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116: Joshua Spodek: I had to force my friends to read it

Joshua Spodek Show Notes

Joshua Spodek wrote a book and his friends said it sucked and was difficult to read. So he turned it all around and rewrote it. Every time he received feedback no matter how terrible it was there was always something to learn. He finally realize his approach needed to change and it was much more effective. What Joshua learned will help you to move onward and upward faster.

Joshua’s first passion for science and math forced him to overcome the social and emotional challenges of his geekiness that got him picked on growing up and going to public school.

Despite no one in his family knowing anything about integrals or electrons, Joshua majored in physics and eventually get a PhD in astrophysics, helping build an x-ray observational satellite and studying under a Nobel Prize winner.

He loved the subject, and still does, but found research life wasn’t for him. He felt trapped by his education instead of enabled by it.

His escape—co-founding a company based on an invention—became his next passion. He invented a device to put on subway tunnel walls that would show animations to riders moving between stations. After its Atlanta debut, his company installed in New York, then Hong Kong, Tokyo, Europe, and Central America.

The challenges of 9/11 and the early 2000s recession led to the investors to squeeze him out of the company he co-founded.

So he went to business school, where he discovered his third, and greatest, passion, which he is still acting on today. He learned that people could learn about leadership and entrepreneurship—that you didn’t have to be born with special abilities. Unlike science, where learning just made you smarter, learning about these fields improved relationships, well-being, teamwork, and more.

For over a decade, since business school, Joshua has pursued his passion of teaching them. He found that how he teaches is as important as what.

Joshua teaches and coaches leadership and entrepreneurship at New York University, Columbia University, and independently through SpodekAcademy.com. And is the author of Leadership Step by Step: Become the Person Others Follow.

Students from undergraduates to c-suite professionals and entrepreneurs who have sold businesses describe his courses as teaching things critically valuable for their careers that they never thought they could learn in a structured way, while improving their relationships and well-being. They also describe them as fun.

Joshua has lived in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village for over 17 years. His daily habits include posting to his blog, JoshuaSpodek.com and burpees (over 2,900 days, 85,000 burpees, and counting).

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @spodek to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“What I teach is part of the picture, how I teach is a big piece of it.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet

“You don’t have to be born a leader to lead.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“If you want to overcome challenges a leader faces, you have to do things.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Leadership is about connecting with people at an emotional level.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“If you work with emotions and motivations you’ll be more effective.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“If you use authority it tends to cause people to push back.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“The time when you use authority is when you don’t have anything better.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Who are the people and what will motivate them.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Learning from a text book gets you started, but then you need to practice.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“You have to solve the problem ahead of you to get to the next one.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“You’re never done.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“It would have been much more helpful to lead them to think for themselves.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Empathy and compassion are skills that we can learn.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“You have to realize where you are and be the best you can at that moment.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Business is about relationship.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

“Have something you do every day that is healthy, challenging, and active.” -Joshua Spodek Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Joshua Spodek wrote a book and his friends said it sucked and was difficult to read. So he turned it all around and rewrote it. Every time he received feedback no matter how terrible it was there was always something to learn. He finally realize his approach needed to change and it was much more effective. What Joshua learned will help you to move onward and upward faster.

Advice for others

Practice and exercises help you to become a better leader.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

I’ve a lot to learn and I’ve come very far.

Best Leadership Advice Received

It’s all about the relationship. Business is about relationship.

Secret to Success

Having habits that I do every day that create discipline and diligence.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

To be able to practice effective exercises and build skills.

Recommended Reading

Leadership Step by Step: Become the Person Others Follow

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Man’s Search for Meaning

Contacting Joshua

Website: http://joshuaspodek.com/

Website: http://spodekacademy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaspodek/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/spodek

Resources and Show Mentions

Most Likely to Succeed – A national campaign to inspire – and empower – communities across the country to revolutionize their schools for the 21st Century.

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

 116: Joshua Spodek: I had to force my friends to read it

 

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I’m excited because the guest that I have on the show today shocked me. Joshua Spodek’s first passion for science and math forced him to overcome the social and emotional challenges of his geek-ness that got him picked on growing up and going to public school. Despite no one in his family knowing anything about integrals or electrons Joshua majored in physics and eventually got a PhD in Astrophysics helping build an x-ray, observational satellite, and studying under a Nobel Prize winner. He loved the subject and still does but found research life wasn’t for him, he felt trapped by his education instead of enabled by it. His escape co-founding a company based on an innovation became his next passion. The challenges of—in the early recession let the investors to squeeze him out of the company he co-founded so he went to business school where he discovered his third and greatest passion which he is still acting on today. He learned that people could learn about leadership and entrepreneurship that you didn’t have to be born with special abilities. Unlike science where learning just made you smarter, learning about these fields improved relationships, well-being, teamwork and more. 

 

For over a decade since business school Joshua has pursued his passion of teaching them he found that how he teaches is as important as what. Joshua teaches and coaches leadership and entrepreneurship at New York University, Columbia University and independently through 

spodekacademy.com. And as the author of Leadership Step-by-Step become the person that others follow students from undergraduates to C-Suites, professionals and entrepreneurs who have solve businesses described his courses and teaching things critically valuable to their careers that they never thought they could learn in a structured way while improving their relationships and well-being they also describe them as them as fun. 

