The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership – Adam Bryant

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out. Today. We're talking about making the transition from manager to leader. I think it's timely topic anytime because as you're growing, there's always people that you want to elevate the leadership. Maybe you want to elevate your leadership. I was just having a conversation with one of our clients yesterday who has a key manager on the team that really wants to step up into a senior leader position. So I hope he's listening to the show. Everybody, my name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with a tip show and an interview show. Little something to help you grow and scale your company and to scale up as a leader. And today's conversation is really about developing your leadership. And you know if you don't develop, if you don't develop your team, then you're going to hold the company back. So that's the point of our conversation today. And before we get into all that, I want to tell you remind you about our Growth Navigator coaching program. Companies between 10 and 100 people. Is that you? Companies between 1 and 20 million, maybe that's you. So these like early stage scaling up companies, we have a program for you. I mean we have programs up through a billion as well. But our growth navigator program, scalingcoach.com navigator is a program with weekly support to help you learn and grow your team for you and your leadership team to learn and grow all the Scaling up tools, the Gallup strengths tools and much more@scalingcoach.com navigator. All right, all right. Hey, I want to welcome to the show Adam Bryant. Adam, I didn't ask where you are today. Are you in New York?

New Orleans, actually. We moved here a few years ago to follow our two daughters.

Awesome. They both have good food.

Exactly.

And follow Your kids is a good call. Adam Bryant is the author of the Leap to Leader. He's a former New York Times columnist. He interviewed thousands of leaders over time about their journey and their stories. And I love this kind of a show and conversation because he's going to share with us all kinds of great stuff. So that's Adam Bryant, and we're talking about his book and the ideas here of the Leap to Leader. How do we take somebody from something where they're responsible for something and actually develop them into leadership? He also leads up a company that does leadership development, Exco Group. And a lot of people do work, work in this realm. But your work with and speaking to thousands of leaders, I think is what really helps. The learning from that is deep. So thanks for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks, Bill. Really appreciate it.

So why don't you, you know, I told the highlights of that, but why don't you talk about how you came up with the idea for the column originally and then how your view of leaders evolved.

Sure. Happy to. So I was a journalist for 30 years, 18 years at the New York Times. I was a reporter and editor and I was a business report for a number of years, interviewed a lot of CEOs, different companies, different industries, and asked them the usual questions that business reporters ask CEOs about. Tell me about, you know, your strategy, competitive landscape. And I just found the more time I spent with CEOs, the more I wanted to set those questions aside and basically ask them, like, how do you do what you do and how did you learn to do what you do? I just became really intrigued with them as human beings. And so I rolled all that up into a very simple what if in 2009, which is what if? I sat down with CEOs and never asked them a single question about their companies and instead just ask them about early influences that really shaped them as leaders and how they deal with the universal challenges of leadership, building teams and culture and how you hire and best career life advice. So that was the initial idea and sort of go upstream my journey of into leadership. And that's really where it started. So I interviewed 525 CEOs for the Corner office over a decade. Left the Times about six years ago to join my current firm. Went all in on LinkedIn. I've got four interview series with board directors, CHROs, CEOs interviewed hundreds more. And boy, it's been a fascinating time the last few years. I don't need to tell you, I mean, leadership has gotten five to 10 times harder and everybody's trying to figure out the playbook for navigating during this time. And to answer your question about how it's informed my thinking about leadership, I mean, I really come down to the idea that I think there's three really good currencies of leadership. If you're going to talk about leadership, I think there's three things. One of them is insights. Tell me something that makes. Makes me feel smarter about the world, about people, about organizations. Second, tell me a story to bring that insight to life. Because that's how we're wired as human beings. Of course. Right? We remember things through stories. Stories make things feel real. And then the third thing is like, give me a framework, a tip, a tool, an approach, some tactic so that I can take that insight, go back to my team on Monday and put it into action. So those are kind of my swim lanes.

Yeah, it's a really useful thing. You know, I love your insight about the typical CEO interview, right? Tell me about your business, your product, your service, the problem you solve, that kind of thing, how you got here, this moment, the funding round, whatever it is. And I think it's hard to do well. I mean, I'm fascinated with it and what they did and stuff, but so much of it is filled with, like, dressed up stuff and not the real story. And so if you focus and say, okay, tell me about your journey, it's a little. I mean, there are people who do it. One of my favorite podcasts, How I Built this Guy Raz, is a fantastic thing, but they take a lot of work to get under the surface there and tell the real story of the growth of the company.

