Author Archives - Eddie Turner

Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 046 | Insights from the World’s #1 Executive Coach | Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

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Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
World’s #1 Leadership Thinker & #1 Executive Coach
Insights from the World’s #1 Executive Coach

Episode Summary
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the world’s #1 Leadership Thinker and #1 Executive Coach! We discussed his latest NYT Best-Selling book with Sally Helgesen, his upcoming book collaboration with Alan Mulally, and the first MG100 Annual Meeting.

Check out this 60 Second preview of the episode!

Bio
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. He was recently recognized as the #1 Leadership Thinker in the World and the top rated executive coach at the Thinkers 50 ceremony in London. Marshall is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Triggers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. His books have sold over two million copies, been translated into 30 languages and become listed bestsellers in twelve counties. He is one of the few executive advisors who have been asked to work with over 150 major CEOs and their management teams. Dr. Goldsmith is a Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources and winner of the Lifetime Achievement in Teaching Award from the Institute for Management Studies. His work has been recognized by almost every professional organization in this field. You may contact Marshall at Marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com and find more about Marshall at www.MarshallGoldsmith.com.

Website
https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshallgoldsmith/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/coachgoldsmith

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Marshall.Goldsmith.Library/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/coachgoldsmith/

Get Your Copy of Marshall’s Book!
https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/how-women-rise-break-the-12-habits-holding-you-back-from-your-next-raise-promotion-or-job/

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.I first learned about my guest today as an adult who went back to school to finish his undergraduate degree. I went to Northwestern University and I was introduced to Aileen Baird. She was one of the toughest professors around and she really challenged me and left a lasting impact on me. Part of that impact was introducing me to the work of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. She introduced me to the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and it instantly resonated with me. I became a Marshall Goldsmith fan and a follower of his work as a result of Aileen Baird. Fast forward about 10 years and I found myself going into the world of coaching. And as part of my certification training, I was again and required to read the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive lasting change in behavior for themselves, their people, and their teams. He is recognized as the number one leadership thinker and the number one executive coach in the world. He has more than 1.5 million followers on LinkedIn alone and this makes him a true LinkedIn influencer. He is the author of 39 books, including New York Times bestsellers Triggers, Mojo, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and How Women Rise. He sold more than 2.5 million copies of those books around the world. So, I am truly excited to have with me today Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s my pleasure.

Eddie Turner:

Please tell us a little bit more about you.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, I was born in Kentucky. I went to school in Indiana. I got a PhD at UCLA Anderson School. I was as a college professor and dean when I was young. And I do three things. I give talks or teach classes. I travel all around the world speaking and teaching. I’ve been to 102 countries and on American Airlines alone, I have over 11 million frequent flyer miles. And I write books and articles, as you mentioned. I’ve actually now done 41. So, I’ve done a lot of books and articles. And then I’m famous for coaching people. I’ve been coaching CEOs of Ford, Pfizer, Latrobe, World Bank, Mayo Clinic, Walmart and so on and on and on. And what I learned about coaching, I’m sure you’ve found the same thing, is I learned so much. In theory, we’re supposed to teach them when in practice, I was learning from what I teach.

Eddie Turner:

And when you say you learn from what you teach, Dr. Goldsmith, what would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned through your amazing career as a coach?

Dr. Goldsmith:

I’m often asked what’s the key to being a great coach. And the key to being a great coach is great customers. In my coaching, I have a very unique system. I don’t get paid if my clients don’t get better. And better is not judged by me or them. It’s judged by everyone around them. So, you can tell if a person really believes what they’re saying, ask them one question – “Want to bet on it?” – “I believe it but I wouldn’t bet on it.” I don’t believe it but since here’s the money, they believe it. I bet on this every time. When you get paid for results, you learn humility. The client I coached and I spent the most amount of time with didn’t improve at all and they paid. The client I coached and spent the least amount of time was improved more than anyone I’ve ever coached, 200 people got better and I didn’t get paid. So, I made a chart. I have a degree in mathematics. I made a chart. One dimension was called ‘Time Spent with Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith’. The other dimension was called ‘Improvement’. There seemed to be a clear negative correlation between spending time with me and getting better. I thought it’s troubling chart. So, I got to talk to my friend who improved the most and I spent the least amount of time with. He and I are working on a book together now. His name was Alan Mullaly. Alan was CEO of Ford, CEO of the Yean in the United States in 2014, ranked Number Three Greatest Leader in the Whole World, just an amazing man and just a good friend of mine. I talked to him just an hour or two ago. So, I go to my friend Alan and I said “Alan, of all people I coached, I spent the least amount of time with you and you improved the most.” I showed Alan my chart. I said “Alan, the way this chart looks, if you never met me, you’d really been good.” I said “What should I learn about coaching from you?” Well, he taught me two great lessons. He said “Number one, your biggest challenge as coach is called customer selection. If you pick great customer, your coaching process always works. If you pick the wrong customer, your coaching process will never work.” Then he said “Never make the coaching process about yourself and your own ego and how smart you think you are. Make it about those great people you work with and how proud you are of them and how hard they work.” Well, these are such great lessons and that has totally changed my life, really got me focused on helping great people. I always got ranked number one coach. Why? Nobody watched me coach anybody. Oh, you got ranked number one coach because you got great clients who sound great.

Eddie Turner:

How about that? So, the secret to being a great coach is picking great clients.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Let me give you an analogy. Let’s take a basketball team. One team is the All Stars. Another team is people who’ve never won. Which coach is probably going to win that game?

Eddie Turner:

The team with the All Stars.

Dr. Goldsmith:

That’s generally the way it works. There’s only so much you can do as a coach. Ultimately, it’s up to them.

Eddie Turner:

Well, that’s a really good analogy.

Dr. Goldsmith:

If they’re motivated and dedicated and want to get better, they’ll do it. And if they’re not, they won’t.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. So, Alan Mullaly, one of the premier CEOs who was successful, I believe, it was Boeing where he was at and before you went to Ford.

Dr. Goldsmith:

And then Ford, yes.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, yes. So, he’s one of the examples of one of your best clients that you have achieved results with. And now you’re working on a new book. So, we will look forward to hearing more about that book in the near future and being able to read that.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Very exciting.

Eddie Turner:

So, when we think about some of your works, I heard that you had 39, you told me now that the latest statistic is 41 books. If someone is being introduced to your work for the first time, is there a book that you think they should start with first?

Dr. Goldsmith:

Yeah, I would start with the one you did – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – first.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, excellent.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Then I’ll go to Triggers as the second. Those two books got ranked by Amazon in the Top 200 Leadership and Success books ever written in history. So, let’s start with those two.

Eddie Turner:

All right.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Most of the 41 books that I’ve written or edited were purchased only by my mother, my father, and assorted relatives. So, unless you need some aid on how to go to sleep, I wouldn’t recommend a lot of my books.

Eddie Turner:

Well, that means that you’ve got 2.5-million revenue sales because a lot of people have read them. And as an author myself, I don’t know how to even sell 1000 copies of your book. So, I’m obviously in awe of you and what you’ve been able to accomplish.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Thank you so much.

Eddie Turner:

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers are the two that we would recommend.

Dr. Goldsmith:

And then also, How Women Rise, I think, is an excellent book. That book is really good too.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, I had the amazing privilege to interview your co-author for that book, who I just absolutely love, Sally Helgesen a couple of months ago and Sally said something, when I asked her about the genesis of that book, that I found very intriguing. Having read your book first, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and at the time, I was not a coach. I just was an individual who was, in fact, at the time still an information technology professional but I was working with a lot of senior executives in major corporations. So, that’s why that book really appealed to me because of the behaviors I’ve seen and a belief system I had about kind of the way they should operate but I didn’t have a language for it. And certainly, I was an IT person. I didn’t even have the authority to even share with them what my view was. And so, your book really laid it out so nicely but then when I started to operate as a coach myself, I realized that some of the things that were there didn’t necessarily apply to female clients. And I started to get a lot of female clients.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, that’s the genesis of the book.

Eddie Turner:

Okay. Tell me more.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, I mean, they’re really great books. And actually, I realized 85% of my clients have been men. Instead, that book tends to be more focused on issues that have been to women. And some of the issues men or women have are the same but some of them are different. Why don’t you get in Sally write to a book about how they’re different? That one call led to the book.

Eddie Turner:

Wow! That is incredible. And for those who don’t know, Sally Helgesen is the world’s premier authority who pioneered women’s leadership before it was even popular. And so, that’s why I suggested you two get together.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Oh, yes. So, it was a really fortuitous thing. Sally and I have known each other for 25 years. So, we’re also old friends.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Wonderful. And that book is an incredible book. In fact, I’ve given that book to several clients and friends as a gift. And it really is making a difference in women’s lives. And so, How Women Rise is another book that we would definitely recommend people read.

Dr. Goldsmith:

And the three books I recommended – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Triggers, and How Women Rise – are all incredibly well-written books. Now, why can I say that without bragging? I didn’t write any of those books. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers, they were written by my partner Mark Reiter. So, we have a partnership. I’m a thinker. I come up with the ideas. We talk, he writes, and then we do a book together. And I’m a very good writer. I’m not nearly as good writer is Mark Reiter. And the book How Women Rise was written by Sally. She’s a better writer than I am too. So, the three best books I’ve ever done have one thing in common. I didn’t write them.

