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Excerpt
Sean: What are the other character traits that you think should be there in a leader or a CEO, founder, an entrepreneur, what are the best character traits for them to have?
Jason: I think one is being humble, right? Because the challenge is when you’re not humble, your ego takes over and that becomes a problem for everyone. Right? I think it’s the ability to be vulnerable and tell people you don’t have it all figured out and be okay with that. Right?
Because that, again it’s something that is rare that people don’t really understand how to do. I think that another part of it is, and especially in these days, it’s resilience, right? And it’s being resilient in our organization by being able to face setbacks and failures and get yourself and other people back on their feet again and do it in a positive way because that’s one of the traits. I think the other thing is looking at empathy, right?
I also think it’s really being able to see the positive aspects in a storm and sharing it with people to keep people going forward. Especially when things are in a challenging place. Not to lie to them, but to be transparent, but you don’t have to be negative in that sense.
I think the other part is just listening, right? Listening and asking people and really just spending time doing that in an organization. Because a lot of times it’s like, super hard. Like I’ve had an example of that is. I did some leaders that always say, why have an open door?
Like anyone could come in and tell me something, whether it’s a virtual open door or a real one. And then I asked them the question, well, how many people are calling you up to actually take you up on that offer? And then you hear silence, right? So what I’ll have people do is start to actually virtually walk around or really walk around and start to ask people questions and get to know them and do different stuff.
And I’ll have them do a simple exercise, like. Do it for 15 or 20 minutes, three times a week for a month. And tell me what starts to happen. And then what they tell me after a month it’s Oh my gosh. People are starting to give me more feedback. I’m hearing more information. They’re happier. They’re smiling.
They’re more excited. And then I say, yeah, because you’re more engaged and you’re showing people that you care. And you’re showing people that you listen and think about the impact that’ll happen. If you do this for an entire year in your organization and how many people you can touch, no matter how big the company is, right.
It doesn’t only matter. It gets around. You’re doing this. So, again, that thing doesn’t matter whether they’re five people or 50,000 people, right? All of these things are the things a lot of people overlook, they’re thinking, Oh, you got to be super smart. You got to be a genius. You have to do all these things.
It actually really isn’t that they showed. I’ve shown tons of data, where they put all star teams of super smart people together, like doctors or any other type of people versus people that were A players and B players. But the A and B players got along really well. They almost always outperformed those people that were all stars.
I mean, the research data shows this and countless numbers of studies I’ve seen. Right. So you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. It’s how you work with other people. And it’s the characteristics. A lot of times that you may not think would be at the top actually are the ones that matter the most and the ones that you think there are often, aren’t the ones that will really create the company and the business that you actually want to build.