Yeah, exactly. And to me, almost one of the biggest compliments, especially when I was doing Corner Office, I did all those interviews and person, usually there was a comms person in the conference room and sometimes they would look at me and say, I couldn't prepare my CEO for this interview. Right. Because, you know, how can a comms person, like, when I ask questions, like, tell me about when you were a kid, what were you doing outside of class? Tell me about your parents, whoever raised you, Tell me about how they influenced your leadership style. It's like, that's not a corporate marketing bullet point. Right? Like, and what I have found too, is that, you know, once I sort of set the table for the conversation with CEOs, and I tell them I'm never going to ask you a single question about your company, they often like, slap the table, table and go, thank goodness. Right? Because I think at some level CEOs are probably a little bit bored of their own voice. Right. Just sort of giving the same, some version of the same talk over and over all day long.

Yeah. And I went through media training once as an executive in a telecom company and you know, it was a couple days of intensive and then some additional work and that kind of thing. And it was all about, we see politicians do this all day long. No matter what question gets asked, you flip it around and talk about whatever the hell you want to talk about.

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. And the way I always approach my interviews, it is sort of a text based product, is a written Q and A. And so there's a lot that can be done in the condensation. Right. You can take a machete to cut out all the sort of pablum and things like that.

Yeah. So let's start. Your book is awesomely well organized in that regard and chock full of stories. But let's have you share a few of them. I think the first one is maybe the distinction between the manager and leader. And you open with Penny Hersher. I hope I said that right. But maybe you could talk about.

Sure. And just to set the table for this. So my last book was the Leap to Leader. And in many ways I tried to the answer. Tried to answer the question in that book, what does it mean to be a leader? What are sort of the mindset shifts more about the internal game of leadership. And the book I wrote before that was called the CEO Test, which is really about what leaders need to do. But I became really intrigued about this idea of like, what does it mean to be a leader again, regardless of your title? What is that mindset? And I think it's been pretty timely because I'm sure you hear this too, Bill, from all your clients. Like, everybody needs their managers to step up as leaders now. Right. There's no set playbook. There's no, like, here's the script for how to have this conversation. Everybody's trying to figure it out on their own. And I do start the book with three anecdotes from three different leaders, including Penny Hersher. And all of them just are about those sort of those moments, Right. When you realize, o, wait, I've got to make this decision. And Penny talked about when she was a startup CEO, she would sometimes check with the chairman of the company. It's like, this is what I'm thinking of doing in terms of strategy. And at one point the chairman said to her, it's like, penny, look, I can tell you it's a good idea or not. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter because if you're wrong, we're going to fire you anyways. And there's just a lot of sort of wake up calls like that where you realize, oh, this is kind of what leadership is about it really. And you have to want to own that sort of accountability, the responsibility. You've got to be comfortable with that.

Yeah, yeah. It does seem like a lot of people get into who, what to do versus who to be.

Exactly. And especially as you're moving up, as you're scaling yourself as a leader, it's very easy to get caught in sort of the doing of the doing. Right. Like you just your previous job, you probably had some like really great superpower, something you were like best in class at, better than all your peers. But then you get elevated to manager and it's easy to sort of go back to that sort of comfort zone and want to do things yourself. And so one of the, when one of the things I do with people who are thinking of moving up in a leadership position, I always ask them, I said, take out three pieces of paper and write three different questions at the top of them. And the first question is, what to you is the difference between management and leadership? And I generally find people often have sort of pat answers, like just one sentence. But I think there's a lot of differences. Right. And you need to be clear in your mind what that difference is. And for me, I go to this idea that it's one thing to, you know, somebody hand you to playbook. Like to me a manager is there's a bit of like, here's the expected outcomes. We want you to drive, we're giving you resources, but we kind of know what you want. What we want you to deliver and to be a leader is to sort of take that and say, okay, I'm going to nail that. I'm going to nail it really quickly and efficiently deliver on all those things. But then I'm going to start going above and beyond and figuring out, okay, how do I transform this? How do I make it more efficient? Then you start looking around, what can I take off my boss's plate? What are the other problems that the company needs solving? What is the problem that the company doesn't know it needs solving? And that's much more of a leadership mindset. The second piece of paper, I think you should put the question at the top, which is do you really want to lead? And you need to underline the word really? Because I think a lot of people, there's these kind of momentums that carry people along into these promotions, these leadership positions. And one of those kind of rivers of momentum is on the corporate side, because you've seen the movie, Bill. Companies start looking at their succession pipeline, their leadership development, they start putting faces and names on PowerPoint slides. And there's this built in assumption that everybody that you're thinking of promoting wants to be promoted, right? Wants to move into their leadership positions. And I don't think companies spend enough time to have the conversation where they basically say to people, do you really want to do this? Are you clear about what you want? And the other river is just sort of personal in society that I think a lot of people just think, well, you know, I want a bigger title. Like why wouldn't I want that job, right? And you get more pay and bigger office for those of us who are still going into the office. And so I always tell people, you really have to pause and ask yourself, do you really want to do this? And be crystal clear. As much as you can do a ton of research about what these jobs are like that you're stepping into. I mean, high school seniors do a ton of research on which college they want to go to, right? You got to do the college tour and visit 10 colleges. And at every minute your parents are asking you, like, how do you feel about how you feel here? Does this feel like a good fit? And yet people just raise their hand and go, of course I would want that job without doing similar research. And then the third piece of paper, the question you need to put at the top is, who are you as a leader? And I always say that you may go through your entire career and nobody will ever ask you the question, who are you as a leader? But I think it will help with a sense of calm and confidence and self awareness if you know what you would say if somebody were to ask you that. And I think a good framework for a good template for answering that question is to figure out like, what are the three values that are really important to you? And then it's not just the words, right? We're not playing fridge magnet poetry here. What are the values then? You need to be able to say, this is why they're important to me and this is how they became important to me. Tell the story and then finally be able to say, and because those values are important to me and this is how they show up day to day, this is how they are kind of manifested in my leadership style. So you can be clear about what to expect from me. And I think, think taking those sort of three questions and really setting aside some time, just you in a quiet room and doing that reflection, that internal work, I just think it's so important to get in that leader mindset.

