← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
494. From Management Mess to Leadership Success
00:42:10
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer welcomes Scott Miller, author of the insightful book, Management Mess to Leadership Success. With a wealth of experience in leadership development, Scott shares his journey from management...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Welcome to episode 494 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is a conversation with Scott Miller about how you can shift from being a management mess to a leadership success. Ready? Let's get started.
- [00:22]
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer hello.
- [00:38]
Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. If you work or have worked in most professional settings, from roles in a global corporation to entrepreneurship, you have likely heard that managers and leaders aren't the same thing. There are tons of articles, including one from the Harvard Business Review, one which was originally published in 1977, that said, the difference between managers and leaders lies in the conceptions they hold deep in their psyches of chaos and order. Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly, sometimes before they fully understand a problem's significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. In this way, the author argued, business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers. While there is of course, some need for both in business, leaders are widely celebrated more than managers these days. The problem, of course, is that many of our natural tendencies lead most of us, especially early in our careers, to make many management mistakes. Instead of being the leaders, our teams quid crib brave. Enter Scott Miller, author of Management Mess to Leadership Success, which we are discussing in this refreshed episode that originally aired in October of 2019. Fun fact, Scott is one of the first guests I ever had on the show, nearly 70 episodes in, and he introduced me to my publisher within a few months of this episode airing. He has been on the show multiple other times to discuss some of his many books and he is a truly awesome human. He will share more about himself and his background as we get into the show, but some highlights include that he currently serves as an advisor to Franklin Covey on their thought leadership strategy. In that role, he hosts the world's largest weekly leadership podcast called On Leadership with Scott Miller, which features nearly 400 interviews during its six year broadcast. I'm honored to have been one of the guests on the show. Thank you for that, Scott. He also hosts a second Franklin Covey sponsored podcast titled C Suite Conversations with Scott Miller, which features interviews with the world's top executives. Scott's also the co founder of the Gray Miller Agency, a speaking, literary and talent agency that represents some of the world's foremost leaders, authors and thinkers. And he's authored a leadership column for Inc. Helmed Franklin Covey's Book Club series with world renowned authors, and hosted the weekly iHeartradio show Great Life, Great Career. He began his professional career in 1992 with the Disney Development Company, which is the real estate development division of the Walt Disney Company. As a founding member of the development team that designed the town of Celebration, Florida, insights from his storied career are the basis of management mess to leadership success. So you can learn what to do and what not to do in your own career. And he's very forthcoming and sharing all sorts of places where he messed up up so you can learn from that. It's a really great episode conversation book.
- [04:00]
Scott Miller
You're going to love it.
- [04:01]
Melina Palmer
Don't forget, links for my top related past episodes and books are waiting for you in the show notes for this episode which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 494 all right, Scott Miller, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [04:19]
Scott Miller
Well, thanks for the invitation. Appreciate it. Excited to be here.
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Yeah. So excited to have you. For those of you who are going to be watching sort of the video of this, we're talking about Scott's new book Management Mess to Leadership Success which. Oh, look at that dual screen showing up in the Zoom feed here.
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I'm in marketing, right. Self promotion is important these days.
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Got to have it, got to have it out there for sure. All those times that we need our brains to be seeing what's going on. So I would just love to start by having you tell for those that haven't had a chance to look at the book yet, this is their first introduction to you. How would you sort of start, I guess how you got here or what the book's about? What's up in Scotland?
- [05:00]
Sure. Thanks for the platform. First of all, my name is Scott Miller and I serve as an Executive Vice President at the Franklin Covey Company. Most people who are working know us as the world's most prominent reputable leadership development firm. Been in business for 40 years. Our influence is really built on a variety of of thought leadership books and offerings. Namely of course, Stephen Covey's book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now in its 30th year, 30 million copies sold. We're a large public company and we do a lot of consulting around leadership development, productivity, executing strategy. I'm a formal leader in the company, served as the chief marketing officer for the last decade. And so you'd think at this point I know a lot about leadership and I'd be an expert. But the fact is that, you know, common knowledge isn't always common practice. Right. So of the hundreds and hundreds of business and leadership books written every year, I'd never have one that spoke squarely to me so arrogantly. I kind of wrote my own and I just kind of confessed all of my challenges and I challenged some of the conventional wisdom around the fact that everyone should be a leader of people. I don't agree. The fact that leadership can be quite rewarding. I don't agree. Maybe the long term, but not the short term. It's hard. So I wrote a very vulnerable, I think, relatable book around here's 30 challenges that every leader faces, not just in your career, but with your husband or spouse or partner or mother in law or, you know, Cub Scouts or whatever your passions are in life. And it's done extremely well because honestly, I think most leadership books are a little aspirational, lofty and academic. And this one's quite raw. I just kind of lay out a lot of my messes and some successes. I think it's short and digestible. And because of that, it's done extraordinarily well in the last four months.
