The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 442: Randall Stutman - How To Become An Admired Leader

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Dr. Randall Stutman is a leadership scientist dedicated to exploring the behaviors and routines of extraordinary leaders. Labeled by Goldman Sachs as the most experienced advisor and executive coach on Wall Street, he has served as a Principal Advisor to more than 2,000 Senior Executives, including 400 CEOs. His work as an advisor and speaker has taken him to the White House, West Point, the Olympics, and the Harvard Business School. Randall is the founder and co-head of the Leadership Practice at CRA. and the Admired Leadership Institute. Notes: The three types of leaders: Result Leaders: People who achieve the company's goals Followers Leaders: People who are loved by their subordinates Admired Leaders: People who both achieve results and are loved by subordinates Admired leaders aren't just admired in the workplace, they're admired by friends, family, neighbors, and basically everyone they interact with... "It applies to everything. Leadership is leadership and it applies to every aspect of your life." A great way to spread positively is through third-party praise. Say something nice about someone to another person and eventually, the positive comment will make its way to the individual mentioned. Excellence: Optimistic Persistent Focused Sound judgment Objective Learning machines Best coaching relationships: Created peer-like quality... You learn from each other The best leaders? It's not about them. It's others focused Leaders put other people up front. They lead from the back. Leadership is making people and solutions better. Anyone can lead anytime they choose. How does a 1:1 Leadership Coaching call go? Catch up personally and professionally Discuss critical episodes in the business Walkthrough situations Set agenda Register - Keep notes, send follow-ups Frequency of conversations with clients: Every three weeks Must be: A sounding board A deep listener Offer feedback Highly prescriptive - Need to make you better Admired leaders are: Someone that produces extraordinary results over time. Followership: People feel differently when engaged with them. They will do anything for them. Admired leaders are rare... Excellence in leadership: Show up in a crisis Admit mistakes Walk the talk Who coaches Randall? Feedback from clients Coaching clinics -- Gets together with other coaches 3rd party praise: Don't be "praise stingy" When you see excellence, tell a third party "There's no 'but' in it." What's something Randall has changed his mind about over time? "I initially thought leaders should be objective and fair. Then I studied Admired Leaders. They play favorites based on performance. They reward high performers.: Life/Career advice: Control what you can control Work hard at getting better "The best people bring passion to what they do."

One of the myths of leadership is leaders lead from the front, when in fact, they lead from the back. They make it about other people. And by the way, that's how you become approachable, how you become accessible, how you become open. Because my very definition of leadership is about making people and situations better. That's what leadership is. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being your text.

Learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off. Right. You'll also receive details about my upcoming new book. You'll be the first to know about the title, what it's about, and you'll have an opportunity to get an early look. Text learners to 44222.

Now on to tonight's feature leader, the great Randall Stutman, founder and co-head of the leadership practice at CRA and the admired leadership institute. He's an executive coach who has coached over 2,000 leaders and more than 500 CEOs over the course of his 35-year career. career. Through the topics we discuss the makeup of an admired leader and how you can become one. And then third party praise. What it is, why it's important, and how to make it part of your everyday life. And then he takes us inside one of his one-on-one executive coaching sessions

and you'll hear what he says to his clients and why he does it the way he does. I think you'll find it fascinating. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great one. It's Randall Stuttman. All right, Randall. I'm laughing just because of our pre-recording conversation. No, it's been so good to get to know you, man. Welcome to the Learning Leadership. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So you have coached over 2,000 people, over 500 CEOs. You don't really publicize that, but it's quite a track record. I'm curious about some of your best students. Somebody call them clients, but there are students of yours. And when you think about the ones who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time,

what are some of the qualities that they have in common? Well, they certainly, first of all, they certainly had these qualities way before they met me and engaged me. You know, listen, some of the best leaders I've been around are hugely optimistic people, although they follow a bit of a formula. They're really pessimistic when it comes to task that is achieving things. And they're very focused on details and they're very worried about whether things are going to get done. But they're very rosy in terms of people and they're hugely optimistic about the future and about opportunity. I mean, so optimism just is a feeling.

It's contagious. We talk about emotions being contagious, but I think optimism is probably the most contagious of all emotions, leadership-wise. I mean, these are hugely persistent people, very focused people, very resilient people. I mean, these are all qualities they had away before they talked to me and engaged me. Most of them have really sound judgment. They have an experience and a perspective that enables them to see things very clearly. They're very objective people. They can create distance from themselves.

But, you know, the hard part is to distinguish the good ones from the great ones. And there's not many great ones, but the great ones tend to have some other qualities. that are harder to describe in simple terms. But I would say, you know, the one quality that comes right to mind from some of the great people is they have this tremendous need to be, to improve themselves. I mean, just this tremendous need to learn. They're learning machines and they're always looking to get better. There's a lot of, you know, people that when they reach a certain status, they reach a certain role, they get compensated at a certain level. They lose that desire to take feedback and get better. They kind of feel like they've arrived.

great ones. It's all every every moment in their lives is a beginning. They're always at the beginning of the race. They're never at the end of the race. And you can feel it in almost everything that they do. But, you know, we could talk about that for hours just in terms of the very idea of what it, what it is in terms of the qualities that people bring to the table that make them special. But those are qualities that stand out. I sense that you, a typical client, a typical student for you was somebody who is like an eight or a nine and your jobs to get them to a 10 or more. Yeah. Is that right?

Yeah, I'm definitely in the business of taking people that are very good and making them great. I'm less interested in taking handicapped people and making them less handicapped, for sure. It's much harder and much more tedious. Usually those people, if they have a big flaw like a derailer, they're fairly unaware about it. So it's painful even to make them aware about it.

but yeah that idea of actually making people much better is the fun of of doing what I do and you know it's interesting you you couch this as student I don't think I've ever thought of any of my coaches as students and the reason is I try to create as much peer like quality as I possibly can where it's mutually influential where I'm learning from them they're learning from me where our relationship is one where they they come to a point where and then I feel this, that I would do anything for them and that it's reciprocal, that if I called them, you know, I was halfway to cross country and I needed a big favor that they would do it, that I'm after that. That's not a student relationship. It's not like I'm the master or a mentor. It's more like, hey, there's, you know, you're really good at what you know. I'm really good at what I know. And, you know, I just happen to be in demand for your ability to succeed in this organization. And so I'm happy to share my wisdom or my insight. But it's a pure like quality. So, yeah, it's fascinating because I don't, I don't see a student at all.

Gotcha. Can you take us back to the beginning of you doing what you do now, whatever year that was? I'm most curious about when you talk about the beginnings of things, how you earned credibility, what you've done to do that. Because there are a lot of coaches out there who, you and I have spoken about them privately that, you know, you just wouldn't hire them. and you basically get hired 100% based upon referrals. I don't see you anywhere on social media. I don't see your face, your name,

hardly anywhere, even on the internet, on your about page for your company. There isn't an about us. It's an about you, right, always focused on the people that you help and not focused on yourself. So like you try,

it seems at least, really hard to almost be invisible. and yet you have way, way, way more work than you can even handle. So what was it like at the beginning and how did you like grow to get to this part, this point, I should say. Well, the problem with it speaking about it is it's going to give my age away because I've been doing this a really long time, right? You look great, Randall. Yeah, well, yeah, thanks for much.

