Brandon Steiner Recap: How to Develop Your Leadership Influence
11 Mar 2022 · 7 min
James Laughlin recaps his interview with Brandon Steiner on three leadership moves: tell the story of your failures, not just wins. Build influence through empathy. Add real value by doing for others what they can't do themselves.
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Leaders. Welcome back to Lead On Purpose. It's that time when I drop the key leadership highlights from our previous full length Episode one with Brandon Steiner. Brandon grew up with next to nothing in New York. He then went on to buy the Yankee Stadium and founded a sports empire. I want to share with you the three key takeaways from that interview. So grab pen and paper and try to implement these into your own life or leadership. And hey, please don't forget to leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. So, first key takeaway from my conversation with Brandon. You gotta know the story, not the glory. We need to hear that nowadays. How many times do you see people writing books and articles on here's how you succeed, here's how I succeeded, here's all my wins, here's how I won. But what's more important is where did they struggle? Where did you struggle and how did you overcome that? That's where the success is. It's not learning how to be successful, it's learning how to overcome failure that creates success. So when chatting to Brandon, he was like, you know what? I want to know the story. Not the glory. The glory. You could Google that stuff, right? But it's the stuff behind closed doors that goes on. The obstacles, the objections, the chaos, the ambushes. It's those things that truly matter. They develop character, right? So what's your story? What have you overcome? What failures have made you the success you are right now? Perhaps as you're listening to this, you're going through something difficult. Whether it's a relationship challenge with a spouse or a friend or maybe a child or a colleague. You know, maybe there's a health challenge you're going through. Maybe your business is struggling. Maybe the position you have in your workplace is not where you want to be. So think about the benefits of going through the tough times. That's where we learn. Now, either we learn or we continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over. But that's not fun. And there's no growth in that. So I want you to think about perhaps journaling. Hey, these are two or three key pivotal moments in my life where I struggled and that helped develop the person I am today as a leader. Now, the second takeaway was if you want to increase your leadership, increase your empathy and compassion, think about others, you know? So if you want to be more of an influential leader, you've got to increase your empathy and compassion. And what's funny about this, for, for those of you that have listened to previous episodes, I interviewed an amazing guy called Chester elton. He's wrote 14 New York Times bestselling books, but his most recent one is called Anxiety at Work. And he put me on the spot on the show. He's like, james, what's the definition of empathy versus sympathy? So we got into it and it was great, and I passed the test. Thankfully, he really did put me on the spot. But empathy is the gold. It's the hidden, invincible goal. You can't. You can't really even. Yeah, you can't put a price on empathy. Right. It's one of those things. The, the more you exude empathy with your colleagues, your staff, your people, your loved ones, the more you're able to help them in their life to succeed, to feel valued, to overcome adversity. So I'd love to ask you, where, where do you need to increase your empathy? Is it with a colleague? Is it with someone that reports to you? Is it with your spouse? Is it with the next door neighbor that cuts the grass up to a certain point on the sidewalk and doesn't cut your bit, and you've built this story and developed a lack of empathy for them. Where do you need more empathy? And let me tell you, this world needs more empathy. Imagine if our global leaders, and I am generalizing there, but imagine if all of our global leaders developed deeper empathy. Well, I don't think we'd be in the position we're in in a lot of cases. And hey, last but not least, the third key takeaway, value is what you can do for someone that they cannot do for themselves. Listen to that again. I think that's gold and brand. This came right from Brandon. Value is what you can do for someone that they cannot do for themselves. So when you talk about, I want to add value, I want to do some value add work here, and I want to add value to the marketplace. Just define what that is. What is it that you can do for somebody, whether it's a client, customer, friend, what is it that you can do that they cannot do. That's where the value sits. And it's about figuring out where is the value add. So I challenge you to write down where in my professional existence does the value lie? What do I do? Who do I show up as? What are my key strengths? What problems do I solve? What can our company do to make the difference? Where's the value? So guys, I hope you enjoyed that short recap, but please do go and listen to the full episode. Brandon was amazing. He's a published author, bestseller in fact. As I said, he went from being brought up in New York with a single mother and very, very poor, ended up being an entrepreneur buying the New York Yankee Stadium, built several multi million dollar and I mean like 100 million plus dollar companies and he now is a leadership consultant with Keller Williams. The guy is just simply amazing. So please do go back and listen to it if you haven't already. But. But I hope you enjoyed the takeaways. And hey, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.
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