even knowing. Write them down and I'll show you what I mean. You could do two words if you need to, but generally, one is good enough. Don't tell me. It's a magic trick I want to show you. Before we get into that, the question I want to bring up to you next is, let's start looking at a famous leader in history. The one I use all the time is General Patton. Especially with the Third Army in World War II, the Third Army had all the tanks. That's what he used going across the country. He did an amazing thing. Within that, how many tanks did Patton drive?

I want to say the position, he probably didn't drive any. There are some famous photos of him driving a tank.

He’s sitting in one, at the top.

He didn't drive any.

How many rounds did he fire at enemy tanks?

Probably none during World War II.

None. Never. How many times he was in a battle and was on the radio and told these three tanks to go over there and this tank over there?

I wouldn't expect him to even be doing that. He’ll be setting the high-level strategy.

None. Many people would say, “Patton is an unbelievable leader.” He didn't take any actions in what would be considered leadership actions on the battlefield. What was his primary job?

He was setting the overall strategy for the Army in the Mediterranean Theater in World War II in Europe and where they wanted to go.

One, providing clear direction, not on specific tactics or even specific strategies like, “These six tanks are going to go here and these six tanks are going over there.” It was what future he wanted his tanks to create. “We need to be able to produce an environment where we control this amount of land or we take this city or that city. We cut off the supply line here and there or the other things.” That's clarity on what the future looks like. He didn't get into how to get it done. His job was to produce that one clarity in what the future looked like. He relied on his leaders to come up with a specific strategy and execute the specific tactics necessary to produce that future. That's one. What else was he responsible for doing?

Managers are the mid-level drones that are necessary to get things running. A leader is the inspiring figure, usually at the front. Click To Tweet

He was overseeing a certain number of leaders. He was responsible for probably deciding who was in command positions within the Theater and reporting things back to his commanding officer and the President, I'm sure, and as well as who's leading all the efforts. I don't know what else.

Within that, another thing you dare to say is to create, enable and support his leaders. His job was to create leaders that could come up with strategies to fulfill the future he's promising, as well as to execute the specific tactics to get it done. One is to create through training, creating environments for them to get the education they needed for selection, enabling and supporting to be able to find those that are doing well and make sure that they're in the appropriate positions. To make sure that they have all the resources they need. That's the other huge piece, to make sure that they had the tanks, the gasoline, bullets, Band-Aids and all they need to get the job done. Create, enable and support is to me, the next big piece.

The last piece is no one's ever said. The last piece is his job is not to be on the battlefield. His job is to direct the action that's necessary upfront. His job is to make sure that he's created, enabled and supported leaders to go do that. He sends those leaders out to do that. The last piece is an important piece, being a safety net in case things go wrong. His job is to think ahead when his leaders are out fighting to make sure that if they get off track, they don't hurt themselves or someone else, to be able to be that safety net so that they're able to be out there. Think of it as a selfish manner. If I'm that General and I'm responsible for the battlefield, I'd never be able to sleep if I didn't put in safety nets to make sure that if something goes wrong, my leaders are taken care of.

Contingency plans to know what you’re going to do when things blew up.

Contingency support and thinking 3, 4 steps ahead. His job was not to take action. His job was not even to evoke action on the battlefield. His job was to be able to enable and support action on the battlefield. The big thing there is support. It is very much a supporting role, not an action role. I would argue that's management. The job of a manager is not to take action and evoke action. The job of a manager is to create leaders that can take action and evoke action. A manager's job is the creation of leaders and creating an environment where those leaders can be effective.

The job of the manager is to create the leaders that take and evoke action from the people.

What Makes A Manager As A Title?

Within that, what makes you a manager as a title? Positional authority. The fact that he was General, he has to manage. He can't lead. Let’s say he was in there in the tanks telling the guy where to shoot the round, what kind of manager do we call that?

Micromanager.

Do we like those?

No, I don't.

Is that a good leader?

No.

No one does.

In some places, yes but most of the time, no. People don't want to work for micromanagers.

The only time micromanagers are necessary are in extremely low functioning teams. When you have dysfunctional people in a low functioning team, then yes, you need to micromanage. You need to control their actions. No one likes that. No one wants to be that. The more that you're leading and the more that you're in there directing action, the more that you're micromanaging. People don't like that kind of manager. If you have positional authority, and positional authority comes in any way, shape or form, it could be father, husband, division manager, or CEO. As soon as you have that title, you have a responsibility to manage at some point. The managers that lead a lot, that is in the action, are micromanagers and we don't like them. That's where most people go wrong.

