YouSaid · the spoken record

Randall Stutman

lines on the record: 106
first: 2020-11-10
most recent: 2020-11-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Exactly. And it's on purpose because I'm a big believer that leadership is about other people, that we're supposed to be in the background, not in the foreground, that Bob Dylan was right when he said when you're on top, you're really on the bottom. That doesn't mean you have to be a servant leader, but I think you have to think in the mentality of this is not about me. So we're excited about this thing we called admired leadership. And the landing pages at Mired Leadership.com. There's a couple of things that'll change your view about leadership that anybody can access. And so I'll leave it there, but would love it if your audience went to admired leadership.com and checked it out.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Specific actions of behavior. So these are all very specific actions. We chose 100 out of a set of several hundred. We're kind of proud of it and we hope that it'll have bigger input. The reason I decided to offer and come on a podcast because I've been trying to be anonymous for the last 30 years and have done a fairly good job.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's wonderful. Thank you for that. And so we picked 10 modules of leadership that is functions of leadership feedback and change and time management and so forth. And then we took 10 behaviors inside each one. We explained those behaviors and 10 minutes or less in a video that involves a bunch of people. And we have outlines and examples. And we're excited as all get out about being able to put it to the world. And we think it's going to have a big impact. Again, there's not many exemplars of a behavioral view. I'd have to go back to Dale Carnegie and then maybe Ken Blanchard. But there's not many. Most leadership works, courses, and books and seminars operate either from an individual viewpoint or from a principal viewpoint. And by the way, both are good. Principles are guiding values in essence. They're also universals in many cases, but they're not this specific.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we're still recording. So let's do that. Okay. Great. You know, we've invested a tremendous amount of time over years. We've been coaching senior leaders and have a fairly large firm. We try to stay low profile about it, but we've had a tremendous amount of success. And for reasons that I can be very brief about because of having larger influence and wanting to influence thousands of people instead of hundreds of people, and as well as it's time for some of this information to not be lost, we've decided to put together a digital leadership course that includes and describes and teaches people a lot of these behaviors. And I know you've spent some time inside of it. I loved it. I thought I was one of the.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think every family values different things, but at a certain point, I think when kids are young and they're very impressionable and they haven't had big peer influence. And so forth and so on. I think it's important that they have a common sense of what the family stands for. One of the most common things that family stand for is the family comes first. That's a very common value that it's about us first. We stand together. We have solidarity as a family. We're all always here for each other. We have unconditional love, which is another value that's part of that. I think that's a common one. But there's no right set of values. But I think it's early on while the kids are younger and they don't have the ability to form their own values or have their own experiences where they can generate their own independent views. You've got to have, you've got to say this is what we all value together right now. You'll be able to make up your choice on your own soon enough. But for right now, that's who we are and what we stand for. And by the way, you and I both know that it has a tremendous influence on what eventually shapes their independent values.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to make that choice. And you've seen me, you've watched me, and you kind of have a sense of what choice I would make, not based on just that choice, but on the values that would drive that choice. And the more you're transparent about that with kids, the better.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His own experience and the like. I think you have to talk about them explicitly. You have to act on them and live them. And it should not be something that people, it shouldn't be Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like, I don't know what that really is. That's a mystery to me. You shouldn't need slogans for them either. You should be able to be transparent. And this is what I stand for. I'm not saying you have to stand for that. This is what our family stands for when you're younger, that you don't have a choice at a certain point, but then you do. You're an independent mind and think. And this is what I value. And I think that's the thing that we leave our kids more than anything else because at the end of the day, it's the values that underline and guide their actions. They're the principles by which they form their choices. So when you said, listen, when you say your kids, listen, this is, you know, you could make a good choice or a bad choice. You're really thinking like, think about where that comes from. Like by what value are you?”