 

Joshua has lived in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village for over years. His daily habits include posting to his blog, joshuaspodek.com and Burpees over, 2,900 days, 85,000 burpees and counting. Joshua Spodek are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yes. Oh! My god, I just turned half my life all at once. I just laughed, I cried, I was proud, I was ashamed, I was humiliated, that was just my whole life—half my life before my eyes. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think as I say, I think they get people medication for that. 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah, it was a very intense retelling—I said, Oh! My god. Yeah, so it’s great and I was like. Oh, my god I can’t believe that happened. Oh, that was great, Oh, I can’t believe that happened. Yes, I’m ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I’ve given our Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yes. By far my biggest passion is I teach and I coach leadership and entrepreneurship but it’s important to get across that what I teach is part of the picture it’s how I teach is a big piece of it. In business school I learned—that’s what they taught in their classes in leadership and entrepreneurship that taught me that you don’t have to be born a leader. Up until then I thought—you look at Martin Luther King, I can’t speak like that I can’t do what he did but then I learned that you could. What they taught me through case study and lecture and reading psychology papers and what I learned is that if you want to teach that stuff, do you want to overcome social and emotional challenges in order to face the social and emotional challenges that a leader faces, you have to do things. And so my passion is not just—if you think that I teach like someone who lectures, that’s not it. It’s very important that I give you exercises that force you to do things in your life that matter to you and you face these challenges and overcome them. Sorry for the long answer. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Well no that isn’t the long answer. For me I find it very intriguing because for example when you start thinking about—looking at your initial foray into education and career I mean the old joke is about things being complex or not being simple and when the things are simple and we say that, hey it’s not rocket science because we think rocket science is so darn complex. Some of the things that you were doing with the astrophysics, to me that that just seems extremely complex. It reminds me of a conversation that a friend of mine had who actually was or is a Phd in Human Behavior was having a conversation with a teacher who is a rocket scientist and she said, “, my work is significantly harder than yours and he kind of laughs” and he goes “but I’m a rocket scientist, right? And so she told him she goes. “Well, for your work if I’m talking about a rocket I have so much thrust I have so much gravitational pull I’m pointing the rocket in a certain direction and I know within a high degree of certainty that thing’s going to land right over there.” And he goes, “Yeah, that’s right. She goes, “You try to do that with people.” It gets so complex. So, I think when you start thinking about where you came from and where you are now even though it seems like you went from complex to simple I think you went the other direction. 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Oh, man. If you put an electron in a magnetic field it will do the same thing every time that’s repeatability and physics and the pursuit is to find the simplicity underneath everything. People on the other hand, people do not do the same thing every time it’s different every time it’s a totally different direction and that was a big thing that hampered me at the beginning.  In fact, one of my big challenges when I started in the business world when I left and started my first company I was CEO so I was running the company but I didn’t think of it this way then. But looking back I looked at people like there are physical objects like they were tools. And I would say, do this and I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to do it and it really held me back because leadership to me is about connecting with people on an emotional level and being able to motivate them through their emotions. If you just think of emotions it’s like some weird thing which is how I looked at it, they were too complex for me I didn’t get it. So, that was—yeah, I agree there’s a lot more simplicity in physics and math people from the outside don’t see it that way but the inside I agree. 

 

Jim Rembach:     And then the other thing is when I started looking at—and in previewing your book I expected, knowing that you came from the world of physics and things like that, that I was going to get this really complex, detailed book structure and what I found was just the opposite. Your book is broken down into four units and the units are: understanding yourself, leading yourself, understanding others and then leading others, I’m like boom mic drop that’s—if you can do those things you’re good to go. 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah. Look, I got to (inaudible 7:40) that was a long time ago, that was in the year 2000, so almost two decades ago and in the meantime I realized that what was holding me back was holding a lot of people back and the same process of what’s going on here? How can I understand it? How can I communicate it to others? I applied that to leadership. When I say leadership a lot of people think, a guy in a suit or damn this images. And also when people think entrepreneurship they think shark tank and my courses are anything but that and really what leadership is about for me it’s not telling people what to do. I want to really distinguish between having authority and leading people. A big piece of what bought my staff out was that—I had a lot of clients that come to me and a lot of them would complain about their bosses. I’m sure people listen to this that had problems that their boss is really difficult to deal with and a lot of their visions of leadership, their beliefs and their mental models about leadership were that if I have authority over someone I can tell them what to do and if I don’t I accept what it’s telling me and if I’m a boss I just have to take it. 

 

To enable my clients to leave their bosses I had to find tools that would work for them and this is for me as well and what you have access to is you have access to people’s emotion. If don’t care if you’re if trying to motivate someone who’s above you in a hierarchy below you and hierarchy, parallel or outside the hierarchy, if it’s a client or some of you trying to work with or if it’s a husband or wife or kid, they have emotions, they have motivations and if you work with those emotions and motivations you’re going to be able to motivate them a lot more effectively than if you just use authority. If you use authority that tend to get people to push back it tends to provoke resistance. So, yeah, I spent a long time trying to get what’s going on with people’s emotions and motivations underneath besides trying to motivate people through external incentives like offering the bonuses or threatening them with demotions or something like that. And it turns out, generally, you can lead people more effectively this way. 

 

Jim Rembach:     You can. I would also say that there’s a right place, right time, for a lot of different things and circumstances they talk about situational leadership. And when you start talking about authority it’s not that you should totally lose your authority it’s just that you want to use it at the appropriate time where it’s going to allow and enable the greatest effect. Because even when you start talking about the different generations in the workplace and things like that is that a lot of folks you essentially have to call them out and say, “Hey, look this is what’s expected and I’ve tried to connect with you and get you to do those things but this is what you have to do.” That has to be very authoritative in nature but you don’t want to definitely do it from the get going on the start, but authority does have its place.

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah. I won’t disagree with that. You did two things there, you spoke with authority but you also spoke very clearly and directly. The clear indirect is excellent. To me the time when you use authority is when you don’t have anything better. And there definitely times, if it’s a time crunch and three people each has a different way of doing it and the person has authority, that’s an appropriate time, I agree—you say, “Look, we don’t have time to discuss this we have to get this done or we’re going to lose this client and I may be wrong I may be right but we have to pick one way of doing it I’m the authority so let’s do it this way.”  Like that’s an example I think, it’s appropriate, I would agree. But I would then make sure after what I’d circled back and say look I’m not sure if there’s a right way I’m not sure if it was wrong way but let’s revisit this and see what we can learn from it. If I step on any toes that I make any mistakes because it’s dangerous. If you can do something better this is like a tautology, if you do something better do the better thing. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Well, I think what you just explained right there is a really good point and a lot of that does come down to practice. And knowing when to be to essentially pull the right thing out of the tool kit at the right time and you’re going to fail with that too. When you start talking about the tools and the mechanisms and things like that, have you been able to help folks identify when to pull the right tool at the right time?

