Well, well we are officially live and I’m always so excited when this day happens. Yes, two thumbs up, Jennifer. It’s so good to see you.All right. Well, hello, everyone! Those of you who are joining us, will join us on Facebook and YouTube, welcome to Keep Leading Live, the video version of the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Keep Leading Live and the Keep Leading!® Podcast are 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 through the power of professional speaking, facilitation, and coaching.

Today, we are live streaming on YouTube and Facebook as we do every Monday. Normally, it’s at 1:10 Central Time. Today, we’re delayed an hour but I delayed the show five hours to get on this busy CEO’s calendar. It was extremely difficult and I’m super thrilled to have Jennifer McCollum joining me. And we want you to know I always have to make my adjustments here.

Let me tell you a small story. I looked at the website and here’s what I saw. Our mission is to change the face of leadership. When I saw those words on the site of Linkage, I was beaming. It is a powerful yet simple message and it’s something I deeply believe in and it’s the reason that the Keep Leading!® Podcast and the Keep Leading Live exist. So, I had to meet and introduce myself to the CEO of this amazing organization and that is Ms. Jennifer McCollum.

Let me tell you a little bit about Jennifer McCollum. She is the first female CEO of Linkage Incorporated where she oversees the strategic direction and global operations of the Boston, Massachusetts-based leadership development firm. With a mission to change the face of leadership, Linkage has dedicated 30 years to improving leadership effectiveness and quality in hundreds of organizations globally. For decades, Linkage has studied what the best leaders do and amassed assessment data from one million leaders to service the purposeful leadership model and I find that quite impressive.

So, officially, let me say, welcome, Jennifer McCollum to the Keep Leading!® Podcast and Keep Leading Live stream.

Eddy, thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here. I have been looking forward to this webcast for quite a number of weeks, frankly, since I met you way back in January, about the last time we were allowed to see each other face to face.

Yes, yes, about the last time we were able to see each other face to face. Speaking of that time that we saw each other in January, do you remember this?

Yes! Of course, I do. You’re looking good.

That’s because I’m standing next to you. So, I was thrilled to be able to get a chance to meet you. I heard about you from our mutual friend Tom Colditz, Gen. Colditz who’s doing some amazing work. He just raves about you and your organization.

Well, I had the privilege of meeting Gen. Tom Colditz when I started as CEO of Linkage about two years ago. He was on our board of directors and he’s been a mentor and a friend to me personally and to Linkage. So, I’m very grateful to Tom.

Yes, yes. Well, wonderful. And I see you all have done some great things together. And we don’t know how things will shape up but, hopefully, one day we’ll all be able to get together again.

You’re not kidding. I think we’re getting better and better at engaging in the virtual environment but there is something about face to face that’s just really hard to replicate. So, it is my hope and dream that we’ll be back on the planes and engaging face to face as soon as it is safe.

Yes, absolutely. I loved what I saw in terms of the work that you’ve been doing around purposeful leadership. Just that phrase says a lot but I understand a lot goes into that phrase. Tell me a little bit about that.

So, thank you, Eddie. The reason I joined Linkage a couple years ago was because, as you so beautifully read, I believe very strongly in the mission of Linkage, which is to change the face of leadership. And the way we do that is to accelerate purposeful leaders and to advance women leaders and other underrepresented populations but getting back to your question around purposeful leadership, one of the things that drew me to Linkage was it’s 30 years of history in studying leaders and working with organizations globally to support developing leaders against what we now know to be true and that is what we call purposeful leaders are the most effective leaders. And I can get way down deep into the data of what a purposeful leadership means to Linkage but let me pause there for a moment and see if you want to take it somewhere else.

I love that. I love what you’re saying. I love the fact that you actually let me back in. You are a professional interviewer. It’s a beauty. I think that’s great, the intentionality behind what you’re doing in the depth.So, I want to hear more about that but I also want to just say welcome to those who’ve joined us. We have several that have joined us from Facebook and on YouTube. Let us know you’re here. Say hello. Tell us who you are, where you’re from and if you have a question.

If you’re not already following Jennifer McCollum, follow her on social media. She’s on LinkedIn. And follow Linkage.

So, yes, go ahead and continue, Jennifer, please.

No problem. So, as I said, we’ve been studying about a million leadership data points which, again, can get a little nerdy for a moment. We looked at about a hundred thousand leaders that we’ve been working with across the last couple of decades. And over the last five or six years, we amassed all of our data and we looked really specifically at what was surfacing to answer a really specific question and that is what is it that the very best leaders do. So, we looked at that data, we looked at our experience, we looked at academic literature, and we looked at practitioners in the field and we pulled all that together through a really robust research effort about five years ago and we surfaced what’s called the Purposeful Leadership Model. And I’ll tell you two things about that.First, the best of our leaders are very grounded in their personal why – what is their personal purpose. And they’re able to align that to the organizational vision or organizational strategy. That’s number one.

The second thing we learned was that the very best leaders make five very specific commitments, whether or not they know they’re doing that, and these are the very commitments that their stakeholders expect of them. and I’m going to rattle them off and then we can talk about them further, if you’d like.

Please.

The first four are what is easy to observe by what leaders say and what leaders do and they are Inspire, Engage, Innovate and what we call Achieve. The last one is a little trickier to see. It’s that internal path to leadership and we call that Become. And that is actually so important that we’ve titled our book What There Is.

Yes, there it is. Let me make sure we let everybody see that.

And Become is that inner path to leadership. It’s that self-awareness that I have as a leader, that you have as a leader, the courage, the conviction, and the commitment to get better as a leader every day.So, those are the five commitments that we can measure, we can develop. There’s a whole lot of complexity underneath the commitments, the competencies and the skills that leaders can develop to get better, but one thing that we strongly believe at Linkage is that you need to be self-aware enough. And sometimes it’s hard. You need feedback from others, you need assessment data, you need a coach to help you realize where are your strengths and maybe where are your blind spots.

Yes, I like that. And interesting that what you said there, understanding your personal why. So, thank you for sharing that in this nice list of five commitments that we need to be aware of.And I want to also acknowledge just briefly, as we see here tuning in, I have a comment from Evan Sanders. He says he’s just learning. So, he appreciates what you said there. So, welcome, Evan. Thank you for letting us know that you’re here. Thank you for giving your feedback.

We welcome others to do the same and to share your feedback with Jennifer, share your questions, and certainly follow Jennifer on social media.

Go ahead, Jennifer.

Yeah, let me give Evan a little thumbs up because, again, the beauty of the Purposeful Leadership Framework is that it’s very simple, it’s very elegant, and it’s also very actionable. So, let me just talk to Evan for a moment.When we look at those five commitments, the first being Inspire, Inspire is about a leader’s ability to set an aspirational goal and to rally people around that goal. It doesn’t matter what level of leader you are, we all have goals and we all can inspire related to those goals.

The second one is Engage and this one is really important, especially in a crisis like we’re in now. Engage is about the leader’s ability to bring everybody together and feel a sense of belonging and a sense of “This is what I can do to support that goal and I feel like I’m heard and I feel like the leader is bringing me in.”

Innovate is about change – what do you need to do to shift and evolve toward that aspirational goal, either at the big blue-sky level or even at the simple process efficiency level.

And Achieve is really important. It’s about achieving the goals but not through you alone. It’s about the structure and the process so that the team can achieve the goal together

And, finally, Become. Again, Become is probably the hardest one because it’s about me, it’s about my self-awareness as a leader.

All right, thank you for sharing that as well. And not only does Evan agree with you but someone who I haven’t talked to for five years chimes in. Linus Okorie says “You are amazing, Jennifer.” Linus is someone I went to Harvard with when I did executive education at the Kennedy School. He is one of the leaders in Nigeria and I haven’t talked to him in five years. So, it’s good to see that he’s chiming in. Thank you for letting us know you’re here and letting us know how amazing you think that Jennifer is.

And I actually want to talk to Linus as well because one of the big shifts that we’re making at Linkage, and, frankly, it’s a massive trend right now, especially given the situation we have faced in the last 60 days, everything is being converted onto digital platforms. And so, whereas prior you might only get access to the Purposeful Leadership Framework through an assessment but you’d have to travel from Nigeria to our conferences or we have to travel there to do a live program. We’ve gotten really good in the last 12 to 18 months about digital access to these concepts. So, for someone in Nigeria, we can actually expose them to the Purposeful Leadership content through digital platforms in a self-service way and then we can get more and more complex on digital platforms with shared learning and cohorts and bringing communities together on the digital platform all the way up to executive level assessment and coaching but our goal at Linkage is to create access to our leadership development work regardless of what level you are and regardless of where you are in the world.

And, certainly, that is helpful. And Linus said that he liked your five commitments for being a great leader. And Evans chimed in and not only he likes them but he listed them.

