People are watching you through a magnifying glass.

As a leader, everything you do is amplified. A casual comment about "opening an office in LA" can turn into a company-wide rumor within an hour. Being five minutes late to a meeting can undermine your entire speech about "integrity."

It takes months to earn respect, but only a few bad habits to lose it.

In this episode, we flip the script. Instead of telling you how to be a great leader, I am going to teach you the 5 Fastest Ways to Lose Respect. By identifying these traps, you can audit your own behavior and stop the leaks in your leadership.

In this episode, you will learn:

-The Hypocrisy Trap: Why asking your team to do things you don't model (like punctuality) makes them roll their eyes at your values .

-The "Secondary Priority" Signal: Why bumping a 1:1 meeting or delaying a salary conversation tells your employee "You don't matter to me" .

-The Authority Paradox: Why acting like you "know it all" (or conversely, knowing nothing) kills team confidence .

-The "Firefighter" Mistake: Why getting stuck in the weeds and failing to be strategic makes your team see you as just another peer with a fancy title.

-The Clarity Gap: How vague expectations force even your best employees to fail because they don't know the parameters of success .

💪 The Challenge for This Week: Audit yourself against the "Anti-Playbook."

-Reflect: Look at the 5 ways to lose respect. Which one are you currently guilty of?

-The Fix:

-Are you canceling meetings? Stop moving them.

-Are you inconsistent? Stick to one message.

-Are you unclear? Sit down and define the expectations.

Resources

-Join the Conversation: Join our Leadership Mindset 2.0 community on LinkedIn or Facebook

-Get Live Coaching: Move from listening to doing inside the Growth Leaders Collective. Start your $1 trial at RMichaelAnderson.com/GLC

Mentioned in this episode:

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All right, leaders, we're going to have a little bit of fun with this one.

People want to gain and earn respect to their team.

So to do that, I'm going to go the opposite way, and I'm going to talk about the five ways to lose respect to your team.

And by doing that, you're going to learn what you're doing wrong, what you need to change so that you earn and gain respect of your team.

Here we go.

Welcome to Leadership Mindset 2.0, Practical Neuroscience and psychology.

To transform you from a tactical doer into a strategic leader, here is your host, former Social Entrepreneur of the Year and coach to some of the world's top executives, R. Michael Anderson.

Let's talk about five ways to lose the respect of your team.

The first thing, and the one that always cracks me up, is when you ask them to do things you don't model.

For example, I might ask a group of leaders what their values are, and somebody might raise their hand and say, integrity.

Integrity is one of my values.

And I say, okay.

Over the last week, have you started every meeting that you've ran on time and every meeting that you've been invited to?

Did you join that on time?

And of course, they give a little bit of a roll of their eyes.

We need to model what we want out of their team.

If you really want a team that is going to always tell the truth, you got to watch your little white lies and never, ever tell them.

If you want your team to be vulnerable and authentic, you need to be vulnerable and authentic all the time.

As leaders, people are watching us through this magnifying glass that amplifies everything we don't do perfectly.

And we need to remember that because of our title and our position, we need to show up, and anything that we say or do is going to basically get around, as they say.

For example, I tell this story.

One of my offices was in San Diego.

My main office for my company was in San Diego.

And as we were growing, I went out to lunch with a friend, and he talked about how his company opened an office in la, and because it was so much bigger, he got so much more business.

When I got back to the office, I told my receptionist just offhand, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we opened an office in Los Angeles?

Now, an hour later, I'm sitting at my desk and my CTO comes into my office, and she says, hey, I hear we are opening an office in la.

I want to be the first one that opens it up.

I'm like, whoa, hold On a second, I didn't say we were doing that.

So then I had to deal with that issue, right, with my cto.

It was amazing to me how I said something as an offhand comment, and all of a sudden, because of gossip and other things, that it all of a sudden became a truth.

So we have to understand the things that we do and we say we're held to a standard that is so much higher than anybody else, and that's what we take on with leadership.

So if you want to lose respect of your team, ask them to do things that you don't model and you don't do yourself.

Second thing, to lose respect to your team, treat them like a secondary priority.

So many times I see managers and leaders putting off things that are important to their team.

For example, if you do quarterly or yearly review meetings with your employees, they love these meetings.

They look forward to these meetings.

And often I see leaders just bumping them out a week, A week, Hey, I can't do it this week.

I can't do it this week.

So here's an employee that really wants connection and feedback from their boss.

And they get excited about it.

And then it gets moved, then it gets moved, then it gets moved.

And you're showing them that they're not that important to you.

Or if they come to you with something like they want a vacation, they want a salary increase, et cetera, and you keep delaying it where you don't get them an answer right away.

What are you showing them?

You're showing them that you don't care that much about them.

I was coaching a chief security officer at a large company, and he talked about how his leader, the CEO, he came to him with the desire to have a salary increase, and he showed him that he was significantly below market value.

And the CEO said, oh, yeah, we'll look at that.

And of course, it never came to anything, which I hear over and over and over, you know what?

The executive I was coaching is not there anymore because he didn't feel valued.

And there was other things, but these all link into it.

So treat these things that you might think are minor but that are really important to your team as important things.

Unless you want to lose respect to your team, then do it the other way.

And that's what we're doing here.

We're playing around the other way.

Cause if you know how to lose respect to your team, you know how to gain the respect of your team.

The next thing is act like you know it all or do you know nothing now there Are some leaders that are in a leadership management position that have fear that their team knows more than them.

Sometimes the team might be younger or inexperienced and the leader does know a lot more than them and has more maturity, et cetera.

But when you are always in this place of authority then the connection gets lost.

