Dan Stanley of BetterMen: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Create stability. In turbulent and ambiguous times, a natural human response is to slide subconsciously into fight, flight or freeze; none of these are useful leadership outcomes. Your team, your company and your family need you to provide a firm foundation for their efforts to be built upon. To steady the ship, take a pause and create some valuable strategic thinking time. In doing so, gather the facts, compose your plan, communicate your direction with intent, dynamically review performance and above all, be consistent in your approach to leading others.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Stanley.
Dan Stanley is a qualified expert in men’s personal development and performance and is the founder of BetterMen, a coaching practice working exclusively with men in high pressure roles.
Dan is an award-winning, retired senior army commando, as well as a key decision maker and contributor in a multi-million-pound service business and until recently, a national sporting champion.
After the birth of his first child, he experienced poor mental health and spiralled down into a mid-life crisis. Dan’s life lessons during this period were the catalyst for him founding BetterMen.
Using scientifically-proven methods, Dan helps men to achieve and maintain long-term personal and professional success.
He has coached hundreds of men including millionaire business owners, MBA graduates, national vice presidents and celebrities. He’s helped his clients to change or re-ignite their careers, to save their marriages and even to exit their business for 7 figure sums.
Alongside BetterMen, Dan founded and leads Men & Mountains; a monthly hill walking community with over 140 likeminded, middle aged, busy professional men from all across the UK.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I spent the first 35 years of my life pretending to be me! My dad was never in my life, as he and my mum separated when I was baby; I didn’t know it, but I’d spent decades of my life seeking the validation of others to feel good enough about myself.
During that phase of my life, I ticked a lot of life’s boxes: I became an award-winning Army Commando, a National Sporting Champion and I helped organically grow a multiple million-pound business, but none of it was enough. None of these accomplishments ever made me feel enough.
At the age of 35, I became a dad for the first time. It sent me into a spiral, triggering an identity crisis and poor mental health. As my daughter was developing, I was falling apart. Within the space of 6 months, the ‘psychological masks’ I’d been wearing were ripped off; I’d gone from an award-winning leader of elite soldiers to a man that couldn’t lead himself.
The birth of my daughter in December 2016 was the catalyst for a rebirth of myself. I’d spent my entire life running from my own insecurities, as well as fears of rejection and failure, and up until that point I had done a great job of keeping it all hidden.
As my life and marriage started to fall apart, there were a series of serendipitous moments that brought me back from the edge — the edge being my suicidal state. These sliding door moments included reading a life changing book that a friend had gifted me, meeting a wise stranger with a profound message on an atoll in the Maldives and partaking in an ancient sweat lodge initiation ceremony.
Confucius the Chinese philosopher said, ‘a man has two lives, the second begins when he realises, he only has one’.
These sliding door moments woke me up. I realised that I only had one life and that I wasn’t prepared to waste it living a lie behind meaningless accomplishments and masks.
They set me off on what Joseph Campbell called the ‘hero’s journey’. Instead of looking outside of myself for validation, worthiness and fulfilment, I started to focus on myself, my self-esteem, my relationship with myself and my love for myself.
As I began to rebuild my life in more meaningful and authentic ways, I knew I could be a leader of men again; for men like me, men that felt lost in their minds and were tired of what Tony Robbins calls the ultimate failure, ‘success without fulfillment’ and I chose to take a chance…
The chance I chose was to step away from my successful career and retrain as a coach.
I took eight months out of my life where I traveled around the world, training with coaching experts such as Brendon Burchard, with the intention of creating a coaching practice that would work exclusively with men in high pressure roles. Men that are ‘technically successful’ but feel a sense of dissatisfaction or frustration in their lives and men whose ‘career success’ is causing adverse ripples of consequence in their health and relationships.
Two years after my midlife realignment, my coaching business, BetterMen was founded; I’ve worked with around 100 men and reach literally thousands with my message that ‘professional success doesn’t equal personal happiness.’
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
A mistake I made when starting out was trying to cross all the t’s and dot the i’s. I was a recovering perfectionist and these perfectionistic tendencies nearly stopped me from starting.
As an example, I distinctly remember spending weeks agonizing over my business card. The font, the spacing, the layout, the colour scheme. When I eventually approved it, it felt like a weight had been lifted…
A week or so later, there was a knock at the door. I had to sign for a package, and it was my new grandiose business cards. I tore open the packaging, opened the box and held my business card in my hand for the first time. It felt great — the weight, the texture, it was perfect. Until I flipped it over and there was a typo on my email address!
What I learnt from this experience is that it’s easy to get bogged down in the detail and to become blinkered by tunnel vision. I am pleased to report that I have let go of my perfectionist affliction and instead, now adopt an attitude of ‘directionally correctness’.
