What's your vision? Mark Wormgoor. Podcast Session 2.

What's your vision? Mark Wormgoor. Podcast Session 2.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What defines a great leader to you?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a big question. Um, so let me start. I think so. First of all, leadership, I think leadership is all about people, right? So I think a great leader first and foremost is a people person. Somebody that's actually there for their team, that cares for their team, and that actually is is is passionate about the people that they work with. So I think that that's first and foremost. I think a people person. And if I look in my own history and the the best leaders that I've worked with, that's, I think that's what I remember most. The people that actually built that human connection, that build a human a human connection with me. So I think that that's first.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Second, what makes a great leader is a is a visionary. Somebody that actually has a vision of where they want to take whatever it is that they're working on, the team, the project, the program, the company. But to really have a vision of the future and what that that team, that program, that company is going to look like two years, three years, five years from now. And they can talk about their vision in a way that makes it come alive. That for the people working for them, they they see that vision, they believe in that vision, and they actually want to work towards that vision. So they the vision is really what takes them takes the team along on the journey.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  So a vision for me is not like the one line vision statements that you see on on all these websites and that that all these companies have. A vision really is something that that is vivid, that you can live, that you can explain, that people really buy into and understand. So I think those are are two, two parts of it. Yeah, I think there's so much to being a great leader. I think people that can build an amazing team. So I mean, building a team, hiring amazing people, putting them together, not just one set of people. So you have a lot of leaders that don't want to hire people that are better than them at some scale or even altogether. So building a great team, I think, is one of the aspects of a leader.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  I think no ego, that probably comes with what I just said before. Leaders that don't have an ego, that that can actually check their, well, everybody has an ego, but people that can actually check their ego at the door and put their their team, the objective, before their own ego.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's. Sort of the four or five attributes that I would say make a great leader.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  There's so many questions I can ask you in that, in that aspect, but let's talk about the ego aspect. And why, why that? And tell me more about that.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  So why that? Um, if you actually have, and I mean, we all have egos, right? Um, and in one form or another, we need an ego to have self-confidence. So an ego is not bad. Um, when the ego actually becomes a priority and you start to put that ego and you put yourself before the team, or you put yourself before the goal. I think that's where it all goes wrong. Um, so I think making sure that there's a balance. Of course, as a leader, you need to have your own boundaries and your own priorities, but not let put yourself before the team or not to put yourself before the end objective. I think that's, having that balance requires you to, to check that ego.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And how does someone, um, get that balance? I mean, or how have you gotten that balance in your life, Mark?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I think that's, uh, how did I get that balance? I think it's something you develop over time and it's been a lesson for me. I mean, if I look at myself 10 years ago, I certainly wasn't the best leader. Um, not saying I'm, I'm a great leader now today, but I, I'm sure I've learned a lot over the years.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  If I look at myself 10 years ago, um, and what I said, probably the first thing I said, um, building that human connection, actually having that genuine human connection with the team is something I wasn't very good at, uh, as a person. And I think that, that I've learned from the people that I've worked with, the leaders that I've worked for, that that is really important. And I think it's, yeah, it's, it's the lessons that you learn over the years. Um, that for me have, have actually helped me to do that and to, to check my own ego as well. And I've also worked, another example, I've worked for leaders that were like absolutely, and I think this is a great example, I worked for a couple of years for a leader that was,