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah. And one of the big thing is, how do you know what the right tool is? One of the major things that comes out of my practice is listening to others and paying attention and being aware of them. Generally, it’s going to be a mix of what the task is at hand and also who the people are. A lot of people look for when is the right time to do this? When is the right time to do that? And I think it’s not that you look at the external circumstances although they factored in but also who are the people and what will motivate them. The more you get to know people ahead of time, spend time with them understanding what they need and what works for them what doesn’t work for them when it’s not a crisis or when you have luxury of time things like that and that will tell you what is appropriate at the time when you need it. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great point that you bring up because I think everybody from a time crunch perspective doesn’t have the luxury to be able to sit and have dialogue and sometimes you do just have to make a decision and move forward. I think where most people  have problems is that actually in making a decision and moving forward is that’s where they stop and so how do you get how do people get past the fear and pass the roadblock so that they can actually execute more? Because when you start thinking about innovation, creativity, when you start talking about being able to accomplish something, you have to execute. And they talk about how that’s the one of the problems that we have in our world today is that people—they may take the time to strategize, they may take the time to  plan and do all that but when it comes to the actual execution point that tipping point that’s where they fall down.

 

Joshua Spodek:     Well there’s a lot of factor in here. I made a little note here when you’re in crisis situation, when things are difficult my model there is the measure of a great quarterback. This is one leader it’s not the only place where people live but the measure of a great quarterback is not just how he runs plays, does he run the play perfectly? It’s what does he do when the play falls apart, that’s when the really great quarterback shine. Anyone can pilot a boat when the weather is calm and the seas are calm and you got a light breeze, it’s what you do you when the wind is going all over the place and the waves are really high and there’s white water all over the place. And I think that the way to develop your skills for those areas—I mean, the only way is through experience. Learning from a textbook that’ll get you started but then you have to practice and practice and practice. And I think the more variety of situations you see with the more variety of people that’s how you develop these things. My practice is—it’s difficult if you just throw someone into wolves right off the bat and start them on this big, big, big challenges the way to get to the really hard stuff is first you practice with the easy stuff. You run simple play or if you’re learning to play an instrument you start with scales and you put them in front of a small group of people and then you build and build and build more and more challenges. 

 

And so you talked about this four units in my book and each of those units is broken down into several different exercises. And the first exercise in the book is really easy it’s not that hard anyone can do it, it doesn’t involve other people. The next one builds on that it’s a little bit more challenging and after you do a bunch more you’re on to a really advanced stuff that if you started there it would be probably overwhelming and difficult but because the one before was just a little bit less challenging than that this one’s you can handle. And the same in any leadership situation, what I didn’t get in school was that kind of practice they just said, “Here’s what you do and here are the principles but not how to put them in practice.  

 

Jim Rembach:     We can sit here and we can read volumes and it could take an entire lifetime but it doesn’t mean that our behavior and what we do is going to have an effect or an impact. But when you start talking about leadership then there’s a whole lot of inspiration that is associated with it because it is so full of emotion. And on the show we look at quotes to help us really focus and stir up and get those emotions going. Is there a quote or two that you can share that you like? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah, there’s two quotes. One is pretty long and when I was looking it up on my computer I have this file of quotes and I make my file quotes smaller and smaller because I like to get—the better ones just keep floating to the top. And so I’m going to go to—the one that I was originally going to go with, I just love this quote. It was a wanted help wanted ad for an expedition, I hope you’ve heard it and it says, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, and safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.” Could you imagine seeing that in a newspaper wanted, like a classified ad?

 

Jim Rembach:     So, yeah, that actually has to do with the pole expedition.

 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah. That particular ad from what I understand actually had thousands of responses. 

 

Joshua Spodek:     It also reminds me of a movie that was a great movie, a movie with great lessons to learn about entrepreneurship was the Martian with Matt Damon a little while ago. One of the things I loved about that movie is there’s all these problems that he faced. And every single problem led to success but then another problem came up, success then another problem came up, success then another problem came up, success then another problem came up and you couldn’t plan for the third problem when you’re working on the first one, you just have to deal with what’s there at the time. The movie was a really cool science-fiction but I think that the lesson, you have to solve a problem ahead of you and you have to solve it and if you solve it you can get to the next problem and if you solve that when you get to the next problem but you’re never done.

 

Jim Rembach:     When you start talking about being able to take things forward and take them to the next level and be able to improve our skills and abilities we have humps that we have to get over. And there’s learnings and a whole slew of wisdom if we choose to pay attention to it and leverage it they will set us off in a better direction. Is there a hump where you had to get over that you can share that sets you in a better direction? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah. I haven’t thought about this in a long time until now. My book is just coming out so I’m thinking back of how the book began and this was before I met my agent, my editor before anyone was helping me. In fact, before I did all—you mentioned in the introduction I’ve written a lot and so when I hadn’t really written that much and I had—all the IDS in my book I was like, I want to write this book and I just wrote out a book and I gave it to a couple friends to read and they came back and they didn’t—like after a month they hadn’t read it. After another month they hadn’t read it. After another month they hadn’t read it and I have to force my friends to read it. And they come back after and they’re like Josh, “Your book sucks. It was really painful to read.” And they said, “Now when I got to the end of it I really sense some really good ideas in there but I really did not like reading this book. It was really daunting, it was not pleasant.” 

 

So I went back and I thought, all right, I’m ending with the good stuff I guess I have to turn all the way around and start with the good stuff and figure out how to rewrite this book. And so when I rewrote it somehow transformed from a book into a presentation. I thought, oh I’m going to make this into a course, I’ll teach. So I invited some friends over, one at a time, and I would go through this presentation, I don’t know who creates presentations in their spare time, but you can see how this would lead to becoming a professor and people come over and like they would stop me in the middle and be like, I can’t take anymore this.  And they push back on the parts that I thought were the most interesting, this is really not going anywhere this is really difficult. I knew that there was really important stuff in there and I was just getting all the stuff that was like people pushing back and pushing back and not liking it. 