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Absolutely. And the extraordinarily well in the last four months is when we spoke earlier this week, I believe it was. So it's already sold 25,000 copies.
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Right. In four months. And you know, and a big book usually will sell about 5,000 a year. So we're on track to hit about 100,000 the first year. I'm not a humble person. I'm trying to be more humble. But I am a very grateful person and I am enormously grateful for those that have read it and emailed and blogged about it and the keynote requests coming in and people like you that where you and I make a connection over it. So I'm excited to share some of my own learnings with your audience today.
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Absolutely. You know, I let you know that I read the entire book on a flight just recently. I think this one I read on my way to Boston, so. And I was able to read it in one flight. Like you're saying, very digestible. And I really appreciate. So the way that the book is broken up, like you said, you don't need. Sure. I could write 100 pages on every Single topic. But how about I just give you what you need to know about this and then we'll move on? Right. And so you've broken it into sort of. If you were to take, you know, one task a day, you could read these five pages and in a month, you know, you've learned all this stuff about leadership essentially. So you have it broken down into 30 concepts. Everything from. And now I'm going to look. But about being humble, demonstrating humility all the way to being grateful and holding regular one on ones, creating a vision. I mean, it's really diverse and to you and to other people and all of this. And we have a lot of really cool concepts in the way they tie back to reciprocity scarcity episodes we've talked about here on the brainy business before that we're definitely going to get to. One of my favorite things about this book is I felt like when I was reading it and so we had our first conversation earlier this week, like I said. But I felt like I knew you already. Like I know all these little tidbits about you and your life and your.
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Personality and everybody says the same thing. Everyone says, I feel like I know you better than I do now.
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Yeah. And there were so many little. When it started to get a little weighty, maybe just in the story, the drama of it, right. Then there would be this comment about like, I think this is just unnatural. Like eating broccoli without cheese sauce, which. And I'm, you know, laughing as I'm on my flight while I'm reading my book like a. Like a ridiculous person, you know what?
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Mission accomplished.
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So I love that it kept me entertained while I was learning things.
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This book is not War and Peace. Right? This is not good to great. It is what it is. It's not meant to be. I had some vitriolic post, I read about it on LinkedIn this week where the person accused me, you know, in their own opinion of kind of giving license to bad behavior and messes. And I thought, oh goodness, that wasn't my intention at all. My intention was to say, we all have messes, right? Let's not wallow in them. Let's not make excuses for them. Let's just own up to them and let's move towards success. And it's kind of hard to improve when you don't acknowledge your mess. I had another post on Amazon, actually, from a fairly famous author, and he said, which I love, you know, a mess is a terrible thing to waste. And I love that because it's so True. Right. Is how you learn is from recognizing when you've fallen down and being confident enough to confess it and talk about it. And I think my superpower.
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Absolutely. And we. And you do it in a fun way. Even where some of the stories are a little bit like, I'm. I'm actually glad I wasn't a fly on the wall. Or the meeting with the Salt Lake Tribune. The first page one of the book, it just. It comes straight into it.
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It does.
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I invited you to be a guest. Even not.
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Melina Palmer
Yeah.
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Scott Miller
I read page one just as an overview and said, nope, you're in.
- [10:44]
Melina Palmer
This is happening.
