All posts by Hanju Lee

For this final installment in our leadership series, we wanted to highlight a leader who embodies all the leadership qualities we’ve discussed. Great leadership is not just about being in charge and having success – the real job of a leader is “moving from being responsible for the job to being responsible for the people,” even when that requires great personal sacrifice. The world desperately needs leaders like that right now.

As I think about the leaders who have impacted me – from teachers, to bosses, to all my heroes – there was one that stood out this week, someone who definitely belongs in the BOS Media Hall of Fame. His name is Jim Valvano.

If you have some time, the best way to learn about Jim Valvano’s leadership is through the movie Survive and Advance through ESPN+. It takes his experience as a college basketball coach, in particular in an unbelievably March Madness tournament run in 1982, and maps it with his own personal battle with cancer. “Survive and advance” became the story of his life both on and off the court.

If you don’t have ESPN+, you can get a glimpse into his story from this speech, when he was presented the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage on this exact date 29 years ago. 

When I think about that speech, I always remember the simple advice he said would make every day successful. It’s summed up in three things:

• Number one is laugh. 
• Number two is think – spend some time in thought. 
• Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. “If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a heck of a day.”

Hearing this again, I thought about the BOS Media meetings we had this week, and the times our team got to laugh, think and cry together. It made me so proud to think of how we’re actually getting to live this out. This type of success really is so simple if we give ourselves time to make it a priority.

Which leads to my favorite story about Jim Valvano, which summarizes so much of who he was as a leader, as well as some of the most important values in my own life and work. It was a quote he heard at age 16 from Olympic Champion Bob Richards that shaped everything about who he would become:

“God must love ordinary people, because he made so many of us. Yet every single day, in every walk of life, ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things.”

Looking back at all the people Jim Valvano impacted, and his legacy as a leader, I think it all came down to one thing: he actually believed those words. He instilled that belief into people every time he walked into the room. As he said throughout his life, “the greatest gift you can give to someone is to believe in them.”

I hope you do something extraordinary today. But most importantly, I hope you’re a leader who believes the ordinary people around you really can be extraordinary.

I always thought that in order to be an amazing leader and a successful entrepreneur, you have to be driven, ambitious, extremely creative, and charismatic. While some of that might be true and can definitely help…I am now convinced that great leadership and entrepreneurship rely on a very different set of skills:

People skills.

That’s the takeaway we’ve learned over and over as we listen to the best business leaders: Leadership is no longer about you – it’s about serving someone else. It’s not about how great you are or how well you get the job done. You are now measured by how great your team is and how well they are thriving and doing the work. 

So let’s get practical. If you want to be a great leader in your organization, your title needs to change. From now on, think of yourself as:

Chief Goal Officer. 

Instead of pushing to be that charismatic, driven, creative person who’s trying to get everyone on board your mission, think about THEIR mission. How can you help the people you work with find the best path for THEM, for what THEY want to accomplish?

The worst advice you can give someone is what YOU would do, not what they should do. You’re not them. The thing that works for you might now work for everyone. In fact, it could actually screw them up really badly. 

So what does it mean to step into a new role as Chief Goal Officer? Here are three key elements:

• ONE WORD. It starts by getting to know your people – how are they wired? I’m not saying you’re going to understand everything about them, but start with this: What is their One Word? What is the core value that drives them?

• FIND THEIR AMBITION, If you know what’s motivating them, from there you can look to the future. What is the dream that they’re pursuing down the road? How can you help them get there?

• RUN A PARALLEL PATH. How can you connect their current work to the goal ahead? Make that path visible for them, and be a stepping stone toward their success. So many of us operate like we’re afraid to lose people when we should actually be celebrating – if we do this right, we get to be part of seeing a lot of dreams become reality.

As we wrap up, I would love to hear about what you think great leadership is. 

• Who’s a great leader in your life? 
• What skills do they possess?
• Why does that make you thrive in what you do? 

Please share your thoughts with me and let’s keep learning together!

To truly understand this subject line, you have to take 12 minutes and watch one of the best leadership videos in the history of TED.

In the meantime, I’ll offer you a summary on behalf of all the optimists here at BOS Media: we believe things can be better when leaders step up and stop micromanaging.

Last week, we talked about the difference between a leader and a manager. In his TED talk, Chieh Huang gives a funny but sadly all too true definition of micromanagement:

“What is micromanagement? Taking great, wonderful and imaginative people, bringing them into an organization, and crushing their souls.”

“Crushing their souls” might sound dramatic, but he actually had the data to back it up. A study that followed 100 hospital workers over a 12-hour day found that their level of fatigue was not correlated with the amount of activity during their shift; the ones who felt the most fatigued were the ones who didn’t have control over their jobs.

