Mike Manazir is the author of the Amazon best-seller, “Learn How to Lead to Win”, released in January 2023. He is a retired Rear Admiral who served 36 years in the U.S. Navy. He qualified to fly F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Super Hornets, is a Top Gun Graduate, and commanded a fighter squadron, two ships including command of the aircraft carrier, USS NIMITZ. Mike had five tours in the Pentagon and is now an executive with a Fortune 100 Aerospace and Defense Company.
In this episode, Mike talks to us about the importance of communication and human connection in leaders, as he stresses how we can get better results if we “lead with our hearts and not with our titles”.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Learn how you can make connections with up to thousands of crew as a leader
- Find out why it is essential that you keep your tone, energy, and passion lively in order to boost the morale of your team
- Understand the importance of “looking at the other side of the coin”, and why you should delegate and not micromanage
“If you lead with your title, you’re going to get less results from your team. If you lead from your heart and you’re inclusive with each member of the team…you will get more high-powered results.”
– Mike Manazir
Topics Covered:
00:26 – Lead with your heart, not with your titles: What inspired Mike to write his book, “Learn how to Lead to Win”
03:45 – It’s about communication and connection: How leading 300 people differs from leading 10,000 people
09:12 – You can create connection even through a speaker: How Mike learned that his tone and energy on the 1MC had impacts on his crew
11:16 – Whatever the mission is, just put “mission”: How Mike relates leadership in the military to leadership in the corporate world
15:33 – It’s all about connecting with human beings: The key learnings in Mike’s career as a leader that he communicates in his book
22:28 – Look at the other side of the coin: How Mike addresses people who are not doing what they’re expected to do
27:46 – Delegate, and not micromanage: What leadership advice Mike would give to his younger self
Key Takeaways:
“You over communicate whenever you go out. You connect with people. You bring people together.”
“Everybody wants to be recognized. Everybody wants to feel valued for what they do. Everybody wants to feel a purpose. Everybody on that ship joined the Navy to serve something bigger than themselves.”
“You can create a connection, a human connection, even through only a speaker.”
“If you get to a point where you don’t want to disappoint them and they don’t want to disappoint you, you can do anything. Anything.”
“Leadership is about plagiarism. You plagiarize all of the good habits that great leaders do.”
People / Resources Mentioned:
- Learn How to Lead to Win: 33 Powerful Stories and Leadership Lessons – https://www.amazon.com/Learn-How-Lead-Win-Leadership/dp/B0BRZ7DWS8
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them, and People Will Follow You – https://www.amazon.com/21-Irrefutable-Laws-Leadership-Anniversary/dp/0785288376
- How to Win Friends and Influence People – https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034
Connect with Mike Manazir:
Website: www.mikemanazir.com
Full Interview Transcript
(Note: This transcript was created with an AI transcription service. Please forgive any transcription or grammatical errors. We probably sounded better in real life.)
Katrina Burrus
Welcome to the Excellent International Leadership podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Katrina Burrus, and today we have Mike Manazir. Oh God, help me again.
Mike Manazir
Thanks, Katrina. It’s Manazir.
Katrina Burrus
Manazir. Everyone knows I’m dyslexic.
LEAD WITH YOUR HEART, NOT WITH YOUR TITLES: WHAT INSPIRED MIKE TO WRITE HIS BOOK, “LEARN HOW TO LEAD TO WIN”
Katrina Burrus
So, you’ve written a book called “Learn How to Lead to Win”. What made you write a book after your extensive military career?
Mike Manazir
Katrina, thank you very much. It’s a great question, and I often talk about this.
I had a wonderful 36-year career in the United States Navy. Great experiences; flying airplanes, driving ships. And starting from the US Naval Academy in 1977, all the way to retiring in 2017, I learned how to lead through these various experiences. And that’s why the book is titled “Learn How to Lead to Win”. It’s a little bit cumbersome coming off the tongue, but it’s about the learning process of it. And I recognized and realized as I learned how to lead small groups –in 1997, I took command of a fighter squadron VF-31 flying F-14Ds in the United States Navy off of aircraft carriers. And then I had several bigger commands after that, leading to being a strike group admiral with the USS Dwight Diaz and higher strike group in 2012 and 2013. And that was 10,000 people. And in the leadership roles I had, I was always questioning in my mind: “How do you lead?”
