Last week, I welcomed Ryan Snellings to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. After more than 25 years in service and operations leadership roles at companies like Fresenius Kabi, Luminex Corporation, and Agena, Ryan recently founded The Jobless Leader to provide career development and executive coaching.

I first met Ryan more than ten years ago during his tenure at Fresenius Kabi and even back then his honesty and quick wit stood out, which you see reflected today in his thought-provoking LinkedIn posts. During our podcast discussion, we talked about three areas of leadership Ryan believes are crucial for service leaders: self-awareness and personal development; building effective leadership processes; and learning how to navigate corporate complexity.

As we talked through these three areas, Ryan shared not only his reflections on why each are important, but also provided some examples of what he’s learned – sometimes the hard way – works best. If you’re an aspiring leader, early in your leadership tenure, or a long-time leader who is always looking for fresh perspective, be sure to check out the full conversation. But here are seven specifics Ryan shared that I feel any leader would benefit from adding to their repertoire:

1. Spend 10 minutes daily on self-reflection. As Ryan and I discussed the importance of self-reflection as a leader, I asked him exactly how service leaders who are stretched thin should make time for this. “Best way to do it is 10 minutes at the end of every single day,” he says. “That's when you are going to remember the emotion you were feeling at the time, the specific incidents, what came up in 1-1s, what goals you met (or didn’t) and why, etc. Writing it down, too – that helps. It’s relatively simple, but it can be eye opening.”
2. Take responsibility for managing your career. Ryan touted the importance of managing your own career, which to him means understanding that hard work doesn’t always speak for itself – you will get further if you learn to articulate your accomplishments in language your boss cares most about (i.e. their goals). “No one is going to manage your career for you, not because they don’t care about how things turn out for you, but because they’re busy,” explains Ryan. “How are you highlighting what you’re doing? If you can talk about or demonstrate the things that you are doing well, and how they align to what your manager's objectives are, it isn’t bragging it’s clarifying your value. Don’t wait until your annual review to bring in a list of what you’ve done, talk about it in every 1-1.”
3. Ignore the “rule” that you can’t be friends with people you work with. “You hear all the time that you ‘can't be friends with people you work with,’ and to me, that's some of the biggest BS there is out there,” says Ryan. “We spend half our lives at work. If you don't like the people you work with, then what are you doing? That sounds miserable. Now it doesn't mean you're going to spend the holidays with them, but you can have a real relationship where you truly care about them and what they have going on in their lives.” We also talked about how a genuine care leads to a natural curiosity about how people are doing, making empathy more sincere. Not that you have to be friends with your team to practice empathy, but the point being that employees can sense when you are “practicing empathy” versus living it intentionally. Ryan highlights this example: “How many times has someone asked you how you're doing, only to look down at their phone and check email or something? To me, they're showing you that they don't really care what you have to say.”
4. Prioritize regular, real-time, personal recognition. “There are a lot of wins throughout the week we just kind of blow by. Seek out a specific thing to recognize – it’s superficial when it’s just ‘good job this year,’ says Ryan. “When someone does something good, you need to acknowledge it right then and there; it's more genuine. I’ve always gotten great feedback when I pay for top performers to take their family out to dinner. It's not about the fact that you're paying for the dinner; it's their family seeing the company recognizing them as a top performer. It makes them proud. As leaders, we get very lazy when it when comes to recognition – not because we’re bad or forgetful, but because we’re busy. We can’t forget to make time for the impact that just a simple handwritten note has.”
5. Ask your employees for advice. As Ryan and I were talking about the value of even something as simple as saying ‘thank you’ more, he brought up the multidimensional power of asking your employees for advice. “Saying thank you is great, but if you want to blow an employee away – ask them for advice,” says Ryan. “Ask them to weigh in on something, not even necessarily related to their role, but something you’re working on. To be honest, their advice is almost always better than what I was thinking.” As Ryan points out, the payback here is two-fold – the employee feels valued because you are interested in their thoughts and opinion, and you often come away with great ideas you wouldn’t have arrived at otherwise.
6. Recognize how clearly employees see through the BS. Ryan is disheartened by the volume of examples you see in the media today of senior leaders of companies acting in ways that are nothing less than questionable. He gives a few examples – a CEO on a Zoom call demanding all employees return to full-time work in the office, with a row of leadership books on the shelf behind them. A company announcing record-breaking profits, then two weeks later do layoffs because they want that much more (only to announce hiring again soon thereafter). “Or organizations announcing a ‘flat structure’ or lack of hierarchy, which is really just a way to imply employees are supposed to take on more responsibility without the pay,” Ryan adds. “There’s a lack of transparency, and people see through that – all the jargon and corporate slang to make things that aren’t sound ‘nice.’ People see right through it.” Ryan fully acknowledges the hard decisions that leaders sometimes have to make, and the hard conversations those decisions result in – he isn’t suggesting they can be avoided, but rather emphasizing the importance of being honest with employees to build rather than erode trust
7. Don’t tolerate toxic people (no matter how high performing they are). You know the story: someone at work is horrible to be around and you can’t for the life of you understand why they’re still there. Oh yes, they hit the big numbers – so anything is tolerated (insert eyeroll). In Ryan’s view, a good leader will eliminate the toxic behavior, no matter what the (short-term) cost. “Toxicity in any form erodes culture. Sometimes these people don’t realize they have destructive habits, and that’s an issue that falls on their manager’s shoulders. If they’ve been given the feedback and refuse to improve, they need to be removed,” he says. “Refusing to tolerate toxicity is the only way to build a strong culture. With the job market being tough currently, you see people staying still – but it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the companies that are refusing to address toxicity when things get better.”