Podcast 749: What Anyone Can Do with Leo Bottary

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Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Foss, the host of Inside Personal Growth, and joining us from Carlsbad, California, just right up the road from me, is Leo Bottary, and Leo is the author of a new book, What Anyone Can Do: How Surrounding Yourself with the Right People Will Drive Change, Opportunity, and Personal Growth. Good day to you, Leo. How you doing?

Oh, terrific, Greg. Thanks, and thanks for having me on the program today.

I appreciate you being on the program. And as we were talking just before this, Brian Soiles was the guy that connected us, and I really appreciate him doing that. He is a prior author. We'll put a link in this podcast to his book as well. Pretty phenomenal book, as well as, uh, What Anyone Can Do. And Leo, I'm gonna let my listeners know a little bit about you. Leo's an author, a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator on the topic of developing peer advantage for high-performing teams and peer groups. During a 6-year tenure at Vistage Worldwide, Leo led rebranding of the company and directed a thought leadership initiative on the power of peers, which resulted in a book that he co-authored with Leon Shapiro, The Power of Peers. He also serves as instructor for Rutgers and Northeastern Universities. Prior to that, he was an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University, where he led graduate-level online learning teams and online campus residencies. Early in his career, Leo served in senior leadership positions at Mullen Hall, where he was also the director of client services for the US. In the mid-'90s, he founded a public relations agency that he led into trade publications, hailed as the regional powerhouse of new media pioneer and a great place to work. He's got a bachelor's from Jacksonville University and an MA in strategic communications from Sutton Hall University, where he completed his doctoral coursework at Northeastern University. And we'll put a link to your website, Leo. It's leobottary.com. You can learn more. He's got 1-minute little sessions there that you can listen to, great videos. I listened to many of those, getting to know a little bit more about Leo before the show. Now, Leo, you mentioned that the author Robert Thompson encouraged you to write this book largely based on what you learned from podcast guests on your show, your podcast show, The Year of the Peer. What are some of those notable interviews? Because I've had 750+ interviews, uh, that you had that you'd like to share with our listening audience.

Wow, I had some terrific interviews. One with Jim Kouzes, and as you know, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner are co-authors of The Leadership Challenge. Probably one of the most— I think The Leadership Challenge now is in its 6th edition, and there's a host of other books as well. I think, you know, I definitely regard those two about the foremost, you know, in the leadership field in terms of what they do and certainly what they've contributed over the past several decades. I had Linda Darling-Hammond on the show, who's probably the top education expert in the world from Stanford University. But I had just a ton of amazing guests. Angela Meyers, who does work for an organization called Choose to Matter, and she talks about how important it is for us to understand that we matter as individuals. Paul Michelman from MIT Sloan Management Review, just a whole group of people, Jeffrey Hayslett from, of course, the C-Suite Network, and all of them did such a great job of really communicating, I think in many respects, very much the same theme. You know, I talked about the power of peers, and that was really a study of how and why formal peer groups work really well. But the more that I talked to these podcast guests, the more that I realized obviously it wasn't just formal peer groups, it's how we engage our people around us each and every day. And it's also not just our peers, it's the whole circle of people we have. It could be our parents, our teachers, our mentors, our kids, you know, that whole circle of folks. So I think what really emerged from so many of the interviews is was the incredible help that every one of these people had to get where they are in their lives, and to want to look more closely at if we did a better job of accessing and being more intentional about, you know, enlisting the people around us, that we could probably do a heck of a lot more than when often left to our own devices. So those podcast guests, I think, were pivotal in kind of making that shift. And Robert and I were on the phone one day and he said, you know, you should really capture that. So that's how that happened.

Well, it's an awesome book. And I think that the point is really about these not only just peer groups, but the people that we hang out. It goes way back to Think and Grow Rich, mastermind groups, right? It's like Putting together mastermind groups. And you speak about Joe Henderson. You're an avid marathoner yourself. Your trip to Portugal, you're running with your friends there, but you started the marathon training program. You also spoke about Oprah in the same kind of paragraph where she lost 72 pounds. And you cite these examples of committing to do what it takes. If you would speak with our listeners about the power of surrounding yourself with great people, whether it's losing 72 pounds like Oprah did, or it's running a marathon. I've been an avid Team IN Training guy myself. You mentioned that in the book. I did 13 events for them as a coach in the cycling side of things, and I understand the power of surrounding yourself with other people to accomplish a goal. But if you would talk a little bit more about how that commitment really does take effect from kind of a behavioral psychological standpoint.