Thanks for nothing. You know, back in all the way back in the mid-80s, I was a professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I was doing some process consulting for some of the local firms, Chicago-based firms, but mostly firms in the south of Illinois, craft foods and Beatrice Foods and, you know, Illinois power and a variety of firms like that. And in the process, I started getting asked to work individually one-on-one. Nobody called a coaching back then. It was just an individual, almost tutorial of dealing with key executives.

And that's how it started. And when people started calling it coaching, I was kind of like, I wasn't even sure I liked the term. I always thought of myself more as a principal advisor, which is more the government way of describing counselors in the background. So, you know, and then coaching, executive coaching started to develop in the early 90s. And then it became a mainstay. And then we had federations of certified certifications and all those things, none of which I engaged in. And so you have no certification. You have no coaching certification or anything.

Yeah, my certification is clients. That's it. Yeah, I mean, and again, it's not that I'm against other people's certifications. It's that, you know, at the end of the day, it's what you know and what you can do. And listen, I have a PhD in organizational behavior and leadership communication. And in the process of that, I would tell you that 98% of my clients have no idea. They don't have any idea. I was ever an academic.

They don't have any idea that I have PhD, nor do they care. And the reason they don't care is because it's all about the conversation and the advice and the council and the sounding board that you provide for that. And if it's valuable, then they want it to keep talking to you. And if it's not valuable, they don't. And so you've got to make yourself powerful. So what it means to be powerful, credible in the space that I'm in, it's knowing things about what to do differently in a variety of situations and then offering good advice that turns out to be true. it turns out to be useful. And so that's how you get referred from place to place.

And then it's about keeping your ego in check by keeping yourself in the background. I have been a long time believer that their best leaders stay in the background. It's not about them. Their physical offices are not about them. Their messages are not about them. They are hugely humble people. I probably don't qualify for the humble side of things, but I definitely try to keep my profile as low as possible.

And I advise that to all the leaders. I think profile really gets you in trouble most of the time. I had a leader that we studied a long time ago who said to me, you know, Randall, you're only truly famous when somebody who's crazy thinks they're you. And there's no upside in that. And it's right, because profile makes you target. Makes you target for litigation. It makes you target for peer scrutiny.

It makes you target for peer jealousy. It makes you target for all kinds of things. The only thing that profile gets you is vanity. unless you're selling a book or you want your face on a coin. And vanity is the anathema of what I do for a living. Truly. Now, there's a lot of people that do it the other way that would say to me, and that we interview coaches all the time to hire them,

they'll say to me without profile, how does anyone know who you are? Well, how about good work? How about great relationships? How about you stand for values rather than stand for yourself? So that's just kind of the way I played it. you know, interesting story. I interviewed Sigfried, the old Sigfried and Roy, a tandem that used to play around Vegas with the Tigers and everything else.

And Sigfried was in a session that I was a part of, and I got a chance to interview him. And we were asking him questions. And I said, you've been on stage at that time for like 30 years. I said, what's the most important insight? And he looked at me and he could, I don't know why he decided to tell me the truth. And he said, you know, I've been doing this a long time. He said, you wear the cape.

You don't let the cape wear. you. I thought, how profound is that? And so I made it, after I heard that, I made it a lifelong commitment never to let the cape wear me. And that, what does that mean? What does that mean? The cape, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the basking and reflected glory, which is something that the academics like to talk about. It's the, who do you know and where have you gone and when you start to believe in yourself to that level rather than in your substance, the cape starts to wear you. And in the process of it wearing you, you become, you become vain in a way that is not good for what you do for, you know, for advice and counsel.

What do you think it's become so much more in vogue for the CEOs of companies to grace the covers of magazines, have digital or actual real ones, have these stories written about them, documentaries made about them. It's become like the founder is the king type thing or queen. And I feel like it hasn't always been that way. I mean, Steve Jobs years ago, but now it's like everywhere you look, they're talking about this incredible, magical person that is the founder. CEO of whatever company. What do you think about all that? Well, first of all, if, you know, again, sometimes if you're selling the book or in this

case raising the money, the profile actually helps you. I bet you that if you talk to the majority of those people plus 10 years after they've done those things, most of them regret it. Most of them go, that was just a silly thing that I did, that I put myself out there in a way, not that I've been bothered. It's not just, it's not the intrusion that it bothers me. It's just the idea that I projected myself as something that, first of all, I presume static. Static.

It wasn't static. I'm dynamic. I've changed since then. And now I've cast myself in certain frames as a place in time that it doesn't serve me well. But more importantly, I put myself out there in a way that I wouldn't approve of today. And so if I had my chance to go back and undo it, I would undo it. I can't even tell you, Ryan, how many very, very senior and significant. clients I've had where I've asked them to reduce their profile and they fought me about it.

And then after the fact, they thank me profusely for it because they don't recognize how out of whack they get when their profile gets bigger than it should. Interesting. Was it hard for you early on when maybe you're you're not as mature? Maybe your ego was bigger and you're trying to actually build a real business. How did you how did you stop your? yourself from wanting the bigger profile as you're getting asked to be kind of their one-on-one executive advisor slash coach. And now you're thinking, wait a second, this could be a real business, not beyond just being a college professor. How did you manage that in the early days? Yeah, well, a couple things. First of all, I'm not sure I, you know, some of those managed for me.

One of the biggest first assignments I had required in NDA, so I could never disclose the client. So that helped me a whole lot, to be honest with you. Because I would have soon been known everywhere for working for this, and working with this key individual that was on television and, you know, broadcast all around the world and everything else. And, you know, I was, I was there side by side in the background and so forth. So that helped a bunch. What, what on?

Why did that person hire you? Because they were scared of going about going to jail. They were in front of a congressional testimony and they were, you know, there was a very high profile, one of the most high profile things that ever had. Right. But why do they hire you? It was actually not. them. It was their legal attorney that hired me as a way of helping them manage the questions

that were going to come at them. Gotcha. So that legal attorney somehow knew that you were really good. How did that happen? I actually found me out of the blue out of some of the research that I was doing. Asked me if I ever worked in 101. I said, I had just started to do so and said, what was my fee? And it's just too laughable. And I said, here's my fee. And they said, well, we'll take your three months. What are you talking about? He's every day for three months. It just happened to be during the summer. And so I said, okay, I'll try. And so, you know, lo and behold, I went back to Washington, D.C. and, and, and I started working with this individual and preparing them for their testimony and everything else that was going to be on, you know, national television and broadcast around the

world and so forth. And the good news is I had to sign an NDA. And so, you know, even 20 years later, I wasn't able to disclose that that was me behind the scenes. And, and the truth is, and here's a classic case of profile. I would have been very proud of working with that person initially until who they became later, I probably would have been a lot less proud. And so I'm actually glad I wasn't associated with them 20 years later. But at the time, it would have put me on the map and would have created all kinds of stuff. And so that helped me a bunch. But the real answer to your question is I have this deep commitment to the value of leadership. And leaders don't, you know, the one of the myths of leadership is leaders lead from the front when in fact they lead from

the back. They put other people up front. They make it about other people. And by the way, that's how you become approachable, how you become accessible, how you become open. You know, all the great things that happen in leadership are not about you being out in front. We have all these media portrayals about, you know, military leaders and political leaders and others that, that are not, they're not wrong, but they're bad examples for most leadership. Because, you know, when Bob Dylan said when you're on the top, you're really on the bottom, he was dead right. You really need to be on the bottom. And I don't mean you have to go all the way to servant leadership, although I agree with a lot of things about servant leadership, about being a resource for other people, about facilitating other people's goals.