• 4:34Speaker 01

  he was really good, but he was also extremely driven. And he, he had this one skill that annoyed the hell out of me. I would always be extremely prepared for meetings, or I knew everything about my projects. He could always ask me the one question that I hadn't thought about, or the one question I wasn't prepared for. I don't know Habita, because I was always extremely well-prepared, or so I thought. I think that also really helped me check my ego and, and lure me to be, be humble in, in my work as well, because there's no way that I can know it all.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  That's awesome. Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Well, I have a few more questions.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Let's see if we can find that one.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  I think we've already discussed this, but if you would put in an aspect of leaders and entrepreneurs at the same time, what tips would you give them?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So I do a lot of leadership coaching as well, and there's something that I haven't talked about. I do a lot of coaching for people that have just become a leader, or have only been a leader for like two, three, four years, and a couple of the same mistakes that everybody makes, so and that's why I like to talk about this, because everybody makes this in the beginning. So first of all, they still want to be in control of everything, or be in all the meetings, or be present and, and know everything. So I think that's the first, same mistake, not mistake, but it's the first pitfall that they all fall into is, at one point you're still an individual contributor, you do your own work, and you know everything, and you can see everything.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  At the point that you become a leader, they want to continue that process. They want to continue to be in control of everything, and see everything, and be in every meeting, and see everybody's work. And that's something you've got to let go of. You've got to let go of, you've got to start trusting the people that work for you, and actually delegate the work to them, and check the inputs, check the outputs, but don't check the actual work that you're doing. So I think that's the first one. And then on top of that, what I coach my leaders or the leaders that I work with on is the job of a leader is not actually getting the work done. Um, yes, that that's part of the work, right? You have a team and with that team you have objectives and and you work towards those objectives.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  The other really important goal that you have as a leader is to grow the people below you. So one of the things that I try to work with with the people I coach is to consciously delegate work. So you give people work that is just a bit too difficult, that is just outside of their comfort zone, that is a little bit too difficult, it's in their stretch zone. And you do that not to make their life difficult, but you actually do that to help them grow and to to get them to slowly get to the next level as well. So growing people, I think half the job that you have as a leader is growing the people that work for you and making sure that they get the opportunities and the chances and the challenges that will help them grow.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  So that's, yeah, those are the two tips for at least for the more junior leaders that I work with.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  It's awesome. You mentioned that not to control the meeting itself, but control the inputs and the outputs.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  And I'm assuming that that's after you've given them clear instructions, there's steps and procedures in place that helps them do the task the right way.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  So tell me more about that. Have you had any experiences where things didn't go plan or the leader itself was a

• 8:19Speaker 00

  the issue in the whole process?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Uh, yes. So I think the other part, I mean, if you give people a little bit too much responsibility, there is the chance that they're gonna fail, right? The chance that they're gonna make mistakes and people learn through mistakes. So that is actually okay. Um, I think as a leader, you need to give people room to make mistakes as long as those are controllable mistakes, manageable mistakes. They they can't be too big, right? Because if they're too big, then then it all goes wrong. But people should be allowed to make small mistakes and and that is okay. Uh, you should celebrate them because that's where people learn and people grow. I'll give you an example of a mistake that I made, and this was a couple of years ago. I was running a project, or I was not running a project. I had actually delegated a project to someone in my team.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  And he needed to do a, it was an upgrade project, but he also needed to do quite a few of the, he needed to organize a lot of the testing with a lot of different people in the organization. He was actually quite technical, so the first part, the upgrade part, that went really well. And he knew exactly what he was doing. That second part, organizing the testing with everyone in the organization, didn't go as well. So we get to a couple of weeks before they go live, I think it was four or five weeks before they go live, and that hadn't been organized. And at that point, unfortunately, yeah, we had to help him to actually get that done. And it was quite an escalation because those are quite senior people in our business. And we got it done in the end, but that was, yeah, slightly too much room.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  And I let it go slightly too far before intervening. So these things happen. And, and again, it's okay. I also learned from that, that that was probably a little bit too much room.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Thank you for sharing that. You, you though, on the other hand, you, you work with CFOs.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  CTOs.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  CTOs, yeah, CTOs, my bad. Yeah, you're right. I was like C-suite, but it was a technological side, you're right. So you work with CTOs, you're working on the higher level of things. And I bet there's different challenges that they face. Would you like to talk about that aspect?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Sure. No, I like that as well. So at that, I mean, it's a whole different ballgame because as a, as a CTO, you have, you actually have multiple teams working for you. So you don't directly control the team, but you control like a middle management layer who all have their own teams. And that creates a very different environment. So a couple of examples. Also, I think as a CTO, you need to spend at least 50% of your time outside of the tech organization. So you need to spend 50% of your time talking to the other people in the business, working with your stakeholders in the business, working with the CFOs, the sales organization, the customer support organization, with the, the supply chain, the operations organization.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And that's hard. So for a lot of people that are in a CTO role, they they struggle to spend enough time on non-tech issues. And it is not non-tech, because I mean, you talk to a head of sales about the technology, you talk to a CFO about the technology. But it's a very uncomfortable situation, because you can't control the situation. Those may actually be challenging stakeholders, they may be difficult stakeholders. And it's very easy to take a step back and focus yourself on your own tech organization, and the technology, and the infrastructure, and the applications, and everything else. So that's one thing that I see quite a bit. And that's, that is a big challenge. I think the second challenge that I see with technology is they often become,