Leadership Paradigm: A manager's job is to create leaders and an environment where those leaders can be effective.

Most managers go wrong because they want to be that leader that's in the fight, like, “Follow me. Take the hill.” That's what you're talking about, George Washington in front of that shift. That same picture we see, you got the rowboat, there's George with his foot up. That's bullcrap. That never happened. He would have been the last guy across, not the first guy across. Think of how stupid that would be. I'm going to send the General standing up in front of the rowboat into enemy territory first. That’s ludicrous. That’s what we think. Most leaders, “I'm going to lead. I'm the one with my foot up in the Captain Morgan's position on the front of the rowboat in the middle of the action, in the middle of the project, which has limited work.”

The reason that's important from the SEAL community is I'm the one that has the least experienced, generally, on the team as an officer. As soon as I have a lot of experience, I'm in charge of 4 or 5 units. I'm not in charge of the unit that goes out and fights. The officers that are in charge of the units that go on the fight have little to no experience. Imagine, as an officer, getting into the unit where everyone that is in that unit knows that they're smarter than you, knows they're stronger than you. The Navy spent millions of dollars to condition them to know that they can do anything humanly possible and they objectively have ten times your experience.

Imagine if I went into that unit and said, “You do this and you do that and do it this way.” It wouldn't work. My job was to create the environment for those leaders. They're the leaders. They've got the physical skill, the knowledge, the experience. It's their job to lead me. It's my job to create an environment where they can lead. That sounds simple, but it's a deep statement. My job is to manage leaders to enable, create and support those leaders and to create an environment where they can lead. That's my job as a manager. It's not to take action and tell them what actions to take.

That distinction is important, one, because they have more experience to me and two, the environment that I'm in is dynamic that if you rely on one person to tell everyone what to do, we're all going to die. We had to create an environment where my job was to ensure that leaders were not only created at every level in our organization but they were supported and enabled to lead. They had all the resources they need, all the direction, all the clarity on where they're going as well as they were given the authority to lead. My job is to manage and follow.

Military Ranks And Positions

I have a question. You've said multiple times that the people in the field have more experience than you as an officer. You even said ten times more experience. Why is that the case? Haven't you come up through the ranks to become an officer? Haven't you done the job that they have done?

There are two different tracks. Enlisted and officer tracks are different. Some enlisted guys will turn into an officer, but it's rare. I'd say 10%, 15% of officers are what we call Mustangs, meaning they were enlisted first. Age-wise for that to happen, they've only done 1 or 2 deployments. Maybe they've been enlisted for 2 or 3 years, then they decide to go officer. They have more experience than I did. I went from the Naval Academy, straight into BUD, straight into an officer position. They might have a couple years on me, but it's not like they have fifteen years of experience as an enlisted guy, then they go the officer route because they'd be too old. The enlisted guys will have done 3, 4 deployments. They may have done this two-year cycle. They've got 6, 7, 10, 15 years in when I've got two.

The idea here is, not to say, for you, as the officer, to come in and say, “I know how you should be doing this because I've done this before.” Therefore, you often become a micromanager as to say, “You know how to do this job better than me. Here's our direction. Tell me how you think it should go. Let me help set the overall strategy and keep you safe.” I can see a similarity in the corporate world where you have people getting MBAs and degrees that set them up into executive positions fairly quickly compared to blue-collar workers who are on the frontlines, who are never going to rise to that office level. The people who are ten levels above them don't have the frontline experience of doing the job that those people on the frontline do.

I don't know. I've worked with a ton of organizations and in those organizations, generally, those people in those positions spend a lot of time in the more direction and less of the enable and support. That's why the organizations don't operate as smoothly or as effectively as we do. I've been in enough organizations at all levels from a couple million dollars a year up to $1.2 billion a year. I've had experience in a lot of ranges of organizations. I've never seen managers are managing versus leading because of the same perspective that you had when we asked, then everyone else is like, “I want to be a leader. I want to be George Washington with my foot upon the boat. That's what I want to do.”

