Roadmap MBA : Leadership and Management Masterclass

This Roadmap MBA Leadership and Management Masterclass is the Leadership and Management module taken from the complete Roadmap alternative MBA course, here to support people who wish to focus on Leadership, or start their business education journey here.

Should you wish, the entire Roadmap MBA is available completely for FREE here on Udemy. Simply search "Roadmap MBA" to complete your journey without spending $160,000 on business school.

Module 13 - Leadership and management

At any point in your career your ability to create good working relationships will be a major deciding factor in your success.

Module 13 is the art of good management. This section does not discuss the technical aspects of performing a management role, but rather the key qualities and behaviours which will influence how you are viewed by colleagues and how to get the most from your team.

Developing better interpersonal and relationship skills will help any organisation communicate and collaborate more effectively, be more successful and make more money.

Perfecting these skills is essential and it is what makes the difference between poor managers and great ones!

This section aims to build on the skills from Module 2, The skills investors, business partners and employers look for, but which can also be applied to working in any team and adds new management techniques to help take you to the next level.

The term “management” is also subjective. Every person in every organisation is in some way managing people, if you realise it or not. It might not be in a formal hierarchy, but any time you have personal contact with somebody else you are managing people. This can happen both up and down the management chain. Develop these skills and you will go far!

For this module can we interchange the words for management and leadership?

Yes. The term good management in this chapter can also be read as good leadership.

In this course we don’t tell you how to perform a management role. We focus on tips to help you grow and improve and create high performing teams.

Never confuse management as being about power and control. A management position may come with those things, but good management is about people, regardless of your position.

Growth Action: Within your business or career do you have any interaction with other people? If you answered yes then you are in management.

The success of your relationships with these people will be a major factor in deciding your success. Acknowledge this fact and start to view yourself as a manager, even if you do not have anyone reporting to you just yet.

This is especially important at the start of your career to give you confidence in your ability to step up when the time is right.

Growth Action: The same is true with leadership. Leadership can come from any level of an organisation. Leadership is a character trait and not a position.

As above, the best leadership lessons will also come at the start of your career.

We learn more from the bad leaders and managers as we do from the good ones.

When you have a bad experience, write it down or remember it and when you get into that position yourself, you already know what you would do differently to be the manager you wished you had.

Assigning responsibilities

One of the most important things any business needs to do is know who is responsible for what tasks and make this explicitly clear to everyone - including the individual themselves.

In a small or micro-business, perhaps with just one or two people, this could all be the same person. This is perfectly normal. Still complete the task and for the areas which you struggle with the most, look to bring in help here first to free up capacity.

Successfully completing this task can transform a business. When used in combination with other techniques from this module it can be revolutionary for an organisation.

Growth Action:

1. Draw the organisation chart for your business / division.

2. Put the name of each individual next to every box they fill. People may perform more than one role within a business. If this occurs, write them in every box (role) they perform.

3. Review the list of roles within the company.

4. List the Key Performance Indicators for every role within the business? What are they measured on? What are they incentivised on? A guide for this is shown below.

5. What elements of the Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet are they responsible for (if anything)?

From your answers:

• Does anyone have more than one hat to wear?

• If you had to pick, do any of the areas of your business / division not get as much focus as it deserves?

• Which of the areas are under performing?

• Which of the areas are performing well?

• Would you get rid of any of any of the people if you could?

• Is the size and shape of the organisation suitable for your current size?

• Based on your goals, do you have the people in place to support your future growth? For an owner looking for a potential exit, you need to create a structure which runs without you.

MD / CEO

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance? If no, replace them.

Marketing

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

Finance

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

Sales

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

Operations

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

Human Resources (HR)

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

R&D / Product Development

Person accountable (write name):

What is this person directly responsible for on the P&L / Balance sheet?

What are their regularly managed KPIs?

What should be their regularly managed KPIs?

Do they have too much on their plate? Could they need help?

Do they have capacity to do more?

Would you hire this person again given the chance?

