Episode Details

Martin Moore is the author of the upcoming book, No Bullsh!t Leadership, and the host of the podcast with the same name which has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times and has listeners in over 70 countries. He is also the former CEO of CS Energy and he currently runs Your CEO Mentor with his daughter, Emma.

Martin wrote his book because there are so many books out on the market that teach desirable attributes that leaders should have, but he didn’t find anything out there that shows leaders how to actually implement these ideas. He wanted to create a practical guide that would help leaders figure out how to be more transparent, how to be expert communicators, how to deal with conflict, etc…

As Martin has witnessed personally there are a lot of leaders out there who attend training programs and they come back motivated and inspired by all of the things they have learned, but when they get back to work nothing has actually changed. So they think they are doing better because of the new knowledge they have, but actually they don’t know how to carry it out so it doesn’t help anyone.

Business acumen vs leadership skills One thing Martin discusses in his book is the difference between business acumen and leadership skills. A lot of leaders aren’t good in both of these areas, they are good at one or the other. Business acumen is about knowing what to do in the context of business--so this includes understanding strategy, being a good negotiator, knowing about finance, economics, marketing, operations, etc…

A lot of times people who have business acumen get promoted to leadership roles, and they are very smart people, but they don’t have the leadership skills needed to be effective. People who only have business acumen can be absolutely terrible leaders.

Leadership skills include being able to deal with conflict, being able to motivate and inspire people, being an excellent communicator, being able to clearly share the vision of the company, etc…

Ideally people in leadership roles have both business acumen and leadership skills, however if forced to choose between the two Martin says it’s better to have the leadership skills and surround yourself with people who have the business acumen then it would be for a leader to have business acumen alone.

Martin says, “A leader’s job is to actually lift the people, to understand them, to get the most out of them, to achieve the results they have to achieve for the organization. And for me, the number one mandate for a leader is to deliver value, period. That's it. Now, before your listeners rail against the fact that I am a heartless capitalist bastard, value comes in many different forms, right? Value can come as much from providing a safer environment for our people, as it can from generating financial value. Someone who's running a surgical practice value might come from better postoperative outcomes for patients. So value comes in many different forms. It's just a matter of understanding what form that is for you.”

The leadership problem When it comes to promoting people, the transition between individual contributor and being a leader is something we are not paying enough attention to, Martin says. Just because someone is great in a certain role does not mean they will automatically be a great leader. We need more training and mentoring for people going into their first leadership role.

And because a lot of people in leadership positions today have not had the proper training, a lot of times the people just now moving into these roles don’t have any real role models to look up to.

“You look up the line, and you look sideways, and you can't see too many people where you go, Oh, I get it, I see what leadership is, I want to be more like that person. And so you develop all the bad habits right at the start, that you shouldn't. And