The Fabulous Learning Nerds

Scott (00:02.022)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another fantastic episode of your fabulous learning nerds. My name is Scott Schuette, I'm your host today. And my most excellent of co -hosts is with me, you love him, Dan Coonrod, everyone.

Scott (00:19.556)
Dan!

daniel (00:20.921)
Scott when you said my most excellent co -host I was like, oh, we're definitely going to Zeta. Oh Okay Yes, yes You know, I watched the the third one. I watched the third one and It's it just just didn't hit the same man. It's just was very different. I think that's cuz I think it's cuz we went and got old I

Scott (00:27.494)
Oh, I was thinking Bill and Ted dude, no Bill and Ted Yeah, I know Yes

daniel (00:50.427)
Ha ha ha!

Scott (00:51.366)
Oh, uh -huh. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that didn't hit me very well either. And I just, yeah. And the thing, okay, spoilers for Bill and Ted, everybody, a third movie that if you haven't seen, you're okay, in my humble opinion. But they go and they do the thing from the first movie where they're going to get all these people together.

daniel (01:14.235)
That's fair.

Scott (01:20.294)
And I'm like, okay, cool. If you're going to go play in them member berries area, like grab it, run it and stick the landing. And they did not. It was just, it was just one of those side stories that they were doing. And I'm like, no, cause they had so much potential. It had great potential. I'm like, this has got great potential to be equally as funny as what I fell in love with, but it was not. It was not. So how are you doing other than you watch Bill and Ted, sir.

daniel (01:47.867)
You know, I am definitely more fair to Midland than I was earlier last week. Yep.

Scott (01:57.734)
What has made you more fair to Midland, sir?

daniel (01:57.979)
Uh...

Well, last week, I got like, I don't know, it's not the flu. I got something. It put me down and out, put me down and out for a couple of days. It hit hard, it hit fast, and then it left me just kind of, it was exciting. It was awesome.

Scott (02:14.918)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, being sick's no fun. George Carlin, God bless his soul, used to say, if being sick was fun, we would do it all the time. Right? Isn't that right? I would totally go and get sick all the time. Like, hey, man, we're going to go get sick. Yeah. Yeah. Not for me. Not going to get sick. Yeah. So I'm glad you're feeling better. Speaking of people who are also feeling better, she's in the house. You love her. We're going to have a great time chatting with her. She's the

daniel (02:19.707)
Sure.

daniel (02:26.363)
Ha ha ha ha!

daniel (02:32.699)
Ha ha ha!

Scott (02:44.71)
Duchess of Design. Zeta's in the house!

Scott (02:56.42)
Did it!

Zeta (02:58.574)
How you doing?

Scott (03:00.358)
Good. Are you more fair to Midland as well?

Zeta (03:04.654)
I am on the recovery as well. I had the flu and my energy level is not 100%, but I'll try my best.

Scott (03:12.358)
Okay, well, there you go. We'll keep things on the up and up. It will be entertaining. I have a question for both of you, if it's okay. It's a rhetorical question. So we're gonna start with Zeta, because. So Zeta, who's your favorite hero and why? Who's your favorite hero and why? Go Zeta, go!

daniel (03:13.275)
Mm -hmm.

Zeta (03:14.988)
Mm -hmm.

Zeta (03:20.59)
Sure, sure.

Zeta (03:32.526)
Oh gosh, okay. If I have to pick one, I would say Nightcrawler because despite everything that he was going through, are we talking about real heroes or like make believe? Okay, so yeah, Nightcrawler. Kurt Wagner, my favorite superhero because despite everything, he still is kind, caring, excellent leader, by the way, of Excalibur in its first run, but all around favorite.

Scott (03:43.43)
I just said hero. I said hero. So...

Scott (03:59.526)
Mm -hmm.

Zeta (04:01.774)
Favorite person to emulate. Yeah.

Scott (04:04.614)
So you like to go poof all over.

Zeta (04:06.83)
And I have a swashbuckling spirit. Yeah. It's bamf. It's bamf. Yeah. It's okay.

