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Doing Something Right – Audio

Hi, this is A.J. and welcome to this month’s V.I.P lesson. The title is Do Something Right.

Now our question is how can you instantly be a better leader? Instantly oh cool instantly be a better leader. This is a super simple way to do it and before I tell you how to do it. Let’s talk first about how not to be a great leader a great boss and I’m basing this on an experience because I’ve had many, many, many, many horrible jobs and horrible bosses in the past you can probably relate. Let’s talk about it the bad boss what does the bad boss do? You’ve all experienced this I’m sure. Number one a bad boss usually has unclear expectations. So, I can remember in many of my jobs in the past the boss would never quit tell me what I was supposed to do.

That’s right I was given the general idea of my job, but then sometimes I would do something else or do the job how I thought I was supposed to and then they would get mad at me the boss would yell at me or say why did you do this, well you didn’t tell me how. Another thing that is common for bad bosses is that they focus on catching you doing something wrong. Fells like they’re always waiting and watching until you make a mistake and then boom there they are suddenly yelling at you or criticizing you not all of them yell some of them might be very calm and quite about it, but the point is they criticize.

It seems like they’re just always waiting to catch you doing something wrong and if you’ve experienced this and probably have then you know how demoralizing this is over time cause eventually you start feeling like god I can’t do anything right no matter what I do I’m always going to screw up. So, if you have experienced this from the other side having someone do it to you, you know how terrible it is and you know that over time it doesn’t help you at all in fact it just kills your motivation and destroys your confidence.

Some people call this gotcha leadership in English gotcha is a little phrase we say when we catch something. Let’s say there’s a bug flying around and you’re trying to catch it and there’s a little fly and you grab it and say gotcha alright I got it. So, the bad boss the negative boss is doing that with mistakes they’re always trying to catch that negative thing, catch that mistake and then when they gotcha, they yell at you or say something they point it out.

So, it feels like they’re always just wanting to get you catch you with something negative and over long-term it creates confusion if they’re not clear if there expectations about what you’re supposed to do are not clear and they’re constantly catching you making mistakes maybe you didn’t even know it was a mistake that creates confusion your never quite sure what you’re supposed to do or how you’re supposed to do it.

Commonly it creates anger if a boss or just anyone even a parent anybody does this to you all the time constantly you can get angry I would get angry I would get really pissed off and frustrated that this person was constantly trying to catch me doing something wrong and criticizing me all the time and it creates resentment this long-term bitterness.

Let me tell you a story giving example from my past one of the worst jobs in my life where I had this exact type of boss. it’s a place called Kids College in Soul, Korea it was my very first English teaching job. Now before that I was trained as a social worker I worked as a social worker and I just wanted to go and experience the world and got this idea in my head I’m gonna go and work in another country and then I’ll be able to experience a whole year abroad. I didn’t have any money so I needed a job and I got on the internet and I found this job in Korea they were willing to take people with no experience with no teaching knowledge at all

they claim they would train us to be good teachers so off I went and flew to Korea this whole new world for me and I started my job.

Their training was, they took me to a class and said here’s your class… go and I immediately started on my first day there was no training. So, I did the best I could and I just started playing games and talking to the kids and I learned as I went. I felt pretty good about myself I thought I was doing a pretty good job however my boss I want say her name, but my boss would come around and she would look in the window of class every day. So, we had windows in our classrooms and she would always come in and look just for a few minutes with this unhappy scowl on her face and of course seeing out the corner of my eye I would see her looking in at me as I was teaching and I didn’t know what she was thinking.

But, then at our weekly meeting of teachers she would criticize me and not only me, this was the ritual at this school. Cause at our meeting our teacher meeting was basically a bet down of the teachers where our boss the of the teachers would go around one by one in the circle and criticize every teacher and tell us all the terrible bad things we were doing and all the mistakes she noticed. And so, at first this upset me and confused me I was not a trained teacher and I got just upset I didn’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Oh…my god I’m doing this terrible job. But, of course as I continued as I started doing a better job and I felt fairly good about myself as a teacher that confusion turned to anger. I got really angry with this woman I got sick of her spying on me all the time and I especially got sick of the constant criticism she never said anything nice, she never pointed out any of the good things I was doing and many times the bad things said the criticism she had were not even accurate. I wasn’t the only one the other teachers grew increasingly resentful and angry.

Now, one day this spilled over and it created such bad blood in the team among the teachers that one day we sat down in the teacher room and refused to go to class so were not working anymore. It was kind of like a little sit down strike and we demanded that we get you know better treatment and we wanted a meeting with the owner and it created this whole huge crisis and that crisis was the result of her style of leadership which is this gotcha negative sort of catching people doing something wrong. It was an extreme version of that and the result was an extreme result where we finally just refused to work.

Let’s look at the other side of this and how it works how to be a more effective leader more positive leader using really using just some really simple methods you know by basically being a good person and showing that consistently and helping people instead feel good about themselves. The first thing that a good leader does a good manager does is set clear and simple goals for team members clear and simple not a 10 page manual on policies and regulations for your team or for the company. That’s not simple if nobody can remember all that and focus on all that it means less than one page. Ideally one to three items, one to three goals for each team member, one to three things you want them to accomplish or to focus on. So, clear and simple so they know exactly what they’re supposed to do and they’re not confused they know exactly what is most important?

