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Chief Change Officer™
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
00:26:13
Kevin Eikenberry didn’t learn leadership from textbooks—he learned it feeding hogs twice a day on a Michigan farm. In this two-part series, the founder of the Kevin Eikenberry Group and author of Flexible Leadership reflects on how early lessons in systems, discipline, and accountability prepared him for three decades of coaching leaders worldwide.
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- [00:00]
Vince Chen
With the American Express Platinum card, you can unlock over $1,500 in value annually with statement credits on select purchases and other benefits. So you can access more jet setting and more resetting and downward dog. Learn more@americanexpress.com US Explore Platinum Terms Apply hi everyone. Welcome to our show. Chief Change Officer, I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change, progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Kevin Agamerray didn't take the usual road into leadership. He started on a farm in Michigan, feeding hogs, hauling fertilizer and learning the basics of discipline and responsibility before he ever set foot in a corporate office. Today he's the founder of of the Kevin Akenberry Group and one of the top leadership thinkers in the U.S. he is the author of Remarkable Leadership From Bot to Boss, the Long Distance Leader, the Long Distance Teammate, the Long Distance Team and his newest book, Flexible Leadership. In this two part series we talk about flexible leadership, why rigid styles backfire, how human nature stays the same even when the technology and the tools change, and what it really takes to lead when the old playbooks don't fit anymore. Let's jump right in.
- [02:20]
Kevin Akenberry
Vince. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
- [02:23]
Vince Chen
I feel like I'm catching up with an old friend. I've heard your name many, many times from your colleague Wayne Turnmill, who joined me last year to talk about revoke leadership. Today we are taking a different angle, which is Flexible Leadership. That is the title of your latest book. I've got plenty of questions about flexibility, about being a flexer and what all that really means in the workplace. But before we get into the book, I want to start with you. You're not just the author of this work and many books. You've taught leadership for over 30 years, yet you studied agriculture originally. So what really interests me is how you've led your own life, your own career journey. That's leadership too, right? And I think it's just as meaningful. So let's begin there. Tell us a bit about yourself, who you are, how your journey started, and then we'll dig deeper into your story and book as we go.
- [03:40]
Kevin Akenberry
I have been, I've been leading others for a long time, helping others learn how to be more effective leaders for a long time. But something that people may not know or unless they come to know me over time is that I grew up on a farm. And it has actually has a huge impact on who I am because it, it helped me understand a lot of things about Cause and effect. It helped me understand a lot about business. It helped me because I had the chance to be not that much younger than my parents, really grow up with them. And my dad had me very involved with stuff at a much younger age than most would have the chance to be. So my kidhood, especially having it be on a farm and in a farm business, that's had a huge impact on my. Who I am.
- [04:22]
Vince Chen
What kind of farm was it? If you don't mind sharing a bit about those early childhood memories.
- [04:29]
Kevin Akenberry
We don't have the time for all the memories, but I will tell you that, yeah, it was. We had cash crops of a variety, a variety of them over the years and we raised hogs. One of the things that I think that you learn if you raise livestock is that you might have a lot of things going on and you might on farm and certain seasons there's a tremendous amount of activity and work and things that have to be done on a timely basis. But you never, you can't ever forget the most important thing, which is you have to tend the animals. You have to feed them, in our case, twice a day. And I think I learned a really important lesson early about being clear about priorities, that there can be a lot of things that you need to be doing and that are super important to be doing, but some things that must override them all because if you mess that up, everything else will fall away.
- [05:19]
Vince Chen
Is that why you chose to study agriculture in college? Were you dreaming of running a farm after graduation, at least back then?
- [05:31]
Kevin Akenberry
Yeah. There's no question that my farm background led me to me, led to me studying agriculture at Purdue. And there was a time when I thought that I might be. Go back home and be involved in not just our farming operation, but a related agricultural business. The world didn't work out that way, and that's fine. But yes, there was no question that when I left for Purdue, that was a big part of the plan. And people have often asked, how do you get to doing what you're doing now? Kevin, when what you started out studying was agriculture, and I said I went to school to learn about systems, biological and mechanical systems, and now what I work on are human systems. And so I don't think it's actually, I think my degree and my time at Purdue served me extremely well in a variety of ways, including in the classroom, even though people might not necessarily make that tie immediately.
