Episode 139: People Leader Accelerator with Dr. Brad Harris, Ph.D.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Dr. Brad Harris. He is a professor of management and human resources at HEC Paris and the co-founder of People Leader Accelerator. HEC Paris is actually one of the top business schools in the country. You know, this podcast really started as a journey to be able to kind of unfold all things leadership, which is such a broad topic. And we've had so many different guests on over the years that have come at it from so many different perspectives. And I really enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Harris. He, um, his academic research, but also his depth of knowledge and his interaction with not just students, but business owners from literally around the world gives him a perspective that I think is just really hard to come by unless you've done this for years. I really think that this is going to serve you as you continue to kind of look into your strengths and your weaknesses as a leader and how you can get better so that ultimately you can serve your team, you can serve your customers, and grow your your business. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Brad Harris.

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Dr. Brad Harris, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Excited to have you coming all the way from Paris. I think you may have been the furthest, obviously, uh, traveled over Zoom to be able to come on the podcast. We're really excited to have you. So we love to start start with background and origin story. And so why don't you just take a few minutes and kind of take us back along your journey and kind of how you got to where you are today and helping people with their teams and developing themselves?

Yeah, thanks, Bradley. And I guess me being from Paris makes you now like an international star in the podcast world. Yes. Is that right?

Well, definitely not a star. Definitely not a star. But definitely we're an international podcast now at this point. Yes. Okay, good.

Okay, well, we're both works in progress. So right now I'm a professor of management and human resources at HEC Paris, which is one of the top business schools in the world. If you look at MBA rankings and Master of Science rankings, certainly well known in Europe, but also over in the States too, they have some visibility. How I got here, and that's kind of your question, is sort of the interesting one. It took me a long time to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and I'm very much still trying to sort some of that stuff out. I think the first clear idea I had for my career was I'm going to be a youth minister. And so this happened around high school age. And I also played basketball and I tried to continue that career at college. I went to a small D3 school in Belton, Texas called Mary Harden-Baylor. For some reason, just thought, you know what, I don't think I really want to be a minister. I'm either too cynical or something. This isn't where I need to make my connection. So I thought, I'll be a basketball coach. Well, You know, it turns out like it's helpful, not necessary, but really helpful for you to actually be good at basketball, to have some credibility there. So that also became apparent at Mary Hardin-Baylor that, you know, maybe I can find another pathway. And then I bounced around some jobs, survived the mortgage crisis in the banking industry. And then finally it's like, you know what, I really like working with young people. I really like helping people get better. I've always liked being in college, kind of wish I could stay there forever. So why not just go get a PhD? And so I really didn't know what I was getting into with the research and everything, but I thought I could do this professor gig. So I ended up at Texas A&M, got a PhD, took a job at Illinois, learned a bunch of stuff there, had some family things happen, the birth of my middle child who has special needs. So this is sort of a transformative moment. We bounced back to Fort Worth where, you know, I'm close to Fort Worth, Rockwall, Texas, where I was born. And then, uh, how did I get here? Well, this is one of those moments, and maybe you felt this too, Bradley, like the more you keep telling people like what they need to do to get better, like sometimes it starts to sink in on yourself. And one of my things with, with my undergrads and my MBAs and even these executives and People Leader Accelerator was, you know, if you really want to learn, you've got to stretch yourself. You got to do some things that are bold. And it felt like at that time, we were just coming out of the COVID pandemic, uh, you know who's not doing bold things? Brad Harris. And so we had an opportunity, and, um, maybe I was fresh off reading the McConaughey book or something really philosophical, or maybe I just watched Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson. I thought, okay, let's, let's give this a go. And that's how we're in Paris.

Wow, I love that. I love You know, you're so right that about whenever you are teaching to others anything, sharing with others how much it actually helps you to be able to absorb information yourself. I mean, I feel like I'm so honored to get to, to do this podcast to hopefully share and pour into other people. But along the way, I actually feel like that every week I get my own coaching, helping me along the way to learn from people like yourself. My dad, when I was growing up, was really big on academics, and he really wanted me to— he was a teacher at my, at my school for 30 years and an entrepreneur after school hours, and obviously still owns that, that business to this day. And, um, I really appreciate how much he instilled in me the, the importance of education. And I realize people, even some people listening to this, may have some different opinions around what kind of where traditional education is going. And we could probably have a whole podcast around that in and of itself and the experience. But the reason I bring this up is when, you know, a lot of people know that I, I went to Auburn and I'm a huge Auburn football fan. And but I really enjoyed my time of getting my degree in finance. That said, a lot of the skills and the knowledge that I learned in college did not transfer over to my entrepreneurial small business endeavors. Matter of fact, I really struggled very much from the early years of understanding basic financial statements— cash flow statement, balance sheet, incomes. Like, I had no idea what any of those were, let alone— and yet even people have questioned me.

They said, well, you got your degree in finance, why is that?

I'm curious about your— whenever you're working with leaders and executives and founders, what has been your experience from people? Because you are obviously teaching at one of the top business schools in the country. What has been your experience about taking academia into the real world?