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's interesting. I have one son, he's older now. He's in his late 20s, and he's a different kind of kid. He's very independent. He's somebody that needs to be self-sufficient. So I didn't have the failure to launch problem that a lot of other people have. He's very creative. He's wickedly smart. But that also means he's a handful, right? And he was a handful growing up and he's still a handful. But the thing that I think that you leave your kids more than anything else is not just the lessons you learn, but the values you hold. And as long as you hold them consistently and it's you leading by example, and I don't mean on every moment basis of every action. But, you know, if your kids don't know what you really stand for, what values really matter to you. And by the way, there are some that I think he knew that I held that it took him a long time to come to come to those values. I think he holds most of the same values that I hold now based on.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Body, they're going to find you anyway. And what that means to me is the truth always comes out. And so your response needs to reek of that truth early on. I don't want to find out later that you knew more than you told me, that you weren't as forthcoming as you should have been and the like. That's what I have seen over and over again. And once I don't trust your response, I don't believe in the integrity response. I can never trust you again. I can forgive you for an incident. I can give you for the event. I can forgive you for expeditious, the response that defines who we are and what we are as leaders. And to me, that's the most important one of all to keep in mind. It's not a behavior per se. It's many different behaviors that make up the response. And there's standards inside, but it's the thing that I think of most when I work with leaders and think about crisis.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I respond in a way that I think produces remedy that isn't just apology but produces remedy. There's a lot of things in the response, but I always tell everybody, you know, write this down in like your notebook. And when you have a crisis, like remember it, it's your response that defines who you really are in other people's eyes. It's not the incident. As bad as the incident is, you get fired for the lying, for the cover-up, for the response. You don't lose your career or your marriage for the actual thing very often. You lose it for the response. And if your response is consistent with who you've always been and who you really are, people will forgive you for the incident. And so you are always the larger context. But, you know, so Paul Baer Bryant, the old Alabama football coach, had a sign over his desk for years and years that I love. I have a little picture of it in one of my notebooks that says, don't try to hide behind anything or any.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, what do you do? What are the best leaders do in crisis? And I could regale you for a long time in terms of just the behaviors that we've identified. But maybe the one that matters the most is this. It's not the actual act that defines you. It's always your response. It's the response that defines your credibility in every case. People will eventually forgive you and forget about or hold in less saliancy the actual incident or act, but they will never forgive you for the response. The response has to wreak of competence, integrity, and sincerity. You have to think about what's my response. And that means there are certain kinds of rules in a crisis. Number one, I don't respond in little pieces and then change my mind. I wait until I get the facts and then I respond as quickly as I can, right? That I do so in a transparent way, that I do so from a set of values and character.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. We know lots about when leaders, I always call it when things go wrong because all crises are when things are going wrong because it kind of encompasses tragedy, crisis. I had both the privilege as well as the disconcernation of leading a lot of senior leaders in New York City during right after 9-11. And so that was a horrible time. And I learned a lot from that in terms of that. That was a different kind of crisis. Crises like the social injustice things that are going on contemporarily, that's a different kind of crisis. But anything that's changing reputations of people and leaders is crisis. So you can have a crisis with a given client. And that's equally real. I mean, if that's a significant client that's been longstanding at the firm and they're changing their reputation about our reputation in their minds because of something we've done or they at least perceive we've done, that's a real crisis for us.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because if you've ever had a teenager, that's not a simple thing to go through and always be a fan. But that's your job. Your job as a leader and it's kind of thankless and it requires a lot of creativity and thought. But that's the job. And some of us are better at the job and we're committed to the job than others. And that's the point. The point is even with the people we don't like or identify with or feel comfortable with, we still have to figure out a way to show fantas. We'll actually show it differently. Easier to introduce somebody than create a different kind of conversation to somebody that isn't as comfortable to you. But you might say to me, well, listen, I don't want to even be around those people. You got to suck it up and really decide do you want to lead or don't you? And I think your choice should be to lead, but that's an individual choice. But all of us can do that anytime we want. Any of us can be a fan of anyone and choose to lead in that way.