Micromanagement wears people out.

But as we talked about last week, there is a risk that leaders must be willing to take if they’re going to graduate from being micromanagers. There is a chance that, on their own, people below you might fail more.

But ask yourself: is failure really the worst thing? It doesn’t mean we have to “celebrate failure,” but what if it’s a necessary milestone on the mission toward success? Most of the wisdom we gain over the years comes by learning from our mistakes – is it really so bad to let people have those experiences?

Chieh ultimately came to a realization in his conversion from being a micromanager – while the downside is people might fail more often, the upside is smart, imaginative people who don’t have their souls crushed might come up with new ideas that you would have never thought of. They might not do the job exactly the way you would have… they might do it better.

In the end, the only solution to micromanagement is: to trust. 

Here’s to not crushing people’s souls!

Have you ever had a job that you were just crushing? You were so good at it that eventually, you got promoted!! Well, congratulations! You are now a manager, managing people…which is fine, but soon, you’ll realize it’s an entirely different skillset AND mindset. Yikes!

Last week, we kicked off a new series about leadership. It comes after we took some time looking at the origin stories of some very successful companies. Almost all of them “started from the bottom” before reaching their goal; for this month, our question is: What did they learn when they got to the top?

One of the most important things to note is the TRANSITION that needs to occur between the bottom and the top. An executive coach I respect phrases it this way: “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Here’s how the leadership gurus understand it: Most people rise to the top by being good at their jobs. You go to school and get training so you can show up to work and be competent. If you’re good, you get promoted, which means you’re now in charge of the people doing the job you used to do. 

And this is how micro-managers are born. The reason they’re over people’s shoulders making their subordinates feel like they can do the job better is because they can do the job better – that’s why they were promoted. But they haven’t made an important transition as they moved from the bottom to the top.

“What got you here won’t get you there.”

The real job of a leader is not being in charge. The real job of a leader is taking care of the people in our charge. That’s the transition that separates a leader and a manager – moving from being responsible for the job to being responsible for the people.

Here’s the challenge: this transition requires great personal sacrifice. It means when things go right, leaders give away the credit to others. When things go wrong, leaders take the blame and give the people whose mistake it was even more chances, even though the leader is the one with the most to lose.

The reality is, it’s easier to micro-manage, accept credit, and pass blame. But that’s not leadership – it’s what Lawrence J. Peter defined as the Peter Principle: when employees rise to “a level of respective incompetence.”

Managers might be able to do the job better. But they need to be able to look back and remember what it felt like to work at the bottom, and what a difference it makes when the people above you have your back. Leaders have made that transition and now create that environment for the people they’re responsible for. 

Remember this statement last week? “People don’t leave companies, they leave bosses.” If you want to create a safe environment and culture for your team to thrive, don’t manage, lead. How? Care for your team, protect your team, fight for your team, trust your team, empower your team, inspire your team…that’s the new role that will serve you and your company well in the long run.

That’s leadership.

A long, long time ago, I was a young dad with 2 little ones and working for a large company as an engineer. Five years into my employment, our company hired a new director to oversee our department. He was a sought-after, seasoned executive that came from our biggest competitor. He held secrets to our new success and was highly ambitious. We started doing some innovative research & design projects to revolutionize the way our product functioned and looked. He valued my input and seemed to like my work ethic and dedication to my job. These were exciting times.

Do you know what else was exciting? Our planned family vacation to Disneyland was coming up in a few weeks. We purchased the airline tickets and had the entire week planned out in beautiful and sunny Southern California! I couldn’t wait to see Mickey and Minnie and introduce them to my little ones.

Well, the two exciting events came to a crashing halt when he told me that my family might have to go without me. He told me this a couple of days before my vacation. He said he felt uneasy that I was leaving in the middle of our project and he would let me know for sure if I could go when he feels better about it. He dragged on making his decision to allow me to go on my vacation until just 2 hours before the flight. Can you believe that? While I was at work, my entire family was all packed at home, anxiously waiting and hoping for the approval to go. They weren’t going to go without me.

This type of controlling behavior from my boss continued for years. I can honestly say that he was the worst boss ever.

Have you heard of this saying? “People don’t leave companies, they leave bosses.” I believe there’s a great truth to that. I also believe that there are dream bosses who can be instrumental in your own personal growth and job satisfaction. They become unforgettable.

I love good leadership. I also despise bad leadership. Your mental health, your motivation, your productivity, your energy, your happiness, and your success can depend on who is leading you. So, how about we dedicate this month to learning to be good leaders? I look forward to sharing what makes a great boss and how you can positively impact someone’s life…forever.

Excited? Me too. Stay tuned…