This means that I know what I want and what it will take to achieve it; I now trust myself to get it right and I am skilled at negating all forms of procrastination and rumination.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My wife! My poor mental health meant that I literally pressed the self-destruct button on my life and our marriage of 6 years. When I was in mental freefall, she had to pick up the pieces and deal with the fall out.
She is my rock. With love and empathy, she held the space for me to get well again. I owe her my life.
We now have two children; our family feels complete. We live close to the beach; we prioritize ourselves and our marriage over our respective businesses and we’re doing our best to raise our healthy, well rounded children.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
My vision was to show men that there’s another way to live their lives and that we, the men of our generation, have a responsibility to readdress the societal imbalances and ill-informed conditioning that many young boys and adolescents experience.
The same conditioning that creates the archaic one-dimensional model of masculinity, where for a man to be a man, he must be strong, silent, emotionless, and successful in his career to be a success. In my mind, this is the same societal conditioning that is the causation of the mental health crisis, the ever-increasing divorce rate percentage and the silent epidemic — male loneliness.
My purpose was to leverage our digital connectedness and to use social media platforms to challenge the status quo of modern day masculinity. To shine a bright light on masculine taboo subjects that ‘traditionally’ men would avoid. Subjects such as workaholism, loneliness, divorce, depression and anxiety.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
During my 12 years in the British Armed Forces, working within the Army and alongside the Royal Marines, myself and my teams have experienced many difficult, uncertain, and arduous times. One such event that springs to mind is when there was a significant change in hierarchical leadership.
Often, new leaders want to impose their will or make their mark; our new leaders were stereotypical in this sense and their reputation preceded them. Across all departments, the change in the executive leadership meant that roles, responsibilities, performance, and budgets were all under close scrutiny.
I could sense the unrest within my team; the silent anxiousness and I knew that I needed to act.
Instead of waiting for the new leadership team to review my high performing department, I proactively requested a meeting with them. I communicated my intent to my team and I communicated to the newly appointed leadership team my agenda.
We met and I spoke openly and honestly about my teams’ concerns and what support we needed from them to continue excelling in our service delivery. In return, I answered their questions transparently and candidly and after a short but impactful meeting, all concerns were diffused; both parties had clear lines on communication and clear understanding of roles, objectives and expected outcomes.
My counterparts all waited to be called forward to meet with the executive leadership team; their teams stewed in uncertainty, and it quantifiably affected morale, performance and relationships.
My message here is hopefully clear; the best way to solve problems is through open, assertive and transparent dialogue. In times of uncertainty, don’t wait. Take the lead, be a self-starter, communicate openly and clearly make your needs known.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
My motivation comes from my motive; my motive is to serve and lead others powerfully and to do this impactfully. I truly believe in the principle of self-leadership.
Self-leadership is about intentionally influencing one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions toward achieving a stated objective.
The reason this is relevant to this question is in the word ‘intentionally’. When you’re living life intentionally, you’re making life happen instead of letting life happen; little distracts, dissuades or dilutes you. Your drive, your determination, your energy and your focus are consistently high and most importantly, sustainable.
Self-leadership is the tide that lifts all boats; if you choose to lead yourself, life improves in immeasurable ways.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Manging their own fear and the fear of others. Jack Canfield, one of the personal development greats said, ‘everything you want is on the other side of fear’.
Fear keeps people, departments and companies stuck; they may know what they want but fall short of their targets or fail to achieve their goals because the people component carries with it fear, insecurities and anxieties.
The antidote to fear is action. Leaders need to be assertive in their communication style, as well as present and visible; they need to call their people forward and make their company culture ‘psychologically safe’ for them.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Slow things down and get a feel for how your team is feeling. Be seen, be visible, communicate, speak truthfully and intentionally; be the leader you know you can be.
Definitely don’t react to the situation or let your emotions cloud your rational judgement. Instead, review your KPI’s, OTIF’s or other performance indicators, but go to your people on the ground with an open and curious mind.
Ask a cross section of your key people open questions, such as ‘what’s on your mind’ and ‘what’s the real challenge here’.
Don’t judge their answers, make it safe for them to speak their truth; demonstrate empathy, show them you respect and value their perspectives — this will build trust.
Then, let people in and share how you’re feeling, as you’re probably feeling the same as your team. Once you’ve let people in, focus your efforts on what you need from them and the key priorities and principles that will lead the team forward towards the result you want to experience.
Jim Collins, the author of ‘Good to Great’ said that ‘if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any’. Remember this when you’re engaging and communicating with your people, as your message needs to be unmissable.
After you’ve delivered your message, make a point of going back out to your people. Stay visible, keep repeating what you need from them and keep getting a temperature check of performance.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
People hate half-truths and white lies; they corrode trust, undermine leadership, and cause stress fractures in relationships.
From my experience, the best way to communicate difficult news is in a clear, concise, timely manner and from a place of empathy.
In my experience, when you share the truth about something with someone and you do so by explaining why it is the way it is, without justifying or excusing the facts of the situation, they are much more likely to want to collaborate with you to find a solution or a better way forward.