Evan, you can go to our website. There’s actually a Purposeful Leadership Quiz where really quickly you can identify what are your strengths and opportunities related to Purposeful Leadership. And then, again, through that self-awareness with our book or with our online content we can support you in becoming a better leader right from where you’re sitting at your home right now.

And Linus says that he has set up the most comprehensive leadership center in Nigeria and he would be glad to work with you. He’s done some pretty amazing work over there.

Wow! All right, Linus, you and me, we’re going to talk.

So, there’s something else I’d like to share, Jennifer, is that you showed the book Becoming but there’s another book where you have documented your research. Do you have that one next to you as well? We’ll just talk about.

I do. Hold on, let me grab it.

I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.

No. Hey, we’re live, man. This is good.So, we talked a little bit about the data we’ve been gathering on leaders writ large across the last 30 years. Linkage is one of the only companies in the world that has been studying the advancement of women for 25 years and we’ve run Women in Leadership Institute for 21 of those years. This is our book called Mastering Your Inner Critic and Seven Other High Hurdles to Advancement. The other reason I loved joining Linkage was because of this research that we’ve done, which is around women and now we’re doing a lot more on inclusion. So, we’ve identified very specific hurdles to women’s advancement that are different than the traditional path men have taken to leadership and what are the competencies that will help women overcome those hurdles. And just like our broader leadership work, we have assessments and development and coaching and consulting and a big Institute to support the advancement of women leaders. And we’ve learned a lot about that. It’s not just about helping women individually. It’s about helping the organization around the women to ensure that there’s the culture and the talent systems and the executive commitment required to advance women. And now we’re pointing that same work toward other underrepresented populations as well.

Indeed. And you’ve done some fascinating work around this. And I saw an interview where you were quoted in Fast Company in October regarding the hashtag #NotWorthLess. You talked about how men can do a better job of supporting women. And I don’t want to put you in a spot and ask you to remember what was written almost a year ago but you talked about how as men we can be better supporters by being advocates and also by shifting our intentionality.

I’ll even tell you a story about that, Eddie. And he’d kill me. He’s in the next room. It’s related to my husband. So, my husband, he would describe himself as kind of an amazing evolved human, happens to be a man and I agree he’s amazingly evolved. We actually put him through a one-day program he volunteered to go. We were testing a new program. It was around the really critical role of men as allies in the advancement of women. And he came back and he said “You know, that was amazing but I’m an individual contributor. I’m a sales guy. I’m not really in a position to support the advancement of women.” And I said “Actually, I really disagree. You are influential in your organization. You’re in many meetings where there are a mix of genders where men tend to be, like in most organizations, where fewer than 20% of the senior leadership is women across industries.” I said “You’ve got an amazing seat to support advancement of women. You can ensure that when you’re in a meeting you’re making sure that women are able to speak at the time, they’re acknowledged for their ideas, that the, what I call office, housework is equally distributed. And your role as an ally and a supporter and a cheerleader to bring women in and have them feeling that they’re belonging and at the same level is really critical no matter where you sit in an organizational hierarchy.” That said, you know a lot about the role of executives in the advancement of women and it is critical that executives and, let’s just call it how it is, most of them are still men, it’s really critical that they create a culture and an atmosphere and action and commitment so women can look up and believe that they’ve got a whole support structure there.

Wonderful. And we will take a quick break to have a word from our sponsor.

All right. So, appreciate the folks who’ve tuned in live. We are glad to have a couple of gentlemen who are willing to jump on the line. Evan is an emerging leader who’s a coach and Linus also, like I said, he’s a leader. So, we’d love to have anyone else who’s listening to us live tell us that you’re here, ask a question of Jennifer or give us feedback, as we’ve already received.What I’d like to do now is pause. We’re having a great conversation with Jennifer McCollum, the first CEO of Linkage Incorporated. And I’d like to just take a quick pause and acknowledge a few individuals that help make the Keep Leading!® Podcast and the Keep Leading Live stream possible.

The first I’d like to acknowledge is going to be Grand Heron. Grand Heron is one of my paid sponsors, Grand Heron International. The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more. So, they are a tremendous supporter. I appreciate their paid ad.

And then I have another supporter of the podcast that I would like to acknowledge. I’m sorry for the delay in the transitioning here. The next supporter that we’d like to acknowledge, the one that I’m also pretty excited about. Many folks enjoy Goodreads, the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Their mission is to help people find and share books they love. Well, now, there’s Goodpods, the social app brought to you by the former MSNBC host of Your Business JJ Ramberg and her brother Ken. Their mission is to help people find and share podcasts they love. Visit Goodpods.com to learn more. I am a big fan of this app and on their site you get a chance to read more about them and you can download the app. Goodpods.com.

And then my final one that I would like to acknowledge, not a paid sponsor, but certainly someone who I am excited to have with me today on the show. So, I want to tell you that at Linkage, we believe that leaders are not born. They are made from their experiences. Leaders are the driving force behind your most important asset, your people. Everyone, regardless of their role, can continually develop into a more effective leader. Visit LinkageInc.com to learn more.

All right. So, that’s all for our ads.

That’s awesome. I’m going to look at Goodpods. I haven’t heard of that before.

Yes, it’s new and it’s pretty cool. And, as we said there, it’s just like Goodreads which a lot of people seem to really enjoy.So, Jennifer, you said earlier in your research that you all discover what the most effective leaders do. If a leader is listening to our discussion right now, what’s one thing you’d like for them to be able to implement right away.

I think I’d actually like to start to pivot to the role that inclusion plays in leadership effectiveness. And the reason I feel like it’s so important to talk about that right now is because in a world where a lot of companies have had to lay off staff, reduce pay, they’re making dramatic pivots in business strategy, the role of inclusion becomes really critical. And let me talk about inclusion as it relates to purposeful leadership. So, we already talked about the five commitments of purposeful leadership. We did some really important work last year. Everybody’s been talking about inclusion for the last 5-10 years, the role of diversity and inclusion. We really sought to codify what does it actually mean and how do you if you are inclusive.And so, to answer your question specifically, the role of inclusion, and I’ll give you some examples of what it actually looks like and how we measure it, are leaders showing empathy, are they showing concern for others, are they creating an environment where you can openly discuss and learn from your failures or your obstacles and your challenges. If you think about the work environment right now, those should be conversations we’re having every single day. Does the leader encourage the culture where people can speak up regardless of their experience or regardless of their background? So, there are a couple of the things that we measure when it comes to inclusive leadership.

Here’s the cool thing that we did last year. Of our Purposeful Leadership Assessment, there about 50 or so items that we test across all five commitments to offer a leader a snapshot into where they’re strong and where they have potential to grow. We took just the specific items that directly impacted inclusive leadership, so three or four of the ones I just spouted out to you. And there were 16 of them. And we took 16 of them and we correlated them to the whole 50+ that we measure. And what we learned is if all you do is measure those 16 items, you can predict how effective that leader is. Without getting too deep into the data, it correlates at a 0.92 which means basically if you’re an inclusive leader, you are an effective leader.

So, my message today is a lot of times when you’re in a crisis, you kind of forget about those things like “Let’s not talk about advancing women and other underrepresented populations. Let’s not talk about inclusion. We got to get this business running.” Well, the truth is you can’t get the business running if you’re not an inclusive leader.

So, you’re saying the two are inextricably linked.

That’s right. And, again, I’m a true believer in balancing the science with the art. What I like about Linkage is that we actually start with the science and then we create a lot of art around how we deliver it to our clients but the data is very clear. The most effective leaders are purposeful leaders and purposeful leaders are inclusive leaders.

The most effective leaders are inclusive leaders and inclusive leaders are purposeful leaders. Wonderful. That is a good message for us to take with us. And it sounds like doing the right thing is also the best thing for the business.

Yeah, there’s actually a lot of data out there right now. Linkage doesn’t do the business correlation data but when you look at driving inclusivity in your organization just like looking at advancing when women and bringing women up in your organization, the data, you cannot dispute it anymore. So, for organizations that have more inclusion and more women and other underrepresented populations on any metric you look at, you can look at revenue, you can look at profit, you can look at that promoter score, you can look at business innovation, you can look at decision making, on every single metric, they are improved when you are focused on not only getting the numbers right in terms of women and in terms of other underrepresented population but also getting the culture right about what it actually means and feels like to be an inclusive organization.

Yes. And when you talk about the culture and what that looks like and what that feels like, literally you’re talking about the temperature inside the organization.

Yeah, it’s interesting. One of the things that we recommend now, having done this research, is what should organizations start doing that they’re not doing today and what should they stop doing that they are doing. And one of the things we talked about is we really need to divorce diversity from inclusion. And there’s a great social anthropologist Vernā Myers, you may have heard this, which is we need to make sure that diversity is about inviting someone to the dance but inclusion is about asking them to dance. And I love that analogy and that’s true. I think most organizations have been so focused on the diversity in the numbers, that’s just getting the invitation, that they’re not focused enough on actually what does it feel like to engage and retain and support those underrepresented populations in leadership.

