Difficult Leadership Pt. 6

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty, the podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Miller. In today's episode, we'll cover topics such as the ego of a corporation, how to approach HR, the responsibility of understanding your company's policies, and the value in knowing your numbers. Enjoy the show.

I do wanna circle back on something and we probably gonna have to do really Ralph, I I really feel man, I just think about this. I would love to do a whole show on HR and maybe we can you know okay that's it may be a touchy topic especially to get some HR pros on kind of talk about it but I think I'm sure. Well, I think we probably could if we get the right topics and just have some boundaries around it. But I want to say this. So what Ralph was referring to earlier is I can't remember what brought this idea.

But I said I need to share this with Ralph to see what he thinks. And I said Ralph, what does the ego basically do? He said well the ego it's the thing that protects against ideas or protect our emotional states. It's the thing that stands up when something's, it don't like something about what has been heard about itself. Essentially, would you frame ego?

Ego is the protection system. And

so I really don't know what was going on that had this come to mind for me, but I said, he charged the ego. You got to understand guys, and I'm not necessarily speaking negatively against it, but you got to understand its functions and things that come out of HR. We've seen this and Ralph and I joke about this. Every time there's a new policy, we're like, okay, who did something?

Exactly.

You know who did something. And when you read when you read your handbook about the policies. There's not a whole lot in that handbook that says this is we're protecting Jane, we're protecting the interests of Bob. Handbook is protecting the interests of the company. And we expect that.

Right. That's it. That's expected. So when you take your, if you decide to go that route, because there's a time and place for that. I think when you do that, you definitely have to make sure you're getting good mentorship.

Because just to circle back around on the conversation that I started off the show with about the person who reached out to me, HR was reaching out to them about talking about somebody. Now this person's initial inclination was I don't have nothing to do with that. I don't know. I don't want to be involved. And so they were asking me, said, well, in a scenario like that, you can just share your experience and leave it at that.

Good, bad and difference. Keep it short and sweet. Because here's what the person shared with me and after I thought about it, I'm like, that person may be right. What this person shared with me about this particular scenario or situation or workplace is that when they've seen that person constantly in conversations with HR and going back and forth. I really want to hear your outlook on this too.

Going back and forth with HR about something that's going on and it's not going well. This person shared with me, Cher, more times than not, I've seen that person go and not the leader. Now what the other thing they shared is, but when a leader has something to say about another leader, then the leader is let go. I'm like, and the person starts citing some examples. I'm like, I hadn't I don't know if I've really seen that, but I guess there's some Here's what we have seen.

We've seen leaders moved around.

Oh, yeah.

So leaders get moved around. So here's what we deduced it to. Leaders get moved around, but employees, the individual contributor perhaps, there's less disruption. Maybe there's less monetary impact because of what they're leading. I don't know.

So to her point, I said we have to handle HR with a high level of intellect and high level of strategy. Guidance. HR

is not the government. You just can't think that they're there just to support you. And I was gonna touch on this and one of the other topics we're gonna talk about, but you have to understand what the policy say and what your rights are and what they are not. Because there are leaders who will flat foot lie to you and because you don't understand the policy they'll get over on you. This has happened to my wife.

This has happened to multiple people including myself because I didn't take the time to read what the policy says and understand what I can do and what I can't do. I just blindly believed what a bad leader said and took it as you know the law and the gospel just to find out later that that was not the case. You have a responsibility to educate yourself on the policies, that your company has and every company is different. Right? But you have a responsibility to educate yourself so that should you get into those moments you know what you can and what you cannot do.

Otherwise you get into those moments and somebody's telling you what you can and what you cannot do. You should be educated enough to be able to tell them according to this I am able to do that. And not just have to blindly believe what someone who is a challenge leader says to you.

Yeah. Wow. No, I think that's great. I think that is great feedback. So next topic here and I think we've kind of hit on some of these, we've been kind of fluid with the conversation, which is improving the relationship.

We talked about, hey, don't declare that person an enemy.

That's right. And in a previous episode we talked about when I hear the word leader or boss, I hear the word alignment and there's that word aligning. You have to align yourself with your boss's objectives. And how can you do that if you don't know what they are? If you're so focused on just doing what you do every day and you have no idea what it is your boss is trying to be successful at.

How can you align what you do to their objectives? And then demonstrating reliability and competence. Constantly showing that you are a team player and that you're not only a team player but you're a go to player because you know your role. I remember when I moved into my current position in a C level, I was getting some feedback from someone who's in a C level, who worked at a company that you and I worked for Terry, when you first came to Houston, who's still there in a C level. And she told me something because I was often amazed at how she was able to navigate herself on the C level.

And she was the only woman and in a very male dominated industry. And I'll never forget what she told me. She said, when you walk into those rooms, know your numbers. Right now she's not even in IT, but I understood what she meant. You have to walk in that room and understand all of your data and think through what kind of questions that you may get from people.

You do not want to walk into the room and not understand your discipline, technical function and your numbers. So when your leader sees that you have that in you, it starts to build that trust and it starts to build the relationship. But if you get in front of people and you don't know your numbers, you don't know what's going on in your own department, what's going on in your own team, basically what you do, hey, many So I work for a credit union. How many loans did you close this month? Oh, I don't know.

Need to go look at. Then that just breeds doubt and it destroys the relationship. You wanna build credibility, not lose it. So you build that by knowing your discipline, what it is that you do.

No, that's great feedback. I love that. I love that. Right. Because here's the deal, right?

The exchange is all about at the end of the day, the bottom line. Right. And so if we go back to one of our early episodes, we were creating these metrics to align with the bottom line. And when we started telling the story that, okay, this much uptime has led to this much increase. These many calls into member care has produced these many new accounts.

And when we start producing that data, really at the end of the day, it showed that we care. It shows that you care because you understand how what you do is driving success for the business.

That is key. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.