You know, in the first question, I feel like the main thing that I get from people all the time is there's a particular. It's usually a thing that they're working on, like the, the promise of the business. And I want to lead because I care about this thing a little bit. In some realms it's the team. Like I just love this team and you know, they need me and like that. But that usually I feel like shows up later. But the first thing is usually this, this thing they're working on that they're really passionate about, that I think matters. And then the other one, when they start to. When you start to ask who are you? I find it always interesting to have a new leader or an existing leader go out and ask other people, who am I? And so there's who you want to be in your values. Right. Which may or may not show up. You care about something and people relate to you in an entirely different way.

Yeah. And that's why I think thinking of yourself as a brand, I know that's sometimes cliche and gets overused, but I do think it's a useful metaphor because in some ways you may have an idea what your brand is, but brands are always determined by customers perceptions of you. Right. Like that's what at the end of the day your brand is. But the point is that you have, you should and you need to control that narrative because if you don't, people are going to just come up with, they're going to decide what your leadership brand is.

So one of the things I struggle with and I see others struggle with all the time, this is a little bit off script maybe, but is delusion. And like I want to be seen a particular way, I want to show up another way, but I actually looks like something else to the people around me. And I wonder if you have a story or an example of somebody who discovered that who they were for others wasn't. Like there was some delusion in how that happened.

Yeah. So I think right away about. So I interviewed the late Tony Hsiehos and I always ask, I always like to ask leaders like, how do you hire? What questions do you ask? And he told me that one of his favorite questions is he looks at you and goes, what's the biggest Misperception that people have about you. And it's a bit of a trick question because once you answer, then he looks at you and he says, well, what's the difference between perception and misperception? Because in this context, there's no such thing as misperception. You can say, a lot of people think I'm a jerk, but I'm actually a nice guy. It's like, no, people think you're a jerk, you're a jerk. Right. But I agree with you and that this is a huge challenge at our firm. We work with a lot of senior leaders and we have tools that sort of get at that gap. And there is generally a gap with everybody. The question is, how big is the gap? And it's the gap between you think you're showing up in the world this way, but how do people perceive you? And sometimes that gap is huge. And a lot of the traps that people fall into is things are really clear in their head about the company strategy. Right. Like they've grown up in the industry, they've grown up in the company. Everything is obvious to them. Everybody knows the strategy. I just explained it last month. And then you find out like, people have no idea what the strategy is. And that's so clear. And, and so you just have. I mean, the, the leadership to do list is like, you always need to be focus grouping and say, like, what do you think is the strategy? And like during operations reviews and different business units, like what do, what do you think the priorities are? And because you always have to be testing for that because boy, like stuff gets lost in translation, you just got to repeat it over and over.

Yeah. You know, I had a team some years ago, I was leading them and we had an agenda and then we had like this company manifesto at the opening of our agenda and we would review it and then reflect on it for, you know, just 30 seconds or something and before we move on. Every day and every meeting. And at one point we were about to start a meeting and I couldn't find the paper and I'm like, oh crap. Like, you know, our meetings now, it's only 15 minutes. Like, you know, and I remember this woman said to me, she's like, oh, Bill, we don't need the paper. And then she began to recite the thing doing an impression of me, right? She had a non native speaker accent. And so she starts to do the thing and then everybody chimes in and everybody not only knew it by heart, but could do an impression of me doing it. And I'm like, oh, yeah, my job's pretty much done here.

Yeah, yeah. And that. And that's brilliant. And to me, the. The. The takeaway from that for all leaders is, like, you have to be comfortable with the idea that people might make fun of you because they've heard you say it so often, but it's like, that's victory, right? Because, as you know, it's like, you got them.

Right.

You said it enough that they roll their eyes, but they can recite it back to you. And so that's a big victory, I think.

