As a leader, it's the the greatest hope that we can have is as a result of our leadership, not only are people going to thrive not only is our organization in a win, but that it's going to produce a lot of other leaders and that other people's lives are going to be impacted as a result.
From we're for good studios and simple modern Welcome to scaling for good with Mike Becca limited podcast series, giving you the playbook to start, build, scale and give generously. In today's episode, we're diving into how to be a leader we're following. The long term sustainability of an organization largely depends on the quality of the organization's team, which ultimately ties back to the company's leadership. It discusses the characteristics of a leader worth following, and then shares practical advice for how to become that type of leader too. Let's dive in.
Hey, everyone, on this episode, we're going to look at the question how do you become a leader worth following? And how do you create a sustainable organization as a result, when I was in college, I went to University of Oklahoma, I pledged a fraternity no one in my family had ever been a part of a fraternity. But I learned a important principle during my time, when I was a pledge, there would always be older members who demanded respect, because they simply because they were older, some people in the fraternity conducted themselves in a way, which naturally made me want to respect them that made me want to follow them. And there were others that in spite of the fact that they were maybe two or three years older than me, I didn't respect and I didn't really want to follow. And so when I would teach future fraternity presidents, what I had learned along the way, probably the single best principle was that Respect is earned. It's not a result of position. And when we think about leading people and leadership, the same is true position titles don't make you a leader, people wanting to follow you is what makes you a leader. So how do you become the type of person that people do want to follow that people naturally want to be a part of your team, and to go whatever direction you're going. So a few characteristics that I've found are incredibly important for becoming a leader that others follow. The first is character and values. Ultimately, when people are trying to decide whether or not they trust you, and whether or not they believe in you whether or not they want to be like you whether or not they want to go, where you're headed, they're going to look at what you're about, and what is most important to you, and can they trust you. People are constantly going to be evaluating your actions. And this is everything from the words we say the words, we don't say the way we spend our money, the way that we handle recognition, the things that we sacrifice for people watch all of these things. And that's how deeply people will analyze your values and your character when you're in a position of leadership, and makes it critical imperative that who you are, is actually worthy of following. And this is not something that we do so that other people will follow us. It's something that we do for ourselves, but becomes an absolute prerequisite for other people following us. I think this is also one of those principles, that the longer that people are around you, the more clearly they will see your character and your values. This is not something that can be that you can pretend it's not something where you can model something that you aren't actually because people will very gradually or sometimes quickly, they'll sniff that out. And actually, the simple principle here is, we are the most cautious around people where we feel like there is a disconnect between what they say they are and why they say they're that way and who they really are and why they really do things. You know, the word we use for that is, is hypocrite. But the reason why we respond so negatively to hypocrites is that there's something deep inside of our wiring that says you cannot trust this person. Because who they are, and why they're doing things isn't going to line up with what they tell you. And so nothing disqualifies from leadership like hypocrisy. The second thing is humility. And when I think about humility, in some ways, has lost some of its meaning. And so the way that I defined it is really straightforward. It's just, it's accurate self awareness. It's at you know, it's having a sober minded view of yourself that you see yourself the way that other people see you. And one of the easiest ways to grow in humility is to have people around you that are willing to tell you what they see, that are willing to reflect to you what they see. There's certainly a tendency when with people that are in positions of leadership to try and surround themselves with people that will tell them what they want to hear. And one of the reasons why that's so damaging is that they will lose their own self view, they lose a sense of what other people see when they look at them. Third, I would mention growth mindset. Growth Mindset is simply the belief that we can get better at anything, that we're all gifted differently. And we all have different talents and abilities. And that no matter how much gifting you have in an area, there's always the ability for you to grow in it, or to become better. I've many times heard people use the kind of cop out excuse of Well, that's, that's not really my area, I'm not, I'm not really gifted at, you know, speaking in front of people, I'm not very gifted at casting vision, or I'm not a planner. And what they're really doing is they're trying to abdicate responsibility in that area by saying, Well, I just, I just, you know, I'm not very good at it. So I'm just not going to work on it. Leaders are about developing others and about developing themselves. And you can't do that without a growth mindset. When leaders have a growth mindset, the people that follow them develop a growth mindset, and the entire organization, the entire team thrives as a result. Fourth