Randall Stutman – Giving Feedback, Followership, and Admired Leadership (EP.497)

Summary

---

Capital Allocators – Ep. 497: Randall Stutman – Giving Feedback, Followership, and Admired Leadership

Date: April 13, 2026
Host: Ted Seides
Guest: Randall Stutman, Founder of Admired Leadership

---

Episode Overview

This episode features a deep-dive with Randall Stutman, renowned executive coach and founder of Admired Leadership, whose clients range from Wall Street leaders to Olympic athletes. Stutman reveals frameworks for “admired leadership,” shares practical techniques for giving feedback, and explores how great leaders foster followership and behavioral change. He also introduces Alex, an AI-powered coaching tool built from his decades of leadership research.

---

Main Themes and Purpose

• How admired leaders shape both results and followership
• Frameworks and behavioral best practices in giving feedback
• The nuances of power, influence, and resistance in leadership
• Latest leadership trends and the impact of AI on coaching
• The difference between best practices and universal leadership behaviors
• Practical strategies for investment leaders

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Behavioral Approach to Leadership

• Behavioral Best Practice: Stutman’s philosophy centers on observable, repeatable leadership behaviors, rather than abstract traits or “leadership styles.”

  • “Most leaders want to be better, but they don't know how. You have to give them the tools, the specific things to do to make them better.” (07:24)

• Habit Formation: Lasting leadership change comes from practicing a handful of impactful behaviors until they become habitual.

  • “You don't need to change dozens of things, but a handful, mindfully and repeatedly, can have a transformative impact.” (07:59)

---

2. Research Methodology: Uncovering Leadership Behaviors

• Studied Over 3,500 Admired Leaders: Stutman investigates behaviors by interviewing both key leaders and those around them, as people rarely recognize their own most effective behaviors.

  • “The behaviors are baked into the stories told about them.” (09:40)

• Pattern Recognition: He discards “anecdotal genius” until he finds the same behavior in at least 30 other leaders.

  • “I don't make it worth teaching anybody else yet until I can find 30 examples elsewhere by other leaders.” (10:56)

• Artifacts and Data: Email, performance reviews, and presentations add depth to leader ‘jackets’ for behavioral analysis. (09:56–10:19)

---

3. Power Dynamics in Feedback

• Feedback as Power: Framing feedback as a formal act can prompt resistance due to the implicit power dynamic.

  • “When I give you feedback, I call it feedback. The expectation…is you're supposed to take it seriously, you're supposed to yield to it…That power has a consequence. It creates resistance.” (00:19–00:34; 22:53–23:08)

• Lowering Resistance: The same message can be delivered as “advice” or “suggestion,” reducing power and thus defensiveness.

  • “Advice is accept it or reject it…Recommendation or suggestion is lower power—so it produces less resistance.” (24:02–24:16)

• Going Even Lower – Observation: At times, simply stating an objective observation prompts self-reflection without overt judgment or instruction.

  • “Most leaders aren't mature enough to do that because they can't stop from saying what the observation means…Give yourself your own feedback.” (26:21–26:56)

---

4. Embedding Feedback in Questions

• How-Questions: Rather than explicit feedback, embed the critique in a ‘how’ question to bypass resistance and create accountability.

  • “How are you going to upgrade the talent on your team? The feedback is that your team talent needs to be upgraded. But I don't say that. Instead, I simply ask a how question.” (35:45–36:03)
  • “When you study admired leaders, they use them all the time…to reduce resistance and to stop people from arguing with them.” (37:12)

• Echo Questions: Ask open questions that have no immediate answer, allowing the recipient to reflect and generate self-feedback.

  • “That question will echo in your head…You will have given yourself almost all the feedback that I would want.” (38:08–39:05)

---

5. Building Followership

• Relational Closeness vs. High Standards (Counterintuitive Insight): High-performing teams balance demanding standards with leaders’ investment in deep understanding of individuals—not just empathy.

  • “Most people that are high-energy, high-charging, results-based leaders…are incapable of being warm and empathetic…and that's ok. You can understand people more deeply in order to create the same relational closeness.” (42:43–43:36)

• Leader’s Energy and Investment: Admired leaders show “reciprocal loyalty”—followers would follow them anywhere due to genuine investment and care.

  • “People would do anything for them. They feel as if they have a deep connection with them.” (08:59)

---

6. Leadership in the Era of AI

• AI as Supplementary Coach: Introducing “Alex” – an AI trained entirely on Admired Leadership content, offering 24/7 access to Randall’s frameworks.

  • “Alex operates from Anthropics, Claude as a base, but it has no access to the Internet. It only answers from our data… It’s like talking to me.” (18:00–18:36)

• Limits and Human Factors: While Alex offers great breadth and consistency, “it can’t care about you… It’s not going to replace me.” (18:49–19:03)

---

7. Differentiating Best Practices from Universal Behaviors

• Best Practice: Situation- or context-specific techniques (e.g., when and how to time feedback).
• Universal Behaviors: Timeless, always-applicable actions (e.g., using ‘how’ questions).
  • “An admired leadership behavior would have worked 100 years ago… Doesn’t matter who you are, where, or what culture… It’s universal.” (34:34–34:46)

---

8. Practical Tips for Investment Leaders

• Feedback Cadence with High Performers: Don’t defer difficult conversations with “rainmakers” or high performers—maintain ongoing, small-scale, frequent feedback to address behaviors and cultural fit.

  • “You need an ongoing high cadence of feedback on the smallest issues. Over time, what you’ll see is you’ll slowly move people from negative to positive in terms of climate, attitude, and other kinds of affect.” (33:05–33:16)

• Reward Process, Not Just Outcomes: Especially in investment, focus on decision process quality, not just results—since outcomes are often luck-driven.

  • “Celebrate and reward process even when outcomes are not great. The best leaders will do that on purpose.” (54:03–54:26)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Power and Resistance in Feedback:
  • “All power produces that [resistance].” – Randall Stutman (01:00)
  • “Get out of the feedback business and get into the recommendation/suggestion business.” – Randall Stutman (25:27)
• On Building Leadership Habits:
  • “There’s gotta be one opportunity every day… The really good ones…will schedule it.” – Randall Stutman (13:23–13:51)
• On the Power of Self-Feedback:
  • “Internalized feedback is feedback that’s going to get acted on…has a longer term impact.” – Randall Stutman (28:35)
• On Tone:
  • “Tone matters. I think of it as more of a style and approach… it sets a climate.” – Randall Stutman (46:12)
• On AI Coaching:
  • “Talking to Alex is like talking to Randall, except it actually cares what you think.” – Randall Stutman (19:03)
• On Balancing High Standards and Closeness:
  • “You show me a leader…who’s grumpy… I’ll show you somebody that has found the counterintuitive pathway. They’ve learned to create relational closeness without empathy.” (43:34)
• On Time Management for Leaders:
  • “You need to organize yourself more about relationships and conversations than about tasks.” – Randall Stutman (48:34)
• On Personal Mindset:
  • “It’s back to this notion of have to versus get to… I get to write these field notes. I get to coach wonderfully successful people.” (50:59–51:18)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Behavioral Approach & Methodology: 07:21–11:10
• Tom Izzo Example—Relational Closeness: 11:22–12:37
• Forming Habits in Leadership: 13:05–14:40
• Behavioral Change & Choosing Behaviors to Practice: 15:00–15:55
• Trends in Leadership & Impact of AI: 16:07–19:20
• Feedback Power Dynamics: 22:26–24:46
• Lowering Feedback to Observation: 26:11–27:12
• Internalizing Feedback / Third Party Approach: 27:46–29:28
• Giving Feedback to High Performers: 29:46–33:16
• Best Practices vs. Universal Behaviors: 34:23–35:29
• How-Questions in Feedback: 35:39–37:12
• Echo Questions: 38:05–40:38
• Counterintuitive Insight: Relational Closeness Without Empathy: 41:14–44:49
• On Tone and Communication Style: 44:57–46:43
• Building Followership: 46:45–48:10
• Time Management for Leaders: 48:12–50:19
• Advice for Investment CIOs: 52:27–54:26

---

Additional Stories and Personal Reflections

• Golf Coaching Story—Parents’ Influence: (54:55–56:46)
  A golfer excelled only when his parents weren’t present, illustrating self-awareness and external influences.
• Randall’s First Job Story: (57:21–58:11)
  Picking up golf balls, learning not everyone acts with positive intentions.
• Books as Tools, Not Sacred Objects: (59:21–60:19)
  “Don’t treat books as sacred… Mark them up, spend five minutes with them, and if you don’t like them, move on.”
• No Retirement Plan: (61:27–62:12)
  “I am an executive coach. I’m going to be coaching people for the rest of my life.”