- [10:45]
Scott Miller
So. But I really like that you take all of that in. And we're working right now. So a big focus in this last quarter and moving forward for the brainy business is on mindset and the way you look at things and how your own perspective is really framing your entire life experience. And the way that other people are interacting with you is in your own brain. In a lot of ways, what you're picking up on, because our brain is our subconscious is constantly scanning the environment and only letting a few things in. And so if you tell it to expect that people hate you or that it's difficult to be a leader or whatever these things are, it's going to pick up on what you tell it to focus on. Do you have any concepts from the book that you think really align with that? I know we talked about Check youk Paradigms.
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Yeah. Yeah. A lot. I'll try to keep it short because I think you've opened with. What is the 11th challenge? Check your paradigms. It probably should have been the first, because, you know, one of the great concepts that I think Dr. Covey popularized, one of his gifts to the world was this idea of really understanding your paradigms. Right. Which are your belief systems. These are deeply inculcated in us by our parents, by our ministers, by our teachers, by our aunts, our neighbors from birth. All of us have got to understand we don't have complete paradigms by anything. We don't have all the facts. We have a set of glasses, metaphoric lenses, right? Where we have cataracts, where we see things based on how we were taught ourselves, the world around us, our companies, people of other races, the role of leadership. And so I think it's so important as leaders, as. As, you know, contributors, partners, spouses, friends, that we recognize you don't always have the full picture. You always have a little bit of a warped lens based on what you've been led to be true. Is true about people who deeply ingrained in you since birth. Some of it's helpful, some of it's not, and damaging. Our parents tried their best. I think your parents have a disproportionate impact on us. And as a parent of three young boys, I'm horrified. Right. About what I'm teaching my children. Right. Am I passing on legacies that are not healthy? So I think that mature people are constantly kind of recalibrating, reassessing. Do I have the full picture? Do I see this accurately? How am I being jaundiced by what I've, you know, been taught to be true? I was raised in a very Caucasian environment. Of course I'm biased. Of course I have prejudices deeply ingrained. Some are surface. I've worked hard against them. I'm a white male in my 50s in an executive position. That says a lot about me. Right. I live in Utah, where it's not a very diverse state.
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Right.
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And so I have to work hard at challenging my paradigms.
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Yeah. And I. So I did a series on the brainy business on all of our biases. And so there's one on personal biases, which I'll make sure to link to in the show notes. But the way our brains are biased to think about ourselves versus thinking about the way we think about others and people like us versus people who aren't like us. This becomes an issue even in. So we stereotype all the time. And it's not just in the most extreme examples and some of what you were talking about in your section there. But if you were to even say, like, I have a stereotype to think that women need an extra leg up. And so when I'm interviewing, it's just here in the back of my brain somewhere that if I'm interviewing someone for a position, I might be more biased toward the female and people that are marketers. I have an idea of somebody that's in marketing that. Scott, we as marketers have an opinion of marketing people that is very different than what other people think about us as a. As a marketing, as a group, as you've potentially seen in your lifetime, of course.
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Yeah.
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So those stereotypes serve us in a lot of ways. They help it so that our brains don't have to take on every single bit of information all the time. But knowing how they are impacting you is so important. And I love the examples that you give in the book. So we did talk a little bit about generosity, which I want to get into here. I really enjoyed. You also, were Talking about the support scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset. And so I'm linking in the show notes to the episode on reciprocity, which is getting toward that generosity space. And then on scarcity are linked for listeners that want to learn more about those concepts. But can you tell us about how those really play out in a leadership space?