is vision, that leadership is about painting a picture of the future, have a picture of where you're trying to go, and convincing and rallying other people that they want to get there. If you're leading people, what are you leading them to? What is the thing that if they follow you that they're moving towards, if you can't define that for people, then there's no real impetus or under, you know, reason why they should be following you. But effective leaders are able to communicate, hey, if we all work together, if we all, if we all cooperate, that this is possible, this future that we all want to live in, and here's what it looks like. And here's what it feels like once we get there. And here's how we can get there. Finally, is generosity, that the best leaders, what people that follow them, takeaway is that they care about my needs, and that there is not a winner take all mentality. But there's a mentality of as they win, I win with them, and that they will be generous with me. We all have seen examples, unfortunately, of leaders where there are people in positions of leadership, where their mindset was that the entire organization, or the entire point of the position was for them to win. And they're terrible to work for and work with is really the reality. But hopefully, we've all experienced examples of the opposite, which are leaders that as they won, everyone around them, everyone on their team felt like they benefited that when the company's more profitable, everybody earned more money. When projects went well, the recognition went around to everyone, when there were there were new positions of leadership that that people were promoted, and people who had been developed were promoted into those positions, that great leaders not only help get to that better vision, but as they get to that better vision, everyone who's been a part of it feels like they benefit as a result. So here are some personal takeaways I've had over the last few years that I think have helped me to grow as a leader. The first is that when the leader role that we have finding our identity from something a part of that is very important. There's this thing about CEOs that when they leave the position, they tend to really struggle emotionally in the months and years afterwards. And one of the primary reasons is because it's such an all consuming role, that it's easy to find your identity in that role. And to think that your value as a person, and the reason why people care about you is because of the role that you hold. I'm a CEO, but that's not who I am. And it's not the most defining thing about me, and I'm able to be a better CEO, I'm able to be a better leader, when I'm not relying on that for my identity. So this is a fairly deep question. But where do you find identity, we all tend to triangulate on identity and something outside of ourselves. And it turns out, we can, you know, we can do all kinds of places to try and find it. And some of them are much more healthy than others. But I found that it's it's pretty profoundly unhealthy when we find our identity in a particular role or title. Second, I think another aspect to developing into this type of a leader is surrounding yourself with people that you trust enough to have open and honest feedback from and that are willing to push you that are willing to challenge you. One of the greatest gifts I have in my life is I have Several relationships that are multi decade relationships, who I know that they care about me, and they're certainly willing to challenge me. And I need that. And I think that that's been a cornerstone of me being able to thrive the last few years. The most important thing when it comes to your friendships is that there are relationships that are not tied to your performance. Because again, the more that you think about your worth as being tied to your performance, the more unhealthy we tend to become, and the less effective of a leader, we are. Another huge category is like your just mental well being. And it's easy when you're the leader, to deprioritize that to think that the the entirety of the job is to make good strategic decisions and, and leading other people, but there's no way that we can lead others when we're not leading ourselves. Well, a couple of examples of that are the information that we take in? How are we defining success? What is the why behind the work that we're doing? And are we do we have people in our life where we can talk about the things that are hard and difficult, the reality is that leading is stressful, and that we have to acknowledge that and we're never going to be able to be the kind of leader that other people need. And we're certainly not gonna be able to do it for an extended period of time. If we're not managing that stress, if we don't have people that we're talking to regularly about the things that are hard in our life. It's easy when you're the leader that you get all the problems and you view your role as being the person who gives solutions. But all of us need places to process things. Counseling is really helpful. close friendships, spouses, where you can talk openly and freely. Often it's a lonely when you're leading, and you feel like most people don't understand your day to day. So finding other people that are situated similarly in their careers can be extremely helpful in growing in that way. Are you taking care of your physical body? Are you getting enough sleep? I am, I've been terrible about this. Over the years, there have been so many nights where I stayed up an extra hour to working on a project and I look up and it's one or two in the morning, and I'm going to get five hours of sleep. And part of it's because I've loved what I've gotten to work on. But doing that consistently enough makes me unsustainable. Another example is eating well, it's easy when you're managing an organization when things are growing quickly. It's easy to just not put focus towards him, am I being smart what I put in my body? And similarly, are you setting aside time to exercise? When we're