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The answer is you have to find different behaviors. You have to find different things to celebrate. You have to do it in different ways because your job as a leader is to inspire and motivate everybody. It isn't just to selectively decide who you like and who you don't like and inspire only them. I mean, heaven forbids if we did that, we'd have some inspired children.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You weren't able to establish a connective relationship with me. Well, then your inspiration motivation is not horrible, but it's not enough. What I find is the opposite, though, that more leaders are better at making decisions and offering feedback and elevating performance, but a lot of them are really have shortcomings when it comes to inspiring and motivating because they just don't know what to do. But this is what to do. They can instantly become better fans of people and ask the question, what would a fan do? What I think is the harder question is, well, what happens if you're somebody that reports a man I don't like you? Your personality or your style or you're just hard to work with or you're arrogant or you're petulant or whatever else. If I had my drugs, you wouldn't be on my team, but I've inherited you. I can't get rid of you. Wouldn't be good for you or for me. You produce great results, but I mean, a fan, I don't even like you. Like, what do I do about that?”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you're not being a fan in that moment. I mean, you're being a fan generally in the sense of if I look at the composite of our relationship, is the composite the tenor of our relationship? Is it one where you're a fan of mine? Can I tell by all your behaviors? That doesn't mean that you're trying to be a fan when you give me hard feedback or that when you're holding me accountable or when my performance has really been in the basement and you have to have that conversation with me, I know a very few people that can be a fan when we're having those conversations, but the question is, at the end of those conversations, where is it that I can feel about our relationship and what's the composite? Do I feel your fanness most of the time? So I would just tell you that, again, leadership has different functions being inspirational, motivational, as an example is a really important function, but it's not all of leadership. If the only thing you were was inspirational, but you couldn't make great decisions, you couldn't hold me accountable, you couldn't elevate my performance, you didn't offer me good feedback so I could get better.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Greed. And by the way, that's the way to get them all in Because that's really what the outcome of inspiration motivation is all about. You light that fire so they want to excel. Make sure Job a whole lot easier too, by the way. What we found is that when you're a fan, people will be a fan back.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of other behaviors and like third party praise, and now all of a sudden you have somebody that you would do anything for because they're doing things that you would never ask for, but that make you feel differently about yourself. That's what it means to be a fan. And fanness is something we could all master or we can all work harder at. And there's nobody that isn't already a fan sometimes. The question is to purposefully go after that and figure out what would a fan do in this particular moment.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, everybody loves it when leaders do that. So how do they do that? They document that piece. They take a photograph of it and frame it. They make a screensaver out of it. They make a t-shirt from it. They write a letter about it so that you can reread it, that letter. They decide to share with you an inch of scotch every month for a year. They celebrate it in different ways, but they keep that. They name a conference room after you temporarily. They name a sandwich in the lunchroom after you for that accolade for three weeks. Not forever, and not inappropriately keeping it alive, but keeping it alive longer and extending it in time. Only a fan would do that, and it inspires and motivates people like crazy. By itself, not enough. But consistently, if you're somebody that extends and expands and keeps great news alive, you'll find that people respond differently to your leadership. You add to that lots of...”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of everyone they lead and they prove it on an ongoing basis behaviorally in ways that you and I have never heard about that we can easily master. What would a fan do? Because what most of us do is we celebrate that good news appropriately to the event. We have a dinner or we call somebody out in a team meeting or we acknowledge somebody or we simply tell somebody that we're proud of them or we can't believe that they've achieved that result in spectacular. That's what most of us do. But what a fan really does is, and only a fan would do this and no one would ever ask somebody to do this on purpose, a fan keeps that great news alive. They actually stunned it in time. They take that acclator, that wonderful outcome. And they don't keep it alive forever, but they keep it alive for longer so that you as a person that I lead has the ability to benefit and bask in that accolade for longer.