This week on the Leadership After Hours podcast, I talked with Luke Smiley. Luke started in finance & investment banking before discovering that entrepreneurship and operations was his passion. He shared amazing lessons from his time at Goldman & Sachs, as the CEO of Appliances+ at Asurion, and now running his own company with his wife, Radish Hospitality.
Here are a few of my takeaways and highlights from our 2 part discussion:
- Leading people isn’t an engineering or math problem to solve: I always say, “People don’t hate change; they hate ambiguity.” Luke discusses not appreciating the human element when we moved from finance to operational leadership. I believe this is why Elon Musk is struggling with X (Twitter). Elon is great at solving engineering problems, so he is able to lead engineering companies like Tesla, Boring, and SpaceX successfully. But X (Twitter) is a human ecosystem, and I don’t think Elon has high emotional intelligence. He approaches human dynamics like a problem to solve or optimize, and humans are more complicated than that. You must explain “the why” to get buy-in and you must accept ambiguity. Engineers don’t like ambiguity or that there might be no “right answer” to a problem.?
- Take “it might not work” off the table: Luke discusses the struggles of “intrapreneurship.” Building a new company concept inside of a larger firm. It’s so hard to innovate and try new things inside these large companies because there are so many checks and balances, and too many stakeholders that need to give feedback or approvals. Luke mentioned a concept I love; What if we take, “it might not work,” off the table as an excuse to not try something? That shift in vision shifts culture towards iteration and innovation.?
- You must be a student of self-leadership to lead others effectively: Emotional control = emotional maturity. As a leader, you must be the calm in the storm. Leaders need to be in control of themselves and their reactions. This allows them to address conflict directly, openly, and impersonally. This is a big one for me. The 2nd Key to Greatness in our system is the Internal Locus of Control. Responding to a situation in a manner that is optimized for your desired outcome is mature leadership. Reacting to your emotions without first determining the potential impact on the situation is the very definition of immaturity and bad leadership.??
Be sure to check out Season 2, Episodes 9 & 10 with Luke Smiley. The world needs more conscious leaders to create the world we all deserve to live in. You are what you consume, and the Leadership After Hours podcast is a great investment in yourself and your future.?