Because my very definition of leadership is about making people and situations better. That's what leadership is. when you when anyone makes a person or or a situation better through their actions, decisions, choices, messages, behaviors, they're leading, which means anyone can lead anytime they so choose or at least attempt to. And so I've always believed deeply in that idea. And that's why I said, guess what? If I'm going to do this and I'm going to coach other people to be better in this,

this leadership thing, then I definitely have to live the example. And if I don't, then I'm a fraud. And it's hard enough to do. deal with, you know, thinking you're a charlatan most of the time to begin with, you know, everybody has that fear to a certain degree. And I certainly did early on when I was like 32 years old and, you know, coaching people that were 30 years my senior. But, but nonetheless, it was that commitment to, right, leadership is not about me. This is not about me. I don't have to be in the forefront. And in that way, I learned later, a lot similar to how how lawyers and legal teams

operate. Very few people would tell you who the legal team is of most. most significant litigation or trials and like, with some exceptions, they're always in the background. You couldn't tell me who 3M or Goldman Sachs or GE's lawyers are right now. You couldn't name them. Why should you be able to name their advisors and coaches? They're supposed to be in the background, not in the foreground. What about, let's say it's a, I've gone to a lot of national sales meetings in my day. We grew up working in sales now.

I get to speak at them. And it's, I found it helpful when the CEO can share the vision and do it in a compelling way. And in a way, that's kind of them leading from the front, isn't it? I mean, it's sharing part of their vision, their beliefs, here's where we're going. Here's, here's what, here's how your involvement's going to help us get there. Right. That, that feels like leading from the front to me. Yeah, it would be leading more from the front if that vision was about them.

That's what I mean. I don't mean that they don't have to assert or they don't have to put forth, you know, good targets or visions. I mean, values that the organization should live by under their leadership. To me, is that about them? Is it is it prideful? Is it something where they have to project that this is about who they are? Or is this about the firm? Is this about the team?

Right. I mean, just think about, you know, we've studied so many great athletic coaches. and the best ones, right, after a loss, will take every part of the responsibility for that. They'll say, you know, I didn't do this and I didn't do that. And after a win, they give every attribution to the team. That's what it means from leading from behind. It doesn't mean that during that game they weren't directing the action.

Doesn't mean they didn't create the plays. Doesn't mean that they didn't motivate at halftime, right? That, you know, in that sense, what I mean by leading from behind is it's not about you. It has less to do with you're projecting about who you are and what you are and more about the people that you lead. And that's what I mean by leading from behind. Is there a way you could take us inside what a one-on-one session is like with you? Like, what do they sound like? I'm sure they're all different based on the client and everyone's different. And I sense that listening is one of the skills you've really developed to be good at your

job. But what's it like to be inside a one-on-one coaching session with Randall Stutman? that's good question since I've never been inside one. I've only been part of one, right? But, but listen, it follows a common structure. So maybe that's a, you know, is the answer to the question. Yeah. I normally, when I, when I hook up and connect with people that I've been coaching, first thing we do is catch up. And so just like any other relationship, we're catching up both personally and professionally, like what's new? And then I get a little bit more specific in terms of critical conversations, critical episodes, things that have happened in the business. things that have happened with their leader,

things that have happened relationally, somewhere in their aspects or in their lives. And then at that point, usually most of the people I work with have been trained by me, coached by me, to save up situations. So what are some situations you want to walk through with me?

Because I'm a sounding board more than I am, a source of advice. And so, right, have you saved up? And some of those are past, things that have happened in the past, and some of those are things that are maybe coming up. And then based on, on my understanding of them through a variety of means, I then have my agenda, things that I want to get

into, things that I would like them to do differently, some recommendations, maybe something to read, maybe something to listen to, but more importantly, things to work on. And then by then we're out of time. You know, the best part of the coaching conversations that I have is they always run out of time. They're always like, you go, crap, time's up, right? I got to move to my next meeting, same as you. And so I rarely have a time most overwhelmingly my conversations end too fast. And we have so much more to talk about. And then what I do is I have a little bit of a register where I, you know, I keep notes for everything. So I know exactly what we covered. And then right then I decide what are the things I want to cover next time. I may not cover them, but what, what are the topics? What are

the issues in the next conversation? I want to decide there right down. And then if I learned something I should follow up on. Like, you know, your son just is, you know, you're moving your son or your daughter into college, you know, two weeks from now. And we're not going to talk for three weeks. I mean, I want to be able to send you a text or, you know, how did that go? How's it going? Like, you know, what's it like? I mean, and so I have those little notes for myself so that I can build a relationship and that I can stay curious about what they're up to and who they are. And then what happens to like anything else, some of those relationships really bond. They really, they really cement and others of them less so.

And the ones that bond, some of them, I keep them for years, decades. And other ones, you know, after a period of six, nine months a year, two years, they're done, right? Just like any other relationship that you would have. It's the cadence. How often do you guys talk?

I try to talk on a three week basis. Every three weeks. The truth is, most of the leaders at the level that I operate at, they're too busy to talk faster than that. Now, we'll spend 90 minutes to two hours together, virtually or face-to-face. used to be face to face.

You know, prior to March 20 to 2020, I had never been virtual in my life. So not a coaching session. I've been on WebEx, of course, and things, but never coaching. And now, you know, it's primarily virtual. And then I'll normally have a touch, touch points, two or three touch points between those conversations where I'm seeking how something went or I'm following up on one of those curious ideas or something of that nature. Occasionally, I'll, you know, make sure that they highlight they don't miss something

that I've just read or seen the news or whatever else or asked their opinion about things. But it's usually a three week case. So you basically play the role of being a listener, a sounding board, offer wisdom from time to time. But for the most part, you're a trusted confidant for them to talk to. Yeah, I think in the sounding board side of things and in the feedback side of things, those are two aspects of coaching that I share with almost all of their coaches, regardless of perspective. I mean, it's rare to find a coach that isn't a sounding board, that isn't a deep listener,

that doesn't reflect back and clarify and validate other people. And it's hard to find a coach that doesn't think part of their role is to offer some level of feedback, either through observation or through some data. Some of them are a little too data conscious for my taste. But nonetheless, they're offering feedback. But the third piece is I am highly prescriptive. I've seen lots of things and I've studied leaders at length. We have a deep catalog of what we can.

consider to be behaviors of excellence. And so I want people to be as good as they can be. And the only way I'm going to get them there is to actually say, do this, do this differently. And so I'm very prescriptive. And most coaches don't do that because, A, they don't know what to say. And then B, it makes them uncomfortable because they think their role is to process or to simply be a clarifying force for people. And while I think that's important, it's not my primary role. I need to make you better. If you come to a tennis instructor and you want to improve your backhand, you don't want them just to listen to you deeply, right? You don't want them just as a sounding more.