Scott (04:09.926)
and I just went over...

daniel (04:10.171)
hahahaha

Scott (04:13.432)
I just went over everybody's head. All is right was bamf. You're right, bamf. Yeah, OK. Well, that's great. Dan the man. How about you, sir? Favorite hero and why?

daniel (04:23.931)
Man, you know, I had all that time while Zeta was telling us to think about it. You know, I'm gonna nerd out for a minute and I am gonna say the most vanilla answer, but what I think for the least vanilla reason, and I'm gonna say Superman.

but not because of all the cool powers. Like those are all cool and he can definitely be like character who can like, well, Superman can solve it, but Superman, in my eyes, Superman's like best unlisted powers, he has this indelible, deep seated sense of what is right and what is wrong. And that's like the best superpower. Like they don't play it up a whole bunch in the comics. He doesn't talk about it, but like.

If Superman's like, I'm gonna do this, like that's probably the best good path that you could take in this situation. And I think that's probably why I like Superman.

Scott (05:21.86)
Mm -hmm.

Scott (05:25.862)
Yeah, love your answer. That would have been my answer for many, many years for the exact same reason. Um, mine today is Captain America. I love Captain America for Captain America and Superman are, are very similar because they are black and white. It's either we're going to do the right thing or we're going to do the wrong thing. There is no gray. We should always strive to do the right thing. And I find that very admirable. Superman's a

daniel (05:35.835)
Love Captain America. A very similar reason.

Zeta (05:36.718)
Yeah, same.

Scott (05:55.398)
the same way. There are plenty of runs that show that off. And you should go and check those out. What was the All -Star Superman? That's it. It was the animated movie. If you watch that, it's fantastic.

daniel (06:08.123)
Oh, All -Star Superman is great. Yeah, I've got the comic and the movie. Both were fantastic. I really liked it.

Scott (06:14.566)
Yeah, it speaks to exactly what you're talking about, which is doing the right thing. She just goes and does the right thing regardless of what it what it means to him. By the way, if anybody would like to read my blog, I have a blog post on my LinkedIn page talking about the leadership qualities of Captain America and why he's so awesome. Boom. Go check that out. Really great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we could nerd out and talk about that the whole show. But there's a method to my madness today.

Zeta (06:20.878)
Even if it's difficult. Yeah. Yeah.

daniel (06:32.185)
Boom.

Zeta (06:34.092)
Nice.

Scott (06:43.302)
we are going to be discussing leadership. We're going to be talking about the complexities of leadership and all three of these answers are really great around why being a leader is not always that easy. And with that, let's go ahead and dive into our topic of the week.

Scott (07:05.83)
All right, this week we're talking culture of leadership, why it's important, what good leadership looks like, and hey, you know what? How you can become a more effective leader. So, yeah, really appropriate, and you know, the funny thing is we tend to lean into this every once in a while, and that's the wonderful thing about being a learning and development people is we have a tendency to really care about this stuff because we honestly believe that...

It can make a difference and that's the kind of people that we are. And so love, love the topic. Could talk all night. We will not try to keep it as sure as we can, but I'll toss this over to Zeta, Zeta Y.

Why is leadership important? Why is it important?

Zeta (07:48.398)
Oh my gosh. I think, yeah, leadership is so important because employee tenure, how long you're going to have an employee in your organization is directly tied to how good your leadership is. If you have great leaders, people are going to want to stay. If you don't have good leaders, it's proven. There's a Gallup poll that says, hey, if you don't have good effective leaders, you're probably going to lose your people. And it's 50 % to almost two thirds.

that you'll lose.

Scott (08:22.086)
So.

Ah, it brings up a... Go ahead, Dan, go ahead, jump in.

Zeta (08:24.878)
So really important.

daniel (08:25.691)
You know, I want to piggyback off of that. I want to piggyback off of that because, you know, like, I think there's a lot of reasons to strive to be a better leader, to strive to not just be like a better business leader, but just a better leader in general, leader of people, leader of ideas. We kicked off by talking about like superhero leaders, you know, very, very abstract. But I mean,

you can get right down to the brass tacks. As Ada, you talked about employee turnover. DDI basically says for every bad leader you have, it costs your business $126 ,000 a year because of dissension, turnover, low productivity. The inverse of that is true. For every dollar a business spends on leadership programs, the ROI is seven bucks. I mean, like we can talk about the...

the moral obligation of good leadership, which I firmly believe in. But I think just kicking right to the dollar amount, like bottom line up front.

