Lead with a Story Podcast

Middle management gets a bad rap. It brings to mind terrible bosses from the Dilbert cartoons or Michael Scott from The Office, or a career graveyard for mediocre leaders unable to reach the upper echelons of management.

And that’s too bad. Because the truth is, most of us are in middle management and always will be. So, rather than languishing in it — which only bolsters the lousy reputation — lean into it. With the right tools, you can be wildly successful as a middle manager. And this week, I spoke this week with someone who literally wrote the book on those tools.

Scott Mautz spent 20 very successful years in middle management at The Procter & Gamble Company. Today he writes for Inc. Magazine, is a keynote speaker and leadership coach, and the author of the new book, Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization.

In our conversation, Scott shared a few of the tools he recommends to middle managers. Click play above to listen. Here’s an overview of our conversation with a small sample of tips from the book:

3 Tools for Managing UP: How to Disagree with Your Boss

1) Always discuss INTENT before CONTENT – When you need to tell the boss they’re wrong, diving right into your disagreement can be off-putting and lower the likelihood they’ll listen and agree.

Instead, preface the content of your disagreement with your intent in sharing it. That way they know the disagreement is coming from a place of respect and desire for mutual success, as opposed to a result of animosity or desire to see the boss fail. Something like this,

“You know, you told me when I first got here that I should be candid with you. I think you’ve been a great boss, and I respect what you’ve accomplished here. But on this issue, I’m in a different place. And so, my intent here is to give you some other alternatives that I think will help us be more successful…”

2) Be respectfully candid – And both words are important. If you’re not candid, you won’t make a difference. And if you’re not respectful, you’ll offend and won’t earn the right to be candid.

3) Avoid judgment words – These conversations go south when the language starts to seem accusational. It sounds like this, “…and the reason why I think you made that decision is because you’re too power hungry (or not empathetic enough, or don’t care about your employees, etc.)”

Stick to the decision and the ramifications. Let them do their own self-analysis unless they ask you for your opinion about that.

3 Tools for Managing DOWN: How to give feedback so that people view it as a gift

4) Be specific – Bland, generic feedback won’t help. Telling someone they’re too analytical isn’t actionable.

Give specific examples of what they did well and did poorly. “You probably spent too much time and effort analyzing the ABC project and as a result, most of what you did never even got shared with management because it wasn’t very helpful.”

5) Be calibrated – Meaning, the feedback needs to indicate how big a deal the mis-step was and what ramifications it might have, if any, on their future career.

If you just tell them they didn’t meet your expectations in the last meeting, and leave it at that, they might spend weeks spiraling into unproductive worry.

Instead, give them some indication of the severity. Either, “…but that’s okay. That’s about where I would expect you to be this early in your assignment”, or “…so, we’ll need to work on this quickly so that it doesn’t hold you back.”

6) Be proportionate – Human beings want five pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback. Many of them want what Scott calls a “compliment sandwich” — tell me something good about me, them give me the negatives, then close with something else good.

4 Tools for Managing ACROSS the organization

This is for when you’re trying to influence your peers or other people you have no direct authority over. And if you think about the people in your work life who’ve influenced you the most, even though they had no direct authority over you, Scott’s research suggests those people did one (or more) of the following four things:

7) Cared about you, and showed it somehow
8) Listened to you when you needed it
9) Gave you something, or
10) Taught you something

Investing in people in these ways tends to earn you their ear and their respect, which means they’ll be more open to following your leadership even though they don’t have to.

You can learn more about Scott at scottmautz.com. And if you go to scottmautz.com/freetools, you’ll find some free tools to help you lead from the middle.

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling, a keynote speaker, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook and LinkedIn.



“My experience as a leader is that all the conversations that really mattered happened in corridors when I was in transition from one meeting to the next. And it would be really easy — because of the time constraint — to just say, ‘This is what I think you should do…’. And yet, one of the most effective things you can do as a leader is say, ‘What do you think?'”

Phil Renshaw and Jenny Robinson joined me this week with some simple techniques for how to be a better coach to your people in only a few minutes a day. All ideas they’ve captured in their new book, Coaching on the Go: How to lead your team effectively in 10 minutes a day.

Here’s an outline of our conversation. Click play above to join in. . .

2:15 – What’s this book about?
3:50 – Who’s it for?
8:45 – Chapter 6: Self-awareness
– Imposter syndrome: Jenny’s self-doubt on landing a top publisher
14:10 – The same experience from Phil’s perspective

17:10 – 3 tools to be better at Self-awareness:

• Step back and notice what you notice – Create a break in your routine so that it’s easier to do. An alarm on your phone, etc.
• 20:40 – Repeating or paraphrasing back what you heard
• 22:05 – Tentative naming

Phil started his career in international banking, treasury, and finance. Today, he’s a management and executive coach with a special expertise in the value of international assignments.

Jenny has worked in communication, coaching, and change management for most of the last three decades. She is also a visiting fellow and Ph.D. researcher at the Cranfield School of Management in the UK.

You can find out more about their work at www.coachingonthego.co.uk. You can contact Phil at [email protected] and Jenny at [email protected].