- [06:23]
Vince Chen
You didn't pursue every culture as a career, despite your degree and upbringing. But at a young age, you also hadn't yet stepped into leadership training or coaching. So what was driving you then as you were building your early career, you actually started in sales and marketing. What's the story behind that?
- [06:50]
Kevin Akenberry
Yeah, so I actually was still in agriculture and I was in sales and marketing in the fertilizer business. And while I was at Chevron, sort of a very large organization in that part of the business doing sales and marketing, I found myself with opportunities, I was asked to and took opportunities to do some training of customers for customers, sales training for customers. And as is often the case in organizations, once you do something and you do it well, ish, you might get other chances to do it, especially if you raise your hand. And so that sort of happened and I started finding myself getting the chance to facilitate things and to be involved in training. And so I moved myself in the direction of that to get myself into the training and development group at Chevron, took some coursework, some master's coursework in adult learning and that sort of stuff. And it's during that time like I went to work for Chevron without the intent of being there forever. My goal was to start a company. Of course, that is what I ended up doing. And what I discovered over that several years was that doing the work of training and speaking and developing others was really what I was put on the planet to do. And so after about eight years in corporate America, I left to start my company.
- [08:09]
Vince Chen
You mentioned earlier how you raised animals and livestock to meet market need. Now with people is a completely different system, much more complex when it comes to psychology, politics and behavior. We'll dive into that later when we talk about your book. But thinking back to your early career, you eventually built your own leadership practice and now 30 years later, you've had huge success, multiple books, trainings and a strong relationship reputation. Your dream came true. But if you think back to the beginning, how did you land your very first client? Entrepreneurship is never easy, especially in leadership training where there's a lot of competition. I'm curious about those early days. How did you get started?
- [09:14]
Kevin Akenberry
I would say no one should do it the way I did it because I didn't do it well. I first of all, when I started a long time ago, there weren't near as many you that whole genre of coach that didn't really exist. But there were certainly plenty of people that had gone out to, to do the kinds of things that I was doing. The, the first clients were all internal Chevron clients. So I left the company and I was working at the corporate level and I was doing A number of projects for other parts, operating units, business units in the organization. And when I let them know that I was leaving, they asked me what I was doing, I told them what I was going to do and they said we don't really want your replacement, we really want you. And so I actually left with a bunch of work which was great in the short term but wasn't necessarily great in the long term because got me first of all, it made the exit very easy in reality, but it postponed my need to really think about how do I market myself beyond those clients. And, and that's, I think, something that I've advised many folks over the years since that you, you can't just do the work. You want to just do the work because that's why you started to do it. But you can't just do the work because if you're not always marketing, you're going to have these, you're going to have these cycles where you've got a lot of work and no work, a lot of work, no work, and you really don't want that. You want something a lot more consistent and a lot more sustainable. So that, that was a life lesson, a business lesson that I suppose I knew back here, but that I learned much later than I might have learned when you first start, like many do. Yeah, we certainly had cycles and it was always my goal to get people to the point where they didn't need us. In other words, to work ourselves out of a job that we were then doing the work we were supposed to be doing if we were getting to the point where we weren't necessarily needed. And that's been sort of one of our core competencies in kind of our core beliefs is that we want to people to become self sufficient and not to simply rely on us for the long haul, which strategically has led to times where like how do I, how do we get a new piece of business somewhere else in that company or whatever. But fundamentally the approach of we want to develop you to the point where you don't need to rely on us as a crutch or in any sort of way has always been our approach.
- [11:37]
Vince Chen
Let's move on to your book Flexible Leadership. Last year your colleague Wayne Turnel talked with me about remote leadership. And for all these reasons the timing made sense. Although as he explained, much of that work was actually developed even before COVID and he couldn't have predicted how relevant it would become. Now. Today you are focusing on flexible leadership. Is this book a second or third evolution of something you've developed earlier. Can you walk us through the story behind this book, why now and how it came to life?