 

But every time that they gave me a feedback no matter how terrible they said it was there was always something to learn from it. In fact, one of the friends—we begin to fight and I was really angry at him. He and his girlfriend they’re over here and I was telling him –like I was trying to present to them and they were telling me that most important stuff was like worthless and I got so angry and then it took a long time before I realized I was really pushing stuff on people that it would have been much more helpful for me just to leave them to think for themselves and let them come to their own conclusion that is to give them less and let them discover more. That’s how I change from being someone who is telling them what to do instead of trying to give the answers I realize it’s going to be much effective to give them an experience that would let them create their own answers for themselves, it’s a kind of abstract what I’m saying here. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Well, it isn’t for me because I think what you were explaining in regards to the lecture and being able to give information and telling them what they need to know that is what a professor does, they bestow information upon people. It’s a very different approach to actually draw people in and being able to build that suspense, build that intrigue, build that curiosity, build that wonder and get people to essentially—instead of you pulling them they’re actually grabbing the rope and just trying to get closer and closer towards you that’s a totally different shift and dynamic that you went through the activities and exercises to be able to learn. So, what happened?

 

Joshua Spodek:     If I can jump ahead to an epiphany that I had. I was visiting a friend’s school. A friend of mine is a founding principal of a school in Philadelphia and I went to visit it because the fourth class, they started the first year there was ninth grade and by the time those ninth graders graduated Barack Obama came to speak to the graduating class Bill Gates had already spoken there, this is incredible so, I went to go visit the school. I’m talking to him and he says, “Do you want a tour? And I go, “Yeah” and he just stopped some random kids walking by who was a tenth grader—some 15 year old kid shows me around the school, I had an MBA by this point, and this 15 year old kid had leadership skills in many ways on par with MBA’s that I knew. But the MBA’s took leadership courses and the 15 year old did not. And I was like, “What’s going on here?” I would ask the student, how does the school run in this way” and students say, “Well the teachers do this, the principal is—how’s the kid notice? And that’s when I realized that what you’re talking about the difference between lecturing and pull the people and give them an environment for them to discover things for themselves and that’s what that school was built on and I felt like I went back to the drawing board I’d decades of learning one way. And I just saw a different way from the outside at first and I kept going back to his school because there is a conference every winter of how this people who teach in this type of community. And I learned from them and I have to back to the drawing board. It was really scary and painful and you have to be humble, because I’m a university professor and I’m learning from grade school teachers. If you look at authority I did not know how it’s supposed to be, it should go not that way. But if you look at who is effective and who was not effective they were effective and I was not, I need to back to the drawing board and learn from them. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great story and a lot of nuggets of wisdom that we can pull from that. So when you start thinking about—you got the book, you’ve got all your burpees and a lot of things going on, what’s one of your goal? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Oh, man. I believe that empathy and compassion and initiative creating meaning, creating value, creating passion I view those things not as traits that people are either born with or not but it’s skill that you can learn. And what I hope, one of my hope’s in my book is that it turn those things into a widely held view that they are skills that you can learn like learning to ride a bicycle. That anyone in the world they want to become more empathic more compassionate but they want to have more initiative but they want to be able to create passion to the people around them that they say, Oh, I just do a bunch of exercises Josh’s book is a good place but it’s not the only place. Just imagine the world where everybody is a bit more compassionate to everybody else because they know how to become that way. 

 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor:

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. 

 

Jim Rembach:     All right here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Joshua, the Hump Day Hoedown, is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Joshua Spodek are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     I’m ready to hoedown. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Joshua Spodek:     I don’t believe that I’m the best leader in the world. I don’t believe that I’m the best leader that I can possibly be in the future but for where I am now I believe that I’m the best I can be. I’ve a lot to learn but I’ve come very far. And so I think that you have to realize where you are and be the best you can be at that moment.

 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Joshua Spodek:     In the most difficult times the professor of mine who became on the board he just always said, “It’s  all about the relationships.” And every time I just always learned that over and over again. It’s the relationship that you have they help you when you’re in trouble, they help you when things aren’t going well, business is about relationship.” 

 

Jim Rembach:     What was one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Joshua Spodek:     It’s becoming less my secret all the time but the structure, the burpees, the writing every day, having habits that I do every day creating that structure and I don’t fail with doing those and that could be discipline and diligence and anybody can do it. Have daily exercises, have something that you do that is challenging, healthy, active. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     It’s hard for me not to say all the stuff that’s in my book. It’s the reason I made the book is to put those tools out there. And so to be able to practice effective exercises that develop skills and I put I put everything I had in there. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book and it could be from any genre, of course we’ll put a link to yours on there on the show knows page, but what would be another book that you’d recommend to our listeners? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Alright can I mention two? 

 

Jim Rembach:     Sure. 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Okay. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, is a book on negotiation and is the book that changed business for me from getting ahead and like winning at all costs to being nonzero-sum and winning together different people. And then the other one is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, which is to me tells you what you are capable of what every human being is capable of and he was just was able to succeed and create life himself so much better than what his circumstances would allow and that tells all of us what we were able to do. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Joshua Spodek. Okay, Joshua this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Joshua Spodek:     Definitely the ability to take risks by putting faith and having confidence in my own ability to resolve situations. I was in graduate school at the time in physics and I felt so trapped. I felt if I tried to do something different I might fail and then I would be lost. And going off and trying something new is exactly what got me out of what the feeling so trap. I call the entrepreneurship it was really taking a risk and having confidence. Whatever came my way I’d be able to handle it and I just didn’t know how then, and it’s probably the biggest resource that I’ve had sinned. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Joshua, it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

Joshua Spodek:     Yeah. My personal blog is @joshuaspodek.com and that’s where I write about my view on the world from a leadership perspective. And then my professional site spodekacademy.com is where my courses are available and that’s the more professional side. On Twitter @spodek and my last name Spodek is pretty rare so if you want to find out more about me you just search on me you’ll find lots of articles and things like. And then on the two sites there’s also forms that you can contact me. I look forward to hearing from anybody, I’m happy to answer question. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Joshua Spodek, than you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. 