Like, I. This show, if you're watching on video, most of our folks are in. On. In audio land. But on. On video, right? I have this angle, right. And I can see myself in the monitor. And I'm cool with the way I look here. I'm happy. I'm good with myself. Right. And I think we have a way that we get comfortable thinking about ourselves. This one, I'm talking specifically visually, but that's part of it. But then there's other angles of where other people see me that I find so, so, so uncomfortable. Right. And because I have a little setup here. Oh, that didn't work. That's too bad. I have another angle. The camera's off, I guess, but it's the side and back angle. And I'm like, oh, I just don't like that angle. I don't like the way my chin and neck look. And I don't like my. You can see more clearly my fading hair. And I think there's something there, like the way that we look at ourselves and get comfortable. Then when somebody says that you're a certain way. Right. Not just the visual, but. And it can be so uncomfortable to be reminded of something that you probably have known for a long time.

Yeah. And just as much as you can get. Get those perceptions that other people have about you, because the more, you know, the older I get, Bill, the more I realize, like, just everybody's telling themselves narratives, right? And sometimes those narratives are really disconnected from reality. I interviewed one CEO, and. And she told me five words that really stayed with me. She said, reality is just source material. Right. And we're all just, you know, sort of cutting the highlight reels about from our experience. Right. Because there's actual experience. But then the stories that we decide to tell ourselves about our experience. And I think everybody's doing that.

Right.

And, you know, sometimes you have those moments where, like, you find out the narrative that people are telling themselves, and you just think, wow, you know, and some of it's like, coming to the fore. Like, we probably shouldn't go down that rabbit hole or return to office. But some of the narratives people are telling themselves, like, I. I talk to a lot of heads of hr and I feel like there's probably a great dinner party game of, like, what is the most absurd thing that an employee has said to you about return to office? Like, you know, well, if you want me to come back to the office, you're going to pay for my work clothes. Things like that. You know, your commutes and your lunches. Well, you know, like, I've been paying for your clothes. You just decide to buy leggings instead of work clothes in the last few years. And I do think there's. I don't mean to be glib. I do think there's an important house.

Slippers that I wear.

There you go. No, and I don't mean to be glib about this, because I do think it points to a really important leadership challenge right now. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the word alignment, because I think before COVID alignment was kind of synonymous with strategy, the metrics and. And all that. But I think it's taken on much bigger meaning and a much bigger challenge these last few years because all employees become much more vocal in their expectations about what the company should be doing and engaging on broader issues in society. And we're at this point in the world now where people can't even agree on facts, let alone what you do with those facts. And so I do think there is this broader leadership challenge of you. You do have to create a sense of alignment in some ways, like, you're the chief storyteller. Like, you have to provide the shared narrative about where you're going, the mountain you're going to take. And that speaks to not only strategy, but mission, purpose, values, guiding principles, all those things. So I don't know, I keep coming back to, like, leadership is just getting harder every day.

It does seem like that. And yet I like this whole thing about if people are in the office and you're seeing people, there's definitely some value there. It's undeniable that when we actually come face to face, we level up on some things. Like, we're more creative and we have better relationship and we collaborate more and we find the little side things and we connect. But I also think you could be fake online. You could be on Zoom, you could be fake in person. We all know that we were gathered around coffee machines and water coolers and offices and Conference tables and things like that. And there were people that would hide their tongue and then undermine what you had to say later and pick apart your, your leadership or your strategy, whatever. It could happen in any realm, not just the, the in person. And you're right. And there are a lot of people today who are the. I mean, people broadly say that it's a generational thing, but I think that this notion that every position that I have and everything should be catered to at every moment, like, oh my God, yeah.

And I feel like there's just been this massive tug of war going on between employers and employees over the last few years and great resignation and quiet quitting and return to office. And all these are just symptomatic of the other line, like, what are the expectations? What's reasonable? And I think, think people are just feeling like it was a little too, you know, the pendulum was too far the other way for too long, like five days a week and commuting and working late and all those things. And so I don't know where the balance is going to end up. I just, I also find with return to office, I mean, if you want to study to prove your point of view, like there's studies out there, right? Like whether you want to say that people are more productive or less, like there's so many studies out there, there are all contradictory. So I think you got to kind of set those aside. I just find with all the leaders that I interview that everybody is really passionate and about their point of view. And they have, they usually have a really full and complete argument for why to justify their point of view. If they think five days a week, they got a great argument for that. If they think hybrid, they got a. And if they think fully remote, like what's the point of going in the office? They got a great argument for that. And it really does start with the leader. And you know, part of it's, what are you building?

What are you committed? I have some of our current and former clients who are like, we're an in person company, no negotiation. And others who are like, we're going to be all virtual and others who are like, we're going to be kind of hybrid and others are going to be how many, ever many days and I don't care how many days and strict vacation and fluid vacation and I mean, it seems like you could build a company and grow a company with any of those things. There's not a right answer.