Eddie Turner:

So, Marshall, do I hear you tell there’s another algorithm that needs to be written about the amount of time?

Dr. Goldsmith:

Exactly. Have a great partner. I never thought about this but you made a great point. The secret of coaching is great client. The secret of writing is to find somebody who can write.

Eddie Turner:

I love it. Excellent. Very good.Well, we’re talking to Marshall Goldsmith, the number one leadership thinker and the number one executive coach in the world. And we’ll have more with Marshall right after this.

This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.

Hi! This is Sally Helgesen. I am an author and leadership coach and you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, we’re back. I have the honor of talking to the number one leadership thinker and the number one executive coach in the world today, Marshall Goldsmith. And by the way, he’s held that ranking for the last eight years. And we spent time before the break talking about Marshall’s amazing literary works that he’s produced over the years. And he gave us some really good advice.So, now we’re going to switch gears a little bit. We talked about Sally Helgesen. And Sally Helgesen and I later learned, Marshall, that I’ve interviewed now five people that are part of an amazing group and the amazing group they’re part of is the MG100 or Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. Can you tell my listeners a little bit about what that program is?

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, years ago, I went to a program called Design the Life You Love with Ayse Birsel, one of the world’s top designers. And she said “Who are your heroes?” And my heroes were kind and generous people who really taught me all I knew for free and didn’t expect much back, people like Paul Hersey, Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, Warren Bennis, Richard Beckhard, and Frances Hesselbein, just wonderful people. And she said “You should be more like those people?” I decided to teach people everything I know for free and the only price is when they get old, they had to do the same thing. So, I made a little video and put it on LinkedIn, little 30-second video and said “My name is Marshall. I got ranked number one leadership thinker, number one coach, number one book and getting old and I would adopt 15 people, teach them all I know for free, and the only price is when you get old, you have to do the same thing.” I thought maybe 100 people would apply. Turned out now over 18,000 people have applied. I’ve ended up adopting about 190. The group is called the MG100. It’s more than 100 now. It’s about 190. And, as you know, these are just amazing, amazing people who are really focused on giving back, helping each other, and have a positive sense of community together. It’s just been wonderful. By the way, we get two couples in the group who are in love.

Eddie Turner:

Okay.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Hubert Joly, one of my good friends, who was CEO of Best Buy, he and [Inaudible][16:09] who is an author and consultant, they’re getting married.

Eddie Turner:

How about that!

Dr. Goldsmith:

And Eric Schurenberg, he is head of Inc Magazine, [Inaudible][16:17], getting married, I think, to Alyssa who’s a number one startup coach. So, who knew? This has turned out to be a huge deal which was way beyond anything I might have ever dreamed of.

Eddie Turner:

So, you brought together some of the world’s top coaches, top consultants and thinkers. And in addition to being the leadership coach, it sounds like you’re going to become the love doctor.

Dr. Goldsmith:

What’s amazing is if you look at some of the people, they’re not all in the traditional coaching world. For example, Chris Cuomo, he is CNN news. He’s one of the ones in our group. And today, I was just with Paul Gasol. Paul, I don’t know if you remember, played for the Lakers, NBA All Stars, probably going to be in the Hall of Fame. So, he wants to work now on how to help retiring athletes have a great life. So, he and I were on the phone for an hour today. Just a wonderful person. So, it’s been an amazing project.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, there’s a big need for that as I have discovered because Houston, I learned because I was introduced to athletes here, is the number one hub of retired NBA players. And so, because of that, I was introduced to a couple of stars to help them and work with them. And I was blown away. I had no idea that such a need existed to help athletes transition from the competitive space to the corporate space or a life after sports. I assumed that there were already mechanisms in place for that but there isn’t. so, it’s great to hear that all Paul is filling that gap.

Dr. Goldsmith:

The numbers are awful. And, as bad as the NBA is, they’re 50% bankrupt in five or six years, about 90% divorced. The NFL Football League is worse.

Eddie Turner:

Wow!

Dr. Goldsmith:

Their numbers are atrocious. By the way, some new people are joining our group along with Paul Gasol. Curtis Martin and Ray Lewis in the NFL.

Eddie Turner:

Oh really?

Dr. Goldsmith:

Yeah, these guys were talking about their lives and how they want to help people now. Their lives are spent when they’re an athlete with total structure and control – “I have work out. I have to do this. I have to do that.” When that structure and control is taken away, a lot of them just revert back to very bad things. The other thing we’ve learned is they wasted their money. Evander Holyfield was worth 250 million bucks. He made 250 million in boxing. He is worth zero today.

Eddie Turner:

I know that. That’s staggering.

Dr. Goldsmith:

It’s mind blowing. I mean, a lot of it is drugs, alcohol, cars, fancy homes. They would love this. I They gave the money away. Gave it away.

Eddie Turner:

Well, that makes what Shaq has done even more impressive. And he said “It’s not about how much you make. It’s about how much you keep.”

Dr. Goldsmith:

That’s it. And a lot of them, a lot of their buddies come and say they were brought up poor. Their friends say “Look, I was your friend in the hood. And you’re worth 50 million bucks. All I need is 20,000.” And they say “Okay.” What happens after you give that guy 20,000? What happens next month?

Eddie Turner:

He wants more.

Dr. Goldsmith:

He wants more. Then they retire and then they try to buy love sometimes and it doesn’t work. There’s an old song, great song by Billie Holiday – “Money, you got a lot of friends hanging around the door. When it’s gone and spend them in, they don’t come around no more.”

Eddie Turner:

Not only am I getting wisdom from Marshall Goldsmith today, I got Marshall Goldsmith to serenade my audience. How about that?

Dr. Goldsmith:

There you go. I had no idea.

Eddie Turner:

I love it.

Dr. Goldsmith:

So, back to our project. Paul Gasol, he wants to interview some of the members of our group. Jim Kim just left as head of the World Bank. Alan, as you mentioned, CEO of Ford, he talked about how are they doing their post-corporate lives. And it’s true for CEOs. It’s true for athletes, singers, all kinds of people.

Eddie Turner:

Indeed. Also, the work that the MG 100is accomplishing is fantastic and it’s exciting to hear about some of these new members who have been added. And, in full disclosure, I am honored to have been one of the people you’ve added as a part of the group.

Dr. Goldsmith:

I love to have you in our group. I think you were officially sponsored by Gen. Tom Colditz. Is that correct?

Eddie Turner:

Sally Helgesen.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Sally?

Eddie Turner:

Sally.

Dr. Goldsmith:

I know you’ve been wanted by a lot of people.

Eddie Turner:

Gen. Colditz definitely played a role as well but Sally sponsored and then Gen. Colditz, Howard Prager, and Frank Wagner also supported my nomination.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, I’m honored to have you as an honorary … You’re not my honorary son. You’re my honorary grandson. I have you as an honorary grandson and you got some new customs coming up. And if you have anybody giving you a hard time, Ray Lewis is your honorary cousin. I don’t know if you ever saw him but I don’t think you might be messing with him.

Eddie Turner:

I’m looking forward to seeing him at our annual meeting. Yeah, having Ray Lewis behind you, that’s certainly fun.

Dr. Goldsmith:

I know. Stranger that it is, Chris Cuomo, the announcer, is one of the people. I was bragging about him to Ray Lewis and Ray was unimpressed.

Eddie Turner:

Well, wonderful. Well, what do you think about the world of coaching? What advice do you have for coaches?

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, my advice for coaches is you got to have great clients and don’t make it about your own ego. Also, though, very excited that you’re going to be joining us in January?

Eddie Turner:

Absolutely. I would not miss it for the world.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You mentioned Alan Mullaly. I’m going to connect a few dots here. My friend Alan Mullaly and I just spent the first three hours in January talking about a brand-new coaching project that I think is going to revolutionize the whole field. What I’m doing and what he’s doing is we’re combining his leadership process, and he’s probably the greatest leader in this century, and my coaching process for making one process that applies from anything to an individual to a multibillion-dollar company.

Eddie Turner:

Isn’t that interesting?

Dr. Goldsmith:

And you’ll be there.

Eddie Turner:

Yes. Now, I’m really even more excited than I was already.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Obviously, I’m biased but I think it’s going to be fantastic. And he has put together a leadership system. I was his coach many, many years ago. He’s taken my coaching process, combined it with his leadership process, and I think this is taking coaching to a whole another level. And we’re really going to be talking about the impact of potentially using this process anywhere from one person up to, in his case, the multibillion-dollar corporation.

Eddie Turner:

Wow! So, it’s scalable.

Dr. Goldsmith:

It’s totally scalable. And also, the key is for both Alan and for me it’s a process. I tell my clients “Look, I don’t get paid because I’m a good coach. I get paid because you’re a good customer. Don’t be making it about me. This is a process and if you follow the process, you will get better. And if you don’t follow the process, you probably won’t get better. And me being your coach or not coach is not the key variable.” Now, Eddie, I have a little bit of advantage as a coach. I say “If you don’t get better, it’s about you. It’s not about me” is kind of an implied message. “You see that book and those 50 big CEOs’ names? They all got better. They got better. So maybe if you don’t get better, one of us has a problem and it is you.”