This is a human endeavor. I propose in the book, and the way that I succeeded in leading – and I think I was pretty successful in all of those roles – I led from my heart with no title, and I had lots of titles; skipper, captain, admiral, boss. And obviously, with those titles, which are exactly the same in the Navy and in business; CEO, manager, boss, people know where you are in the hierarchy. If you lead with your title, you’re going to get less results from your team. If you lead from your heart and you’re inclusive with each member of the team, and we’ll talk about how that inclusivity can apply across all walks of life, you will get more high-powered results. So, to your question on the book, there are 33 stories in there, and I have many, many more in my head. We actually edited out twelve stories, so there’s book two running around somewhere in my head. 33 stories that describe the answer to common leadership questions; Are leaders made, not born? How do you become a good leader? How do you get people to do what you want? In the military, you can order them. And I will tell people, “Yeah, but you won’t get a good result.” “Sure you can. You can order anybody anywhere”. But I realized, Katrina, all of the audiences that I would talk to leadership about, whether as a United States Navy senior leader or in my current business – and I don’t mention what business I’m in because this is my pursuit, it’s separate from the current business I’m in – but when I’m in a group of people, no matter how diverse the group of people are, no matter how their backgrounds are, no matter what level they are, when they ask a leadership question, I not only have an answer, I had a story. And I don’t say that I have an answer from an egotistical “I’m a great leadership teacher”. I do not teach leadership. What I respond to people on is, “Here’s how I learn to lead. When I had 350 people and I learned all their names because I wanted to connect with them all the way to 10,000 people, and I had to communicate.”
IT’S ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND CONNECTION: HOW LEADING 300 PEOPLE DIFFERS FROM LEADING 10,000 PEOPLE
Katrina Burrus
Okay, just stop for one second there. You said you lead with your heart.
Mike Manazir
Yes.
Katrina Burrus
With 300 people, you might know them all, but when it’s 10,000, you can’t know them all. So, how do you lead with your heart with 300 people, and how is it different with 10,000 people?
Mike Manazir
It’s about communication and connection. So, with 300 people in my own fighter squadron, when we would deploy, we’d all go together. And so, they’d see the skipper running around all the time. And I learned all their names and I’d put my hand on their shoulders when I talked to them and I’d say, “Thanks a lot, that was great.” We’re all right there.
When I commanded Nimitz, the US. A navy nuclear powered aircraft carrier, I also was deployed with 5000 people. But I had to communicate broadly through the announcing system. And then when I’d run around the ship, I’d get a chance to meet people.
In my strike group, I would get a chance to fly from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower flagship over to a destroyer, or run down in one of the squadrons. And I would connect with people that way. And so, you over communicate whenever you go out. You connect with people. You bring people together. And it might be a series of what we might call “town halls” or “connection audiences”, or you’re just talking to them on the radio or the general announcing system. How you come across if you can meet with them in person, obviously now they’re like, “Hey, I can relate to that guy right there.” If you’re talking to them, communicating to them, the method through which you communicate can also display how approachable you are.
Katrina Burrus
Okay, give us an example. Give us an example of making it very tangible for the people you talk to through a loudspeaker.
Mike Manazir
Yeah, I’ll give you a great example. And I was about to actually go into that, so we’re on the same wavelength here, as it were.