Part two the easy part the powerful part is instead of trying to catch them doing, having or making mistakes or doing things wrong you catch them doing something right and that you’re always watching your team members and your waiting to see them do something that’s good. And when you catch them doing something good then you praise them instead of criticizing them you praise their great behavior specifically not just oh, you’re really great oh good job that’s not very effective. When you specifically praise someone you say I like the way you did this. If I was managing teachers for example and I watched the class and I saw them do something good I would say I like the way you taught this lesson you did a great job of explaining that vocabulary. Very specific so they know exactly what they did well.

This is very important that it needs to be specific. I think one problem that people have with praise or compliments one reason so people don’t like them is because they don’t sincere and they don’t feel sincere when people are too general good job, good job, good job you’re really good, good job. That just feels like your trying to you know pump them up a little bit and the person doesn’t even know why they’re doing a good job so it feels insincere sometimes it’s not so effective. So, when you catch someone doing right very important that you praise them in a specific way. You tell them exactly what you liked and why. And when you do that that creates a great positive motivation.

Now I was fortunate to have a boss who did this in my past also. All my past jobs weren’t terrible I did have a few good ones and one of them was at a place called the Alcove View Shelter it’s when I was a social worker and my boss was named Kristen and she was fabulous probably the best boss I’ve ever had. She gave me a few simple goals there were a few simple things I needed to do at my job. I would go out to high schools and I would talk to groups in consoling groups with some kids who were struggling for some reason and my boss gave me very specific goals what she wanted. She needed a certain number of people in the groups. She needed the kids to make a certain progress. She told me exactly what was needed.

Beyond that she let me have freedom and do whatever I needed to do. And immediately this excited me because she seemed to trust me. So, right away I was clear on what I needed to do. I had clear specific goals and they were simple and I had the freedom to go about doing them. So, that created an instant motivation so I went out and I threw myself into this work doing my best. Now the next she did is that she praised me. She actually focused on what I was doing well. When she heard something from the schools, from a student that said something good about me she would bring it up. She would say A.J good job you did a great job thank you for doing this and she would specifically tell me what I did.

Kristen specifically praised me she, she was specifically focused on what I was doing right and it that created such a tremendous confidence in me as a new social worker at that time. As a young worker one of my first real jobs and I remember that because to be on the receiving end of that. That kind of leadership, that kind of management made a powerful impression on me. It was such a positive experience for me, built up my confidence. I did a better and better job at that position this benefited of course me it benefited Kristen my boss it benefited the whole agency it was win, win all the way around.

Alright, let’s talk about how to specifically do this it’s so simple, so powerful these are the kind of things I like, they’re simple, they’re powerful, they work and easy to do, anyone can do them. So, you are in some kind of leadership or management position, but that doesn’t mean that necessarily that’s your job title you might be a team member, but you can still be a leader within the team. You can still provide leadership and praise and motivation to other people it doesn’t matter what your official position is. Certainly if you’re a parent this is true with your own child. So, the first step very simply decide the exact behaviors, the exact goals, the exact results that you want to see from your team from other specific people.

The more specific the better. General goals and vague ideas are fine they sometimes can be inspiring, but you’re not going to be able to find specific things to praise unless you get specific about what you want. So, what exactly do you want them to do? What exactly do you want them to accomplish? Be clear about it yourself and then communicate it to them. Tell them I don’t know why some leaders some bosses they feel like they can’t just directly come out and say I want you to do this. Yet that’s the most effective thing to do have a little meeting one on one and just go through you know just one to three things that you specifically want them to do. Then quit easily watch them look over their shoulder in a positive way to catch them doing something right and when you see them make even a small step in the right direction mention

it, notice it. Specifically tell them exactly what you liked, tell them exactly what they did that was good. That was effective that was an improvement. That will of course motivate them to continue doing that thing.

Now, the best praise of all is a kind of public praise third person praise if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this you’ll know what I mean. That’s when instead of your boss or another person praising you telling you oh…I like that you did this it was very good instead they tell another person and you hear it. So, they tell your friend they tell your co-worker wow they did such a fantastic job. I love how they did this, this and this. It was amazing. When you over hear that kind of praise said to another person said to a group it has a deeper sociological impact on you.

This is what my old boss Kristen used to do we had weekly meetings at that job as well and instead of being criticized and put down at the meeting she would actually specifically point out things that team members had done, but she would do it in a public way. She would say hey I just want to point out A.J did a great job on building this program at the local high school and she would list out the reasons I had done a good job and she would tell everybody not just me everybody would hear it. And that had an amazing effect on me it just feels really good to hear good things said about you publicly. And no matter how much somebody says they don’t like that they’re probably lying we all love it. Okay you know you love it. So, just imagine how other people feel when you do that.

Positive leadership builds on positive values on positive behaviors through praise so it’s similar to some of the past lessons we’ve talked about where you’re building on strengths your building on what’s good that’s what positive leadership is instead of again focusing on the negative and the weak. Yes, sometimes there are problems that need to be fixed and they need to be fixed and we need to address them, but most of our energy should focus on building what’s good, reinforcing what’s good, and praising what’s good. That creates that upward spiral that we all want where we get better results, more motivation which leads to better results which leads to more motivation up, up, up that’s what we want that’s your role as a positive leader. So, get up there and do it in your life in your job, in your family any area of your life at all use this.

Alright I’ll see you next time. Have a great day.

Bye for now.