Good leaders save your business.

Scott (09:41.094)
Yeah. And I think that part of the opportunity is like there's twofold. Like, so there's the business impact part of it. There's also the people part of it. And I want to talk a little bit about both. Right. So I really feel like there's a disconnect. You guys can tell me if I'm right or wrong. I don't have anything to back it up, but I actually have some things to back up the thought process around, you know, the things that we do and learning, right. Getting people to change their behavior to get better results. Like that, those are things that we're going to talk about.

But sometimes I feel like, you know, what the business really looks at and values and respects, like a lot of my experience has been like, can you get stuff done? Right. And I think a lot of times what happens, we spend so much time focusing in on, hey, let's get as much stuff done as humanly possible for the lowest amount of dollars so we can make the most dollars. And that's what's valued and respected. And to me, I feel like there are

There are people out there that run teams and whatnot that are really good managers that allow that to get done. Like we're just going to go ahead and we're going to get as much stuff as I, as I possibly can get done with the people that I get done. And, and that's how I'm going to get rewarded. And you know what? That's important. And that's fine. Like, I feel like that's important and fine. And I would put those people in under management, right? Those are, and there there's a place for great managers, right? Managers that are good at this are awesome.

Zeta (11:03.886)
Oh yeah.

Scott (11:07.398)
When you move over to the idea that now I'm going to steward human capital, right? So I'm going to go ahead and lead people who have hopes and dreams and good days and bad days and insecurities and all this other kind of stuff. All the stuff that comes with leading people, like that's a completely different competency. And a lot of the things that are important from a people leadership position are sadly some things that we don't spend enough time talking about.

And that's where a lot of that opportunity comes. So I'm going to finish with this and let you guys jump off of that. But one of the podcasts I listened to, yes, I listened to podcasts too, Scott Miller's On Leadership podcast. Scott Miller works for the Stephen Covey Association, Franklin Covey Association. He used to be CMO for a long time. He's got his own podcast. You should totally check it out. If you're a leadership nerd like me, you should check it out.

But he's got a new book on careers. And so his intern was actually his producer was interviewing him on his own show, which is great. That'd be fantastic. Like Zeta interviewing me on this show. That would be fantastic. You're way better than a producer you got. At any rate, that being said, what he said was this and was really interesting. One of the things that's important to understand is I think we all understand this, but the way he put it together was just super. He's like, you know, when you get promoted into

Zeta (12:15.922)
Thank you.

Scott (12:30.052)
leadership roles and where you're actually, you know, leading a group of people. It's because you were good at something, like really good at something, right? You were the best salesperson, the Michael Scott analogy of leadership, we're going to go ahead and promote you because you're really good at sales, we're going to promote you because you are a fantastic project manager, right? You were really fantastic at all these other things. So you're really good at something. But the the opportunity comes that um,

The skill sets that made you really good at those things don't necessarily make you really good at leading people, right? They're different competencies. And most people are not getting the coaching, right? Our good friend, Callie Lippman, I'm sure she's listening to this right now, like, oh, she's screaming, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? They're not getting the development, they're not getting the training, they're just like, hey, now you're leading people, go have fun. And so what we have, and this is great, so please use this, it really helped me think about stuff.

daniel (13:04.219)
Yeah.

Zeta (13:05.868)
Mm -hmm.

Scott (13:28.154)
We have really good people who wind up being not the greatest of leaders for one reason or other. And so that onus then falls onto us. So leader leaders, how do you have those hard conversations? How do you, like I like to tell people, how do we mentor up? Which is really challenging, but also very rewarding as well, because you all want the same thing. So thoughts, comments, piggybacking off of that.

daniel (13:53.659)
I 100 % agree. I feel too often, and again, it's just, it's the merit -based work culture. How do I reward excellence other than through a promotion? And when you hit the ceiling of our individual contributor space, how do I continue to reward you? Well, the only place is a new role. And often those new roles,

our leader roles, our highest compensated roles tend to be leader roles. They tend to be focused on like, you know, leading teams, leading people, leading the business. And so let's say you've got a great salesperson, great individual contributor. They're bringing in the dough. They're doing amazing. The idea becomes like, well, we have to, we have to keep them because they're a valuable asset. And like, we want to reward them for all of the hard work and effort they've put in.