So, I’m the CEO of the USS Nimitz and we’re on deployment. And of course, if you’re the captain on an aircraft carrier, life’s pretty good. And I actually got to fly F18s off my own carrier. That was fun. If you are a very junior enlisted person on the aircraft carrier, you’re homesick, you’re probably overworked. You’re usually getting yelled at. It isn’t great living accommodations. You can’t get away from people. You can’t have balance or solace or peace. And so, life’s not so great on an employed aircraft carrier, but I need everybody to do their jobs. And so, each night at the end of day operations and before we commence night operations, I’d get on the general announcing system. And on a carrier, we call it the 1MC. And so, what’s really funny is the Boson would get on there –
and maybe your listeners have heard of the Navy Boson pipes where they’re piping somebody aboard, or this long, shrill Boson pipe. And so the Bosons took great pleasure in blowing the pipe, like a minute, and it drove the crew crazy. And then once done blowing the pipe, it’s to announce the captain. And then he’d go, “Stand by for the captain”, or “Stand by for the commanding officer”. And he’d put the mic down. I’d grab the mic and I would go “Get NIMS Warriors, this is old Salt.” And “Old Salt” is the call sign for the captain of the NIMS. So, it’s me or the guy behind me. “Old Salt” is how you refer to the captain. And it’s a nickname. So I said, “Good evening. This is Old Salt. Give me NIMS warriors. This is old salt. Let me tell you what we did today.” And I was always pumped up just like this. And I would refer to the particular sailor of the day. Each day, we would recognize one sailor out of 5000. And their supervisors would nominate them each day. It would come through the chief’s mess, chief petty officer’s mess, and they’d recommend to me, “This is the person we want to bring up”. So they’d bring them up with a whole chain of command. They’re all dressed up in their dress uniform, got ball caps on, and the sailor of the day gets to sit in the captain’s chair while I’m talking on the 1MC. And so, I would joke, I’d say, “I got sailor of the day today as Petty Officer Joe Schmuckatelli. He just sitting in the chair. Hey, he just waved off an F 18. I better check and see what he’s doing.” And then I would talk about Joe and where he came from and his hometown and his family. And then his chain of command would give me a particular situation that he had done that was really good. And I would call him out, and I would say, “He just did this for the ship. Blah, blah, blah.”
Well, it turns out everybody wants to be recognized. Everybody wants to feel valued for what they do. Everybody wants to feel a purpose. Everybody on that ship joined the Navy to serve something bigger than themselves. And now, you just value them for their work and their efforts. And so, here I was celebrating our sailor of the day, talking about him to all his shipmates. And of course, they’re listening to the speaker, and they’re going, “Oh, man, Joe’s up in the captain’s chair. Dude, did you really wave off an F18?” “Oh, yeah, I really did.” And then I would tell them what we’re doing, why we’re there, what’s going on outside, because whether you’re 100 miles off of San Diego or in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere, you can’t really tell on an aircraft carrier.
And so I would tell them what’s going on, and I would say, “I love what you’re doing. We just had a big inspection. You guys knocked it out of the park”. Or, “Hey, we got a big inspection coming up. I really need you to hammer this home and then go from there.” So, here’s the story. I was always really excited just like this.
Katrina Burrus
It’s exciting, it’s humor. It’s recognizing, going into the details of the person, communicating to everybody, telling that not only you recognize them, but you have enough detail to demonstrate what you thought was really important.
YOU CAN CREATE CONNECTION EVEN THROUGH A SPEAKER: HOW MIKE LEARNED THAT HIS TONE AND ENERGY ON THE 1MC HAD IMPACTS ON HIS CREW
Mike Manazir
Exactly. Now, let me get to the actual story about your question. How did that work?
So, this one particular time, we were in the South China Sea for a day of flight operations. Have to be on the bridge. Then we went through the Strait of Malacca, which is between Indonesia and Malaysia. As most of your listeners know, that’s a very busy waterway between the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal. And then we come out the other side. And this particular night when I was talking, we had just done completing flight ops in the daytime. We’re going to do flight ops at night. So, three days of me being on a bridge, and I was tired. You don’t get much sleep as captain, so I was kind of tired. So, when I got on The 1MC, I was less ebullient than I normally was. And I kind of gave the announcements, talked about the sailor of the day, and I had to go down and see the command master chief, who is the senior enlisted person on the carrier. And I ran down the stairs to go see the master chief. And I’m kind of in a hurry, and I’m going across the mestics way down on the second deck, about twelve floors below where my chair is. Ran down there, and a sailor comes up to me and she puts her hand on my chest, and goes, “Captain!” I mean, she literally stopped me, “Captain, are you okay?” And I said, “Sure. Why would you ask me if I’m okay?” She said “Well, when you’re on 1MC, you sounded really down.”