- [12:26]
Kevin Akenberry
Sure. First of all, to stay on the marketing mode for just for a second. You're right. One of the best things that you can do. I've often said the best business card in the world is a book that's got your name on it. It doesn't necessarily mean you're smart, but it means people think you are. It's a part of our business strategy and for me as a thought leader to be writing and I write probably equivalent of a couple of books a year just on our blog and for other people. But yes, there was the need for me to write a business reason to write another book, but that was. That doesn't answer the question about this book and necessarily why this book at this time. It isn't necessarily. In some ways it's a culmination of everything I've written to this point, and yet it's not a sequel, it's not directly connected to anything I've written before. And in fact, I think it has some ideas in it that no one has quite elucidated in the way that I've done. And so I'm super excited about this book. I believe Vince is the best work I've done and I think hopefully can be the most impactful work I've done.
- [13:25]
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- [14:00]
Kevin Akenberry
Is the best work I've done and I think hopefully can be the most impactful work I've done because, you know, the subtitle of the book says navigate uncertainty and lead with confidence. And certainly we're in a world that's more uncertain than ever. And so it's super important for us to think about that and acknowledge that. And if the world is changing and uncertain, that means that we likely need to do something different as those things change. And I'm trying to give people a playbook to think a little bit differently about what they need to do to lead in and through that Uncertainty.
- [14:38]
Vince Chen
When you are getting ready to publish a new book, do you focus more on creating something evergreen or do you sometimes take a more opportunistic approach based on current trends? For example, right now everyone is talking about AI, but given how quickly AI technology evolves, writing a book about it might not be the smartest long term move. If someone publishes a book about AI today, it might feel tiny, but could quickly become outdated. On the other hand, your work on leadership, change and uncertainty, those are much more evergreen themes. So when you plan for a new book, do you think more in terms of, hey, this is my vision for the next three to five years, this is what my clients and audience need to be ready for, or do you sometimes let the urgency of the moment guide you?
- [15:50]
Kevin Akenberry
So that's a really good question. I think if you go back and you look at the fact that we wrote the Long distance leader in 2018, you'd say they were really smart because they didn't know. Here comes Covid. And yet we wrote that. We wrote that on because we knew that the trend of more people working away from each other more of the time was real. And we wrote it because we had a bunch of experience in helping clients with those things we want to write. I want to write from things that we know work. We have relevant experience working with clients on. And as a business owner and leader myself, I'm always trying to make sure that what I'm sharing is relevant and is based on what I'm trying to accomplish myself as well. Our approach has always we're thinking about what we think the trends might be. And so after the Long Distance Leader came a couple other books in a series about long distance that was, maybe you could say, at some level opportunistic. And yet we felt like it had a level of evergreen to it. And I think that's correct. But we've always been careful to write and I've tried to be very careful to. To write in ways that are timeless rather than evergreen, to use your word, rather than timely. Specifically, I happen to believe this new book is very timely, but I believe it will also stand the test of time.
- [17:11]
Vince Chen
I think so, honestly. When I started my podcast about a year ago, I couldn't predict everything about the future. But one thing I Knew for sure, 200% change, both as a concept and the action is constant. We live with change, uncertainty and disruption every day. That's actually why I feel you are a perfect fit for this show. Change itself is changing and it never ends. Some people might ask if I Launched the show opportunistically because of all the current disruptions. Climate change, AI technology, workplace shifts, and so on. But no, I see change as evergreen. That's why I chose this theme and this title. As long as I'm healthy and as long as technology give us the tools to connect, I plan to keep this show going for a long time. Because change will never go out of style.
- [18:28]
Kevin Akenberry
Yeah, that's 100%. In fact, I would say that if there were no change, we wouldn't need leaders now. We might still need managers, but we wouldn't need leaders because leadership at the end of the day is about reaching valuable outcomes, which means that we're moving to a place that we aren't currently. So whether the change is external or not. Right. Even if there were less external change, unless your situation as a leader was perfect, your team was doing everything that they could possibly do, and you're reaching every possible goal and outcome that you have in mind, there's still leadership, since that's not going to happen. Right. There's always the need for leadership to move us closer and moving toward, to set that objective and to keep doing the things it takes to move towards it. And that's not even thinking about all of the other external changes that we know are a big part of what we're about. Yeah. I don't think there's any question that change is a. Is an omnipresent and ever probably more important piece of our role as a leader. And therefore it makes your show so useful to leaders around the world.