You want them to say, here's what you need to do to be better at your back. And so I've spent an enormous amount of time generating both advice as well as prescriptive value as to what do you do to get better. And so that's part of it for sure. What are some examples of things you would say, do this? Like what are some of the prescriptions you give? And you could be as general or as specific as you want. But obviously you're not going to name names. are some things you'd say, for example, that may be a problem someone's dealing with, that you are

prescribing them to do X? Well, well, I mean, it just as a simple example. I mean, sometimes you tell people that they have to shut up. So, for example, you know, what's very common that leaders don't understand is that their status raises in an organization, they become leader, that their opinion actually stifles conversation. So when their opinion gets on the table too quickly, when their opinion is the first thing out there when their viewpoint is expressed, even if it's just through facial expressions, it's cognitively efficient and certainly organizationally efficient just to get on that train track. So even the people that are, you know, that are not psychophants at all, that, you know, that are not vested in terms of just agreeing with that leader, wills go,

this, no sense of arguing. We already know where this train's at it. Let's get on the track. So a lot of leaders just need to be told to shut up. Like, you need to listen before you say what you say, like, I don't need you to be last as an example, but if I observe that they're always out there and they're saying, you know, my team never really talks up. And I'm like, well, I can tell you why, because you talk first. And, and, you know, it's such a simple prescription as an example. I'm just giving you an example. But I mean, it's a very common thing for me to say is to say, I can tell you exactly why your team isn't take risks or your team doesn't talk up or your team doesn't do X because it's about you. And so we need to, we need to figure that out. In many cases,

it's telling them, you know, to be, to be quiet for a while and let the conversation unfold before they offer their esteemed view or their convicted opinion. And that's a really simple one. But we have a catalog of, you know, I have like almost 500 very universal timeless behaviors that can make anyone better in every aspect of leadership. And then there's literally hundreds of concepts and constructs and pieces of advice that, you know, are useful to people, frames of reference and like. And so it can go anywhere when you're offering prescriptive advice to say, have you thought about this? Maybe you should do that.

But when we get to a thing that we call admired leadership, where we're looking at those timeless behaviors and like, then it gets really precise. And then, but we're using that to say, here's something you should do all the time, not just in this situation. It'll work in the situation too, but I want you to do this all the time.

And anytime you confront this, I want you to do it in all your relationships. I want you to do with your family. I want you to do with your friends. I want you to do with your team. I want you to do with your leader. and then once I get to engage them in that kind of a behavior, then I can make them, then I know I'm making them better holistically, which is where they need to go.

What does it mean to be an admired leader? So admired leadership for me, right, and the way that we kind of think about it is, it's someone that actually produces extraordinary results over time, independent of things like the market cycles and the talent that they've inherited, the strategy that they have to deal with. things like that they're simply able to produce outcomes. And by the way, you don't have to be client-facing or revenue-facing. Everybody has outcomes and metrics so we can measure whether you're productive or not. And you're best-to-class. You're best-class in your organization. You're probably

best-class in your industry. So extraordinary results leaders. They're really rare, by the way. There's lots of really good results leaders, but extraordinary results, like over decades of time, they're really rare, especially if they can do it in up and down markets. Then on the other side, though, What we learned a long time ago is that a lot of results leaders get there in really bad ways. They get there by stepping on people. They get there disrespectfully. They get there by barking and screaming and so forth. So we all know that leadership also includes followership.

So the most admired leaders are also great, you know, followership leaders. Now, by followership, I mean, you know, people feel differently when they're engaged with them. They feel as if that person is entirely vested in their success. they feel connected to that person, deep relational connection, they feel a loyalty that they hope is reciprocated, and they'll do anything for that person. And that's about how that leader creates that relationship and that context. And so extraordinary followership, equally rare in organizations,

very, very uncommon to have people that are constituents that would follow you anywhere, large groups of them. And so what I'm looking for admired is people that actually have both, tabs, both qualities, that they both are results-based as well as followership-based in extraordinary ways. And that that means that in most organizations, they don't exist, like maybe one, maybe two, at most. And when we're talking about, you know, 60-70,000 leaders, you probably don't find any, maybe you find one. Now, lots of results-based leaders, lots of followership leaders. By that, I mean, lots, still very rare, five, six, seven, maybe a dozen in the large organization of each

side, but the ones that actually have both sides. Really rare. I call them admired leaders because the first two I ever found and I wasn't looking for it, the people around them use that word. They'd say, I admire them for this. I admire them for that. And so I went, wow, these are admired leaders. And then, you know, I thought, bingo. Okay. And I didn't realize at that point that that was not a label I should put on other people because that puts a big target on their back. But that's a different issue for another conversation. So obviously somebody's listening and saying, Randall, I'm current. currently a VP of strategy at Fortune 50 company X. I want to be an admired leader. Me too.

What are some of the keys or the things I could work on right now to one day hopefully be known as an admired leader? So first of all, I think the idea is, how do I say this, the evaluations you have to leave to other people. There is no way to become admired on purpose, per se. In other words, there are things you can do that are going to create better results and more followership. And there's things that you can do to enhance your credibility and display character and display competence. There are things you can do to be better at how you give feedback to people,

how you build teams and the like. But the evaluations, you have to leave to other people, because you don't control it. So it's like any other sport or competition or engagement, you control what you can control. And I can tell you this, you never control whether somebody's going to respect you or put an admired word on, you know, label on you, right? So I think the pursuit of the idea of the label is probably wrong. I think the idea of wanting to be more credible and more admired all the time by the way that you behave, by engaging in kind of a destiny of, I'm going to engage the world in the way that I would admire somebody and hopefully be admired at some point. That's great. But it's more the journey in the process than it is the outcome.

And what I would say is, you know, that's what we've spent and what I've spent, and that's what makes our firm and me special. If it's anything, we're not smarter than anybody else. And we're maybe a little more experience than some, but maybe not others. But what we know is really cool. And that is we've been able to say this. So excellence in just about everything in life. Excellence in being a great dentist and bringing a great dancer and being a great golfer and being a great speaker and being a great actor or actor. or actress, right? Every single one of those things when we think of great and that people achieve

mastery and excellence. It all has routines associated with it. There are routines that are shared in common with people of excellence in those arenas. Why wouldn't we think that leaders, great leaders, also share routines and behaviors of excellence? Well, they do. And the majority of the ones that you know are things you learn in third grade. They show up in a crisis. They admit their mistakes, they show themselves to be human, they keep their promises, they walk the talk, right? All good, by the way, good reminders and important things. But how about if I told you that we have found 500 routines that you've never heard of before? All which are very common to the most admired leaders in the world. Some of these people have never met each other, actually none of them

have met each other. They come with different generations, different nationalities, different industries, and yet they all do the same things. How come? Because they're just like every other person of excellence. They've figured out, not in every single aspect, but they've figured out how to engage in certain routines. What we've done is collect those routines and teach them to other people. And that's what's what admired leadership really is as a as a catalog of behaviors for us. And that's what that's why I get up every day and, you know, do this stuff. Well, what are a few of those routines? Yeah, wouldn't you like to know. Of course. That's why we're here. Yeah. So I'm so, So, you know, like, you know, we, you know, we leave them for our digital course and things of that nature.