Yes, I love it. The first time I heard that was from Robert Livingston at Harvard. He was a professor who was talking about that and I just thought that was brilliant. So, I was giving him credit for that. So, you’re telling me this came from someplace else.

We can figure it out later but regardless, it is in such a powerful quote.

No, really, I love it.

Yeah. And I think that’s the harder piece. To be honest, if you’re focused on the numbers, we have a lot of clients who are and it’s a great starting point, they make the commitment to bring in more women and more underrepresented populations, the best companies make that commitment and they create a very big initiative around “What are we going to do?” on four things. One, “What are we going to do to disproportionately invest in those populations?” It could be put them on high potential tracks, invest in them with coaching and training and conferences like Linkage runs or it could be just giving them stretch assignments but the other three things are actually the harder things and that is investing in their culture. And that means that all leaders, men and women, that have the ability to impact the culture through their leadership need to be doing that and that relates to executive action and commitment. Are they putting money where their mouth is? Are they actually operating in line with what an inclusive leader looks like? And we can help them as well. And then, finally, our talent systems. Are they fare from hiring to succession planning and high potential identification? Are they truly objective and fair to allow for all populations to rise?

Thank You, Jennifer.And it looks like Faustina is listening to you. She says that is great. She is very optimistic. Thank you for weighing in, Faustina. And if you’re just joining us, listening to Jennifer McCollum, please let us know where you are from, say hello and let us know if you have a question.

We do have one question that comes from Rosemary Winbush. She says “Thanks for your insight on leaders. Is there a formal leadership track at Linkage to reproduce leaders?”

I love that, Rosemary. Reproduce leaders reminds me a little production line. I wish it were that easy. We do have a formal leadership program, if that’s what you’re talking about, where we can support you or your organization in measuring, developing, and coaching to purposeful leadership. And our goal at Linkage … And, again when we say change the face of leadership, we mean it two different ways. The first way to change the face of leadership is really more of a figurative changing the face, which is we want to disrupt conventional wisdom about what effective leadership is, which is why we are so focused on purposeful leadership. The other way to change the face of leadership is more literal, by helping the underrepresented population, the largest of which are women, but you can look at women and race and any other ways to identify underrepresentation, we want them to rise as well. And the reason is because we know that if we can do this, it’s our life’s work, if we can do this, organizations will be better, teams will be better, and individual leaders will do better.

Thank you for answering that question. And thank you, Rosemary, again for your question.Jennifer, I saw something that you wrote about in real leaders and that was just in March and, essentially, it revolves around what we’re dealing with right now. And so, you and 66 other CEOs were asked about your view on how you’re surviving, how you’re thriving. So, in your organization I don’t want to end this conversation without asking for those who are listening, what advice do you have from the top that leaders should be thinking about during this time to survive this crisis.

Yeah, it’s so important and I think it’s safe to say that all of us who are leaders, and all of us are leaders and what you’re talking about is leadership from the “top”, at the executive ranks, we’re really concerned about a couple things. One, and I think we did pretty well here, one was looking internally at our employees, are they safe, what will it take to transition them to their homes where work’s going to be a lot harder, and what can we do to support them. and that was kind of the first 30 days of scramble was around safety and efficiency and productivity, knowing that life has changed incredibly for all of us but the second thing we’re concerned about is what I’ll call business pivot or business innovation. So, in a world where so many of our organizations are struggling to survive, on the one hand, when you think about the world of academia where they’re trying to figure out a whole new way to teach our kids, when you think about the world of conferences, Eddie, where you and I spent a lot of our time where all of a sudden there’s no face-to-face conference, you think about development where everything has gone digital, it’s this pivot to innovate quickly for the very survival of our organizations is the second thing.And I think to answer your question specifically, while purposeful leadership is critical always for leaders, in a crisis, you have to dial up a couple of those levers even more. I talked a little bit about Innovate. How do I ensure that the innovation that we’re leading now, at Linkage, we massively accelerated what we were already doing, which is our investment in digital, how do we make sure that innovation is structured appropriately? And that’s the Achieve commitment? We’ve got structures and processes that may have to be redesigned on the fly so that we can very quickly pivot. So, that’s number one.

Number two is how can I inspire and engage the organization in a very different way. Before we were talking about a three-year-out plan. Now, we’re talking about a three-month-out plan. What does it look like in the next three months? Are people clear about where we’re headed and how to get there?

So, a little bit more immediate and rather than being more farsighted, a little bit more short-term impact.

Yeah. And Engage is important too. You’ll know this actually from our time together in January but we initiated a weekly business plan review and this is from our good friend Alan Mulally who was the CEO at Ford and Boeing during respective crises, during the recession and 9/11, and his perspective I believe strongly in, which is it’s always important but in a crisis it becomes even more important for everybody to come together to have complete transparency to tell people what you know, what you don’t know, and if you don’t know, when you’re going to figure out an answer and how you can be a part of creating the solution.

And you just did a fascinating interview with him recently as well.

I did. I was so lucky. We had about 1,500 people come or indicate interest in this webinar but I think it’s an indication of this period right now which is people are hungry for information and development just like us. We can connect in a video conference, I’d rather see you live, but we’re making it work virtually.

We’re making it work.Well, Jennifer, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking with you today. Is there an overarching message you want to leave our listeners with or a famous quote that you want to share with us or a leadership lesson?

Well, I’m going to actually quote again our good friend who we met together, Harry Kramer. He’s a former CEO at, I think, Baxter Healthcare but now he works at Kellogg. He was ranked the number one MBA professor in the country. And I’ve actually been channeling him a lot because it makes me calmer in moments of crisis. And he said “Look, a crisis is always going to come and you got to do two things. The first thing you got to do is just do the right thing.” And so, when I wake up every day and when I engage my teams like we’ve got a lot of hard decisions but if we’re guided by “Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing the right thing by the business? Are we doing the right thing by the people inside our business? Are we doing the right thing by our clients?” and the second thing is “Are we doing our best?” And if I can answer those two questions, I wake up with them and I go to bed with them, I think we’re going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay. I like that. Thank you for that advice. And, yes, he is quite an individual, extraordinary. So, thank you for sharing that.We showed you the website for Linkage earlier. Are there any other connecting locations you want to share with our viewers where can they learn more about you and your organization and the fantastic work your team is doing?

So, the best way to do it is LinkageInc.com. I also want to encourage people, there’s a whole site under Events. We’re doing free webinars every week or two to support our leaders and our rising leaders. We also talked about the two books. So, Why Is, Become, The Five Commitments of Purposeful Leadership, that’s for all leaders in all levels, and the other is Mastering Your Inner Critic and Seven Other Hurdles to Advancement. That’s primarily targeted at women or anyone that wants to support the rise of women leaders.

Wonderful. Well, Jennifer, I know you’re an extremely busy CEO. Thank you for all the good you’re doing in the world and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be a part of this live session of the Keep Leading!® Podcast and Keep Leading Live.

Thank You, Eddie. This is going to be the highlight of my week.

Thank you, Jennifer.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 position or our title. Leadership is action. Leadership is an activity. 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.

See you next week, everyone.

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 through the power of executive and leadership coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.Did you know that client leadership is a leadership competency for 21st century leaders? I did not know that but because of my guest today, I learned that it is imperative that today’s business leader can no longer be satisfied with having an internal focus. Today’s leader must be externally focused as well and develop key client relationships. Here today to talk about quiet leadership is Andrew Sobel.

Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on the strategies and skills required to earn lifelong client loyalty and build trusted business partnerships. He is the most widely published author in the world on this topic. He’s written nine highly acclaimed books on developing the relationships that matter with your clients and for your career. His books have been translated into 21 different languages. He has published over 400 articles and contributed chapters to four books on leadership, strategy, and marketing. You’ll find his work in USA Today, the New York Times, Businessweek, Harvard Business Review, Forbes and others and he’s also appeared on numerous television programs. I am super excited to have with me today Andrew Sobel.

Andrew, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Thank you so much, Eddie. I’m really delighted to be here and to have this conversation.

Well, Andrew, I always say I’m excited to have my guests because I always have because each person is so unique but I’m going to say something to my audience that I don’t even think you know and that is that I have very few people I consider a business hero but you’re one of them. And you’re one of them ever since I met you with Bob Dean back at Heidrick & Struggles. And you’ve just released the book All for One, if I’m not mistaken, at that time.

Yes, that’s right. Yeah, 2009.

Yes, yes. And so, we brought you in to work with our executive leadership around the globe. And I was extremely impressed. And I read that book and later on your released Building C-Suite Relationships and my favorite book is Power Questions that you released but you also had a podcast at that time. And I still have that podcast on my iPhone to this day and my favorite episode was the episode that you produced about Leonardo da Vinci.