and for all of the good they've brought the business, but maybe they're capped out at salary. Maybe there's no role above them. And the answer too often is let's promote them into a leadership role. And if that's not what they want and that's not what they're good at, you've basically removed a piece off the board.

put it in charge of a couple other pieces and you've brought the value and the value of the people that they're leading down because you're like, well, we have to figure out some way to reward. I think there's a whole other conversation about pay structures and business organization that none of us are qualified to dive into. But too often those people who are not bad people become bad leaders because they don't have the skills and the business.

isn't interesting in developing them as a leader because they've already given them extra money. They've already invested in them to what they see as an extra amount.

daniel (16:05.179)
That person in our scenario or theoretical isn't a bad person. It's not like you brought up, it's not a bad person. They're just not a strong leader. If the business were...

building programs that identified good leaders, uplifted leaders already in places, built leaders and leadership as a function of the business.

That helps everybody.

Scott (16:33.796)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, totally get it. Like we, we're human beings, right? So we all have similar wants, needs and desires. One of the things that I found most successful for me is like reinforcing the behavior that I want, right? So, hey, it's totally okay. Everybody, this is great. This is a little secret. Like I do this all the time. Thanking people for doing the right things and even telling them out loud, like when you do this,

Zeta (16:34.892)
Oh, yeah.

Scott (17:03.43)
I feel valued. Because then hopefully what happens is it goes and it sinks in. I'm like, oh, Scott feels valued when I do, oh, I should do more of that. OK, great, cool. And 90 % of the time it works out. Kind of taking a step back a little bit, going back to where Zeta brought us from the beginning. And I want go back to you, Zeta. So let's spend some time talking about, if we're thinking about effective leadership, right?

managing people in the right way. What did you find or what are we seeing out there as far as traits and things that we can point to as far as saying, you know what, that's a good trait or a good, necessary thing for strong leaders to have these days?

Zeta (17:49.614)
Well, if I could start off with a kind of an anecdotal story. When I went from project management to actually being a leader and having to take care of a team, it was a big jump. And I knew how to get tasks done. I knew how to do design and how to get hit deadlines. And then people were reporting to me. And then I had to make sure that they got their things done as well.

there was a lot more skill that was needed to do that. It wasn't just check a box, right? Callie Foster, back in episode, I think, what was it? 81, she talks about courage and she talks about compassion. And I think if you guys want to hear more about that, check it out. It's episode 81 is from last year, I think in September. But other than those, emotional intelligence is kind of an all encompassing umbrella that kind of talks about,

your ability to then deal with your emotions, your own self -doubts, your own worries, as well as the emotions of people that you're taking care of. Being able to navigate, that's pretty difficult, especially if you're put into that position and not knowing where to go. So how do you get better at that? You stay valid. You trust the people that you task to do things and you help guide them.

When say they don't hit the mark, right? You ask them, hey, how can I get better? Hey, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? Ask for feedback.

That's what I've kind of learned in the field. I bet there's more if you guys want to jump in.

Scott (19:37.638)
I want to hit on a couple of things that are really important. So I want to be clear, like when the first couple, my first couple of seasons and trying to figure this stuff out, same thing, good person, not the best leader. So a lot of what we're talking about is from experience and a lot of things. So that's really important. Right. Right. And then figuring these kinds of things out and then going, finding out more, which we'll get to in a minute. But I think that, um,

Zeta (19:50.124)
Yeah.

Zeta (19:54.88)
I'm looking stuff up. Right?

Scott (20:04.422)
One of the things that's like counterintuitive from a leadership perspective is that when I am also responsible for the output of my team and the individual contributors within my team, a lot of times we'll make that mistake of saying, well, I got to be on top of everything. Now I got to be on top of everything. And that couldn't be further from the truth. Like, I mean, you have to be on top of everything, but that doesn't mean you have to have ownership and everything because...

If you have ownership in everything, you try to control everything. This is very, very true. Like those people who try to control everything, control nothing. Right. And so, um, Jocko Willink in his book, Extreme Ownership, great book. You should totally pick it up. I preach about it a lot of time. He talks about this thing called decentralized command, which is this idea that you've got people that are really good at what they're doing.