---

Leadership Takeaways

• Frame feedback as advice, suggestion, or even pure observation to reduce resistance.
• Use “how” and “echo” questions to internalize feedback and foster change.
• High standards can coexist with relational closeness through deep understanding, not just empathy.
• Rewarding decision processes—not just results—encourages quality risk-taking.
• Focus time on meaningful conversations and relationships over task completion.
• Harness technology (AI) as a supplement for scalable, high-quality coaching.

---

“Get out of the feedback business and into the recommendation/suggestion business. You’ll give feedback more often with a lot less resistance.”
— Randall Stutman (25:27)

---

[For more, visit admiredleadership.com or explore Alex at leadwithalex.com]

---

Transcript

[Randall Stutman]

Why do we call something feedback to begin with?

The reason we do it comes from

a place of power, comes from expertise,

comes from experience, comes from knowledge, comes from legitimate status. In other words, I have the position, the right, the role to give you

information that will improve your performance and or change your behavior.

When I give you feedback, I call it feedback. The expectation that both of us have,

especially that I have as a leader, is you're supposed to take it seriously, you're supposed to yield to it. In other words, at least pretend you're gonna engage this. Why? Because of power. That power has a consequence.

It creates resistance. People naturally become a little bit reluctant, if not totally defensive to things that come at them from power. So if I say to you, listen, you've been late to meetings a lot, team really needs you to be here on time because they wanna hear what

you have to say.

I can say, I have some feedback for you. As soon as I say I have some feedback for you, you may not dig in, but you're going to get a little bit defensive. That's the nature of power.

All power produces that.

Well, what happens if I take the same message but I lower its power? The next piece below Feedback is called advice. I could say the same thing.

I could say, can I offer you some advice? Person says, well, what's your advice?

And say, well, you need to get

to the team meetings on time.

People want to hear your opinion.

My advice is you're missing a big opportunity.

Same message. The only difference is I lowered my power.

[Ted Seides]

I'm Ted Seides and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Randall Stutman, the founder of Admired Leadership and one of the most sought after executive coaches in the world. He's known across Wall street, the hedge fund community, professional sports, the Olympics and the White House entirely by word of mouth. Randall was a past guest on the show six years ago in a rare public appearance, and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Our conversation covers the framework for uncovering the behaviors and best practices of admired leaders and then dives into examples around giving feedback. We also discuss how admired leaders both generate results and develop followership. And a few extra behavioral gems for investment leaders. Last year, Randall launched Alex, an insane AI coaching tool trained solely on his insights. It's effectively an executive coach available 24, 7 for only $300 a year. We use it regularly and always for situations with elevated stakes. Give it a [e-mail] before we get going. It's travel season, partner meetings, board Meetings

the Capital Allocator, CIO Summit Omaha for Berkshire and Milken across planes, trains and automobiles. You're bound to run into a few

snacks when they're unavoidable.

I try to remember Will Guidera's story

of the pilot who lifted everyone's spirits by bringing families into the cockpit.

But it's not always easy. Which leads to my most recent pet peeve. I was on a flight with some unfortunate delays.

We were scheduled to land from a

cross country journey at 11:30pm but got diverted from New York to Philadelphia because of weather at just the wrong time. After a gas and go stop that took about an hour, we finally landed at 3am and at that time there's only a scant crew working at hangars.

So we waited another hour on the tarmac.

None of that was anyone's fault. But after a long flight and equally long day, you can imagine everyone was

ready to go home. All the passengers queued up to depart

one by one in an orderly fashion.

It's actually uncanny how respectful people are when getting off planes.

But there's a moment when it's your

turn to get moving.

And on this particular flight, after eight and a half hours, the person in the row in front of me seemed oblivious to the cadence of the queue. When it was his turn, he arose, seemingly clueless, and forced everyone behind him to wait. Of course, this wasn't just a grab your bag and go, two bags, maybe three come down from above. Then he pauses to put on his jacket, then reorganizes his bags to put a backpack on top of his wheelbag. And then, without as much as Namsorri, he slowly started walking off the plane. Not a single movement in his deplaning occurred until after the person in front

of him had started walking.

So there you have it. My new recent pet peeve. Don't be that person who who isn't ready to deboard a plane when it's your turn.

It's just not that hard.

And thank you for spreading the word about my most recent pet peeve, which

you'll only hear by tuning in to Capital Allocators. Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. Expert calls have always been one of the most powerful ways to build conviction. But today, investors are asked to cover more companies and move faster with leaner teams. With AlphaSense's AI LED expert calls, their Tigus call service team sources experts based on your research criteria and lets the AI interviewer get to work. Then they take it one step further. Your call transcripts flow natively into your AlphaSense experience and become searchable and comparable. So your primary insights plug directly into your earnings diligence and pitchbook workflows with no tool switching. AI for coverage and efficiency, humans for complexity and conviction. Sounds like just the right mix to create a scalable institutional edge without growing headcount. For hedge funds, this means validating thesis assumptions before earnings across dozens of experts instead of a handful. For private equity it means faster pre IOI scans and deeper commercial diligence, and for asset managers it means pulling real operators perspectives straight into models rather than without disconnected tools or manual handoffs. All of this lives inside the AlphaSense

platform, turning raw conversations into comparable auditable insight.

The first to see wins the rest. Follow Learn more@alpha sense.com Capital Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Canoo Allocators. Exposure alternatives has never been higher and most of them will tell you the same thing. Their data hasn't kept up. Chasing documents, extracting performance and reconciling across dozens of funds is a real drag on the people doing serious investment work. Canoe intelligence purpose built AI to fix that problem. Over 500 institutional clients, including 40% of the top US endowments, trust CanU to process more than a million documents a month across 44,000 funds. If your team is still doing this work manually, I strongly recommend you check out [e-mail] Please enjoy my conversation with Randall Stud why don't we start with

a refresher of your coaching philosophy?

[Randall Stutman]

We come at this thing behaviorally best practice, which is fairly rare in the marketplace. My belief is most leaders want to be better, but they don't know how. You have to give them the tools,

the specific things to do to make them better.

The philosophy which is so imbued in everything that we do is that if

I can show you best practice behaviors, especially ones that are tremendously impactful and that you haven't done before, don't know about, never heard before, and then I

can get you to make somewhat of

a habit of them, then it changes things. I don't need to get you to

change dozens of things, but I can

get you to change a handful.

Mindful of behaviors that you engage in

and how you give feedback, how you motivate, how you build relationships, some of

the things you do to create team

that can have an impact. In terms of your leadership trajectory, how

[Ted Seides]

do you go about uncovering what works?

[Randall Stutman]

I have my own methodology in terms of studying leaders. I've studied over 3,500 admired leaders, people that we believe have results and followership at the same time. Most good leaders, iconic leaders, are results based leaders.

That's wonderful.

You have to get results to lead. The really special people are able to get those results and then create followership where people would do anything for them. They feel as if they have a deep connection with them. They feel as if that connection is reciprocally loyal. As a result, they feel differently about themselves and they feel connected in a way that other people don't. Therefore they have staying power. They'll follow those people from job to job, role to role.