leading others, it's tempting and easy to put ourselves last. And in many ways, that's, that's an effective mindset, like leadership is about serving other people. But taken to an extreme, it becomes unhelpful to others, and unhelpful to ourselves when we're not taking care of ourselves. If we can't lead ourselves, we can't lead other people and taking care of our bodies taking care of our mental health. This is one of the cornerstones. So as we've talked about today, becoming the kind of leader that you want to be and being sustainable. And the way that you're approaching leadership depends a ton on our character, who we are. It depends on us prioritizing, taking care of ourselves, mental health or physical health, it depends on our perspective and our ability to cast vision for other people. And one of the hallmarks of great leaders is that people want to follow them. But another hallmark is that they naturally produce other leaders, great leaders inevitably multiply. And when we multiply, our impact becomes exponential. My hope for simple modern is that more than anything else, it would be a place that produced other leaders, and that we would become an exporter of healthy culture that as a result of people working here, they'd be developed as leaders, and whether it's in their communities, or their families or their company someday, that there would be a lot of leaders that would come out of this place. And that's probably the biggest hope that I have. And as a leader, it's the greatest hope that we can have as as a result of our leadership, not only are people going to thrive, not only is our organization in a win, but that it's going to produce a lot of other leaders, and that other people's lives are going to be impacted as a result. And all this has positioned our company for growth and hopefully for sustainability. And these are principles that you can take and apply to your own life. So here's some questions you can ask yourself as you're thinking about how to apply this personally. How are you finding identity in your role or your job? What is an area where you're making compromises about your physical health because of your position? Is your leadership helping to create and encourage the development of other leaders? If not, how can you be more deliberate in that area? Do you have people in your life that are giving you honest and candid feedback about how they experience you? Are you experiencing being a follower, as well as leading others?
Hey friends, taking a quick break to share a glimpse of generosity on the frontlines of some of the simple moderns, amazing nonprofit partners. Simple modern is on a mission to give generously. They partner with nonprofit organizations all over the world to help make a positive impact in five core areas, water supply, human trafficking, education, marginalized communities, and homelessness. Today, we'd like to introduce you to one of their nonprofit partners city here OKC
Hi, my name is Adam luck. I serve as a CEO here at City care. We have a couple of different programs here in Oklahoma City, we have a supportive communities program, where we have 112 units of permanent supportive housing for individuals transitioning out of homelessness, we also operate Oklahoma City's only low barrier night shelter. We also oversee the Whiz Kids Program, which is a faith based mentoring, and literacy tutoring program for elementary school students. We've got 38 sites across Oklahoma City, we have so enjoyed and are so grateful for our partnership with simple modern, not just the products and time that their team donates. But the support of a community organization like simple monitor has meant so much to us. If you're interested in learning more, you can go to city care okc.org, we would be more than grateful for your help if you are local. And if not, we always appreciate letters of encouragement for our next shelter guests. And financial support is always welcomed as well. We'd love to be in contact if you're interested in learning more.
Welcome back to the generous entrepreneur. It's John and Becky and we're sitting down with Mike, we're just coming off this a leader worth following segment. And I think it's a challenge to all of us to look from within. And you know, Mike, we talked a lot about leadership, a lot about growth, kind of lead us into really how to successful entrepreneurs, right, the highs and lows, because
there's so many in the journey.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's a simple principle that there will be weeks where you're just convinced that things are going to the moon and then like 12 hours later, you're convinced that you know everything is on fire. I think there's a couple of things here. I mean, one is, it's about managing yourself and about, the easiest way to manage yourself is to zoom out and to look at bigger kind of chunks of time. I think if you look at a 24 hour period, or a seven day period, I think it can be very easy to get too high or too low based on how things have been going. When you kind of zoom out and you look at a six month period or one year period, I think you can get a much clearer assessment of how you're doing how the organization is doing, you know, what's the actual trendline some of that is just surrounding yourself with people you need. You need optimists and people that are willing to you know, say the hard questions around you. There's times when you need the people that are confident that even though it's hard right now that it's going to be brighter tomorrow. And then you also need the people that even when things are great, and it doesn't seem like there's a cloud in the sky that are asking some of the harder questions. So I even think having a balanced team can help with this. But most of all, it's how do you internally deal with it? I think that taking personal reflection time is a big part of this, I think the relationships that you have outside of an organization become especially important, and having people that will really tell you what they see.