Yeah. And part of the pitch, especially to the younger generation is around delayed Gratification, because that's kind of the pitch about return to office. If you return to office, you're going to build your network, you're going to build relationships with colleagues. It's good for the company, it'll be good for you long term. We can't guarantee it's going to happen. We're going to tell you when those moments are. So it's this idea of amorphous delayed gratification versus hey, like, I can roll out of bed, I can walk my dog, I can like run to the drugstore, lunch or whatever. And so it's, it's a tough pitch. And I just find it's like there's a lot of passion around that topic. Like people just don't want to go back to the office.

I think one of the challenges, this idea of delayed gratification. There are a lot of folks, I remember when I was young, so many people, it was still an acceptable narrative to say you're going to put in your time at a big company, you're going to grow in advance if you do the right work and if you're smart and if you are good with. And then you're going to retire. And then I watched companies, retirement plans get gutted by money wizards who gutted companies left and right. And I watched companies break their promises on what they would do for you in the future and that kind of thing. And now you see people and they come in and they work for like three months and they're like, where's my promotion? Like, you don't even know how to do your job yet.

Right, right, exactly. And I was really interested when the whole quiet quitting hashtag came on scene. What was that last year? Two years ago? I made it all blurs. But I was curious, is this a three week cycle? And it just lasted for months. And I think I talked to a lot of people who are a lot younger than me trying to understand what is this all about. And they would always say it's not about quitting. And I said, well, then you've got a branding problem because quitting is in the name. But they kept saying it's really about a, it's about boundaries, just not wanting to sort of work. And I think it was also just this sense of roi. I mean, to your point, like there used to be this sense like you work hard, you put in your time, you're going to get promoted and all that. And I think people are just feeling like, well, it might happen, but the ROI doesn't seem to be There. So I'm going to like live my life and go to the rooftop bar at 4:30.

Yeah. And you see people who, you know, planned their whole life to retire someday and buy a boat and sail the world and then you see somebody else who finds a little bit of balance and goes sailing every weekend. And like that. That whatever your version of that is, I think is very real. My grandfather on my dad's side was compelled to die a millionaire. Just like so driven because when he was young the family didn't have a lot of money. When they went through the Depression, some of the family moved in the house and that meant the kids had to live in a tent. And having to live in a tent and the personal sacrifice of that.

He.

Didn'T take that as like a whole badge of honor. That was shameful and suffering. And so he became incredibly thrifty, you might say cheap about like everything. And I remember building a patio behind his house. And we would go down to the beach in the morning and take buckets of sand and put in the back of his Datsun B210 and then drive it back up from the Santa Monica beach up to his house in Brentwood. In Brentwood, right. Not a low priced part of Los Angeles. And put the sand down to make his brick patio. All his life like, you know, couldn't spend the money to go out to dinner and that kind of thing. And he did die a millionaire, technically speaking, you know, and even going through a couple of fairly financial things. But his also, he loved and always wanted to go sailing. And he wouldn't buy himself, he wanted a boat that was like five to seven thousand dollars. This thing. A west white Potter, a small little, you know, bay sailor. He wouldn't buy it for himself even though he desperately wanted and thought about sailing all the time, you know. And I, I was just like, wow. And then my dad was like the complete opposite. Would only live in the moment and today and that kind of thing. And I'm like, somehow I have to find a balance between those two characters.

Yeah. And just to build on that, I mean I, I feel like the old construct around work life balance tended to be from an age when we, you know, work was like you go to work and then like everything else is what you do outside of work. But you know, the lines separating those have been obliterated.

Well, yeah, because you go into the office after having a terrible morning with your family or spouse or whatever and then you suffer through the morning because it's all. And then you. And you have. Or you have a bad day and you take it home, you take it out on your. Your family.

Right, right, right. And I feel like I'll make an argument. Here's my pitch for the new work. Life back Balance. You can tell me if you agree or not, but I have this theory that everything in life, literally everything we do, falls into one to three buckets. And the buckets are want, should, and need, or need, slash, have to. Right? So explicitly or implicitly, every time you do something, you say, I want to do it, I need to do it, or I should do it. Right. And I feel like that's what has changed because I think previous generations, there was very much like delayed gratification, right? Like, I should do this, I need to do this. And then I. That'll be. That will pay off into want later. And I think people are sort of revisiting that. And there's much more. It's like, I need a little more. They'll, like, want in that pie chart of my daily life. And I think, you know, that's healthy, Right. Like, sometimes people like my age say, you know, kids these days, but it's like, at the end of the day, to me, that's what the big rebalancing is going on is like, what are the three pieces of that pie chart, the want, should and need, that help sort of define your life every day, you know? Yeah.