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Yeah, definitely. Challenge two is to think abundantly. And I wrote it up front because I think it is fundamental to being an asset or a liability, right, A tax in our lives. Again, I'll go back. Dr. Covey, who had a profound impact on me, passed away about eight years, seven years ago. He talked about how there's two types of mindsets, a scarce mindset and abundance mindset. And a person with a abundant mindset, it doesn't necessarily mean you are generous. Has no correlation to whether or not you donate to causes or, you know, you give your stuff away versus sell it at a garage sale. It has to do with a belief system, a mindset that fundamentally you believe that there is enough to go around, enough food, enough paper clips, enough budget, enough fame, enough credit, enough time and attention. And I share a fairly sobering story in the book. Well, I share a lot of sobering stories, but in this one in particular, you'll recall I call out a colleague of mine, someone who worked for me, you know, 15 years my junior. I actually re recruited him back to the company after he'd left because he was so talented and his name is Jimmy. And I share it openly. It's his real name. We went to lunch at Cracker Barrel, which, by the way, is my favorite restaurant. I love the Cracker Barrel. I'm the only person with cufflinks at the Cracker Barrel, trust me. And I love the pot roast of the Cracker Barrel. You don't need a therapist if you have a Cracker Barrel, right? I mean, good home, fool. You can be as good as a therapist. And I sat down with Jim and Jim opened the lunch and said, basically, quote, scott, I'm sick and tired of you taking credit for all of my projects. Boom. I mean, you know, not much else needs to be said. And I was just, I was offended. I was incredulous. I was inside defensive. How dare you. And I just kind of sat and gathered as much restraint as possible. And I listened to him talk about it and he shared several examples and most of them I didn't agree with, but it didn't matter because he felt like I was being a credit hog. And I'll tell you, as they get to know me, you know, I'm fairly charismatic. I have a big personality. I cast a pretty big shadow. It's kind of hard to get credit out from under me. And from that lunch, I had to realize that, you know what, perhaps maybe subconsciously I was taking some credit of his projects. You know, someone said something really wise to me, Melina, once. They said, you'll never have enough until you define how much is enough.
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I love that.
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And I had to really think about how much more credit do I need, right? I'm in the C suite, I'm an officer, I report to the CEO. Do I really need to take credit for, you know, the projects in my division? And so it really fundamentally pushed on me around having a scarce versus abundant mindset. You know, does my region or division always have to fight for the most budget? Maybe our year, we need less budget. And it ought to go to operations or supply chain or innovation or tax or legal. Right? Not right. Don't fight for as much as you can get. You might need less. And so it's had a profound impact on me. And I think I am a naturally abundant person, but I think I also have to remember to check back into that paradigm.
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Well, especially, and I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but just being ambitious, which I'm definitely an ambitious person. I know you've said that you are as well, and I'm sure many of my listeners are and would tie back to this. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's really good to have ambition. That's how we have entrepreneurs and get books written and all of these things. Start podcasts, whatever it is. But if we're not looking around and being generous. And I got some advice from a previous role as well, where they, you know, it was saying, just always talk about what the other people on your team are doing as often as you can, to be putting names out and just whether they're in the room or not. And I think you had, I believe you had something in the book about talking about people as if they were in the room and that I think it was that Stephen Covey wouldn't do that. See, I read this.
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I know you did. I know you did. I'd love to touch on that because I think it's actually profound when the time is right.
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Oh, you can go ahead right now if you want.
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You know, Dr. Covey had this concept where he talked about, he calls it being loyal to the absent. And in essence, it's this concept of really just not gossiping. And I love this quote that he said. I mean, the guy's super well quoted, right? When you defend those who are absent, you retain the trust of those present. You know, I have a colleague in this company, enormously credible, enormously competent, funny, witty, hard working, razor, fast processor. And this person just eviscerates people in their absence. And it's funny when she's doing it about them, but while she's doing it about them, you can't help but think she's doing it about me.
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Right?
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And if you want to be a great leader, a great friend, you will never speak about someone when they are not in your presence differently than if they're looking right at you across from the table. Says, easy does hard. But if you want to change your relationships. I once heard someone give someone some marital advice. And the advice was never confess your spouse's sins. Don't trash talk, don't talk them down, don't joke about it. And as soon as I fall into that, right. I've been married 10 years. My wife and I care about each other. We have three boys, right? They're kind of robbing our marriage from us. That's their goal in life, our marriage from us. And I kind of joke about it because it's true, right? They will take every ounce of your energy. My wife and I will go to dinner and kind of you find ourselves kind of devolving into this tit for tat thing. And we know it's not healthy, right? So be loyal to those who are absent, right? If you've got something to share with someone, have the courage to share it to their face or keep it quiet.