You know, Mike, I've known you a really long time. And we've been friends for a long time. And one of the things that I value the most about you is how you show up as a husband and as a dad. And I think one of the things I've learned as an entrepreneur is that there's a very easy temptation that when things are going well, you just want to keep pouring into that business, you want to keep replicating that success over and over. And I think one of the things you've done most beautifully with simple modern, is not necessarily the success of this nine figure company and the culture and all of these things. But it's the way you've been able to embed balance, and the family and the personal and the work life. I want you to talk a little bit about that. Because I find that to be very unique. And, you know, in a in a time where we're seeing a lot of shifts and business and we're seeing this new age of work sort of start to rise and people are, I feel like we're sensing at least in our community. This rise of I want to have more time with my family. I don't want work to consume me talk about how you've been able to set that tone in your own life and in this company.
Yeah. So maybe I'll give you three thoughts. I mean, the first is that it's it's a question of priorities. And we all have to be honest with ourselves about like, Hey, what are my priorities really? And for me, I want to be a great CEO. But it's even more important to me that I'm a great father and a great husband. I always say I'm a better CEO than I am a father or husband and I have lost the lead and that that's that would be something I'd consider to be a failure. So, one is being honest with yourself about priorities. The second thought is, I think there's a misconception about what work life balance looks like, especially in the world that we live in, that it's this kind of steady state, it's just about finding the right mix, is it 60% work and 40% home? Or is it you know, 5545. And like, what's this exact kind of mix, because what I've learned is, it's a lot more like interval training and like, or like, you know, kind of a wave, where there are times when I really need to be almost 100% of my capacities devoted to being a father or husband. And then there's other times when, like, I'm leading this company, and I really have to give it a lot of my capacity. And that's not me abdicating my responsibility as a father or saying, I don't care about being a father, it's just me being a good steward, and a good leader, that my job sometimes requires me to give it everything I've got for short bursts of time. The key is, I think that you're aware of that, and that you make appropriate rotations based on that. So there are occasionally there'll be a week where it is really important for me to be present, as a father, let's say, and I'm going to take the kids and for four or five days and just spend time with the kids, we're gonna go on a vacation with a family or something like that, well, like Why come back to the office, I'm going to have to be able to cycle up and you know, I'm gonna have to be able to go hard for a while, because I've been out, like, that's just how it works. And vice versa, there are periods where it's like, Hey, we've got a huge sales meeting with Walmart or whatever. And for me to be excellent at this, I'm going to have to put in a lot of hours, and I'm going to have to go hard, I'm gonna probably have to travel to do this pitch and all these different things. But then I'm going to be intentional on the backside of that of creating time and space, where I can invest in and focus on relationships, my family, and making sure that I don't, I don't get, you know, out of whack and how I'm allocating my time. Interestingly, it's not really about how many hours you work or where you work your hours, it's a lot about capacity. And I've learned this, building companies that it's a pretty mentally taxing process. And I tend to be kind of an all in go for it personality. And I have a fairly high capacity, the feedback that I've gotten, and yet, what I've learned is, if I use everything I've got during the day, then I can be running on empty when I got I get home. So even if I do get home at you know, 530, let's say that doesn't necessarily mean that I can be there fully. And I can be excellent. And I think this is the final point that I would make is that, you know, a lot of the reason why we don't feel work life balance right now has to do with how we interact with the time that we're not at work and how we interact with devices. I mean, there's really just no other way to say it that it is I can say this from personal experience, there are days where I can leave everything I've got at work. And by the time I get home, I just don't have the capacity to be excellent relationally or I get home, and then I'm looking at email from work, or I'm looking at Twitter or something. And I'm not fully present. You go back 100 years Hunter and 20 years and you look at the United States, the average person worked 80 hours a week, 90 hours a week, this idea that like what's killing us as a 40 hour workweek. I think that's a that's a red herring. I think the reality is what's what's eating at us is that we're not devoting as much capacity towards relationships as people have historically, like throughout human history. We're in this period where we're able to distract ourselves so much that we don't put any real focus on relationships, and we end up feeling that disconnectedness and that's what's eating at us. So it's deliberateness. It's deliberateness, with boundaries around not just how many hours I work, but how much of my capacity I give to my job and my work, intentionally setting aside time and capacity for the you know, not just my family, but the relationships that matter the most. And then actually being present. When I'm when I'm with them.