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sales are up and revenues up. And when marriages in a good spot and not having strife, most of us can be decent fans. We can root, we can cheer, we can be positive. But the deal is the best leaders say, no, no, no. I have to be a fan all the time. Good news and bad news because it's not dependent on whether I offer hard feedback or hold you accountable and have difficult conversations. It's not about your performance. It's about my leadership. And I can choose to be a fan consistently all the time. It's not about giving people mixed messages. It is about saying my fanness, and that's the term I want to use, that my fanness, which is really what the idea is, has to be consistent. And it has to be with everybody that I lead directly, and I have to prove it in my ongoing behaviors. And so I have to ask myself, what would a fan do? And when you study the best leaders, what you're going to find is they're great fans of everyone.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the universal. And there's no exception to it. You have that, and I have that. And everybody we're ever going to lead has that same desire to have those people, maybe they respect us. I hope they do, but they have those people that they respect. They want those people rooting for them. And it's not enough to simply tell people that you are. You have to prove it every day. So we've been after for a really long time because we learned about this way before Tiger Woods' story. That's just a story that helps illustrate it. We started learning about this Universal Almost 30 years ago. And in the process, we've been able to identify all kinds of behaviors. And you'll be able to figure out any of the behaviors if you simply ask and answer one question in this given situation, what would a fan do? What would a fan do? Now, most of us are decent fans with good news. Most of us, when the report card comes back and they have high grades and the team is achieving their results.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I tell you that that is the universal of all motivation, inspiration? Because here's something that everybody on the planet wants. They want the people that they respect, that they admire, that they look up to. They want them rooting for them. They want them clapping, cheering for their ball to go in. And what that really means is they want them to say and do, which we'll talk about that, and prove that they're a fan. and that they would do anything for them to succeed.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's always now why do I tell you that story? Sports writer, major sports writer, standing on the side of that green watching all of this had been to every major sporting event in the world. Said that when that ball started trickling backwards toward the cup, in the amphitheater of what that ground did with the trees and the grass and everything else, there were about 5,000 people there. He said he had never heard or seen anything like it, that the enthusiasm for that shot was unequaled. And when it got closer and closer to the hole, he said people were making so much noise and that they were so enthusiastic about what happened. He said everything was moving. The ground was shaking. He could feel the vibration up to his thighs. So he wrote the next day in the newspaper that that ball made the final revolution for one reason and one reason alone. Because everybody around the green wanted it to go in. Not because they thought they could make it go in. They didn't think they could collude to that. But their enthusiasm for that shot is the only reason it made the final revolution. He wrote there was no way that ball could sit on the edge of the cup. Everything was moving. The ground was shaking. It was like an earthquake.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's moving directly toward the hole, and the people around that green can see what might happen. They start to freak out. They start to jump and scream and clap and yell and hoot and holler. And so that ball gets slowly and slowly tour the cup and the volume continues to go up. It gets about a foot of the cup and the volume even increases. And then it sits on the edge of the cup for 2.2 seconds. Now think about how long that is, right? One second, two second, right? The Nike logo is not perfectly, but pretty closely inframed on camera. I'm not even sure what that was worth because that was on his golf ball. And then it makes the final revolution and drops into the cup for what's considered a birdie too. He's now got a two-shot lead and he goes on to win the golf tournament. One of the more amazing golf shots in competitive history, if you're an aficionado of golf, it's always in everybody's top few, right? It's my favorite one.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Off into the bunker that this is really something that is very, very hard to do. And so Tigerwoods, though, height of his prowess does something that most people can't do. He and his caddy pick out a spot about 20 feet away, the size of a dime, and he is able to take the club back steep enough and in a way where he's able to put spin on a shot in that particular spot, hits the caddy later admits, hits exactly the dime spot, not sort of close to it, but exactly the spot, rolls up into the side of the hill. Stops and checks because it has spin, and then it starts to trickle back down toward the hole.