David Anderson, Founder of Off Madison Ave and Lighthouse PE, is passionate about helping people and companies thrive through leadership coaching, board service, and team development. We explore how David helps companies build high-performing teams using his High-Performing Team Framework, which includes: psychological safety, a learn and grow mindset, the chemist mentality, and attention to team dynamics when introducing new members.

David also shares lessons from his book Leader is not a Title, emphasizing that true leadership is about influence—not hierarchy. We talk about building trust, breaking silos, and knowing when to evolve as a leader.

Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today I have David Anderson with me on this episode, who is the founder of Off Madison Avenue and Lighthouse PE, two companies that are now doing their own thing. And he is spending his time sitting on boards and doing leadership team coaching as an executive coach, business coach. He’s also the author of Leader is Not a Title, which actually has a very cool cover. You have to read it closely to really see what is the title, what is not the title. But we can get into this later. So David, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on today, Steve.

Absolutely. And let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice and perhaps in your businesses as well?

Yeah, awesome. Great question to kick it off here this morning. My personal “Why” is to help people and companies thrive. I have been very blessed over the years to had a lot of things go my way, be lucky. Believe me, I’ve had my fair share of rough times and screw-ups and bad businesses, but overall, I’m very fortunate. And as you mentioned early on, I am the founder, technically CEO of two companies, Off Madison Ave and Lighthouse PE. I’m not involved day-to-day with those anymore. And I really am helping people and companies thrive now by working as an executive team coach. I really focus on building high performing teams. As we all know, you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don’t have the right people, it doesn’t really matter. I do speaking on this topic and a few other things and also sitting on boards of directors, helping companies really thrive. So it’s all about helping people and companies thrive.

Love it. Well, okay. So help us and help our listeners thrive as well. And so let’s talk about this thing that you mentioned, the building high performing teams. I totally agree. A company is really a group of people committed to a cause. And if they’re not thriving, then the company is not thriving. So what does it take for a business owner or CEO to build a high-performing team? What are the steps? What is your framework on this?

Well, there’s a few things. There’s lots of factors that get you to a high-performing team, but a high-performing team is one where everybody’s roles are extremely clearly defined. People know how to interact with each other to accomplish the common goal, the strategy, the vision that they’re going to. There’s no silos. Many organizations get caught in silos. They keep it from being a high-performing team. They know how to communicate with each other. 95, I would even say maybe more percent of our challenges are poor communications, lack of communications that get us in the way from ensuring that we are a high-performing team. My most favorite analogy of that, I don’t know how many of your listeners out there are race car fans, maybe race cars once in their life, whatever, but think of a pit crew for a Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR race.

The driver actually is very important, just like a CEO, chair of achieving goals, winning the race, but it doesn’t happen without the pit crew. And the pit crew is the best example I have been able to come up with of a high-performing team. When they come over the wall, everybody knows exactly what they need to do. I need to jack the car up. I need to take the lug nut off. I need to put the new tire on. I need to adjust the tips for better aerodynamics. I need to clean the windshield. In Indy, you got to refuel. Formula One, you don’t refuel. I know exactly how much fuel it is to get to the next lap or to win the race. That is a high-performing team.

Yeah, it really is and it’s amazing. In Formula One, I remember when I was a kid, it was 15 seconds to do all that stuff and now it’s down to just a few seconds. I don’t even know what it is. Is it like five seconds or less?

It’s unbelievable and if one of those team members, something goes wrong and it becomes a 15 second pit stop, a 20 second, that means the race. It can very well mean the race. So, the question I ask a lot of CEOs that I work with, chairs of the boards and others is can you draw your team out as a pit crew? Who has this role? Who has that role? How does this role interact with the others? Do you have somebody who’s coming over the wall that maybe was good when you were in the minor leagues of auto racing, but now you need a better person to come over the wall, more experience, has done it before, whatever, to ensure you achieve your goal?

One of my absolute favorite people and favorite books is Marshall Goldsmith. While he’s been ranked the number one business coach in the world many times over, but one of his books, he has several, is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. And as high-performing teams, you may have great people, very good people, but you have all the right people in the right seats at the right time to accomplish the current goals. And that’s a high-performing team when you can say, yes, we have all of those people. 

Okay. Yeah. Now, in our pre-call, you also touched upon a couple of concepts I’d like to bring up here. One is psychological safety. So what do you mean by psychological safety and how does one create that?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And that’s one of the factors that with you can have, again, the best people in the world, but if your team doesn’t have psychological safety, I need to come up with a better term. That’s a Harvard term for it, McKinsey, all of those guys, it’s not a Dave term. Does your team have frank conversations? Do they debate? Do they maybe even argue through that? Does everybody in the team feel safe to bring up issues? Does the CEO allow it?

