Embracing the Weird: Frankie Russo on Authentic Leadership

Leadership At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today I am talking with Frankie Russo about the importance of authenticity and loving your weird to unlock innovation. Frankie is a serial tech entrepreneur having led multiple companies to remarkable growth, some landing on the Inc. 500 list eight years in a row. Frankie is the author of two best selling books and a speaker known for transforming organizational culture and inspiring individual and corporate innovation. So welcome Frankie.

Thank you so much, Susan. This is such a wonderful opportunity to be on the show with you. I always love talking with thought leaders like yourself, especially as we are all pushing to, you know, really create something wonderful for the world that we serve. So thanks for having me on.

Yes, well, I'm excited to talk to you about your body of work, but let's just start right off the bat because it's definitely a catchy phrase. What does it mean to love your weird?

Oh wow. Yeah, great question. So, wish I knew. No, just kidding. So loving your weird is. It means a cup, a few things, right? So loving your weird essentially is this connection that we all have to our inner child, our five year old self and how that relates to how we show up at work and specifically how that can relate to unlocking a culture of continuous innovation. And so loving your weird, it's about loving all the different parts of yourself. A big part of the dream journey I take people on with the Love youe Weird framework is this idea of unmasking authenticity. And so really the foundation of creating a culture of continuous innovation starts with that, like getting honest, taking the masks off and really changing our relationship to this idea of this fear of failure or fear of not being enough. And so there's a lot of that type of work that goes into the Love youe Weird framework, but it doesn't stop there.

So.

So it's not just about creating this safe environment of trust where people can show up with their unique brand of weird. It really is there to then unlock the next component which I call unleashing imagination. So imagination obviously is this core important ingredient to all breakthrough innovation, creativity and the things that really create that novel creation that turns into growth, whether that be revenue growth, company growth. So it's absolutely a non negotiable component. It's one of my favorite parts is the imagination part. And then what we go do from there is, is also weird. And that's this concept of generosity. So generosity. And I'm not talking about necessarily donating money or things like that. Generosity or this idea of, of helping others or having this collective ingenuity when we're not taking score and we're being radically generous. That's a weird concept as it relates to a lot of settings in the corporate space. And so when you put these three together, that's the love your weird framework. But what's fun about it is that if you, as we uncover this and peel back the layers, what you realize is that the most authentic, imaginative and generous version of ourselves is that five, six year old Susan or Frankie that's still inside there. And bringing that forward actually is kind of the secret ingredient of the love youe Weird framework.

Well, I certainly love the reference to what happened to you in childhood is influencing you now.

Absolutely.

What's interesting is like I take the perspective that in some cases what happened to you in childhood created a wound, and that wound is impacting how you.

Show up as a leader on every level.

Yeah, on every level. So there, there's. And, but the flip side of that is there's this beautiful quality of childlike innocence and playfulness that also got squashed along the way. And what I hear you saying is if you really want to unlock innovation, we need to tap into that and bring that out.

So love your weird. For me, it all came out of this divorce that I went through and which has nothing to do with work per se. Although, you know, it's all interconnected. And it wasn't until I realized that unlocking this new relationship that I, I realized I had abandoned my weird, which was this kid who was an inventor, a preacher, TV preacher, astronaut, and a cowboy all mixed up together. And that's who I was at 5, 6 years old. And I had abandoned that because it was weird. I had gotten bullied at a young age and I had, you know, there was different things in school and teachers and a lot of stuff started to really mute that. And then fast forward, I got into a relationship that ended up muting that as well. And that's why actually the ending of that relationship was part of my journey to realizing as an adult, wow. I've gone a long time living what I call an inauthentic existence. And so loving your weird. I was already in Innovation at the time and I was already on this journey of, of helping a lot of other people that worked for me were part of our teams. And what was interesting is that as I started to introduce this love your weird concept where at work, that was when it became this, this new. It kind of birthed this other thing that went beyond just loving myself and, and accepting myself and getting out of shame and, and personally living in a space that is more or limitless. That was when it really became really interesting. So as I started to open that up and welcome this new mindset at work, especially with my own teams, some remarkable things started to happen. And so it's this fun experiential thing that happens, but when you start to make it a culture, it created this environment of continuous innovation that I'd never seen before in any of my other companies. And that's what led to, you know, 60x growth, which we of course never had seen before as a result of this, this new way of doing things and approaching ideas, approaching meetings, approaching creating products and all those different components of innovation that we were creating as a tech company.