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2005. He's at Augusta. He's playing in the master's golf tournament, something we all know about that unless we don't watch television. And one of the majors of golf. It's the fourth round, the last round, the final round. And he's on the 16th pole. He's got a one-shot lead. It's par three over some water. And he's hit his shot right on what's considered the collar of the fairway and the rough, which means there's two or three or four inches of rough right behind where the ball is sitting. And then there's cliff grass. So what that means is that when the club face comes through the ball, it has to cut across that high grass first, which takes spin off the golf ball and is very difficult to hit the golf ball squarely in that regard. It's a very difficult golf shot in any shot, much less in that particular moment. In the broadcasters, you can watch us on YouTube if you like. The broadcasters who are commentating are talking about how difficult a shot this is, how if he tries to get tricky and get it close to the hole, it's liable to drill.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That are all about this idea, and maybe cover one or two of them with you right now. But in the process, you can figure out the rest of them if you have the idea in your head. So what's the idea? So I want to tell you a story because golf has always been an important thing to me. I don't know if you've ever played golf, but I played in college and I competed it for a long time and I love the game and love what it represents and the like. And so I've been a big fan of an aficionado of golf. And so I want to tell you a story about Tiger Woods. So in 2005 Tiger Woods was at the height of his prowess way before the nine iron went through his windshield and all the different unseemly things came out and his life fell apart and things changed, right? But at 2005, he had the skills that nobody had ever seen on a golf course. And he was doing things that nobody could ever even imagine that he could do, especially in under competitive pressure. And so in that particular spring.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not as inspirational motivational because we just have a hard time becoming skillful and masterful at this thing of inspiration motivation. And that's where we kind of are. But when we started studying leaders a really long time ago, what we learned was there's actually universal of motivation inspiration, one that everybody on the planet, independent of culture, gender, age, experience, everybody wants it, that everyone desires it. And in the process of that, if we can master that thing, it doesn't mean we don't do the other things. We should be doing those too. But that if we get good and skillful at this one thing, then it becomes the game changer of how you really, how the best leaders really motivate and inspire. That's where I want to go. So the way I like to offer the frame of this or the way that I like to introduce this idea is by offering a frame. Because we've been able to identify 40 plus behaviors of inspiration motivation.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's almost impossible to adapt and flex like that. That even with our kids that we see all the time or with a spouse or with a good portion of the time, it's really tough to size up every situation and know exactly what motivates and inspires them and then to react in the emergence of the meaning that transpires between us in conversation and in action for us to actually pull that off. So what most leaders do in defense is in a very calculated way every once in a while they'll sit down and try to do something that's inspirational and motivational. But generally they have a go-to and their go-to is whatever inspires them. So if there's somebody that's inspired by praise, they generally offer a lot of praise just about everybody. And if there's somebody that really is inspired by the idea of influence and empowerment and control and autonomy, then they give that to everybody. And they kind of say, and so they have a go-to, which means they're missing some people completely and other people, it depends and the like. And so lo and behold, we go off and...”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To achieve those kinds of desires. Other people, not so much. You and I both know that in addition to praise, that sometimes it's just relationships, having watching somebody that we admire, respect, and wanting to be like them, be around them, gain their respect and have their recognition implicitly is a big influence on whether we'll do what we should be doing or lighting our fire, right? But people are really different. So the deal is what happens is most of us try to become more inspirational by sizing people up and then deciding, you know, you need more incentive and this other person needs more autonomy and control and somebody else needs more mastery. And by the way, appraisal never gets you in trouble. And so we try to adapt and flex. And what we realize is that life is really much more emergent than that. In the ongoing conversation that happens all day long with many people and all these relationships we have.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Higher purpose. Some people aren't trying to master anything, and other people that will, for the most part, if you give them responsibility, they will run from it. So even though they would say that those are things that more contemporary leaders need to invest in, and I agree 100%, people are really different. Now, let's add to that list. We know that incentives play a big role, especially organizationally and motivating and inspiring people. And incentives can not just be compensation. That can be affection and time and resources and knowledge. There's lots of ways to incent people. In large organizations, I've been in financial services and coaching a lot of leaders there for a long time. I mean, there are some people that are really coin operated. You know, they only do things for the coin. Compensation drives everything for them. And other people, not so much, right? We know that some people really like to belong, to have status, to have a certain title, to drive a certain car, to go to a certain university. They're very motivated and inspired.