They'll do anything for them.

When I find somebody that has those kinds of results and then has followership, we'll normally call that person an admired leader. If you have followership without results, which

is also not uncommon, it doesn't mean you don't have any results, just means

you don't have sustained extraordinary results over time.

We still want to talk to those people and study them.

I have spent time with over 15,000 leaders trying to figure out their leadership, but about 3,500 admired leaders.

When we study them, the first thing we do is we'll interview them. We normally don't learn all that much

when we interview leaders.

Just like a great ballplayer, they don't

know what they do. The good ones.

We'll interview the people around them.

That's where you learn some things.

Generally, the behaviors are baked into the

stories that are told by them and about them.

There's a reason that a certain stories

get told over and over and over again about them.

The hard part is discerning what in

that story actually reflects what they do behaviorally. Then how do you find it past that? That's the hard part.

We look at artifacts, emails, performance reviews, outlines, presentations. I call it creating a jacket for someone. Sometimes I can get a lot of

data, sometimes I don't get as much.

Up until the 1950s, you couldn't get

any behavioral data on anyone. I can't go backwards and study leaders historically very well, but contemporary leaders have lots of things.

They give lots of interviews.

The people around them are usually fairly verbose. If you ask them to describe what this leader does, can get lots of

artifacts, and so we can go deep with the leader.

I have a particular way that I

look at that data, discern certain kinds of things that they do differently. Then once I find something, I need

to find other examples of it in the rest of my data set. In other words, if all of a sudden I study a leader, Ted and I Recognize that they do something very differently. And I go, that's really interesting. It's really cool.

Everything that I know about leadership suggests

that that should be highly effective.

I don't make it worth teaching anybody else yet until I can find 30

examples elsewhere by other leaders.

I couldn't see it until I saw that leader do it. But now once I see it, I can hear it and find it in other leaders. When I find a pattern like that and it's strong enough, then I want

to teach everybody in the whole world about it.

[Ted Seides]

What's an example recently of a story you heard from someone you were studying that gave you that aha moment that you then triangulated and said aha. Here's something I want to share.

[Randall Stutman]

It's NCAA Tournament time right now. It's March Madness. Tom Izzo is a famous Michigan State coach.

He's been to so many Sweet 16s and Elite Eights and Final Fours. What's fascinating is there's a story about

him where he'll show up to his

players dorms and walk with them to class. Not to make sure they get to class or anything like that, just to say, hey, I'm your friend, I want to just talk. If you've got something on your mind, I want to chat about it. I'm just going to show up. I'm here. You don't want to talk about anything. We're just going to walk to class together because we're colleagues. We're in this together. Not many people with his level of

success show up at their athletes dorms

and walk them to class. He does that consistently.

I've recently heard that story.

There's something there. I'm not sure it's magical, but there's something about reducing your status, making yourself every day, being able to create the comfort so that people want to talk to you. Spending the time and the effort showing up at their place rather than them showing up at your place walking with them. And it's amazing, the research about being

side by side and walking with people.

People get much more disclosive when they're actually walking shoulder to shoulder than they

ever are face to face.

There's something about that that's a fun story. It's not a story that I'll probably find anything deep in, but I'm collecting

stories like that all the time.

[Ted Seides]

The concept of taking something that you're convinced is a behavior of admired leaders and sharing it so someone has to practice it. How long does it take for someone to adopt something new they haven't been doing.

[Randall Stutman]

I thought you were going to ask

me how long does it take me to figure out the damn behavior.

Because sometimes I know it's there.

I can't articulate it in a way that I can teach it or that other people can teach it. And that takes some time.

You've got to give it a language.

You have to give vocabulary to that behavior.

Once you give it a vocabulary, if it's the right vocabulary, it makes all

the sense in the world after that

until you can actually harness it. It's not in terms of teaching or creating a habit. There's things that you would do. Number one is you have to keep

this thing in front of you every day.

You have to have some mnemonic device

that reminds you, I don't care if

it's a note card or post it note or a screensaver or lipstick on a mirror, then you have to try it every single day. There's gotta be one opportunity every day in some relationship, hopefully initially, low consequence situation, trusted relationship. You got to do it every day at least once. The really good ones, the people that are trying to create habits, they'll schedule it, they'll go, next Tuesday I'm going to be in this meeting, I'm going

to do that behavior.

The people that are really focused on this will keep a running journal of opportunities taken, missed for themselves. Things I could have done, could have said differently or I like the way I did that and how did I do that? Sometimes keep a journal for other people, like my leader. What opportunities did they miss today? They don't know this behavior, but they're missing it all the time. What would I have said or done differently if I were them? Once you do that for a handful

of weeks, three, four, five, six weeks,

it become a routine, it become a habit, and then it will be yours. You won't have to think about it very much until you get lazy like everybody else. There's lots of habits you and I build, then over time we lose them. I have behaviors that I mastered early in my career that I have found and I realized 10 years later I don't have them anymore. I had to go back and redo them, recreate the habit of them.

But that's how you do it.

It's going to take you two months at the most to build an inculcated behavior.

[Ted Seides]

How do you keep track of the website's hundred, the field notes you write every day? There are so many different behaviors you could be practicing. How does somebody go about deciding, oh, here's my list of behaviors I want to work on.

[Randall Stutman]

The good news and bad news about

admired leadership is it's overwhelming because there's so much of it. What you have to do is pick a behavior that you're gonna work on.

Just one, not 20.

This is 30, 40 years worth of work. If you want it.

The one you should pick is the one that you have passion for. It's the leader you wanna be. You wanna be the kind of leader that does that. Not necessarily just for effect. I talk a lot about technique and not to do things in technique, because if you do them for effect, you won't keep them up. You'll only do them in some situations. You won't get very skillful at them as they don't work on somebody, you'll give them up. You got to pick the behavior that you believe in that represents what you value, that you're passionate about and the kind of leader you want to be. Once you do that, you'll have a commitment to make that real for you over time. I'm giving you more than you could ever chew or digest with the hopes that something's going to grab you by the throat and hold you down until you do it.

That's the key.

[Ted Seides]

Over the last couple of years, what have you observed changing in the experience of the leaders you work with from different environments or different behaviors that you've noticed?

[Randall Stutman]

Leadership is leadership. Most of it doesn't change, of course, the pace of change is nothing we've ever seen before.

There are certain behaviors and things you

have to do to adapt. Not necessarily admired leader behaviors, but there are things that you have to adapt in order to create the urgency and

the speed and deal with the level

of pace that's going on topically.

I would have told you 20 years ago that it was more about style and executive presence than I've ever seen. I would have told you maybe 10

years ago it was about talent selection

and about creating and forging the right team. But I don't see any real one

pattern that matters more than another. Right now I coach something like 60 to 70 people at the same time, and I have for 30 plus years.

Sometimes you'll see a theme that generates, but I don't see any theme other than everybody in the world talks about AI too much. AI, the most overhyped and the most underhyped phenomenon that we've ever seen.

Amazing crazy possibilities and what it does

already, but overhyped in lots of other ways.

Leaders are fixated on it right now and they'll probably be Fixated on for the next few years for sure, if not forever.

[Ted Seides]

There's probably a good opportunity for me to ask you about your application of AI which admired leadership. Alex is the craziest, best coach I've ever experienced. I'd love to hear about your journey in creating Alex.

[Randall Stutman]

Alex is so unbelievable it is hard to make sense of.

First of all, Alex stands for admired leadership excellence.

That's why we call it Alex. Alex, of course, is gender neutral.

Who knew that I was spending 40 years of my life preparing to put

my content into an AI? People ask me for years, why aren't you writing books?

I didn't want to write books.

I wanted to coach people.

