Leadership Jam Session

In this Jam Session, I sit with Jason Ross, a psychotherapist who specializes in parenting, relationships, trauma, substance abuse, and wellness. I thought it'd be a great idea to sit down with Jason and get his perspective on leadership from the psychotherapist point of view. We also talk about any advice or guidance that Jason can provide on how to best manage not only our people but our families as well, and any thoughts he may have on the mental or emotional effects of COVID-19. You can find out more information about Jason by visiting www.JasonEricRoss.com as well on all social platforms.

• Authenticity ultimately is what connects everybody. That’s what motivates them. That is what builds trust, and trust makes for a strong team
• Demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence that makes people want to connect
• People don't want to look at themselves and at their deficiencies. Those who do, they're the game changers
• Ego's the divider in terms of emotional intelligence. When your life is based around your ego, there's gonna be a problem. When your life is based around your esteem, that's different. You're gonna lead better
• As a leader, you need to understand that vulnerability can be a strength
• The greater the ego, the greater the insecurities
• (During a pandemic or crisis) the biggest takeaway is staying emotionally connected, and perhaps, be more vulnerable in a healthy way

• www.JasonEricRoss.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonericross/

In this Jam Session, I sit with Scott J. Miller. Scott has been with FranklinCovey for more than 20 years and serves as the Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership. He is the host of On Leadership with Scott Miller, a weekly leadership webcast, podcast, and newsletter featuring interviews with renowned business titans, authors and thought leaders.

His radio show and podcast — Great Life, Great Career with Scott Miller on iHeart Media’s KNRS 105.7 — provides insight and strategies to assist listeners in becoming more effective as business leaders and to improve their personal performance. In Scott’s latest book, Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become The Leader You Would Follow, he shares uncut and honest stories of his last 20+ years, and as Scott puts it, as a struggling leader.

• As a leader, your job is to get work done with and through people
• We learn more from our messes than our successes (Challenge #1: Demonstrate humility)
• Just own your mess, because there's great power in vulnerability and transparency
• When you own your mess you make it safe for others to own theirs as well
• Leadership is about deliberation and calibrating your emotions
• As a leader, make time for relationships as they are everything (Challenge #10: Make time for relationships)
• Leaders that connect with their people are invincible. People don't quit leaders who love them
• Effective leaders are very deliberate in declaring their intent (Challenge #4: Declare your Intent)
• If you want to become and build your own leadership credibility, be very thoughtful around what you are modeling because what you model gets valued
• Remember, be cognizant of when to be efficient and when to be effective

• Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become The Leader You Would Follow, by Scott J. Miller
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, by Liz Wiseman

In this Jam Session, I sit with Jeff Harris. Jeff is a successful C-Suite leader with a track record for turning around struggling companies. Jeff shares a story of how he leads a company based in New Zealand through a crisis from his home office in Colorado, all while dealing with his own personal health issues.

This episode was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and while working from home became the new normal during this time, Jeff had been remotely running a company from across the globe, well before the pandemic. His story is inspiring as you’ll hear about great leadership, persistence and resilience as well as tips for working and leading remotely.

• Be curious, ask questions, and listen
• Never underestimate the power of 1:1s with any employee level
• In a turnaround situation, your CFO is your right-hand person
• Check your ego at the door
• When making changes, it’s important to note that change can break people if it’s too much
• Focus the team and obtain alignment on key metrics and KPIs
• People do what people see (you doing)
• Clarify expectations and over communicate
• Be transparent. If your fish tank is dirty, then clean it

In this Jam Session, I sit with a successful entrepreneur, Mark Scuderi. Mark shares a story of how his business survived the housing market crash of 2008, and how he came out of it stronger, both professionally and personally.

This episode was recorded just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the housing market crash pales in comparison, you will hear Mark talk about how that experience changed how he runs his business, leads his team, and manages his personal life. Perhaps there are some lessons that you can walk away with and apply to your current situation today.

• Mark’s “Four F's” to running a thriving business:  Family first, Fitness second, Finance third, and you have to have a little Fun
• The importance of holding a weekly "mastermind group" with your team 
• Keep your teams looking towards the future
• Remind your teams about the importance of staying positive in difficult situations
• Sales is all about mindset and attitude
• Maximize efficiencies by integrating new technology into your business
• Consistently reinvest in your people, systems, and processes so the business will take care of itself
• As a leader, it's important to know that your ambitions are not the same as everyone else’s

In this next Jam Session, I sit with Major General (ret.) Craig Whelden. General Whelden spent 30 years in the U.S. Army, followed by seven in the private sector, and another nine as a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) with the U.S. Marine Corps.

He is also a motivational speaker on leadership and performance excellence, and an award-winning, best-selling author of Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best.

• Put (metaphorical) “rocks in your rucksack” that represent both the good things you want to adopt but also the bad things you want to avoid
• Prioritize the most important things in your life
• Character is part nature and part nurture
• The very best leaders can be found by combining innate skills with world-class training
• During your darkest times, there's often light at the end of the tunnel. You just can't see it yet
• True leadership is when you can demonstrate you care about everyone in such a way that it sticks with them…forever
• Strive to reach an achievable rung on your career ladder. Once you arrive, everything after that is gravy

• Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best, by Craig B. Whelden
• https://www.craigwhelden.com/

In this next Jam Session, I sit with Jennifer Judy Caldwell and Paul Catanzaro. Paul has held positions in sales training and is currently a district sales manager. Jennifer has held leadership positions in sales, commercial training, planning and operations, and recently started her own strategic training design consulting firm. We tackle the topic of self-awareness and how to coach employees to help them further develop their own.

