#233 Leadership Is Influence Part 2 w/Draven Hope & Ben Townsend

Leadership is fundamentally about influence and returning more value than the resources invested. Our views on leadership evolve over time, often shifting from purely analytical approaches to recognizing the crucial importance of emotional connections.

• Leadership defined as the ability to influence others toward fulfilling the company's mission
• Effective leaders connect organizational goals to individual roles
• Leaders have a moral obligation to understand and support employees' career goals
• "Emotional resonance is more compelling than fact" - analytical leaders often must learn this truth
• The "Jaws effect" demonstrates how stories create stronger impact than simple facts
• Relationships matter in organizations - performance alone doesn't guarantee recognition
• Understanding human nature is essential for leadership effectiveness
• Building good relationships isn't compromising integrity, it's recognizing reality

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership Discussion
• 2:37 Leadership as Influence and Value
• 5:28 Communication and Emotional Resonance
• 7:32 The Jaws Effect: Stories Beat Facts
• 9:19 Relationships vs. Performance in Organizations
• 11:44 Navigating Human Nature in Leadership

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

Welcome to the Scott Townsend Show brought to you by Dietzelman Productions.

Speaker 2: 1:09

My next question is what made these experiences so valuable? But I feel like you guys did a good job at answering that, so I'm just going to skip it.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:19

So the next one is have your own views of leadership changed over time.

Speaker 1: 1:27

You want me to go first?

Speaker 2: 1:29

By the way, I kind of looked over. Scott sent these questions before and so I looked over them yesterday but I didn't. So I spent two minutes just reading through them and I put it down and I didn't want to look at it or think about it too much before the interview. So I'm cause I wanted to give you my reactions today. So that's kind of the approach I took with this. So have your own views of leadership changed over time? And mine is yes, 100%. I remember early on, way before I was leading teams, I remember people would talk about leadership and it was so cliche and it just kind of bugged me. But it's communication, communication, communication, and I thought that was kind of a corny cliche. But leadership is like I said earlier. I believe leadership is simply the ability to influence. That's what it is to me.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Because, you go into a company and whatever company you have, and your company has a mission and your job as a leader is to fulfill that company mission. And here are the resources you have. You have this much budget for advertising or putting up displays in the indoor garden area and this much budget for the people spend in that area and all this kind of stuff, and so you have to take that spend that you're responsible for as a leader and you have to return more value for that spend than the spend itself. So that means developing people. Of course you have your own career ambitions as well. You want to get promoted and blah, blah, blah. But you have to return more value as a leader. The outputs have to exceed the inputs or you won't be in a leadership position for very long. There's other reasons you could be out of a leadership position, but that's one.

Speaker 2: 3:33

And so I think you know, in your ability to influence. I do believe that communication is. That's how, that's how you create your ability to influence. It is about communication. It's about understanding and being able to relate the mission of the company to the job that Liz has as an indoor patio person, garden person, and how her job relates specifically to accomplishing the big top level mission of the company she works for. And so being able to do that, whether in leadership or not, I think is very important, but for a leader I think it's paramount. And then I believe that you have like a moral obligation to understand what your employees want out of their job and try to help them accomplish that. It's about the mission, but it's also about building people, because people is how you accomplish the mission. And so my views on leadership, with regard to how important that communication is, is very important and along those lines.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Just one other thing I'm a pretty analytic kind of guy, analytical kind of guy, and so, being that way, I think one of the ways that I've kind of changed is especially, you know, as you're relating to other other people is to be less analytical and kind of fact-based in your approach and, uh, spend more time on the empathetic, the empathy side of things and dealing with people, because I read a quote this isn't mine, but I read it and and it was, it was uh it.

Speaker 2: 5:17

It really struck me as yes, that's truth right there, and I can see the error of my ways. You know some of my you know interactions as a leader, but it was a statement that said Something like this emotional resonance is more compelling than fact. Emotional resonance is more important than fact. Emotional resonance is more important than fact. So you can be 100% right about some issue or what you're trying to accomplish with your team, but not have your team follow because somebody else is making a different case or you haven't made the emotional case for it. You haven't made, you haven't connected with them emotionally to kind of like seal the deal on what you're doing, and so I think my view of that has absolutely 100 percent changed over time and I think you avoid, you ignore that, that need for emotional resonance at your own peril as a leader, and so that would be my answer to this, this question.