And so, what that demonstrated to me was my tone, my energy, and my passion was getting to the crew. And I said, “I’m great, thanks. I’m just tired. Thanks for checking on me.” So here is a sailor well below the seniority of the captain, and she has enough respect for me and enough connection with me to not only address me, stop me physically, and then ask how I’m doing, with concern about how her captain is doing. And so, you can create a connection, a human connection, even through only a speaker.
WHATEVER THE MISSION IS, JUST PUT “MISSION”: HOW MIKE RELATES LEADERSHIP IN THE MILITARY TO LEADERSHIP IN THE CORPORATE WORLD
Katrina Burrus
Wow. Impressive. So, there’s another question that’s slightly different. So, connection, communication, recognition can be applied to the corporate world as well. What about the mission? The mission is so different. How do you galvanize military people for their mission, which is to help the United States, help save their teammates, “esprit de coup”, as they say in French? And at the same time, how does that translate to the corporate world, which the mission is to make more money, to stakeholder value, but you also need to have people work together and have a clear direction where they need to work?
Mike Manazir
Katrina, marvelous question. And I have found – I’ve been out of the Navy now for five and a half years, and I work in the corporate world – and I have found that whatever the mission is, just put “mission”. Whatever our North Star is; what are we trying to achieve? Could be a sale. It could be the extension of a program; it could be the opening of a subsidiary. In the military, it’s “We’re going to go and take this enemy. We’re going to go and succeed on deployment. We’re going to go succeed in this inspection.” It’s the same. People are the same. My book, “Learn How to Lead to Win”, those 33 stories, they have leadership lessons tied to each one, Katrina. and we have examples in there that apply directly to what every single one of your listeners do. Could be in church, they have a project for church. It could be a nonprofit. It could be business for profit. It could be military. Every single human being wants to be part of something larger than themselves. Everybody. And we just talked about the recognition aspect of it. Everybody wants to feel recognized. And you see study after study after study in the United States and I’m certain overseas: people don’t leave their jobs for money. Sometimes grass is greener over there. They leave their jobs because they don’t feel valued, or their boss is toxic. They leave a boss, but they don’t feel valued. You can create energy to go after anything through the human connection. This applies in business, in the military. And I will offer to you that if people are responding to you because you’re using your title, whether you order them in the military or because, “Hey, that’s the VP that just told me to do that, or the CEO”, they will not risk. They will be afraid to fail. They will not feel like they’re in a psychologically safe environment, and they will not stretch for the business. They will not take risk for the business. They’ll say, “You know what? I’m good doing my job. It’s okay. I don’t feel really safe here”. If you get to a point – and this is where I want all of your listeners to get to, this is where I strive to get to as a military leader and as an executive in business – you get to a point where you don’t want to disappoint them and they don’t want to disappoint you, you can do anything. Anything.
When we talk about war fighting, and people are literally having to risk their lives, it’s for the person to the left of them and the person to the right of them. The Medal of Honor recipients that you listen to, they didn’t want to let their buddies down. That’s what we’re talking about. Now, most of what your listeners do and what most of I’m responsible for, even in the military, yeah, in naval aviation, you’re kind of risking your life every once in a while, but it’s not like you’re on the battlefield, and you have a distinct personal, immediate risk of losing your life. However, that sort of commitment to the mission, you’re going to get the best results. They are going to try harder. They’re going to think about things on their own. The morale is high. They’re going to go, “How can we achieve more? This is a great team.” A football team, NFL football team, or a football team in the World Cup, if they got great morale and they’re a great team and they know what the goal is, and they’re supporting each other, and each one’s valuing each other, you’re going to win every time.
And that’s what I found in 36 years of Navy and five and a half years out here, 100%.