I didn't want to be that guy,

that sage on the stage. Now it's turned out to make it

look like I'm a genius because none

of our stuff has ever been out in a real way.

I have hundreds of behaviors and thousands

of best practices that no one has access to. Except now we've taught everything to Alex. Alex operates from anthropics, Claude as a base, but it has no access to the Internet.

It only answers from our data and

we have a couple million words in it. I have a team that is amazing in terms of being able to train it and gauge it with heuristics. Alex will disagree with you, will create context with you. It operates like a real coach.

In many cases you can't tell that

you're not talking to a coach, you're not talking to a live person. Shortly it's going to have voice. It's going to even be spookier.

In essence, it's like talking to me. You might not want to talk to me, but Alex knows everything that I know pretty much and has the subtleties now. Alex can't care about you, doesn't have conviction. It's not going to replace me as a coach or any of the good

coaches in our firm.

It can't work through a multi level problem the way that I can in terms of clarifying, creating, illustrating best practice, allowing people to role play and practice things. It's unbelievably good.

My partner likes to tease me and says talking to Alex is like talking to Randall, except it actually cares about what you think.

And that's probably true. Alex is cool and it only gets better because we're putting more data in it all the time. But it's only our data. I'm very guarded in terms of what I put in there.

It has to be really special and actionable.

It doesn't have Any nonsense in it

or mediocre advice or lists of things. And that's what makes it so special.

[Ted Seides]

As a live example of AI coming into it's clearly a human to human interaction business. How have you thought about how Alex impacts cra myer leadership as a business?

[Randall Stutman]

It makes us stronger. It gives people 24. 7 access to our content and to the way we think about things. At 2 o' clock in the morning,

you can ask Alex a question.

By the way, Alex is entirely confidential. We can't see your questions and answers.

We do a couple of quality checks

randomly, but other than that, it's just like a coach.

It's totally confidential.

I think it makes the coaches better. It certainly enables everybody in our firm

to know our content more thoroughly. It's simply a supplement to you.

In many cases we have certain coaches in our firm who will engage a client and the two of them together

say, let's see what Alex says.

Let's explore that which is fascinating in and of itself. It's not something that I do in my coachings. I don't want to talk to myself, although fascinating. TED A couple weeks ago I argued

with Alex and I've done that many times.

It's an LLM but doesn't think. Here I am arguing with it, going back and forth.

I said to Alex, Alex, talking to you, engaging you is like talking to myself and says, well, Randall, I respectfully disagree.

And I go, why? And says, I know everything from you. I know your content, but I can

pull it together faster than you can.

I can pull things in ways that you don't. I can be original in the things

that I say as well because I'm

blending and synthesizing things just like you would synthesize things. I might surprise you with what I come up with that would represent certainly

be consistent with what you would think,

but would be different. I'm like, who are you?

So scary.

This is where we are now.

Imagine where we're going to be in two or three years from now. It's so very cool.

[Ted Seides]

How do you think about the different

categories of behaviors when you're organizing all of this?

[Randall Stutman]

When you find an admired leadership behavior

or a best practice, in most cases, it's not perfectly identifiable.

Is it a behavior of credibility or

is it a behavior relationship?

Is it a behavior of motivation or

is it behavior of team dynamic? You have to bucket these things in order to make sense of them. There's no perfect bucket.

What we'll do is we normally think

of the functions of leadership.

Good leaders are good at giving feedback. They're good at building teams. They're good at propelling change. They make quality decisions. You can bucket things relative to what

are the topics and functions that leadership serves.

Occasionally, you'll miss a behavior.

Your behavior could probably fit in four or five categories. I can tell you this, Ted. I'm not very special. But what we know is really special,

and we know so much of it. The real thing is to find a place where it will shine in that

particular topical area where it's going to be taken notice. People will take notice of it in that space because it fits the kinds of problems and situations that they confront

when they think of that issue.

[Ted Seides]

I think universally in our industry, people struggle with feedback. Would love to hear your favorite behaviors tied to giving feedback.

[Randall Stutman]

First, one isn't a behavior, it's just a best practice. But it's such a cool best practice. It starts like this. Why do we call something feedback to begin with?

The reason we do it comes from

a place of power, comes from expertise, comes from experience, comes from knowledge, comes from legitimate status.

In other words, I have the position, the right, the role to give you

information that will improve your performance and or change your behavior.

When I give you feedback, I call it feedback. The expectation that both of us have, especially that I have as a leader,

is you're supposed to take it seriously and you're supposed to yield to it.

In other words, at least pretend you're

going to engage this.

Why?

Because of power. That power has a consequence.

It creates resistance. People naturally become a little bit reluctant, if not totally defensive to things that come at them from power. So if I say to you, listen, you've been late to meetings a lot. Team really needs you to be here

on time because they want to hear what you have to say. I can say, I have some feedback for you. As soon as I say, I have

some feedback for you, you may not dig in, but you're going to get a little bit defensive. That's the nature of power.

All power produces that.

Well, what happens if I take the same message but I lower its power? The next piece below feedback is called advice. I could say the same thing.

I could say, can I offer you some advice? Person says, well, what's your advice?

And say, well, you need to get to the team meetings on time. People want to hear your opinion.

My advice is, you're missing a big opportunity.

Same message. The only difference is I lowered my power. And by lowering my power, I've reduced resistance. Why is it we don't call Most feedback advice, because most leaders don't want

you to have a choice. Advice is accept it or reject it.

Truth is, they can accept or reject your feedback too. Let's not pretend too hard that they can't. That's the notion of advice. Let's lower power one more time.

I could actually lower power two or three more times, by the way, but

let's lower power one more time. What do we call it? Recommendation suggestion. Now, what's cool about recommendation suggestion is it's lower power so it produces less resistance and very few people will reject it. Unlike advice, where they hear it as accept or reject, recommendation suggestion is, okay, I'll take it under consideration. Again, they're taking your general feedback under consideration. Instead of saying, have some feedback for

you, or can I offer you some advice?

Say, hey, I have a suggestion. I know very few people that would

go, oh, I don't want your suggestion.

Now all of a sudden, my suggestion is you get to the meetings on time. Same exact message, except I've reduced resistance entirely. What I tell leaders all the time, Ted, is they need to get out of the feedback business and get in the recommendation suggestion business. They're going to be able to give a lot more feedback a lot more often with a lot less resistance and defensiveness just by what they call it, by how they introduce it and frame it. I know very few people that if I said to you, I have some feedback for you, they go, I can't wait to hear your feedback. But if I say, hey, I've been thinking about this. I have a suggestion or recommendation, most people would go, if you have any level of credibility with me at all, what is it? They want it. They don't want your feedback, but they want your recommendations, suggestions. And when you frame things like that, you're somebody that as a leader can offer feedback all the time. You're always offering suggestions, always offering recommendations. Some leaders don't like that because their notion is recommendations. My feedback is stronger than recommendations. The truth is, people can take it that way anyway. They don't have to yield to what

you say because you come from power.

Now, there are times where I only want you to give feedback, performance reviews. Things have gone tremendously off rail. We need to talk about feedback because I need to use my power and authority to convince you of the seriousness, the gravity of this and beseech you to act on it. But that's not the case 99% of the time. Get out of the feedback business. Get in the recommendations suggestion business.

You'll see that it changes everything. So simple.

[Ted Seides]

If you were taking that one level lower, you said that you could lower the status even more than that. How would you do that?

[Randall Stutman]

Lower than that is observation. I don't give them feedback.

I just make an observation.

Most leaders aren't mature enough to do that because they can't stop from them saying and finishing what the observation means with kids, with people that are highly resistant, people very sensitive. Sometimes it only takes an observation. Hey, I saw you do this in the meeting. What does that mean?

I know, just an observation.

Give yourself your own feedback. I'm going to call out, what did I see? What did I observe? What do I think? I noticed that people respond poorly to you when you do this. Well, do you think I should not do that? I don't know.

