what advice do you have for those who have weak poor or otherwise ineffective leaders how do you manipulate that situation mm-hmm so again III think I may have actually answered this question before mm-hmm but I’ll answer to get sure when I when you are in a situation like this when you got somebody that’s weak or ineffective leader or a poor leader the answer is always the same which news you lead you lead yourself and I hope people that listen to podcast all the regular you all knew what I was going to say there you all know that when someone is not leading you then you lead them you pick up the slack for the weakness it my leaders want to come up with a plan cool I will my leader doesn’t want to give a brief that’s fine I will my leader doesn’t want to mentor the younger troops that’s okay I will do it leader doesn’t want to take the blame when something goes wrong that’s fine with me I’m gonna take the blame and you think about that one that one can be tricky because you think well I’m gonna look bad in front of the in front of the more senior boss now think about it from the senior boss’s position if if you work for me echo and the boss comes in and we the mission was a failure and I’m the I’m the guy that’s in charge and I say sorry boss we failed it was echos fault and echo goes hey sir it was my fault here’s what happened here’s the mistakes I made and here’s what I do to fix it next time who do you respect more yeah of course I’m looking to promote you you know I actually want to promote you I don’t fire myself for being a guy that’s passing the buck and passing responsibility or not taking ownership of anything so imagine what that looks like before you get all intimidated by taking the blame for something and think you’re gonna look bad and think you’re gonna get fired think about what it looks like from the senior perspective and you actually have to imagine what it will look like underneath you you have to see it from your perspective cuz it’s even when you think about their perspective you still can be in fear of it you think oh I’m the guy that’s blame I’m the one that’s gonna get fired no and and am I saying this like blanket that there’s some times where if the boss screw something up really bad like let’s say it was something like classified information got left out and it was your boss that literally left it out and you go no it was me well first of all you’re not telling the truth right so you’re not telling the truth and the person made a mistake that’s and that there’s no excuse for yeah so that’s not a situation that I’m talking about and if your boss was the type of person that said yes I’m gonna put the blame on him I would burn them alive like actually here’s what really happened so I’m not talking about that type of situation but when you’re doing an operational thing where there’s mistakes that get made and your boss is scared to take ownership of them take ownership of them mm not that it you will win in the long run now you know here’s the part that is crucial and critical and the most challenging part of this and that is when you step up and lead you want to make sure you aren’t stepping up and stepping on your leader you don’t want to step into their little spotlight you don’t want to impose yourself in their leadership limelight and glory you don’t want to do that you you you can’t do that you want them to get the credit you don’t want to have them be intimidated by you in any way and this is hard because when you start taking ownership for stuff it’s very it can be very intimidating for the person that’s above you because they think dang this guy just he’s just a bold bastard then stepping up and taking charge of stuff and they might get intimidated that so so what you have to do is you have to do some some indirect maneuver warfare here and for instance if they don’t wanna what they don’t want to come up with a plan maybe you start saying hey sir what do you think of this would this be a good plan mhm and maybe if you’re if they’re not mentoring the younger guys maybe say hey you know what I want to do this up I want to spend some time with the guys after work do you mind if I have a session with them kind of go over what we learned on last appointment or hey about this new regulatory thing that’s come out in the business world and I want to get our younger troops to know it do you mind if I teach a class on that so you’re asking them permission and you might even say you know hey I think it would look really good for you too if we were doing this do you want to make them look good and those are the ways that you do that you step up and lead but make sure you’re not stepping on your leader because that could backfire and you could end up in a situation where they feel intimidated and you’re getting put in the doghouse or fired or demoted or in trouble because they feel intimidated by you so use caution if you have a good leader some leaders just aren’t that aggressive mm-hmm and when you start getting aggressive they start they actually like the fact that you’re getting aggressive and they like I mean I work for some people that love the fact that I would step up to take charge they had no problem with it because they were good confident leaders it’s the insecure leader you have to watch out for the insecure leader that’s worried about looking bad and that’s another two change perspective again on this when you as a leader have somebody that’s stepping up and taking charge ask and you start feeling intimidated by it ask yourself why it’s probably your ego you’re being a weak leader by being intimidated by your subordinates if your subordinate is doing your job and doing it better than you let get step up and start looking how can you go up the chain of command how can you look up and out how what other areas can you focus on since that leader has stepped up and is making things happen that’s awesome that is awesome we want that mm-hmm that’s decentralized command that’s building other leaders underneath you which is what your goal as a leader should always be and I’ll tell you every time I see someone that goes oh I got a weak leader I’m always like lucky you yeah yeah lucky you take advantage of that take advantage of it do whatever you want you have such a good opportunity when you have a weak leader above you don’t look at that don’t don’t get all downtrodden because it just doesn’t motivate you awesome motivate yourself get chart getting charge of things take advantage of it make things happen it’s awesome to have a weak leader I love it get after it it’s good to give me so much mobility in my in my in my job right I’m so much more mobility and if I’ve got someone hey if I got someone that’s a strong leader that’s great too but weak leaders no factor hmm I’m gonna take advantage of it yes feel like you yes you got a weak leader and and you’re kind of um you’re not stepping up you’re essentially allowing the the group the team the objectives to kind of fail in a way you’re kind of allowing it and then in a way to depends on what you do but in a way you’re kind of be being like hey all right you’re allowing the excuse to be valid you know we’re which kind of makes it invalid really when you’re like hey I could step up but hey it’s the leader so as long as it’s not my fault you know that my leaders not that good you know it’s you’re really not taking much ownership yeah just point your finger at your leader and say this is a weak leader yeah that’s not what we do here not what we do at all and the times where I’ve had weak leaders I I always took advantage of it like I said one time and I’ve talked about this on the podcast before we fired our leader you know we had a little mutiny that only happened once for me but you know it happens that I mean I I don’t know the all the details of that but in a way isn’t that you just staffing up and making it happen I mean that’s really the impending result like dang that’s that’s kind of where we’re gonna arrive that really giving us stepping up if if that’s how it goes down that’s how it goes down but you stepped up you solve the problem if there’s a problem and that was a problem there’s your solution anything yes up and down the chain of command you gotta own it for sure
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