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO

 

042: Leadership Development Return on Investment: For Organizations, Teams and You

Leadership Development Return on Investment Show Notes

Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) in leadership training and development is considered to be an important element in Human Resources and beyond. The ROI of training and development is frequently a topic presented and discussed at conferences, workshops and professional associations. Journals and media regularly present the subject with more and more emphasis. Executives have come to expect ROI projections and estimates in requests for leadership training and development funding. Leadership educators now find that asking for Return on Investment information is common place. In this episode learn how to get over the ROI hump.

In this special episode we discuss the hump of Leadership Development Return on Investment that Paul submitted on the Fast Leader Website. Helping me address this hump is Dr. Pelé Ugboajah.

Dr. Pelé helps us to define leadership and discuss the ROI formula for organizations, teams and individuals. He also reveals a shocking statistic about the impacts of learning. He also shares what is a realistic timeline for developing better leadership skills and what you need to do to during that time.

Dr. Pelé also shares with us some of the issues that surround calculating return on investment and how you can come to grips on your situation and build better business cases to go beyond learning to developing.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Get over the Leadership Development ROI hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Leadership is something that really needs to be addressed in organizations.“ Click to Tweet

“ROI on Leadership Development for one company is different for another.” Click to Tweet 

“What did we pay to develop leaders and what did we get out of it?” Click to Tweet 

“It is the intangible things that allow us to achieve those tangible things.” Click to Tweet 

“Behavior begets culture.” Click to Tweet 

“As behaviors change in organizations results also change.” Click to Tweet 

“What makes a good team has got to be analyzed and quantified.” Click to Tweet 

“The character of a team is reflective of the quality of the leader.” Click to Tweet 

“Bad leaders produce bad teams” Click to Tweet 

“Bad teams are symptomatic of bad leadership.” Click to Tweet 

“There are as many definitions for leadership as there are people on this planet.” Click to Tweet 

“Leadership is influence.” Click to Tweet 

“When a vision not being achieved that tells you something about leadership.” Click to Tweet 

“When no one is following, that tells you something about leadership.” Click to Tweet 

“Whatever we think we are doing today with respect to leadership development, is not working.” Click to Tweet 

“We have an industry called Learning and Development that only focuses on Learning.” Click to Tweet 

“Learning is the beginning, development takes time.” Click to Tweet 

“You don’t develop (leaders) in a classroom.” Click to Tweet 

“Leadership development does not happen in a classroom.” Click to Tweet 

“You learn by doing, over time.” Click to Tweet 

“I can be a leader only if the situation presents itself.” Click to Tweet 

“People should strive for leadership at all levels.” Click to Tweet 

“85% of success is from skills and attitudes, not knowledge.” Click to Tweet 

“People have to start” Click to Tweet 

“People have to practice leadership skills and attitudes.” Click to Tweet 

“You can boil down leadership into measurable and observable behaviors that people can practice.” Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) in leadership training and development is considered to be an important element in Human Resources and beyond. The ROI of training and development is frequently a topic presented and discussed at conferences, workshops and professional associations. Journals and media regularly present the subject with more and more emphasis. Executives have come to expect ROI projections and estimates in requests for leadership training and development funding. Leadership educators now find that asking for Return on Investment information is common place. In this episode learn how to get over the ROI hump.

What is holding organizations back from building their leadership pipelines?

Cultures that don’t believe that leaders can be nurtured.

Many organizations have eliminated their middle leaders and are now starving for leaders; what should they do?

They should start turning everyone into a leader. People should strive for leadership at all levels.

What is one of the biggest mistakes you see orgs make when trying to develop leaders (identifying competencies?)

They don’t focus on specific, measurable behaviors.

What is the best advice to give for those that want to be better leaders?

They have to learn something about leadership, they have to practice that thing, and they’ve go to monitor the achievement of their results in a community of practice over time.

What is one of the secrets you believe that will contribute to developing leadership skills faster?

Practice. 85% of success is from skills and attitudes, not knowledge. People have to practice leadership skills and attitudes.

What do you feel is one the most misguided recommendations you hear experts give about developing leadership skills?

That leadership presence is unknown and intangible. That’s wrong. You can boil down leadership into measurable and observable behaviors that people can practice over time.

Imagine you were given the opportunity to change a tradition, system or belief that has hindered our ability to create more (and better) leaders over the past several decades. But you can’t totally wipe everything away, you can only choose one traditional, skill or belief to eliminate. So what would it be and why?

That leaders are only born; they are also nurtured and made over time.

Recommended Reading

Leadership development ROI Case Study

Additional Resources

70/20/10 Model

Return on Investment as a % = Program Benefits / Program Costs x 100

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

042: Leadership Development Return on Investment: For Organizations, Teams and You

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

“Developing your company’s talent and leadership pipeline can be an overwhelming task but your burn is over with ResultPal you can use the power of practice to develop more leaders faster. Move onward and upward by going to resultpal.com/fast and getting a $750 performance package for free.”

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion today we have a special episode. We are going to address a question that was submitted on the Fast Leader website. We have a tab where any of you can submit a question and you never know it might show up and we’ll address that particular question. We have a special guest to talk with us about it. And today we have Pele Ugboajah that is going to help us with this, and we’ll give it to him in a second. But this particular question that we’re going to address today is really multifaceted, has a lot of different impacts that are both individual in nature, workgroup and team in nature as well as organization in nature because it gets down to the question of ROI. What is my ROI both as an individual, as part of a group, as part of an organization? And we’re going to focus in a little bit around leadership development. 

 

The particular question that was raised by Paul, and I play for you in a moment, was about maybe his individual ROI, we’ll address some of that coming up, think about ROI in a little bit different context and the reason we want to do that is because it is multifaceted, it is different for everyone and that’s will be part of our discussion is going to be like today. But any question that you have or any issue that you’re struggling with just go to the fastleader.net and click on the tab, what you struggling with, and leave us with a message.

 

So, now let’s listen to Paul:  

 “Hi. My name is Paul and I’m struggling as leader with getting return on investment. I endlessly put in more than I get back and I want that to change somehow.”