I've never had someone say, “Yes, my whole purpose in life is to manage well.” The true understanding of how it works for managing lead is different. You can also start by asking, “What's your definition for leadership and management?” People fumble around with definitions. They don't have one. What's the difference? One does direction. I've heard all sorts of stuff, but it's not clear or functional. For me, the big distinctions are the role of a manager is to create an environment that supports leaders in making the right choices. The key words there are to create an environment, support, and leader. The definition or distinction for leading is to create an environment that enables followers in making the right choice. The big difference is support versus enable. Support is, “I do stuff ahead of time and then you go out and, through the supporting role, make good choices.” A leader enables in the moment. “My job is to enable your choices as we're taking action.”

I want to clarify, going back to the military, I'm thinking about the ultimate boss, leader or manager is the President. The President of the United States is often referred to as the leader of the free world.

He’s the commander-in-chief. He's the manager of the free world, which is ultimately true. How much actual leading does he do? Hardly any because he doesn't know squat. Think of it as a commander-in-chief that leads the military. Most presidents don’t know squat about military tactics.

Our last four US presidents have no military experience before they always did. They don't even have any actual military experience.

If they can't lead the military, what they can do is manage it well and be led by highly experienced military leaders. Patton's job was to manage down and to lead up. Lead his manager, senior generals and/or the Commander in Chief, the President.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the President of the United States at the time.

To provide the president with the information they need, the president needs to manage Patton well. As a manager, my job was to manage and follow my leaders that I create, enable and support. If you think about that, from that perspective, would you rather be someone that has spent your entire time in the trenches leading, following and switching back and forth? Would you like to look back and say, “My life was spent creating, enabling and supporting leaders across all levels?” I want to manage all day long. That's why I love what I do. My whole job is enabling kick-ass managers, which in turn create kick-ass leaders.

Most managers go wrong because they want to be that leader that's in the fight. Click To Tweet

If you look at a progression and this is an interesting progression to look at, and this is the only progression that works. If you don't go through this progression, it's going to fall apart until you have good individual performance. I don't mean good, excellent, until you can perform well at an individual level, you'll never be included on a high functioning team. People get this backward all the time. “If I can get on the right team then I'll do better.” You can't. You have to first do well yourself. You have to have superior individual performance and then you'll be included onto high functioning teams.

Once you get onto the high functioning team, if you perform as a follower well, by the nature of making good choices and taking effective actions, others are going to start following you. That's an interesting distinction around leading and following. The only difference is who's making a better choice? Whoever makes the best choice, others are going to see that and start doing the same thing, which is following. By being highly effective on a highly functioning team, I will start inspiring or evoking leadership or followership which makes me leading. I first have to perform well individually, then I have to perform well on a team, then I get to lead on that team. Ultimately, making the jump from leading on a team, taking and evoking action into managing leaders is a big step and that's where most people fail.

Creating Better Leaders And Managers

Let's make this practical for our readers who are especially working in talent development. Their primary purpose is to develop people in an organization, create better leaders or better managers who are more effective. How can we take action with this? What can they do to create better managers who are thinking more like a military manager?

The first thing is changing the paradigm around leading and managing. Getting to the point where people aspire to manage and not be in action. A leader's job is to be in highly effective action, and to inspire and evoke highly effective action. If we look at it fundamentally, that's what a leader does. A leader makes good choices and inspires or evokes good choices in others, which is leadership. That's where most people like being. They like to be in action and they like to be evoking action in someone else.

As a manager, your job is to not do that and that's the hard spot. If I'm a manager, I'm the CEO, and I'm in my head of marketing thing taking action with him or her and evoking their action, I'm micromanaging. That's not my job. My job is to stay out of that. My job is to make sure they have clarity on what to do, that they have the resources to do it, the authority to do it, empowered to do it, and to make sure that if they screw up, it doesn't hurt them or someone else.

Going back to those three key actions of a manager is, one, clarity on what the future looks like. Two, create, enable, and support leaders. Three, a safety net in case of failure. Taking this practical, if you want to inspire highly effective management, which to me is the step above leadership, first, you got to stay out of action, in the trenches action. That's the first thing. How do we do that? You stay in these three core things, making sure everyone's clear on where you're going, making sure that you’re creating, enabling, and supporting leaders. You're building and evoking leadership at all levels and three, safety net in case of failure. Here's the magic trick. Look at your card. What is the action that you wrote down?

The thing that made this person an effective leader is, what I wrote down is she is empathetic and that she identifies and understands people's strengths well.

That's a description of a way of being for her, but what did she do? What action was that and that led to what?