Zeta (20:43.79)
Mm -hmm.

Scott (20:56.742)
right, that are kind of maybe ready for that next step or whatever, like give them some responsibility and make sure they own their jobs. And you can check in every once in a while, see where they're at, see how they're feeling, all that good stuff. Then you don't have to necessarily be on top of everything, but in order to do that, we have to set clear expectations. Now I was involved in a company many years ago that was part of Gallup's book, From Good to Great. So one of the things that they have is a

triangle of engagement and go look it up. This is about 30 years old. Go look it up. At the very bottom, it's a pyramid. Things that are necessary for people to do the best job ever. Does anybody want to know what's on the bottom? You know, foundational. You're not going to guess?

daniel (21:36.763)
What's on the bottom?

daniel (21:41.115)
No! I don't want to play the guessing game!

Scott (21:43.686)
Oh my gosh, okay, great. What's on the very bottom is I know what's expected of me at work. Expectations, right? That's why setting clear expectations, super important. Right, well, that's fine, right? Super important, and every time, I swear to God, every time I run into opportunities, I can almost always go back to...

daniel (21:53.019)
That's what I would have guessed.

Zeta (21:58.22)
Mm.

Scott (22:07.91)
Did I know what was expected of me and find opportunities? By the way, if I'm a leader and I don't set really good expectations around what's being, what I need and things get dropped, who's that on? That's on me, right? It's totally on me. And by the way, you should totally take ownership in that because it is your responsibility and your people below you, like when you take, by the way, if you take ownership, you know, and I kind of should have set better expectations, like nine times out of 10, those people below are like,

Zeta (22:21.742)
on the leader, right? Yeah, yeah.

Scott (22:37.158)
Oh no, no, I should have, you know, everybody kind of steps in and join in on this party and I, on the expectations party, which is great ownership party, excuse me. So setting clear expectations is vital. Um, and then backing up to your whole emotional intelligence, which I think is super important, especially in a post pandemic world. Cause I don't know, raise your hand. If you agree with me, we all kind of went through a little bit of trauma together. Right. So all of, all of us.

Zeta (23:04.046)
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

daniel (23:05.019)
fair.

Scott (23:07.142)
had this like shared trauma. And so, you know, that idea of being understanding around where people are really important. I have a new employee and one of the things that we level set on right away is like, we never know exactly what anybody around us is going through. So we are gonna lean with kindness every time, whether the individual deserves our kindness or not. We are gonna leverage this.

every time. And we do. And sometimes they don't deserve us being kind and humble and also good stuff. But I'd rather be doing that than the other thing. I'm sorry, I have rambled again. Other thoughts on other

Zeta (23:50.862)
No, you did fine. You did fine. Yeah, so lead by example.

daniel (23:51.067)
You're fine. You're excited. So I'll say for me, yeah, I think for me, a lot of the...

early first step problems in the leadership journey is defining what type of leader you're going to be. For me, and just my perspective, there's two different base styles of leadership and then a couple levels, right? And when I was first starting off, all of the examples I had, except for one.

which was right in front of my face and I didn't realize it and I'll get to that in a second, but were directorial style leaders. They were leaders who knew what to do. They were like, made snappy decisions. They knew the ins and outs of the business. They could be like, go do this, go do that. And man, like a great directorial leader is like, oh, it's awesome. Like that sense of like, you talk about the bottom of the pyramid, knowing what your job is. Like that's what directorial leaders do. Like they...

You know what you're supposed to be doing. There's no like gray area. You can go off and accomplish and crush your goals because you've got clear vision, clear leadership, directorial leaders, like fantastic.

I tried to be that for probably the first few months of being a leader. For those people who I was leading at the time, I apologize because I can't, that's not my thing. Like I can go tell people what to do, but I just sound snarky and like kind of a jerk telling people what to do. And I don't want to tell people what to do. Like I've got a real strong belief that like, hey, by the time you make it to your nine to five job, we've probably mostly all grownups. And if I have to tell you what to do each and every day,

daniel (25:41.979)
Mmm, grumble, grumble.