 

I’m sure that many of us including myself find times were doing just that, we feel like we’re struggling, we’re putting a lot in and not getting the things back there we’re desiring or what we want our objectives are not getting met and the performance that were trying to get just doesn’t occur. We’re going to talk about that particular issue of ROI and getting things back and focusing on leadership development. Helping us today is Dr. Pele Ugboajah, who’s a PhD in Organization and Management and has a specialization in Leadership. His dissertation and research focused on the effects of narrative on entrepreneurial leadership. And you may say, “Why are we having Dr. Pele for saying entrepreneurial leadership because I’m telling you today this concept and focus on entrepreneurial behavior, growth, and innovation is vital for us to not just thrive in today’s marketplace but just to survive.  Dr. Pele are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Pele Ugboajah:    I am ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay so now, normally we go through and we talk about the inspiration. We talk about leadership quotes. We talk about several things associated with what has helped us learn and grow as leaders of self and others on the show. But when you start thinking about this issue of leadership development and ROI, what do you think is some of the fuel and the driving passions behind people wanting to do anything associated with?

 

Pele Ugboajah:    Jim, thank you for that question. I think that your colors statement and the thing that he’s seeking clarity on, is really the evidence that we need that—leadership is something that really needs to be addressed in organizations. This is great evidence for the fact that at an individual level this particular leader is seeing the symptoms and the struggles of being a leader, and so I thank you for that. As far as what we see, we see exactly what’s happening to this individual. We find that this is what we call leadership effectiveness, not necessarily ROI unless one could argue that ROI at an individual level really is effectiveness.

So, this is something that we see a lot and as you lead me towards your question I’d be happy to talk about this one specifically. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay. Now, let’s stop for a moment and do just a quick explanation of what is ROI and how do you calculate it. And if you look at the simple explanation, what we do is we look at what benefits that we may get from any activity. Again, we’re going to focus in on leadership development and learning here on this episode. And talk about the benefits that we may get from that and we’re going to talk about a particular case study a little bit where the study that anybody can pull down, and it’s on leadership educators.org, and I’ll put a link on the show notes page so that you can get to this case study, where they looked at the return on investment and doing a managerial assessment of a proficiency program for the Georgia Extension System. For those that aren’t familiar with extension systems they have to do with the agricultural support for a state, their state run organizations and groups, I will make that available and they talk about, what was the investment of going to this leadership development program and what was the impact?

 

One of the things that they use as the program benefit was actually reducing turnover of people who were in their program and being the leaders in their program. The point being is that there’s a lot of ways that you can assess program benefits when you’re thinking about being a leader, developing leaders, and then you look at the cost of actually doing that, if you want to turn it in percentage you multiply it by 100 and that turns into percentage, so what it is, it’s program benefits provided by program cost multiplied by 100, and again we’ll put that on the show notes page. 

 

That’s a very simple explanation of what is ROI, and that’s ROI as a percentage. So Pele, when you think of an organization and you start looking at this ROI calculation, again we want to focus in on leadership development because you know I think you’re going to share with us some statistics associated with leadership development and the impact that it currently having you on and the world at a global scale. But if you were to think about an organization what are they looking at in regards to benefits, to go into the ROI calculation?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     Okay, so, for organizations, I suppose we have to look at whatever returns they were seeking when they put in leadership development program. It’s a very fluid and changing landscape. ROI for one person is going to be different for an ROI calculation for another person or individual or company. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in some cases ROI is in the eye of the organization. A company has to say, really what is our cost benefit? You’re just doing analysis, why did we pay to develop leaders? And what did we get out of it? Some companies may not get money out it, it may not be about money it may just be about culture, it may be about temperament, it may be about how people feel when they come to work and in the morning on Monday. And so all of these things need to be somehow qualified or quantified to begin the judgment call on whether or not something is contributing toward ROI or not. I hope that answers your questions, it’s a very broad question. 

 

Jim Rembach:     It is. There’s one point for me that stood out that I oftentimes find something that can create some deeper level of understanding and insight. We often talk about leadership and the things associated with leadership, and again we’re talking about creating an environment by which a lot of the things that are supposedly intangible becoming very tangible. All of us have heard about doing time studies, right? How long does it take to do a particular piece of work or a task? The same thing applies when you start thinking about leadership and getting work done within an organization and so that can become quite tangible when you’re starting to talk culture. 

 

In today’s organization we have to work across many different functional groups. And guess what, if we have an issue with being able to work within those workgroups, with being able to—stepping up and being a leader within those workgroups and take responsibility when we have to, what’s going to happen to that work? It’s not going to get done very quickly and it’s going to create a lot of problems. We’re going to miss deadlines and I think—who of the Legion has been part of the project, a projects, when you look at your last 10 that you’ve been part of, and goodness knows, we know that work today is all just loaded with projects. How many met their deadline? And when they met their deadline, how do they meet their deadline? Oftentimes it’s coerce, ‘if you get this done by this time it’s going to mean X’ that’s not how we actually want to create a culture that’s going to thrive.

 

So, when you think about that tangible aspect of culture and being able to work within those workgroups that is something that we can calculate and sees a very impactful benefit to actually helping raise the level of leadership throughout the entire organization.  When you start thinking about tangible and intangible and some of the things that are associated with this calculation, is there something that stands out to the people missed very often that they need to consider?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     I think your point about tangible versus intangible is extremely valuable because we have a tendency to look toward what is tangible. We look at things like sales results, we look at how many customers required over a certain period time, but the funny thing is that it’s the intangible things that allow us to achieve those tangible things. And those intangible things are things like behavior. And behavior begets culture like one is a parent of the other. If you have a lot of behaviors that a lot of people ascribe to hence comes your culture. 

 

So, I think the core intangible, if you want to use that as a good descriptor, is behavior. What exactly is behavior, let’s get down to some definitions. Behavior is described amongst the academic behavioral community but really in terms of common sense, as whatever an individual does or says. Let me repeat that, whenever you do something that is measurable and observable or you say something, again, measurable and observable you have just behaved in a certain way. And so, our task really is to help our leaders, help our organizations get down to the granular level of seeing, understanding and measuring behavior so the people can improve those behaviors over time. So I think behaviors is that intangible you’re talking about. As behaviors change in organizations results also change.