And I'm not trying to be coy, whatever else. But, you know, you and I were talking a little earlier why I don't write books and things. And there's no advantage for me just to put them out into the world so other people can take them and do what they want with them and so forth. And we worked really hard to generate these things. And we want to kind of own the attribution and the like. But, but there are some that are worth talking to. I've given a few away in terms of other podcasts and the like. But let's talk about, you know, some routines that maybe are not so foundational, give you an example, right? Yeah, I was going to say, like, you know, you're going to have to give something. We're not going to, we're not going to go. Right. So this is not something that we would, you know,

it's in our, our digital course. But, but nonetheless, really important routines, they're just not as universal that is not as applicable as others, right? Not as foundation. So, so take the idea of people that engage in high quality performance. High quality performance, whether it be athleticism, you know, some sport, call it, you know, golf, which is a sport that I, you know, really have affinity for or, you know, an intellectual performance like chess or or a less of a game more like just running a meeting, right, you know, facilitating a meeting. Okay. What you're going to find is the people that are at the highest performers, the people that actually create excellence, when do they practice? See, because most of us practice and then perform. And then occasionally

some of us practice and then perform and then we practice the things that went wrong. But when you actually study the best performers, people of real excellence, both in leadership and elsewhere. What you find is actually, they actually practiced right immediately after performance what they did the best. So go, go study somebody like Jack Nichols or Tiger Woods, right, or somebody that has excelled at golf. But let's just say, let's just take the area of putting. They had a, they went in and they had a wonderful round and they put it really well. You know what those best performers do? They immediately go to the practice putting green. And they, practice putt it because they want to imprint what they just did at the highest level they

possibly could. And it's not just athletics because that's the easiest one to describe. But, I mean, there's a simple routine, right? Again, it's not in our main catalog because it's not something that most of us do all the time every day that I would teach you to say, this is what you need to get better at leadership. But it kind of summarizes or kind of collects the view that I have, which is here's something that's not intuitive, that once I say it out loud, makes perfect sense. And now that I've said it, you'll start watching some of the best performers in any aspect of anything, and you'll start seeing them do it. And you'll go, why hasn't anyone ever told me that before? And why is that such a hidden routine? Well, all the best routines are not

well-known or very old articulated because most people who do them don't know how to articulate them, don't even in many cases know that they do them. But there's a simple one. Now, let me give you a different one altogether, also not on our catalog. But I think it's pretty cool, right? But it's, again, not one that you'd use every single day. But like, like we go into different cultures, you know, if you're like me, you know, you talk fast and you're fairly direct in the way that you say things, right? That's going to be off-putting in some places, right? Maybe you have a style where you're, you're more quiet, you like to sit back and watch people before you say things. Whatever you think might be offensive or might be off-putting, when you study people that are really good at relationships,

what you find is they pre-apologize. They basically say, hey, listen, I'm going to apologize right now because I'm going to be more direct than you that you're used to, and I might even be offensive, and that's not my intention. I'm going to apologize right now for my actions.

And what you're going to find is people go, and they don't nearly find what you just do as offensive. Really? You already apologize for it. Absolutely. Happens in every culture I've ever seen. And when I coach leaders that go into different cultures, they go, that's amazing.

All I do is pre-apologize about my style and my style. People say afterwards, didn't bother me nearly as much. Pre-apology is one of those universal, timeless things that people do really well that are of great at relationships. You can pre-apologize about just about anything you want that you think is going to be offensive or that's going to bother someone. When I think about the first one there, the second one's definitely surprised to me. They're pre-apologizing, but it's definitely something to ponder. The first one with practice alone, I found when working with leaders, the difference between the good and great ones are the great ones realized they have to put time on their calendar

to practice for big moments. And the other ones say, you don't understand. I don't have time. Not even before or after. It's just like, I don't have time for that. And I would say, what do you mean to have time? Like, this is your job. Like, it's one of the most important things you're about to do.

You're about to address a thousand people. and you don't have time to practice. You don't have time to have an after-action review where maybe now in your case, you're going to practice what you did well and get coaching, get feedback immediately in the moment. I mean, when you play sports, which is my background, you have immediate feedback after every play,

and then after practice, you watch the film and get feedback again. And then you could go work on it if you need to, and you're constantly getting feedback. I think that's why it's helped me, and I crave coaching because of, I've just always had it leading up to the professional world. So I think that just the thought of practice alone is also a routine and a commonality among the ones who are making it happen over time versus the ones who say, Randall, I don't have time for that, man.

You don't understand my calendar back to back to back to back to back, man. I can't do that. Right. Well, and first of all, I agree 100% with what you just said. And you're probably spot on in the sense of it's a distinguishing feature between people that are decent and have the talents, but that don't excel. But you really just distinguish the difference between a principle and a behavior. So when I tell people about behaviors, they automatically have principles in their minds.

They say, yeah, I've heard those before. No, you haven't. So what you just described as a principle, a guiding action of behaviors, you should set aside time to practice after performance, before performance, but you need to set aside time. That's not a specific action. But the idea that I immediately practice after every single performance that I do, with the thing that went best so I can imprint, that's an actual action and routine.

That's what turns it into a behavior slash routine that's a little different. By the way, we need principles and we need behaviors. But I can't even tell you how many leaders that I talk to that desperately, and people, parents, spouses, friends, right, who just want to be better, but they don't know how. And what I've learned is principles can take you so far, but you need behaviors to actually make you better. And so I love principles. There's lots of great ones running around, some which are less obvious. They're equally universal, by the way, if they're any good.

You know, Stephen Covey was great at producing and talking about key principles. But I'm in a different game. I play in the game and run around in the world of behavior, which I think are the more tactical tools that really create greatness. And so really what you just said and what I just talked about, go hand in hand. You have to commit to the time first before you can actually engage in the behavior. You've got to have the principle in your head to say, I want to practice. Practice is the difference.

Now the question is how do you practice? And this is one particular behavior around practice that would make you a lot better. So I think what you just said is spot on. Who coaches you? Like how do you work on yourself to continue to get better as a coach? So a couple of different ways. Number one is, you know, I get feedback like everybody else. I run an organization about 100 people or so.

and in the process of that, I get myself reviewed every year. It's not always fun because a lot of people lack perspective, but nonetheless, I get all the feedback about the things that I could be better at and be differently and the like. And so that happens for me. I get lots of feedback almost all the time from my clients based on the responses I get from who's responding and who I'm getting rejected by, who's engaged in and using my advice and so forth and so on. And then lastly, we do coaching clinics in our firm where we get together with all the other coaches. and we talk through situations and then we give each other feedback in terms of why that

might not be the best approach to that situation or that particular piece. And then lastly, I have a particular former colleague of mine who used to work with me who we do it for each other where we critique each other all the time around, you know, both stylistically as well as the content and advice and how we carry certain messages and so forth. So all those things together, that's how I get better, but, you know, it's not enough. I never get too much of it. I know you mentioned that the wrong word was used when I said students. And the more I thought about it.