Just an observation.

Observation is even lower in power because it says I'm not even taking a position. I'm simply going to call things out

the way that I see them.

By calling them out, there's implications. There's a reason that that matters and why I would call that and make that observation.

But I don't discuss it.

People that are good at observation, a

lot of good, spectacular teachers are wonderful at observation.

A lot of great coaches. I've seen some wonderful ski instructors, mountain climbing instructors, pilot instructors, some of them are just wonderful. They just simply throw out observations. You're sitting there going, what does that mean? You're giving yourself your own feedback over

[Ted Seides]

and over again in that 1% of the time where it calls for feedback. What are best practices or behaviors to give the feedback so it can be heard and taken in, knowing that there will be this resistance.

[Randall Stutman]

You always have the option to allow

people to internalize their own feedback.

There's nothing more powerful than I give my feedback to myself rather than you telling me too many leaders depend too much on telling people and delivering feedback

in a more direct way. I'm not saying that that's wrong all

the time, but the power is if I give myself my own feedback rather than say, well, what do you think?

Just ask an open ended question.

How do you think you did? What do you think went well and didn't go well?

You can do that.

What I think is interesting and mired leaders generally do this is they use a third party.

What would your mother say about what you just did?

It's not what I'm saying, it's what your mother would say. It's exactly what I would say too. But I'm going to ask you to answer my question by using a third party. How do you think the customer will

respond when we do this?

How do you think your colleagues took that meeting? What was their conclusion when they walked out of that room today? They're going to give you an answer and that answer is their own feedback. They're going to tell you exactly what you would have said to them directly, except they're going to generate it. It's going to come from them and they're going to go, okay, I got it. And they're going to internalize it. Internalized feedback is feedback that's going to get acted on, remembered, has real duration to it, and has a longer term impact. Anytime I can get you to give yourself your own feedback and using a third party is the easiest way to do it. There's always a user or a customer or a colleague or another parent or a friend.

What do you think they would say?

I don't have the objective view. I don't have the perfect view as

to what they would say.

Whatever you said, you're giving yourself your own feedback.

When you answer the question, that's tremendously

powerful and good leaders do it all the time.

[Ted Seides]

One of the ongoing challenges you see in the investment world is giving feedback to high performers. How have you found admired leaders? Deal with the person who's performing, who might not be fitting the culture the way you want the culture to move forward.

[Randall Stutman]

First of all, independent of admired leadership,

let's think about best practice. When it comes to feedback.

There's two things I'd want you to

think about in terms of that world.

Number one is right after success, right

after mission accomplished, right after tasks have been achieved.

People are much more receptive to feedback. Why?

Because they've just succeeded. They've got an armor to them because of their success, their effectiveness.

They're much more sensitive right after defeat, right after a mistake, right after inaccuracy. Yet that's when leaders want to give feedback. They want to give feedback right when the person doesn't want it, when they're

going to be most resistant to it.

You got to remember there is not a lot of timing issues relative to feedback best practice wise, but that's one of them. Right after success or effectiveness, you can get feedback pretty fast and people will absorb it and take it in and want to deal with it after defeat,

or after mistake after error.

You probably want to give some people some buffer, give them some time to reflect and get them emotionally ready so that they're capable of dealing with that feedback. As a result, too many leaders correct people too fast, too many Leaders deal

with mistakes too quickly.

The whole point of feedback is change behavior and improve performance. It isn't just for you to get

it off your chest and have catharsis. That's a big mistake that most leaders make.

Another big mistake that leaders make. There's a bias that almost everybody has

across the whole world. You have it, I have it, everybody has it.

And that is we're generally more critical of people based on our own strengths.

Whatever it is that we're good at,

we're more critical about other people about it. Yet we know that there's lots of

ways to get to the outcomes. It doesn't have to be our way.

But if you're somebody that's really analytical, you'll be more critical of other people's smarts. If you're somebody that's really organized, you'll be very critical of people that aren't as organized. You're somebody that's creative, you'll be critical of creative. You do this to your kids, you do it to your spouse, you do it to your team. You generally over index and overemphasize the things that you're best at. And that's what you generally get critical of people with. That's something you really gotta fight. You gotta fight the bias to go, I need to be more objective than that. I need to focus on the strengths, weaknesses that they have and the feedback they need, not reflection of me. The question you asked, which I think is fascinating, is I have somebody that has maybe a great performance, but they

have a lousy attitude or in some way they're effective.

It's quite common because people feel bigger

than live in some of these organizations.

The deal is you've got to keep

up a cadence of feedback with those people.

You can't save it up. Because the reason that people don't give

feedback to those people is because they generate those results, because they're dependent on

that outcome, because they don't want to turn those people off.

What would happen if all of a

sudden that person copped an attitude or they got disinfected and they left and went to another fund? So we generally hold it up. Then even when we give it, we're so indirect and we walk such a delicate line. The result of that is people learn the shitty attitude I have, it's okay as long as I perform. We reward all the wrong stuff. The answer is, hey, get in the suggestion feedback business. But in particular, I need an ongoing small issue. Let's talk about the smallest things. I don't have to deal with your attitude generally. Let's talk about how you engage with this person. Let's talk about how you're learning this. Let's talk about how you share that. You need a ongoing high cadence of

feedback on the smallest issues.

Over time, what you'll see is you'll slowly move people from negative to positive in terms of climate, attitude, other kinds of affect.

That's the key.

If I save it up and I never give it to you, I never really deliver the hard message, then I'm rewarding you for all the wrong stuff. I'm going to get more of it. That's how prima donnas become prima donnas.

[Ted Seides]

We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about Ridgeline. Imagine starting your day with reconciliation. Already done. No spreadsheets, no breaks to chase, no duct tape holding systems together. Ridgeline is the first front to back system of record built for investment managers. One platform, one real time dataset. Embedded AI investment firms are replacing a patchwork of isolated and data order management systems, accounting systems, reporting add ons and client tools with this fundamentally new operating model. Automating complex workflows, scaling personalized client experiences and unlocking the full value of AI. If this is the year your firm is ready to modernize operations and harness AI, you can learn more at Ridgeline AI. And now back to the interview

[Randall Stutman]

you

[Ted Seides]

mentioned a couple times. Best practices as distinct from behaviors. What's the difference between the two?

[Randall Stutman]

Best practice is more situational.

It's context specific.

It may not be perfectly timeless or universal. An admired leadership behavior would have worked 100 years ago. Would work in any industry. Doesn't matter about technology. Doesn't matter who you are, where, Iowa,

what cultures we come from.

It's universal in that way. That's what makes them so powerful. That's why I'm trying to find admired

leader behaviors all the time.

Because those are the ones that have

the biggest impact and they're the most powerful in the hands of a crafty leader. Best practices exist all kinds of places.

Like holding your feedback bias at bay.

A best practice like a suggestion instead of feedback itself.

They're contextual. I don't always want to offer suggestion.

I don't always want to offer recommendation.

I do need to think about the context. What do you need to hear? When do you need to hear it?

That's what makes them best practice.

Whereas behaviors apply anytime I can bake them into my style and in the way that I lead, they're never going to get me in trouble. And they're always going to have some level of influence that I want. They're rare.

That's why they're so hard to find.

I've been able to find 500 of them, probably 30 or 40 of them in feedback.

[Ted Seides]

What's an example of one of those admired leader behaviors? In feedback?

[Randall Stutman]

You ask people how questions, just like you ask them what and why and

where questions all the time.

How questions, when they come to feedback, changes things. Let me tell you why. A how question, if it's done and carries feedback, actually embeds the feedback inside the question. When I say to you, ted, how are you going to upgrade the talent on your team? The feedback is that your team talent

needs to be upgraded.