Sure. And, you know, you mentioned Joe Henderson, which is really a great place to start, because when you look at the title of the book, What Anyone Can Do, that actually comes from a line in a book that Joe Henderson wrote back in 1976 called The Long Run Solution. And in it, when he was talking about successful runners and people who are successful in general, he basically said, you know, most of these folks aren't capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound and, you know, have these superhuman capabilities. He says most of them just do the things that anyone can do, but that most of us never will. And so one of the things after all the work I did studying formal peer groups is I have this sense that anybody, I believe, is capable of surrounding themselves with really good people who can be encouraging and influential for them. And I believe that when we do, we will do those things that anyone can do far more often. And it really even speaks to the— what I talk about with the study from the University of Scranton where they looked at basically said that 92% of people who, you know, commit to a New Year's resolution fail at it. So what's interesting about that is several-fold.

One, people are deciding for themselves what it is they want.

Secondly, most people aren't setting goals like trying to make the Olympics, they're just trying to lose 5 pounds, they're just trying to do something, you know, pretty basic oftentimes, and yet 92% fail. And in many respects, I think what contributes to that greatly is that people don't enlist the people around them to say, hey, this is something that I'm committed to doing. To make it public, to get their encouragement, to get their help, to get their advice, to be there for them so that they can actually achieve what they set out to do, even if it's something simple like that. So I think that if we are better at identifying, number one, and enlisting the people around us— and that oftentimes has to do with just us knowing for ourselves what we want As you well know, part of the book really begins with a look at ourselves first. It's really reflecting on who are we, what do we care about, what are our priorities, what do we want to do. And to your point about marathons versus maybe I want to run a marathon, and if I want to run a marathon like Oprah did or like countless other people do, you're going to surround yourself with people that can help you do that. If I want to learn a language, that's probably a different group of people who I want to help me do that. So I think, though, that time and time again, it's shown that the more that we can enlist the help of others and engage them, the more likely we are going to be successful and the more likely we're going to be able to do those things that anyone can do. And those are those little things that each and every day, build to helping you do things like run a marathon and be able to speak the language.

Well, and one of those is focusing your attention. And I actually had a gentleman on here, a book he wrote called Unlearning, or Ultralearning, I'm sorry. And he finished MIT courses in less than a year in computer science. And you know, you, in your chapter on know what you want, then go get it, you tell a story about a video entitled Seeing Red Cars. Can you explain the significance of the video and what it means to helping people focus their attention?

Yeah, Laura Goodrich, actually, she laughs about the fact that she actually did the video and then wrote the book. Usually not the typical order, but she did this video called Seeing Red Cars, and it's really based on two ideas. One, is that most people, when you ask them, what is it that you want, usually the response will be, well, what I don't want is X, Y, and Z. But they don't really oftentimes pinpoint on what they do want. Second, she said, like the red car, she says when you see a red car, all of a sudden you start to notice red cars everywhere.

With this idea, we get more of of what we focus on.

So if we in fact can identify what we want and then focus on those things that can help us make that happen, then that puts us on a path, you know, as well. So, you know, I think Laura's work is really terrific, and I definitely recommend it. It's a pretty short video on YouTube that anyone can get, Seeing Red Cars.

Yeah. And I think that's called the reticular activating system, if I'm not mistaken, if I remember my, uh, going back in time. Now, you state that working to surround ourselves with the right people is part of what you call a daily ritual, a habit of choice. What advice do you have for our listeners to have them help find the right people to hang out with?

Well, that's a great question. Again, I think it does start with knowing what we want and having a sense of who are those people that we may need. Some of it may be literally just encouragement and support, others may be for technical advice on something, right? So if I wanted to run that marathon, to continue that metaphor, then I would want to surround myself with people who've done that before, who have experience, who can share thoughts and ideas with me. Or maybe there's someone who wants to run the race with me or wants to run another race in another city, but it's roughly the same timing, and we can kind of help each other hold ourselves accountable to doing our training runs every day. Things like that. So I think people can have different roles, and based on what we want, you know, we can look to identify who, you know, those people are, and whether that's in our immediate area, whether it's through social media where we can make connections with people. You know, I just think we probably never had more access and more reach than we do today with regard to being able to connect. I mean, look at the fact that you and I are on this call together basically because of a mutual contact with Brian Solis.