IT’S ALL ABOUT CONNECTING WITH HUMAN BEINGS: THE KEY LEARNINGS IN MIKE’S CAREER AS A LEADER THAT HE COMMUNICATES IN HIS BOOK
Katrina Burrus
So you see, “Learn how to Lead to Win”. That implies that you have to learn to be a leader. So, what are the key learnings that you communicate in your book and that you’ve learned being a leader for so many years?
Mike Manazir
Well, first of all, listening to people and watching leaders that you are exposed to. We learn the most from bad leaders. We learn the most from how we react to leaders that are really good, and say, “I’m going to do that.”
Nothing in my book is new. Nothing. Leadership is about plagiarism. You plagiarize all of the good habits that great leaders do. And so, in the back of my book, I actually have some leadership maxims. And on my website, www.mikemanazir.com, there is more content that talks about the things that I learned in leadership. But things like very early in the book, when I stumbled upon the idea that if I learned somebody’s name and I learned how to pronounce it and actually learned it, where I could look at them and I’d see you 200 yards away, and I’d say, “Hey, there’s Katrina Burrus”. And “Hey, Katrina”. No name tag, no other thing. And in the Navy, when people go, “Here’s the skipper” – So I had a story this one time, and it really drove it home. I was flying as a skipper in my fighter squadron, and we were going on an exercise, and I was walking off the flight line with a couple of my troubleshooters walking in the airplane, and I knew one of the troubleshooters’ wives was in the hospital in San Diego, and we were north, operating out of another field. And I started yelling. He was 200 yards away. I was yelling, “Hey, officer Edwards”. And he kind of looks at me, and he’s looking back down, and he’s walking with his buddy. And as I’m yelling his name and walking towards him, he’s trying to walk away.
Katrina Burrus
Really?
Mike Manazir
Yeah, he’s trying to walk away from the skipper, right? Because here comes the skipper. And like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s the skipper. That’s the CEO”. That’s the, you know, whatever. And I get closer, “Hey, officer Edwards”. And he finally kind of stops, and he goes, “Skipper”. And I go, “Yeah”. And he goes, “You know my name?” I go, of course “I know your name. You work for me.” And he goes, “If you know my name, I’m in trouble.” Then I said, “Oh, no. How’s your wife? I know she’s in the hospital. Do you need any accommodations? Do you need to go home?” “No, sir.” And he’s just stumbling on his words. He can’t believe that I’m talking to him about his own personal issue and that I know his name. And he’s saying, “Oh, sir, I don’t need anything. You know my name?” And so it’s kind of going on like that. Well, it gets back through. He tells his wife, “Skipper checked on”, gets back to the Ombudsman that Skipper knows everybody’s names, and because he knows the names, he cares about everybody.
So, if you learn people’s names, the most basic identity about somebody, and you learn their name, and you talk to them every day, and you ask how they’re doing or you recognize their work, and you pass them a cup of coffee, CEO says to you, or some manager down here, or somebody huge in your company says, “Hi, Mike. How are you doing today?” “Sir, doing great, thanks.” And now you’re on cloud nine because the big person just recognized you. So, I learned that if you could learn people’s names, and that was the very first lesson, there’s a whole bunch all the way through of these learnings about how to connect with people the best, how to appear as if, “No, I’m not the Admiral. I’m Mike Manazir, and I’m going to relate to you. Yes, of course I’m the Admiral, and I do this, and you know I’m the Admiral. I know I’m the Admiral, but I’m not going to use that to hammer down what’s going on.”