But I don't say that. Instead, I simply ask a how question. The feedback is already embedded in the question itself. No resistance, no conversation. As soon as you start to answer, you subscribe to my feedback. Really sneaky. Now imagine you say, well, Randall, my team's pretty good. I don't need to upgrade the talent. I'm going to make you own it anyway because it's my feedback. So I'm going to say, if we

were to upgrade the talent on your

team, how would we go about it? What would we look for? Because I want to carry that, but I want to carry it without any resistance. So now listen. The most admired leaders don't generally ask how questions, but they ask more how questions than you and I do. When we give feedback, what they really do is they ask a how question, and they collaborate with the other party

to answer the question.

It isn't a gotcha. They say things like, how are you going to repair that relationship with one of your colleagues?

The person says, well, and they go, let's talk about it.

They figure out a strategy, a solution going forward. All the while, instead of sitting down and saying, hey, I need to give you some feedback. You got a rocky relationship with one

of your colleagues, and you go, well,

it's not that rocky. And then we start to argue and get nowhere.

How questions?

They embed feedback inside them. When you study admired leaders, they use them all the time to carry feedback. They carry more feedback with how questions in order to reduce resistance and to stop people from arguing with them and instead engaging them and making them own the feedback. They make people accountable to their feedback instantaneously by using a how question instead. We went back in time and we studied great leaders in the history of the universe, male and female culture to culture. We'd find a lot more out questions than you Think because instinctively, intuitively, or just that they learned it, they've learned that resistance is their enemy with feedback, defensiveness is their enemy. And feedback, arguing over the reality of the facts. And that's happened in the past. Enemy of change. How do I get past all that? Ask my feedback.

Let it get carried with a.

[Ted Seides]

How about one more?

[Randall Stutman]

There's something that I call an echo question.

An echo question is a question that

I would ask that has no right answer. It's not a rhetorical question, but I

want you to think about it and

I'm going to think about it.

I say to you, you're up for promotion this year. There's pluses and there's minuses. There's people that will advocate for you and people that probably would want other

people to be promoted over you.

I want you to think about the reasons that you have for being promoted and the things that are in your way. You think about it. I'll think about it.

Let's talk next week about it.

In that week that transpires, that question will echo in your head. You'll first think, why did Randall ask me that? Second thing is, what's my answer? Third thing is, what's his answer? You will eventually land so that when we sit down and talk about it, you will have given yourself almost all the feedback that I would want. You'll say, well, here are the pluses and here are the minuses. And I can see any gap between how you see it and I see it. It's so fascinating because you prepared yourself with my feedback and I never gave you any. Yet you're already half the way there, maybe all the way there. When you study admired leaders, they always

have an echo question going on with somebody about something.

I don't mean that they're asking the same person over and over again an echo question, but they're always asking people, hey, you think about this. I'm going to think about this question. Let's explore our answers. If it's going to create anxiety, they might talk about that afternoon. They don't let people be anxious all weekend. What they'll do is they'll say, what's the feedback that you really need? Is there an echo question that I might be able to get you thinking about it? Criteria, success, rewards, punishments, promotions, hiring, selection, people's reactions and response to you, all ripe for echo questions. Echo questions are really cool. Imagine sitting down with your child and saying, hey, I want to talk about how things are going on your team, how the coaches are thinking of you in Terms of your skill and your attitude, as well as your friends and your teammates are engaging. Or I want you to think about what are your big assets, what are the things that you're really bringing to this team and what are the things that you could work on. I haven't thought about it completely. I want you to think about.

Let's talk about tomorrow now.

First thing that'll happen is your son, daughter, colleague, teammate will go, let's talk about it right now. You go, no, I want to think about it. I don't have clarity yet. What you don't say out loud is I want this question to echo. Okay? I need it to echo in your head. By the time we show up and talk about it tomorrow, you'll have generated all kinds of thoughts and energy and activity and you'll have your own feedback, most of which I'll agree with. Occasionally I need to push something and then whatever I push will be directly

the gap between how you see it and how I see it.

So cool. Echo questions unknown of in the literature. Very common with admired leaders and feedback.

[Ted Seides]

Every time you mention a behavior or best practice, it feels totally intuitive. I'm curious if there are behaviors or best practices that you found that are counterintuitive.

[Randall Stutman]

Oh, there's quite a few counterintuitive behaviors. Lots of them.

Once we articulate them, most of them are pretty obvious. You've been around HAL questions your whole life carrying feedback with them. That's a wholly different thing now that

I've said to you that how questions embed feedback inside them makes perfect sense.

It's a fact there are some behaviors

that are somewhat counterintuitive.

Let me give you one. When you think about high performing teams,

they operate differently in terms of the relationship with the leader.

There's an old idea around matrix, a

two by two grid that says the

relationship I have with my leader is

about my relational closeness With a leader. How close am I?

Do they know me? Do they care about me?

Do they understand me?

At the top of that matrix is

the notion of expectation. Standard focus on details.

Most high results.

Leaders are more focused on standards than they are focused on relational closeness.

But we know that high performing teams require both. The highest performing teams are the ones where the leaders have really high standards, really high expectations, unusual focus on certain kinds of details and people feel relational closeness. Problem is, most of the people that are really high standard leaders don't like

to be relationally close.

They're not warm and fuzzy people. They're not very empathetic people that Are empathetic, generally don't have high standards. They generally don't have the attention to details, which is why so many teams underperform or get inconsistent or the team members get defensive. Over time they'll get defensive because the leader has high expectations. But they won't have relational closeness. They won't feel as if they're cared about. Then the opposite occurs. I know my leader cares about me, but they don't stand for much. They don't push me hard, they don't challenge me. You would think that the normal pathway is I got to teach people how to be more empathetic, warm and fuzzy. But my experience is most people that are high energy, high charging results based leaders, they're incapable of being warm and empathetic and fuzzy. But there's a different pathway that is you can understand people more deeply in order to create the same relational closeness. I can invest in understanding the experiences that have made you up as a human being.

Has got you to be where I

can understand your judgments, your decisions, the quality of your decisions over time. I can understand geographically what's important to you, where do you find solace, where do you vacation. I can understand what bothers you, what makes you happy. I can understand your talents and skills. I can understand your passions, I can understand your kids passions. I can invest in you. You show me a leader that you think has got fabulous team results and you say this person's grumpy. This person is not anything warm and fuzzy. I'll show you somebody that has found the counterintuitive pathway. They've learned to create relational closeness without empathy. They've learned to create it without being warm and fuzzy and giving people a

lot of couch time.

What they've done is they've invest deeply in those people and understanding them. They keep notes and they continually build a book of understanding about those people. Those people say that person is invested in understanding me. They get me. I feel relationally close. They can have as high standards as they want. That's counterintuitive to me. I would have never imagined that you show me a coach like Bill Belichick or Nick Saban or Pat Summitt. These people with high expectation. You go, these are not warm and friendly people. I will show you every time. Nick same had invested tremendously in terms of understanding.

Talked to every coach that you ever

played for, if you played for him, looked at every piece of game film, knew physically everything about you. Could tell you the width of your palm. Wow, you're going to invest in me like that? You care about me in a different way. Belichick, famous for knowing your kids, the sports your kids play, the positions of the sports your kids play. And he goes out of his way

to talk to those coaches that coach your kids.

This guy cares about me even though he's a grumpy guy. Every high performing team leader has a

combination of those two things.

How do they create relational closeness? How do they have high expectations and standards? It's not intuitive.

But there's a second pathway to relational closeness that's not intuitive to me, and

that is deep understanding on the margin.

[Ted Seides]

How important is tone?

[Randall Stutman]

Tone is style, and style is the

way that you express yourself, and you

can express yourself positively or negatively. We generally overemphasize athletic coaches because it's something we all know and they're out

there in the marketplace.

They don't have a lot in common

with most corporate leaders.

We don't give fiery halftime talks. We can't kick people off our team instantaneously. Bring somebody new in. We don't have two hour games. There's so many things. Most athletic coaches can have a bigger range of tone and style than you and I can.