Yeah, that's been a journey for me too. How do we take this thing that we think we know a lot about and then give it in a way that's digestible and kind of meets people where they are. I want to first echo, like, I share your background. I love being at college. I learned a lot. I was a finance major at Texas Tech in my undergrad, and then because I didn't know what to do, I concentrated on finance again in my MBA program before finally switching over to something that was more leadership-centric and a little more intrinsically interesting to me. So when we're working with executives, uh, they're actually a little bit easier to teach than undergrads because they have some context. Now they, they have, it's not uncommon. I shouldn't throw everyone in a bucket. They have some stereotypes. They have some assumptions like this academic mumbo jumbo doesn't translate. You can't possibly appreciate the speed and the complexity in which I'm working. Uh, this is especially true, um, for some of our audience, these people that are kind of out there on their own, trying to build up an agency, they're entrepreneurial. So what do we do? Uh, we spend a lot of time more teaching. So there's a couple different approaches to teaching, and I, if I'm teaching undergrads, I do a little bit of both, but there's a sage on the stage approach where like, you know, you don't know anything, I know everything, I'm going to give you all this information. And then there's this guide on the side approach, and it's a lot more like a coach. And that's where I spend my time with these folks that have the context. Like, let's break down what happened. Let's think about what issues, what challenges you got. Here's this theory. Here's this tool. Let's see if it works. And I'm really upfront. My business partners— this will drive some people crazy, Bradley, but one of the first things we talk about, the answer when we deal with people, which is very much a leadership story, is almost always, it depends. And so Like, if you're picking up a book at the airport and you're reading it, it sounds great and really definitive. There's 3 bullet points you got to take away. You finished it on a cross-country flight. Uh, you know, how do I say this tactfully? Like, you probably didn't get what you need from that book. We probably need a book that tells you, like, these are the decision points, these are the razor points where things can go either way. Um, now let's talk about ways that you might diagnose these critically to match them with your context. So for me, it's all about critical thinking, it depends, and really embracing the context with executives. I love that.

I've heard this said before that, you know, business is not a bathrobe. One size does not fit all. And so if we read Peter Thiel's book, you know, Zero to One as an example, it's like, oh, well, then that's just exactly how you have a startup. Well, I mean, he's obviously had success with that, and then that's his, that's his theory about it.

But that doesn't—

there's obviously probably some— there's some, some other people in other books out there that say the exact opposite of that, uh, from whatever he— what he's saying, just as an example. And that is a great book. But I, I totally agree with you. I think depth and nuance a lot of times are really required to apply to your specific situation. I can remember adopting blanket things and just saying, okay, well, that worked over it's absolutely going to work over here. And I think that those two things cannot necessarily be conflicting to one another about what doesn't success leave clues.

Do you?

Right. I mean, it's almost like, well, you know, shouldn't I just apply what— because it worked with somebody else who has a similar business to me, has a similar team size to me, wouldn't that work to me? And then I try to do it and it doesn't work at all.

Your thoughts? I don't have a long response here. I agree with you. I am guilty of trying to look for shortcuts and blankets, and it's not a bad idea to try things on and, and learn from them. But man, there is no one-size-fits-all. Peter Thiel's book— actually, that's a— he's listed as an author, but I think it's one of his students, like, summarized his lecture notes on that Zero to One. But that's a great example. It's fascinating. There's some good points, but it's really geared toward high-growth venture capital startups. Which for me and you is probably not the right thing. Exactly.

Right.

And heck, you're Huntsville, Alabama. I'm Paris, France. Like, we could probably say forget the high growth thing. There's probably just differences between like Bay Area, California and the Stanford mindset than where we're at that would affect anybody we hire. So I'm with you on this one.

Yeah. Speaking of that, kind of staying on the same thoughts, as I was preparing and thinking about this, I really wanted to ask you, around just leadership development. And when I think about when I started my business, nobody taught me how to be a leader. Um, I think I had some natural God-given gifts in terms of being able to talk to people and, and sell. And I think a lot of people, a lot of people listening to this can say, yeah, I mean, I kind of had that skill. Maybe, maybe it was actually your sales skills that allowed you to have the opportunity that you have now, right? Is because you had performed at a certain level. But man, looking back on it, I had no idea what it meant to be a leader. I had no idea. And whether it was reading a book, I mean, I was just thrust into it and was trying to kind of find my way through it. How do you all support somebody that's in that you know, not just early stage, but in that first 5 years or so, that as a, as a business owner trying to lead a team, whether that's 2 or 10 or 20, um, trying to figure it out, trying to learn what it means to actually manage and lead people to a result.