So, you’re going to be able to do that connection with people. Got to be authentic. I’m not saying that if you learn people’s name, they’ll think you care, and that’s good. That’s all you have to do. This is authenticity at work. I’ve been told I’m a very authentic leader. What you see is what you get. In my book, the other thing you get through there is a whole bunch of failures. There is failure after failure that recovered from. And then I learned something. I learned from the failure. I also learned there’s the hand of providence in my career, in my life, that every single one of the key failures that I talk about in the book on my career path has some kind of a thing that happened that was really good. And if that failure hadn’t happened, the really good thing would not have happened to me. So, as we look back and we’re all afraid of trying and failing and we don’t want to do that, I would encourage your listeners, no, go. Fail. Go. Fall over. Try a new skill and fall on your nose and get up and go, “Gosh. That was hard”. Or if somebody asks you to do something in your company and you don’t think you’re going to go that way, they want you to go this way, as described in my book, “Go that way”. And don’t be afraid, because they see something in you. Your mentors see something in you; that you have great potential, and you can succeed that way. And we’re afraid of failure, but I have found in my career, in my life, that when I dusted myself off, stood up again from the failure, not only was it better, but I learned something from it. And I was a couple of times, which I do relate in the book, I was able to then brief other people junior to me coming up in the same situation. I said, “Let me tell you a story about my experience”. And I gave them some confidence to look at the fork in the road that was in front of them and things like that.
That’s why I wrote the book, because these 33 stories, each have leadership lessons tied to them that talk about what I learned, why it applies to all of us on this podcast. And also, there’s an additional leadership resource, like if Stephen Covey talked about this, here it is. Or if John Maxwell talked about it, here’s the resource. I always talk about books like “The 21 Irrefutable Laws” by Maxwell, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie from 1926. I mean, it’s all about connecting with human beings. That’s how you get the best results.
LOOK AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN: HOW MIKE ADDRESSES PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT DOING WHAT THEY’RE EXPECTED TO DO
Katrina Burrus
So, we’re coming to the end of our podcast. Just one thing before we leave. There’s two questions: One is, if you have somebody that is not doing what they’re supposed to do, how would you tackle that?
And the next question would be, if you were a younger version of yourself, what is one advice that you think is essential for a young leader that is promoted to lead many people?
Mike Manazir
Those both make sense.
If you have somebody that’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, there’s a story in my book called “The Other Side of the Coin”, and it talks about a situation called “Captain’s mast” on the carrier, which is a non-judicial punishment. So, sailors will go there. It’s less than a court martial or a trial, and the captain is trying to determine why this person went on absent without leave, or they failed to follow an order, or they got in a fight with somebody. In this one particular time, the captain that I was serving at the time, I was his executive officer, and he determined that the person in front of him who was continuing to be a bad actor, his supervisor was beating him up physically down in the engineering spaces, and his chief was overlooking it and not allowing it. So, this guy was running away essentially from physical abuse. And so, what Rick called that, my captain called that is, “Look for the other side of the coin”. What is it that’s bothering the employee? And you got to come at it from a positive sense, like, “Hey, you’ve been a great employee, or I know you’re a great employee. We know each other”. You’re not necessarily friendly, but if you get to know your people, you know what their capabilities are, and then you can make other human resources decisions based on the capabilities of people. But let’s assume that this employee, you got in the right place. You assume the right skill sets, and performance is not where you needed to be. The first thing I would tell your listeners, look for the other side of the coin. Are you okay? What’s going wrong? Do you understand the task? I mean, these sort of opportunities for the employee to answer a question like, “Hey, I was trying to hide it, but I’m in real trouble with my marriage right now” or something like that. Some external thing that’s affecting their performance. I would go there first. Second, if there was nothing like that and they’re just not performing, I would clearly stress and they need to know what the objectives are. And if they don’t know what the objectives are, then it’s your fault as a leader. And by the way, I approach everything like it’s my fault. If people don’t get it, I didn’t communicate it right. If they didn’t do it right, I didn’t train them right.