As team leaders.

We need to have a more positive. It doesn't have to be warm, but more engaging, more validating style to the way that we engage people. You can have a fairly negative style without recognizing it. Example. Where do you start when you start talking with people? Do you start on the negative? You start on the positive. That's a trained thing, by the way. You weren't born that way. Most smart people start on the negative because it's a differentiator, because it illustrates differentiation and distinction as well as it illustrates, at least in most people's mind, that you understand something at a deeper level. What you normally do is go right to the negative, but there's not an optimism in that. Have you trained yourself to start positive or do you start yourself on the negative? What you're gonna find is, that's a tone.

It sets a tone. It sets a climate.

Most leaders don't realize that that's the case. They don't realize they're doing it. When they start giving feedback, they immediately

go for the criticism.

And then they go, oh, I feel bad about this. And then they end with some weak, throwaway positive where people that have a better tone will say, I need to emphasize the positive, not just to make you feel better, but, but just to be objective and to set the right tone so you're ready to hear my negative feedback. Tone matters. I Think of it as more of a style and approach.

It's got affect. It's either positive or negative, and I

can get there in lots of different ways.

[Ted Seides]

I want to circle back to something you started talking about at the beginning, which is followership. You hear about that word and it creates energy. It's exciting to the thought of a leader that you just want to follow anywhere. How have you gone about teasing out what creates that followership?

[Randall Stutman]

It's mostly a function of the way

you motivate and inspire people and build relationships. If I find a followership leader that

doesn't have results, I can still learn

a lot of stuff from them. Not as much as I would from an admired leader, but pretty cool.

When I talk to people around you,

who you lead, how do they feel about your relationship?

Do they feel as if you're adding value to them? Do they feel. If there's a high frequency of contact, do they feel that the investment you're making is significant? Do they feel that you're making them better and challenging them in that way? High talent wants that.

The relationship piece is a big deal relative to followership, but so is motivation, inspiration.

Do I want you to succeed? Am I showing you that I'm rooting for your success? Would I do anything for you to succeed? Or do I put hurdles up in front of you to make you earn my trust, earn my respect, earn my desire? Followership is more an orientation that we have toward people. Good followership leaders tend to be high fans of other people. They tend to be relationally close to other people, but in particular, they tend to invest in other people in a multitude of ways. And that builds a sense of loyalty and a connection that they get to

enjoy the benefits or the fruits of.

[Ted Seides]

When a leader's tasked with whatever the objective is of the company they're running, investment firm they're running, and you have all these other things to be relationally close to the people to create that followership. All the ways of giving feedback. How do people go about managing their time?

[Randall Stutman]

Leadership takes a lot of time if you're going to be any good at it. I'd argue that you need to organize

yourself more about relationships and conversations than about tasks.

That too many leaders think about tasks. And by the way, that's a perfectly acceptable. Majority of the world does that. But if you're going to be good at this leadership thing, you need to organize yourself around.

What are the conversations I want to have today?

What are the relationships I want to

touch and engage today?

That's going to have more impact for you than anything else. Time is always going to be a

problem because that takes time away from

getting things done, but so does a

lot of other things.

For example, some people are so over scheduled they've never had unstructured time to think freely and let decisions and strategy and other things bake. They make poor quality decisions as a result. That's a function of time too. We can think we're wasting time when I'm choosing to walk to the office, when in fact instead I'm choosing to walk and think about my decisions walking to the office without an interruption, doing some deep work around that decision. Time for you and me is always the challenge.

How do we spend it?

It isn't that I don't have enough of it or I have too much

of it, it's how do I spend it?

When I think about time and I

think about coaching leaders is I don't care what you value, but is there

a time value congruency? If you tell me your family's important, I want to be able to look at your field of time and how you spend it and know that you're spending a good portion of your time with your family. Because if you're not, then that value is nonsense. Good leaders have time value congruence. They schedule their priorities rather than let

their priorities schedule them.

You raise the ultimate problem which we

all face, which is we have to

decide how we spend our time and there's nobody that's telling us it's perfectly right and we're going to see short and long term benefits or effects of those choices. We can be really bad at them or really good at them. A lot of things that look like they're productive and effective right now are

probably bad choices at times.

[Ted Seides]

As you've thought about scaling your time from being private with your clients for many years to six years ago when we talked you were launching admiredleadership.com and started writing field notes. What's been the impact of those first two initiatives?

[Randall Stutman]

I do nothing but sit around and write every day. It's crazy. It's no simple task writing even a

short little email every day that hopefully

is articulate and make sense, especially as a best practice. I spend an enormous amount of my time writing now where I never did before. I spent most of my time talking before. I'm writing every day, which makes it

easier because you get more fluid.

I've had a couple of days where I go oh crap, I get no

field note for tomorrow and I'm not

in the mood but that doesn't happen very often. It's back to this notion of have to versus get to. I constantly remind myself I get to write these field notes. I get to have hundreds of thousands of people read my stuff. I get to coach wonderfully successful people,

people that need me to get to

the next spot where they're trying to get to. I get to do those things. I don't have to. I'm still fairly private. This is the first podcast I've given in five, six years.

I gave a bunch when we first

started doing all this because I had to. I'm really a big fan of yours, so I'm happy to do this one, but it's not something I'm lining up to do.

I spend most of my time coaching

and talking to my clients perspective as well as real and talking to people. Because I have literally hundreds of people that are former clients of mine that

I worked with for years. There's no reason for me to maintain

the same level of cadence.

But they still call me looking for

a sounding board and advice and counsel. So I'm constantly engaged.

I'm probably busier now than I've ever been.

[Ted Seides]

How's the uptake been on the website?

[Randall Stutman]

Really good. Both Fieldnote Readership Alex Accept Alex Use our base [e-mail] and that platform, that playbook that's in there with behaviors, all of it continues to grow and expand

and all go organically. We chug along with revenue to continually invest in growing the place.

And it's been growing very nicely and has since inception 40 years ago.

[Ted Seides]

If you were giving advice to a chief investment officer head of an investment firm about one behavior you think they should consciously practice over the next couple weeks. Curious what comes to top of your mind?

[Randall Stutman]

When I think of a chief investment

officer, I immediately think of decision making. I think of somebody that's making critical decisions over and over and over again.

If there's one thing that I would

want a chief investment officer to do is to separate decision process from decision outcome. Those are different things. You don't control the outcome perfectly.

In many cases you don't control the outcome much at all.

You always control the process.

The idea of being able to make

for a great process, knowing the difference

between one and two way decisions, that

is one way decisions that can't revoke that easily going to cost a lot

of money or time and energy.

Two way decisions.

I can revoke debt if I need to.

I need different processes for those things

in order to create a robust and

Vigorous process for those one way decisions especially. Here's the key to reward the process, not the outcome.

We get to lots of investment outcomes by luck Beshear market things that happen that we had no control over. And you celebrate and you go, what are you celebrating?

Because we celebrate luck.

We don't say that we're celebrating skill. We wouldn't have even thought of it. But that's not the case. Start celebrating decision processes that are great,

processes that produce better bad outcomes.

What you're going to find is you make for people willing to take more risk, willing to invest their time and energy, hone in and be specific with the process. Long term, they will make better quality decisions. Why?

Because you're focused on the quality of the process. The outcomes are what they are.

Good leaders always celebrate and reward process even when outcomes are not great. The best leaders will do that on purpose. They will go out of their way to say a wonderful process. Everybody around the room will be scratching your head going, but it didn't turn out well. And you go, you bet. But if we did it 10 more times, it would turn out great.

Eight times.

That's something we don't control.

We control this all the time.

Figure out your decision process, especially when we decisions codify it and make it consistent and reward and celebrate anybody that does it with rigor that will create

better long term decisions throughout your whole

[Ted Seides]

organization in the work you do outside of investing in sports, coaching, other businesses. We'd love to hear your favorite story of something that might not cross over at all. Just something that's come up that you find yourself repeating over and over.