Yes.

I’ve pronounced it correctly because you told us how it’s to be pronounced on the show.

That’s right. A lot of call him da Vinci but actually he’s referred to as Leonardo, if you only use one word, because da Vinci just means “From the city of Vinci.”

Yes, yes. And something else that you said about him and how he was the world’s first management consultant. Can you just share that with my listeners?

Oh, sure. So, Leonardo had apprenticed at a young age with a famous Florentine artist and I think he, at that point, was around 21-22 years old and was frankly looking for work but most of the big commissions with the Medici rulers of Florence had already been given out to other famous artists. And he wrote a letter to, I believe, it was Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and said “I can help you design very advanced weapons of war” and he wrote this long letter telling him all about the things he could literally invent for him that would give him a competitive advantage. And he was hired by Sforza. And he went up and spent a couple of years in Milan and he was basically his consultant. He consulted to him on military strategy, weapons, on, for example, things like how to drain swampy land so it would be more fit for battle, all kinds of fortifications, you name it. So, I like to say 500 years ago he was the first management consultant.

Yes, yes. And you highlighted so many different things about this person who most of us might have only thought of as just being a great painter. You talked about him being a Renaissance man and all these other areas. And that really resonated with me because I was a person who had multiple skills and was just starting to be able to get the opportunity to leverage them. And there’s a phrase that you introduced that I adopted as part of my own way of describing myself and I always give you attribution and that was you talked about being a deep generalist and a deep specialist.

Yeah. The deep generalist, I guess the deep part is your core expertise as a provider, whether you’re a lawyer, consultant, banker, you name it, accountant. That deep expertise you need to bring to the table like yours is around leadership and leadership effectiveness but you also have to bring a broader set of skills that you layer on top of that, both big picture thinking skills and relational skills, what we call business acumen. So, you have to layer those broader skills on top of your core expertise. And if you can do that, it’s very powerful combination because then you’re not only able to advise a client about your specific expertise but you are able to contextualize your solutions within their entire business and their business goals. So, it’s sort of like the difference between going to see a really great internist or general practitioner for your health, who’s looking holistically at your health at all your bodily systems versus when you go and see a very narrow specialist or maybe a dermatologist or a podiatrist who looks at your feet and so on. So, I think, in many professions you need to be that deep generalist. And especially, Eddie, if you want to work in the C-suite, if you want to work with top executives, you’ve got to bring that bigger picture thinking, you’ve got to build that deep personal trust that is characteristic of a deep generalist.

Absolutely. And that’s been a theme through a lot of your work that I’ve had a chance to read and what I remember from the time I had the privilege to work with you. And you have a new book coming where you continue to share your wisdom with readers. It Starts with Clients is the name of your new book. Tell us a little bit about when people can access that.

Sure. It Starts with Clients is being released at the end of March. It’s around March 31, April 1, in that period. It’s going to be available, it comes out from John Wiley & Sons, my publisher. And It Starts with Clients really is a guidebook to growing your client base. It is built around, what I call, a 100-day challenge. So, let’s call it we have 15 weeks. It’s built around a 100-day challenge and it looks at 14 major challenges that all of us face in growing a client base. I don’t care if you’re a banker, if you’re in sales for a company, if you’re in client service, if you’re a consultant, whatever. We all have to overcome these challenges in order to build clients for life. And that’s what the book is structured around. And it really incorporates everything I’ve learned in 25 years of research, interviews with, at this point, about 8000 top executives and successful rainmakers. It really packages all of that around these 14 key challenges. And I’m really excited about the book.

And I am excited as well. Thank you for sending me an advance copy to review before our session today. One of the things that you introduced or that you talked about and that you taught me that I didn’t know is this concept about client leadership, that it is a leadership competency. Can you share with my listeners your thinking around that?

Sure, Eddie. So, what opened my eyes to this was years ago I began working with a big Fortune 500 company in the New York area, a big technology company, and they were always very client and customer focused. They invested heavily in client service. They had an organization structure that was really focused on the client, marketplace, and so on. And they were very, very successful because of this. They called it their ‘Client First’ strategy. Anyway, at a certain point, I was doing some executive development with them and they shared with me their leadership competency framework which they had spent a lot of time thinking about. And one of the five competencies was called ‘Client Leadership’. And so, this just, I guess, confirmed what I had always just felt intuitively that client leadership, the ability to lead in the client marketplace is a fundamental leadership competency. I’m sure you’re better at this than me but I think somewhat simply about leadership as being in a company there’s internal leadership, there’s managing teams and managing internally, there’s self-leadership which is self-regulation and sharpening your own saw and then there’s client leadership, the external marketplace. Now, you have to think of this more broadly than just purely clients who pay you money for a service. So, I’ll give you an example. It’s easy to see if you’re the head of Sales or Marketing or if you’re a business unit head, you have to go out and meet with clients and customers, right? So, you need to be good at that but it’s also true, let’s just say you’re the head of IT, you’re the Chief Information Officer, you are also going to be meeting occasionally with major clients. In fact, you might be part of a kind of executive visit program where you are given a portfolio of flagship clients and it’s your responsibility to go meet with them a couple times a year so that you might get involved that way. There’s another way you might get involved and that is managing your key stakeholders. So, to use my CIO analogy, the CIO might need to be managing major partnerships, alliances, let’s just say with Amazon or Microsoft or Google or Oracle. And those are critical relationships. And, honestly, the same techniques you use in building client relationships, you need to use with those types of external stakeholders, right? You need to go out and build rapport with them. You need to understand their agenda, what they’re trying to get out of it. You need to then help them with their agenda so it’s a win-win relationship. Eventually, you want to build a personal relationship with them because that creates many benefits. I don’t mean you need to become best friends but that creates many benefits that just having that arm’s length transactional relationship has. So, you can see that the same process you need to apply towards it. And, nowadays, leaders have to be managing these outside stakeholders because of the interconnectedness of our business ecosystem.

Yes, no longer is it okay to just have our one silo that we’re looking at. We have to extend our vision.

Exactly.

And something about your answer I really love, Andrew, is your depth of experience is very clear. We didn’t say this but listeners should know that you are a past CEO. You are a person who spent years in management consulting. And when our reader reads your work, you don’t just tell theories that you research as an author. You are a bestselling author who has sold hundreds of thousands of books but you always tell the story about your theories that come directly from your client work. And I felt as a leader, and I’m sure others do as well, that we’re getting access to the C-suite when we read your work.

First of all, Eddie, thank you for saying that. I’m really delighted that you noticed that. Especially in It Starts with Clients, I really try to use my 35-plus years of experience to enrich the book with a lot of important stories and anecdotes. Many of them are my own. Some of them are my clients’ stories, leaders I’ve worked with at these different companies who had incredible experiences because it does bring them to life. So, stories, I think, are critical because we tend to remember them, our brains are wired for them. Just to give you an example, I could talk on and on about the importance of understanding your client’s agenda of what I call agenda setting which is a process. First, you’ve got to react to what they’re asking you to do. Then you need to sense their agenda and really understand it. And then, ideally, you help them to shape it collaboratively to improve it, their agenda being their three to five critical priorities, needs, or goals. So, for example, what really drove that home for me, because a lot of people will say “Well, yeah, of course, you got to understand, you know, what’s important to the other person,” is I worked with the top partner at one of the biggest strategy consulting firms in the world, top partner in the sense that every year he sold more business than any other partner out of hundreds in the firm and every year, consistently, year after year. And I had lunch with him once and I said “Bill, I’m curious what’s your secret. You’re the top performing partner in this entire global firm.” And he looked at me and he pulled a little sheet of paper out of his pocket and he said “Andrew, do you see this piece of paper?” And it was all crumbled up and scribbled on and annotated. He said “On this piece of paper, I’ve written down the names of each of my clients, the individual executives, not the companies, the individual executives. And next to their name I’ve written their two or three most critical goals for this year. My job is to make them successful and help them accomplish those goals.”

I like that.

And he didn’t define himself as “I’m a strategy consultant. I’m an engineering operations consultant. I’m an innovation consultant.” He defined himself as being in the business of helping his clients achieve their most critical goals. Obviously, in his bailiwick, within his expertise. I can’t help my clients with a risk management program in finance because that’s not really my expertise but you see what I’m saying. That was his focus.

Right. No, I love it.

And, to me, it’s very powerful to think of yourself that way, whether you’re a coach, for example, a leadership coach. My job is to help my clients achieve their most critical business goals. And actually, personal goals.

Yes.

It’s not just their business goals, it’s their personal goals. It’s their career aspirations. Perhaps they have a learning agenda. And you can help facilitate that. Perhaps they want to expand their network. Maybe they’re going through a family crisis and just even knowing that helps you be more empathetic. Do you see what I’m saying?

Absolutely.

