I had a realisation of my very own Ellen Degeneres moment, and fortunately, I managed to steer away from a path of destruction thanks to my team.
If you haven’t been in the loop, Ellen Degeneres of the Ellen Show had an uprising from her team because of the toxic culture that she created, with more and more people backing those claims by the day to a point where rumours were swirling around on whether her show would be cancelled.
In my last post I shared about how we celebrated the crisis a couple of weeks ago, let me share with you what happened on the very same morning before the lunch celebration.
In my entire career and business, I have always been a very single-tracked and focused person. Always maintaining my focus on the goals that I set, doing whatever it takes to achieve it.
I can be like a raging bull focused on the red target, and anyone who comes my way or slows my charge forward can and will get trampled or get dragged and bruised along my path.
Where I only care about the results, and not of my feelings or those around me.
In my moments of fiery passion, when I don’t get the results that I want or certain tasks were not performed to my desired outcome, I can get angry and frustrated. This is especially true when the heat’s turned up during this crisis.
I would not only hold people in my team accountable (which is okay and a must), but I would sometimes curse at them and unintentionally shame them in the process. Even though at times it’s also my fault due to poor communication.
Those who are more sensitive and are empaths amongst the group would feel hurt in the process, and especially when this happens in my morning meeting with the day, it can demoralize and affect the entire team’s productivity for the day.
This inadvertently created a culture of fear where team members are unwilling to share bad news, try to mitigate problems themselves, and unwilling to take their own initiatives in fear of failure and facing my wrath.
But thankfully I have an amazing team, who has held out together amidst this crisis, with good leaders within the team bringing the team together for a town hall session to put a mirror to my face. Overcoming any fear they had of how I would react to it, and were willing to share the truth.
I know that they did not only do it for their own wellbeing but for the wellbeing of the company and myself.
During the hour-long town hall where they presented to me the key issues that they’ve experienced, they reminded me of the 5 Sales Ninja code and core values that I preach and instil in my company.
1. Commitment
2. Honour
3. Honesty
4. Improvement
5. Teamwork
Of which I realised that although I upheld most of it, I was not being honourable in my conduct. So since then, I’ve apologised for my dishonourable conduct to those whom I’ve hurt in the process and to my team as a whole, and I’ve committed to doing better and have taken the necessary steps towards improvement.
As leaders, it’s important for us to recognise our weaknesses, have the humility to acknowledge and recognise when we’re wrong especially to our own team. To understand that our own approach may work for ourselves, but not necessarily those that we work with and rely upon.
Within that are the lessons for our personal growth.
I would once again like to thank my team for sticking through these challenging times together, facing my wrath, and being willing to step up, to be honest, and share the truth for the wellbeing of everybody.