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Absolutely. And I know that is another section in the book where you talk about if you're not ready or willing to have those difficult conversations, just don't be. You don't get to be a manager, a leader. You don't get to. It's too bad. And those are hard, but you do. You have to have them. And people, when you have them in the right way. This is where I was thinking a lot about framing and this discussing the undiscussable. And so if you frame the conversation in the wrong way, you can just derail everything before you even get there. But if you put some thought in and have a proper frame into the conversation, the way you ask a question, think about how they would want to be treated, even besides how you would want to be treated. And like you said, you've had a lot of people have very frank conversations or statements with you over the years. And I think a lot of that is being open to feedback that you're willing to hear it and not, you know, flip the table over even if you're hurt or it's hard to hear in the moment. And it takes a lot to be open enough that people are willing to have those conversations with you. And some of that comes with being willing to have conversations with them. And if you say you're open for feedback, be ready to actually receive it and know that that doesn't mean you're just going to get good feedback. And that is actually a positive thing. I would say nobody's getting it right 100% of the time. We're all semi management mess or life mess or marketing mess. I know there are some series in your books maybe coming soon, we'll see. But we have all of this parenting failures, things that we think wish we hadn't done. And so being able to talk about it is really important and can help us all to grow and be better. And those things we didn't even realize we did. Like you talked about. And actually on last week's episode I talked about one of my own I feel like was ready to talk about it because of reading your book. So thank you for letting me share that last week on the podcast on the episode on Counterfactual Thinking. If you want to check that out, all of you listening, there will be a link in the show notes. Before we move on, there's one other topic I really, really want to talk about with you, which is key in the book. It's really how you round it out and it's a big focus. Actually. I'm going to be talking about goals on next week's episode and I know you have some really great tips in here on goals and they align very closely with what I've been talking about and sharing on the podcast. So I would love for any of your tips or thoughts on goals and why and how they're important.
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Sure. So in the book I take on challenge 24 and 23 are all about setting what we call wildly important goals. Jim Collins, who wrote the books Good to Great, Built to Last and many others, how the Mighty Fall, he's a good friend of ours, he's an influencer in our company and he's had a big impact on us. In his book Good to Great, he coined the phrase bhags, right? Big, hairy, audacious goals. And we have a. We have a book and an offering that's aligned to what we call wigs wildly important goals, same kind of concept. And that as leaders in organizations, you need to be very deliberate and articulate about elevating some goals over others. Everyone's got a whirlwind. We call that your day job. But above that, as a leader, you have to make sure your team members understand what are your top one or two or, or at the most, three wildly important goals, not just merely important, that if these don't happen, nothing else matters. And so part of a leader's challenge they face is to deliberately elevate, articulate, and put emphasis on through funding, incentives, clarity, rewards, communication, you name it, around these things that are extraordinarily important. So in our personal lives, too. And that's a great concept. But I think what's more valuable than just elevating your goals is then to define them. And we have a very easy process. We call it from X to Y by when and that the way to craft a goal is to say, we're going to increase customer retention from 81 to 83% by the last day of the fiscal third quarter. Or I'm going to, you know, I'm not just going to lose weight. I'm going to lose seven pounds in the next 30 days. And then you have lead and lag measures, right? And a lead measure might be, I'm going to walk every night for exactly 24 minutes or I'm going to decrease my calories. You get the point, right? There are some lead measures and some lag measures and lag measures you can't influence. They're kind of rearview mirror. They're important to see, important to know, but you can't influence them. You can influence lead measures. So the first big idea is elevate wildly important goals, Speak to them, reward to them, and align to them. Second, craft them from X to Y by when and understand the difference between lead and lag measures. And then lastly, I write challenge 24 is to align your actions with the goals. If you're a leader, don't just announce that we're going to increase customer retention by 2 points in the next 90 days, say, and here's what I'm going to do about it. Because in order to accomplish a wildly important goal, you have to either learn something new or do something different. You can't just ask your team members to do it. You have to say, and to increase customer retention, I am going to leave the safety of my office and go out and visit seven clients in the next 10 days. It's a little scary for me. It's not my talent. I'm taking the head of sales with me. But I'm going to go out and do that. Here's what I'm doing. Let's talk about what you're going to do differently as well. Just modeling what you want to see in your people.
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Right. I know one of the things that I always used to say and heard a lot from others as well is, you know, once you start getting totally sick of hearing yourself saying the same exact thing over and over, other people are maybe just starting to get it.