Like, yeah, it makes sense. Because I think about the people I've worked with one-on-one, I would say part of the reason why I think I've improved is because I learned so much from them. Because they're out there in the world doing excellent work. These are the eights and nines who want to be tens, right? They're doing excellent work. And when I'm hearing what they're doing and what they're going through, I'm like, oh my goodness.

And I think the act of doing it, because one of the best ways to learn is to be a teacher, is to put yourself in the mode of being a teacher, as you would know better than anybody. And so you're regularly teaching and sharing feedback and offering advice and giving prescriptions, but then you're also hearing how they're handling real life situations. And then you can use that moving forward, maybe for other clients. I would imagine you've probably learned a ton from the high-level leaders you work with. and then you're using that moving forward for other people you're working with. Exactly right.

You know, here's a common conversation I have. I'll deal with a CEO level coach that I, or coaching that I haven't dealt with before. And they'll be a little skeptical. Maybe I've been imposed upon them by a board or where I've been referred to them and they're just curious and I'll like. And I'll say, you know, how long you've been doing this? And I'll say, well, I've been the CEO for five, six years.

And, you know, I'll say, how many times you've been the CEO? Like I'll be, you know, say, this is my second CEO role. And I'll say, so you have an N of two, right? you have an experience of two and right and you at times five years how about if i told you that i've you know i have an end of 5 000 right you know which is probably how many people i've i've engaged over over my career and then maybe many more than that in terms of study and then how about if whatever situation you have i've seen it 26 27 28 times would you want any of the insight any of the sounding board like why do you want to play this video game and get killed over and over again

when i can take you right to door 17 right like wouldn't that make sense and you know you're definitely into saving time and being efficient. Like, let's get right to it. And is, you know, is that not a valuable resource to you? If I can show you like what everybody else does, the things that don't work, the things that might work, the things that you definitely shouldn't do and the like. And most rational people will go, of course, now prove it, let's talk. And that's, you know, it starts the conversation.

And then if I'm any good, and hopefully most days I'm good, then that conversation goes, wow, I never knew anybody knew that much about what they do as much as much as I'm, I know about what I do. So now I have a resource, a valuable resource that I can't let go. And that's what coaching is all about. One of the other things I've heard and I've read about you is that you're a big believer in third party praise. And this can help build.

You mentioned earlier about optimism and cultures of positivity. This is something I would teach. As a dad, I try to say we need to spread positive gossip about our friends. So speaking, what's that? I like that. So speaking posibly, yeah, speaking positively behind the backs of others when they're not around and just to create that habit, that behavior, that routine as a person. And if you're known as a person who is always thinking about a great thing to say about somebody,

I mean, to their face too, for sure, give them an honest compliment, but also when they're not around as opposed to the standard gossip, which is usually something bad. And I love to hear you talk more about third party praise and doing this and creating a culture at work and how leaders can lead the way with third party praise and spreading positive gossip. Yeah. So I love your expression of it. So here's what we know. Not my research, not my data, but most leaders that excel in results generally are praise stingy.

That is, they're praise stingy. They don't offer as other people would like them to, right? So if they get a knock, even though they get all these tremendous results from people and teams and all like, hugely efficient, productive people, it's that they're not as, they don't offer as much praise. Now, why would that be? And one of the reasons, of course, is that they're very task oriented. People that are generally results oriented are very task oriented. And they have very high standards and to those tasks.

And they have, they're very detailed oriented. So when they say excellent, they mean excellent. They don't mean sort of excellent. And they withhold certain judgments because they have a higher bar than most other people, which makes them praise stinge. As a result, what happens is those teams and those people around them don't feel as recognized. You know, it becomes more parental in the way that their leadership happens because people are waiting for their simple acknowledgments and approvals and the way.

And it's not the most functional thing. So you could try to teach somebody with high standards that's a result and task oriented to be more praiseworthy and more praise oriented. But I tell you that that's a really hard thing to do. But what I can get them to do, which is what almost all the admired leaders we've studied do, is engage in third party complement, third party praise. Now, what does that mean? It means that when they see excellence any place, they tell a third party. Again, I don't want them not to tell the person themselves. As much as they possibly can, I want them to be praised direct. But it's easy to tell a third party. So the question that I have for anybody listening is,

when's the last time you complimented your kids, right, to one of their friends without your kids present? Or your spouse without your spouse present. Or maybe you compliment it one of your team members or one of your peers or maybe your leader to one of your leader's peers without them being present. That's third party praise. And there's some real advantage of third party praise. It's not just about making people look good in the eyes of other people. That's actually a minor piece. The major piece is this.

First of all, the conversation that praise has no but in it. In other words, there's no doubt. So when I say to you, you know, Ryan, I loved your presentation. But slide 16 was kind of weird, right? There's always a butt because there's always a way. I'm like, I'm your leader. I'm somebody that's supposed to offer feedback. I can make you better.

So there's always a butt. But third party praise has no butt. I don't get into any of the butts to the third party. So that's pretty key. But the second piece is it's like a time release vitamin's going to get shared, right? It's going to come back to that person. at some point over the course of the next two days, five days, two weeks, five weeks, whatever it might be. And this time release vitamin is going to happen at the, you know, really interesting time.

But here's the real kicker. The idea when I offer you praise directly is there's always a little suspicious of what's your real thought. What's your, what's the real candor here? I mean, I know you think you must have thought that was pretty good because you offer me praise you're not normally doing that. But like maybe you didn't give me all the butts or maybe it's not, maybe not the, you know, the full skinny here. But here's the deal. When you tell a third party and they come back and tell me, I almost all you see that praise is more sincere. Because if you didn't believe it, would you tell a third party? Never. Okay. And so the sincerity of that praise has a bigger impact on me than anything else. I know it's true. And so, yeah, you made me look good. Yeah, yeah, it really is interesting how it gets shared with me. But what the real value is that the sincerity of that praise matters more deeply to the person hearing it through that third party. because it came through that third party.

When you study the best leaders, the most admired leaders in the world, they're addicted to third party price. They do it all. It's like a hot potato. They see excellence. They see anything good. Yeah, they're a little praise dingy now. Again, occasionally they'll share it directly with people, but they always tell a third party.

They make it a rule of their relationships to always tell a third party. And it's amazing what that does for the morale of a team, for the feeling of recognition, what it does with kids, what it does with a spouse, what it does with friends. people bask, right, in the sunshine of your praise when it happens third party. They're so pleased and proud that you're sincerely believe something that you would be willing to share it with somebody else about their performance or about something who they are, what they did. It's tremendously powerful. And so, and it's one of the behaviors that we put in the catalog and that we describe in detail. It actually is associated with some other things, but that, you know, that we could talk about later.

But it's such a powerful behavior. and it's one of those things I teach you all the time. And it's something you could start doing right now. If you stop and analyze your behaviors, your actions, this is an immediate thing. You could start to implement, take notes however you need to get the next time you talk. Send a text message to it. I mean, however you have to do it, this is something and it will become part of your routine. And you won't even have to think about it.

