“If you want to make an Operator super uncomfortable, start praising them.”

My mentor told me this the first time I attended one of his virtual summits and it’s 100% true. Operators are by very nature more rigid in how we work and some of the least likely to truly show our emotions. That’s just not who we are.

But

recently, some changes in my life required me to accept praise with gratitude. That’s what my team needed and I had to give them that space.

Instead of shrugging it off, I took it all in with gratitude because I recognized that they needed to do that for their own sense of self. For their own soul and personal well-being.

Have you ever had trouble receiving gratitude?

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover the 5 secrets to run your business like a Special Operator: https://www.adamliette.com/sof

Transcript

What's going on out there, this is Adam Liette, thank you for joining Smooth Operator Podcast, episode 123. Already, it's gone good or 22, actually, so I had to unpack something here today, because I've been doing something interesting behind the scenes where I've been employed full time plus for the last several years. And I recently decided to leave my full time employee to pursue my own career as a professional operator as someone that helps other businesses set up things like what we've been able to set up at the company I work for, and which has just changed our team and enabled us to be all everyone's everyone's right, operating on Rockstar status all the time. It's really impressive.

And it's real testament to them. And I just did that because as part of this, I had to do a whole lot of self examining, and really self evaluation. And the hardest thing I had to do was to sit there shut up and let my team express thanks, gratitude, appreciation for the work I had done with them. And for them. And the years I'd spent helping to build that organization in the organization that it is. And it was one of those super uncomfortable zoom calls was actually just today, where it was everyone saying goodbye, because it was gonna be my last full team call. And it was roundtable, everyone around and had had their moment to talk about their time with me and the individual things I had helped them do over the years. And I'm not gonna lie, it got a little emotional with many of them. And I didn't, I didn't realize the impact that we can make on people's lives by being just an active listener, by being someone that is just in the room, not necessarily trying to solve their problems for them definitely working to help that by just being a person to gripe to, to air grievances. And to then have us turn around and actually fix their grievances. What get out of town. It was unbelievable. And there were several team members that just said some things that were pretty crazy.

And you know, one of my one of my mentors, says that, if you ever want to make an operator super uncomfortable, start praising them. And he's 100%, right? We don't really do the work for that the work itself is his own reward. But it's nice to know that what we're putting into the world, what we're putting out, and the energy we're putting out, comes back. And so I'm really full of gratitude right now I'm really full of emotion. So this is definitely one of the harder episodes to to record because it is about some things that are very real right now that I'm experiencing in this real visceral way. Something like how, how do you receive praise? How do you receive accolades from those around you? It's all too easy to brush it aside. And that one of the turnaround guys I call it's like a reverse Mr. Me too. We all know Mr. Mee to me to Mr. metoo is the guy that no matter what you did, no matter what problems you encountered, or achievements you had, they did something cooler. Okay, we all know Mr. metoo. And kind of my instinct when I receive praise is to return it back with praise.

And I decided I think that's like a, I don't know if it's a false modesty. I don't think it's a false modesty. It's definitely a It's definitely like a survival mechanism where receiving praise causes us to Oh, I better give some back real quick because because I just received praise like No, no, it has to be reciprocal nature shut up and let people say thank you. Like let people express their appreciation because they are feeling that need to give that and just receive it, man, like be uncomfortable be in that mode. moment to allow yourself to be open. allow yourselves to show that other side of us that softer side that isn't always present because we we, we tend to put on the hard face. A military, what do you think I did I mean, come on, it's all about putting on the hard face, but letting yourself be human, letting yourself receive. It's very healthy. And honestly, the person giving it to you, they need that they need to give you their appreciation, because they feel a debt.

They feel an immense amount of gratitude to say some of the things that these people, wonderful, amazing people said, on this team call. Like, not a whim of it was said for my benefit. It was all said out of the idea of I don't know if I'm going to see this guy again, I have to tell him how I feel. And so I just shut up and took it, took it all in. And it was my cup is running over, man, I'm telling you. Really fantastic experience. That definitely made me uncomfortable. But you know, in everything that we do, if you're not getting uncomfortable, you're just not growing. Like you got to be willing to get super uncomfortable with this stuff. You're not leading static robots. You're leading people. As much as we nerd out over processes and workflows, and oh, look what I did. And this project management software, look at this funnel. Like that's all cool, sexy stuff, believe me, don't get me excited. But at the the end of all of it, we're in the people leading business, we're leading people.

And those people have the same insecurities and stressors and emotions, and all the various things that make them people, it's all run through their veins too. So if someone does feel that need to praise you to say thank you, just receive it,

receive it be filled with gratitude, you will get your chance to reciprocate. Let them have that moment. Let them have that time.

Because they're feeling a debt. And they they're paying back their own perceived debt through what they say. Let them say it and bring it all in, soak it in and know that you are an amazing person.

You are capable of things that you didn't know you weren't were capable of. We're always finding new boundaries, receive it and then go turn that into something beautiful. Turn it into something powerful when we receive. It says this amazing gift. And I can get into some things about religion. I won't go into that, because that's a whole nother subject. I think religion is very much the same way. It's about receiving a bounty. It's amazing. And I kind of want to go seek that out. I want to go chase it. I want to go chase people to praise and I want it to do great things. So I can be praised. But first, I want to go chase people because now I have a debt I have to go Phil. So super uncomfortable call for sure. And we'll we'll definitely unpack some of the changes that are happening in my life over the next coming episodes. As I mentioned yesterday, it's fully intent on producing a new episode every single day. So you're gonna get my daily thoughts on what's going on, in now the new startup business. But overall, the notion of change a lot of these tactics and things that I use are very much universal, and are going to continue to be a part of my life and I hope that I can help them become part of yours. So in the meantime, do check me out it's www dot Adam liette.com Good. subscribe to the podcast, leave a review. Man, I just got first review on Apple podcasts. Please do if you're hearing this. I can't ask you enough. Please go leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Whatever you're using to listen to podcasts. That's really what's going to help us get listened to by more people get discovered. And so I genuinely appreciate for that from the bottom of my heart and your comments will continue to be received with gratitude. Alright, thanks so much and until tomorrow, I'll see you then.