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Totally true. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. It's very true. I mean, I think I write about in the book. Right. Is once you're totally sick, you're halfway there.
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Right.
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That's not meant to patronize or play or anybody else. They're less intelligent. It's in your mind. You're thinking about it, you know, constantly. You're recalibrating as a leader. You're obsessed with it. And they're hearing it maybe once every three weeks or six weeks or once at the town hall or once at the annual event. You got to keep honing it in and repeating it to the point of ad nauseam.
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Exactly. And you think that you ask somebody for something once. I would say, I know I have a lot of entrepreneurs or small business owners that listen to the podcast and even you think you put out the sales call or you send the one email and you think. Or even, you know, somebody who's looking to pitch a book or to do something and you send it out once and you don't hear anything or you get a I'll follow up with you later. You know, the. My friend Nikki Rauch says no response doesn't mean no for one thing. And then knowing people are really busy and so you have to follow up. You think that if you send it once or you talked with them at a networking event, that you must be top of mind or they hate me. Right. You write this story in your brain.
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Our brains lie to us. Right? Our brains, you know, lie to us. I love your example. I'll have people that will be interviewing for a job and they'll call me and say, you know, they said they would call back in two days. I'm like, yeah, they said that. And, you know, it's all you're thinking about. And they're thinking about 400 things. Yes, they call you back, but just recognize you're obsessing with it. And they have, you know, you're not working, you're out of a job. They still have their job. So, you know, be a little mindful of that.
- [28:55]
Melina Palmer
Right.
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Scott Miller
And then you wait. You know, there's a reasonable time to follow up. Not, you know, it's, I Talked to you 24 hours ago and I know you said it would be within two days, but I haven't heard from you yet. I'm so excited. Maybe not, but you don't want to just totally let it drop. And again, definitely follow along. These biases where our brains assume that something is going wrong with us. They hate me, they don't like me. They've. They've already moved on. But like you said, they're either they're busy or something else is going on.
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Can I expand on that a bit?
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Absolutely.
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You know, in one of the podcasts, like you, I host a podcast. It's actually the world's largest now leadership newsletter and podcast. And each week I'm privileged to host a different thought leader, bestselling author, CEO. One of my favorite interviews was with the psychiatrist Susan David. She actually wrote the book Emotional Agility, and she was on the World Business Forum stage and she was just compelling. She actually is South African, so her accent is captivating. And she's also an MD at Harvard Medical School. This book, Emotional Agility, is just barnstorming the nation. I don't know how many, 5, 6, 8 million views of her TED talk. When I interviewed her, I couldn't help but want to hire her as my psychiatrist because she was a genius. And she basically taught me this idea that, you know, most people confuse opinions and emotions with facts, right? That your emotions and your opinions are your emotions and your opinions and facts are there are facts. And that we tend to make up a lot of narratives in our mind about what is fact when it's just our opinion.
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Right?
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And it's a good example is I don't know about you, but I'll often role play a conversation I'm going to have with my boss or my wife or a team member in my car, and I'll role play both sides. And before I know it, we're in a fight and I'm thinking of all the things and it's never happened. And I come in and I'm all prepared for the fight and actually goes very differently because I've built this narrative on my mind and I'm girding my loins for how they're going to challenge me. I do that all the time. It's not healthy.
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I do that all the time. I've had so many conversations, I'll say to My husband all the time. Like, I can't remember if we've actually talked about this or if I just had our conversation like 85 times.
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I know. And I think it's well intended. Right. We don't want to be caught off guard. We want to work through our argument. We don't want to be seen as being unprepared or we're just really passionate about our outcome. And I think there's some value and I think there's some damage. Right. Is because oftentimes then you're confusing your emotions and opinions with a conversation that hasn't happened yet.
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Absolutely. And I, because I brought up my husband, I actually when. So we're both. This is both of our second marriages. So there are some things you learn in first time around and other relationships and things. But we made an agreement, probably signed in blood somewhere, but that we've basically just assumed the best possible intent from the other person, no matter what. So if he says something and I hear it and think, why would you say that that way? You know, it's actually, that's probably not what I.