What's weird about you that you started loving?

Yeah, so the biggest thing that's so. A lot of people say this and so if anybody's watching and thinking this is that, you know, they say things like, you don't that weird. And you know, one of the things I've learned is that you don't have to look weird to love your weird. And so weird is a lot more about an inside job. So for me, some of the weird things I started to love is that I really started to embrace my inventive side. So leading up to this, I was, I had dabbled in some things that were like creations of products or inventing something new, but hadn't gone full sold out to it. And this was the thing that kind of pushed me over into that. And it was, it just was allowing me to reconnect with the inventor. I was always trying to invent things as a kid. And so I had hundreds of experiments. I turned my parents basement into a lab and was trying to create time machines and just whatever, I mean, hundreds of things. Most of them didn't work obviously until I was an adult. And I realized, okay, there was something more to that five year old Frankie than I have been really like allowing myself to do. So, you know, as a kid I always was trying to, to talking and trying to get people on board with these inventions and, and the other kids, it was weird because they just wanted to play or they want to do sports. They're like, can you just stop being such a weirdo about that? So that's where the whole like weird part came from, was being looked at as weird with that.

Yeah, because it's interesting. It doesn't sound weird to me. Right. It sounds like it's the judgment that Other people had of that that you took in, and then it became something that was weird to you when it was actually really natural for you.

Absolutely. That's what it is, is that it wasn't weird for me, it was weird for everybody else.

Yeah.

That's a big part that I always like to drop into early on in the work that I do is this idea that, like, we've got to create a space where there's not that type of judgment and it's got to be authentic. That's why you have to cover the authentic piece. And this fear of. Of failing or fear of being judged or showing up and, like, take the masks off. Like, if. If we can't get through that part, we're never going to be able to create a culture of continuous innovation. It's not going to happen. And so that's why it's those three ingredients together that make it work.

Yeah.

And have one without the other. They're all great by themselves, but it's when you put them together that it creates this recipe for that.

Yeah, totally get it. So I'm going to get to the other two pieces in a minute, but I want to stick on since it's the main pieces. Loving your weird and unmasking authenticity. How do you help people rediscover this side of themselves?

Yeah, so the first thing is about really getting honest about some of the things that aren't working. So usually people can identify what's not working or what the problem is or what they wish was different or. Or whatever.

They.

They usually can identify that faster than they can identify a new idea. Breakthrough. And so if. When we start with that, that component, that's really the key is that we really want to have it set up in a way where they're starting to look and take inventory and. And. And just really get honest about what's not working. Right. So if that's individually or that's collectively as an organization or as an individual, what. What is it? What is not working? And as you start to look at that, those are the pieces that really create this stuck environment where people feel stuck or stagnant or maybe even going back. And so you want you. It starts by getting honest with myself, and then I'm able to get honest collectively. But really the first step is getting honest with myself about, like, what's really not working. Like, am I really doing the things that I feel like I was born to do or I am best at? Most of the time, the answer is like, at least it's partially no. And so as you start to take inventory, you start to look for things that we can get rid of to create the space.

Okay, but take me back to how do I discover what was weird and see it in a new light? How do you go through that process?

Okay, so. All right, so we'll go back a little further. So when people are doing the work that I usually encourage them to first look at what was I into at 5 or 6 years old. So a lot of times if you're talking to somebody that's, that's older, they haven't even thought about that in a long time. They might have thought about their kid who was recently five or six years old, but they haven't thought about themselves at five or six. So that's usually the first step. Now what I will tell you is that there are some people that can't remember. Okay. So I always try to honor that. And, and the reason they can't remember is traditionally from either some large or small trauma.

Right.

Or the, the, their brain and their, their ego, the good part of their ego has created a safety inside of them so that they don't have to feel that pain again.

Right.