• 12:01Speaker 01

  and that's a bigger organization, they become just operators. So if somebody in the business organization asks them a question, like, can we have this, or can we have that, they go and deliver that. And that, that's all that they do. So they don't proactively reach out and talk about potential solutions and position tech as something that can grow a business, because tech is incredibly powerful these days, and tech can really boost the company forward. They don't do that. They take a step back and just wait for a question. They wait for the order, they wait for whatever comes in, and they will deliver against it. So I feel that CTOs really need to take a big step up and actually become a visionary for technology within the organization,

• 12:45Speaker 01

  and talk to all of these senior stakeholders, and have that discussion, like, how can we make technology the rocket that's going to boost this organization forward?

• 12:55Speaker 00

  So tell me more about that, because I feel like you've had some experiences in that. And what input did you give in that case? And what output was the result of if some of these

• 13:07Speaker 00

  conversations you had, maybe as a CTO?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  So I mostly do the coaching, so I'm slightly behind the scenes in most of these discussions, but I can talk about some of these situations. So one of the situations that I've seen is there was a very senior stakeholder in an organization that somebody that I was coaching. And they were quite difficult, challenging, demanding and blaming technology for all of everything that went wrong. The reaction from the person that I was coaching was to take a step back and actually not speak to them and let it go. That really creates a very difficult situation. If you don't take that discussion head on and you actually confront them and have a discussion like, how can we solve this together?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  That created a very difficult environment. Yeah, and I worked with them to actually solve that and to go and address that problem with them. So that's, yeah. Those are the things not to do, like take a take that step back. And I was talking about them. I don't want to concur to names or organizations, but like taking that step back is just the wrong decision. Like confront problem head on, talk to the stakeholders and actually find a middle ground, like how can technology help you solve your problems? And not everything is a technology problem because people love to blame their their business problems on technology. And often that's not the case, right? Often there's a lot of other things going on as well, but it's easy to blame technology if something goes wrong.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're right. And that really happens in a lot of other niches too. Like a lot of times leaders would find ways to blame marketing or they'll find ways to blame sales or they'll find ways to blame technology or they'll find ways to blame customer support. Like it that and it might not be the core issue. I mean, if a customer got sold a bad product or a bad experience, that's not is the how there's and that happens a lot in businesses and

