Video - Robert Craven - Reverting to Type
VIDEO: 4:40 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven
Pre-COVID you were acing it! Running your business, working on it not in it. But all that has changed... not everyone is back in the office, you're having to 'do stuff'.
Listen to this short from Robert where he talks about the pitfalls of Reverting to Type.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:00
Hi Robert Craven here, I'd like to talk today about something which is really worrying me, which is the way in which so many agency leaders are are reverting type. So what essentially happens is, over time we learn to become a better leader we learn to become more adult in the way we think about things, we become less emotional, we become more rational, we pick up more leadership skills, we pick up more experience about how to be how to be a good leader.
Robert Craven 00:42
And then what happens is something like COVID comes along. And, and what we should be doing is we should be taking all the best of what we you know, be rational, step back, be objective, do the numbers, understand what the implications are looking at the downside, be rational, write down the left, what we're going to do, make it happen.
Robert Craven 01:08
But what actually happens is that we revert type, so you got to ask yourself, what is your type, and I suspect your type is less sophisticated than that leader that you were that was just pre COVID. Because just pre COVID, you'd had all that experience, and you're starting to develop a better leadership style, a more mature leadership style, working on the business, not in the business, not being a meddling fool, not dabbling, not getting too involved in the detail, but letting your people run the agency. But reverting to the type means you go back to where you were pretty much when you started the agency, which is our we're doing stuff we're making stuff happen, I'm, I'm on a keyboard, I'm buying stuff, why I'm making small decisions, that by reverting to type, what you're doing is you're you're suffocating your people, you're suffocating from them, stopping them from from being able to do what they do best, which is run their teams run their departments run the bits and pieces that they run.
Robert Craven 02:16
You think you're doing good because you're getting all the kind of testosterone and endorphins and endorphins from from doing stuff. But you're but you're, you're doing the detail, you're doing the tactical stuff. At a time when more than ever, your agency needs you to be stepping back and being grown up and having a deep voice and making decisions in a cool and calm way. Now I get that we're now kind of through the worst, but I don't think we are through the worst, I think more agencies are gonna go bust now than went bust when this whole thing kicked off.
Robert Craven 02:55
So now more than ever, you're having survived and having got this far, you know, locked down really second wave, oh, having got this far. And having kept your agency together. Now, now is the time more than ever, to take on the mantle of leadership to take on the mantle of being grown up to take on the mantle of looking at the facts, looking at the opportunities, looking at the challenges, looking at the downside, looking at the upside, and then making those decisions and then acting on them. But stop being so tactical stop being so in the thick of it and give your agency what it deserves, which is someone at the helm, who's able to look behind in front left above beneath and make rational decisions and not just emotional decisions. Now those emotional decisions may have got you where you are. Now you may think they have. But you look at the great leaders. And it's the decisions are not purely emotional pieces. There's a real sense of objectivity.
Robert Craven 04:11
That's why virtually all the great leaders do yoga and mindfulness and meditation because then when they're confronted with an SU, it's not their ego, responding to the situation. It's not their emotion and their passion responding to the situation. It's a decision being made. Thank you very much for listening and in front of us.