But the problem is that the ego has this double edged sword where ego is going to over protect if you let it. So it makes everything too rigid for sure. And, and so it's, it's really ask, going back to that and asking ourselves, you know, what was I into? And it's not just a playful exercise, it's, it's insight. Because the thing, the reason why the five or six year old self is so important in this is that it's the best picture, especially if you're older and like you feel like you're in a rut or you're stuck or you don't know what you're supposed to be doing or you feel lost. That version was before it got altered. And so that's the original.

No, got it. Yeah, that makes sense.

Something for someone else.

Can we play with this for a minute? So if we take like as me as an example and I was thinking through. Okay, so what was I like at 5 and 6?

Yeah. What were you into?

What was weird, I guess, sort of weird about me or something that drove my parents crazy is that I loved playgrounds and I would freak out anytime I saw a playground. We must stop and I have to go on the swings and other things about me or something that drove my parents crazy is that I loved playgrounds and I would freak out anytime I saw a playground. We must Stop. And I have to go on the swings and other things. And it got so bad that my parents had to drive, like take a longer route because they couldn't pass a playground without me freaking out.

Yeah.

So would that be an example?

Well, think about it. I mean, how many places that you work or have worked or clients that you've had have a playground in the building?

Not many.

I mean, Google's at it. You know, they're cool, but like it's, it's rare, it's not common. That's weird, right? Yeah. Play. Playing on the playground and trying to figure out how that fits into work. That's weird. So that's a. But it's a perfect example because in the work that we both do, you know that like there is some advantage that can be gained from approaching work from that play mentality. Okay. Because it's the, it's less about what exactly was I doing at 5 as it is like, okay, what was my mindset like back then? So if my 5 year old self was looking at what we're going to do today for work, how would, how, what would their opinion be on it? What would and how would they try to solve it? It would probably be a ridiculous, weird option. Right. The strategy would come across initially as ridiculous or weird, but as you continue to unpack that, there's probably something in there that is the perfect unlock for what you've been struggling with or what, what you've been hitting a wall on.

Right.

It's giving yourself the permission to say, what if I was trying to solve this as a five year old? Right. And yeah.

What if I could enter into everything with more sense of play and more exuberance? I think it was like I was a very exuberant child and I think I still have some of that, but it's tempered more. Right. Because you don't necessarily go in and coach a CEO with vast exuberance.

But here's, tell me this, when you played on the playground, how much did what you were going to be when you grew up or the future or what was going on in life or how are you going to solve problems or whatever was on your mind, how much did that matter to you in those moments?

Yeah, absolutely nothing. It was like playground now. And I think so I like you're.

Trying to solve problems.

Yeah.

In work or whatever for your clients. When you're trying to solve problems, do you solve them better? When it matters so much and you have to get it done.

Right.

Does it matter that much? And you're able to really be in a flow. Which one, which one do you solve better problems with?

Well, definitely the latter is going to allow you to think outside the box and come up with creative ideas. Right. And, and not judge them and not so pressurized.

Yeah, yeah. You, you didn't judge yourself at 5 or 6 the same way you judge yourself now. That's what, that's the first building block of this. How do we get to the back to a place where we don't judge things prematurely? That's where we miss so many things that we don't even know we've missed.

Got it. So now let's take that further and say for the next piece, unleashing imagination. Tell me more about that piece of your process.

Yeah, so one of my favorite studies came out in, in the early 70s and it was around a study NASA did. Right. And, and some, a lot of people may have heard this reference, but I love it because it, it, it illuminated an actual research component or science component to what I innately had seen in my own life and believe. And that's this concept that kids are a certain level of imaginative that we don't see as adults. Okay.

Yeah.

In fact, they tested 1600 kids back then because they wanted to see the level of genius imagination that was in these children. And the reason they did is because they were trying to figure out is imagination something that's learned or unlearned? Right. Because we all want to be more imaginative. We want to come up with great ideas, we want to think differently. And what ends up happening is that we don't as adults. In fact. So they tested these kids. What percentage of them do you think tested at that genius level of imagination?

Oh, gosh, I don't know.

So it's 98, 10.

Oh, wow.