Yeah. Um, boy, uh, this is like a multi-episode podcast we're about to record here, or what? So there's a lot that we could A lot of directions we could go on this. So your audience is primarily not limited to— we have a lot of small business owners, a lot of diversity here, but there's a lot of folks that are running insurance agents, right? And I happen to have a brother-in-law in Chamblee, Georgia, Jake Onneson at State Farm. Jake from State Farm is his tagline. Super clever, right? I really admire— he's likable, he's charismatic. He might be a little bit like you, Bradley, in that he can sell. He's friendly, he's gregarious, but he's also a young guy and now he's got 2 or 3 people responding to, or he's responsible for, and he's trying to figure out like, how do I scale myself, my business, uh, in a model that doesn't look like I just work harder or I just make more hours out of the day to get these things done on my own. So I have a lot of empathy for that, for folks that are trying to do this hustle like this. Okay, so if we're talking about leadership development, I would first like, let's, let's dumb this thing down. Like, what does leadership mean? And we won't go through the exercise, you and I, um, but if you do this in a class, it doesn't matter if it's undergrad, MBAs, or executives, if there's 30 people in the room, you're going to get 30 different answers. What is leadership? I say, okay, well, all of these could be right. Like, I'm not going to fight you on what it means, and like, uh, your Eisenhower quote's great over here and all this stuff, but Um, Eisenhower is quite interesting. Uh, but it's really just, if we're going straight academics, a social process of influence. And when you say leadership is just a social process of influence, okay, now we've got some ingredients. Now, social process is like a funny word. It's almost like sausage, like it— I think we know what it is, but we're not sure everything that went into it, you know. And so I would, I would break it down further. It's It's power and the ability to influence are the two things that we're worried about. So bases of power and influence. And I think influence is cool. Like, I like this lens here because it's simple. We know what it means. We're getting people or some collective to do something they otherwise wouldn't have done. It can be manipulation if you want to be dark about it, but it's really about moving people in a direction that they wouldn't have otherwise done. Influence, very much related to sales. And then I think we're— where my students and I, we spend a lot of time wrestling, and we don't— we can't do it on the podcast because we don't have 3 months of a semester here to do it. But we spend a lot of time like, what is power? What does power look like? And how do we use that power in a way that feels right for us? It feels authentic, it feels ethical, it feels moral. But how do we get people to do stuff? And this is, this is where I'm evolving immensely, but, uh, it's, it's really a lot like sales, Bradley. And we had a program at my former employer, TCU, uh, a guy named Zach Hall and Brandon Chikotsky developed this sales center. And I was the academic director of our leadership program. And I can't tell you, like, they had that program in place for one year. And I thought, and I don't want to be too self-deprecating here, but I thought, man, we should just get rid of some of what we're doing in the leadership program and just throw all these people into sales. And like, this is influence.

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This is what it is, and it's easier to understand in sales because you have clear wins and losses and things like this. But like, if we can, if we can get people to understand what leadership is, it's not all this pie in the sky stuff. It's a social process of influence. And then we can move on to actual real-life transaction points, whether it's sales or trying to get a subordinate to do something or delivering critical feedback that helps someone actually improve. Now we've laid the foundation and the groundwork for people to actually start practicing and improving all these things that really matter on the day-to-day, besides the visioning and the, you know, being Elon Musk and saying weird stuff, but you're also, you know, super rich, so you get away with it, you know, all these things, you know.

You know, I've never heard the parallel between leadership and sales until you just brought that up, and your breakdown of leadership and how that does parallel to sales That's really good. That was actually helpful. I have never thought of it that way. So along those lines, what are your thoughts around— so I'm actually curious what you're going to say to this, because, because my thoughts have evolved on this, on this topic over time. If you'd asked me this question 5 years ago, I would have given a certain answer. Now, now I actually think it's a little bit different. Specifically for small business owners. Again, maybe, okay, um, high-tech VC-backed startups, different. But the businesses that we're talking about, the businesses we run, it seems a little bit different. And that is, what is your thoughts around— so a business owner comes to the table and has some natural gifts, has some things we've happened to be talking about charisma and sales ability, et cetera. But there's many others versus having some, you know, some weaknesses that they have and some gaps that they need to fill in their leadership. And so the prevailing wisdom is focus only on your strengths, double down, triple down on your strengths, and just, you know, push to the side your weaknesses. What are your thoughts around that?

Uh, I'll, I'll go first in the spirit of an honest Q&A here, but then I want to hear your thoughts on this too, to see, because I can imagine how this evolves over time and as we learn and we see different things about ourselves. Even I'm a big believer that if you want to keep leveling up in your career, no matter what that profession is, you're going to face these moments. They're not all the time, but you're going to face moments where, to borrow from Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here is not going to get you there. And that means you got to question some assumptions. And I heard my, my co-author on a, on a book that I recently wrote— he was on your podcast a few weeks ago— use this quote also. But I, I believe there's something to this, and I believe that's what leads you to podcasts about getting better and leads you to buy books about leadership development, sign up for EMBA programs. So I think You've got to know when to lean into your strengths for sure. And it's great to have an advantage, but we can't like have these gifts that were— I don't know if they were God-given or somehow we were nurtured to have these gifts around charisma or influence and sales and this sort of stuff. Likeability, physical attractiveness even is a positive correlate of leadership. But we can't, we can't be born on second base and wake up thinking we can hit a double. Like, we still have a lot of work to do. So I think we, we always need to be supplementing that. But at the same time, I had a student, you know, I get away with a lot in undergrads. Like, you, how can I say this, some people are like me when I was an undergrad, and they're not, they're kind of floating in and out of attention spans. But, but occasionally you get some really good critical thinkers, and I had that at TCU several times. And some, someone said, well, you know, you keep seeing what got you here won't get you there. But, you know, I can't keep thinking— like, there's probably a lot of times when you got to remind yourself that what got you here is what got you here and not deviate too far from it. So I do think there's— we have a lot of— we have a lot of runway where we can lean into our strengths, but we do hit walls from time to time when we're just tilting at windmills. We can't get any better by just leaning into our strengths. We're already there.

Totally.

Now, what's your thoughts on this?