And so if you act like you know it all or you do know it all or you do know a significant amount, then the team can lose confidence, they can lose that risk taking.

I give some leaders a challenge and it's to go to your number two and ask them how to do something.

Ask them to walk you through something that you that they know well.

Even if you know how to do it, play a little bit dumb.

They will get so much enjoyment about helping you do something or act like you know nothing.

If there's a subject matter expert in your team, then act like they are so much better than you and you can never help them out.

They'll lose respect.

Either one of those are going to have you lose respect.

If you always know it all to a certain person or if you know nothing to your person means they're going to lose respect for you.

The next one is not being strategic.

So often I have leaders come to me and they say, oh, my team tells me I need to be more strategic.

My boss tells me I need to be more strategic.

I'm not being strategic with my team.

So that means that there's a lot that this means.

But this could mean you have no vision for the team, the team don't know where they're going, you have no strategic priorities or you never get the strategic priorities done or you promise strategic type things, roadmaps, organizational charts, etc.

And you don't follow through on them.

They see this, that's going to have them lose respect for you.

Or if you're always following firefighting and never working on the high level things and jumping in there and rescuing, they are just going to see you as somebody like them that happens to have the job title of their boss or leader.

Number five is be unclear in your expectations.

Take the assumption that people want to do a good job.

Your job is to make sure they have what they need to do it.

I was talking to one lady and she's like, my boss gives me these really complicated things, doesn't tell me how to do it.

I ask her, she's like, you should know how to do this yourself.

And then when I deliver it to her, she's like, it doesn't have this, it doesn't have this.

It doesn't have this look.

This person wants to do a good job.

The leader is not giving her the parameters to do a good job.

So she is frustrated.

She is thinking about quitting.

She doesn't respect her boss.

She wants to respect her boss, but she doesn't because she's not giving what it takes to be successful.

And so here you have somebody that's really dedicated.

The lady was smart.

The lady was committed.

But she's like, put in this no win situation.

That is something very, very dangerous.

If you have employees, you need to make sure they're clear of their expectations.

They have what it takes, the knowledge or the experience to do a good job.

Then you let them go do it.

Because if you're just like, oh, you figure it out or do your best, or you should know this, there may be some places to put that in place, but if it's consistent, there's a problem with you or the fit or whatever it is.

I always tell leaders, leadership is about spending a little bit of time up front to deal with less crap on the back end, and that is making sure people understand their role and their expectations.

And when you give unclear roles and expectations, I'll lose respect for you.

So you're doing a great job of losing respect to your team, Dear leader.

Then I'll give you one more.

A bonus one is to be inconsistent.

So you want to be consistent in the messages that you're delivering.

So maybe that is, hey, we take risks, we move fast.

And then somebody does that, and you're like, oh, you took too many risks.

Well, hold on.

You just told me that our mantra was to be.

It was to take risks.

Here I am taking risks, and now you're telling me not to.

So whatever message you're delivering to your team needs to be consistent.

And when it changes, when it's inconsistent, then people lose respect, they check out, etc.

Okay, leaders, here is your challenge for today.

Look at these five ways to lose respect of your team.

And which one are you doing?

Well, because then if you change it, then you are going to gain respect of your team.

Let's go through the five really quick Again, ask them to do things you don't model.

So are you modeling almost perfectly?

Every.

Don't.

Don't set yourself the goal to be perfectly.

Are you modeling things that you're asking them to do?

And if you're not, where is that?

And be careful.

People think that, hey, if I'm the boss, I have to take out the garbage.

I have to do this I have to do that.

That's not what that means.

That's not what that means.

But you do need to connect to everybody and you do need to show up and model the behaviors you're looking for.

And you have to be a stellar model of this.

2.

Is there anywhere that you're treating your leader like your team as a secondary priority?

Have they come to you for things?

And look, that doesn't mean you need to take action on them right away.

Maybe they say, hey, I need to help with this other department.

Can you talk to so and so who's maybe your peer?

And what you might tell them is, hey, I'm going to talk to them within the next week.

And if you don't get to talk to them in that next week, because I know how things can go, you want to have this high level conversation with another executive, you don't do it.

Send the person a message.

Don't let that leave them hanging.

Say, hey, I know I told you I was going to get to get in touch with them this week.

It didn't happen.

I apologize.

I know this is important and I will make sure I do it in the next week.

But then you got to follow through.

You can't keep pushing these things.

Act like you know it all or you know nothing.

Are there people on your team who really look up to you and are really almost.

I don't say addicted to you, but they hang on every word.

Show them that you're human too.

Or is there somebody that in a way challenges you or that you're not connected enough with?

Get connected with them.

Are you becoming a strategic leader?

Are you a strategic leader?

Are there strategic initiatives in play that you're not making progress on?

Step up, get it done.

If you're not, if you're constantly firefighting, you got work to do there.

Unclear expectations.

Is there somebody you don't feel on the same page with?

Is there somebody maybe not delivering?

Maybe it's time to have a conversation and to slow things down and to make sure that they understand what you expect of them.

Because there's probably a disconnection there.

And then are you consistent?

The last bonus one is are you consistent?

Do you have the same message every day, every week, every month, every year?

Because then it'll get there.

Or are you flipping around here and there because that's going to frustrate people as well.

That's your challenge.

Remember, there's a Facebook group, There is a LinkedIn group called Leadership Mindset 2.0.

I want to know what did you get out of this episode?

Go there, create a post, ask me whatever you got to do, and I will give you real life personal feedback.

All right, leaders, go out there and get it done.

There's a lot to do.

I'm sure you got a lot on your to do list, but just remember, when you have the respect of your team, every single thing is a lot easier.