• 15:08Speaker 01

  It's very, it's very easy to blame others. It's it's hard to take ownership and step up and say, we're going to solve this together. But it's the only way forward. I mean, if if something has happens, it's better to, well, it's always better to be part of the solutions than to be part of the problem. So even if even if technology is the problem, right? Step up, fix it and deal with it.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Thank you for sharing that, Mark. I have two more questions for you. And I think these ones might be a little bit tough.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision? And how can those leaders then lean into funding that vision?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Wow, I think that is an, that is an interesting question.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  So a vision is very far into the future, right? A vision is often three, five years in the future. And a vision is good, but in the end, you need a very solid and concrete plan to get there.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  So, and that comes with three months plans, six months plans, year plans, like what are we going to do in 2025? What are we going to do in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4? So first, I think a vision is nice, but it needs to be broken down into a plan first. And I think that's not always done properly. So actually getting to a realistic plan, that's going to realize that vision is a first step. And that's, a lot of people just start taking steps without having that three year, five year plan to get to the vision. So I think that's the first one, diligent planning, which takes work, time and effort. I think the second part, funding, funding is risky. It's very easy to not fund a growth trajectory or a next plan.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And just stay with the status quo, especially if you are in an organization that's profitable. But a lot of people do want to go to the next level, that 2X, 10X level of the organization. To get there, you do need to have funding and you do need to take risks. But you can contain the risks. So you can actually go and, and I like, I heard this from, from my coach the other week. Just start by taking all of the riskiest assumptions and start just taking those off the list, right? So what do I need to do to achieve my vision? What are the biggest assumptions and the riskiest assumptions that I have on my list? And just take them off. And, and start addressing those first. And it often doesn't take 100K, 200K, 500K, a million to do a short test.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  You can do a quick pilot test, often with spending 5K or 10K or 20K. You can do a quick test to prove that something is going to work or isn't going to work. And it's fine if it isn't going to work, if that loses you just 5K or 10K, that's okay. As long as it doesn't lose you the million. It doesn't have to bankrupt the company by doing a small test. And if you see that it works, you can scale up quickly and actually make it work. So why do leaders hide from funding their vision? And I think this is actually a bigger question. Leaders don't like taking risks. It's very easy as a leader in an organization to follow the safe path. If you follow, and this maybe isn't true for CEOs, but this is true for most other leaders.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  If you follow the safe path, you won't get fired, for example. And I see that a lot in the bigger organizations that I work with. For example, if they have a challenge that they're working on and they want to solve it, the safest path that they can take is they can hire a, one of the big four firms, a big consultancy firm, a McKinsey, an Accenture, right? One of those firms. And if they've given the answer and something still goes wrong, they can always say, oh, but this was advice that we got from the big four. You can't blame me for that. And that's just the safe path and not taking risk and just being able to blame someone else if something goes wrong. So I think a lot of people like playing it safe for their own career, their own perspectives,

• 19:15Speaker 01

  their own future, and don't like taking risks because you don't just risk the organization and the team. It's also your own career that you put at risk there. And people don't, yeah, don't like that. They like playing it safe.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  So, yeah, me neither. I don't like playing safe. If, if more and more entrepreneurs bet on themselves earlier enough and they, they took the risk early enough, I think they'll know either they're not meant for that thing or they'll fail faster and they'll progress faster or they'll not get stuck in one dream or one vision of their, instead of. You know, either progressing or not or switching sides, you know, I think that's that's a very, very valid point.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And I think it's in those cases, especially for entrepreneurs, it's always good to remember what is your, what is your absolute worst case scenario? So if, if your entire business goes bankrupt, if all goes to hell, what are you going to do? So my worst case scenario is that I'm going to have to, I mean, I'm also in tech. My worst case scenario is that I'm going to have to call a tech company and actually ask them for a job and go back into a nine to five. That's my absolute, and I don't want to do that, right? No matter what happens.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  That's like my worst case scenario. But I mean, I'm not going to be homeless. I'm not going to be living under a bridge. If all goes to hell, I'm going to have to call somebody to give me a nine to five and I'll be paid an okay salary and, and it'll be okay. But that's, that's absolutely what I'm trying to prevent.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's awesome. That's, that's exactly my position too. My, my worst case scenario, I have to get a nine to five job in a tech company.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Worst case scenario.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And then for some people, this might be the best case scenario. They want to get hired by a tech company and get a nine to five job.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And that's okay, right? I mean, there's a lot of people that, that have the nine to five at the tech company. They're absolutely happy there. They don't want to take the chances, that are very happy with the money that they get paid there and they should absolutely stay there, right? I mean,

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I started entrepreneurship now four years ago. I could have made a lot more money in, in just a nine to five, right? Becoming a CIO or something, or, or doing that, or just a high price consultant. I would have made more money. I learned so much more doing this and this has been so much more fun. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, but I would have made more money over there for sure.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun and we'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.