Yeah, so mine evolved. So I, I had— I didn't even know really anything about strengths and weaknesses, I don't know, 7 years ago. Let's go back, 2015. Um, I don't think I even really knew exactly what that was, to be, you know, to focus on your strengths and StrengthsFinders assessment and things of that nature and other types of assessment— Kolbe, DiSC, Myers-Briggs, etc. So it was probably around that time, and I just kind of blindly adopted, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, so whatever my strengths are, that's what I'm going to do. So Dan Sullivan, who I obviously love Dan Sullivan's work and Strategic Coach, and he calls it unique ability. And so you do your unique ability and just kind of delegate everything else. I mean, I'm really simplifying a really important topic. So I get it, but I have evolved to say, well, I think that if a lid in your leadership is holding the business back, because you have not focused on developing that part of you. So for some people, visioning, putting together a strategy just doesn't come natural to them. But then they have this other aspect of it. What if the lack of that is holding the business back? You owe it to your team, to your customers, to the business, to your community, to yourself, to your family, to go and develop that strength or develop that aspect of it. Now, Can you take that from a weakness and make it a strength? Maybe not. But if that weakness is holding you back, then that's a constraint on the business and it's your job to debottleneck that, which could be a skill, a belief, or trait that you have. So that's my thoughts of how my perspective on that has evolved over time.

I think there's room for us to have opinions like this, but, uh, so I really appreciate where you're coming from. Let's, I mean, let's, let's take it out of business and out of insurance agents, out of academia for sure. And let's, there's, there's really cool examples of people that have had to kind of, uh, lean away from some of their, their strengths that I, that I think we can give. I'll give one quick one. So Dave Grohl, So this is the, the lead singer of the Foo Fighters, former drummer of Nirvana. You know this guy, I suspect several of your listeners will too. Well, there's a time, um, post-Nirvana, but Dave Grohl goes out and he, he lays down all the tracks himself to make the first Foo Fighters album. He writes about this in his book The Storyteller, but there's also things in Rolling Stone, there's Howard Stern clips. He talks about this a lot. Well, he was making, um, I guess it's Nothing Left to Lose, I think was the album they were working on at the time. And he's got this, this drummer, and this drummer's really accomplished. And Dave Grohl is smart to know, like, you know, I'm the lead man, I'm also a pretty good drummer, um, but I need that, I need a drummer in the band so I can actually focus on being a lead. But they're in the studio recording and, you know, something happens. Anyway, Dave goes back to the studio and re-records the drum tracks over this takes the other guy out, records his own, then calls the guy and says, hey, I did this. I guess Dave kind of knew like this is probably not the right thing or there's going to be some backlash. And the guy quit, you know, he said like, that's, that's BS, man. Like, that's, that's violating like what my contribution to this band, like, I hate it. And so there's some debate about how civil it was, but, but Grohl learned from this. And then a few years later, Taylor Hawkins, the late Taylor Hawkins, Taylor Hawkins, the, the newish drummer for Foo Fighters, comes in and somebody says like, or Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses says, hey, uh, what's it like being the drummer for the best drummer of the '90s? Or something like that. And, and Hawkins has this moment like, I gotta quit this band, like, I can't be the drummer, I can't record. I know the last guy quit because Dave recorded over him. And, uh, and, and Dave had learned from it, apparently. This is my kind of attribution on the situation and said like, no, you got to do it. And really nurtured that and said, I'm not going to be a perfectionist. Like, it's more important that we have you invested in this band than us to get everything the way I think it should be. And so, I mean, I think that's the case of the perfectionism and the hard work drove Grohl to a lot of success. But at some point he had to let some of that go so he could actually have a band that could tour and be this massive thing we know as the Foo Fighters.

What a great analogy.

That was awesome.

That was—

that's such a great story. And that leads me to a really— we kind of have focused the first part on leadership. I really want to talk to you about culture too, because in my mind, as you were telling that story, I was just thinking around the culture of the band that they had, right? Because I mean, I'm sure there is— I'm not— I don't know what that culture is, but I mean, at the end of the day, they've got to be— they've got to be together. What are your thoughts around culture? And what does building a healthy culture actually look like to you when someone says that? Like, how would you even begin to define that?

Yeah, yeah, great question. I love it. Culture is one of those things that I think is important. I know it when I see it. But I think it's also this term that we use that we bandied about without knowing exactly what it is. And we use it as an excuse for a lot of things. I, I kind of think about culture as what are the norms, like how does, how do things actually get done around here? And then do we have a clear understanding of the values of the firm or some sort of shared understanding of what the values are? Maybe not of the firm, but of this working group, what are the values that we share and we're committed to? And then how do we actually live those out? And so if, if you got a team of 5 or 10 or whatever and you're thinking about culture that's a small enough group that you might have a toxic employee. But more likely or not, the person in charge, the owner of the agency in this case, is probably still the main driver of the culture. And what he or she is doing is what's going to dictate the norms and the acceptance or the rejection of some values. So it's values and behavioral norms, if you ask me. And how do we get that? We get— we got to be very intentional. And I really recommend taking time, I don't know what it is, once every 6 months to think about what values matter most. And here I'm talking 3 to 5. If you got 10 values, you got too many. You're not making choices. If you got 3 to 5, now you can say, yes, this is in our value proposition, and no, that's not.

Yeah, I love that. First time I, first time I took a stab at core values, I probably— I don't know this, I wish I could recall I probably read a Patrick Lencioni book, would be my guess. And I said, core values, yeah, need to do that. That's a good idea. What I want my core values to be. And I think it came up with like 12, and I was like, I'm gonna put them in a wheel. And, uh, you know, I, I thought they were good. I didn't get any, any buy-in from the team. It was just, you know, in a team meeting and And I said, you know what we'll do? We'll just plaster these on the wall. That'll make them stick. Literally make them stick.