Eddie Turner:

Tough to argue with that.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Yeah. I am so excited about the new things we’re working on together and so excited that you’re going to be joining us in January. We’re going to spend three hours with this. Then Alan’s going to be there for two days. So, you’re going to get a chance to really interact with somebody who not only understands this from a coaching perspective but from a massive leadership perspective.

Eddie Turner:

Well, I can’t wait. I can’t wait. So, let me ask this then. So, you gave us some more advice for coaches, then amplified what you said earlier, but what do you see is the future of coaching? Is it this process that you’re going to be introduced with Alan?

Dr. Goldsmith:

I’d say it is definitely the future because it’s basically looking at coaching from a whole different perspective. Let me just give you a couple of breakthrough ideas. We’ve been taught one thing. In your life, people say “Well, why is this stuff I teach so hard to do?” Well, one reason this is hard to do is, and I talked about this in my book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, is you spent a whole life taking tests. You mentioned you went to Northwestern. You take tests. You take tests over and over and over again. What was the purpose of these tests? Prove how smart you were. You don’t have to prove how smart you are hundreds or thousands of times. It’s hard to stop. It’s very hard to stop this stuff. And, by the way, every time you proved you were smart, would you get toward positive recognition – “Oh, Eddie, you’re good. You’re smart. You get to go to this fancy school. Oh, look at you. You’re the smart one.” And how about if you didn’t get those tests right? – “Woo, very bad, very bad. Oh, not so good. Not so good at all.” We have been conditioned to prove how smart we are over and over and over again thousands of times in our lives. It’s hard to stop. And the higher up you go, the more you need to learn to stop. The other thing is every motivational speech sends the wrong message for leaders. What message do you get in any motivational speech? – “You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it” – but the problem is when you’re CEO, as Alan taught me, it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s not if you can do it. It’s if this team can do it, this company can do it, they can do it. And it’s hard because we’ve been so conditioned, and even these leaders have talked about “I’m a servant leader and I empower people,” they’re just taking the problem and passing it down one level. So, now your top seven people all believe “I can do it. I can do it. It’s all about me.” No, no, it isn’t. It’s not all about you. It’s about this whole company. It’s about our stakeholders. It’s not all about you. And it’s because we’ve been brought up to believe that you have to be ashamed if you need help.

Eddie Turner:

Yes.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You have to be ashamed if you don’t have all the answers. Well, Peter Drucker taught me about knowledge workers. Knowledge worker knows more about what they’re doing than their boss does. Everybody I work with manages knowledge workers. They know more than you. You can’t just tell them what to do and how to do it. You have to be a facilitator. You have to ask, you have to listen, you have to learn. And this is a big change. This is a big change. And, by the way, most coaches, you know what their philosophy is? “I’m going to sit there in the room and ask you questions and you’re going to come up with the answer from inside you.” That’s fine if you’re doing life coaching. What Alan want is when some guys got a bunch of cars backed up out in the Tundra because they got a part broken, they got to know what to do. Well, Alan’s asking them questions about life is not going to get the cars fixed, right?

Eddie Turner:

Right.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You got to find somebody who knows what they’re doing and learn to ask them for help. When Alan first went to Ford, the company was losing 17 billion, billion with a B, dollars. The stock was down to $1.01 and the company was careening into bankruptcy. In his first meeting he had top 16 leaders and said “Okay, you’re going to give me your five top priorities Red, Yellow or Green – Green, we’re on plan; Yellow, we’re not on plan but we have a strategy; and Red, we’re not a plan and we have no strategy. Red, Yellow Green in first meeting. 16 x 5 = 80 priorities and losing 17 billion dollars. You know what the results were? All green. Alan said “Well, we’re losing 17 billion dollars and we’re all on plan.” He said “I think this is a bad plan. We may want to reconsider this plan. We’re losing 17 billion dollars here. Somebody’s got to be doing something. Why don’t we do it over?” Finally, somebody said “Red.” Alan said “Thank you for saying red.” He stands up and applauds – “Thank you for having the courage to admit you need to improve.” And then he said something even more profound. He said “You’re not afraid. You know how to get there. You’re lost. It is okay. You’re certainly sure of your own thing. My name is Alan Mullaly. I’m the CEO of Ford Motor Company. I will tell you one thing. I know a whole lot less than you do. I know a whole lot less than we do. What don’t we actually find some people who know what they’re doing and involve them and figure out how to fix this?”Now, how simple was that, number one and number two, how brilliant was that? Number three, the sad part. How unusual was that? How many CEOs would say “I don’t know the answer.”

Eddie Turner:

Not many.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You know more than name. Not enough. And what Alan says is “Not only do I not know the answer and, by the way, you don’t know the answer, let’s be real. None of the big shots sitting in this room know how to solve your problem. How do we find some smart young people out there who actually know something and see if we can get this fixed?” You know what he said? Within 15 minutes the problem was fixed.

Eddie Turner:

Wow! That’s quite impressive. It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable like that.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Well, that’s the new world. That’s what we’re going to teach, as a coach. I say you’re going to learn a little bit from me but you’re going to learn a whole lot from all those people around you. I’m a facilitator who’s going to help you learn from these good people. I’m not god that has all the answers. And, by the way, you got a problem because Mary says you don’t listen. You can sit in a row and have me ask you probing questions for a few years. You might want to go ask Mary “How can I be a better listener?” Why don’t we just ask Mary?

Eddie Turner:

Yeah. Well, you summarized it very nicely there.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Yeah, that’s it. And that’s Alan’s whole leadership process. Somebody challenged Alan. You know what he said? I won’t go into the details but you can look up his network online. It’s a huge number. Somebody says “Alan, if somebody would ever pay you as a CEO millions of dollars just be a facilitator?” You know what he said?

Eddie Turner:

What’s that?

Dr. Goldsmith:

He said “No, maybe hundreds of millions.” He didn’t get paid millions. They’re going to get paid hundreds of millions. And you know what, when he left Ford, his personal check was, I think, 400 million dollars, he had the highest approval rating of any CEO in the United States from the employees in a union company. Think about this. The UAW, United Auto Workers, 97% approval for him as their CEO. They usually hate the CEO. And how about CEOs who make 400 million dollars? They really hate them. They love the guy.

Eddie Turner:

That says a lot.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Nicest guy in the world. I was on the phone with him today for an hour and a half “Nicest guy in the world.” He said “You know what, Marshall. It’s not about me.”

Eddie Turner:

Not about me. Not about the individual leader. It’s about those who we are leading.

Dr. Goldsmith:

If they’re leaders, it’s not just about them, either. It’s about the whole team that they’re working with.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, yes. Well, very well said.So, Marshall, I could talk to you for hours but how would you summarize our conversation that we’ve had today.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Let me ask you a question. What’s your deepest learning from today?

Eddie Turner:

Well, number one, you really whet my appetite for what we have coming in at our annual meeting there for the first time that you’ve assembled all the MG100 but your coaching approach stands out. And I’m really looking forward to this process of combining your tremendous talent as the number one leadership coach with Alan Mullaly’s leadership skills. Those two coming together and merging sounds like an amazing marriage.

Dr. Goldsmith:

And now there is going to be a price for this, Eddie. You know what the price is? When you get old, what’s the price?

Eddie Turner:

I have to give it all away.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You have to give back to others.

Eddie Turner:

Yes. And that process has already started, sir.

Dr. Goldsmith:

That’s good. You’re a good honorary grandson.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, sir, granddad.So, Marshall, thank you so much for spending a little bit of your time with me today and to be able to share with my listeners just a little bit more about you.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s great fun.

Eddie Turner:

Where can they learn more about you?

Dr. Goldsmith:

First, go to www.MarshallGoldsmith.com. I’ve got hundreds of videos and articles online. You mentioned LinkedIn. Just be a follower on LinkedIn. I have material online constantly there. Go to YouTube. I’ve got 3 million views of my stuff on YouTube. So, I’m not really hard to find.

Eddie Turner:

All right. So, we’re going to make sure we put all that in the show notes so folks can go ahead and get all those resources.

Dr. Goldsmith:

You can email at Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com.

Eddie Turner:

All right. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes as well so folks can connect with you, become a follower if they’re not already, and continue to learn from the amazing Marshall Goldsmith.Marshall, thanks again. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, okay?

Dr. Goldsmith:

See you in a couple of weeks. And, by the way, out there there’s this guy Eddie. So, if you ever need to get help and somebody helping you out, I’m recommending you talk to this Eddie character because that’s part of his job now.

Eddie Turner:

It is. It is.

Dr. Goldsmith:

Thank you.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you, Marshall.And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.

Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.

Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.

The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.

The post Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 046 | Insights from the World’s #1 Executive Coach | Dr. Marshall Goldsmith appeared first on Eddie Turner.

Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 024 | Meaningful Conversations | Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC

admin — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 22:12:32 +0000

Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC
#1 Female Coach in the World and Past President of the International Coach Federation
Meaningful Conversations

Episode Summary
I interviewed Marcia Reynolds, who is rated the top female coach in the world and is global expert in holding mind-changing conversations, to learn how leaders can have meaningful conversations even when they are difficult.

