Practice

 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:

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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. 

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