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling, a keynote speaker, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Imagine you’re driving home from work one night around 8 pm. It’s cold. It’s raining. And there’s a dirty, slushy, melting snow on the ground. You glance out the car window and you see a young girl huddled up on the side of the road. She looks cold, scared, alone, and injured.

You pull over and invite her into your warm car, and take her to a diner for a meal.

She doesn’t speak to you the entire time. She just sits there, staring down into her plate while eating, dripping gray water all over the seat. Your mind races though all of the unthinkable possibilities for what might have lead her to this place in life.

When she finishes eating, still not having said a word, she peels herself off of the plastic seat, gets up, and heads toward the exit. You watch as her frail little back walks away from you. In two more seconds, she’ll be through the door and gone from your life forever.

At that moment, what do you do?

Emily Chang doesn’t have to imagine. She knows. Because this happened to her. At that moment what she decided to do was yell out,

“Where are you going to sleep tonight”?

The girl stopped. Her shoulders quivered a bit. And Emily continued, “I have a spare room.”

That girl became the first of sixteen people over the last 25 years to have been blessed to spend some of the darkest times of their lives in the respite of Emily Chang’s spare room.

An abused child bride. An unwanted boy with hydrocephalus. A girl raised in a brothel. And over a dozen other young people whose lives were changed for the better in Emily’s spare room.

Emily documents their stories in her new book, The Spare Room: Define Your Social Legacy to Live a More Intentional Life and Lead with Authentic Purpose. In the book, she not only shares their unforgettable stories, but the life and leadership lessons we can all learn from them.

In this episode, Emily describes one of those young people lucky enough to spend some time in Emily’s spare room. Click the play button above to hear the story of Devon, a child bride thrown out of her own home.

Emily Chang has worked in leadership positions at Procter & Gamble, Apple, and Starbucks. Today she serves as the CEO of China for the global advertising giant, McCann. You can find Emily at https://social-legacy.com/.

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling, a keynote speaker, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Hi, my name’s John. I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m the new CFO here at the airline.”

“So f–ing what?”

That’s the beginning of how a senior airline executive learned to put employees first in their leadership communication.

My guest this week who shares that story is Gary Ross, who started his career as an Emmy-nominated TV news reporter. He then led the communications departments at Hyatt Hotels, CDW, and Fortune Brands. Today he’s a trainer, coach, and consultant for CEOs to help them tell their stories better and inspire their people.

We work through several of Gary’s most important leadership communication lessons, including the difference between Transparency and Clarity. It turns out one of those things is an absolute necessity for leaders. The other is not. Click the play button above to listen to our conversation and find out which is which.

• 1:00 – Being an Emmy-nominated TV reporter
• 2:55 – Running Inside Comms consulting
• 5:30 – Learning the value of putting employees first – Gary tells the story of an airline CFO getting cursed out by a production worker for bothering him on the job
• 8:30 – how he put that lesson to work later as the CEO of CDW.
• 15:08 – Articulating the difference between Transparency and Clarity.
• 19:00 – Why meeting someone without anything to offer is just wasting their time

You can find out more about Gary and his work at https://www.insidecomms.com/

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher or Podbean.

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Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling, a keynote speaker, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Sign up for his newsletter here to get one new story a week delivered to your inbox.

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Humor Engineer, Drew Tarvin, recently partnered with the Procter & Gamble alumni organization to start a new podcast with former P&G executives called Learning from Leaders, and it’s open to the public.

Join me on this episode with Drew for a brief discussion about the podcast, some of its early guests, and some of the early insights from his interviews with these industry leaders.

You can find Drew’s new podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and most of the podcast servers. Or, find it here: https://www.pgalums.com/podcast  To learn more about Drew, visit: humorthatworks.com.

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

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Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling. He’s a keynote speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Sign up for his newsletter here to get one new story a week delivered to your inbox.

“Hey Paul, I’m thinking about writing a book. Can we talk? I’d love to get some advice.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten that email since my first book came out eight years ago. I usually end up spending an hour explaining everything I’ve learned about the subject. And I’m always happy to do so.

But on my podcast this week, I had someone on who knows far more about it than I do — publisher and global credibility expert Mitchell Levy. And his method turns everything I thought I knew about getting books published on its head.

Click the play button above and listen to our conversation about:

You can find out more about Mitchell at his website: mitchelllevy360.com.

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

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Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling. He’s a keynote speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Sign up for his newsletter here to get one new story a week delivered to your inbox.

Jason Hartman has

Click play above to listen to my conversation with Jason where he’ll share what lead up to all that. We get to the first big lesson around the 14-minute mark, and number two starting at 16:30.

Key Take Away

After listening, here’s my challenge to you: Over the next week, any time you find yourself wanting something that just doesn’t exist (yet), write it down. By the end of the week, you’ll have a whole list of great business ideas.

You can find Jason

Click these links to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or Podbean.

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Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling. He’s a keynote speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author.

Connect with him via email here. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Sign up for his newsletter here to get one new story a week delivered to your inbox.

IMAGINE CONDUCTING this experiment. Put five monkeys in a cage with a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. Underneath the bananas, place a ladder just tall enough to reach them. read more