Check out this 60 Second preview of the episode!

Bio
Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, Master Certified Coach, is fascinated by the brain, especially what triggers feelings of connection, commitment, and possibility. She draws on her research as she helps coaches and leaders make every conversation is a difference-making experience. She has provided executive coaching and leadership training programs in 41 countries.

Dr. Reynolds is the Training Director for the Healthcare Coaching Institute at Virginia Tech. She was the 5th global president of the International Coach Federation. She is also visiting faculty for the International Coach Academy in Russia and Create China Coaching in China. She is recognized by the Global Gurus top 30 as the #3 coach in the world. Her executive clients see her as a thinking partner as she helps them navigate the ambiguity and surprises of leadership.

Interviews and excerpts from Marcia’s books Outsmart Your Brain: How to Manage Your Mind When Emotions Take the Wheel; The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations into Breakthrough; and Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, have appeared in many places including Fast Company, Psychology Today, and The Wall Street Journal.
Marcia’s doctoral degree is in organizational psychology and she has two master’s degrees in education and communications.

Website
https://www.outsmartyourbrain.com

How to use anger as a force for good | Marcia Reynolds | TEDxAtlanta
https://youtu.be/owZb9qub-RU

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciareynolds/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/MarciaReynolds

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/outsmartyourbrain/

Marcia Reynolds Amazon Author Page
https://www.amazon.com/Marcia-Reynolds/e/B001K8YN5Y?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

Leadership Quote
“They want you to be present more than they need you to be perfect.”

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Transcript

This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.

This podcast is sponsored by Grand Heron International, your online service provider for on-demand coaching and a wide range of services for coaches. Through a network of vetted credentialed coaches Grand Heron International offers coaching onsite, a professional coaching service for individuals seeking guidance. Whether you are a company committed to investing in your leaders and individuals seeking guidance or a coach searching for a superb network of coaches, visit GrandHeronInternational.com.

Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, the Leadership Excelerator, Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.

Would you like liked to have more meaningful conversations even when they’re difficult. If that is the case you’re going to want to pay attention to this episode. I this episode I have the honor of interviewing the top female coach in the world, a true pioneer in the field of coaching and emotional intelligence, Dr. Marcia Reynolds. She’s a global expert in holding mind-changing conversations. So she will explain to us how to have meaningful conversations even when they’re difficult. She’ll do that in and whole lot more right after this.

This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Eddie Turner LLC delivers executive and leadership coaching, professional speaking, facilitation services, and management consulting across the globe. Eddie Turner LLC also creates voiceovers, serves as a master of ceremonies, as a panel and event moderator, and provides national media commentary. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.

Eddie Turner:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.

Would you like to learn how to have more meanwhile conversations even when they are difficult? If so, you want to listen to my guest today. I have with me Dr. Marcia Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is a master certified coach. She has provided executive coaching and leadership training programs in 41 countries. Dr. Reynolds was the fifth global president of the International Coach Federation. She is also visiting faculty for the International Coach Academy in Russia and Create China Coaching in China. She is recognized as the top female coach in the world and number three overall. Interviews and excerpts from Dr. Reynolds’ books Out Smarter Brain, How To Manage Your Mind When Emotions Take The Wheel, The Discomfort Zone, How Leaders Turns Difficult Conversations Into Breakthroughs, and Wonder Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment And Direction have all appeared in many places including Fast Company, Psychology Today and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Marcia Reynolds is truly an amazing person and this is why I’m so excited to have her on the show today.

Dr. Reynolds, welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Thank you, Eddie. Thanks for asking me to be here.

Eddie Turner:

I’m just thrilled. Please tell us a little bit about you.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, as you were saying, I’ve been involved in coaching for a long time but I’ve been involved with leadership development for nearly 40 years. And it was my constant quest to find how people change their behavior that I finally found coaching and I think it’s the best technology we have for changing people’s minds, helping them to change and grow, and to build better companies.

Eddie Turner:

Wow! I’ve never heard anyone refer to coaching as a technology. Interesting word choice, I like that.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, my doctorate was in organizational psychology with an emphasis in neuroscience. So because of the powerful way that coaching impacts the brain differently from telling people what to do, giving them advice, mentoring them that we activate their brains in such a powerful way with coaching that it is definitely a technology.

Eddie Turner:

I like that. I am going to be using that, Marcia.

So I should probably share the fact that you are more than just a regular guest. You are somebody who I’ve watched from afar. I’ve read your work, I’ve seen you speak at conferences but later on I had the great fortune of meeting you in person as a client to speak at conferences for my own association when I was the president of the Association for Talent Development but also I have recently hired you to be my mentor, be my coach. And so I’ve enjoyed learning from you directly. And I completed a Coach Mastery Program with you and Dr. Dorothy Simonovic recently as well. So I want to just be able to share your wisdom with my audience. So I’m really excited to have you.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

That’s great, Eddie. It’s been really a pleasure working with you too because you’re so eager to be the best coach there is.

Eddie Turner:

Well, I figured if I’m going to be the best coach there is at the start by being coached by the best. So there we go.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Thank you.

Eddie Turner:

So you are known as a global expert not just in coaching but in holding mind changing conversations. That’s pretty impressive. How did you develop that reputation?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, as I told did you, Eddie, since I’ve been working with leaders for so many years, it was always the difficult conversation that they struggled with. And so, I spent years teaching different techniques like conflict resolution and assertiveness and fierce conversations but it was always focused on what the leader said. And when I found coaching, it was more about how leaders listen. And I said “That’s how you change your conversation.” So what leaders are always wanting to do is have people do things differently and to think differently but, again, you can’t do that by telling them “You must think differently” or coercing them. They always say “Well, I’m influencing them” when really it’s just manipulation and most people know it and they resist it. So finding a way that leaders can have impactful conversations that can really in one conversation change people’s minds and their behavior forever, that’s what impressed me and that’s why I went into studying it as a science and becoming an expert in how we do this because that’s what I do. I’m obsessed with learning how does this work and how I teach it. So I’ve spent years figuring that out.

Eddie Turner:

Now, when many people hear the phrase “mind changing conversations,” some might confuse that with manipulation. So can you tease out for what you mean in what you do and why this is not the ladder?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, that’s kind of to get them to see how can I do this. Even though they may think that that’s what they want to do, how can I change their minds? I mean that’s what we’re doing all day long, right? It’s all over social media. It’s all over our interactions. I write for Psychology Today and I’ve had quite a few posts go viral and one of my viral posts is How To Read People’s Minds. And, no, I’m not trying to make them be psychic but when you’re curious and you notice their emotional reaction and ask really good questions to help them think for themselves, it helps you understand them, which in essence is reading their mind. So when you say how to change people’s minds, what I mentioned to you before, Eddie, is that when we practice coaching, it actually impacts a different part of the brain than when we tell people what’s best for them or try to mentor them. And it hits the middle brain. This is our source of creativity and seeing things in a whole new way. And when you share reflections to get people to think about their thinking and then ask curious questions about that, it actually goes deeper into their brain and they start shifting their frames and their stories and their perceptions in a way that they see themselves and the world in a broader format. It was limiting before. Now they see new things about themselves in the world. That changes their mind forever. You can’t go back once you have a new perspective. And so it does change people’s minds. In one conversation you can do this and that’s what I write about.

Eddie Turner:

That’s powerful. So you can change people’s minds by changing their perceptions and the power is it comes from within them and that’s why it is so much different than manipulation and that’s something that is equipping them for further growth and development.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Absolutely. I mean when you tell people “You need to see it differently,” well, you know that doesn’t work.

Eddie Turner:

No, not at all, not at all.

So you discuss some of this in your work entitled The Discomfort Zone. Can you tell us what the discomfort zone is and why it matters?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

It’s interesting because some people, without reading the description of the book, I had somebody on Amazon write a review and said “I bought this book because I thought it was going to teach me how to be more comfortable in these conversations and instead, she’s teaching me how to make people uncomfortable.” And I’m like “Well, if you would’ve read the description, you would’ve known that what I have found in mentoring coaches for years and working with leaders that at the moment that a conversation gets uncomfortable, it’s like they mentally runaway, sometimes physically, they don’t move in to the discomfort to find what’s inside of this, what is this representing” because really it takes a moment of discomfort for us to be open to learning. If we’re not uncomfortable, we’re just like building on what we think we already know but when you reflect back to me the story I just told you and then you ask me a question about my belief around that story and what other elements am I missing, that might not feel comfortable for me in the moment because I’m starting to look at myself but if I don’t look at myself, I’m not going to learn and grow. If I don’t look at my stories, if I don’t look for the gaps in my logic and the limiting beliefs that I have framing my stories, the story can’t change.

Eddie Turner:

I’m glad you said that because when I read in your book that you said leaders have to be comfortable with disruption and tension and a conversation rotation because this creates the discomfort zone in which new ideas are birthed, when I read that, I exclaimed “Wow!” For many people I know, this would actually trigger the fight or flight response that we hear so much about rather than staying in that discomfort that was created. So you touched on that a little bit but can you tell me a little bit more about the importance of what you mean in that statement?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

What I had said about how many times people run away from a conversation that’s starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable, that there’s some tension, the person might be defensive and that’s the moment we need to stay with it. This is where emotional intelligence comes in to recognize when I’m uncomfortable with their discomfort and then just to breathe it out and come back and be present with the person to ask them “So what’s making you uncomfortable in this moment? Where’s the conflict for you?”