Yeah.

That fell apart because I didn't do anything in the behaviors to actually instill those core values. I broke every rule of trying to actually install core values into the organization. Number 1, too many. Number 2, no collaboration within the team whatsoever. And certainly did not try to do things to actually be consistent with installing them into the business.

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Well, welcome to the club. I think I've done this also. At least you learned that it wasn't perfect, I guess.

Yeah, I did. I did. I was like Dave Grohl. I learned like what not to do basically in those, you know, I mean, oftentimes This is more like a therapy session than anything else, looking back on it. But yeah, I totally, I totally agree with you. You know, you have some thoughts around, around core values, but then also you kind of mentioned it there, and I'd like for you to just get, uh, go a little bit deeper, is that, you know, values can be empty words. Now, they can be certainly a lot more than that if they're handled the right way, but you really talk about behaviors and the importance of that with the values. Can you just talk about that?

Uh, you are the first person that's just organically asked me this question, and I hope I don't screw it up. I love this topic of values and behaviors. And so, uh, by the way, Lencioni is fine. I have come full circle on Lencioni. I used to reject him because he's not citing academic research. How could someone possibly use these fables to tell stories and teach us? And now I'm like, You know what? He's actually not too far off, and it's a whole lot more entertaining than some of the things that I read. So you know what? I'm going to give you Lencioni. That's a good way to go. OK, values and behaviors. This started for me a long time ago. I read this book by Jack Welch called Winning. And now Jack Welch and that phrase winning have kind of taken on their own life forms. And we should definitely not model our management style after Jack Welch. Uh, wholesale anymore. Like, that, that model's gone.

Yeah.

But he talks about mission statements and value statements and how they're a bunch of hot air if you don't get them right. And one of the things that stuck with me, and I think he's right on this, is that instead, when you're going through the exercise of defining core values for an organization, a team, or something like that, just swap them for behaviors. And then you can change the label later. But like, let's go for 5 behaviors that we want to see. And there's this funny line between values and behaviors. And I'm working up to another musician story here that I, maybe you'll like, but we gotta be careful not to say these things are completely overlapping. Like we need behaviors because without behaviors, we have no way to reflect our values. And then if you can't reflect your values in a meaningful way, why even have them? They're just, they're nothing like, like kindness as a value. We can do that. But if you're not behaving like it, who cares? But we fall like, and I'm talking about our followers and ourselves here, Brad Harris is very much included into this example. We fall into these traps where we start confusing our behaviors with our values. So the direction doesn't, the arrow doesn't go both ways all the time. So here's one for me. Like I used to love trying to be funny in class when I was teaching. And I kind of got this, like I'm tall and just awkward enough that I think people are like, oh, that's like a dad joke, and they give me the benefit of the doubt. But I realized when I went to Illinois from teaching at Texas A&M, like, all of a sudden, like, 40% of our students were, were Asian. They were from— they were not from Texas.

They were—

it was a very— it was a lot more diverse. My humor wasn't playing well, and at times I think my humor was really off-putting and distracting from the lesson. I had convinced myself for like a whole semester, like, I'm not changing, dang it, because this is who I am. Like, humor is just part of the Brad Harris value proposition. Looking back, like, to say humor is a value is just— it just sounds ridiculous. But this is what I convinced myself. I don't know that I said that out loud, but that's how I was acting. But when I started thinking about values, like, no, you know what, Brad, you got to read the room a little bit. You got to practice what you preach. You Humor is not the value. You used humor as a way to probably like hide insecurities, but really, if we're being virtuous about it, as a way to connect with students so that you could get your content across in a more personal way. And so I realized like, I gotta be able to scrap that behavior and find a different behavior to live out that value. So we gotta watch out for these, these traps we, we put ourselves into where we, we've got this behavior that we're not willing to change when really That behavior is not the value we were trying to live out from the jump. OK, I'll be quick here, Bradley, but you got to hear this. 2018, New York Times ran this profile on Jimmy Buffett. And they said— the title of this article was something like, Jimmy Buffett Doesn't Live the Jimmy Buffett Lifestyle Anymore. And I love this. It is an exposé on authenticity and the tensions, uh, that come with that whole construct and ever evolving authenticity and stuff. But basically it said it started out that he was a beach bum that was just— he was going to make a living smoking pot, drinking rum or margarita. I don't know what his jam is, but singing beach songs. But now he's got Margaritaville casinos. He really doesn't drink tequila anymore, and he He licensed his own barbecue sauce. He was at the time overseeing a Broadway production, a musical of himself, uh, and he lived in a mall in New York City of all places.

Wow.

And so he's— they're interviewing him and he's kind of doing the exercise too. And the authenticity is very much a narrative, which is a pro and a con for that construct. But he— I guess he convinced himself like it's not about the beach bum sitting on the beach and not going to work and doing these other things that we mentioned. For him, the values, it took him a while to find it. The value is that he's going to be a champion for every man that's trying to stick it to their boss. And so now, in this way, all of these things make sense because they are still behaviors toward the behavior or toward the value of sticking it to the man. So I think we all have to be a little bit like Jimmy Buffett in that regard and know, like, we're not stuck on behaviors. We should be stuck on values, not specific behaviors.