- [19:36]
Vince Chen
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin, for your acknowledgement. Before we dive into the content of the book, I have one more question. Earlier, you mentioned that between you and your co authors, you have around 20 books. I started imagining a portfolio of books, or maybe even like a puzzle made of 20 pieces. This latest one, Flexible Leadership, includes elements from earlier works. I'm curious, how does this one fit into the bigger picture? Is it like building on top of a foundation you've already laid, or is it more like a complimentary piece that fills a gap? I'm trying to visualize it because for someone who's already followed your work, your fans, your audience, your clients, your colleagues, when they see a new book from you, they'll probably wonder, how does this fit into everything else they've learned from you? So I love to hear your perspective.
- [20:54]
Kevin Akenberry
Yeah, I would say that it is more three dimensional than a flat jigsaw puzzle. And secondly, I would say that it, you know, I don't think I can write New things that aren't connected to in some way, what I already know about leadership and that I've in many cases written about. And so there's no doubt that there's connective tissue to other stuff I've written. And yet, as I said earlier, it. It does completely stand on its own. You certainly don't have to have read anything else I've written to have it make sense. There are a few, there are a few places where I tie back to things that I've written or said in other books, but it really is, it does set on its. On its own, and it's defining a new way to think about leadership that, as I said earlier, I don't think has been quite described in the way that I'm describing it here. And I know that's a bold statement given all that's been written about leadership over the years, much of it written by people that I know and value. Right. It's. It is the evolution of my thinking to this point. It's the evolution of my observations about leadership, and it's the evolution of my own leadership practice put into a format that people can use, I hope. Practically.
- [22:10]
Vince Chen
Whenever a guest sends me the book, I always make sure to at least skim through it carefully. I read pretty fast, so while I might not promise to study every page in detail, I made sure to get a strong sense of the work. Now, looking at your book right here, there's one sentence from the introduction that really caught my eye. Let me read it out loud. Everything seems to be changing, yet the most important things aren't changing at all. The words aren't changing at all are written in italics. So my immediate question to you is, what are those most important things that aren't changing?
- [23:10]
Kevin Akenberry
I'll answer that, but I want to say something else that's really important about change in general, and that is so often when we're leading a change or even thinking about change, we say, oh my gosh, everything's different. And the reality is it's almost never all different. And in fact, we make the change efforts harder when we only talk about what's changing and don't talk about what's the same. So the first thing I think is an important point is that so we're introducing a new process in our organization, and one of the most important things we can do is say, okay, there's 12 parts of the. There are 12 steps in this process, and we are drastically changing four of them. But everybody, eight of these steps aren't changing. And so we lower the anxiety level and we raise the clarity level simply by doing that and reminding people that not everything's changing. So there's an underlying truth there that is inside of that statement. But to your point directly, people have been leading other humans for centuries. And while context is changing, which is a big part of this, the idea of this book, while context is changing, when I started leading 30 years ago, I did have a fax machine. I didn't have email yet quite. And I didn't have a website and there weren't podcasts and we could go on and on and we can have the phones that we have now, all that stuff. But what was the same as now is that teams behave in certain ways based on team dynamics. And human beings are still human beings. Amazing, wonderful, remarkable and messy. And all of that is still true, will continue to be true. And there are truths about leading, There are truths about influencing, There are truths about human behavior and group dynamics that aren't changing. And so when we try to say everything's changing, we are missing the boat and losing sight of the foundational stuff. Your values as a leader are likely not changing. And those most important things you and Wayne talked about, the long distance leader. And in that book we say rule number one is think low, think leadership first, location second. And most people want to flip that around and say, oh my gosh, it's all different. Nope, it's leadership. And then the nuances that are important based on the fact that we're not in the same place matter a lot. But we got to start by with what's not changing and probably not going to change, certainly not in my lifetime.
- [25:55]
Vince Chen
That's where we'll pause. Today, Kevin walked us through how growing up on a farm shaped his views on priorities, systems and early career growth. In part two, we dig into the heart of flexible leadership. How intention, context and personal flexors can change the way you lead, work and connect. That's coming up next. See you there. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show. Leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.