So, you need to know both the professional and the personal agenda. And when you do know that to a very deep extent, that becomes powerful because then, when more about your client than any other competitor, when you understand their issues more than anyone else who works with them, that massively differentiates you.

Indeed. And in that answer you reveal the other thing I love about your work, Andrew, and that is not only do you give us graphic illustrations through the stories you tell, I see those characters come alive even as you started describing that, I felt like I was listening to the audiobook but they come alive and you tell us how. You end every chapter with strategies that we can take to actually now do what you’ve explained and illustrate it. And so, just extremely compelling.

Thank you so much. Well, I’m delighted that it struck you in that way. I’ve had a handful of clients read the advanced copies and they’re pretty exciting.

Good. Well, I’m talking to the amazing Andrew Sobel, a globally recognized executive who speaks four languages and is the bestselling author of nine books in 21 different in languages. He’s a leading authority on the strategies and skills required to earn lifelong quiet loyalty and build trusted business partnerships. We’ll have more with Andrew right after this.

We’re back, everyone. I am thoroughly excited to be talking to Andrew Sobel, a globally renowned executive who speaks four languages and is the bestselling author of nine books in 21 different languages. He is the leading authority on the strategies and skills required to earn lifelong client loyalty and build trusted business partnerships. We’re talking about his new book, by the way, It Starts with Clients. And through Andrew I feel like I have gained access to the mind of CEOs and what it means to be in the C-suite. And through his new book he reveals strategies that all of us can apply.Andrew, what separates great rainmakers who are able to earn clients for life as trusted advisors from ordinary professionals?

So, Eddie, that’s the million-dollar question and one that I have spent many years studying. So, I hope I can give you an answer here. First of all, there’s no one thing, obviously. There’s no silver bullet. And, secondly, I think each of us does have certain gifts that we bring to bear in different measure, right? So, I don’t think every great rainmaker is not a sort of cookie cutter of the other as it were but I think there are a few things. One of them I mentioned earlier in the show, which is, they think of themselves not as a purveyor of a product or a solution, not as in business to sell a particular product or solution but they see themselves as their role is to really help improve the client’s business and organization, to help that client meet their goals. And they may do it through a particular product they sell or a particular service but they have that bigger picture conception of their role. I’m using the word a bit loosely but it’s almost a more transcendent conception of their role with clients, if you see what I mean, as opposed to “I’m a great salesman for X product.”I think there’s a second interesting quality about these individuals and it is that they are at the crossroads of the market, the best ones are. And here’s what I mean. So, during the talk about recessions in 2008-2009, I had a client who was in the executive search business and he called me up and said “Andrew, it’s terrible out there. I call clients up. They don’t even want to see me. They say “Look, we’re not hiring anyone. We don’t need you.” And I said to my friend “Look, here’s what’s wrong with this picture. Clients should view you as being such an interesting fount of information about the market, about talent, about leadership and all that stuff that they will always be willing to see you. Even if they don’t need your services, they’re going to want to want to see you because you’ll always have something interesting to say.” And so, I think that you do that by actually getting out into the market and talking to lots of people. My co-author, dear late Jerry Panas, my Power Questions co-author, he was very old fashioned and he would say “If you want milk, you’ve got to get out of the house and go out to the barn, no matter what the weather.” And the point is the more you’re out there talking to people, whether it’s prospects, clients, just people you know in the industry, the more valuable you become to your clients because you’ve got the pulse of what’s going on. So, they’re at the crossroads of the marketplace and, therefore, clients are always interested to see them.

Another interesting characteristic of really great rainmakers and trusted advisors is they are a trusted adviser to their best clients when there’s lots of business and when there’s no business. In other words, they’re there even when there aren’t big fees coming in. They’re still checking in. they’re still going and having coffee and offering to be a sounding board and give advice and so on. And so, I think that’s, again, a different way of thinking about it because a lot of people, Eddie, they get busy, they’re delivering on contracts they’ve sold and they kind of forget about all those past clients instead of maintaining this attitude of, it’s almost like “I’m your trusted advisor forever.” Now, obviously, there’s limits to that. I’m not saying you’re just constantly doing free work for people but it’s an attitude and all you need to do is stay in touch occasionally and be helpful and it does give people the feeling that “Hey, Eddie’s there for me. Even if I don’t have a formal coaching assignment with Eddie, he is okay if I call him up once in a while, right?”

Right.

So, I think that’s also very powerful.

Okay, Andrew, now I have a new set of assignments. I need to put on my to do-list for next week. Thank you.

You’re very busy, Eddie.

It is really a good reminder and so very true. So, clients should be seeking us no matter the circumstances. And they will only do that if we’ve proven ourselves to be a fount of knowledge who offers value and, as you so beautifully say in your work, move from being just the hired expert to being the trusted adviser.

Yeah, yeah. And, as you said, Eddie, in terms of my new book, there is a lot of detail in it on the how-to because too many business books are full of platitudes – “You need to listen well. You need to ask good questions. You need to be a trusted adviser to your clients” – but, honestly, often people don’t really, I hate to say this way, they may not have the experience to be able to spell it out for you “Here’s exactly what you need to do.” And that’s something I hope I’ve done for my readers in this new book.

Indeed, you have. In fact, at one point, your book Power Questions was like a Bible to me. I carried it around and I’d go through it really quickly before client engagement. And when I read your new book, I realized I hadn’t read the Power Questions book in a while and I went back and perused it last night. When I picked up the new book, the first chapter I went to was the chapter about the power questions.

And there’s a few new ideas in there and I hope you saw that.

Yeah. So, when you said that, I loved how you explained instead of asking this question and you’d explain why because it’s trite, because it’s overused and this is what everybody says, you would say “Hey, ask this.” And so, it really helps those of us who want to move from just being transactional to building these relationships by applying what you’ve written there.

In fact, can I bust a cliché for you? People always say “There’s no bad questions, Eddie.” Actually, sorry, there are bad questions. Well, that’s one myth I hope I bust in the book, which is there are bad questions. There are all kinds of bad questions that people ask. And they make you look less smart, not smarter.

Yes, yes. Bust away, absolutely. And I must stop saying that as well. Sometimes when leading a class, I’ll say that but, yes, there are certain things, especially in our client relationships, if we’re going to exercise client leadership, there are some questions we clearly want to avoid.

I mean, look, in general, you’re not going to shoot yourself in the foot by asking a question but you could go with a CEO and ask questions that were too basic. And the CEO might be thinking, “You know, you could’ve learned this before you came in to see me.”

Yes.

Just to give you an example, they might say in the back of their head “You really should have gone to school a little more.”

Yes, I love how you open up in Power Questions. There’s a quote that you used that either you said or one of your senior executives said about what CEOs can tell about a consultant by the type of question that they ask. Do you want to share it?

Yeah. That happened years ago. I was actually in Chicago, interviewing the CEO of a 10-billion-dollar company for actually another book at the time. And he said to me “You know, Andrew, I can always tell how experienced a potential supplier or advisor is, whether it’s a lawyer or a banker, by the quality of the questions they ask. That tells me how experienced they are.” And you’d notice he didn’t say “I can always tell how good they are by the quality of their PowerPoint slides.”

I started laughing because, yes, that’s what you said. That stood out to me. That’s definitely one of the highlights you’ll find in my copy of your book, that section. Yes, absolutely, that speaks volumes.

Well, a lot of credit goes to Jerry Panas, my co-author. Jerry was the leading fundraising consultant in the world, a brilliant man. And I’ll tell you a little secret that nobody knows. Originally, when I started conceiving of this book, the title was Powerful Questions and we actually sold it to the publisher with that title. And one day Jerry called me up and said “You know, Andrew, I wonder if Power Questions isn’t a better title.” And I immediately went “Holy cow! How come I didn’t think of that. Of course, it’s a better title.” So, I credit Jerry. Honestly, it’s like a hundred times better. Because a lot of my clients have adopted the language. They talk about “Okay, what’s the power question we’re going to ask in this meeting?”

Yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up because I didn’t think about that. I looked at the book yesterday with fresh eyes. When I read the book before, I was not a coach, I hadn’t gone through coach training but I’ve since had and I’m certified, I’ve done like two different organizations’ training. So, in my mind, I find myself always saying “powerful questions” because that’s what you hear but when I looked at your book again with fresh eyes yesterday, not only did I understand that “It just says “Power Question”.”

Yeah, exactly.

And then I looked at the illustration where you have the power symbol in the question mark and that didn’t stand out to me before and I got it.

Excellent.

Okay. So, everyone wants to gain access to the C-suite and to senior executives. Why is it so hard?