For me, there's that type of leader who inspires, that inspirational leader. That leader who points to goals and hills and says, that's where we need to be. Let's get there. How do we get there? What does that look like? That type of leader who can like move the culture of a team, of a business, of an org and like push it into new places.

new directions redefine what it means to be part of that team or org or business. And there's in Star Trek and like in like comics, there's lots of great inspirational leaders. In the business world, there's lots of great inspirational leaders, but they tend to be those leaders who are visioning and they tend to be at the very top.

because they're not in the minutiae. They're not like figuring out like the day to day. They're not, they hope that you know how to get from point A to point B because they want to push hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people and you know, millions of billions of dollars worth of capital in a direction. And I think too often we don't ever have that conversation with people. We just say, congratulations, you're a leader.

Here's some people whose livelihoods depend upon you now and here is some goals that the business wants to launch and Here's a book on leadership read it. Good luck. I'll check in with you at end of year review and You have no idea like what kind of leader are you gonna be what kind of like like are you are you gonna? Inspire people and have them move. Are you gonna like give direction? Are you gonna be somewhere in the middle?

daniel (27:43.035)
And we don't ever have those conversations, I don't think.

Zeta (27:47.15)
I think we should. I think we definitely should.

Scott (27:49.636)
Oh, well, if you definitely should, by the way, would challenge you. I don't think you have to be at the C -Sweeter CEO level to be a visionary leader. 100%. Like, if you're doing the...

daniel (27:54.939)
Well, I agree. I agree. I think too often those are the examples when we ask, we point to like, oh, you look up there, but you're right. I said in the beginning, I said the example of an inspirational leader was right in front of me though. Like one of my mentors who had brought me into the company where I would become a leader was a great inspirational leader. And like, it was awesome when he was pointing at hills and

Scott (28:00.422)
that we can point to.

daniel (28:23.803)
talking the big picture stuff. When we started talking like end of year metrics and numbers and specific deliverables, eh, a little wishy washy. But again, like I said, another example was right in front of my face, but somebody was like, you're a leader now. I was like, okay, cool. Yay, I'm a captain, what's that look like? I don't know, except from Star Trek.

Scott (28:52.004)
You know, the funny thing is we talked a little bit about decentralized command and the ability to delegate the ability to kind of stay on top of things without controlling things. The beautiful thing about that, it does take some work. Like it takes some work to build that foundation. But once your teams are on it, then you can vision and you should. And by the way, my experience, like visioning full -time job, like, or three quarter job. Like, you know, if I'm building the vision and what's going on,

I take a lot of work and I have to trust the people below me to do what they're doing right. And I have to inspire them to do more so that I got time to take the business to the next level. And when you get to that point in your career where you can start doing those things, that's when things can really take off. That's when it gets really fun. Because, you know, hey, here's what I'm thinking about, which is really, really great. You can't have any of that kind of time if you're just can -banding everything and you're micromanaging them with Jesus out of stuff.

daniel (29:42.971)
Best times.

Yeah.

Scott (29:49.51)
And you're checking in on people every five minutes. Like it takes away from your leadership capital, which is the amount of time that I have to do the right things, the things that I'm getting paid for. And you got to guard that leadership capital with your, it's like gold, right? So getting called into baloney stuff that takes away, you know, that eats up your leadership capital. Ooh, just be careful about that. I'm sorry. I'm getting all excited again.

Zeta (30:15.63)
No, no, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Be passionate about it. More people need to be. Another thing, when you were talking about, Scott, that I could just jump off on, when we think about the leaders that we want to lead us, say, we're just a worker and we're aspiring, what do we want to see in a leader? Someone that we trust, someone that trusts us, someone who's not going to micromanage and look and pick at every little thing.

daniel (30:15.675)
No, no, you're good. You're good. I'll say I'll say go ahead, Zeta. Yeah.

Zeta (30:44.078)
You need to build that rapport, right? You need to be able to trust your leaders. They need to be able to trust you to be open and honest, to know what to do, how to do it. So I just wanted to throw that in there.

daniel (30:55.739)
Now trust, trust is super vital. You know, you guys both bring up things that like, it's easy to get electrified. It's easy to get excited about talking about these things. Like when I had, the most fun I had leading Scott was when I handed that visioning off to the team, when I would be like, okay, guys, here's this number. This is the number that we got to hit. Let's sit down, let's talk. What does it look like for us to hit that number?