• Use the technique of time and tone for every conversation. Wait for the right time and always use the right tone
• Help your employees become self-aware by asking insightful questions
• Help your employees see how their behavior directly correlates to the brand they are creating for themselves in the eyes of others
• The Trust Continuum - the level of trust you have with your employees is a critical factor in how you approach your conversation
• Don't get distracted or sucked into the blame game - focus on holding your people accountable for what they own
• When giving feedback related to self-awareness, sometimes it's best meet in person
• There are times when you just need to turn up the heat by having a very direct conversation and set very clear expectations
• There is huge value in reaching out to other managers and leveraging their experience on how you should handle a scenario that you haven't experienced before

In this next Jam Session, I sit with Katherine Stultz, a highly successful business executive with over 20 years of successful leadership experience with roles of increased responsibility. Over the course of her career, Katherine has held a variety of leadership positions, most recently as a General Manager for Spain and Portugal. In this episode we discuss how Katherine navigates moving her team through various new roles, and as leaders, how we can be most helpful in doing so.

• You must invest a significant amount of time in understanding the capabilities and interests of the people on your team
• Be aware of the danger in pushing someone to soon into a role without providing the right guidance and support
• As people evolve and grow during their career so do their needs. No one has it all figured out
• Look beyond the technical competencies when building out your team by also looking at what compliments their other skillsets
• Create an environment that allows a team to have a healthy debate and bring different perspectives instead of creating a yes, yes, environment
• As you move into higher leadership roles within your organization, it's impossible to be the subject matter expert at everything

• The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, by Michael D. Watkins

Not every department in an organization gets to sit on the proverbial pedestal. So, how do we ensure as leaders that our teams are seen as integral components of an organization? In this episode, I sit with Carmine Merlucci, Vice President of Land Development at Toll Brothers, one of the largest land developers in the United States to talk about ensuring his team gets the “spotlight” they deserve. His team gets dusty, dirty, and consistent with the rest of the industry, is considered a cost center. But without them, the rest of the organization can’t move forward.

• How to avoid being viewed as the "death by meetings" department
• The critical skill of presenting, the right information in the right way, to your stakeholders based on their needs and not yours
• Consistently demonstrating to your stakeholders how your team is an important and vital piece of the organizational puzzle
• Setting your people up for success by reviewing their work before they present to your stakeholders without feeling like you’re micromanaging
• Reminding your people how they play an important role to the company's bottom line, even if they are not on the revenue side of the business
• Positioning your team so that when the market starts to go down, your team is the last one standing because your company views them as the “A Team”
• Provide opportunities to stretch their skills by delegating tasks beyond their daily tasks, which ultimately makes them more marketable during a declining market
• Learning from the mistakes of promoting someone too soon or moving them into a role that wasn't aligned to their strengths

A great misperception is that being a leader in the military is very different from the leadership skills required to lead in the private sector. In this episode I talk with Colonel (ret) Chris Valle, currently a Vice President with DNV GL’s Program, Design and Implementation (PDI) business area. We discuss parallels between leadership in the public and private sectors, and why you should consider hiring someone with military leadership experience.

• Core Values of the United States Airforce are just as applicable in any industry:

1. Integrity first
2. Service before self
3. Excellence in all we do

• Don’t be so quick to judge an incoming leader with a military background. It’s not all top/down and authoritarian
• Leadership is industry agnostic whether in the military or the private sector
• Hire the right people, train them in the right way, and trust them to do their job.
• Showing that you care about the people that work for you and you care about the mission that you're doing, embodies loyalty and a commitment to the team and to the principals
• When you take over a new team, try to do nothing for the first 30 days; you’ll want to see how the organization is running before you put your hands in and start tinkering with something that might be working very well
• You have to sell your team on a future vision that everyone understands. You can’t just push it onto people
• Alignment to the vision is just as important as alignment to the tactics, and both need to be integrated into your team. Then your job as a leader is support the team to achieve it
• When it comes to holding teams accountable a Stop Light Chart (time stamp 18:00) can be useful, as it does two things, one of which we don’t often really think about:

1. This tracks how well the team is performing against the most important metrics, and
2. It drives a culture of accountability and trust that allows managers to admit that the areas of yellow and red need more support to move them to green, and that they shouldn’t be penalized for being upfront about it

• My American Journey, by Colin Powell

Many of us have created our own set of principles we use to guide how we lead. In this Jam Session episode, I talk with Mike Kosikas, Director of Talent Development and Operational Excellence for a medical device company, as he shares his own three guiding leadership principles: 1) Quality of Life, 2) Compensation, and 3) Development

• Your employees don’t care about how much you know until they first know how much you care
• As a leader, you can directly impact quality of life - for better or worse
• Frequent check-ins with your team can positively impact their quality of life
• Compensation is closely tied to either building trust or losing trust
• When discussing compensation never get baited into comparisons     
• The toughest part about developing your people is trying to find where opportunity meets desire
• Developing your people involves a huge investment in time, level setting, and providing the path forward with the right resources
• There is more value in being viewed as a collaborator instead of a transactional leader
• Developing your employees involves knocking down barriers so that they can run faster

• On Leadership, by John Wooden 
• It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, 10th Anniversary Edition, by Michael Abrashoff 
• Principles: Life and Work, by Ray Dalio