Because the absolute best incomes always come from a team environment where there’s deep conversations where you’re bouncing ideas off of each other and go there. In my book, I talk about the difference between brainstorming and conflict is one thing, ego. Well, actually, let me take that back. Emotions is the one thing, but ego leads to emotions. And does your team, are you able to communicate as a leadership team without emotions? People’s feelings don’t get hurt because you all know that you are working for the good of the organization. And that doesn’t mean we all always agree.

What it does mean is that each person in the room feels heard, and when they leave that room, you leave with one voice. You may not all agree, but you leave as one voice. So again, only difference between brainstorming for the good of the organization and conflict is emotions. And it’s the CEO or the leader’s responsibility to ensure that the emotions are kept to a minimum and it doesn’t become personal. Emotions mean it’s becoming personal. Don’t let it become personal.

Okay. So another concept I’d like to just switch to it that you mentioned was the learn and grow mindset. What do you mean by learn and grow mindset?

Yeah, great question. So I am a graduate of a school here in Arizona, Arizona State University. I’m a little older. It’s an amazing university. Now, I sure had a great time in college, but when I graduated, well, first of all, my grades were never that great. But when I left, I didn’t continue a mindset that I need to learn and grow and expand not only my skill sets, but my personal skills of how do you have a learn and grow mindset where I don’t know everything. As a matter of fact, I’m far from knowing it. How do I have a mindset to hire people that are better than me with skills and that? How many podcasts do you listen to a month? How many books do you read? How many articles do you read? How many would ChatGPT, the greatest thing ever to allow you to learn and grow, dive into topics to learn more?

And it took me a lot of years before I realized that, Dave, you are so far from knowing everything. And there is just about everything I’ve gone through. Thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of people have gone through before are experts of things, learn from their experiences and make yourself better. 

Love it. Another concept that you talk about is the chemist mentality. So is this about personal chemistry on the team? Or what is this about? 

Yeah, I do. In my book, I talk about CEOs are really chemists. If you think about it, what do chemists do every day? They mix different ingredients. They bring things together to try to get to a formula that provides an outcome. In pharma, in industrial, whatever, it’s all about that. Well, think about your team in the exact same mindset, that it’s the right mix of people, skills, mentalities, levels of experience, all of that that lead to the best outcome. That means a high-performing team that’s achieving the corporate goals, whatever it may be, your division goals or whatever. But, so many times, a new person comes into the mix and we don’t give enough thought to of how that changes the chemistry of the team. How does that change perspectives, all of that? So we constantly need to be thinking about our teams as the outcome of what we are building as chemists and how do we mix and change, adapt that to get there. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I mean, I see this all the time. I’ve got some clients where there’s a lot of stability on the team, sometimes too much stability and no new team members coming and things starting to get stale. And I often recommend to the CEO that bring in one person who is going to be the yeast in this team, who’s going to stir things up and make everyone perform at a higher level. If you bring in an A player, a high performer, they’re going to pull everyone up with them. And I was fortunate to have such a person on my team, in my business, 15 years ago that I brought in from basically a college professor.

I gave a donation to his foundation and he referred his best student to me. Boy, this guy was really awesome and he really moved and shook things up and he was very creative, he was very ambitious and he was very driven and it elevated the whole team up. So that can be a very, very useful thing.

I completely agree with you. We all worry so much about turnover and too much turnover can be a challenge, but not enough turnover can also be a huge challenge. We get comfortable in what we’re doing. If you’re a CEO listening, is your team too comfortable? How do you shake it up? And something that I had to deal with, I had to know too, when it was time for me to move out of the role that I was in and that somebody different needed to come in and be the president, CEO, pick whatever title you want. The agency’s been around for, I think, 26 years, I know more than 25 years. That’s probably too long for one CEO. So when is it that you bring in the next person to help? And that goes right back to the foundation of Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There to go through.

Yeah, and sometimes, a lot of people say private equity is you’re just focusing on EBITDA and they fire a bunch of people. But I do think that sometimes private equity is really helpful because a company gets stale, maybe the founder already fulfilled their vision and then you need the fresh energy, someone to come in and have another vision and climb another mountain. And then you can keep rejuvenating these companies and they can actually grow faster that way.

Absolutely. I mean, look at Bill Gates stepped aside and brought other people in. There’s tons and tons of examples. What I say is focus on what you really enjoy doing, not what you think you have to do. So many founders think we have to stay in a specific role. I’m not a detailed person. I’m not a great day-to-day person. So you got to go back to the chemistry. And the difficult part of that is that we have to include ourselves in that formula as CEOs, chairs, founders, whatever it might be, because I’ve dealt with, and I’m sure you have too, Steve, companies where it’s the CEO founder that is the biggest obstacle to growth going forward. So you need to evaluate. Those are always fun conversations, but it’s the truth.