And so it's how a lot of things Yeah, the world of technology and how we're connecting today is really making our world shrink, but I'm not certain it's making it more meaningful, which brings it to the next question. You state to become a super connector and consider un-networking as an approach for developing deeper, more meaningful relationships. What do you mean by un-networking?

Well, un-networking was a concept that a couple of my guests on the podcast brought up, and it was the idea of they would hold these un-networking events where the idea was not to connect with people and lead with what's on the front of your business card, but the idea of what would you write on the back of your business card, not just what position you have or what company you work for, but a little about you, who you are, and what you're about, and what your priorities are, and building deeper connections with people from the start doing that. And that was a concept there that I thought was pretty interesting, so I wanted to make sure that I included that.

And Sekou Andrews, in many respects, who wrote the initial quote, on the front of the book talks about that as well. It's about really not focusing so much on position and title and company and these kinds of things. In fact, many people today, as you know, on their LinkedIn profiles are not listing job titles on their descriptor in terms of their profile anymore, but it's kind of who they are. And, you know, I think it's A better approach, better way to think about it.

Much better approach because it's, uh, certainly more personal. It allows you to get, uh, in touch with the person in a deeper way and understand more about them. And, you know, even when you go to research people on the internet today, there's so many ways you can find out things about them, uh, before you, uh, actually start doing a podcast, even like I did with you. Um, you know, and you state that we learn better when we learn together. And collaborative learning has been around and it is very powerful. What suggestions do you have for the listeners to start to learn in a collaborative group? I mean, I know that Vistage, that's what Vistage is all about. It's bringing people together to learn together. But if people aren't part of that and don't have the kind of resources or money to join a Vistage, what recommendations do you have for them?

I think one of the most common examples and something that anyone can do in their neighborhood or whatever is I think book clubs are fascinating. You find a group of folks who want to take on a book every week or a book every couple of weeks. And you get half a dozen people together. Everyone has read the book. You all sit down and you talk about it for a couple of hours. And when you leave that interaction, every one of you is going to know more about that book than before you walked in the door. Because once you get all of these different perspectives and you can embed what you, that learning in effect by talking about it, it makes all the difference in the world. And I think that's probably one of the simple ways that, and a great example of how we do learn better when we We learn together. Linda Darling-Hammond brought that up during our podcast and basically said that teachers who collaborate with one another outside the classroom are by far able to create more collaborative environments with their students. And I think the same is true for CEOs. Those who work with other CEOs are able to collaborate and foster a culture of collaboration to build higher-performing teams at their companies. And so I think this idea of learning together, not just because it deepens the learning, but I think in business-related groups, it actually— people can give you the courage to act on that learning, which I think is really crucial, right? We can all read something in a book and we think it's a really great idea, but we may we may not be wanting to implement it in our company the next day. We need to kind of sit with that. We need to talk about it. We need to get comfortable with it. And oftentimes groups who learn together give one another that ability to do that.

Yeah, I think it's a very encouraging environment. I mean, cohort groups have been around for a long time at universities for people to work with and learn together. And I actually attended— Yeah, when you have a cohort group, there's a huge difference, and I think that's one of the really simple ones. A lot of universities don't use it, but many do, and obviously I think it's a great way for people to connect and also make deep, meaningful relationships while at the same time having fun and learn. That's one of the things you talk about in your book. You know, in 2016, you were invited to speak at the Digital Hollywood Conference. During this event, you formed a spontaneous mastermind group composed of about 10 volunteers. You speak for about 2.5 hours talking. What was the epiphany about the questions being asked at that event that really just— it seemed to me that that was a big kind of turning point about the importance that the questions that were being asked by that group of the, I call them the thought leaders.