Oh, it's so good. It just makes me think, uh, a few, maybe 2 months ago, my wife and I, we have a new, um, amphitheater that just opened up here in Huntsville, and Kenny Chesney came to town. Well, you know, Kenny Chesney has that beach, like the whole thing, right? Right. So, you know, everything about it, which by the way I'm not really a big Kenny Chesney fan, but his concerts are really good and he's got a lot of really good hits. I'm just saying, if you ever, you know, even if you're not a country music fan, he puts on a really good show. Um, it really was to that exact thing of, you know, what, what I had in my head with his songs and how he was on stage, like, that needed to almost like match up, you know, of authenticity. And it did. But I don't know what it's like whenever he leaves stage. Is he actually really like that? I mean, who knows? Maybe he is.

Um, That was a really good side story, Bradley. Like, I don't know how we got on Kenny, but that's, that's excellent.

Yeah, um, I, I went back and I looked because I knew, I knew a couple of them, or I knew one actually, um, but I wanted to look up Enron's core values. And so while you were talking a minute ago, I pulled it up. Enron's core values were integrity, communication, respect, and excellence.

Now you could argue for a period of time that they were pretty excellent.

If you go back and look at their sales numbers in 1998, 1999, I mean, they were pretty incredible right before the downfall of Enron. But just because they had the core value of integrity, they were clearly not living that core value out. I mean, that's the most extreme example of core values done terribly wrong.

Boy, that's a great example. Uber has— the old Uber under Travis Kalanick has some great values too that you know, everybody should check out and have a good laugh at. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah.

Integrity. Integrity number one for Enron. That's good.

Integrity number one for Enron. Yeah, that's kind of, uh, comical to you.

Humor. Humor.

Maybe that was their humor core value.

I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, well, last question, and then we'll, uh, we'll wrap up and go into, you know, rapid fire. If somebody is wanting to— so they hear this, and, and we've just had really kind of a, a back and forth around leadership development, my own personal growth. And at the end of the day, I think life and— but also business just really can't be done alone. And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of times you can have a really big team, you can be doing really, really well, and if you really can get some people to open up to you about how they're actually feeling. They can feel very isolated. They can feel very alone. They can feel that their problems are unique to them. Nobody else can understand them in their situation. And that's simply not the case. And a lot of times we need some folks to kind of walk alongside us as a guide to be able to, you know, call us on our BS and to be able to say, you know what, actually, I don't think you're— I don't, I don't think now, knowing the situation, that your approach there is the right thing to do. Can you speak to the importance of having guides, mentors, coaches in your life to be able to, to help guide you along your journey?

Uh, yeah, I can. So we definitely need these, these folks in our lives, and we need them from different sources too. Like, we know social support is one of the most important predictors of our leadership development. That can come from people at work, it can come from subordinates, supervisors, but we also get this stuff from our churches, from our families, from our other organizations. So yeah, uh, one thing that struck me as you were talking, and this is something that we teach folks too, usually around the topic of feedback and having clear one-on-ones with your subordinate, is clarity is kindness. Like, we, a lot of us, not all of us, have this tendency to be overly nice, and we don't, we haven't done the legwork And then once— even if we do the legwork to be able to give candid feedback, we lack the courage to give it because we're afraid people are going to respond poorly. But we're not giving people the feedback they need to get better. Um, and I mentioned the legwork. You cannot just drop in and drop the bomb on somebody once or twice a year, like, you stink and you got to get better or you get fired. Like, this has to be an ongoing, safe conversation. You have to invest in them as a person. We know that people want purpose and they want meaning and they want autonomy and all these things, but I don't think it's lost. One of the most powerful predictors alongside those other job characteristics is this idea of relationships and kinship at work. And we want these strong bonds and we want them with our boss. And I think I've done a really male-centric job of citing people, including McConaughey, Buffett, and Dave Grohl now. But there is a really interesting book that I've enjoyed reading called You Have More Influence Than You Think, and it's by Vanessa Bonds at Cornell. And there's a lot of different ways she goes in this book. But I think one thing that I would encourage your listeners to— these people are trying to grow a team— is whether we think we're Ted Lasso or we're the most relatable person in the group or not, like we have some level of authority over people and they're not giving us clear feedback. They're also afraid to admit when they don't know what to do and all of these things. So it's on us to cultivate relationships and be proactive in creating an environment, a culture, if you will, where we can actually help each other get better.

That's so good. That's so good. Really quick. Question. What are your thoughts around, um, 360 reviews for the leader? Because in my mind, I was, I was, I was kept thinking around feedback loops, like how important it is for you to be able to, to give feedback to them on a regular basis, but then also for them to be able to give feedback. And then sometimes, I don't know, different thoughts about this, how often you should actually have an anonymous 360 review done on you.

If you've got a big enough team and people feel safe that like their responses aren't going to be identified, maybe there's some value there. And maybe you get more from that than you do these one-on-ones, because again, there's a power dynamic of just asking your subordinate like, you know, what do you think of me? I think this is one of those cases where if you're going to get 360 feet, I guess it's not really 360, it's just from Well, it could be your regional director or something like that and your subordinates, but you have to, you have to go in with the mindset of— I listened to one of your Bite-Sized Podcasts the other day and you had this good thing about like the most important thing, the MIT, and it was protecting your own confidence. And I don't want to encourage people to be egotistical there, but I think that's right. Like you have to acknowledge your subordinates don't know everything you're doing behind the scenes. They don't know also that you don't know what you're doing some of the time. And so I think if you get this feedback and it's anonymous, anonymity like does weird things to people. Like they may cut you deep, but you've got to remember like the reason I did this was for me to get better and I've got to protect that confidence. I will say anytime you put a feedback mechanism in, Bradley, you better be dang sure that you're acknowledging that feedback in a way that people can see. And if you ask for feedback 2 or 3 times in a row and nothing changes because of it, you've counteracted any positive effects that are possible from that process. So you better make sure there's at least some small wins or small changes that come from that feedback process.