Yeah. I like to say that the bottleneck is always at the top of the barrel.

Very good. I like that. Yeah.

All right. So, I mean, you are a good example of stepping out and letting someone else come in and take things forward from there. That’s very impressive, actually. You did that with at least two companies that I saw on LinkedIn. There’s a software company, the AI company that you founded, and then this Off Madison Avenue, which is an advertising agency. So how did you know that it was the right time to move on? And was this a difficult thing to do, or it was kind of something that you yearned to do it and you kind of intentionally got yourself to the point where you could do this at some point?

Well, there’s a lot to that question, so I’ll try to keep it simple. First of all, my own coaches helped me realize that, my own business coaches. I am also a member of and have been very involved in the global leadership of an organization called EO, Entrepreneurs Organization. So I am part of a forum in EO with other CEO’s, CEO forums. I’ve traveled the world with the organization meeting entrepreneurs around the world. And so I learned a lot from them. Some of them had done it. So I learned from that. Now I will tell you the first time I did it, I completely screwed it up and made a total mess of it because I brought a person in to run and they started on Monday. And on Tuesday, I was like, I’m out, good luck, which was about the stupidest thing I could do.

Anytime you do that, you have to ensure there’s a good transition. I would say at least a year transition with kind of stepping down, going forward. So the first time after, about four months, I lost three of the six leadership team members because the new guy was so bad. Then the new guy, he technically quit, but he knew his days were numbered to go forward and then I had to rebuild. The second time I did it, I did much better, but not great. I hired somebody within and they did a very good job to a point. And then I realized that what got you here helped us get to the next step, won’t get you there. And it took me too long to make a change to the person that I have in now, again, because I got complacent and it was easy.

And then it wasn’t. And the third time, we’re only about more than six months now in, and it’s going fabulous where we had a transition. I did bring somebody in from the outside. I had a transition schedule. I did extensive interviewing, cultural stuff. We use culture index a lot. So, a lot of that we went through and the new person in a matter of six months has made such a significant difference. Now I just wake up and go, well, why didn’t you do that 18 months ago? So it’s there, but it’s a live and learn and you know where you’re going from there.

Yeah. And what’s important is that you did it and now you are on to your next thing. So that brings me to the question of your book. You wrote a book which is titled Leader is Not a Title, but it’s a very cute way of saying you’re a leader and then you have to look really closely to read what’s the subtitle? Is not a title. Okay. 

Yeah. 

So it is the title, but it’s not the title. So tell me a little bit about why you thought it was important to say this and what is the message? What is the outcome that you are trying to foster with this book?

Yeah. Great. Thank you for asking. So I wrote the book actually back in 2019. And as a thank you for the compliments about it, it’s less than 100 pages. It’s not a long book at all. If you read the intro, you will say that there is no earth shattering, groundbreaking new research on this. What I just basically did was take my learnings, my experiences that I had personally and that I had seen so many of my fellow EO members go through and broke it down to a simple leadership guide that we can use for newer people coming into leadership. It’s a great refresher for people coming into leadership.

But the basic message is, as we’ve seen people go through our organization, they’re always so focused, well, what’s my title gonna be? I’m gonna be assistant vice president. I’m gonna be a vice president. I’m gonna be executive vice president. And I’m like, what’s the difference between all of those? None. You can be christened with a title, but it doesn’t mean you have any more influence. On Monday, you get a promotion and a new title than you have on Tuesday. Leadership is about, first of all, you’ll read in the book, leadership equals influence. That’s all that it is. If you can’t influence people, you’re not really a leader. You just have a title. And how do you influence people? We influence through motivation. How do we motivate people to do what we need them to do for the good of the organization and then the good for themselves?

That’s where my helping people and companies thrive comes together here, is motivating people. How do you motivate people? You motivate every single person differently. There’s no manual on blonde-haired people, gray-haired people, you motivate this way. You have to get to learn the people. But think about your organization’s people that have no significant title, but have huge influence in the organization that can help protect your culture, help do other things because people respect them, they listen to them, they know that they’re trustworthy, they know they have integrity. And I’ve had some leaders I’ve worked with that lacked all of those, but thought they were pretty big crap because they had a title.

Yeah, I’m with you. I mean, leadership is all about leading people. It’s not about the authority. It’s about the influence. And for the people to know that you have their best interest at heart, so you’re worth following. Because you are leading them to somewhere good that you want to get to. It’s huge.

Absolutely. I agree. One of my favorite quotes, John Maxwell, is before you can lead others, you have to lead yourself. And I believe that’s a big part of leadership. Just take a minute and think, okay, if I’m a leader, what do I want in the leader that I have? Integrity, motivation, they care about me. Level five of John Maxwell’s stuff is, it’s about creating other leaders. You are a level four, level five leader when you are creating other leaders because you know those leaders will help the overall company go forward. So, if you follow John Maxwell, your focus should be on developing leaders because that, by naturally, will allow the organization to achieve what it needs to.