Managing Cash

Managing cash flow within a business is critical. This generally falls within day to day operations of a business and hence is not covered by this course, however the following are some tips to improve cash flow in your business which can help you grow:

1. Can you change the date (or frequency) that your send your invoices? Could you go to twice a month?

2. Can you give added value to customers who pay on time (or in advance).

3. Can you get your invoices out more quickly. Could this be automated?

4. Send friendly reminders a few days in advance and make friends with your clients / suppliers to keep them on side.

5. Ask is there a reason the other side pays late? The more you understand their business and their pain points, you might be able to solve them and create a win win for everyone.

6. Do your billing cycles coincide with your clients and/or your suppliers? Could these be aligned?

7. Can you shorten production and delivery cycles for your product to get cash out (and back in) more quickly?

8. Can you reduce your sales cycles. Can you save the amount of time you currently waste (and the associated cost) through closing quicker?

TOP TIP: If your company is cash rich, you can use this as a strategic advantage over your competitors, providing the ability to allow certain companies to pay over longer terms, or invest more in marketing or promotion, however cash should never go out the door faster than it comes in as this will create trouble as the company grows.

What could your business do if it had more cash?

Could you buy and sell more stock / inventory?

Could you invest more in promotion?

Could you grow your team?

Could you finance an acquisition?

Could you borrow less?

Could you invest in new product R&D?

Fine tune your ability to get cash into the business more quickly to fuel your future growth. Small changes in multiple areas can compound to make a real difference.

What to do when losing money

When any business is losing money you need to reduce your overhead to return the company to profit, and/or make a change fast to bring more money in, as quickly as possible.

This is the most difficult part of a leader’s job. Your ability to handle this responsibility and make tough decisions is something to consider when planning your career. At times business owners need to be ruthless to save the business.

Growth Action: Get a clear understanding of your costs from your management accounts. Understand where every penny goes. Review if each expenditure adds value to the business or if it is unnecessary. If it is not essential, get rid of it.

Growth Action: To achieve accurate control of your costs you need accurate measurement and control.

In a service based or people business, the measurement and control you need is measuring the capacity and utilisation of your team.

Utilisation is how many minutes in a day are useful (or billable) vs. the total number of minutes in the standard work day (outside of a reasonable allowance for toilet breaks, lunch and miscellaneous business tasks). If you are busy this can be above 100% if your team are working more than your contracted hours. It can also be much less.

As a manager it can be difficult if your team complain being busy and request an additional support. You need to know the actual figures to make a judgement.

The truth could be that they only provide 5 hours of positive value added work a day and have 3 hours unaccounted for (waste). As the manager you need to minimise any waste and know the true capacity of your team, however this only comes with adequate controls.

Growth Action: Watch out for the slackers in your business. If 5 of your team are working at 90% and 1 is working at 50%, the 1 is dragging the team down. Make the tough decision and remove this person from the team. You will still get as much done but without the politics and toxic negative influence in the office.

Growth Action: Explain to your team why you are asking them to do certain things and listen to any concerns they have.

Make it clear that the plan is actually in their best interest to have a successful business which provides security of employment and opportunities for growth for the future, however this is only possible through possible through control of your business overheads and proper control on the numbers.

Growth Action: If you can bring your team along with you, you can get them to become the driving force behind the business and it will set you up for future success.

Communication

Do you have a plan?

Have you communicated the plan?

No matter your task, make sure you have a plan. If you are in sales, have a sales plan. If you are a business owner, have a business plan... but whatever your role, have a plan.

If you have management responsibilities within a business, your task is to communicate your plan. The successful communication of your plan will be the major deciding factor on your team’s success!

Growth Action: As a manager, how can you complain if you don’t achieve the results you want if you haven’t communicated exactly what you want, what you need and when you need it?

This is how detailed your business or sales plan should be.

Work with your team to continually refine and improve it. Be as explicit in the detail as you can, but whatever you decide, communicate it and make sure the team’s understanding is the same as yours.

Do you manage a team?

How exactly do you share the vision you want them to follow?

Are there ever any areas people get wrong?