Eddie Turner:

Are you saying to ask the other person?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yeah, you ask the person those questions but you can’t if you’re stuck in your own discomfort. Again, you notice when you start to feel uncomfortable as a listener, breathe because you’re probably holding your breath and remember that the person, if they’re uncomfortable, then this is a fabulous we list learning opportunity. So if you really want to help them, you got to get comfortable with their tension, with their discomfort so you can help them process it so they can see new possibilities.

Eddie Turner:

So I found myself kind of holding my breath before you had that. So I had to hold myself.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yeah, right.

Eddie Turner:

So step one is recognize your own tension.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yes.

Eddie Turner:

And then when you’ve recognized your tension, ask the other person about their tension and what’s making them feel that way because of the response that they’ve elicited inside of you.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yeah. I mean it’s so powerful just to say “Wow! You seem to have tightened a little a little bit and you got quiet. Can you tell me what’s going on?” Just as simple as that, to get them to be looking at “What is making me feel this way in this moment?” So we notice there experience and then just be curious about it.

Eddie Turner:

Very nice.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

I want to say, Eddie, too when you mentioned about disruptions, many of the neuroscientists and the people who write, the behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman say people get really stuck in their thinking patterns even if these patterns don’t serve them but they can’t undo that. They need an external disruption in order to rattle and free themselves from these patterns that they’re stuck in. That disruption generally comes in a form of a reflection where I just share with you what I heard you say or saw you express and a question. So we have to get comfortable with doing that kind of disruption of their thinking to help them think in a different way.

Eddie Turner:

Now, I’m glad you said that as well because that leads to something else I read that I want to ask you about, the Idea that you just talked about the external force that will trigger this via reflection and allowing the person to hear or see what they just gave to you, the recipient. You said your book for the same reason you can’t tickle yourself, you can’t fully explore your own thoughts.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Right.

Eddie Turner:

Is that what you mean what you just explained on that?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Sure. Your listeners, I want you all to try tickle yourself. Your brain says “I know what you’re doing. I’m not going to let you do that” but if somebody else comes at you, they only have to touch you, they just have to wiggle their fingers, you’ll probably laugh. So it’s the same thing when we try to analyze our own thoughts. It’s our ego. Ego is just definition of who I think I am and how I see the world. The ego throws up a wall and says “No, I’m not going to let you do that because this is how I navigate your day. I take care of you. So we’re not going to evaluate thinking.” So what happens when I start to analyze my own thoughts, I rationalize my thinking, but if somebody else outside of you, and usually I’m thinking of a coach or somebody using a coaching approach, shares a reflection and a question, then it breaks through that ego barrier and we can then stop and question our own thinking. So that’s how that works.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you, Marcia. So, would you say that this is one of the reasons why senior leaders in organizations have trouble analyzing their behavior and sometimes end up in their own echo chamber, as some might say, because other people aren’t going to tell them the higher they get in an organization what the truth is perhaps about their behavior. And so they just have their own confirmation biases because they continue to get rewarded with higher positions because they are the way they are.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, there are two things. One, the main reason is we have assessments, 360 assessments, engagements, surveys. It’s an external source. And then when we give them feedback and coach them with this information, then it’s far more powerful than them trying to figure out “Why is what I’m doing not working?” but you’re absolutely right, there was a great article written by a guy named Hal Gregersen, it’s a Harvard Business Review article called the CEO Bubble, and he says that especially at a CEO level people aren’t going to tell you the truth. They’re not going to tell you what you’re doing wrong. So you have to go out there and seek people’s input and what is it that they need from you differently and what challenges are they facing that you can help them with because you’re just not going to see it and people won’t be honest with you. So that’s why I love using some assessments when I coach higher level leaders or do live interviews with their leadership team and other people that are impacted by them.

Eddie Turner:

What is your favorite assessment?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, I do a lot of emotional intelligence work. So I’ve been using the EQI 2.0. And it was different when I started using it 20 years ago. So I do that but most companies I work with have 360. So I’ll just use whatever they have. I don’t like things that are too complex. I like simple things. Even if it’s communication, I’ll use the DiSC assessment but honestly I like doing live interviews, doing like five or six interviews with, if they have a boss, with their boss, a couple of their peers, and a couple of people who report to them and then I just gather it together and create a generalized report because people don’t always trust assessments but it’s interesting when you have a conversation with them and they know it’s confidential and that’s going to be a generalized report, they will be open to you. So I prefer just doing interviews for my leaders.

Eddie Turner:

Very nice, very nice. So we’re talking to the top female coach in the world Dr. Marcia Reynolds and she is helping us understand how to have meaningful conversations. We’ll continue this conversation right after this.

This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.

Hi. This is Dr. Steven Stein, psychologist and the founder of MHS Assessments and you’re listening to the Keep Leading Podcast with Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, we’re back everyone. We’re talking to the top female coach in the world Dr. Marcia Reynolds and she’s helping us understand how to have meaningful conversations and she’s able to do that because she is truly the authority when it comes to conversations. She is a global expert in holding mind changing conversations.

So we were talking before the break there, Marcia, about emotional intelligence and some of the assessments that you use but is there a way that you would say that people can use their emotions to influence and inspire people as a leader?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, as a leader you set the emotional tone of any conversation. So the brain tends to align itself with the emotions of what it determines is the socially dominant person in the room and hopefully that you if you’re the leader but whatever you even walk in the door with, they’re going to sense and either they will align with that or they’re going to resist it if it’s a difficult emotion that scares them. So to be very conscious of the emotions that you bring in with you, not just when you sit down with the moment you enter a room, is vital to whatever success you think you might have in a conversation. So you have to set the emotional town before you do anything else.

Eddie Turner:

Indeed. And one of the things I heard you say is that your emotions are even more powerful than well rehearsed words when it comes to these conversations.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Absolutely. People will trust what they’re feeling in the moment much more than whatever words you’ve chosen to say to them. Again, I go back for years when I was teaching leadership, it was always “Well, here’s what you say in these moments. Here’s how you give feedback. Here’s how you delegate.” And when I found coaching, I’m like “Oh, well, that’s why none of that worked” because it’s really, as I said before, not so much what you say but how you listen. There’s not just paying attention. There’s a how to listening that people feel comfortable with you.

Eddie Turner:

Now, along those lines of how you listen, how you pay attention, as I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to be a part of your inaugural Coach Mastery Workshop and it was a phenomenal experience and I have used a lot of what I’ve learned since the completion of that program but there’s one thing that you said get that I continue to repeat. In fact, I was interviewed for a program in Asia just yesterday and I cited this. You said that when we were talking about mastery, we were all thinking about the skills and different techniques and whatnot, you said that mastery is not the perfection of skills. It is the deepening of presence. How does one deepen their presence? I know the answer because you already told us but for my listeners, how do we do that?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, it’s not just in coaching, Eddie, that being very present with people so we can truly hear what they’re saying and what they’re expressing and what they’re not saying but when you think about any sport, the best know how to shift into the moment and be fully present and not be distracted by anything else. It’s called in the zone. And it was years ago I was working with a sports psychologist where I was asked to come up with a formula for anybody to be in the zone no matter what it is they’re doing. And so in order to pull yourself into the present moment, the first thing you have to do is relax your body. Most people think it’s about self talk and none of the top athletes that I worked with for that program said that they used self talk. They said “If I say to myself “Oh, you’re a winner, you’re a winner,” then the back of my brain goes “No, you’re not. You’re a loser.”” And that’s when they choke. They said they had to breathe out, release the tension in their body so then they can access their brain, go to their brain, clear their mind and quickly put their awareness in the center of their body. In martial arts they call this your point of strength. It’s just below your navel. And all of the athletes said that “When I’m aware of what’s going on in my body is when I can do my best.” So that awareness of our core, that center, the bottom of your breath, that if you keep your awareness there and stay out of your head, you’re much more control. So you relax your body, clear your mind, put your awareness in the center of your body and then I add in that we don’t stay in our center that long so you anchor your thoughts with one or two words. So in coaching it’s often “I’m curious and I care.” It could be “I’m common courageous.” It could be “I’m determined.” Whatever it is that you want to feel in that moment, you choose as those words so every time you start going back to your chatty brain, you just think “How I want to feel and you breathe in curious and care. And it brings you into this present moment with the person that you’re with. And what’s so powerful about that? Not only will you listen to them better but when you’re present, they feel safe with you. And creating psychological safety is the most important thing we can do in our conversations in order to have them be effective so people feel that they can open to you, they can discuss things that aren’t comfortable. They have to feel safe. So being present helps people to feel safe with you.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. And thank you for that point of clarification as well because, yes, you taught us that in a coaching context but I thought it was also apropos here in the conversational context that we’re discussing. So thank you for outlining that. In fact, I felt a moment of Zen almost come over me as you were explaining that. My way back too because that was the first time I heard it, 1993 or in the ‘90s I should say, with Michael Jordan and The Bulls because that that was my hero growing up from basketball perspective. So Michael Jordan had a game there against the Portland Trailblazers. He was not known for shooting the three-point shot but at that game he broke the finals record for three-pointers because he hit six three-pointers. Michael Jordan was not known for shooting three-pointers but he went on to set the finals record by hitting six three-pointers and he blew away the Trailblazers in that first game. And there’s this moment they play all the time where he kind of shrug his shoulders. You can’t see me doing this but he shrugs his shoulders as if to say he looks at the sideline and says “I don’t know what’s going on.” And they asked him afterwards and described being in the zone. It was a similar ability he talked about in the game against the Celtics when he went off for 63 points. And so, yes, that context is the first time I heard it. And so seeing how we can get into the zone, not just in the sports world or in a coaching world, but in our daily conversations where we want to have an impact as leaders.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Right. Yeah, they’re good teachers.