Her being able to put people in the right places to leverage their strengths and also to hold people accountable and be able to connect and relate to people, to motivate them, inspire them to do their jobs better.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but tell me if I'm summarizing this well. What she did was create an environment where you were able to be highly effective. In doing so, did that drive others to see you as a leader? Are you being highly effective?

Yes, it did.

She created and enabled you to lead. How did that make you feel?

I wrote down inspired, understood, valued and I would add empowered as well.

I could have told you, one of the words is going to be in there, empowered, safe, understood, supported, clear on what to do. Was she a kick-ass leader or a kick-ass manager?

She was a kick-ass manager and still is.

Leadership Paradigm: A leader's job is to be in action and to inspire and evoke highly effective action.

I knew that's what's on there. Every time that someone does this, it always falls in one of those three things, “I was always clear. Clarity on what I need to produce. I was always empowered, supported. I knew what to do. It made me feel better. I have more skills that create, enable and support.” The last one is, “I always felt they had my back. I was safe. If I messed up, they're going to cover for me, a safety net in case of failure.” Those three behaviors or roles that I talked about as a manager, every time we do this, it falls into one of those three. The emotions are always the same: inspired, heard, empowered, safe, supported, it's always the same thing. Inevitably, you proved that I'm right. When we think of, when we experience what we would say is amazing leadership, we're experiencing kick-ass management. How many times did she tell you what to do like, “Go do this specific thing?”

Never.

Not once. She didn't lead you, ever. She managed you amazingly, which empowered you as a leader. Why does this work all the time? If you think of it from the CEO perspective, if you have one leader, the officer is the one leader and everyone else follows and I get shot, what happens?

We're now a leaderless crew.

We all die. If my job was to create, enable and support leaders at every level, and I get shot. What happens?

Someone else picks up the staff, whatever it is and people know what to do.

Even better than anybody.

People still know what to do. They know how to do their jobs. They continue on.

They have a clear direction. They've created, enabled and supported the lead and there are safety nets in case of failure anyway. It doesn't matter.

They feel empowered to make decisions versus waiting for that one person to tell them what to do.

Your answer is wrong. Everyone would wail and cry for the loss of me. After that, then they get into effective action. You're callous, I die and you don't even care.

Presumably, we have a mission. I don't know how it works. I didn't serve in the military but I don't think you, when you're in the middle of the mission, stop to cry.

SEALs are known for crying in the middle of missions. It's a little-known fact.

I had no idea. We're learning all kinds of stuff. I would cry, Larry.

To wrap this up, this is the other paradigm that changes mine. Hopefully, everyone out there, if you did the experiment, I've done this thousands of times and it always works out the same way, think of how screwy our language is. Who's the best leader you've ever worked with? It's the best manager and you proved it. I didn't. That's why I do it this way. You wrote this down without me doing it. I said, “I know what's on that paper.” Fundamentally, if the person was an effective “leader” in your mind, they're managing well. 

If you perform as a follower really well by making really good choices and taking effective actions, others will follow you. Click To Tweet

On the same respect, if you have a group of people that you lead, you're the manager. You've got these followers. You manage ten people. Of those ten people, one person is always in effective action. They always know what to do. They always have the skill to do it. You always know what they're up to. If they need help, they come to you right away. That's the type of person you would call a leader in your group. When someone follows well and they're in effective action, we would call him a leader. Think of about screwy are language is. Who's the best leader you've ever worked for? It's the best manager. Who's your best follower? It's a leader. No wonder we have problems within organizations.

Nobody wants to be a follower and be called a follower. You'd rather be a leader, even though followers are people who take the action as important, if not more important.

They are the most important.

They do the thing.

As you know, we got a long enough history, I love being different. You calling me normal is the worst insult. I'm abnormal. I want to be the best manager ever and I want to be the best follower ever because that means that I've done nothing but create leaders in my life. If I manage well, I've created nothing but amazing leaders, which means all I have to do is follow my amazing leaders to success. Put on my headstone, “The best manager/follower ever.”

I'll take it. I'll have to remember that if I ever get that responsibility. You've completely shifted our paradigm here and our thoughts on leadership and management. For people reading, working in large organizations, worked with large organizations in the past, we talked about shifting the paradigm being the important thing, what's one more piece of advice you would give if you think about going to executives and vice presidents and saying, “I want you to think of yourself more as a manager. Think more in terms of high-level strategy and empowering your people setting the direction and clarity, making it safe for them.” What's one more thing that they or we could be doing to set them up for success?