Be explicit in your instructions and take the time to share and communicate your plan, and it will make a big improvement to performance.

Give your team permission to ask questions. This is an important piece to work together.

Always be open to improvement. Ask for their ideas and the simple task of asking (then listening) will improve their engagement in the process.

Do you have any experience of bad communication within a business? What went wrong? Could you learn from it for the future?

Commander’s intent

Within the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink [22], and later reinforced in several case studies in BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell [23], both discuss how in the military it is not beneficial to have slow inefficient communication in order to achieve a successful mission.

Within large organisations such as the military it would take too long and be too slow to react if all decisions were made by senior management. A Commander who is not on the battlefield does not have the same amount of information or gut-feel as the leader on the ground.

In these instances teams such as the US Navy Seals operate a decentralised command model. The leader on the ground can make all of the decisions on what needs to be done, as long as this works towards the instruction given from the top, known as the Commander’s intent.

Commander’s intent is the goal you want to achieve and a high level overview on how the Commander wants to achieve it. The interpretation of this is then down to the leader on the ground to do everything they can to achieve the mission, without having to go back up the chain of command on every decision.

In business this technique can be used by empowering your team with the high level overview on what you want to achieve (the Commander’s intent) but actually let them make the decisions on the ground in line with your direction. This allows slick efficient communication and highly efficient decentralised command structures for running a lean and efficient business.

This technique proves why it is valuable to set the high level goals for the business, but then also break this down into Lead Actions for each month.

In practise, a business owner / manager may set the monthly Lead Action to “approach to 200 new potential clients per month”. Using Commander’s Intent, it is then down to their team if they choose to use the phone, email, networking, doorstep cold call to approach the 20 new customers.

The team can learn quickly and see what works in order to best achieve the goal, without needing to go back to the owner / manager.

This is also a great technique to give back more time to the owner, who would otherwise be pulled into all aspects of the business.

Through Commander’s Intent, the leader is able to step back yet still retain overall control, empowering their team in the process.

[22] Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, 2019 (ISBN-10 : 1250270960)

[23] Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2006 (ISBN-10 : 9780141014593)

Run a lean and efficient business

As an executive you could be responsible for the running of a business and everyone within it. The pressure of this responsibility is often underestimated, especially as costs begin to add up, or if business is difficult.

As a leader your ability to handle this responsibility and make tough decisions is something to consider when planning your career.

As a leader you may have budget responsibility; meaning that you are responsible to ensure that your division makes a profit. One of the most important factors to consider is the control of overhead!

Overheads are all of the costs of a business which are payable regardless of the amount of product you produce.

Overheads generally pay for the facilities to support the cost of producing your product or service, not the cost of each individual unit you sell. These are commonly wages for salaried staff, rent, insurance, computers etc.

As an executive you have the responsibility to review your capacity to perform your task at different staffing levels and how much profit comes from this, weighing up the cost of additional overhead vs. the impact this could have on capacity and therefore your profit at the end of each month.

It is better to have a smaller more efficient team, than carry any excess overhead. You want 4 people running at 100% rather than 5 people running at 80%, or 6 running at 60%, which is common.

Running a lean and efficient team protects the core group and makes the overall business stronger and more likely to survive. It is also more profitable! Lazy or unproductive teams can also be toxic and produce lower outputs than half the number of people who are all highly motivated to work.

Growth Action: Review again your staff performance metrics and your ability to measure staff utilisation, as a key tool to inform you on what to do next.

Growth Action: Could you have a more profitable business if you reduced the size of your team and only focussed on your most valuable customers?

How happy are your team?

In a management position it is always difficult to find the balance to engage in the banter or fun office discussion and be friends with everyone, or not get involved.

Allow your team to speak off the record to you about absolutely anything in their lives and get it off their chest. Office politics included, but never in an open forum.

A problem shared is a problem halved and having your team know they have someone they can speak to will greatly improve performance in the workplace. It also costs nothing!

Are they stressed?

Are they worried about their jobs or things at home?

Are they unhappy with any office politics?

Let your team speak to you privately and get things off their chest. This will improve performance and attitude in the workplace.

Office politics can rip through an organisation like a virus.

Growth Action: Arrange one to ones once a month to have an informal catch up with each of your team. This will help you build better relationships but also allow you to solve any issues before it becomes an actual problem.

Growth Action: Listen to staff suggestions. Make them feel special. Make them feel valued.

Growth Action: When an employee does have a problem, either inside or outside of work, be aware of the fact that it is probably the only thing they will think about and their productivity will drop. Having someone to talk to may take the pressure off their mind and help them be much happier, healthier and more productive at work.

Ask yourself the following questions

Do you have any experience of office politics causing a negative feeling in the office?

Do you have staff who don’t like each other?

Do you have different groups who gravitate together with each thinking the other does not deliver what they should?

Do any of your team have things going on outside of work which might play on their mind or affect their performance at work?

These are all negative influences which will impact business performance.

Be an ear to listen and see if you can do anything to help.

Business performance will improve if you do this, but always be cautious not to lose the authority you need to run an effective business through becoming too friendly with your team which may become difficult if you ever need to discipline your team or reduce headcount.

Create career plans

Create individual career plans with personal goals and ambitions for your team. Review progress and help them develop.

In any business staff retention is a major issue. For any business, especially in a service industry, your staff are your business. Without them you have no product and they are well within their legal rights to leave (in accordance of the terms in their contract).

Balancing career progression with the business case to support and financially afford salary increases is difficult. Many businesses run on small margins and simply cannot afford to give pay rises.

Accept that everyone will have their own career in mind and accept that in their mind they will often prioritise this over the needs of the business.

Yourself and your own family will always come first and the leader needs to accept this, but also use it to their advantage.

Growth Action: Creating a career plan with each member of your team to ask where they want to be in 1, 3, 5 years.

Putting together a solid plan of Lead Actions, which can be reviewed against, will provide the platform to make your employee feel they are developing and working towards their goals, even if there is no immediate reward. The trick is to understand each employee’s motivations.

Written goals are extremely valuable for achieving business success. This is why we do it in Module 1.

As the leader, don’t ignore ambition. If you have employees who feel that they are learning the job they want (to later help them get to their dream role) or to help them develop the skills needed to make the next move up the ladder, they are more likely to stay and support the business and be a great employee.

Simply ignoring a person’s ambition won’t make the ambition go away. Ignoring an employee’s true feelings increases the chance that they will leave and this will come sooner if they do not feel any personal development in their current role, or if they don’t feel they have the trust, respect and backing of the manager.

When balancing the needs of the business with personal development of your team, any additional personal development can be done out of hours so that it does not affect company performance or reduce time billing.

The important thing is to listen and provide the steps to support your team’s progression. If an employee chooses not to take the support as they may not want to work any extra hours or weekends, that is their call but as a manager you have been supportive and have created the environment to allow them to flourish.

If the employee chooses not to develop and add more value, you then also have the argument not to provide the pay rise or additional benefits as they have not earned it.

Personal development and career development plans do not necessarily cost anything, but they do address an otherwise unspoken issue which unless addressed could become a major risk for your business.

Growth Action: Arrange informal one to ones with your team. Ask their genuine opinion on career progression and then work with them to achieve these goals with defined Lead Actions.

Growth Action: To understand your team’s drivers and ambitions, ask them to complete Module 1 about goals and ambitions. Use these with your team and use this as the starting point for their career plan, or sign them up on this course.

Growth Action: From their responses, look at the areas where you can help your team grow and learn, and potentially even use them to take some responsibility off your plate. Achieve this and you will have a much more productive and positive team which will also lead to dramatically improved business performance.

This is also one of the easiest ways to increase performance and reduce staff turnover.

Understanding different types of motivation

In management you need to know what motivates your team. People are generally motivated by both positive and negative forces, but if done correctly you can use both to make a real impact in motivating your team.

According to human performance specialist Tony Robbins, as detailed in his book Awaken the Giant Within[16], what motivates people comes in two forms: what people want, and things they’re afraid of. Tony Robbins calls these ‘Moving Towards’ and ‘Moving Away’ values.

Ambitious positive goals and desires are Moving Towards values. Fear and negativity, or fear of losing something are Moving Away values.

We can use these concepts to understand your team’s motivations, therefore finding more about what drives them.

In your teens and early 20’s you may have been willing to take greater risks than you are now as you probably had less to lose. In your 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, chances are that you have created some wealth for yourself, you may now own a house, car, have a family etc. You now have something to lose and hence your motivations may have shifted. You may still be chasing a dream, but now with a potential downside of losing what you have achieved to date.

Everyone has both Moving Towards and Moving Away values, and neither is stronger or more valid than the other. You are still highly motivated, but your motivations may change over time, now having both the desire for the dream goal but also the fear of losing what you have.

In management understanding the concept of Moving Towards and Moving Away values will allow you to use them as a valuable tool for motivating and understanding your team.

Growth Action: Write down what motivates you? Are they Moving Towards or Moving Away values?

From Module 1 you will have already articulated your positive aspirations, however now also consider things which you might be scared to lose.

Negative feelings or fear, such as losing your job and the impact this could have on things like reputation fall into the Moving Away category.

Understanding your drivers will do amazing things for guiding your future success as you will know exactly where your motivations come from. Knowing this will help you achieve your goal and most importantly what actually makes you happy in life.

Growth Action: What would losing your job, house, car, business or career mean to you? Would it put your family out on the street? Would you feel embarrassed in front of your peers or be seen as a failure? Would you have to ask friends or family for money?

Through asking yourself these questions and even future pacing the scenarios, this could give the motivation to put extra effort into what you are doing now so that this never happens. This can act as incredible motivation.

Growth Action: Tony Robbin’s book ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ is superb for helping you realise what is important to you. Use this as a guide to achieve career and personal happiness.

Imagine you lost your job. The job market was flat so you struggled to get another one. You had car repayments which you couldn’t keep up so your car is repossessed. You lost your house.

As you lost your house you had to move back in with your family, however they live on the other side of town so you also had to pull your kids out of school. Life could kick you in the teeth and it won’t always be your fault.

If you genuinely imagine and play out this scenario (or whatever is most applicable to you), I am sure you will agree it is pretty terrible but could happen.

What would you do in that instance to gain back everything you have now? How hard would you work? This is a Moving Away value and can be used as a motivator.

The fear of losing everything is extremely strong however many people don’t appreciate the amazing things they have around them already.

For motivation, recognising that things genuinely could all go wrong (as happened to a lot of people after the financial crash of 2008, oil price crash of 2014, or COVID in 2020) this could happen to you. Realising this, working hard now and grinding towards something can be the best motivation you ever have.

List 5-10 things you are grateful for:

What would you do if you lost one of them?

What would you do if you lost all of them?

What would it mean if your business went under, or you lost your job and could not find another?

Use the above as fuel to drive you and put in place the positive Lead Actions for your business or career.

You can also use this with your team, allowing them to do the same exercise. A highly motivated team is much more likely to be successful.

Top tips for developing your team

As a business owner / manager it is important to ask yourself how are your staff learning new things? If they have been at the same company for over 5 years, are they learning the latest techniques from industry? Probably not.

Investing in a training course such as this for your team can have huge results. Training can also produce external peer groups your team can bounce off and share ideas not afraid of asking questions which they might not do internally.

Top tips for developing your team:

People join companies, they leave managers.

One of the major barriers to growth for companies is the quality of managers to develop and nurture their teams. If you have a business which allows managers to develop talent whilst being developed themselves, you create a thriving environment where everyone feels engaged and excited to come to work.

Be flexible.

When trying to recruit top talent it is not all about the money. Some people might want more flexible hours, some to have a higher percentage of commission to reward good performance. Be flexible in your approach and you will attract and retain more of the people you want.

Discover how your team like to be recognised.

Recognition is often the thing we crave the most, but everyone in your team will like to be recognised in different ways. Some people prefer public recognition, some prefer it in private. Some people like material rewards. Ask each employee as part of their appraisal or career plan what they prefer and tailor your approach to suit each person. It costs nothing but will help you get the best from your team.

Remove barriers and frustrations.

One of the most valuable things you can do as a leader is give your team free reign to solve problems and drive the company forward. One of the best ways to do this is simply asking them, “if you could change anything in the business what would it be?” then solve it for them!

Onboarding. Get the first impression right.

Make your team feel special from day one and they will perform much better. Buyers remorse is not just a sales technique, it is true with any commitment, including taking a job. You don’t want a new starter regretting their decision after one week if their start at the company has been poor or they don’t feel welcome. First impressions matter!

Consider having walking meetings.

Instead of being stuck in a meeting room, if there are only a small number of you have a walking meeting. Walk around the block and get some fresh air whilst you talk. This will help you relax and also was a technique used by Steve Jobs and John D Rockefeller and is proven to encourage more stimulating conversations and greater output than simply sitting in a room going through the motions.

Train up your superstars. Invite them to senior management meetings.

A huge proportion of people leave their jobs due to lack of fulfilment or a feeling of a lack of progression. Exposing your team to the high level discussions which often occur at your monthly management or board meetings will help get your rising stars ready for the eventual next step of progressing through the organisation, but yet costs you nothing. It is an easy win to help their progression.

Does everyone have a work book?

All of your staff should have a single work book which they take with them every day and includes all of their notes from every meeting, and crucially includes their task list for urgent actions.

Keeping a consistent work diary / work book is a great way to improve the consistency of a team, whilst also reducing mistakes or forgotten tasks. Another simple change which can make a big impact.

For sales people you can also include notes or the key questions to ask inside the front or back cover of the work book, allowing your team to never miss a qualifying question or important point, instantly making them better at their job straight away.

Honesty & Empathy

When in a leadership position, acting with honesty and empathy will take you 100x further than being deceitful and self centred.

Thinking solely about yourself may bring the occasional quick win, but most of us have a long careers ahead and your reputation is more valuable than you imagine!

It is also an important point to note that a CEO’s job is not actually to get high performance from themselves. A CEO’s role is actually get great performance from everyone else!

Being honest and building trust is one of the best possible ways to do that and this is true for any sector or any country in the world.

Growth Action: When you come up against business challenges, be open and honest with your team. Explain the situation and the criteria you have to work within, and then ask for suggestions on the best way to solve the problem; then ask for their support as you take your desired course of action.

Acting with genuine honesty and empathy will be far more successful than still having the same problem but not communicating with your team.

This simple act will also demonstrate you as being a strong and compassionate leader.

Fight in the trenches

In Module 1 we asked you to describe the person who you see as being at the top of their game in your profession or career. The person who you would love to be like. We then looked at implementing Lead Actions to help you achieve this same level

When times are tough, be this person and replicate the behaviours of someone who you see as being the best of the best. Be the leader you wish you had and demonstrate the values this person would bring.

Growth Action: Visualise what behaviours this person would show in your position and how they would act with their team, then replicate the same behaviours.

Growth Action: Fighting in the trenches and working with your team to tackle the problems you face (not just telling them what to do) will win you much more respect and admiration than simply shouting orders and putting pressure on your team from above.

Apply constructive pressure, but do it in a way which works with the team to solve the problem and lead by example, will build massive reputation and respect.

Growth Action: From your business plan, communicate with your team exactly what you require and when you needed it. Working side by side with your team to deliver what is required will bring respect, but this approach also needs structure for the team to operate, so they each know exactly what is expected and instruction on how to complete the task.

Extreme ownership

Within the book Extreme Ownership [22], Jocko Willink describes the mental approach Navy Seals take to achieve maximum performance within their responsible area of command. Extreme Ownership is a mindset about taking complete responsibility for the mission or whatever you are responsible to deliver.

In practise this theory and mindset means that as you tackle your mission, which could be running your business or doing your job, anything positive or negative which could happen you take responsibility for and put it right.

If a team member doesn’t perform, Extreme Ownership dictates that rather than just placing blame, it is working with the person to say “I obviously didn’t provide enough training to help you achieve the required level, it is my fault, however in future we will do X”.

Extreme Ownership is not about taking blame for other people’s mistakes or letting them slack off, but through owning the problem and doing anything you can to achieve the mission. Extreme Ownership is about the mindset to make this happen.

For a small business owner, Extreme Ownership could be accepting that the success or failure of your business is on your shoulders. You can let this pressure crush you or you can take control of all of the Lead Actions required to make your business a success by following them through. If you don’t take responsibility and the business fails, you have nobody else to blame, so do it right.

In your career it is working within your team to do everything you can within your grasp to help the team be successful. If someone else makes a mistake, help them fix it. Take ownership and lead from the front.

[22] Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, 2019 (ISBN-10 : 1250270960)

Protect your team

If your team knows their boss cares, they will be more loyal and perform better.

Look after your team and they will look after you.

As soon as employees feel that you or someone in a senior position does not have their back and will look after themselves first, their productivity will drop and they will either leave the business or create a negative atmosphere which could drag down the whole team until the issue is addressed.

Growth Action: As the leader it is your job to shield the team from the pain. When things go wrong take the blame. When the pressure builds to hit a target, take the pressure on your shoulders and work with your team to get the best possible result.

Growth Action: Stronger leaders have harder working teams behind them. This hard work will improve overall performance within this division, and this itself will reduce any potential negatives which could occur. Protecting your team and demonstrating strong leadership is a self fulfilling prophecy of achieving high performance.

Growth Action: When things go well, give praise and credit. Recognise their performance. When things go badly, discuss this with your team and together create the list of learnings and creative actions, but then take ownership. Demonstrate how the problem will not happen again. This is what great leaders do. Be a great leader.

Recruit the best people you can!

How does your business advertise its job roles? What do people think about the company? Are they applying to work for you simply for the pay cheque or do they genuinely buy into your vision? How does your company stand out from its competitors?

If you can create an incredible business brand and are well known in your industry, this will do great things and attract the right people to work for you (and with you).

This is how you attract top talent.

Hire for four things:

• Do they have the drive? A desire to excel, persevere, learn and innovate. To act with courage. To work hard.

• Do they share your values? Do they fit with your culture?

• Will they deliver results? Have you shared the KPIs you expect them to achieve during the interview process? If not you should. Are they confident they can hit them?

• Do they have the skills you need? Can they learn it? Skill can be taught and should be refreshed over time. Do they have the business network you need? Do they bring extra things to the business?

Recruit for these things in that order. This should help build your company with higher quality talent.

Growth Action: Getting your marketing and social media right will improve the recruiting attractiveness of getting people to join your business.

Businesses with A-players do better than businesses with C-players.

Growth Action: Write better job specifications. Sell the company and make it clear what are the benefits for joining your team. Make it interesting. Make it stand out.

Growth Action: Before you invite people in for interview, ask them a range of questions to see if they fit your values and mission. Look for genuine sincerity in their answers on why your company is a great fit for them.

Growth Action: In interview go into detail and look for honesty. For each company on their CV, ask who they reported into, ask for names of people and ask “What would they say about you?” The fear of being reference checked should illicit truthful responses. At the very least you will see what the people are like under pressure.

Growth Action: Ask who would be their dream employer and why? Why do they want to work for you? Ask where do they want to be in 2 years? Does this fit with your plans? Are they just giving you answers you want to hear?

Growth Action: Put in place a brilliant onboarding process to make employees feel special.

Growth Action: If things don’t work out, pull the trigger early. It is in everyone’s interest to move on quickly.

Suggestion box

Within the business:

• Ask for opinions and ideas.

• Share both the good and bad feedback.

• Not hiding negative constructive feedback will show people that they have been listened to will do wonders for staff engagement.

No matter how clever you are, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. Implement a suggestion box asking for feedback about everything in your business.

Growth Action: Ask your team anonymously for 3 things they like, and 3 things they would improve if they could change anything in relation to any business activity.

When the answers come back, take out any personal gripes or insults (because there will be some) and put the entire list on the company notice board.

A strong leader is not afraid to show any negative constructive comments about his or her business.

When you do this, through sharing what people like about the business this will have a social proof effect and will make people think “yes I like those too”. This creates a positive impact within your team.

The things people like could be the hours, the people, the fact that management listen to them, the free coffee machine. Share the positives, it is great feedback and improves employee culture!

Even though we might not want to hear negatives, this feedback is priceless and is the chance for you to do something about it.

If for instance the toilets are not up to standard, acknowledging this and saying you will do something about it (if you can) goes a long way to build trust within the team and shows that they have been listened to, or you can acknowledge the suggestion but explain why it is not possible to rectify at this time. The important thing is to shown you listened.

Ignoring people’s answers or not asking in the first place does not make the problems go away. The problem still exists but as a result you are gradually building a less connected or engaged workforce.

Simply letting people get things off their chest will help diffuse any ill feeling or possible situations before they become actual problems. This will help the business even if you don’t actually make the change, simply through listening.

Publicly acknowledging flaws also shows strong leadership. Having the confidence to admit that things might not be perfect but you are willing to do something about them is much better than not having control of the situation and hoping things go away.

This is all part of good management and positive engagement is crucial for achieving a high performing business or team.

Town hall meetings

Have regular meetings with everyone within the business, ideally together or connected by live webinar, where you share progress of the business plan and good and bad points within the month.

No matter if you work in a minimum wage job or you are CEO, people want to do a good job and feel valued.

Through taking the time to explain the wider business strategy, where you are planning to go, why, how each member of the team’s work impacts on the overall picture and why this is important; this leads to much greater employee engagement across the business.

Many often forget that a CEO or MD’s role is to get the best from other people.

In a big businesses there could be several layers of employees between the CEO and the customer. Due to this, the overall business performance (i.e. the experience the customer experiences when they purchase the product or use the service) is rarely the direct result of the CEO’s hard work but rather the cumulative hard work of lots of people and in particular those on the front line.

Talk to them. Inspire them. Make yourself accountable. This builds trust.

Engaging once a month with the workforce and creating a motivated, happy and excited workforce who are passionate about your vision will benefit the bottom line.

Growth Action: Take the time to communicate your plan and share the vision with your team.

Growth Action: Ask for ideas and support. This will make your team feel valued, make them work harder, perform better, and this will do great things for your business.

Growth Action: Do this in person (or via video) so you can communicate your body language and tone of voice, as well as your message.

Growth Action: Do this on a regular basis. Once a month is a great target.

Allow people to ask questions and celebrate any high performers if you can!

The aim of this module was to share a range of techniques which can be implemented in any business and are proven to make a positive impact quickly. Choose which techniques you could implement with your team and build these into your business.

So that's it for the Leadership and Management module.

I hope actually it's one of the most interesting modules for a lot of people because it does largely relate to almost everyone in the world that works in the business or leads a team, or works for themself.

Often a lot of the traits can be seen as common sense and hard work and honesty and empathy goes a long way to really understand people's viewpoints and opinions, but also have the strength of character to know the right direction and actually empower people to execute your vision.

So we are getting towards the end of the course now and what I hope is that everything that you've learned so far has really helped improve your skillset over a range of different areas and as we'll talk about in the Advanced Techniques module, it's how we can actually use all of these fabulous things together.

For instance, talking about your organization's leadership, management, how you work with the team, how you communicate your vision through your personal brand and your marketing that can make people like your company more that they'll trust it more and they're more likely to buy your products.

The whole point of the Roadmap is what we're looking to do is actually show how a lot of these things actually interrelate.

So we are about to go onto Module 14 on mental health.

I really hope that you've enjoyed this course so far.

Please leave us a review on Trustpilot if you get a second and also if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.