- [31:59]
Melina Palmer
What he meant.
- [32:00]
Scott Miller
I'm sure he meant the best possible version of this. And I can still clarify and ask a question, but where I can say, I'm pretty sure I heard that wrong. Can you re. Explain or whatever it is. But we both just assume the best. And that's sort of, you know, surrounding yourself with good people so that you.
- [32:16]
Can actually assume good intent. Right. And also so that people don't have to assume good intent. Declare your intent. Right. My intent is to give you some feedback, not hurt your feelings. I might say this wrong, so forgive the words that I use. I might need to do over. Here's my intent in telling you this. That goes a long way.
- [32:35]
I do love. And I'm glad that you brought that up. I know throughout the book, and this is some of that framing I was talking about, there were multiple points where you gave whether it was intentional or not. I know that my listeners and a lot of people just really enjoy having the script instead of, like you said, just having this aspirational theory of what you can do. But in your case, join not so much as, like, don't say this, say this instead. But in the way you. You said, like, this is the story of what happened. And here's another way you could have approached or I had this other conversation with someone and said it this way. I think there are a couple times where you do specifically say, look at. Try to say this or this or this. These have worked as far as sort of a formula for speaking, but I really enjoy that practical application that's within the book.
- [33:24]
If only someone had written this book 25 years ago and given it to me, I'd be a lot better off.
- [33:31]
We all learn from our messes. So, Scott, what would you say if you were just going to sum up the book and why it's important. Important and relates to sort of this brain science in just one or two sentences, really quick, why does this matter? What's your elevator pitch as far as the book?
- [33:49]
Yeah, I think that leadership in organizations has been positioned as it's a little bit easier, follow these things, kind of just do what got you here, we'll get you there kind of mentality. I just think it's wrong. I think that leadership is hard. It's not for everyone. Everyone's got a mess. And that acknowledging and understanding that, you know, we're kind of. We're kind of led to believe that we're supposed to be the smartest person in the room and have all the answers as leaders, and the bug stops with us. Our job as leaders is to be not the geniuses in the room, but the genius makers. To quote Liz Wiseman, who wrote the book Multipliers, that your job is to be a talent magnet, to attract and retain great talent for too long. I thought my job was to be the smartest person. No, my job is to find the smartest person and bring them into an organization. So I think be very cognizant of when your brain's lying to you, when you're confusing, you know, fact and fiction. Challenge your paradigms, own your mess. Just own it. Be vulnerable. I think I was asked last week to define leadership by another interview. And I said, I think it's a combination of confidence and vulnerability.
- [34:54]
Absolutely.
- [34:55]
Those are two core leadership talents. Because you can be confident and still be humble and you can be vulnerable and still be influential. I think people want to relate to their leaders. They want to lessen the distance between them and you, and so own your mess. Move to success. Don't wallow in your mess, but just call it out. Because everyone knows your messes. The receptionist, the boss, your people, your team. They're talking about them. So why not just own up to them and make it safe to talk about them and take some risks and let them own their mess too, because they won't own theirs if you don't own yours.
- [35:29]
Absolutely. And I would say, too, that definitely ties back for all the brands on social media and Whatnot. Now, in a world where everybody can see everybody else's dirty laundry and we're talking about it and you see it everywhere, the brands that come in and say, hey, thanks for letting us know we've made a change. We saw this, or they can kind of make fun of themselves. You just relate to them so much better. And that's how brands are personalities, just like any. Any person. So the way that they can implement makes really big difference.
- [35:58]
Well said. Hey, you should be in marketing. That's great.
- [36:01]
Hey, I'll consider that for the future.
- [36:05]
You should write a book.
- [36:06]
Hey, that sounds like a great idea.
- [36:09]
Well, maybe I'll help you. I'd be honored to.
- [36:11]
Oh, thank you. Well, thank you so much. As some of my listeners know, that's definitely in the mix and that is on the horizon. So thank you, Scott. I appreciate it so much. And I know you mentioned your podcast. I believe you have two.
- [36:26]
I do.
- [36:26]
So if we were to say go ahead and give us the names of those and then just sort of best way for people to follow you and love what you have going on. We've obviously linked to the book and several of your socials in the show notes, but tell us about that.