Oh, that's so good. Yeah, you better be prepared to, no matter what it is, that you're able to— you're in a place that you can actually accept that for what it is. And because if you do it and don't, and don't receive that in the, in the way, like, they, they feel safe and they open up, and then you don't handle that well in the moment, and then you don't change, you'll never, you'll, they'll never be open with you again after that, you know. They'll just get over, they'll just tell you whatever it is you want to hear to make you feel good just so that you, you stay off. So I, I think that's great. All right, you ready for some, uh, rapid-fire questions?

Yeah, I'm ready.

All right, here we go. This is my E9. What's the last book that you read?

Uh, it's a book called Sellout, um, and it's about these punk rock bands that made it big and some that didn't. And it's very much this idea of what we're talking about, like how do you scale up in a way that's true to your values.

Uh, you guys, you, uh, co-authored a book. So other than your book, which we'll, uh, make sure that we let people know about in just a second, What's another book that you would recommend to business owners and leaders?

Yeah, I have strong convictions around this. Put down whatever you bought at the airport and buy Jeff Pfeffer's Leadership BS. He's actually got a new one out called Seven Rules of Power, but just start with Leadership BS. It will make you uncomfortable. It will force you to think about hard things about leadership, but it is a good ground map for actually learning how to Influence people better.

All right, it's in my Amazon cart in about 15 minutes.

Okay, okay, okay.

Maybe, maybe, maybe my Audible. Uh, you obviously live in one of the best, most amazing places in the world, but what's one, uh, of your favorite places that you've ever traveled to?

Uh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, or Saigon. Man, that place is incredible. And I don't even know why it's incredible, but it's a place you got to check out.

You're on a 10-hour flight from, from flying from Paris back to maybe Dallas, Texas, and you can sit next to anybody. Who would you sit next to and why?

Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that question. My co-author on your show said he would just buy the extra seats and not sit next to anyone, which, you know, he copped out on several of your questions. I, I would if, if we're in first class, like, I want to sit next to my guy Dirk Nowitzki. But if we're in coach, we— I can't, I can't be next to a 7-footer. But I gotta just ask that guy, like, what it was like to come in as a, as a kid, get beat up for the first couple years in the league, go all the way to the Finals, squander a huge lead, and then wait till really, really late in your career, 2011, and, uh, and turn it all around. What, what is that possibly like? It's awesome.

We're like 2 years into, almost 3 years into the podcast, and so finally somebody gives me an answer that's sports related. Even I think I, I've said I would sit next to a business guy, but, uh, I think really down deep I'd probably sit next to Tiger Woods. Like, that's who I'd really like to talk to, you know, about, about golf, or, or maybe Bo Jackson, possibly. Um, what was the best thing, um, that came out of COVID for you?

Uh, best thing that came out of COVID it just forced me out of my comfort zone. Like, I couldn't get— I really am someone that struggles with trying to get external validation for the work that I do. Like, I don't know where that comes from, but when you can't go in and be physically proximal with your co-workers or your students and you're just talking to a screen with people that aren't paying attention like it forces you to think about, is what I'm doing important and how do I get okay with it? So that is— and I hated every second of it, but that is probably the best thing. That, and I ran a lot. I ran like 2,500 miles during the COVID break or something like that. So, uh, but probably the first one is more impactful long term.

The number one reason why someone should consider getting their MBA?

The number one reason is— gosh, I don't know, man. I'll give you two. Like, build out your cohort connections, build out your social network. And two, really use that as a launch or a pivot that makes sense. Don't go get an MBA to get one promotion straight up the same ladder you were already going and being dissatisfied with. Mm.

What is one of your biggest leadership pet peeves?

You got to prioritize. I cannot stand leaders that just will not commit to anything. You got to make decisions, you got to own them, and you got to do it in a way that's true to who you are. So ruthless prioritization.

When you're not working, what do you love to do in your free time?

I'm a runner through and through.

You got a great place to run, there's no doubt about that. Yeah, uh, it is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast after all. What is your best piece of leadership advice you've ever received?

Uh, the best piece of leadership advice I ever— I think I've ever gotten was to be me but more. That really helped me feel good that, you know, I've got some of these strengths that we talk about, but there's room to grow. And I don't know why this "be you, but more" phrase has stuck with me over time, but man, it's just, it's sufficiently ambiguous in a way that always lets me find meaning in it.

Oh, that's good. That's going in my journal. That's going in my journal later tonight. I'm going to, I'm going to write that down. I like picking up the little things like that. This has been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it. Where do people— where would you want to point people to for the book? And then also, if they want to connect with you guys about your accelerator, where would you like for them to go?

Yeah, thanks. So books on Amazon, people scaling for success, people priorities for high-growth organizations. You can just reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's Brad Harris. If you're an HR leader, not just a general leader, but an HR leader, it's peopleleaderaccelerator.com. But I, I would love for people to reach out with questions. I'm not selling anything right now other than that book, and I'll give you the secrets for free.

Awesome. It's been great having you on. Hope to have you back on in the future.

I appreciate you, Bradley.