Eddie Turner:

Very good teachers, yes.

So, Marcia, we’re having this conversation and many of these points have come from your book Outsmart Your Brain and The Discomfort Zone but you’re working on a new book. Can you tell us about that?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Right. It doesn’t have such a catchy title as the other two. It’s called The Coach’s Guide to Reflective Inquiry.

Eddie Turner:

The Coach’s Guide to Reflective Inquiry, okay.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

And I’m very proud of this book. I’ve been teaching coaching skills for over 20 years and I can now say that there are certain things missing that when people learn coaching is like they think it’s all about the question. It’s not all about the question. I call it the cult of the powerful question, that there’s far more to coaching than just asking questions. In fact, my favorite quote from a guy named John Dewey who wrote a book called How We Think that defined coaching in 1910. He said that questions seek answers but inquiry provokes insight.

Eddie Turner:

Say that one more time. I want to just isolate that.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Questions seek answers but inquiry provokes insight.

Eddie Turner:

I love it.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

So inquiry is not just about asking questions. There’s a lot more to it. And he’s the one who defined reflective inquiry. So what is the reflective part in how are we missing that and what are some of the coaching myths that are out there? And this is for coaches but it’s for leaders as well because using a coaching approach to your conversations are going to be far more effective in getting the results you want.

Eddie Turner:

Well, I am so happy to share that and I will also say this, that you don’t know that I’m going to say, is you have an article on your website entitled Stop Trying To Ask Good Questions and it’s in the blog section and OutsmartYourBrain.com. And I share this with people because one of the things you were working with me on is getting out of my head and to stop trying to ask good questions. If people would like to get a little bit of a sneak peek into some of your wisdom and what you’ve taught around this, you’ve written a wonderful article that everyone has access to.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Absolutely. Well, actually, my last few blog posts were directly from the upcoming book. It was helping me sort through what I was writing. There’ll be more to come.

Eddie Turner:

Isn’t that a nice teaser? So that is a book written by a coach for coaches, it sounds like. And can other leaders benefit from this if they’re not a coach?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, absolutely. I teach leaders coach to leaders around the world and it’s becoming accepted. I mean even Google has coaching skills as their number one leadership skill.

Eddie Turner:

How about that?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yeah, and leaders need to know how to coach. I actually think this simplifies coaching. I think so many leaders, they don’t have time to do that but what I’m giving them is this is not going to take much time. If you follow what I write in the book, you’re going to find that coaching is much easier than you think, especially if you’re not sitting there thinking “Oh, what’s the question I should ask you?” It’s not about that. It’s just about “I’m listening to you. I receive what you give me and I just give it back to you.” So I’m going to simplify coaching for leaders in this book.

Eddie Turner:

I love it. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of that. And I agree with that premise, obviously, and I also teach a program that is not directed for folks who want to become a certified coach. They’re just leaders, managers, HR folks who are interested in having coaching skills and that program is for the Association for Talent Development, their coaching certificate program. So it is an important skill. And to your point, organizations at all levels are seeing that this is an important skill set to have. Interesting to know that Google considers it number one. I didn’t know that. So, thank you for sharing that tip.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Yeah, in their oxygen study they came up with that was the number and skill and I think emotional intelligence was number three.

Eddie Turner:

How about that? Two in-demand skills that a lot of folks are talking about and a lot of things are being written about but it still seems to be an invasive skill that folks have yet to attain to the level they’d like. So certainly people like you, your work both as a practitioner and also as a thought leader who’s putting these things down in writing go a long way in helping us all improve.

So, Marcia, tell us, if you would, what is the main point you want our listeners to take away from our conversation today.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, I think you and I have discussed a number of times the importance of being present, that people won’t even listen to you if they don’t sense that you’re fully present with them. So whether it’s setting your emotional tone, remembering who you are as a leader to put the person in high regard that you have to create this what I call a safety bubble where they feel safe with you and that’s based in your presence.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, Marcia. And since this is the Keep Leading Podcast, we like to give leaders a quote that they can reflect on to help them keep leading. Do you have a quote you’d like to share?

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

They want you to be present more than they need you to be perfect.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, wonderful. They want you to be present more than they want you to be perfect. What a nice thing for us to remember as leaders as we keep leading.

Marcia, where can my leaders learn more about you? I’ve enjoyed this conversation. I hate to stop.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Well, of course, my website which, thank you, you’ve mentioned because I do have a blog there. The website site is OutsmartYourBrain.com. So they can go there. They can find all my books I’ve written there. There are a lot of free resources other than the blog. There are videos. And if they look under The Discomfort Zone, they’ll find all kinds of tools and resources that they can use. Of course I’m on LinkedIn. I write for Psychology Today. So they can find me around the internet.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. Yes, you are available everywhere. There’s something else I want folks to know and that is that you recently delivered a stellar TED Talk. And so we want folks also look for How To Use Anger As A Force For Good and this will be in the show notes and a link to that will also be on the page I create for you on my side as well.

So, Marcia, thank you for being a guest on the Keep Leading Podcast.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds:

Thank you, Eddie, for having me. I truly enjoyed the conversation.

Eddie Turner:

And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.

Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on The Keep Leading Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to The Keep Leading Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.

Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.

The Keep Leading!™ podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.

The post Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 024 | Meaningful Conversations | Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC appeared first on Eddie Turner.

Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 023 | Business Leadership Strategies | Joel Block

admin — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 09:32:12 +0000

Joel Block
Hedge Fund Manager, CPA, Venture Capitalist, Keynote Speaker and Author
Business Leadership Strategies

Episode Summary
Listen to this episode to hear my interview with Joel Block as he shares business leadership strategies. He explains how we can leaders can lead with financial integrity, intelligence and why it matters.

Check out this 60 Second preview of the episode!

Bio
A money business insider, Joel’s a long-time venture capitalist and hedge fund manager (gobbledygook for professional investor) who lives in a Shark Tank world like on TV. Since selling his publishing company to a Fortune 500, Joel reveals the inside track for money and success to business executives and their teams. Twice annually, Joel headlines the standard-setting Real Estate Syndication & Hedge Fund Symposium, helping CPAs, attorneys, investment bankers, and others to organize & run investment pools. Joel is on NSA’s board of directors and is co-chair of the elite Million Dollar Speakers Group.

Website
www.joelblock.com

Other Website
www.BullseyeCap.com

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelblock

Twitter
https://twitter.com/JoelBlock

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/joelblock

Profit From the Inside™ Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/profit-from-the-inside-with-joel-block/id1435311561

Leadership Quote
Avoid kneejerks….

Download Joel Block’s Business Resource Guide for 2019

Subscribe, Share and Review

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/profit-from-the-inside-with-joel-block/id1435311561

Transcript

This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.

This podcast is sponsored by Grand Heron International, your online service provider for on-demand coaching and a wide range of services for coaches. Through a network of vetted credentialed coaches Grand Heron International offers coaching onsite, a professional coaching service for individuals seeking guidance. Whether you are a company committed to investing in your leaders and individuals seeking guidance or a coach searching for a superb network of coaches, visit GrandHeronInternational.com.

Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, the Leadership Excelerator, Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

Hi, everyone. This is Eddie Turner, your host of the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to leadership development and leadership insights. And today we are going to be listening to Joel Block. Joel’s one of the sharpest financial guys I know and Joel’s go share business leadership strategies with us, how we can lead as leaders with financial integrity, with financial intelligence and why it matters and other strategies that we can use if you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner. He’ll share all of that with us and more right after this.

Eddie Turner:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Today I am really excited to speak to a fund manager, venture capitalists and keynote speaker who provides clients disruption-proof strategies to give their company the inside track. I’m talking about Joel Block.Joel, welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast.

Joel Block:

Eddie, hey, thank you very much. How are you man?

Eddie Turner:

I’m doing well. Thank you. before I get into this Joel, please tell people a little bit about your background because you have a phenomenal background. I want people know a little bit about who you are.

Joel Block:

Sure. Well, I started in the CPA business but really wasn’t destined to stay in that business and when I was at Pricewaterhouse years ago started working as real estate syndicators. Those are people that raise capital by assets. And I just thought “Gee, that’s a business I want to be in. So I quit Pricewaterhouse, went in that business and then I felt into a venture capital transaction along the way and raised a bunch of money. So I really learned how to raise money and I learned how to acquire deals and be involved in the deal business and I’ve spent the last 30 years doing that and I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, I’d say, given some of the things I’ve seen you’ve accomplished in some of the things that you do. And I got a chance to actually hear you do what you do in front of a live audience not long ago. And you and I met because you shifted from just doing your work in the finance world to speaking about it and you are now a member of the National Speakers Association and you’re on international board. So tell us about how you use speaking in your business and why that’s so important.

Joel Block:

Well, in 1995 I sold a company that I had raised a bunch of money for and that I had spent some years working on. And after that transaction I thought “You know, entrepreneurs and business owners across the country really could benefit from learning from what it is that I learned as an entrepreneur and what is that I did when I was out in the field.” And it took a little while to kind of get up and running but I started telling stories to different kinds of groups and explaining things and people really like this, they find it very inspiring, very motivating but they also really find it very tactical because I’m not making this stuff up as I go along. I mean I really did the things that I talk about. And as a result of that, I’ve just continued and then along the way a big real estate company called and asked if I would do a seminar program for them. And so that’s turned into something pretty substantially. I teach real estate investors how to set up syndications and funds and how to raise money.So, listen, I’ve been in a variety of businesses and I just talk about them and tell other people about them and I love sharing what it is that I do and I love helping other people learn.

Eddie Turner:

That’s one of the things that’s so impressive about you. You do have just a vast amount of knowledge from your different experiences in this area. And when you are speaking you come across as an authority. There’s just no question that you know your stuff but then also you kind of have people on the edge of their chairs, they’re hanging on your every word because you really are not just sharing regular knowledge that people can get out of a book. You really are giving people the inside track, if you will, as to how things work on the back end and give a perspective that the average person wouldn’t normally hear.

Joel Block:

Well, people in the money business are on the inside track. And everybody wants to be in the inside track but most people really have a hard time getting there. It’s one of the things that I talk about. I talk about that there are retail investors which is almost everybody and then there are professional investors which is me and the people that that I spend time with. And there are reasons that professional investors make more money in five days than everybody else makes five years and it’s because they know certain things, they understand certain things, they look at the world in a certain way and that’s the inside track. And the inside track, by the way, is not that you get secret tips from people and that people know everything because that’s not always true. Listen, we all have networks, we all know people, and we all have different kinds of capital. We have intellectual capital, financial capital, we have relational capital, reputational capital. We have all different kinds of things and we need to put those things to good use. And the inside track to me is the best, smartest and fastest way to get things done. And if you’re not doing it that way, then you’re going to lose to people who are on the inside track and they really have an advantage over you. So I hope that people will start to learn how to take advantage of being on the inside track.

Eddie Turner:

Yeah, your formula for how to make more money in five days than some people we’ll make in five years, that was phenomenal to see you unpack that in front of a live audience. And so I’m going to encourage people to definitely look at your next offering so that they can learn from you directly. Now, they don’t have to wait until they’re sitting in one of your sessions. You actually wrote a book where you detail a lot of information that is just very straightforward, easy to read, it makes so much sense. The title of the book, share that with us, please.

Joel Block:

Stop Hustling Gigs And Start Building A Business.

Eddie Turner:

And then the subtitle is what I really love.

Joel Block:

101 Tricks Of The Trade To Help Entrepreneurs And Self-Employed People Build A Money-Making Machine.

Eddie Turner:

Yeah that’s powerful. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, I am one myself, of course, and self employed people both in the speaking business and outside of the speaking business. So, your 101 tips, it’s like “Wow! This is common sense stuff here” but you make it real and you make it tangible, something that we can actually put into action. Can you share with us perhaps, and it’s like asking a parent which one is their favorite child, but out of the 101 tips that you share, what’s your favorite?

Joel Block:

Well, first of all, let me say that I spent a lot of years in venture capital, investing in companies. I’ve probably been inside more than a thousand companies. And I’ve watched what successful companies do and I’ve watched a lot of other companies that are not so successful and they consequently aren’t around anymore. And there are things, there are patterns that exist. So I documented that some of these patterns over a long period of time and that’s what the book is. It’s really a collection of all these different things that I learned being in the field and investing in companies and investing in management teams and being involved with these different kinds of people. I would really probably say the one that I go to the most often, there’s 101 or 105 or whatever, I forget what’s in the book, but “Money follows expertise. The better you get at something, whatever the underlying thing is, you need to get better and better and better at your craft. The better you get at it, the more money you’re likely to make.” Now does it happen once in a while that somebody’s mediocre and they skyrocket? Yeah, once in a while but for most people the trick really is to get really good at your craft and then things are going to take care of themselves.

Eddie Turner:

So how do I know I’m good at my craft because I think I’m okay, right? The average person might be thinking what they should use.

Joel Block:

I can’t really give you a barometer for each industry. Everybody has to kind of know for themselves what that means. Maybe that means that they get a coach. Maybe that means that they have a teacher or instructor that helps them. Maybe they’re on a mastermind group with some high-level people. There’s probably a lot of different components honest to that but you have to really work hard to be near or at the top of your game, be the best you can be, and when you feel like you’re really on track to be the best you can be, other people are going to stand up and take notice and that’s when money starts moving in your direction. And that applies not only the people. It applies to companies. If your company is the best in the space, money’s going to be attracted to it. So you got to add value. You got to be really good at what you do. Do not go online and tell everybody how great you are if you can’t deliver, if you don’t have the goods.

Eddie Turner:

Very good advice. All right. Well, in your career, in what you are doing now in venture capitalist, it’s been very successful and you have all these lessons around finance, around business. You told us that money follows the expertise but is there another key piece of advice you by yourself often giving leaders, giving entrepreneurs.

Joel Block:

Money is a complicated thing. And one of the things that I tried to make people aware of is that you have to understand the character of money. And people look at me like I have four eyes when I say character. People are saying “Joel, money doesn’t have character. It’s green and it goes in your pocket and that’s it” but the truth is that money is very, very complex. I studied money in college for years and interest rates and accounting is how to write it down and then finances, how to organize it and get more. The difference between me and other people, the way I look at money in the way that non-professional money people look at money, well, let’s put it like this. To an accountant, for example, or most people in general, they tend to look at money like poker chips. It’s a way of keeping score. And that’s fine. You definitely can keep score with money. If one person’s really, really good and they do a great job, that’s fantastic, but to me, I look at it a little differently than that. I look at it as a tool. To me, money is the tool that I use to make more money. Most people do not use money as a tool. Most people just keep score with the money but I actually use it as a tool. And so the character of the money is very important and you really have to understand the money. And by the way, the federal government understands the character of money very, very well which is why our tax code is so incredibly complicated. There are hundreds of different characters of money and most people are sitting there and saying “I can’t even think of one” but I’ll tell you that it’s very complicated.And as you get into the nitty-gritty, there’s a lot to understand and the more you understand, the more likely you are to get a seat at the table, to keep your seat at the table, and to really be part of the decision making in a business organization because at the end of the day, businesses are about making money. Now I would go a step further and I would say as much as I’m about money, business is really not only about money. Business is really about people because people make money.

Eddie Turner:

Well, tell me more about this idea that you use money as a tool because to your point, many people are probably thinking “Well, I just keep score with it?”

Joel Block:

Well, I mean, look, investors give me their money. So I have a bank account full of money and then I take that money and I go buy things. I buy assets and those assets, we add value to those assets that makes those assets more valuable. Than we sell those assets to other people and then we make money and the money comes back in our account and we share that profit with our investors. So that’s how we use money as a tool. I mean, the fact that we have the capital ready to go, and I talk about there being a readiness premium, we actually make money because our money’s ready to go. If your money’s not ready to go, you’re going to pay more money. If your money’s ready to go, you’re going to pay less money when you go buy something. So the fact that we’re organized, we’re ready to go, we get a readiness premium and then we put the word out, the word in the marketplace, deals start coming our way because we’re the guys with the money and then we start buying things and then we start investing in things or we start in a moving money in a certain way. And those are the things that help us to make more money on the money itself. So we make money on the money and that’s what most people do not know how to do.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, very interesting. So I’m an entrepreneur and if I’m an entrepreneur listening to this podcast who is a leader, who’s leading their own business, they’re leading their our own community organization, whatever it may be, can you tell them about something that you wrote in Chapter 13 of your book where you talk about building your revenue octopus.