 

Jim Rembach:     And I think that’s a great point. And also as you were talking I started thinking about at an organizational level some of those things that may seem hard to calculate but can be and a lot of things at an organizational level, we’re talking about brand impacts. When we start talking about missing those deadlines, it doesn’t necessarily impact the individuals or even the workgroup it could impact the brand and it really doesn’t matter if you’re in a B to B or in a B to C environment thinking about that overall brand impact in wanting to be associated with the company and not want to be associated with the company, those can be some very high  strategic level impacts that often can go into that actual calculation or that benefit of any type of development program an activity that you go about. 

 

So not at the team level. Let’s take it down a notch because every single one of us, unless we’re a solopreneur, are part of particular team or workgroup. So, we start thinking about a benefit associated with going through the leadership development process and improving leadership skills, that pipeline, and that bench strength of leadership. What are some of the things that come to mind when you start thinking of smaller workgroups?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     Well, I think you made a valid point about larger organizations having not only organizational culture and behavior to contend with in terms of measuring but also customer behavior and culture to find a way to understand because that’s the way you understand the impact of your  brand. It’s how your customers are behaving, again back to the behavior word, what are they doing and saying? Those same concept apply precisely in the same way that teams and organizations, teams within organizations. However, we can now begin to—because we’re talking about smaller teams, we can now begin to talk more specifically about leadership and leadership impact. Because it is very visual, we can see it happening—you come to a team meeting, if you are a fly on the wall in a team meeting you could literally see if you got good leadership happening in this particular team or not. 

 

It goes back to several formulas for what it takes to be a good team, things such as trust, things such as—the openness and willingness to challenge the status quo, transparency and so on, so, there’s some basic building blocks of what a team is and should be. When you see those things absent in a team that is your indicator that leadership is not happening and you can begin to use those as measurements for behavior to understand whether or not good leadership exists or not in a team. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a really important point. For longest time I’ve been looking and focusing in on the works of Dr. Shea McConan and he talks about there’s seven key elements associated with those outcomes or those behaviors result in, and he talks about the importance of feeling valued,  conflict management, ownership, openness, motivation, feedback and difference management and those being the core pillars associated with being able to get that trust and that openness and getting work done faster knowing that somebody’s got your back and it also potentially rolling that up at an organization level. I think you and I were participating in a conversation the other day with a Chief Learning Officer of an organization, she was talking about this issue that she deals with in regards to this whole top down problem. And I mention the case study was a Harvard Business Review study, it was printed back in 1970, and it talks about why change programs—don’t change anything essentially. And it’s just that, it’s the top down piece pushing things down, starting at the very top and expecting them to have a long term value and impact to the organization as they get down, it just doesn’t happen. You get a short term blip but it’s not long term impacting and it’s just not sustainable. 

 

When you start thinking about the team, one of the things I see a lot of organizations do that as I’m learning more and more about this whole concept of motivation that could be a detriment. As a matter of fact, there’s one particular tool that I look at their demo on their solution and what they were essentially doing was creating an artificial coercive motivation so that these things can happen as far as getting results, right? When you start talking about teams and comparing their performance with one another at what point does it become unhealthy?

 

Pele Ugboajah:    That’s an important question and I think that’s why we have consultants because the better consultants you are the better you can make what is very potentially explosive into a very positive nice process. The rules are always the same, we have to understand if people trust each other. You’ve got to know whether or not this ability to address conflict, we need to know how committed people are. And all of these things such as avoiding accountability or some people who don’t focus on results but only focus on themselves, all of these pillars if you will of what makes a good team had got to be analyzed, quantified, qualified and use as a lens to understand whether or not you have a functional leadership in that team or not. Because in the end, the character of a team is very reflective almost on one-to-one level about the quality of a leader. Bad leaders produce bad teams. And bad teams are symptomatic of leadership.

 

Jim Rembach:    It’s funny you say that. I was actually in a tradeshow a couple weeks ago and overheard somebody talking about, “I wish I could get my team to do the things that I need them to do when I’m gone.” And I almost want to say, “Well, that is because you’re not a good leader.” But of course, I refrain from doing that but I think that’s kind of the old adage that goes to—what it is that happens when you’re not there? And I don’t know if it’s necessarily a situation where one individual as a leader can totally change the situation where there’s negative performance in that. It literally requires a collaborative effort. But creating the environment and using your learning and development opportunities to put in the behaviors that will enable you to do that is important. So, let’s focus on Paul. Now, when I shared with you Paul’s message you had a very different perspective than I did. Please share that with me?

 

 Pele Ugboajah:     My mind hearing of his message was that he was struggling personally as a leader. And he wanted advice on how he could increase his leadership effectiveness. Now, he did use the word, return on investment, like what he said was, “I’m putting much more in that I’m getting out, it’s something like that. So, he was talking about return on investment at an individual level. However, what he’s really struggling with is leadership effectiveness. One thing we need to definite in addition to all the other definitions we’ve talked about such as behavior and teams we need to define leadership, why? Because there are as many definitions for leadership as there are people on this planet. Let’s find one that we can at least work with. 

 

I would say, let me just propose one and see if you agree, I would say that the shortest way to describe it, leadership is influence. Leadership is your ability to influence others. You set a vision, you create an environment where others want to follow and achieve that vision. So, when a vision is not being achieved that tells you something about leadership, when no one is following that tells you something about leadership. As you say, if you’re taking a walk and you look behind you and there’s no one behind you all you’re doing is taking a walk, you’re not a leader. And so, I would say that for pulse specific situation he needs to do three things. 

 

Frist of all, he needs to recognize that he is a leader. He is a leader, however, he needs to nurture his leadership to the point that he desires it to be and to do that he has to learn something about leadership that is in line with his own personality and his own abilities and position. Then he has to practice those things he learn as tangible, measurable behaviors, and then he has to track his achievement process over time within a community of practice and may even preferably with a coach who is consistently focused on his development. So, if those three things that I think Paul needs to do. Learn some competencies and behaviors regarding leadership. Practice them in reality at your job and make sure that you are doing it within the context of a community of practice that can help you achieve your leadership goals.