Yeah, I think that everyone was just super engaged, and what happened with that, you know, to form a kind of spontaneous peer group, if you will, that literally played the role in helping to, you know, process a specific topic that one of the guests at the conference brought up was pretty amazing, and I think what people realized was they thought to themselves, wow, how effective this was for that person, right? Because the way these things work, as you well know, is there are a lot of clarifying questions that would be asked. Like someone brings a topic to the table like I want to grow my business in a certain country or I want to do this or I want to do that. And what people do at that point is they ask a lot of really good questions questions to try to really get specific about what the challenge is and how to go about doing that. I think what people found really remarkable was here's a group of people that didn't know one another, barely understood the rules of engagement of how a peer group works, and yet the recipient got such incredible value from the experience. It was, I think, occurred to everyone, wow, imagine if this group met all the time, really got to know one another, got to know one another's businesses, shared the perspectives on a regular basis. And this is what we talk about with regard to peer advantage. It's being more selective, more strategic, and structured about how you engage with the people around you. And when you do that, when you take this very powerful force of peer influence that we've all experienced for as long as we can remember, and again, are more intentional about it, the results can be extraordinary.

It certainly is. And I think the importance of questions, you know, as podcasters, we have to do a lot of listening and we have to formulate a lot of questions. And it always amazes me when the authors say, wow, you really had great questions, you know. Those questions are as a result of trying to dig in and learn more. I think that that's a great example of that actually. Now you state that Tim Sanders notes that being a mentor means serving as a humble teacher. We should always be mentoring people, he said. You need a teacher to give you a gift for the next stage of your journey. Leo, what gift would you want to leave with our listeners about your book, What Anyone Can Do, and how surrounding yourself with the right people will drive change, opportunity, and personal growth? What would you tell our listeners?

I would say two things. One is I would really sit and reflect in terms of where you are in your life, whatever stage that may be. And look at the next several years going forward and think about what do I want to do? How intentional can I be about what I really want? You know, not just what you don't want as Laura Goodrich would say, but what you do want. And then when you identify what those things are, be thinking about who are the people in my life today who can help me achieve those things and maybe there's some other people that you'll be required to meet in order to have them help you on that journey as well. But I think to the extent that you would be open enough and willing enough to enlist the help of others and to return that favor, because we are all in this together. And I think that one of the things that came up with all the guests in the podcast was that they were not just recipients of a lot of people's great advice and commitment all over the years, but they were very giving as well. And I know sometimes when there are people in our lives who give so much to us, we can't always pay them back, but we can pay it forward. So I think to the extent that we start seeing our journey as more of a group effort and not something that's solo, I think that that would be a great start as we think about the remainder of this year and we start looking at 2020.

Well, the book is certainly a very easy read for our listeners and for you to really consider not only how you build these peer groups, or I would say people you surround yourself with is so important. Um, you know, I think it was once said, and you probably remember this, Leo, you're only as good as the people that you surround yourself with. Um, and the importance of that, I can't say it anymore because that is how you're going to get the support for that next initiative or next project or next thing that you're going to try and do and ask questions of people that you are— I don't want to say you would look at them as thought leaders, you would look at those people as the kind of people that you would love to have their advice. Whether you call it a mastermind group or a peer group, it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is to get in with a group and start asking questions. As you said, those questions are so important. And then give back, right? That's the other thing. You want to help other people by giving with the talents that you have. And don't be afraid to do that as well. You may think you might not have something to say, but you really do, and you need to be heard. Um, we have anything to say about that, Leo?

Just that I couldn't have said it any better myself. I mean, I think that, um, It really is very much about that. And when people talk about it being better to give than to receive, I think that that is so true on so many different levels. So, you know, I just really couldn't agree more.

Well, there's a quote here on the back of your book by Sam Rees, the CEO of Vistage Worldwide. What Anyone Can Do is a brilliant primer on what we can all do as leaders. To surround ourselves with a strategic network of peers who will challenge our ideas, drive us to be more disciplined, and share in our success. For all of those committed to the continuous self-improvement, you will find that Leo has built a step-by-step guide to turn aspiration into actions. Leo, pleasure having you on Inside Personal Growth and spending a few minutes with our listeners speaking about your book, we will put a link to Leo's website, which is really simply leobottary.com. There you can find more about Leo's books, about Leo, as well as— I call them the— what do you call them? The one-minute little videos. Uh, what are those?

What Anyone Can Do Minute.

Yeah, there's lots of them there. Uh, they're, they're really good. They're a minute long, obviously. So he's trying to get you to, to listen to those. You can also subscribe to his podcast there as well. Leo, thanks for being on and thanks for spending some time with my listeners today speaking about your book.

Hey, well, thank you so much.

You have a great day.