Leadership and Management
Austin W. Boyd, CEO Whitespace Innovations, Inc.
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Keys to Leadership and Management
• Start with “why?”
• Vision
• Values
• Listen
• Learn
• Relate
• Communicate
• Courage
• Innovation
• Serve
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Start With “Why?”
• Before you can manage a business, you need to assess why you
are in business in the first place.
– Read Simon Sinek’s important book Start With ‘Why?’
• You need to be able to answer this important question:
– What’s the point of it all?
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First address the “why?” of your business
Second address the “how?” of your work
Finally address the “what?”
Too often we reverse the order and make a big mistake
• If you hope to manage a business and lead people, you must
first understand why you are taking on this terrible load
– If you don’t, you will fail to tackle your core motivation for this work
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Vision
• If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take
you there
• You must have a vision for your work, for your business, for your
end-game in this venture
• Some key questions to narrow in on vision:
– What do you want for an epitaph on your grave stone?
– What do you want to be remembered for? What is your legacy?
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Community legacy… church legacy… family legacy… business legacy
– What is your mission in life?
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My mission is to (verb, modifier, noun) through my (action words that end
in ‘ing’) in the (places I connect with other people)
• Once you have established a personal vision, extend it through
your company and determine the corporation’s “vision” for
action, for impact, and for the future
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Values
Take a stand. What do you stand for?
Other businesses are watching… other people are watching
You want others to emulate your values
You want others to seek you out because your values match
theirs
• You want to show your values through your work and your
relationships with others.
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– People will read you and your company like a book. Make it a good
one.
• Austin’s stories about bad values and the leadership impact
• Austin’s stories about good values and the leadership impact
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Listen
• Use your ears twice as much as your mouth
• Earn the right to be heard
• Practice the “Austin Boyd Shut Up Method”
• If you get a person talking to you across the desk, and if you
really listen, then you can sell that person anything
– That could be a customer, an employee, or an auditor …
• Leadership and management require extraordinary
communication skills.
– The most important skill is the ability to listen
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Learn
• Be a lifetime learner
• Try something new
• Listen and learn from others in what they are learning about,
then emulate them
• Dive into new fields of study, including learning about new lines
of business before you launch into unknown territory
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Join a book club
Take a trip overseas
Go back to school
Participate in your professional society
Volunteer with a new organization
Host a weekly “brown bag” and get different folks to speak
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Relate
• People do business with people
– This is ever so much more important in the south than it is up north
• Put a focus on people
– Your employees, your customers, your vendors, your competitors
• Find new groups to relate to
– Reach out and be diverse in your approach
– Do not surround yourself with people who say “amen” to everything
you say. If you do, you will fail.
• Embrace disagreement and learn from it
– Encourage dissent and lively spirited debate
• Do not shy away from conflict. Manage conflict, but don’t ever
expect to eliminate it
• Practice management by walking around (MBWA)
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Communicate
• Communication is 65% non-verbal
– How are your non-verbal communication skills? Ask your spouse
• Communicate more than you think you need to
– That does not mean to talk a lot… it means to make a point of
keeping people apprised of a situation, passing along news,
checking in frequently
• Remember how splits tend to start…
– Someone stops communicating, leading to a lack of trust
• Write letters, particularly thank you letters
• Practice saying “thank you” verbally at every opportunity
• Set up a “battle rhythm” of regular short meetings so that people
know when and where they can plug in to get caught up
– You don’t have to crush your company with a million meetings
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Courage
• Take a stand, based on your well-considered, wellcommunicated values
• Buck the system. Take a chance, especially when it means taking
a chance on an employee
• Be bold
– Go big, or go home
• Break the rules
– Ask forgiveness, not permission
• Take a stand for your people, particularly in the face of a
customer complaint
• Don’t be afraid to confess that you made a mistake
• Remember the cowardly lion… he did not need a warrior’s
heart… he dug down deep and found the fortitude within himself
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Innovation
• Seek areas that others avoid
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Whitespace
Blue Oceans
Outside the box
“I never tried that before.”
• Look for opportunities and approaches where others lament that
“it’s impossible.”
• Ask questions
– Get people talking and thinking outside of their comfort zones
– “Good leaders ask great questions.” (John Maxwell)
• Don’t be afraid to try something new
– Take off the blinders. It’s a big world out there
• Do not punish failure. Learn from it.
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Serve
• Be a “servant leader”
• Qualities of a servant leader:
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Value diverse opinions
Surround yourself with people who disagree
Cultivate a culture of trust
Develop other leaders. Find your “number two” and train her
Help people solve tough problems, even if you are not paid
Encourage others. Let’s do it! (not “you do it.”)
Sell instead of tell. Persuade, not command
Think “you” and not “me.”
Strive for selflessness and unselfishness.
Think “long term”. Practice “the art of the long view.”
Think “next generation.”
Act with humility
It is never uncool to be kind
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Wrap Up
• Start with “why?”
– Why do you work? Why do you serve?
• Leaders don’t have all of the great ideas.
– Leaders do provide support for those who want to contribute
• Leaders achieve very little by themselves
– Leaders inspire people to come together for the good of the group
• Leaders never start with what needs to be done.
– Leaders start first with “why” we need to do things
• Leaders inspire action
• Leadership requires a vision of the world that does not yet exist,
and the ability to communicate it.
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