It's interesting, that whole, Like, I think of some of those things, like running or even taking a shower. Those are moments where problem solving ideas occur for me. You know, I have ideas all the time, but there are moments where I'm off task and out, where I see some creative thing. I was in a workshop about songwriting, a couple of them, actually, earlier in the week, and. And I only realized, oh, there's some brilliant things there about creating strategies that are defining, articulating your strategy in a way that resonates with people. Right? Like, the core idea of a song is fairly simple. It comes down to a couple words, and. But you get a couple words, right, and then you really touch something that has some emotional heart to it that's distinct from just a concept.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to that point, we can talk about the art of simplifying complexity, which I think is a core leadership skill. But, yeah, I like your analogy about songwriting because it really does come down to just one idea, a couple of words. Post it.

Note. While we talk about time and that kind of thing, why don't you tell us about Mary Elizabeth Poiret that you wrote about and where you spend your time.

Sure. She had this wonderful insight when I interviewed her. She talked about if you, if you want to scale yourself as a leader, you have to start giving stuff away. And when I asked her like, what do you mean by that? And she just said, as you're moving up in your career, there's all those things that you're really good at that you love to do. It's a wonderful feedback loop, like you're in the top. It's like your superpower and you get a lot of satisfaction from it. You get a lot of atta boys and atta girls for it. But if you are going to scale yourself as a leader, you have to have the discipline to give those things away, to delegate those things so that people can a step up and feel like they are growing and you sort of let people, other people have the spotlight. But I just thought that was, you know, I'm always drawn to like great, you know, just a handful of words, like, to your point of songwriting, some great insight that really speaks to a broader and more complicated idea. And it's, it's just a handy shorthand of like, if you are going to scale yourself as a leader, you've got to keep delegating. And all those things that you say, man, I love doing that. I want to do, I can't wait to do it. It's like you have to pause and say, can I give that away? I should give that away.

Seems to me I'm reflecting on where we opened that. What is the distinction between management leadership and what I'm hearing so far in the examples and the things that you're sharing is that leadership is for sure about being in front. Right. Taking the lead, being first, taking on a problem, a challenge or whatever, being willing to say, step up. And then the other part is distinct is when I think about management, I think about projects, managing a project, I think about schedules and task lists and that kind of thing. But when I think about leading, I also think about people. So being in front and then the human element of, of courting stuff and, and then I think about all these things like it doesn't really matter if you're not up to something. Like, why be a leader? I mean, I suppose you could be a leader of people because you care about the people. But until you have a, like a big project, you don't need a lot of people. Right. When you're taking on something like world changing, you need people or either a lot of people or some very special people.

Yeah, yeah. And to your point about leading from the front, I mean it. I've heard that from a lot of leaders I've interviewed I. Over the years, and I've also heard a lot of them say, you know, I lead from the back and.

And supporting the team. Right, right.

And. And I always. I always tell people who are getting into management or wanting to learn about leadership, I always say to them, like, buy a neck brace before you start reading because you are going to get so much whiplash from all the contradictory advice you're going to hear. Right. Because for every lead from the front, no lead from the back, it's like, Bill, we really need to you to create a sense of urgency. But you got to be patient.

Right.

Bring people along. You got to be compassionate, but you got to hold people accountable. It just goes on and on. And the important insight for me is that everything that's hard about leadership is hard because it is a paradox. It is a contradiction. It is a balancing act. And you have to understand that first of all, and then know that whatever the context is, whatever the situation, you need to flex depending on the demands of the moment. So there are those moments where you need to be compassionate. Somebody's dealing with a lot on your team, and then the next meeting, you got to pound the table and say, like, you need to step up. And so, you know, the paradoxes of leadership to me is just a really important insight about why leadership is so challenging.

You know, it's funny, there are so many books on leadership and what we highlighted just there, lead from the back, lead from the front, and the contrast, the two, and the fact that all these books. And yet I would say there's value in both of them. It seems to me that the danger or the what erodes all of that is trying to reduce everything to a bumper sticker. Like, there's value in reducing it to a bumper sticker. But if you become fixated on lead from the back is right or lead from the front is right, you miss the complexity, the nuance, the richness of a fabulously complex universe.

Yeah. And I fully with you. And I do think because leadership is so hard, there is a market for people who say, leadership, Bill, is about this one thing. Right, Right. And people like, that's great. Clickbait. Because people are going, wow, it's just one thing. You know, I've been. I've been struggling. Tell me what that one thing is. And it is dangerous. And my. I always feel like just the world in general needs to be more sort of Skeptical consumers of leadership advice. Because, you know, there's so much trite stuff. There's so much platitudes. There's so many, like, fortune cookie, you know, supposed insights about leadership. And so I think people should raise the bar. I'm always skeptical when people want to put a new adjective in front of the word leadership.

Right.

I just, every time I hear somebody, it's like, well, you know, I believe in blankety blank leadership. It's like, okay, but as opposed to A, as opposed to what? And B, it's like, well, maybe there's context where that doesn't work.