Speaker 1: 6:25

That makes sense yeah, I think, I think, yeah, that's right, that's you know. Uh, you can have the facts. Facts don't sell. Um, for example, you know, don't go in the water, don't go swimming in the water, because you might get. You know, there's a shark out there and if you just leave it at that, ok, you're going to forget that the next 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 6:57

And then pretty soon someone throws a ball and it goes out in the water. You go out there splashing around, go get the ball and come back on the beach, you know, and now everyone's kind of splashing around in the water and totally forgot about the fact is, you know. Fact is, somebody did see something earlier this morning. Or you can tell the story of jaws and there's no way you're getting in the water today or tomorrow, you know, know, I mean, after jaws came out, there was a huge. I mean nobody wanted to get in the water. You know, even in swimming pools everybody was freaked out at the deep end, cause it's just so scary. And so, yeah, telling a good story sells the fact, the facts themselves don't sell.

Speaker 2: 7:44

But yeah, and internal relationships. Because let's say, let's say, in the indoor garden center, let's say that, let's say that your boss is number one. My, my biggest objective for you guys here on the team is is to say the most important thing for us is to sell barbecue pits. And let's say say that Kim is number one in barbecue pit sales. And let's say that there's somebody else but Kim. I don't make this personal. Person A sells barbecue pits like nobody else, but they don't spend any time developing a relationship with their boss. And then you have person B who doesn't really enjoy selling barbecue pits.

Speaker 2: 8:30

They're a vegetarian and they don't you know whatever, I'm just making this up and they and they sell whatever patio furniture, whatever it is, and but that this person has a really good relationship with their boss. You can say that they're schmoozing or brown nosing or however you want to say it, but they're. They're spending a lot of time, um, you know, building a great relationship with their boss. And then the boss has to make a decision. Well, who gets, who gets the tickets to the whatever the thunder game in Oklahoma city this coming weekend? Who gets the tickets? And the boss awards them to the person they have a great relationship with, rather than the person who is executing the number one thing that leader has told the team to execute. So that's an example of what that to me, what that emotional resonance makes. When you get more than one person involved in an organization, you have politics.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Yeah, but isn't that kind of crappy if you're selling grills like nobody's business and yet Joe Blow over here who's?

Speaker 2: 9:39

Yes, it's crappy. Yes, 100% it's crappy.

Speaker 1: 9:44

And they get the tickets to the thunder game. That sucks and really, really does but but it's, it's.

Speaker 2: 9:54

I'm not, I'm not. I'm not saying whether that that is right or wrong. I'm saying that's what it is and I'm saying that's human nature. And so, along with if you know that it's not about being a bootlicker, it's, it's about look, if I, if I execute my job perfectly here but I don't spend any time developing relationship with the people around me, then human nature is going to, is going to point out their frailty and I'm not going to get what I want and somebody else is going to get what they want because they're just a 100% bootlicker. And so you can't ignore that side.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Emotional resonance again, this is human nature. And is it right? No, and as a, you know, kind of left-brained person, you're going to say, well, that's ridiculous. You know, I can't do that, I'm never going to do that. Okay, well, this is something I had to learn, you know. I had to learn. You know that emotional resonance is more powerful, more compelling than just the fact, is just human nature. And if you, if you ignore human nature, you can leave yourself kind of out of what you want and where you want to go, just by not recognizing that fact, there's nothing wrong and it's just smart to build a good relationship with your boss and the people around, and so don't, I would say. That's one thing that I w I would not neglect. You know, as I, as I execute the mission, it's not a moral issue, or you know the issue where you know you're sacrificing. You know your belief system. It's just one of recognizing human nature, and you can have it either work for you or against you, which one you want. Thank you.