The short answer to that is you have to be an extremely good follower which we identified as a good leader if we're using the good word, the good terminology. For me, when it comes to managing, your job is to create, enable, and support leaders. Your job is a lead follower. I use the word, lead follower, because our job as a leader is to lead and follow depending on the situation. The primary thing there is to take effective action and evoke effective action.

When I use that understanding, when I am in highly effective action, I will naturally evoke action in others that mirrors mine. That's what following is at the best level. I need to do that as much up as I need to do it down. My job as a leader within an organization is to lead my managers because they don't know. If they knew, they wouldn't be the manager, they'd be a leader. They'd be in with us. My job is to evoke effective choices in my manager as much as it is to evoke effective choices in those that are following me. How do I do that? It gets a little more complicated. There are actions that are associated with that. How can we do that? We'll make sure that they're always giving me the information I need and clarity on where I'm going. My job is always to make sure that I have all the knowledge, skills and resources I need. Always consolidating more information so when a manager comes in with a need, I've got the resource.

The biggest one is over-report information. I want my managers to know more about what I'm doing than I do, because only then can they make good choices. My process when I'm leading my manager, I want them to tell me, “Larry, stop telling me what you're doing. It's way too much information.” Ultimately, it's selfish because I can't be wrong if you, as my manager, know exactly what I'm doing. Over-report, which is where most people go in the wrong direction. They under-report.

The most important one by far and this is what we could leave on, the most powerful tool of a leader is to sincerely ask for help. We could do a whole another episode around what it means and the power of asking for help and how asking for help sincerely to someone with capability and capacity is one of the most connecting and one of the strongest leadership tools you have. There's a whole discussion around that. That's the biggest one.

We could do a whole another discussion around the importance of asking for help, why people don't ask for help, and why they should be. Speaking of asking for help, for anybody reading who wants help with this and wants to connect with you and learn, where should people go to reach out and connect with you?

Amazing leader, Andy.

Thank you, and follower.

Leading the right way. I love it.

I was following your lead.

Leadership Paradigm: The most powerful tool of a leader is to sincerely ask for help.

Within that, and this ties into the question you asked, “I change your paradigm on this.” One of the risks, for anyone reading, you already have a different way to view the world. What we did was make a bigger gap. If you are having management or leadership problems before and you have this, it got worse. That's where, out of responsibility, I need to tell you. This is the tip of the iceberg, that shift in paradigm needs to be communicated to those that you work with because if you start acting in this way without proper communication to those that you're managed by or leading, you're going to create more dysfunction.

Within that, being able to have the right narratives and understanding of how to communicate this is important. That's how you can create significant change with an organization. Ultimately, that's what we do. Our business is doing that, being able to empower managers to have the knowledge, skills and resources to increase the leadership of their organization. How do you know if you need that? If you've ever sat there saying, “I need more support. I can't get my team to do what I need it to do. Sometimes they fulfill, but most of the time, it seems like they're coming up short.” That's the world telling you that you are not managing well, which I hate to say it but it's true. Ultimately, since you have the positional authority, if your team isn't supporting you in the way that you need, it’s because you haven't inspired the leadership that is necessary. That's what we do. We specialize in education around taking these things into organizations, generally at the manager level and up to the senior level.

I'm putting together something special for you from what Anne said around some classes, a series of free classes that talk through what I did on a deeper level. You should be able to find that on our website, it's Plan-Sight.com/leaders. I'm putting together a series of free classes that are going to cover what we talked about in a little bit deeper detail. It's free, so feel free to use it within the organization. You can show the video with your team, which is going to be one of the best things to do. No selling in it, straight content.

Straight content and value, which I know you're all about. I've been through your courses in the past, Larry, and I got a ton of value from it, which is how we built this relationship and why you're on. Larry, this has been awesome. You have shifted my paradigm and mindset.

Do you want a manager on your headstone too?

I wanted leadership and management. I now want a manager headstone. You blow my mind. I have many more questions, but we have to wrap things up. Luckily, you and I are hanging out. I'll get to ask you my questions then. Thanks for coming on and sharing your wisdom and advice here. I appreciate it, Larry.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Take care.

• Larry Yatch - LinkedIn
• Episode 29 – previous episode with Larry Yatch
• iTunes – Talent Development Hot Seat
• LinkedIn – Andy Storch
• Plan-Sight.com/leaders