Okay, 98. This is the same test they gave people applying for NASA, by the way. Simple, simple test. They gave it the same exact test. Well, the people that were applying for NASA, out of 100,000 adults, it was 2%. The, the, the thing that they realized was that like at 10 they tested the same kids. From 5, they, it was already down to 30%. At 15, it was 12. And then 2% of the adults. So, so what is that about? And, and the, the, the thing is, is that our society, our culture and our the. Eliminates more of that imaginative divergent thinking versus this like kind of rigid math, convergent type logic. And you have to have both. It's not like you can just play on a playground all day. Right. But it's a It needs to be more of a balance. And I think that's where you know being willing and open minded to having a space where imagination is a core value that you look for in adults. A core thing that is celebrated that you make time for and that you, you identify where the rigid components are where we have to let's say like make a decision and the imaginative free flowing what if world of that we were like when we were kids. So. Yeah, go ahead.

I was just gonna say I wonder how this has changed over time with children. You know, when I think back to my childhood before electronics and all those pieces, we had to really use our imagination to have fun. Like you know, we had to make stuff up all the time and, and we did make up crazy games. I remember I made my own haunted house. I was always the little entrepreneur. I charged people 25 cents to come through this. Love it I a movie using this old silent camera. And then yeah.

And like compared to, compared to some of your peers some of them would have made. Some people would have been like oh she's kind of, that's kind of weird. They might have thought it was clever but it was like it doesn't do that. Or like should she be doing that and she have a license? Who knows what adult brain idea would. Would say that what you were doing back then. Like you know, that's childish or ridiculous whatever.

Yeah. I think my question is, I'm wondering generationally what's happening now. And I don't know if you have.

I mean the only thing I think gener personally that would be any different is because of the screens and everything else. They might be. Yeah being quicker but I mean dropping down to 30 at 10 years old, I mean that's pretty quick. So yeah, I mean I'll be honest. Like has anything changed in the human capacity? Absolutely not. Has an acceptance of outsourcing imagination gone up over the last generations? Absolutely. In fact, I mean now it's even more so now. But there's this interesting dynamic that it. If we collectively choose to lean into our imagination more then what. What can happen is that we don't outsource all of it. We use. And when I say outsource it, let's just say like AI or something along those lines. Right, right. Or augmented reality or virtual reality or gaming. So like a lot of it's gaming that has created these spaces where you might think oh these kids aren't as imaginative as they used to be. But they're, they're also living in these expansive multiverses so maybe they are more imaginative. Right? Right. It depends how you look at it. And yeah, that's why you see a lot of stuff with gamification. It's the same thing. Like if you take the same test or the same quiz or the same exercise at work and you make it a gamification, all of a sudden people are in. They like it more. Why is that? It's because we, we, we don't judge it the same way. If we think it's a game or we think it's for fun, we don't judge it the same way, and yet we get the same results. But people had fun. And that's all we're talking about is like, how do we get. Get to a point where people love their work? They're not. Because everybody's worried about burnout. They're worried about employee churn, retention, performance, and ultimately revenue growth. And it's like that's tied into all this too. It's like we have to create a space where, where both can happen. And I think that most people think they have to choose if, like, we're either going to create this, like, soft skills at the company and like, just check these boxes, that'll make the employees feel good. But at the end of the day, we still need this output and, but they, they're still thinking of them as separate.

Right?

Right. Does that make sense?

It does. So tell me, what do you think, the last piece. Why is the last piece of what you have, the generosity one, so important to this framework?

All right, so I have this belief that I've seen work out in many, many ways in my life and in my businesses and things of that nature. And that is the belief that if we create a mindset and an action of helping others as like our first move. If my first move is always thinking, how can I help Susan, or how can I help the person? Some people call it servant leadership or whatever you want to call it. But the fact is, this idea of helping others without taking score is such an important ingredient to create the type of collective ingenuity, to turn this amazing group of people that are being authentic now and this amazing ideas into reality. That's the third step of generosity. You, you know, it can go by many names, but generosity is something that has to be present in that we, we can't be taking score, which, which is a mindset of like, okay, what does not taking score look like? Well, it looks like somebody who really has a mindset of abundance that I'm not going to lose if I share, especially if I share before I know what I'm going to get.

Right.