The same is true in both personal and professional relationships. Nobody wants to hear all the reasons why something isn’t or hasn’t worked. What they want instead is to understand the solution, the remedy; working with people is much more cohesive than working against people.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Even experienced leaders can sometimes fall into the trap of feeling like they need to come up with new strategies and new solutions, but they don’t. Especially not when they find themselves in unpredictable times.
Instead of looking forward, they can look backwards. They can assess, review and make plans based on previous successes; if something has worked well and produced positive results in the past, then if repeated into the future, it will likely yield similar results.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
The number one principle I would say can help is to simply slow things down. I have witnessed this in first-hand guide organisations during turbulent times, whether they are in war zones, national sporting areas or in high level businesses.
You see, energy is contagious; if leaders are highly charged, emotive and impulsive, they can create a wave of unease that spreads throughout their organisation. Whereas, slowing things down creates space, calmness and a composure that signals control and strength, which in turn allows those being led to feel grounded and steady in themselves. The best leaders I’ve had the privilege to work alongside have all had the capacity to instil calmness in their organisations.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Common mistakes I see in all levels of leadership include certainty, conformity, passiveness, and people pleasing.
If you think about the parody of promotion, what usually happens is that because someone is effective in their job role, they get promoted. But the more they get promoted, the less they do their vocational job and the more they are expected to lead and manage. Not all people that excel in their job roles go on to excel in leadership roles.
Assertiveness at its rawest form is about getting things done. It’s built on an ability to express, influence and communicate. Leaders need to be assertive, therefore, the one thing that organizations should avoid is promoting passive people into a leadership position.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Never ever lose sight of the fact that all decision makers are people. Regardless of budget size or contract value, the most effective way to generate new business and retain current contractual business is to pay close attention. Put directed effort into relationships that underpin the client relationship.
Communicate effectively and frequently, measure touch points, go out of your way to know what makes the person on the other side of the screen or desk tick. People buy from people; the best businesses recognise this, and they demonstrate that they care.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Create stability. In turbulent and ambiguous times, a natural human response is to slide subconsciously into fight, flight or freeze; none of these are useful leadership outcomes. Your team, your company and your family need you to provide a firm foundation for their efforts to be built upon. To steady the ship, take a pause and create some valuable strategic thinking time. In doing so, gather the facts, compose your plan, communicate your direction with intent, dynamically review performance and above all, be consistent in your approach to leading others.
- Be visible. Think of the leadership greats: Churchill, Mandela, Martin Luther King. We know they were great because people talked about them; your people won’t talk about the leader that never leaves their office. Get out of your office and away from the digital meeting platforms. Be seen and be the leader people need you to be. Doing so will create a win win situation; you’ll get to ‘feel’ what’s really going on, which will direct your efforts whilst at the same time, your calmness and composure will be contagious to those that you lead.
- Communicate effectively. John Powell said ‘honest, open communication is the only street that leads to the real world’ and in uncertain times, you need to be you in order to be grounded in the real world. Ask more than you tell and when you tell, do so deliberately. When you’ve told, seek confirmation that your message has been received and continue to reaffirm your message at every opportunity. And remember, your communication is only as good as the response it evokes.
- Practice self-care. In turbulent times, not making time for yourself is a mistake and can quickly escalate to burnout. If you’re tired, your performance and leadership ability will be diminished. The best forms of self-care are simple and self-starters. To keep yourself in the game, I would recommend the following: Eat nutritious foods, have healthy snacks in the office ready, take fresh air breaks throughout the day, be sure to take your lunch break, say no to screen time an hour before bed and plan distraction free time in your diary to spend with your loved ones.
- Have a sounding board. Leadership needn’t be lonely, but what we often see, particularly in egoic leaders, is that they place themselves in solitary confinement. Nothing flourishes in isolation, especially not people. The best leaders let people in, they have trusted confidants that they can confide in and use as reflective listening partners. These trusted persons offer them the space and safety to explore their own minds, to release and decompress and to quite frankly, get out of their own way.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
When things aren’t adding up, start subtracting.
In our digitally connected, transient world, we’ve highly optimised our lives. With the space we’ve worked hard to create, we’ve filled the space with more… More of everything. More work, money, travel, experiences. Just more.
We’ve almost conditioned ourselves to think that being busy is normal and relaxing / having distraction free fun is wrong.
When we slow life down, we get to appreciate the little things more; we get to focus on the important things instead of the urgent things. We get to be present with our loved ones and our children, we get to enjoy our health and we get to create space between our thoughts.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I am active on LinkedIn, where I post thought-provoking content daily. You can also stop by my website and download my e-book on ‘Burnout’ or take my diagnostic scorecard to get a temperature check on your work-life balance (or lack of it).
LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/dan-stanley-bettermen/
Website — www.better-men.uk
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Dan Stanley of BetterMen: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