- [36:40]
Yeah, well, thank you for that. So the big one that I think would be most interesting is this On Leadership series. It's actually an email that comes out every Tuesday. It's a subscription email newsletter that includes an audio and video interview, much like today's with usually people much smarter than me. I interview. And you can visit franklincovey.com it's called on Leadership. Subscribe to. It comes out every Tuesday morning at 6am and it's easy to get. Sign up your friends and family. And then you can find me, of course, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn. Probably the best. I write a weekly column for Inc. Magazine. I write monthly for Thrive Global. I've authored this book, Management Mess. I'm the new author of a book out on October 8th called Everyone Deserves a Great Manager. I've co authored it with two Franklin Covey colleagues. We think it will be a big book. It follows six critical practices that if you want to have a great team, that every manager actually does. So that's kind of my. That's kind of my shtick.
- [37:36]
I love it. And I think, as you were saying, all of that, that's one of the things I've talked about a little bit too, is just, you know, busy is a mindset thing as well. Right. And a place where we can get kind of sucked into not having enough time if we have our mindset wrong. You accomplish so many things right in so many places. You have your two podcasts and books coming out and too much you can. But having that abundant. There's enough time, there's enough capacity. I can make this happen. I think has helped you immensely in what you've already done.
- [38:07]
And I think also by having so many balls, I've realized I've had too many balls. So I'm actually going to end. I host a weekly radio program on iHeartradio called Great Life, Great Career. It's been very popular. I've been quite pleased with it. It was ready for syndication and I just realized I was kind of spreading myself too thin. I want to speak and write more. I want to focus on the main On Leadership podcast. I'm actually letting the radio program go. Maybe I'll regret it, maybe I won't, but I want to stop doing a lot of things at B level and do more things at A level. And I kind of took me doing some things at B level to recognize that.
- [38:42]
Absolutely. It's not one of your wigs at this point.
- [38:45]
Not one of my wigs. Well said.
- [38:47]
Melina Palmer
All right.
- [38:48]
Scott Miller
Well on that I will say thank you so much, Scott, for joining us here today.
- [38:52]
My honor.
- [38:53]
And there will be links in the show notes, of course. So have a wonderful day.
- [38:56]
You too as well.
- [38:59]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you learned from Scott today? For me, as I mentioned in the introduction, Scott is someone who holds a special place in my heart and my own story. He has been so kind to me over the years and I'm very grateful to him both for joining me on the show as one of the very first guests. It was a solo show before he, Nir Eyal and Roger Dooley came on as some of those first guests. And yes, I'm incredibly lucky that these three amazing people all pitched me at the same time and inspired me to try out a new format. And if you would like to hear more about this story and others, please do check out episode 500 when it comes out in just a couple weeks as I will be sharing more of the story of the brainy business and how it's shifted in these seven years and 500 episodes. That is absolutely nuts, by the way. It's really hard to wrap my head around, but I am so fortunate for guests like Scott and listeners like you. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. Whether this is your first episode or you've been around for the almost 500 we've done so far. It means a lot. And yeah, just thank you for everyone over the years. In addition to this being a good time to refresh this episode for that nostalgia factor with milestone coming up, I also chose to refresh this one today because of my guest on the next brand new episode, which is Willie Peterson, who's going to be discussing his book Leadership the Inside Time Tested Prescriptions for those who Seek to Lead. It is a great extension of the leadership conversation with another person who has a fascinating career. After working as a lawyer, Willie turned to industry and served as CEO of multi billion dollar businesses such as Lever Brothers Food Division, Seagram usa, Tropicana and Sterling Winthrop's Consumer Health Group and he now teaches on Strategy and Leadership at Columbia Business School. Yes, it is a fascinating conversation and you don't want to miss it. If you aren't yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now is a great time to do so. There are links in the show notes to make it easy for you, as well as links to my top related past episodes and books including Management Mess to Leadership Success, Ways to get in touch with Scott and Myself, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 4. And just like that, episode 494 with Scott Miller is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Willie Peterson, author of Leadership the Inside Story. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [41:53]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.