 

 Jim Rembach:     I think those are three great pieces that we all could instill as part of our behaviors in trying to get greater effectiveness in whatever we do as far as leading his concern. And I think—Paul, thank you for your contribution, we love you and we hope this helps. But also when you start thinking about that ROI, going back to that calculation play, many of those things that you referred to of those three, there’s some investment required. And so, when you also start thinking about return associated with it, what I often see is that—Oh, gosh, and I’m  going to have this problem too is that we want them to be immediate, we want those returns now, we don’t want them yesterday. And oftentimes we somewhat are a little bit laggard in trying to get those returns, and it’s like, “Gosh, if I have just done this two year ago, or last month for that matter, I would have a different effect or different impact.

 

But when you start thinking about this timeline and you’ve studied this, the impacts, how long can somebody really expect impact to occur and get greater effectiveness? What’s realistic?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     First of all, let’s just start with agreeing and admitting to the research job there which says, essentially the 150+ billion dollars that are is spent each year, for example, in the US on training and development is almost universally wasted because 85% of it is gone. The return on investment is only about maybe 5% to 20%. Let’s just say 15% that is a terrible statistic and it is evident that whatever we think we’re doing today, with respect to leadership development is not working. So, let’s just start with that, how do you do it better? I think you point about taking more time and focusing on developing things where time is really well taken. For example, we have an industry called Learning and Development that only focuses on learning, that’s the problem.

 

 Learning is the beginning, development takes time. You don’t develop in a classroom. I have a saying that I don’t think I invented but I’ve certainly adopted it to myself and my name. You don’t learn to play soccer at a seminar—my name Pele to soccer player, okay. You can’t learn how to play soccer at a seminar, you’ve got to get outside of the seminar and you’ve got to practice soccer, you’ve got develop over time, so back to your question: What is a meaningful expectation in terms of time and leadership development? First thing I want to say is that,  leadership does not happen in the classroom there’s something called the 70/20/10 rule, which says that and this is based on research that we could put down on your links later on. But 10% of learning happens in the classroom, 20% happens outside the classroom while you talk to people within the community of practice and a whopping 70% of real learning happens in the field, outside of the classroom, after job, in the workplace. What that tells me and should tell everyone is that, you learn by doing overtime. 

 

Now, when I was an executive coach in a leadership development firm, we had coaching and leadership development happen over six months to a year. It is not something that happens in a week, a month, or even three months, why? Because you need time to really get the community of practice working together to help this individual this individual grow. You need time for the opportunity to happen. If want to practice my guitar, I can pick up my guitar anytime I want and just play it, but when you’re trying to practice leadership development it is situational. I can be a leader only if the situation presents itself.  

 

And so I have to actually seek out opportunities and hope and wait and look for and create opportunities to practice those behaviors. And to do that you have to spend some time in the workplace coming across those kinds of leadership situations. So, six months is a small but a good minimum, twelve months is even better. And that 12 months has to be structured, it has to be all about practice and feedback, or what we sometimes call, feedforward which means a more positive approach, more futuristic approach to, how do I get better, and it’s got to be something that is measured and recorded hopefully in a format or platform or tool that will allow you to see whether someone is getting better or not. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Dr. Pele, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom. Now, before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

“Contributing to the annual $150 billion loss in training and development investments is downright demoralizing so raise your spirits and training ROI by increasing learning transfer with resultpal.com. Get over the hump now by going to resultpal.com/fast and getting a $750 performance package for free.” 

 

Alright here we go Fast leader listeners now it’s time for the—Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Dr. Pele, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Dr. Pele, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     I’m ready to hoedown. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright.   What do you think is holding organizations back from building their leadership pipelines?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     Cultures. Most organizations that you’re talking about have cultures that frankly don’t believe that leaders can be nurtured. They believe that leadership comes from nature only. And one could debate that all day, but the fact is a switch needs to go from, “We have leaders who are born that way” to “We have leaders who we can develop overtime. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Many organizations have eliminated their middle leaders and are now starving for leaders, what should they do?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     They should start turning everyone into a leader. Just because you’re title doesn’t say Vice President or Director, doesn’t mean you can be a leader in your specific team, group or situations, people should strive for leadership at all levels. 

 

 Jim Rembach:     What is one of the biggest mistakes do you see organizations make when trying to develop their leaders?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     They don’t focus on specific measurable behaviors. They focus on this high level pie in the sky descriptions of competencies and vision and not what people need to do on Monday morning when they get back to work. 

 

Jim Rembach:       What is the best advice to give for those who want to be better leaders?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     They have to learn something about leadership. They have to practice that thing about leadership and they’ve got to monitor the achievement of their results within the community of practice overtime. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of the secrets you believe that will contribute to developing leadership skills faster?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     Practice, 85% of success is from skills and attitude not knowledge. People have to start practicing leadership skills and attitudes.

 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of the most misguided recommendations you hear experts give about developing leadership skills?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     First of all, this idea I think that things like leadership where executive presence are unknown and intangible. You only feel it when it’s there, that’s wrong. You can boil down leadership into measurable and behaviors that people can practice over time, and that’s that a misguided belief in the culture of our organizations. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader Legion you can find links to the research that we sided in this episode and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/ ROI. Okay Dr. Blake this is my last Hump Day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to change a tradition, system of belief that has hindered our ability to create more and better leaders for match we were given the opportunity to change a tradition system or belief that has hindered our ability to create more and better leaders over the past several decades. But you can’t change and wipe away every single thing. You can only choose one tradition, skill or belief so what would you change and why?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     I would change the belief that leaders are only born and I would suggest that leaders are also nurtured and made over time.

 

Jim Rembach:     Dr. Pele, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, can you share with the fast leader legion how can connect with you?

 

Pele Ugboajah:     You can connect with me by going to www.resultpal.com and I’m available to be contacted through there. And I look forward to any concepts that come my way, I’ll try to help as much as I can. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

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