Family Business Series: The Vulnerability Required to Go From Being a Boss to Being a Leader

With Guest:

Cory Carlson of Connector Consulting, Owner

Host, Jamie Duininck, asks business coach, Cory Carlson, about how to become better leaders in our families and our businesses. They discuss the added challenges of being a boss when working with family members. Cory explains that tools like enneagrams can help but being vulnerable and asking for personal feedback about how you can do better is the key to going from being a good boss to being a great leader.

Episode 40.3 | 5 min

Guest Bio

Cory Carlson, CEO and owner of Connector Consulting, has known Jamie Duininck for many years. Jamie has turned to Cory for insight and advice on running a family business, because Cory takes a holistic approach to coaching. Cory challenges his clients to work through family and personal issues in order to solve their business problems and achieve success.

Having begun his career in the corporate world, Cory became a business coach after experiencing the positive impact that a trusted advisor had on his own life. He understands that it can be difficult to ask for help, and it is important to find the right coach for you. Cory believes that to be successful in business you must also find success at home, and great leadership and coaching starts with vulnerability.

Jamie (00:02):

This is The Water Table.

Speaker 2 (00:05):

A chance to hear the agricultural side of these issues.

Speaker 1 (00:09):

A place for people to go find information and education.

Speaker 3 (00:13):

Water management is just going to become even more critical into the future.

Speaker 1 (00:19):

How misunderstood what we do is.

Speaker 2 (00:22):

I would encourage people to open their minds and listen to this dialogue.

Jamie Duininck (00:32):
Welcome back to The Water Table podcast. Today joining me as Cory Carlson.

Another question I have, and I think that this is really specific to family business. When you work in a family business, a lot of times you don’t really ever have a boss, from the standpoint of your boss might be your father or your brother or your sister, whatever that might be. Most of the time I think that’s softer, but not always, sometimes it can be much more difficult having a family member. So my question really is around self-awareness. I think those are the challenges I know I’ve had in my life where I’m not self-aware of something and nobody’s comfortable telling me, and it’s so important because a lot of times you just absolutely don’t see it until somebody that you trust tells you.

How do you deal with that as a coach around you’ve seen it and in helping people break through some self-awareness issues?

Cory Carlson (01:46):
Yeah for sure, I mean, self-awareness is such a… Emotional intelligence as a whole, but especially self-awareness, I mean that is really a significant game changer in those great leaders that can get the best out of themselves, but the best out of those around them. So if you’re listening, use this as a prompting to get better self-awareness.

So there’s a few ways to do it. I mean, there’s test assessments, right, there’s DiSC, and Myers-Briggs, and I’ve done all those. The one that I’m the biggest fan of is the Enneagram, it’s been obviously trendy for probably five, 10 years, but Enneagram because it’s yourself, who you are at work and when at home. So do the Enneagram and learn, and you’ll get to see what your superpower is based on what your number is. There’s nine different numbers and they’re all good when healthy, and they’re all bad when unhealthy. So figure out just what your number is, learn what that superpower is. But on the flip side, you’re also going to see your shadow side. You’re going to see what your kryptonite is and how you show up. So that’s one way to do it.

And then just start get getting vulnerable and just asking, Hey, how can I do better? And this is at work, as you talk about that boss scenario. This is also at home. And we’ve just got to know how we show up. How do others see us when we walk in the room? And as you get to know that you can start to change. And once you start asking for self-awareness, it may sting at the minute, but man, when you start to get better, man, it is so worth it.

So I think just sitting down with some of your coworkers or maybe it is that boss, just asking them, what are you seeing are some of my blind spots? That’s why they’re called blind spots, right? We don’t see them, but we all have them. So just asking, what are the blind spots or what are some of the things that I could do that would get better? Just don’t wait for the annual review. Hopefully many of the listeners doing this, our reviews aren’t just annual. We’ve gotten rid of that. That’s pretty archaic process. So making sure you just got more on the spot reviews, you’re talking about it.

You can do this with your boss, also with my wife, I’ll ask, Hey, how can I be a better husband? And I’ll learn. Same thing with my kids, I’ll ask, on a scale from zero to 10, how am I as a dad? And they’ll say some number, and it doesn’t necessarily matter what the number is, but it’s great, what do I need to do to get close to a 10? They can always give me some feedback. So I do it as quick as I can to implement their feedback.

Jamie Duininck (04:33):
Well, thanks Cory, for joining us on The Water Table. Great discussion today. If you’d like to hear, as a listener, to the whole discussion with Cory, you can find it at WaterTable.egg/business.