Scott (31:17.03)
Mmm.

daniel (31:25.051)
How do we get there? Like, what's the shape of, what's that number mean to us? What's that number mean to like our org? How do we reach it? What do we need to do? What assets do we need? What does it look like for us to get there? I was leading a team and we were doing a super big initiative, moving a business from like service -based culture to like sales -based culture. And like, I got super lucky to get like,

invited into that project on the ground floor and got to bring the team together. And like, we spent like four days, like up on the top of a building that like nobody else was there. We're like on this top floor and we just like took over like this open space area and it was just us. And we had all these whiteboards and markers and pens. And for like three or four days, we just visioned and we just built like what would be the purpose and point of like.

these initiatives and what they were going to look like and how we were going to partner with other people and what it meant to be part of our team. And just as a team, we visioned that he bring up trust, like somebody on the team early on was like, I don't like this. And they've had that trust. They had that trust enough. Thank goodness to say something. And we all stopped. And like that could have been this moment where, like the team was very excited. We were off going down this path and we could have like just been like, Nope, you're on great. Have a great day.

and completely excluded that person. And that would have been super wrong. And instead the team's like, no, like, let's stop, let's re -examine. Let's circle up, let's figure out, like, what don't we like about it? And like, again, that place of trust was those people saying, what don't we like about it? As soon as one person said, I don't like this, the team was, what don't we like about this? It was an awesome, magical moment. Yeah.

Zeta (33:15.886)
We not I. Yeah.

Scott (33:18.598)
Yeah, that's called building a high performance team. Because then people take ownership in their part. And the best part about actually taking the time to build a high performance team is when you get there, again, it makes your job easier because they will police themselves. Right? You'll never have to have a hard conversation again because they'll be having it amongst themselves, which is really, really great. I want to transition, if I could. And a lot of people listening, we're telling great stories, but I want to make sure that we're being helpful.

Zeta (33:21.71)
That is.

daniel (33:21.915)
Yeah.

Scott (33:48.038)
So hey, I'm a new leader. I just got promoted.

Maybe I was handed a book. Maybe we did have some quick, you know, day or two conversations about leadership, but that's it. How do I get better? Right? For those people that are leading people that want to get better.

daniel (33:56.891)
Ahem.

Scott (34:08.774)
Where we start, what kind of advice do we have for them?

daniel (34:12.635)
can jump in.

You, from my perspective, the new leader, one, just talked about this, stop thinking of I. If you have a group of people and you're leading these people and you are trying to get them to a good place, it's we. It starts with we. We succeed, I fail.

daniel (34:43.515)
And next is to see yourself as a force multiplier. As a leader, you're probably not producing as much, if any, of what you used to be producing. Your team is. Which means where the business once had, you know, four, five, six, seven, 12, 15, 20 people, plus you, they now just have 20 people minus you.

And so you have to make sure that you're making up that production, that output somehow, some way. That means that everybody on your team has to work a little bit harder. And that's something I think you need to remember, you need to hold onto that because of you, the team of people you're working with are working a fraction more than what they had to.

So you have to be a force multiplier.

Scott (35:46.342)
Great stuff. A couple things that I would add onto that. Oh, Sazayda, go ahead.

Zeta (35:48.73)
No, no, I was going to jump in mine, but please, I was going to go in a different direction. So please take after Dan. So if you have something to add. Yeah.

Scott (35:57.286)
Oh, okay. All right, great. Thank God I edit these shows. All right, so the deal is, I want to be a little bit more prescriptive if I could. So the very first thing that I would say is again, piggybacking off what I Scott Miller say is we are in the people business. You're in the people business now, which means that we are in the relationship business, right? So start building relationships.

Start building relationships with your team. Start building relationships with the people that you serve. Start building relationships with your boss and the people that they serve. Start making those connections, finding out what those people need, and building that trust with those people. Because you know what? Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets done without good relationships. Nothing. If you're gonna think that you can go ahead and have terrible crappy relationships and still get a lot of the things done and meet the needs of the business,

you're going to find out real quick that that doesn't work, it doesn't work so well. So that'd be one thing that I would do right away. The second thing that I would do right away is go find someone or something or somewhere where you can get fed. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is maybe there's a book that you want to read. Maybe there's like for me, I've...