There’s also references in the book about a captain of a United States Navy ship that can get fired being asleep, because one of the people on the ship does something wrong, or the officer of the deck allows a collision to happen or something like that. And you can get fired as a captain. You can be asleep, and get fired. So, I always slept soundly because I knew I trained everybody. You have to assume it’s your fault. As the leader, “What have I not done to communicate to this teammate that this is what has to be done? Here’s my expectation.” So, after you determine that there’s nothing wrong with them externally, you then determine whether they know what they’re supposed to do. If they say, “Yes, boss, I’m supposed to do this as this.” “Okay, what’s standing in your way?” “Well, blah, blah, blah.” And then you have to help them get over those barriers, so you give guidance, and you remove barriers as a leader. And then if all that fails and they say, “No, I got it”, you say, “Okay, here’s my expectation”, and you’ve already connected with them. “So, here’s my expectation. By this date, we need to have these two things done. Do you understand that?” “Yes.” “Do you understand it’s very important to me?” “Yes.” “Okay, then we understand each other and come back and give me details anytime. And by the way, if you have any trouble getting things done, come back to see me personally.” And then, you kind of watch that. And you also watch to see, let’s say you’re the big boss, you’re one level above this employee, and you just happen to be talking to this employee if you are skip level or something like that. Also assess the managers underneath you. How effective are they at getting things done? I have found in a low morale organization, Katrina, that people will recommend things, although they try really hard, and they’ll get shut down time and time and time again, and they’ll get tired and they won’t perform anymore. And so, you have to check your organization to make sure that stuff’s getting done right. You might think everything’s great from up here. That’s why I always communicated all the way through my ship, and then I was always running around trying to figure out what’s really going on. And there are managers and leaders out there who don’t want the boss to know what’s going on in their organization. I’ll bet you there are a lot of your listeners right now that are like, “I don’t want the boss talking to skip level Louie down here that’s like on the factory floor.” I’ll make sure I give him information. Your organization will fail if you have that. And so as a leader, you’ve got to model that behavior all the way through all of your managers, your expectations, how you lead. And again, there’s many examples in the book.
DELEGATE, AND NOT MICROMANAGE: WHAT LEADERSHIP ADVICE MIKE WOULD GIVE TO HIS YOUNGER SELF
Mike Manazir
What would I tell my younger self? It’s funny. When I was a commanding officer of a fighter squadron when I was about 40 years old, that’s my first really big leadership experience. The weight of leadership on me was evident in taking that role. And I recognized that I was a leader all of a sudden, and I had to make decisions as a leader. I did not recognize that I could do the job, I could do everybody’s job as a skipper in NF14 squad because I’d been brought up that way and I knew all of it. Later on, and as I looked back down on that job from higher and higher level leadership, I realized and recognized that I didn’t know anything as that commanding officer. And I learned so much later on.
The one thing that I would have told my younger self: Delegate. you’re put in charge of a big organization. And let’s say that the place you were, you could do the entire job in your sleep in half the day. Now, you’re put in charge of a big organization, and by the way, you’re a really great performer now. Every single one of your listeners who’s reached a high level position right now and is succeeding, I guarantee you this had happen to them. They’re put in a situation where they don’t know how to do it all anymore, and they’ve had to learn to delegate and not micromanage. That’s what I learned. I’ll tell my younger self, “Learn immediately how to delegate to your team, how not to micromanage even the most important task, the crown jewel of the company.” We’ve got to get this done. Give it to somebody else, give guidance. Remove barriers. The only two things that an effective leader needs to do; give it to somebody else, you tell them why and what we need to do, but you don’t tell them how. And they’re going to come to you. First of all, they’re going to say, “Thanks, boss, I love working for you because I get to do my job”, and you’re going to get better results because you’re delegating and you won’t die from stress. That’s what I tell people and my high performing leaders and my current office environment. If they’re young, they have a hard time learning how to delegate and not micromanage because they know how to do everything, and they think, “I’m going to get a better answer if I do it myself.” And sometimes, that works. Most often it does not. That’s what I would tell my younger self. Delegate, don’t micromanage.
Katrina Burrus
Well, thank you very much, Mike. We’re coming to the end of our podcast, so I encourage listeners, “Learn How to Lead to Win”, a bestseller by Mike Menazir.
Mike Manazir
Perfect.
Katrina Burrus
Wonderful. And you have extensive knowledge and experience and thanks for sharing with our listeners.
Mike Manazir
Thanks, Katrina. It was great to be on with you today.
Katrina Burrus
Thank you.