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to understand what motivates people and inspires people differently. And so there's a fairly tight list. There's some that are more popular than others. If you read somebody like Daniel Pink or you read the people that wrote Prime to Perform, which is a really good book or something else, they'll tell you that things like mastery is something that really inspires and motivates people, that investing in your being better, especially within the newer organizations, right? The idea of having a higher purpose, the ability to answer the why question, why are we doing this and giving people higher reasons? That's motivational and inspirational. They will say, which is all correct, by the way, they will say things like autonomy, control, responsibility, right? That giving people more autonomy, more control is very inspirational. Although those are very different things because I'll tell you that there are some people don't really care about.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And those things are really, a lot of them very compelling. So we know that what motivates one person, inspires one person isn't what inspires somebody else. That I give one person high standards, a really big challenge, a high bar, a swift kick in the butt, some fiery rhetoric, and it motivates them to do more. Somebody else, I give them exact same message and it actually demotivates them. They feel singled out. They feel as if I don't have confidence in them. They feel as if that challenge undermines their ability to concentrate and focus. I mean, so people are really different. One person I offer praise. I give some recognition. They'll do anything for my recognition. Somebody else, it's like they wear a force field. Bounces off them as if it has no effect at all. People are really different. So the first thing that we normally do is we try to size people up. We know that”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To some degree is motivational. Not all motivational things are inspirational. So, for example, I might offer you a disincentive. That is, if you don't do something, I'm going to give you the cold shoulder. I'm going to not talk to you. I'm going to act out of sorts. Now, that may motivate you to do what I've asked you to do, but it doesn't inspire you. It doesn't light your fire in any way. In fact, you're just complying and you're being motivated to this thing in order to avoid my distaste, my pain that I'm giving you by giving you the cold shoulder, right? Not all things motivational inspirational, but most things that are inspirational, actually motivational to some degree. But I don't bandy the terms about. I use them kind of fluidly because I want leaders to be both light the fire as well as to get people to act, you know, both, right? Now, we have a lot of good things in our head, but it all comes from that psychological view. It all comes from individual difference.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, inspiration motivation. I know a very few leaders who think they're too inspirational or too motivational. And it's such a big part of leadership, it's such a big part of being a great parent and a great team leader, a great CEO, a great anything, a great instructor, being able to inspire and motivate people. Now let's talk about the difference between those two things first. So motivation is generally not by my definition academically thought to be anything, any action that compels other action. So when a leader does something that makes it so that you do something differently, then I motivated you to do that different thing. So motivation isn't a compulsion to do things. So it's an action that compels action. Inspiration is lighting the fire itself. It's inspiring you to want to do better, to do different things, to achieve and to excel. And so it's just a larger term. Almost everything that is inspirational.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The communication of this organization will get tremendously better, but I won't control it It won't come from me. It'll come from lots of other people. And right now, our messages are powerful because I'm basically the editor. I'm the one that controls all 86 mediums. And so you're right, but you're wrong. And so I'm not going to do anything. We're going to keep it exactly the way it is. That's a great example of this idea that I benefit from this problem. And so I'm going to keep this problem the way it is. People want to stay in power. They want to stay in control. They want to have influence. They want to be paid as much as they can get paid. And so they do things that are not just self-interested, but they do things that are in the interest of maintaining those things, even when it's not obvious.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to a degree, people learn when they're ready to learn. People act when they're ready to act. There's nothing that I can do to propel them forward if they're not ready to prove it. But sometimes we can talk through, if you expose why people don't want to change or what the benefits or change are or expose that people are benefiting from this issue. I remember going to a large organization once. There were like 86 different mediums for communication in this organization. We were working with the person that was in charge of all of them. And one of our advice pieces of advice was, well, first, they needed to really narrow them down. They needed to create a little bit of communication council to control them and have a common message. They needed to vet the messages with the executive team and all common sense stuff. Nothing that's surprising. And he got honest with me one day and he goes, okay, that's great. You do some great work. We're not going to do any of that. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, if I do what you're suggesting.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People like the outcomes, not all of them. They admit that there's dysfunction on one side of the equation on that problem. But to give it up and to change and get away and lose that issue means that they lose something and they really like it. They're committed to that thing. And so a lot of change organizationally and in families and in relationships don't occur, not because they're not the right answers. We don't know what to do, but because people benefit from both in terms of power, resources, right? They benefit from those problems existing. You and I come up with all the elegant solutions we want, but one of the reasons that people don't do things is because they like the dysfunction that they have. I don't mean the complete part of the dysfunction, but they like the outcomes that they're getting right now. They don't want change.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly why that's happening. And I said, Well, why? And they said, oh, because somebody, maybe multiple people are benefiting from that problem. They like that problem. They want to own that problem. They want to keep that problem because they're benefiting from that problem. And when I really started thinking about that,”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Insurance company, and they had a problem that had been a perennial problem for them. And the CEO had asked me to work on this problem with the team, and I worked on the problem. And I came up with what I thought was a very practical, a very powerful, very elegant solution. I presented it in front of the executive team. They all believed, similar to me, that it was really a beautiful piece of work, and so I was very pleased. And then I watched, and they didn't do anything. Like, they didn't change. They didn't bring it up. They didn't execute on it or anything else. And then about six months later, the CEO and I were talking. I said, you know, he goes, yeah, we really need to commit ourselves to that. And we need to revisit that. And so we revisited again and I brought it up again and we talked about it. They didn't do anything about it. So I was scratching my head and they were paying me a very nice fee. And so I didn't want to complain too much by scratching my head. And I was talking to a mentor I had at the time. And I described the problem to them. And they said, oh, I can tell you.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. Yeah, it is. I mean, because the larger culture and the talent in that organization is what is influencing whether different kinds of processes or acts or strategies are going to be enacted in a way that produces sustainable outcomes. I believe it was Peter Drucker that said culture eats strategy for lunch. I would tell you that talent sets the table. And so without talent, you've got nothing. If I'm trying to influence an organization at the deepest level, I want to deal with talent first. But culture has a big impact, and that's what you're really describing. You're describing a culture that is either self-satisfied or that believes everything's going to be a fad. They're going to wait new leaders out. They're really, they like the outcomes they're getting by being dysfunctional. I have to tell you a fun story for me. So when I was first starting to work with senior leaders and organizations, I was working in a large”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whole issue of ego, of vanity, of success, of being comfortable, of being good enough is as big an impediment. And that makes it true of any behavior that I'm trying to teach them or show them or get them to do differently. And some people have just been rewarded by the wrong things. They've drawn the wrong lessons from good outcomes. A classy example with a lot of organizational leaders is they've been harsh, stern people, and people generally perform at a high level for them. And they think it's because of their harshness and sternness that that's why they've gotten there. That's the lesson they've learned when in fact I can prove to them empirically that it's actually in spite of their harshness and sternness that they would even get even more out of people if they varied that style in different ways, but they've learned that lesson and they're not going to give it up because they've been that successful on that particular style of trajectory for”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not sure there is one. I mean, because that's going to come down to how committed and passionate you are to change that thing. Sometimes that's going to be a function of whether you've gotten a lot of resistance or you haven't been very effective in that area and so forth. But I would turn your question around to say, why are some people coachable and other people not coachable in any given behavior? And my experience is some people like themselves too much. They aren't open to making change because they like the outcomes they're getting. They've been very successful. When they look in the mirror, they like what they see. By the way, most of those people get almost their advice and counsel in that same mirror. They are very comfortable with the kinds of responses and reactions they get. They're good enough. And so when I come to them and say we should probably work on X or you want to change Y, the response is, yeah, and they'll dabble at it, but they won't really be committed to it. So I find that that.