It’s so hard because in the last 10 or 15 years more and more people are trying to meet with the C-suite. And that’s for many reasons. I think, in some ways they’re more powerful than they used to be. They are viewed as almost celebrities in their own right but also, frankly, a lot of purchase decisions, they aren’t made in the C-suite, but they do have to okay them, if you know what I mean, and so on. So, everybody’s trying to get in to see people in the C-suite and C-suite executives, therefore, have become ever more protective of their schedules. Also, they do want to ensure that their teams are empowered to sort of take decisions and to meet with people. They don’t want to be the bottleneck.And there’s another reason which is the external responsibilities of top executives have multiplied in recent years – dealing with regulators, dealing with key clients, dealing with alliance partners, all kinds of external responsibilities that these executives have. And we now have something both great and terrible called email. So, if you think about it, the demands on their time have just multiplied. There’s actually was an article a few years ago in the Harvard Business Review where they track this. So, 30 years ago, it was something like 1000 or 2000 communication, interactions a year. And now, it’s more like 25,000.

Wow!

There’s actually a chart in this article showing this because, think about it, first you had just like telephone calls, then you had voice messaging, then email developed and the internet and on and on. And so, there’s been this long almost geometric progression. So, I think there’s a lot of reasons. Therefore, if you want access to the C-suite, you really have to think through what your strategy is. And there’s two parts to it, obviously. A part of it is how do you build a network of more senior executives and the other is how do you get into seeing a senior executive that you don’t know very well. And I’ll tell you right now. Again, no silver bullet here but I’ll tell you right now with senior executives, most of them have told me in surveys I’ve done, and this is corroborated with other research, that they generally won’t see someone they don’t know unless they’ve been recommended to them by a colleague or friend. So, that’s number one. There’s a second condition. If they feel they have a particularly interesting idea.

And the other way around that, I believe, you addressed in your book in the last chapter about becoming a person of interest. Am I right?

Exactly, exactly. So, person of interest, of course, is a subject of a law enforcement investigation. They generally talk about a person of interest in this investigation. So, I kind of humorously use that term but, basically, what is it about people, business professionals that a top executive would actually seek them out. And, look, it starts with your reputation in your field, of course. You need to have some renown, some visibility that you’re tops – in executive coaching, Eddie is one of the go-to people. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be the go-to person in the world or even the United States but it might be in a certain industry or a certain group of executives you’re known as being a fantastic executive coach, right? And, for me, for example, there’s certain industries I work a lot in like professional services, like financial services. So, I’m much better known in those industries than, say, manufacturing, which is fine. So, you need to build that reputation.I think there’s a second piece though that’s really important. You have to approach senior executives with a different level of thought leadership. So, I’ll use your business as an example. Let’s just say, an HR executive who hires you might be very interested in your coaching methodology. They’re going to like what training do you have or what methodology do you use and is it this and is it that and what are the checkpoints and how do you ensure continuous learning and all these, whereas if you’re talking to a more top executive, they’d be more interested in knowing about who else have you coached and what results did you get for them. They’re much more interested in the impact and the results and have you handled their issues before. So, that’s just a simple example.

It’s a great example.

Is that fair because I have a small executive coaching practice and that would be typical for my experience. So, the thought leadership whereas you might be talking to that HR executive or I might be talking to a learning and development executive about more of sort of content and my teaching methodologies and my digital learning suite and all this stuff, whereas with a top executive I’m talking to them about culture change, about creating a clients-for-life organization, how do you align your entire organization towards creating true breakthrough client experiences, what does that look like. And so, you’ve got to be developing that kind of thought leadership. You can’t just go in and talk to senior executives about your methodologies. And I do see that mistake quite often. One client of mine, very quickly, who is an accounting partner at a big four firm was invited to the dinner with a board of directors of his client. And he told me, in front of a big group, he was very confessional, he said he went all prepared to talk about taxation issues and VAT policy and all this stuff. And during the dinner, he said, the questions he was peppered with started with “What do you think is going to happen to the Dollar-Euro exchange rate?” or “What do you think about this macro event that’s occurring?” And he told me he was totally unprepared for the dinner because he didn’t really think that these board members were going to be much more interested in big macro issues than they were in his accounting methodologies.

Isn’t that something?

And he said he learned his lesson.

A lesson well learned, I’m sure. Wow! So, I got to tell you I’m just fascinated and I’m stuttering because I’m talking to somebody who I’ve wanted to talk to for a long time, who I haven’t talked to in years, actually. It’s like we’d have communication there but haven’t spoken. And so, I have just thoroughly enjoyed talking to you, Andrew. And I got to tell folks It Starts with Clients is a book you want to read. Andrew gets into how we can master the first meeting, how we reframe for maximum impact, something we talked about a lot in coaching, how to use those power questions that I was talking about earlier, and how to build senior executive relationships and so much more.What is the biggest takeaway you want our listeners to have in this conversation, Andrew?

I think, maybe on two fronts. In terms of specifically thinking about growing your client base, I want to say one thing. You have to lower the threshold for a client meeting. That is actually one of the secrets to grow your client base because a lot of people feel they can’t go with the expert mindset – “I can’t go talk to a client or a prospect unless I’ve got a brilliant idea or a 30-page PowerPoint presentation” – whereas when you have the trusted adviser mindset, you know you can go talk to clients, have a cup of coffee with them, ask them a few powerful questions and share some observations about their business or about other clients you’re working with and you can have a great conversation. So, lower your threshold for a conversation for a meeting with a client. You’ll get in front of more people and you’ll learn more and then you will become ever more valuable. On the leadership side, of course, as we’ve discussed, I think you have to think about the importance of your client leadership. So, if in a company you have a relationship with a big client, even if you’re the CFO, you want to be building a relationship with the CFO of that other company. If you’re the head of HR, you want to be building a relationship with a head of HR at that other company. Do you see what I mean?

That’s a really good point. I like that. Thank you for sharing that. That’s a different way of thinking about it too.On the Keep Leading!® Podcast, we like to find out what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or your favorite quote that you use to help yourself to keep leading. Can you share what that is for you with our listeners?

Sure. This is one piece of advice I got, which, I’ll be honest, was hard for me to take at the time because it kind of goes against the selfish human heart, right? And that advice was “Andrew, the great boss, the great manager, the great leader is the one, when things go well, when there’s a big success, gives all the credit to his or her team and when they don’t go well, they take the blame.” And it’s a very simple statement but I think it’s very powerful. I jokingly said it goes against the selfish human heart but it is true. When things go great, we want to give credit to the team but we also want to make sure everybody knows that we were masterminding it, is the person in charge. I think, maybe it’s Daniel Goleman who refers to this. It’s part of level five leadership. It’s that humility that people have like the founder of Walmart and so on. I always like that quote and I’ve tried to remember it.

Thank you, Andrew. Where can my listeners learn more about you?

Two resources. One is just my website AndrewSobel.com. Secondly, my learning academy. I’ve got several great online programs on building relationships externally and internally and that’s simply Learning.AndrewSobel.com. Lots of free resources on both those sites.

Wonderful. Well, we will be sure to place that into the show notes so that people can go to those sites and get access to your resources, many of which you give away at no cost, and folks can do a lot of learning just by spending a little time on your site.

Wonderful. Eddie, you’ve been a fantastic host, really. This has been a delightful interview. You’ve made me think and I really appreciate being a guest on your program.

Thank you. It’s been just an honor for me. Thank you, Andrew.

You’re welcome.

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.

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.

On the Keep Leading!® Podcast, I talk about leadership from many different aspects. Today, I’d like to talk to someone who is leading at the highest level. I will interview Jeremie bacon. He’s the CEO of the Imagineer Technology Group and the Chairman of the Illinois Technology Association. He’s been featured in Fast Company, Crain’s Chicago Business, and appears on Chicago INNO’s 2019 50 on Fire List, a list of the top innovators in Chicago. Jeremie Bacon co-founded Backstop Solutions which provided back office support to hedge funds and other investment managers in 2003. In 2015, Bacon co-founded Synapse Software Labs where he pioneered Software as a Service platforms in the financial services and customer relationship management markets, a relationship software company which merged with Imagineer. Fun fact – he’s a musical theater junkie and performs at least once a year in a show.

Jeremie, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Jeremie Bacon:

Hey there! Thanks so much for having me on the show today. I appreciate it.

Eddie Turner:

Well, you’re a pretty impressive guy. What should my listeners know about you?

Jeremie Bacon:

I don’t know. That was a pretty exhaustive list. I think one thing that people usually don’t know about me is that I also am an ultra-marathoner and endurance athlete. I love doing adventure races. And that love and passion for doing ridiculous things in the mountains and in the woods also led to another company that I co-founded called the Forge Adventure Parks and we build outdoor recreation parks which are pretty fabulous, hundreds of acres of outdoor awesomeness. So, that is, I guess, one of the things I could throw into the mix.

Eddie Turner:

So, you’re just a serial entrepreneur is what I hear you saying, Jeremie.

Jeremie Bacon:

I was bitten by the entrepreneurship bug when I was eight years old and it has been both a blessing and a curse ever since.

Eddie Turner:

Eight years old. Wow! Now, that’s impressive. I’m often asked are leaders born or are they made. So, it sounds like you are almost born?

Jeremie Bacon:

Well, I think the entrepreneur part of me was definitely born. I think the leadership thing is something that we all learn. I would argue, I guess, that I probably was born with some innate leadership traits and skills and things but I think it’s through experience and, honestly, through a lot of effort that those traits are developed into real skills over time. At least in my case that’s how it’s been.

Eddie Turner:

Okay. And I understand from talking to your staff and some of the amazing work that you’re doing and just the level of enthusiasm and passion that your staff has, the culture that you’ve built in your organization is just phenomenal. And you have a phrase for the culture you’ve built. Can you share that with my audience?

Jeremie Bacon:

Sure. So, we focus most of our efforts and most of our energy on being customer centric in all things and in all ways. Our culture sort of focuses on four key values. And those four key values drive that customer-centric approach that we take. We’re really big believers in the idea of openness and integrity and pragmatism and gratitude. And, in fact, most of our conversations start and stop with us talking about how grateful we are for the opportunity we have to build our products and service our clients. And those values for us, anyway, sort of lead us down this path of being focused on customer centricity which, we feel, at the end of the day, is just another way of saying having an acute always-on focus on needs versus wants of our customers and in our teammates as well.

Eddie Turner:

Very nice. So, service-centric leadership has four pillars. You said openness, integrity, gratitude. And, I think, I missed the fourth one.

Jeremie Bacon:

Pragmatism.

Eddie Turner:

Pragmatism. Excellent, excellent. So, tell us a little bit, if you would please, how you arrived at this as a leadership philosophy.

Jeremie Bacon:

Yeah. So, for me, the journey, I think it was with a lot of journeys, it kind of starts inside my own head and inside my own heart and sort of getting to know myself as a person. When I was a little kid, my dad always used to say to me that one of the most important things that I could do as a young man, as a boy and then as a young man, is truly get to know myself. He always used to say “Know thyself. You have to know yourself before you can know anybody else or really be of great value to those around you.” And as a kid, I didn’t really understand what that meant or how to apply it but as I got to know myself better and got to know my own strengths and weaknesses as a person and as a leader, I began to see the value in sort of focusing on that as a thing. And, for me, my natural, I guess, tendencies and persona are such that I have this crazy passion to grow and expand and explore the world around me and I have probably too much energy, great need for excitement and, for better or worse, I’m constantly driven to seek bigger and better things. And better can be defined in many different ways. In fact, my wife would tell you, my wife is my soulmate and my rock and my island and she’s stuck with me now for 20 years of marriage and 23 plus years as my partner in crime …

Eddie Turner:

That’s outstanding.

Jeremie Bacon:

She would tell you that that’s the thing about me that drives her the most nuts is that I’m too crazy in that way but what’s interesting is that it’s through that passion that I have for sharing and for developing and building teams and growing things and designing products and working with customers and working with people that sort of helped me to see the possibilities for the future and what we can grow and what we can go do and then gives me the sort of the strength to rally the troops, if you will, and help guide and lead my teammates to, I guess, [inaudible][08:17], if you will. It’s this sort of natural tendency to drive groups toward results is something that just comes naturally to me as is that ability and that desire to share passion and energy and to drive changes and to keep things moving at a rapid pace. I think, for me, it’s those things that makes it essential that I try to work in and try to create environments that are built around openness like you need to be open to new ideas and new ways of thinking and you need to be open to being wrong and being told you’re wrong by your teammates bluntly from time to time but if you’re not acting with integrity, then you can’t accept that feedback and accept that criticism, if you will. And if you’re not pragmatic, you can’t implement and build and design the kind of products and the kind of experiences you’re working toward. And, lastly, if you don’t have gratitude to do all that, you can’t share that thankfulness with your teammates for them being open and being pragmatic with you and forcing you to be better and forcing you to work for your client and do things in a bigger, better, more efficient way. So, for me, those four principles are really tied together but they also are grounding principles for me as a person who is driven to run early sprint all the time. They help keep me grounded and help keep me in place.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Well, it sounds like you’re doing an outstanding job of it. And what I love about it is that all this is authentic but I see corporate values all the time, as I’m sure you do in the line of work, you are as a CEO, but this is the first time I will say that I’ve seen gratitude and certainly pragmatism as a part of a core values. So, fantastic.

Now, you said you allow your team to challenge you and speak openly. That says a lot about you as a leader because at times that’s difficult for leader. So, in this openness, what are some lessons you’ve learned that have made you an even better leader?

Jeremie Bacon:

Yeah, thank you for asking that question because, to me, that’s a super important one. I wasn’t always sort of self-aware. And I think, again, coming down to this notion of knowing yourself and knowing your strengths and weaknesses, for me, anyway, opened me up to being able to take that criticism. And, in fact, people who work most closely with me know that I demand it. There are a few things that I demand. One of the things I absolutely demand and use a strong word for is “You’ve got to tell me what you think. And you’ve got to tell me if you think I’m wrong.” One of the challenges that’s associated with my leadership style is that I believe in planning and I believe in deep thought and deep analysis but I’m also oriented toward action. So, as my teammates will say, I don’t sleep much and I’m kind of always on and always wired and always thinking. So, oftentimes I’ve thought through a problem, thought through a bunch of different variants, thought through the solutions and made a decision about what I think is the right path forward but because I do so much of that behind the scenes or while I’m running a marathon or whatever, sometimes I bring those things to the team and like it’s all new and fresh. Not everyone works that way. And so, I’ve found that if you have an environment where your teammates can’t say … actually, I should back up, where a) your teammates don’t understand that that’s how you work and that’s how you’re wired and therefore, you can’t help it, it’s just who you are and then b) don’t understand that they can tell “Jeremie, you’re wrong and here’s why” or “Hey, should we stop and think about this angle?” or “Did you look at this as a potential problem?”, then you end up in a situation where you’re setting yourself up and your teammates up for failure. So, as a result, I demand that people are open and frank with me about how they see or perceive my thinking, my thoughts, and my vision for a particular thing. And that can be a little intimidating for some people. Also, I think, it’s so important to be open and honest about that trait.

Eddie Turner:

Well, that says a lot because a few people, especially at the higher levels, want to be told and you say you demand it. So, that’s very strong. So, I’m sure that would catch a lot of people off guard.

Jeremie Bacon:

No one’s right all the time, right? If that’s the case, you’re right 1% of the time. So, I grew up in the asset management industry. And although I’ve been building software companies that serve asset managers for a couple of decades now, our clients are all money managers and these men and women get paid very well to make the right investment decisions with regards to which securities they’re going to purchase and how long they’re going to own them and who they’re going to back and all this stuff. And the most wise and humble of all asset managers will tell you, and those that are the most successful long term, will tell you their entire purpose for being, their entire goal when they go into the office and look at the markets is to be right 52% to 55% of the time. And if they are, they will win. And the biggest and most successful fund managers in the world, that’s their focus – “How do I be right not 100% of the time but 55% of the time?” And that’s how you win. And it’s really interesting when you think about that way because traditional business isn’t much different, right? No one ever has the best product. I should say that the group that wins rarely has the best product. The group that wins rarely has the best resources. It’s how they spend those resources and how they allocate their time and energy that matters the most. And, again, for me, that’s why it comes back to we got to be out in the open, we got to talk about it, we got to work it out, and then we got to work like crazy for the good of the customer. It doesn’t mean bending over backwards to do a bad deal or to be taken advantage of by a customer. It means being open and transparent with that client and working together to drive a result for them too.

Eddie Turner:

Okay. Well, excellent. Well, we’re talking to Jeremie Bacon. And what we’d like to do right now, Jeremie, is just to pause for a word from our sponsors.

Eddie Turner:

We’re back. We’re talking to Jeremie Bacon, CEO of the Imagineer Technology Group and Chairman of the Illinois Technology Association. Before the break, Jeremie was telling us about his company’s service-centric leadership philosophy that he’s built and the four pillars it’s built on and his viewpoint on leadership, leading from the top as a CEO.

Jeremie, you started to tell us a little bit about the type of work that you are doing. So, tell us a little bit more about who Imagineer Technology Group is and who your primary audience is.

Jeremie Bacon:

Sure. So, Imagineer Technology Group is a 21-year-old software company that makes software services for asset management firms. When we say asset management firms, we mean money management firms. So, our clients are the world’s largest hedge funds and traditional asset managers, think groups like Vanguard or BlackRock, Fidelity, those types of money management firms, all the way through to private equity and venture capital firms as well. So, our customers use our platforms to do a couple of pretty important things. One is they use our systems to manage their marketing and investor communications and fundraising activities. So, they use us to help them manage the fundraising process, to deal with opportunity tracking, to monitor their perspective of an existing client’s engagement with their websites, to do marketing services and marketing automation things for them as they’re trying to raise more money, and then ultimately service those investors once they’ve gotten their funds. So, someone comes in and invest a bunch of money. They then use our platform to send them everything from performance estimates and statements and documentation around their performance and the strategies of the funds and things like that. It’s a pretty interesting industry.