Joel Block:

Oh yeah. Listen, this is really important. A revenue octopus, the concept is that great businesses have multiple streams of revenue that are all derivative from the same origin. And what that means is that you want to repurpose your money and you want to repurpose your revenue streams in different ways. So you get one thing going and then you do something that’s similar but enough different that new money’s coming in, so you’re reaching new markets, new people and you’re really maximizing the way that the money moves. What you don’t want to do is spread yourself so thinly you can’t control what you’re doing. So you have a supermarket over here and a restaurant over there and some other kind of business down the street and you’re doing this and doing that, that doesn’t work, but a revenue octopus … Let’s think about a couple of great companies. So, for example, Starbucks is a great company and I think about Starbucks, how they might have got started. They first started brewing coffee, great coffee. And then a couple guys probably sat down together and said “Gee, we have this great coffee and we have these customers. So what are our assets? Well, one is the recipe for the coffee. The other asset we have is our customers. What else could we give these customers? How can we go deeper with these people and give me more? So what else do they like to buy? They’d probably like to buy maybe a coffee machine for their house or maybe they’d like to buy some clothing with our logo on it because now our logo is becoming popular or eventually down the road they’ll say “Well, gee, maybe people would like to buy gift cards” or maybe they’d like to get a credit card with our company’s name on it.” And then eventually Costco calls and says “Hey, could we sell your beans in bulk?” So you see where that goes. So over time they have many, many different ways for you to leave money at Starbucks. There’s a lot of ways Starbucks can make money on you. And that concept is what I think of as a revenue octopus. Great businesses have eight, sometimes even more than eight. I talk about put your faith in eight. You have to have a lot of revenue streams in order to have a really successful business. If you have only one, you’re subject to seasonality, downturns and other kinds of things including concentration which is really dangerous. So there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong and you want to be very careful that you’re strategically planning to be smart and ahead of the curve and really good. And when you do that, you’re going to find out that you’ve got a great business.

Eddie Turner:

Put your faith in eight. Revenue octopus. All right, that’s a phrase that you own. You’ve trademarked the ‘Revenue Octopus’. Thank you for sharing that with us, Joel. So you’ve given us a lot of good things to think about here – Money follows the expertise, use money as a tool, and have a revenue octopus. We’re talking Joel block right now.We’re going to Joel Block. Right now I’m going to pause for a word from our sponsors.

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This is Judy Miles Lewis. I’m the director and founder of Mountain High and Judy Lewis Consulting and you’re listening to the Keep Leading Podcast with Eddie Turner.

Eddie Turner:

We’re back.So we’re talking to Joel Block, one of the sharpest finance guys I know, and he’s letting us know as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as self-employed people some of the things that we need to think about when it comes to running a business and around the ideal of finances.

Joel, our good mutual friend Rochelle Rice said you asked her what in coaching I would call a powerful question. She said you asked “Are you building a business or hustling the next gig?” And she said it knocked her out of her chair.

Joel Block:

Well, listen, that’s the concept of the book is that most people do not have a business. They really just have a job that they’ve given themselves. Now, we’re talking what about smaller operations. The middle-sized companies, they understand the concept of strategic planning. They understand the idea of having multiple streams of revenue. So we’re talking now about smaller companies or smaller groups. And it’s very dangerous. If you go out, you sell something, you deliver the service and then you run back to your office, get back on the phone and start calling more people, somebody else gives you a little something to do, you run out, you do it. That’s a really hard way to live for a long period of time. So you have to have some way of having the business do some of the work. If you’re doing all the work, that’s not really a business. That’s either a practice or it’s something else but you really got to have that business helping you. It’s got to do some of the work. Your reputation, your brand, they all have to be working for you.

Eddie Turner:

Do you have any examples that come to mind, Joel?

Joel Block:

Examples of which part of this?

Eddie Turner:

You said having the business work for you.

Joel Block:

Yeah, in any really good business, you’re going to develop referrals. So referrals might be one way that business comes in. And then your reputation, people are going to get to know who you are over a period of time. And you have to have different things that they can buy. You have to be able to productized yourself in a way that you have to turn some of your things into products where somebody says “You know, Joel, we don’t need a speaker right now but we need some advice” or “Our CEO wants to be part of a group of other CEOs, a private group that maybe like what I run” or somebody needs some sounding board or somebody needs this or … There’s the different ways that I interact with people that I deal with. That’s part of what it is. So you have to have lots of different ways that people can work with you. And then you might have your Marketing department using social media, so social media is helping drive leads. You might have lots of different ways that you’re generating referrals or you might have sales people that are helping you. So somehow or another you’re not doing all the work. The business is doing a large portion of the work.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you for sharing that. Now you believe that everyone, as a leader especially, should prioritize financial literacy so much so that I’m told that you demand that everyone who works for you or sits on the board with you masters basic finance 101. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Joel Block:

Well, that’s true. I can’t always demand it but I was the chairman of the board of the Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club which is a pretty big club in Los Angeles. We serve about 7000 children a year. Many of those children are from disadvantaged families. And the job of the board of directors, like the job of the officers in the company, really the job of those people is to make sure that our executive director had the resources that she needed to take care of the children that we’re charged with taking care of. And if you don’t understand how the money works, it’s very difficult to really be taken very seriously in a larger company and it’s hard to be successful. You could be great at many other things but at the highest level of management, in order to really be taken seriously, you have to bring some financial acumen to the table. And so when I was chairman, there were many people who were not financial people and we’d take out the balance sheet, the income statement, we’d do the financial report for the month and I would explain, I do a little less than a 15-minute lesson on some financial concept that I wanted everybody to understand. And there were people that didn’t like it because they thought it wasted a lot of their time but at the end of the day, after learning a lot of this stuff, people really come around and they say “Gee, it’s really good that we did this because number one, we’re stewards of capital, we’re responsible, we’re making decisions and if you don’t understand the decisions that you’re making, you’re going to find yourself in a pot of trouble after a while.” So I try to encourage groups do this. Not everybody is equally open to it but I certainly think that groups inside companies and there are particular sectors inside of companies, for example, HR, HR people, they bring so much value to the table but they’re not always taken seriously at the most senior level of the organization because they can’t contribute in a financial capacity. And they really need to bone up on these things because that’s the way they’re going to get their seat at the table and that’s how they’re going to keep their seat at the table as being able to understand what the financial contribution of their department is to the company because they’re human capitalists and that’s pretty much the most valuable component the whole company and they responsible for that. So they have to get above the compliance of the HR and really kind of get into the value driven component that they’re delivering. And when they get above that and they get into that new level, it really makes a huge difference and their performance starts to go up, their recognition goes up, the respect they get goes up. All the way around it works out for them.

Eddie Turner:

So to be a leader at any level in any organization, we must understand finances. It’s inextricably linked to being taken serious. I like how you said that.

Joel Block:

Well, listen, there are people that will take offence to “Well, I’m taken seriously and I don’t know about money” and you know what, you absolutely can be taken seriously but at the highest level of the organization in a business which is all about delivering value and converting that into profit, it’s very difficult to be a significant contributor if you don’t have financial wherewithal and capacity.

Eddie Turner:

Okay, thank you.So, at times as leaders, we might not give a lot of thought to some decisions that that we need to make and we may kind of have a knee jerk reaction and just make a decision off the cuff. What advice would you say to leaders who are making knee jerk decisions?

Joel Block:

I’d say “Count to 3.” A big part of the problem that we have in our society, Eddie, is that people, they do a lot of knee jerks. Now, I’m not talking about intuition, and you know I’m very intuitive and I make decisions based on my intuition, and understand you can never have 100% of the information. If you get 60%, 70%, 80% of the information, you have to be able to make a decision with the data level of information. The thing is you don’t want to make a decision with 10%. You want to gather enough information to be smart. And it’s really my opinion that if the people in our society in general just counted to 3 and didn’t blurb dumb stuff out and they just thought about what they were about to say, so many of the problems that we have as a society would subside.

Eddie Turner:

All right. Well then, Joel, I really appreciate all this information that you’ve shared, these insights that you’ve shared with myself and the leaders listening to our program. What would you say is the big takeaway from our conversation station today that you want every leader to know?

Joel Block:

I want people to learn enough that they can take the inside track because there are people who are taking the inside track. Now you may not yourself know how to take the inside track but you need to get around people who are on the inside track, they can share with you how to take the inside track. And when you do that, you’re going to find yourself being a lot more successful. And actually, if I could give a little plug, my own podcast show which you’ve been on is called Profit From The Inside and for every single week we deliver different kinds of approaches and techniques for taking the inside track.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you. So your podcast Profit From The Inside, strategies to give your business the inside track and then you’ve also provided for our listeners a list of your top tools for leaders for 2019. I’m going to put that in the show notes for folks. And you’ve got an impressive list of tools that you’re sharing.

Joel Block:

Yeah. Smaller companies have to produce 20 times what our corporate counterparts produce. And we have to lean on really good tools to help us to do that. So many of our smaller companies, we don’t have janitors emptying our trash and we don’t have, I don’t know, technicians changing the printer cartridges in our printers and we really have to be good at doing more things in a lot less time than some other people do. So I just have these great resources that I’ve used over a long period of time and I always am adding new ones, different kinds of things that help me to be more efficient and optimize and stay on the inside track.

Eddie Turner:

All right. On the Keep Leading Podcast we want to make sure leaders can keep leading. What words of advice would you have for them?

Joel Block:

I would tell your people that money follows expertise and just make sure that you are the best that you can be and it will start to be recognized.

Eddie Turner:

All right. Well, Joel, thank you so much. Where can my listeners find out more about you?

Joel Block:

Probably the best place to go to is JoelBlock.com and there’s a lot of information about me. We produce weekly completely commentary beside the podcast. We produce all different kinds of commentary and most of the information about those things are available on the website.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. And we’ll also make sure we put links to your social media profiles so folks can follow you on social media.

Joel Block:

Perfect.

Eddie Turner:

Well thank you again, Joel, for being on the Keep Leading Podcast.

Joel Block:

Thanks for having me.

Eddie Turner:

And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.

Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.

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