I try really hard to do this whenever I'm talking with somebody and somehow a topic gets brought up or even the person of thinking about. of thinking about what they do really well or if it's a specific action, oh, who do I know does that well and say it and share it with the person. So that just becomes your default mode to think of positive things that other people do and say it and get it out. And that just becomes routine. And it's a good feeling too. Like it feels really good to do that. Like I like the feeling. And it's always like a smile moment with the other person you're talking to as well. And it helps I think it can be contagious as well. That's another big part of leadership.

Absolutely. You know, it's interesting about what you just said, though, is, and that's one of the reasons that pre-apology and immediately performing after, or practicing after performance, what you did well, they're not, they're universal and timeless, but they're actionable, but they're not things you would do every single day all day long, whereas like third-party praise and all the other admired leadership behaviors that we catalog and put in our digital course, those are all those things I want you to. do all the time. But you raised a really interesting issue because you said it makes you feel good about yourself and it's easy to do. You can start doing it tomorrow. But anytime you start something new, it's not typical for you. It's going to be a little inauthentic. It's not something you have consistency around because authenticity isn't what you do the most often. You just started doing third-party praise because you heard about it here. Makes sense to you. And so initially you've got to convince people that you're going to stay with it, which is the difference between the idea of technique versus

routine. See, because when you do things as a technique, right? So somebody just heard you, Ryan, say, you know, wow, Ryan feels really cool about himself when he does third party compliments. So therefore, I think I'll try it. And then they do it for effect, right? They do it to have an effect, which means they do it once or twice in a particular environment to have a particular outcome. And they don't do it consistently. Don't create mastery around it. They aren't become skillful at it. They haven't committed to themselves. It's not the kind of person or leader they want to be to be a third party praiser. So they do it as technique.

And what happens is, number one, it doesn't have the effect that it should because it's just a one-off. Number two, the other person on the other side goes, do you just go to a workshop, listen to a podcast or something? Like, this is not who you are. Like, I've never seen you do that before.

And so they'll actually give you an anti-reward, you know, they'll punish you for it to a degree by being skeptical of your authenticity. And then third, you don't become masterful at us. You go, oh, that technique doesn't work. And then you throw it away, right? The key is to be committed to say, listen, third party praise, third party compliments, that's something that I really like.

I like the idea of it. I like who I am when I do it. I'm going to commit myself to it and I'm going to do it because it's who I want to be, not because I want to have some outcome or some effect by it. I'm going to do it because that's the leader I choose to be. That's the father or mother I choose to be. That's the friend I choose to be. It's the spouse I choose to be.

And now when I commit to it, I'll try to do it every single day. as many relationships and episodes that I can. And now I get skillful at it. I have different ways of expressing it. Now I start becoming authentic about it because it's consistently what I do. And then the world changes. So the big piece of advice, anybody listening to this is stop doing things as techniques. Techniques are not your friend. They actually will fail you. Start committing to things and creating routines and habits out of them because you believe in them. And you'll find that the world changes. Over the years, I would imagine there were times where you thought one thing.

And then as you gathered more intelligence from reading and working with clients who've done well, your mind has changed. I sense you're that type of guy. You're curious. You're thoughtful. You listen. So I would imagine things have evolved. What are like one or two examples of something where you've changed?

Your mind has been changed over the course of years of studying leadership, of studying excellence, that you've really thought, hmm, I had to rethink this and change my mind about it. I think, gosh, there's so many examples of things where I thought I had it right and I had it dead wrong. And then things where there were just a little bit of a twist where I had it mostly right, but that mostly right wasn't good enough. But let me give you one when it comes right to mind. I've always believed that the leaders should be objective and be really fair.

So the idea of fairness, the idea of creating, you know, an equitable relationship with people so that you treat people very similarly because that's what leaders do. And I was deeply committed to that kind of idea of fairness for leaders until I really started studying admired leaders. And when I realized they play favorites like crazy. Really? Like crazy, right? They're always playing favorites. Now, let me explain that, though. They play favorites on one particular standard.

They play favorites based on performance. You want more time and attention, more responsibility, more information, more specialness from the best leaders. You need to perform. They don't play favorites based on relational comfort. They don't play favorites on the base of history, which most of us do social history. They don't play favorites based on affinity and similarity, which is very common for leaders. They eschew all of that. But what they do is they basically, you know, sometimes intentionally, sometimes,

just intuitively, they spend more time, more energy, they engage more, you know, enthusiastically with people that perform. And what happens? Everybody says and gets the right message. And that is, you want more of that leader's time and attention, you perform. And it rises the performance, raises the performance of, you know, rising ties lift all boats. It raises the performance of everyone on the team. And so I've come to go from one spot where I believe that leaders were supposed to not play favorites to be fair. And now I believe just the opposite. I teach leaders all the time. You need to be, you know, rewarding the high performers in a way that you don't reward anyone else. By the way, intuitively, we know this because we recognize this. Many times when you go into a situation,

you study leaders on a team, you'll find that they spend most of their time with the weakest performers because they're the squeaky wheels. And they actually send the opposite message that if you really want my time and attention, all you have to do is mess up. You really need to stink. And the more you stink, the more time and attention you'll have. And the high performers hate that. High performers go, let me get this straight, right? I'm the best performer on the team, and you don't give me any specialness. But this person over here probably isn't even going to be on the team in six months. And you're spending all your time and energy with that. Something is wrong here. And they would be right. Something is wrong there. And so I totally went the opposite way now.

I now believe that we should all be playing favorites based on performance. And performance, I don't mean in general form, right? Whoever on your team and whoever in your life is doing things really well, reward them with your time and your attention and your interest and your responsibility and your information and make sure that they understand that that favoritism, if such a word would be applied here, is because of their excellence and not the other way around, not because of some affinity or some comfort that you have. So there's an example of something. Yeah. That's a really, That's a really interesting one, Randall. You know what I've noticed as I was thinking about this during your answer?

When I was leading a sales organization, the really good ones, they wanted to be left alone. The excellent ones craved coaching. They wanted it. And these are the ones at the top of the sack rankings. That's how a lot of sales organizations work. They post those stack rankings every day. Here's how you're doing. So I'm saying the really good ones are like, hey, leave me alone.

Leave me alone. Let me go. the great, the excellent, the best of the best, give me all you got. I want all the coaching that's out there because I know I'm doing well, but I know I can do better. And I want feedback. I want to improve. And that's, I think, the difference between the really good and the excellent is the excellent ones are the ones who are calling you. They're already doing really well, right?

They just want to keep doing better. And they know it's possible because nobody's a finished product. nobody's is at their absolute peak productivity or performance. They know they can get better. And that's what the excellent ones do. And I think that's something to think about, especially if you're leading a team that the excellent, excellent ones,

they crave feedback. They want coaching. That's our job as leaders to help give that to them, not say, oh, they're fine. We'll let them be. Let me go work over here with the ones that are struggling. No, I like that you've, that you've,

I guess, changed your mind on that over the years. Yeah, amen to everything you just said. By the way, those top performers can go anywhere. For sure. For sure. For sure. You're stuck with, right? Until you do something with or you make them a whole lot better.