Eddie Turner:

It sounds interesting, especially when you start to talk about some of the biggest money market or asset management firms that are out there that you mentioned such as BlackRock and others. Is there a sweet spot that you have if someone is interested in reaching out to you for services? Is there a group that might say “Well, maybe we’re not big enough for this company?”

Jeremie Bacon:

Well, what’s interesting about the way that our platforms work is we have a series of service offerings that are uniquely situated and positioned for everything from startup fund managers that might be two or three people in the proverbial garage somewhere working on their trading strategy and starting to raise money. We have product offerings that are capable for them and that are price point perfect, if you will, for that particular side of the market. The majority of our clients are larger managers that have more experience, either five years, seven years, 15 years old as asset managers and have anywhere from a billion to a hundred billion dollars under management on their platforms. And then sort of everybody in between is a good fit for what we do because we’ve been able to break the platform down on a sort of feature-by-feature and service type by service type basis.

Eddie Turner:

And what’s interesting is you are truly on the leading edge and one of the reasons you’re on the INNO list of 50 on Fire is because of your use of technology to supply financial solutions.

Jeremie Bacon:

Yeah, that’s all we do. Every day all day we think about how do we improve the tools that we already have and how do we think about creating deeper integrations between our own tools and other tools in the marketplace that our clients use to help them complete the picture and sort of further streamline their own operations and become even more efficient with how they build and manage their client relationships.

Eddie Turner:

And I think that’s interesting and I think that’s important because we started off our conversation talking about some of the soft skills that are important for leaders but when we look at the business acumen that you’re demonstrating here and what you’re doing leading in this space, what leadership lesson is there that you could share with other leaders who are listening to our conversation?

Jeremie Bacon:

Well, let’s see here. There’s a couple of things, I guess, that come to mind immediately. And they also conveniently, I suppose, relate back to our own values as a business and how we try to position things. One of the things I wish I had known, if you will, or wish I had been told as I was sort of growing and developing as a business person, as an entrepreneur and as a leader is that the most important thing you can do when offering a product or offering a service, whether it’s your first day in the market or your 5000th day in the market, is to develop mutual respect between your customer, your prospect and yourself, your business. Everyone who talks about your company, whether they’re a salesperson or a customer service representative or your CFO or your Head of Product or anybody in the middle, ultimately, is a champion for and a representative of your business. And their first and foremost number one job should always be garnering, gaining, and earning the respect of their prospective or existing customer because respect sort of leads to trust and, in my mind, trust leads to commitment. And to build a team or to build a customer base and build a relationship, you need all three of those things. And, as you know, relationships that aren’t built on deep trust and deep respect don’t last very long. It just is the way it is. And in an industry like ours, we’re focused on owning our relationships with our clients forever. For as long as they’re in business, we want them to be a client and we have a very good track record of retention of our clients. And, in fact, generally speaking, the only reason we lose a client is if they go out of business. And we get there because of that lesson.

Eddie Turner:

That’s really interesting because not a lot of industries can say that you truly want a customer for life.

Jeremie Bacon:

It also means that we’re willing to walk away from customers that we don’t think we’re going to be a great fit. And so, for me, and my sales teams will tell you I harp on this all the time, the most important thing we can do in sales and marketing when we’re qualifying and working at the top of the funnel is qualify that customer and to do that requires real meaningful discovery and diligence. And if you fail to qualify your customer and you fail to prepare to service them, then you’re preparing to fail them as a vendor and they’re preparing to fail you as a customer. It’s like the old Benjamin Franklin quote – “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail” – old Ben is one of my favorite leaders of all time. And I think that that truism, if you will, certainly applies in what we do. It’s far easier to service an existing client than to get a new one. So, when you are getting new one, you owe it to yourself and your clients to pick the right ones.

Eddie Turner:

Absolutely. So, do you have any heroes or people who you look up to in the leadership space as a CEO. Oftentimes, it can be a lonely place.

Jeremie Bacon:

Sure. So, there are lots of entrepreneurs, women and men alike, who are in sort of the modern era that I respect and look up to and follow but, to be honest, I spend more time looking at leaders of the past than I do at leaders of today. And mostly that’s because most of us who are in leadership roles today, we all learned it from somewhere. This is a bit of a sidebar but I’ve been a musician and singer and stuff my whole life and one of my favorite musicians of all time, is Robert Plant, the original lead singer for Led Zeppelin but he has always been famous for saying that we all make it from somewhere. We all learn and we all steal our ideas from others, from those who’ve come before us, whether it’s musical or it’s anything else. So, the person I go back to the most, honestly, is Benjamin Franklin. Although he’s not always thought of as a leader of men and women, he’s thought of as an innovative idea thinker and entrepreneur in his own right, but I think he’s actually often under-looked or underappreciated as a leader. In addition to truisms like “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail” that he’s known for, I think one of the things that I really respect about his approach and one of the quotes I often go back to with my own children is he said “If you tell me, I will forget. If you teach me, I will remember. And if you involve me, I will learn.” And that, to me, has always sort of been powerful. I remember reading it the first time The Art of Virtue.

Eddie Turner:

Yes, one of my favorites.

Jeremie Bacon:

It’s on my desk. I refer to it literally every week. And I read that as a kid and it blew me away and I thought “Wow, that’s really cool. It’s really neat.” And, of course, he nicked it from some Chinese philosophy, the whole “If you teach someone to fish” thing but it’s really neat, right? To me, it’s really cool. So, I like Ben. He’s a good dude.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent.

Jeremie Bacon:

I also like my mom. And so, one other person I think about all the time, particularly as it relates to sort of eccentric leadership is my own mother. She led by example through her whole life and was always focused on service. And, in fact, one day she sat me down when I had just turned 15 and we were talking about how to live a life that you will feel is rich and fulfilling and rewarding and how to get through good times and bad alike and she basically said to me “Look, the most important thing you can do,” from her perspective, “is to fill your heart with love and admiration and go out and serve others. And what’s truly important is how we live, serve, and love others today in the now.” And, as a person, because I tend to be focused on tomorrow and next week and next year because I’m always thinking about the next thing, that has always been really grounding for me to, again, remind me to stay in the now as much as possible, to be present, and to lead in the moment and to lead with the teams that I’m with because I spend a lot of time in the clouds.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. So, Jeremie, tell me, if you will, how would you summarize our conversation today.

Jeremie Bacon:

I guess, I would summarize our conversation by saying that in the world of entrepreneurship and business development and leadership, from my perspective, the most important thing we can do is to keep the customer, keep your teammate, and keep your values at the center. And doing so, ultimately, I found leads to greater success for you as an individual and for your team, as a business group, and ultimately for your client as well.

Eddie Turner:

All right, very good. And on the Keep Leading!® Podcast, we like to give leaders something to help them to keep leading. Do you have a piece of leadership advice? You’ve given several great quotes throughout this interview. Do you have any other quotes or any other advice you’ve received that helps you lead as a leader?

Jeremie Bacon:

Yeah, there’s one other piece that comes to mind all the time and that is it mostly because of the power of the message and the power of the person who delivered it to me but without boring you with all the details, I think the best advice I got as a 17-year-old was from George Bush Senior. I was at the White House and he and I were having a conversation. And during that conversation, he said something to me that also lives in my mind every day all day. And he said “Look, it’s not enough in life to know what your goal is and what you want. You have to understand why you want it and the true why behind that goal or accomplishing it is meaningless.” And that, to me, as a kid going into my senior in high school was mind blowing, to say the least.

Eddie Turner:

Well, I bet. That’s quite an experience to be 17 years old in the White House and be able to talk to an American president. And you may not know this but I’m based here in Houston, Texas. And so, he is truly a legend. And so, yes, George Bush. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that with us.

I just have really enjoyed talking with you. Where can my listeners learn more about you and your organization?

Jeremie Bacon:

Sure. So, ImagineerTechnology.com is how to find our company. And I’m on the internet on LinkedIn.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. So, what we’re going to do is in the show notes we’re going to put links to you and your organization. We want folks to reach out to the Imagineer Technology Group, connect with you on LinkedIn, follow you on Twitter, and get to know you. You and your team are doing some really amazing things.

Jeremie Bacon:

Well, thank you for saying that. We appreciate that. We’re certainly trying real hard.

Eddie Turner:

Well, it’s been a pleasure to have you and we’ll have to catch up and talk again next time I’m in Chicago.

Jeremie Bacon:

Sounds good. I’d love that.

Eddie Turner:

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.