That type of mindset, that transactional mindset is where is why generosity is so important is to break that transactional mindset down. Because look, the, the great companies are the ones that create a free flow where that sharing is, is celebrated. And it's, it's this collective rewarding of, of the organization. That type of, those types of organizations are always the great organizations. And it's because they, they know you can't, Everything can't be transactional. It can't. Not if you're really trying to create novel innovative breakthroughs that are going to make sure that the organization doesn't get left behind.

Got it. So the link between being more generous and being able to create breakthrough innovations, tell me like it, it's not going to transactional, but maybe make that a little tighter for me. What, what is that combination?

So before I do that, real quick, just so you know, like the kid part of this is. Yeah. The thing about being a kid five or six is that we, we had an abundance mindset that most turned into scarcity. So that's where the kid comes in. So the kids in every scene. Okay. But so with, with that in mind, you know, the, the thing about breakthrough innovation, okay, is that a couple of things. One, people think that it's going to be one department that's going to make the product, or one department that's the creative department. And then you have all these other departments, which is essentially 80, 90% of the company that's not involved. All right? So the first thing is that, like, everybody needs to be involved if we're going to soar. What I call these seismic shifts that we're all facing now, and they're getting bigger. And so the reason why generosity is so important is because everyone has to be thinking, I'm coming today to give. Everyone has to be giving. Now if everybody's giving, that means someone is receiving, right? And so if everybody is thinking give first and not worried about what that's going to look like, there creates a culture where people are fully engaged, right? And they're fully alive. Coming with the ingredients, right? Which is like sometimes just agility, like the ability to pivot. Like if I love what I do, if I feel like I've got everybody's got my back, I feel like I can be generous. I feel like I can show up as myself. I feel like my ideas are celebrated and then used to turn into something when change happens, which it always is. And now happening at, you know, breakneck speed. When that happens, it you that this is the, the culture that allows for us to continue to shift because agility is a big part of, of how you create breakthrough. So it's ideas, it's, it's, it's everybody bringing their unique piece to it. And so the generosity is, is, is being willing to think of others first, especially as it relates to putting the puzzle pieces together.

Yeah.

So instead of one thing I talk about a lot is this idea that a lot of times at work and, and sometimes it's not even the leader's fault. Sometimes if there's an environment where the leader inadvertently created a space where they, the people wear masks, the leaders is doing the best they can to make a decision based on the mask. They're looking at the mask, they're not looking at the person. And so they're not even meaning to make the puzzle pieces crammed together to try to make it work because they're thinking they're doing the right thing because, oh, look, I'm looking at the mess. I mean, that's why like, you have to have these building blocks in place and you have to create that space of like, to make sure we're not, we're actually all know each other, which requires us to first know ourselves. And then from there it's, it's this mission almost inside the organization to create the puzzle based on the pieces that we have. Now sometimes you have people that don't fit, but hopefully you've already worked that out as you're, as you're figuring out, as everyone's trying to figure out what, you know, what are they uniquely showing up to be?

Yes. So tell us, this has been super fascinating. Tell me what's one thing you would suggest leaders do tomorrow to start to integrate this model?

Love it. Yeah. The first step is to get honest and take some inventory. So if, if I'm a leader, I'm looking at this, I'm like, where do I even start? Is like, get honest about the problem. Because there's no point creating solutions or innovations or things like that if you don't understand the problem. So the first step, if you're going to go on this journey is to look at, get honest about, you know, what's not really working. If I'm, if I'm being honest, that that goes beyond maybe just like the KPIs, you know.

Yeah.

And try to get as honest as you can with yourself about that. That's one thing. And then the other thing I would do is ask yourself, like, am I imaginative at work or do I think other people are imaginative at work? And those are the two things I would start with.

Great.

Great.

Awesome. Well, where can people learn more about you and your work?

Yeah. So obviously Frankyrusso.com or Google, Frankie Russo is fine. You can find everything there. I'm on all the social medias and then I do have a couple of books out where books are sold. Amazon books a million, that kind of stuff. Or I don't know if they have a books a million anymore. I know that's Barnes and Noble. So yeah, you can find me just my name, Frankie Russo. That's my handle for most of the social stuff.

All right, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.