Yeah. And I guess this is what you’re doing by coaching leaders. You are developing them. You’re using this force multiplier effect where you are creating leaders who are going to create great organizations and who are going to help a lot of people be successful. That’s pretty awesome. So, I have a question about your previous life still, which is being an entrepreneur. Maybe it’s your current life because you haven’t sold your businesses as well. What is the hardest decision that you ever had to make in your businesses?

That’s a great question. The first hardest decision I ever had to make was when to hire the first person, because now, I’m responsible for another human being and their family and whatever. You can always deal with if you’re not getting a paycheck or whatever, but once you hire that first person, you’re committed. So that was a long time ago, but that was the big one. For me, the hardest part is still on the people side as you’re a growing organization and you need to have the difficult conversations with, you’re a great person, you’re valued here, we appreciate your loyalty.

This day and age too, sometimes people cap out at salary levels and other things too, where you just have to have the tough conversations of how much they’re appreciated and valued, but the what got you here won’t get you there. Now, I’m not in any way saying that you always have to replace somebody, but if people don’t have the right learn and grow mindset that you asked me about early on. Sometimes people just cap out at where they are and those are the toughest conversations if you like the person. Sometimes it’s just time for a change because people, attitude, they think they’re entitled, whatever, just being blunt, those need to change. But the people conversations are always going to be the hardest. 

Yeah, and I see some entrepreneurs who have this idea that they want to make the company their second family, and then at some point, they hit the ceiling because they realize that, well, there’s a difference because I won’t be able to grow this company if I keep all the family members here. And in a family, you obviously cannot fire family members, but in a business, it can be counterproductive and you tolerate people that don’t fit anymore and then it can backfire.

100% you are. That family mentality, while I understand it, can also be a real challenge to people, as your organization evolves and grow. And again, there’s probably a place for them. It’s just maybe not what they want, what they expect, the title they want, the salary they want, but that’s where you need to make those tough conversations. And it’s even more challenging when there’s family members in the business or family businesses or other things that makes it even more difficult. But you gotta have them or you gotta bring somebody in like me. I’m consulting with a company right now and I just went and did a leadership training and there were 19 people in the room. I’m like, this is your leadership team?

And they were like, yeah. And the mentality when I asked later on was, well, such and such has been with us for so long. So just as they kept adding people, you can’t have a leadership team of 19 people. You just can’t get it done. You can tier it. You can, you know, executive committee, senior leadership, you can go down. But to have 19 people on your leadership team because you don’t want to have the tough conversation of you’re no longer part of this team is going to hamper their growth.

Well, sometimes they want you as the coach to have this conversation. I had a client that merged because it was kind of a veterinary horse. It was a family business founded by the father and then the son was a very talented guy. He also founded his own business and both businesses became successful. And then, at some point, they went to merge it and the father wanted the son to take over, but not just yet. So we had this situation where there were 18 people on the leadership team or everyone came on the leadership team who was in either company and we basically had to use this process of coaching them to whittle it down over time. So there were other issues. But yeah, I agree with you. Big teams can be really, really challenging to do, but sometimes you have to do it because no one else will. 

You’re exactly right, Steve. 100% they bring us in to be the bad guys to do that. The consultant said, we need to do this. It’s happened over and over again. Or the same situation of this person’s been there 20 years, and they were the director of operations when the company was doing two and a half million dollars. And now it’s doing 10 million. It’s probably not the right person to continue to be doing the operations. You need somebody who’s taken a company from 10 to 50 million to get where you need to go.

Absolutely. So, David, if someone would like to learn more about your approach, read your book, check out your businesses, where should they go and where can they learn about you and from you?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Steve. Well, first of all, the book is on Amazon, Leader is Not a Title by David W. Anderson. I also have a website, my personal website for my coaching, my speaking board of directors, which is [email protected]. The W is my middle name. So [email protected]. You can reach me there. There’s a bunch of information about me. There’s a “Contact Me.” You can find me on LinkedIn. Also there’s a few David Anderson’s in this world. So, look for David Anderson, DWA Leadership, Off Madison Ave in Arizona. You can find me that way through the search on LinkedIn.

Yeah. So definitely check out David’s website, dwaleadership.com and check out his LinkedIn page as well. There are good posts that you can read there and learn about the businesses. So, David, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom about coaching and building high performing teams on this show. And those of you listening, if you enjoy this conversation, then you know that every Monday, we’ll have a new episode. So make sure that you subscribe to us on YouTube, you follow us on LinkedIn, on Apple Podcasts to give us a review and stay tuned because we bring great guests every time. So thanks for coming and thanks for listening.