I just I want to keep going on this concept of focus. Because we're sitting in this beautiful building, we're surrounded by this incredible product. And I know that's not your legacy that is the hallmark and the pinnacle for you. I know your greatest legacy is what you're going to pass to your son and your daughter. And I want to talk about that a little bit and the focus there, because I hear you saying things like leadership is multiplication. But I also think that that translates to your children, and you want them to be the ultimate multipliers. How are you taking the lessons learned? We've heard so many stories throughout this series from your philanthropic partners. How are you taking those stories? Back to your kids, the successes, the failures, the ways that we show up to serve, how are you taking that back and making that a growth lesson for your kids?
It's, it's the question that I'm asking myself all the time, you know, as I'm leading people, am I doing a good job of leading the people that are that are closest to me? Are they getting my best? And the most helpful thing about being in a position of leadership is that I think it just keeps a lot of these concepts more front of mind for me, because I'm interacting with them. throughout my day, I'm pretty deliberate about thinking about how do I apply stuff, like growth mindset with my kids, you know, how do I fight against an entitlement mindset? When my son, who was our first when he was born, I was really fixated on like, you know, milestones and all that stuff. And if I could go back, I just wouldn't care nearly as much about that. But I will say that now as he's hitting 10, like we're having real adult conversations, you know, when I'm at a restaurant, and I'm tipping, I will, I will tell him, Hey, how much do you think we should tip? Why do you think we should? Well, you know, I think we I think we should leave a 50% tip. Why do you think I think that and like, we will talk through these things. And it really goes back to this deconstructing idea that like, you're really not just telling them, Hey, here's what I think's best, or here's, you know, the way that we act, but you're helping them understand why you think that way, because that's what gives them the roadmap. So it's the same idea. It's like, yeah, some of it is you're setting an example. But also some of it is you're helping them to understand what's guiding your thought process, and how that's helpful for them. I do think in general, our kids are able to understand more than we give them credit for. And so I probably, if there's one way that I challenge my kids is that I talked to him, you know, I talk to them more like adults, it's a way of honoring them. And, you know, showing them that I believe in their intelligence and their ability to pick things up. And sure enough, they really have.
I mean, what a cool way to tie it all together. You know, as we talked about the evolving roles. I mean, the same thing happens in our parenting journey, you know, and I think seeing that journey that you're on with your kids, gives me so much reflection of how do we infuse these values? How do you infuse generosity into just the way we show up every day? Because we learn through doing and that's just beautiful, Mike? So okay, what's happening in simple mod? I mean, we we had to wrap this up a little bit, what's happening, what's on the brink of simple modern, what's next for you?
Yeah, so it's an exciting time, we're taking on several pretty big projects, we are opening a domestic manufacturing facility. So we'll be making some simple modern products, we hope to make several million products this year in Oklahoma, which is really exciting. There'll be plenty of challenges. But we're excited to take those on, we've got a lot of great products in the pipeline, I think we have more new product releases we're doing in the next year than we've done. Maybe in the history of the company, we just went live in Walmart's nationwide. And we're really seeing just the number of customers that we're able to serve grow exponentially. And, you know, I think that the two big benefits of that, from my perspective are number one, in a company where our mission statement is, hey, we exist to give generously, just our ability to make a positive, generous redemptive impact is growing pretty, pretty rapidly right now, our ability to give financially, all these things, the number of employees that we're able to, you know, pour into, like these are all growing really rapidly right now. And I get excited about that. The other thing I get excited about is that when you have a consumer brand, this is kind of a unique thing in our culture, that consumer brands are actually you know, they're looked to as this kind of picture of what life can be like. And I see that in a positive light, that we have an opportunity to speak into people's lives, that I think the things that we're talking about are worthwhile. And that if simple, modern, and you know, having 10s of millions of customers and the brand, if what the brand really stands for is these things we're talking about, you know, really developing other people generosity, excellence, then I'm really excited about that being part of its lasting impact.
I think it has an we got around this completely out and we're ending with leadership and being a leader worth following what is the mic drop moment that you want to leave our listeners with about being a leader that's worth following?
I think it's simply two things. leaders were falling care immensely about developing themselves and personal growth. And they care about those that they lead and want the best for them. And that's what makes people want to fold.
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Were your hosts Becky Endicott and John McCloy and the series was produced by Julie confer or