Right.

And so I don't know. To me, it's like, we should try to simplify but not oversimplify the challenges. Leadership.

Right, right, right. Or simplify as a way to organize the thoughts, but then add in the detail and the color later. Like, you know, how do you approach thinking about steps? Do you go right into the details, or do you need to know big picture? I personally, I'm wired. I want to know what's the outcome and then big picture, what are we working on before? But other people are just like, right into all the details right away. And I'm like, oh, right, that's really uncomfortable. And then I have to organize it and find the big picture and the outcome for myself. And I prefer to start the other way. But then I also know that some people need to go through all of that. Right. There's different ways of grappling with the.

World and thinking about that, and we need to acknowledge that. Right. Like any sort of cookie cutter, do it this way. It's just, you know, and that's why I always break out in hives when I hear the phrase leadership theory. Right? Because, all right, you've got some interesting Venn diagram that's supposed to explain all of life, and maybe that makes sense. But let's introduce some variables, which is actual human beings and the particular context of your company and the particular leadership style of the leader. It's like, now that theory is breaking down pretty quick.

You know, it's funny, I don't know exactly why this comes up, but I have a favorite book that I found very hard to read initially and not all favorite. I. I couldn't reduce that, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Piercing book. And I. I found it very challenging to. I think I read it first when I was 12 years old or something like that. It was a tough book to read through, but it's such a lasting and interesting thing about this tension of different Ways of looking at the world and grappling with things for me. Yeah.

Well, you take me back to my teenage years, too. It's been a long time. Long time since I've read the book. So.

Yeah. Fascinating to see some of these things and, you know, some of them just like this, these personal journeys of who Am I and what Do I Care about? Which I think is maybe a good segue to another of your stories, Phil Martins and stoplight moments. People talk about 3am moments. Phil talks about stoplight. Talk about, tell his story.

Yeah, so do. He was working for a firm, and I think they were planning an IPO or something. And then the, you know, the. The financial crisis of 2008 hit. And he just described this moment where he was driving along in, and a CFO called him and told about what was going on and the broader implications of it. And he, you know, he's just sort of absorbing this and taking it all in. And he found himself, like, he started hearing this honking behind him, and it's because he was just sitting at a stoplight that had turned green. And he's just, like, all up in his head about this moment. And he tells that story because when he's mentoring and coaching leaders, he says, you are going to have those stoplight moments where you're just, like, feeling completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge you're facing and realizing that it's all on you to make a tough decision. And I find, and I'm curious if you see this with the people you work with. But one of the most consistent themes that comes up is challenge for leaders, just being able to make a decision. Right. Because at the end of the day, some people go, I need more data. I want more data. It's like, well, that's not those kind of decisions. Right. It's. There's always going to be that gap between data and judgment. I mean, that's where human beings come in. But, boys, it is a very consistent theme. I mean, I've talked to CEOs, and I asked them, okay, so you take over a new team, a new company. How do you decide who stays on the bus and who leaves the bus? And they will often say, like, one of the big things they look for simply is, can you make a decision? Because decision implies risk. Right. Like, I'm going to go left, not right. You're. You're shutting a door, and you're putting yourself out there, choosing a path.

Yeah. There's another story I want to ask you about before we do that let me remind our listeners, viewers that we got a program of coaching for you. And we've now got, I mean between our 270 coaching partners around the world and our associate coaches, we've got something for every stage of leadership. So if you're trying to get to a million, I got a thing for you. If you're trying to get over 20 million, you're just, just you're sitting at 1 or 2 million. We've got a program designed exactly for that. And then of course we've coached companies through a billion and beyond. But scalingcoach.com navigator, our growth navigator program is the program that has like the most comprehensive stuff. It's the place for most of our listeners to get started and get scaling up, get the support every week, peers, accountability, learning, guest speakers in person, online. You got a little something every week on Wednesday where you come together and work on your business. So a structure to work on your business a little bit every week over a couple of years. We know now from experience that that will like help your company to find your breakthrough. So check it out. Growth Navigator scalingcoach.com that's the spot. All right. So why don't you tell the story of Shauna Erdman and I think this thing about your motivation, your personal ambition, what you're up to, that tens there's something interesting there.

Yeah. And she really speaks to this question of do you really want to lead? Which is the first section of the book because I think it's so important. And so she's head of talent at Comcast and she really nailed this insight which is that a lot of companies just sort of carry people along and there's this built in assumption that if we as leaders identify you on the team as a high potential leader and we see great things for you in the future. Big leadership possessions that you know, she says you've got to have the conversation, you've got to ask people if this is what they want because so many companies don't. And then people are sort of carried along, they're put in a leadership positions and the collateral damage when it doesn't work out is pretty high. Right. People get in these jobs and go wow, I had no idea. And I'm really not comfortable doing this and, and this isn't my strength. And so I just, I really feel like it would be a great use of time for companies to really hit that pause button and say if you're thinking about management leadership position, we're going to have a structured program to give you an idea. We want to give you a pretty detailed brochure of that trip you're thinking of taking. Right. So that there aren't any surprise. Not that you're trying to talk people out of it, but just so that you don't get in that chair and go, wow, I had no idea that I was going to be putting out people like fires with people problems all day long. I can't get my work done. I got to do all my work at work. And you know, there's a reality of these jobs that there's got to be much more of an honest gut check up front and have the conversation before people step into them.