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do they misperceive about you? What do they overestimate about you? Underestimate about you? What do they just get wrong? And by the way, it takes self-awareness in order to answer that question. And I eventually come to learn whether that was accurate or not. And that tells me an awful lot about that leader. So that's a really important piece for me. I'm trying to figure out who people are by knowing how where they are of themselves and what they think are the greatest friends and weaknesses that they have. That's probably the primary piece that I'm after.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How self-aware they are. When I go talk to that manager, where's the gap between what they told me and what the manager is going to tell me and so forth? And the like. And I'm also learning a little bit about are they able to articulate and be as detailed on the negative as they are on the positive because that's a sign of self-awareness too. A lot of people can really get specific around their positives, but then gloss over their negatives, which means they're not operating on their negatives. So that's one of the things that I ask. I ask many different things, but that's probably, if you told me I only had 20 minutes with somebody and I can only explore one topic, more than knowing their work history and the size of their team and who's doing what and whatever and I want to know what their self-perception is around their strengths and weaknesses and how other people they perceive seeing them. By the way, one of my favorite questions of all time that I ask everybody is, when you first meet people for the first time, like what do they get wrong about you?”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I want to know from their own point of view what they consider to be their signature strengths and weaknesses. I want to know what they consider both, and they'll always ask me, you mean as a leader? And I go, no, as a human being, right? Because to me, they're all the same thing. If you're impatient as a leader, you're impatient as a spouse and as a parent. And if you're somebody that's decisive, you're decisive everywhere. So I've never seen anyone take any strength and turn it on and turn it off. They have it just about everywhere. So I want to know from their perception. I often want to know whoever knows them best in the world, whether that be a partner or spouse. What do they think the strengths and weaknesses are? I'm amazed how many people will go, that's a really good question. I don't know that. Well, they should. And then I'll normally ask them, well, what would your leaders? What would they say your greatest strength and weakness is? Because A, I'm learning a couple things. A, I'm learning that really what are some of the things that are helping them achieve outcomes as well as things in their way. But I'm also learning”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And by the way, but you got to have one. And I'm happy to be a sounding board to say that doesn't sound right to me. Sounds like with what I know, there's something else that should be a high priority. That would be an example for me.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of all the things going on with their team, what is the highest priority? What are they really focused on? And he gave me a much longer range piece. And I said, well, short term, what is it? So the long-term goal was around, of course, achieving certain kinds of outcomes and process redesign. And then as I got them narrower and narrower, this was a gentleman. But then there was one relationship that had been problematic for the last few weeks that he and I had talked about. And I said, without you resolving the conflict in that relationship, isn't everything else a little bit dysfunctional? And he agreed. And I said, shouldn't that be your highest priority? And then he admitted, yeah, I've been putting that off. And I go, if it's not your highest priority, you're going to put it off forever. You need to make it a priority in the next couple days to sit down, air this out, and try to at least manage this conflict as best you can. He agreed, called me a few days later, and said, oh my goodness gracious. He goes, well, it's my next priority after that. I said, no, no, only you can decide.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a teenager once. I mean, he's an older now, but I had a teenager once. And I remember distinctly him coming home, and I would say, and I said to him one day, what's your priority this week? And he said, he was a lacrosse player and he was looking forward to a particular game. He said, it's the big game on Friday. That's my priority. I'm working out. I'm practicing. I'm really focused. And I saw, that's great. I said, as far as I remember, you know, your calculus exam is like 50% of your grade is on Friday's exam. And you said, yeah. And I said, I think that's a lot higher priority. And let me make something clear to you. If we don't do well on that exam, we're not prepared. You're not even going to play in the lacrosse game, right? I mean, that's a much higher priority. That's a simple, fun one for me, but it makes the point. Sometimes people have self-interest that holds something up higher that in fact misses the point. Too many times they don't have priorities. But I'll give you another example, which I think is more concrete than that. In an organization that I'm in, I've recently asked a senior leader.”
2020-11-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #96 Randall Stutman: The Essence of Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT