how do you shift your mindset from individual contributor to manager growing a company from nothing to something required being an individual contributor and getting a lot done with a little but as we grow it’s clear that I need to hire people for specific roles and accept the accept that I can’t do everything I’m very used to getting stuff done and doing everything myself and it feels a little weird trusting someone else to do it how can I shift my mindset to appreciate being a manager over an individual contributor so straight up out of the gate you are actually failing as a leader by doing what you’re doing but I do by by continuing to do things yourself get in the weeds and not let people lead you’re actually failing as leader and therefore failing the team so number one you have to watch out for that and you know by the way that means the more time that you spend in the weeds getting stuff done yourself because you’re so perfect that’s the last time that you’re thinking about strategy that’s the last time you’re thinking about you know what’s gonna happen tomorrow and future operations and that’s not good to be in that situation so first of all you need to build the trust with these people you don’t have to give a hundred percent trust to someone out of the gate if if I if we’re a company and I hire you and I’m gonna have you doing some tasks that doesn’t mean I say hey echo here’s the task go do it and now I’m just gonna walk away I don’t even know you I don’t know how well you can do the task so I’m gonna say hey echo here’s the task actually watch me do it okay you’ve seen me do it now I’m gonna watch you do it okay cool you seem to be doing that pretty well I’m gonna come check on you in two hours see how it’s going come back two hours next day I check you once every five hours next day I check you in the morning I check you once in the afternoon next day I just check you at lunchtime maybe two three four days later I check you once every other day pretty soon you’re good to go and guess what I’m doing I’m doing something else doing something that I should be doing I built the trust I confirm that you know how to do it I you trust me because now I trust you we’re building some team and some relationship so that’s all good so so the original point though I think the way that you shift your mindset is to recognize that micromanagement is actually failure mmm no progress is made while you’re micromanaging the longer you are micromanaging someone the longer it takes for them to develop as a human being and as a useful person in your organization every minute that you micromanage someone is a minute of them not thinking for themselves is a minute for them not taking ownership of something so if I’m micromanaging your task you’re not taking ownership of it if you’re not taking ownership of it we know where that leads mmm so let people learn let people lead and to not do that is failing don’t fail one time one oh it’s you in Hawaii get your driver’s license at 15 Thanks I don’t know how what it is now that was long time ago obviously but I learned to drive with my dad before that you know when we were young we didn’t quite as dirt roads everywhere so he’s like hey you know and it started with when we were young when we’re young young like seven eight years old we’d sit on his lap so he’d do the shifting and the gas and the brake and stuff like that dirt roads we just do the steering that’s what it kind of started with then after a while he’s like okay now we’re just gonna learn how to do this you know it was a man you Trent a stick shift so he was like okay now you just learned how to go right and now it’s going shift gears all on the dirt road whatever and so I was like 50 just turn 15 or maybe even 14 and he was like hey um he’s like alright let’s go drive no usually it’d be like we were going to the beach so on the way home hey let’s take this dirt road you can steer kind of thing but this was actually like okay let’s go drive so I’m like alright but he popped he plops me on the front seat and he goes alright take us there and we were going wherever we were going down to the beach he’s like all right take us there I was like ding I don’t know Brive steered before I 50 I haven’t done the whole thing all at once but he was sitting right there he just said take us there I was like dope I took took him there whatever he didn’t critique much you know but I got there and he just kind of let it happen he was the same kind of thing where first he’s checking my steering they needs China this is over times years and I’ll and yeah after a while it’s like bullies doesn’t I he’s still managing he’s right there he could slide his foot over to the brake if you need to I guess if yes put his hand on the wheel steer you away from the oncoming truck if need be yeah and at the same time he’s letting me make little micro mistake I hit the kerb a little bit yeah you know stick shift you do too much or yeah well any let that happen because that’s my thing to figure out the feel because each car is different and it’s cool because that’s actually good one time we were going on an operation my first deployment to Iraq and we were driving a far distance through cities we’ve never been through before and we got turned around mmm in the city and we were had a far way to go to our objective it was a kind of a high-profile operation and where we stopped mmm and I hear the call in the radio like all stop and I say something along lines of you know what’s up and you know the the the point man which is the lead nav in the vehicles he comes up on the radio he’s like just trying to get my bearings mmm a little stress noise I walk up so I get out of my vehicle just to mention this guy’s one of my bros and I walk up the vehicle and he’s in there and I hit see he’s he’s flustered mmm he’s flustered in he’s you know I don’t wanna say embarrassed but he’s flustered and now I’m there yeah you know what I mean yes and new I think his thoughts are Jacko’s you know jock was gonna be mad or whatever yeah and I I go up and he’s he’s cracked open the door right I open the door on the Humvee and I go you know what’s up man just in the most mellow voice about I go hey what’s up and he goes I I don’t know where we are I was like cool man we’ll set security let me know when you got it dialed and he’s like all right cool and that’s what we did so and it took like you could see his face like he he just turned back to computers started working but when I walked up to him you know he could see that I was panicking because you know you got we had a bunch of vehicles you know you got seven vehicles with us and and they’re all driving around and I’ve done two laps around the it’s not fun and there’s and you know you make it through and like past the enemy one time you got away with yeah now you went by him three times listen it’s not cool yeah and every one of the whole troop is sitting there and the vehicles going hold on jackass is gonna run us by this checkpoint again or my this thing again yeah all of us so but yeah just went up hey bro what’s going on I’m just trying to find where we’re gonna set security let me know when you got to figure it out good good that’s that’s so good on you because you know everyone was feeling the strat like what you’re saying for like it was like dang where’s this guy leader does not know one I’m sure everyone was feeling that then it’s like all right I got a kind of detached from that feeling and goes you know yeah and and then you know I got on the radio because that wasn’t you know I just said I said the guy’s name like hey just getting sorted out right now wearing me rolling heared about a few minutes when we know we’re at in everyone’s you know sat security boom done there was another time we got ambushed on that same climate sure and I was in vehicle number two and we’re in a big convoy and the the ambush pretty much was aimed at the center and in the back of the convoy so a bunch of machine-gun fire a bunch of RPGs and nothing really hit and in fact nothing did hit the RPGs went over us and and I was I would never say much on the radio right and the guy in the back vehicle he’s actually the platoon chief but I say I didn’t say much but clearly we just got ambushed I mean there was a mass but you see no fire and explosions going off and we pout you know we go through that we continue on and the platoon chief in the back he says something on the radio something along lines of he’s like you know comes up in the music hey joko you know we just got hit with an ambush back here and I got on the radio knows like Roger it’s it you know whatever goes okay I guess we’re all right like all good all good in the hood I think you did me like that one day yes in fact when I say I think I mean I remember the time you did me okay so I was I’m forgive me right now you just talked about an actual ambush actually happened I’m talk about something way less impactful just bear with at least you’re asking for forgivness masala grocery story is actually this pod corded like a week or something early so I was like boom let me finish the whole thing get it ready to get pushed out all I need it was done all I had to do is press the button to make it live that’s all I had to do and this was like a week I think it might even even been two weeks in advance wow those are the good old days yeah yeah but and then the day came it was so done and out of my mind the day came and I was just like hey I don’t know it’s not on my mind so the long story short I I didn’t do it so yeah I didn’t press publish it was ready to go anyway so I wake up in the morning I see message well a bunch of Twitter posts right and send that but I had got a text message I think there might even been a phone call oh no no is a phone call and a text message from you this you know this is something something obviously is something you know I get it this early in the morning by the way yeah so I look at it um and so I listen to the voice message first in it was you all coming like hey how’s it going oh good morning um just to sort of let you know it’s Wednesday you know we have that but that podcast we recorded that’s you know that’s supposed to be going on right now so whenever you can whenever you’re ready go ahead and post that but it wasn’t like all the Twitter folks where’s the Bundesrat you know okay whatever you ready it’s all good you know I didn’t know what happened maybe you’re under more stress hey never know you got to think when you’re in a leadership position not that I’m like the leader here but if you’re in a leadership position you don’t know what someone else is going through maybe you had some technical issue and I’m like we’re gonna call you up and you’re like where’s that thing and now you freak out if a kid or yeah I don’t need to make it any worse there’s something going on like you were sleeping that’s it I didn’t want you know but you always think about the perspective of the other person that you’re dealing with and you don’t want to escalate things yeah that’s not gonna help yeah just de-escalate hey man just wondering what’s up if you need anything from me on the podcast maybe we need to re-record it I don’t know let me know I’ll be over that’s what we’re here for I’m like with two people shouting at each other and you chime in so they stole shouting and you’re ready I got three people shouting yeah yeah anyway
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