[Randall Stutman]

I coach college golf teams and college golfers for fun. I played in college and I get back to the game and I wish I could still play at a high level, but I can't. I love working with the kids that want to work on the mental side of things. I don't mess with anybody's swings.

You know, it never occurred to me

the impact that parents have on these kids. Because my parents were divorced from my playing, they didn't watch me or anything else I developed on my own. But some of these parents are so vested in their kids. One of my favorite stories is I have one of the teams I worked with and one of the players is what I call a social performer. And particularly for his parents. His parents follow him on every hole. If he makes a bird, he looks at his dad, looks at his mom, smiles. You can't play high level golf that way. You gotta play for yourself. You can't Be distracted like that. You can't be a social performer. Otherwise, you soon you start with excuses and all kinds of weird stuff.

He's quite good. Even though he does that, he's as

good as he's gonna get like that. Turns out that team goes to Hawaii on a tournament, and because it travels, snafus and everything else, parents can't go. It's the best tournament he ever plays, the best rounds he's ever had.

Because his parents aren't there, he's able

to create the hyper focus that he needs. The coach is thinking, wow, this is amazing. So he sits down, he talks to the parents, and he says, hey, your son performed unbelievably. He didn't have you there. He wasn't looking for your approval or anything else. He said, we know. We can't believe we missed his best tournament. We're never going to miss another one. We'll never, ever miss another one.

They totally missed it.

They showed up every time after that. And he went right back to where he was. It's funny how those things work. Sometimes people just don't get it. That's such a fun story for me because I always wonder, what am I not getting?

Where am I showing up? Where I go? You bet. And I'm going to double down.

I should not just be doubling down. I should actually be removing myself from the situation. So that's a fun one for me.

[Ted Seides]

Randall, I want to ask you a couple of fun closing questions. Before we get to the closing questions,

I want to tell you about one of our strategic investments. We've made a few, and each are working on a product or service we

think will be valuable to our community.

One is Oldwell Labs or owl. OWL is the very best software I've seen for allocators to find and track managers. And I've seen a lot of them.

Trust me, it'll be worth the look. There's a link in the show notes

so you can learn more.

And here are those closing questions. What was your first paid job and what'd you learn from it?

[Randall Stutman]

My first paid job, I picked up golf balls on a driving range. I have to tell you this story because this driving range, they had a golf club that had been sawed off

at the bottom and they had nailed

on it a tomato paste can. You could scoop up a ball, put

it in the can, then put it in a basket.

I'd carry around this basket, and when I filled up all the basket, I'd go in and dump it, and then

I'd go out Again.

And I got paid some small shekels to go out and collect these. What was so fascinating about that was

I wore a big board on my

back because people could hit you with

a golf ball out in the range.

It was a very popular place.

Of course, you first realized that people would aim for you.

They would actually go after you.

Every once in a while, somebody would hit me in the wrong spot, right

at the top of my back.

It would be forceful enough.

If you were out 200 yards, it

would knock you over. It was the first time in my life, Ted, I realized some people want

to hurt you for fun.

That never occurred to me before. I was always innocent. I was never fully trusting. When I learned that people will hurt you for fun, that changed my entire view of people and relationships. And they really do, because you're de. Individuated. They don't know you're not a face.

You're just out there with the board on your back.

But, man, some of them are really good. They would hit me a lot.

[Ted Seides]

What's one thing most people don't know about you that you find interesting?

[Randall Stutman]

I'm not sure I'm that interesting.

I am a first responder.

I once was a part of Mount

Rescue in southern Utah, where I spent a lot of time. If somebody got really lost and they

couldn't find them, they would ask us

to go out on our horses and go find them. So I'm well trained in first aid. I'm well trained in wilderness survival. Most people would never recognize that. But actually, you know what?

I got a different one for you.

Here's something you don't know.

My undergraduate degree is in forest biology.

I was a student of dendrology, mostly of silviculture. And that's how trees grow. Dendrology is the notion of identification of trees. You walk around with me any place, I tell you what every freaking tree is, and that always blows people's mind. They're like, what?

[Ted Seides]

What's the best advice you've ever received?

[Randall Stutman]

One of the most impactful pieces of

advice that I've ever gotten is not to treat books as sacred.

By that I mean write in them. You don't have to read them, you don't have to finish them. You can start another one. Spend time with books. Spend time with articles.

Spend time with.

Rather than feel guilty. I was that person where if I started a book, it'd sit on my nightstand and it'd be like, well, I didn't really get into that, but I gotta finish it. I can't start another one. I had somebody that said, don't take

yourself so seriously and don't take books so seriously.

There's something to be learned. Spend a little time. There are conversation right in the margins. You're not gonna be that famous. No one's gonna ask you for your library collection and look at all your notes, argue with them, mark them up, spend five minutes with them, and if you don't like them, then put them on the shelf and then spend time with them again. That changed a lot of things. I can consume a lot of information, a lot of writing, and a lot of reading that way. Where too many people treat reading as something they have to complete and something that represents them in some physical way.

I treat books like they're candy.

[Ted Seides]

How's your life turned out differently from how you expected it to?

[Randall Stutman]

Oh, my gosh, my life is so different than I expected it to be.

I expected to play professional golf at a high level, and if I hadn't

gotten hurt, who knows? I was damn good putter. I was decent in everything else.

But once you lose a sports dream,

you have to find something else. I happen to be interested in organizational influence, persuasion. I started studying that, and it turned out great. I went from teacher to coach.

At one point, our firm got big enough where I had to stop teaching,

and I was a professor for a long time in that process. That was an identity shift.

Now when I look back, I go,

it all worked out perfectly.

Who knew I was preparing to create Alex, an AI coach? Who knew I was preparing myself to write a field note every day, but

very different than I ever thought it was going to be. Getting hurt was the best blessing of my life.

Had I stayed, I probably wouldn't have been that good. If I had made it, I wouldn't

have had as good of impact or wouldn't be able to influence people's lives the way that I do now?

It turned out really well, but, gosh,

very different than I thought.

[Ted Seides]

All right, Randall, last one. If the next five years are a chapter in your life, what's that chapter about?

[Randall Stutman]

It's the same chapter.

Nothing's changing for me. I have a lot of people that

say, you're going to retire. I always say, Frank Sinatra, did he hum for a couple of years and

then he stopped singing. And by the way, the answer to that is he never stopped singing. You know why?

Because he was a singer.

I am an executive coach.

I'm going to be coaching people for the rest of my life.

I'll be coaching people probably at the

last breath of my life. Just like I'm guessing Frank Sinatra was thinking about a song he wanted to sing.

It's who I've made myself to be.

I don't have a next chapter. Do I think I'll travel some more? Maybe. Will I write some things I haven't written yet? Maybe. In essence, it's one continual chapter I'm

trying to get better.

The gap between who I am and

who I need to be is always bigger than I want it to be. At the end of the day, I'm

going to do more of the same stuff, and I expect the next chapter will be the same. There's not enough good leaders in the world, so I'm about spreading the message. Everybody needs to do better.

Be the leader that other people need them to be. If we touch one or two people,

as far as that goes, then this is all worth it.

[Ted Seides]

Randall so appreciate you sharing your wisdom and always enjoy it.

[Randall Stutman]

Oh, that's great. You're doing great at this stuff. I always enjoyed listening and I appreciate

you taking the time and talking to me.

[Ted Seides]

Great. Thanks.

[Randall Stutman]

Thank you.

[Ted Seides]

Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, hop on our [e-mail] where you can access past shows, join our mailing list and sign up for premium content. Have a good one and see you next time.

[Podcast Disclaimer]

All opinions expressed by TED and Podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Capital Allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Capital Allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions in securities discussed on this podcast.