You know, I, it's interesting. I hear a couple things there. One is, is that I hear all the time is that balance between my work and leadership. Like, and like I have a personal bag I carry or you know, that of some task function that I got. And then I have my team leadership and seeing those things as separate rather than mingled or finding a way to bring them together instead of seeing them from a dualistic point of view. And then the other one I think is the, like the personal, your ego in the matter, your stand, you're willing to contribute, that kind of thing. And when I first talk to people who are say, moving into a mentoring kind of position, they got some leadership, but they're starting to actively think about developing it. I'm always saying, look, there's something you want to accomplish, like with the business, there's something you want to give back, but there's also something you want to take away. And it's really okay to be honest about. I want to make more money or I'm going to have fun or I want to solve this problem or I want to apply this to this area. Whether you're leading in a, like a non profit realm in a volunteer thing or you're leading in your business, like there's, there's, there's personal benefit, you know.

Yeah. And it is a mix, right. And, and I feel like everybody's on the continuum. So it, at one end there's like total narcissists, right. Like they're completely self centered. Everything about the job is about them. They see their employees as assets just to help them achieve their own goals. And at the other extreme where people are like just much more selfless, it's not about them. And to be honest, like we're all a mix of both. But like where are you on that spectrum? And to me I feel like you can put all leaders in just One of two camps, you can just say those who are more selfless and those who are more self centered. And when you think about all the bosses you've worked for or maybe working for now, to the listeners, you know, it's not like you need to pause and say, wow, you know, my boss, I wonder which camp they're in. Like, we all know that at a gut level, right? Like I've worked for bosses who are much more self centered and I've worked for some are really selfless. And I think that's a much more useful framework. A lot of people still invoke the phrase servant leadership, which is now 50 years old. And I fully appreciate and understand the signal that you want to send with that. But to me a more useful and practical framework is to talk about leaders in terms of selflessness or more self centered.

You know, I sort of feel like, and I honor both, you know, when I'm getting ready to do something, I'm very self indulgent beforehand. I take care of me, you know, great, because I know that I'm about to be generous tomorrow or later in the day or whatever. So I don't hesitate or feel guilty about that. And I know that there are certain things like when I'm giving a talk on stage, a huge amount of that is performance and my personal benefit, there's a business takeaway, but personally, emotionally it's a rush, it's an ego boost to go give a talk in front of people and that's enjoyable. However, I also know that if I all that, that was all I ever did, I would feel really lonely because it's definitely separate and disconnected to do that in some ways.

Right. And your point's well taken. I mean we are all a mix of both. But to me, like it's just the test. If you take any manager, any leader and do like a blind poll of their team and say, is your boss more self centered or more selfless? You know, that's, it's sort of the perception is everything and you know, so over the years I've, I've taught a lot of executive ed classes and you know, people in the audience are all have full time jobs and big companies and sometimes I do like snap polls, right? Just say, hey, raise your hand if you trust your boss. And it is very rare that more than 40% of the hands go up and they, and then I'll ask how many of you feel like your boss actually listens to you? And again, very rare that more than 40% of the hands go up. So I just think that it's like there's Bill, like you know, it, right? There's, there's, there's too many bad bosses in the world, right? Like we, we, we are all doing our best to help people level up.

Here's what I love about your work. You, you, you're collecting so many stories and perspectives and examples so that we can find ourselves and learn from all of them. And AdamBryant books.com is the website. We'll throw that on the screen here. We'll put it in the show. Notes Adam bryantbooks.com you know, thousands and thousands of interviews and in depth looking at the stories and lessons of people and you choose what to, to pull out of it. We don't have to reduce it to bleed from here or there or, you know, anywhere. I would not eat them on a train.

We can't, can.

We can find ourselves in the complexity of all of it and find a place to support it. I think it's awesome. I'm so grateful for you to come on the show to talk about all this today as we wrap again. Adamriantbooks.com and then I want to give a shout out to my friend and mentor Verne Harnish who created the Rockefeller habits as he read about the habits of John D. Rockefeller and then the scaling up book that grew out of that and without whom none of this would have been necessary. And to Wanda Mitchell getting our show ready in the background every day. The folks at Podfly Productions who put it out edit everything like that. Thanks again everyone for listening for watching. We'll talk to you again next time.

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