I listen to three or four different podcasts a week on a weekly basis, all about this stuff. Why? Because I want to get better. And I also realize, I'm not going to get that in my corporate job. I'm just not. I don't care how good they are. I'm not going to get that. So hearing other thought leaders in this space really helps me identify like, yep, that resonates with me. I'm going to try that today, see how that works. Or nope, this doesn't resonates with me, but there's still some fundamental things that are there. Find a way to get fed. Take.

ownership, take ownership of your own personal development around leadership. So that'd be the second thing that I would do, right? So, hey, build those relationships. Go get fed. Go find a way to get fed. And number three, if you aren't doing this now, find a way to do it. Then just measure your effectiveness. It could be as simple as a little survey that, and most companies do this, like here's a survey, how's your leader doing? Like you hopefully should do that if you don't.

Scott (38:17.926)
No one's going to get upset with you if you do. Partner with your HR and say, hey, I want to send out a survey and find out baseline level how I'm doing. And then a year or whatever that term is later, have another indicator, baseline indicator of how well you're doing and measure yourself so you can get better. Yeah, just like any other form of measurements you have, your own personal development and effectiveness is super important. Everybody's afraid of 360s.

Feedback is a gift. I had a mentor tell me that many, many times. It's a gift. OK, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to walk in, and I'm going to get some good feedback, and I'm going to get some really crappy feedback. But just embrace the things that we can learn from so you can get better. Those are the three things that I would say.

Zeta (39:08.91)
I love those those those it's kind of hard to add anything to what Dan and Scott said, but I will start with them. Leadership is not just about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge. To get better is to also help your team grow to invest in them. To have a clear accountability for your actions. Like you said, we succeed, but I fail if you're a leader.

daniel (39:11.515)
Yeah.

Zeta (39:39.278)
You should make sure that you try to invest in your people, try to figure out what their purpose is, where they want to grow, how they want to grow, and help them on that path because one, it'll make your teams better, but also it'll make them better. And I think from a philosophical standpoint, it makes everything better.

Scott (40:00.198)
Awesome stuff. Any other final thoughts as we begin to wrap things up tonight, everybody?

daniel (40:07.419)
Yeah, I think we talked a lot about like people leadership this episode and I think that's awesome. I would love for us to come back and circle back around and maybe talk about business leadership. Not tonight, another night.

Zeta (40:08.3)
Hmm?

Scott (40:23.526)
No, it's all good. No, I think that that's great. You know, people in Richmond, all that other good stuff. I think it's important, but you know, this brass tacks of, hey, I've got a team, now what do I do? I mean, having these conversations is important. And continuing to have these conversations, I think, is super important. So I want to thank you all for that. So Daniel San.

daniel (40:35.001)
Yeah.

daniel (40:42.459)
Poor. Yes, Scott.

Scott (40:46.566)
Could you do me a solid and let everybody know how they could connect with us tonight?

daniel (40:51.211)
Absolutely. All right party people, you guys know the drill. If you haven't already, email us at nerds at the learningnerds .com. Email us any questions you might have, join in the conversation. This week, we're super curious, who is the best leader you've ever worked with and what traits or moment makes you think of them as the best leader? If you're on Facebook, you can find us at learningnerds for all of our Instagram peeps, fab learning nerds, and lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates.

www .thelearningnerds .com. Scott, back at you.

Scott (41:27.206)
Thanks, Dan. Hey, everybody. Could you do me a favor? Could you go ahead? Could you go ahead and hit that like button? Hit that subscribe button. Share this episode out with all of your friends. Really, really super important. Do me a big, huge favor. Could you pretty please write us a review? Could you write us a review of the iTunes Stitcher, or every other podcast? Let us know how we're doing. We'd love to get that feedback from you so we can get better. And it helps other people find the show and get the great stuff that's there. And with that, I'm Scott.

daniel (41:56.635)
I'm Dan.

Zeta (41:58.574)
I'm Zeta.

Scott (42:00.102)
And we're your Fabulous Learning Nerds, and we are out.