You know, I always try to give, uh, maybe 2 to 3 real key takeaways, and I want to give you my 3 big takeaways from that conversation with, uh, Brad and then share with you my quote that he shared, that he shared, that I thought was awesome. Number one is whenever he talked about, you know, it depends. That's one thing I take away. It depends. And it really becomes like practicing, you know, they talk about practicing medicine. It's kind of like practicing business is what we're doing. And so it really does depend. Depth and nuance is required. You're dealing with humans, you're dealing with people, and people are inherently complex. And so that was my first takeaway. Second one was the parallel he gave between sales and leadership. And I'd never heard that before, as I mentioned in the episode itself. So I thought that was great. And then number 3, just the, just the importance of him diving into, yes, the value of core values, no pun intended, but then behaviors and where they fit. And then the quote that I love is whenever he said, be me, but more. Be me, but more. That was great. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn, and then you can pick up his book Scaling for Success on Amazon. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors: DirectClicks, Rock Solid, Club Capital, and Coach P Consulting. You know, one of the things I haven't talked about as much with Coach P is that once a month he's going to do agent-only calls. And so a lot of times on those twice-weekly calls, this is where your team members are actually able to sit in and hear from some of his team members and get behind the scenes of what are the actual plays that they're running. But a lot of times as we just talked with Dr. Harris, you want to be able to know that other business owners and entrepreneurs are going through some of the same things that you're going through, some of the same struggles. And that's why he does agent-only calls. He has some tracking mechanisms in place so you can see how everyone in his community is doing. So for you and for your team, make sure you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast whenever you reach out to David and his team, and he'll give you an entire month off, your very first month off, when you mention that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. We're getting close to the end of the year. We're getting in the last few months. And so you want to get the ball across the goal line. You want to get the ball in the end zone on the goals that you have this year, and you want to be able to feed your team with some really solid leads that they're going to be able to convert. And so you can get a return on your investment, right? So, I mean, if you're spending $5,000 a month total in marketing and that's some percentage of your top line gross revenue, and I'm just using a round ballpark number, you want to know that every dollar of that is actually going to get you some quality leads. You got to be able to track that. Well, how do you know what you're actually getting from the things that you're spending money on? And so having a scoreboard and dashboard is so important, but also having transparency, somebody that can share with you, these are the targets and these are the ranges we want to fit in. I mean, sure, can you set up a Google Ads account yourself and try to go and run the ads? You can. But not knowing exactly what the campaigns that are working and the campaigns that are compliant for your company is really incredible. Make sure— incredibly important— make sure you go to directclicksinc.com. Directclicksinc.com. I was talking to a business owner just a couple of days ago. It's actually last Thursday. This is on a Tuesday when I'm recording this. And he mentioned, hey, does this make sense for me to have somebody do this on my team? And I said, yes, it does. If you go back, we recorded— I don't know if it's, uh, probably will have dropped by the time we get to this podcast, but it's with Rob Dubé. And he talked about the 10 Disciplines. And he says, as a business owner, don't do $25 an hour work. And that's not to diminish the importance of $25 an hour work. Matter of fact, it's a $50,000 job, roughly. For somebody on your team. But the value that you bring to the business is so much more important for you to be spending your time on those much more higher leveraged activities. A lot of times people call them income-producing activities. So you want to be able to get an assistant for you so that you can level up. Make sure you go to rocksolidassistance.com, even if you've just casually interested in, uh, talking to someone, possibly getting an assistant and kind of working through— I'm not sure, is this the right time for me to do that. And I know a lot of people have had questions to me about, I'm not so sure where to even begin with an assistant. Where would be the first place? What are some of the things that they would do? Well, Tracy and her team can really walk you through that and give you some of the ideas and best practices of some of the initial things. And then you and your assistant, you'll be able to work through some of the things for you because they care about matching you up with a really quality assistant. You know, they, they have a two-sided business. They want to match really great clients like all of you who listen to the podcast, along with really awesome, amazing assistants. RockSolidAssistance.com. I was just talking to Mike and the team. They just got back from a huge conference that went incredibly well. And the growth that Club Capital has had has been because they are getting referrals from people that listen to the podcast and things that they've been able to— the insights they've they've been able to glean from their financials, something that was just kind of an afterthought, maybe a once-a-year thing, to now it becomes really a driver and an engine in their business to be able to make decisions off of. Just a couple of minutes ago, I was talking about, you know, making the investments in your marketing and having the dashboards around marketing metrics. And Matt Jones and I talk about those quite often. But then where does that fit in also with the financials, right? So the marketing metrics ultimately lead to leads, which lead to sales, and those sales lead to, you know, sales in your business, revenue, commissions into your business. Well, being able to manage all that and having that together in one place and then having perspective of your peers of what they're investing in and where they're not investing is incredibly important skill set for you to be able to absorb. But doing that and putting all of that together is not a good use of your time. And that's where Club Capital comes in. So make sure you go to club.capital, sign up for one of the webinars. Or be able to book a no-obligation demo with somebody on the team, club.capital. All right, everyone, it's a great episode. I enjoy talking to Brad and his journey. I wish I was in Paris. If you've not checked us out on YouTube, you can see his background. He had a really cool backdrop there, and it made me want to get to— I've never been to Paris, so I'd love to go to Paris. So Brad, if you're still there, then maybe we can have a, have a beer in Paris at some point. Alright everyone, until next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is The Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.