Right. They can't go anywhere, right? And not only that, your expertise, the things that you know, you're the only person as the leader of that group that can make the top performers a little bit better. Almost anybody can make the bottom performers a little better. Why are you spending all your time there? Yeah. Why are you rewarding them with all your, all your information, responsibility and affection, right? Which is how everybody else sees it.

So, yeah, there's an example. I give you other. ones where I really flipped, but that would be one that comes right to mind. Well, I got one more question, right? I don't know we got to run, but one more question. It's been really cool talk to you. For the person earlier in their career, they're not 100% sure what they want to do, but they do want to leave a dent in the world, right? They want to have a positive impact on people and do well. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? So you mean just, I mean, the most broad,

general career advice? Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, you know, I already covered this a little bit, but, you know, you've got to control what you control. You can't, you can't, you don't determine other people's evaluations of you, but one of the things you're definitely in control with is, is how hard you work at getting better, how much hustle that you engage in, how willing you are to take feedback and you actually seek it out. Those are things that I think are rare qualities for people. They almost always distinguish. There's a reason that we applaud those kinds of people that run the bases, even when they know they're out.

There's something about the human spirit that acknowledges hard work and that really appreciates the people that try to out-hustle other people. So I think that's one of those things that I would say. And other pieces, listen, this notion, that you need to go find your passion. I just not, it's one of those other things that I have totally changed on over my lifetime. I think the best people bring passion to anything they do. I think it's your job not to go find passion.

I think your job is to be a passionate person. And I think, and I've learned that I can be passionate about any small, menial activity as much as I can be passionate about anything else. That's just an attitude. And the attitude is the decision that I make. And then my decision is to be passionate and to display my, my full passion, whatever I'm doing, whether I'm washing windows or, you know, I'm getting somebody else some lunch, you know, or I'm creating strategy for our team. My job is to be

passionate. So I think another thing from a career standpoint is you've got to bring passionate to every single aspect of things. Another one for me would be the details really matter. The people of excellence are always into details. They distinguish details. They distinguish everything relative to they discriminate just about everything they really are into the details the details really matter are you into details or are you have you gotten your learning to a place where you you know the nuances and and the smaller things can be distinguished by you and that you understand how much the impact and create difference so those are a couple um career general career you know i got to hit you on the passion one man because i think it's so great i was just we we do these off-site

events where we'd go and like helping the community you know like plant stuff spread mulch do all those types of things and i think about some of the the top performers they brought so much joy and passion to like something like spreading mulch which isn't that fun and outside in the hot but they're but they have you're like this makes sense this makes sense why they do so well with their job it doesn't really matter it really doesn't matter that they have that outlook on life like i'm bringing it let's go. What are we doing today? What are we doing? And then they go. I love that example because first of all, they're going to work hard at spreading mulch. They're going to be passionate about spreading mulch. They're sweating. They're rolling up their sleeves. Let's go. Come on. Yeah. And the mulch is going to be

spread expertly. Yeah. It's going to be details of that mulch. Like it can't be thick in one spot. Like it's got to be done right. Okay. And when you watch somebody do that, you go, is it any surprise that this person's been successful? Of course not. And by the way, you could have done that. They could have done that at the beginning of their careers. They could have done it at any spot, right? But it's not common. And you control all of those things. Nothing of those items are in the control of anybody but you.

I love it, man. Randall, I don't, normally people are more than willing to share where to find them online. Do you even want to share where we could find more of your work online? Well, we have a leadership course. Digital course. We call it mireddleadership.com. Just go right to admireleadership. and then you can start seeing if you don't even go past the the firewall, the paywall,

and just the upfront videos will teach you a lot of stuff about how we see leadership. If you're looking for me, don't because like I don't want to be found. I'm going to try my best to help you be found a little bit more. Try not too hard. The reason I'm doing this is for that, you know, that leadership course. We wanted to have more impact on people and the like. We want those behaviors to be in more people's hands and so forth. You know, it's really not about me.

One of the things that I'm most happy about, and, you know, and there's a lot of people to think I'm crazy, but, you know, we have 15, 16 hours worth of content in that course, and there's not a name on the whole thing. My name's not on there. Nobody else's names on there. Some of my esteemed clients have chosen to appear for me, and their names aren't on there. And I think that's so cool. Like, I just think it's great.

It's about the content. It's not about the people. So I kind of, you know, live the value, if you will. And so I just think, I think we're. I think people are tired. I'm tired of all the chest thumping about who people are and the profile when they don't have anything to say. We got tons to say. There's all kinds of richness there, but it doesn't have to.

It doesn't matter who we are. It matters what that is. And if it helps people, then it helps them be better. Then that's what we're about. So anyway, you find us at www. atmyadleadership.com and hopefully you'll do it. Something else that I would love to plug is I write a daily field note every single day. It's free.

It starts people's day about leadership. It's just a paragraph for two. We've got lots of people reading it every day. I've been doing it since the early June, and I didn't think it would be fun, but I'm having a ball with it, and people spread it all around. If you go to Admiarleadership.com,

you don't want to do anything else. Just sign up for some of the field notes and start getting them every morning. And I can't wait to open it up and see what I wrote three months ago, four months ago, which one's coming up and whether it was any good or not. But I enjoy them every morning.

and sort of lots of other people. So do that. And then lastly, Ryan, I got to tell you that one place to find me is anywhere connected to what you're doing because what you're doing is great stuff. So way to go. Thank you.

I appreciate your team. Likes to share a lot of my stuff on Twitter. And I didn't even know initially they were, you guys were associated together. And I dug a little bit and said, what is this in Myr leadership? Yeah. Keep sharing all my stuff.

And then I'm like, wait, this is Randall's group. So that was cool. That was cool. That was cool. Your name, by the way, my friend Mike Yoder said, you have got to talk to Randall Stutman. And then I started digging in. And obviously, then we had a long call and hit it off.

So I'd just like to say, it's been awesome getting a chance to talk to you. I know this won't be the last time. Let's certainly continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. I appreciate it. And listen, leadership matters. So thanks for doing what you're doing and keep it up. Thanks so much, man. You could probably tell that that will not be the last time that Randall and I

speak. We had a number of conversations leading up to this one, and I'm glad we did. I find it to be a really interesting guy who is not afraid to go against the grain, who's constantly seeking knowledge, trying to learn, trying to get better, trying to update his systems so that he can be a better coach for other people. And I like that quality and a person. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If I take a look at my notes, admired leaders are people who both achieve results and are loved by the people they lead. And as he said, this is very rare for those who can do both. And then the definition of leadership is simply making people and situations better. And sometimes I like those simplistic definitions of what leadership is. That's something

if you Google and search out what leadership is, what effective leadership is. There's billions of responses. And I like this simplistic view of making people and situations better and everything that that entails. And then third party praise. Spread positive gossip. Don't be praise stingy. When you see excellence tell someone, whether the person who did it or sometimes even better, somebody else. Make this part of your everyday routine and you'll see it become contagious. It's really cool. Once again, I want to say thank you. you so much for continuing to spread the message, message, continuing to spread the message of the learning leader show and telling

a friend, hey, you should listen to this one with Randall Stutman. It will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and because you continue to write reviews and rate the show on Apple Podcast, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk good soon.

Can't wait.