Big Idea’s
- Excellence doesn’t get turned on and turned off. Admired leaders are admired leaders everywhere. When you’re an admired leader you do the things that you believe in everywhere. From how you lead your company, how you are as a spouse and how you parent. It becomes part of who you are.
- Among Randall’s many aha moments throughout his career, he says the biggest aha moment was recognizing that admired leaders apply their patterns, behaviors, and routines in every aspect of their life, not just in their career.
“When you’re really good at leadership, you do the things that you believe in everywhere, and that was a big aha”
- Randall has spent the last three decades understanding and uncovering behaviors that are unknown but common amongst leaders from all walks of life.
“Most of us wanna be better leaders, but we don’t know how, and so we read and we talk about it and we attend conferences, and Admired Leadership is how. It’s the actual actions, great leaders and things that you and I can do tomorrow.”
1 Key Takeaway to Act On
Wisdom Journal
- At the end of your day distill what you’ve learned down into key insights. These go into your “Wisdom Journal”. Take notes, distill down to the key insights or “wisdom”, rearticulate it in your own words, review your Wisdom Journal monthly so it becomes part of your knowledge.
3:33 Randall’s Routines
- Randall keeps his phone far away from him when he is sleeping and when he wakes up he waits a minimum of 30 minutes before he dives into emails or texts. Starting his day without the distraction of technology is what Randall credits to setting a productive tone for the day.
- At the end of the day, Randall writes down anything he listened to or read throughout that day and distills them into key insights to put in his “Wisdom Journal”.
- Because most of his days include jumping from conversation to conversation, Randall tries to create white space through transition points and segways from each conversation to make sure that he is transitioning quickly between them. This white space allows him to refocus and shift his attention to the next conversation.
“I try to find segways or transition points, so I don’t move exactly from one conversation to another conversation, at least instantaneously. I create as much of that white space that I can create… That’s a good thing. And I try to do that fairly purposefully all day long”
6:20 Distilling Knowledge into Key Insights
- This is a behavior Randall’s uncovered amongst many of the top leaders he works with. It’s the behavior that seems to really change people. Randall dives into the importance of distilling knowledge. If you are somebody who is constantly reading, listening to podcasts, watching or attending speakers, hearing quotes, and the many other ways we continuously learn new knowledge, you may be taking countless notes but without the distillation process, the knowledge you learned is difficult to remember and apply.
“We’re learning junkies. We wanna get wiser. We think the whole idea here is not just not to make the same mistakes over and over again, but to actually do things as effectively and as efficiently as we possibly can, and to actually act smartly.”
- The first step is taking notes.
- After taking notes, Randall looks through and asks himself
- What are the real insights?
- What’s the wisdom here?
- Is there anything I really wanna keep?
- And then can I rearticulate it in a way I can remember it.
“And so now you’re engaged in the distilling process, you’re taking 8 pages, 10 pages, 20 pages of notes and scribbles, and you’re moving many things in 2, 3, or 4 sentences… I want the process to create a kernel of what’s the insight. What’s the thing that I wanna eventually remember?”
- After doing this for decades. Randall has 36 journals, each dedicated to a different topic. Among these topics, he lists having specific journals dedicated to feedback, language, and even jokes. Randall will spend about an hour each weekend going through a handful of the journals to keep the insights fresh in his mind.
“The review is what enables you to be able to find it and find its power and to make it part of your own and make it so that you’ve got the ability to act on that wisdom”
“Wisdom is only wisdom if in fact you act on it.”
15:27 Creating A Shared Learning Team Environment
- Prior to creating the Admired Leadership digital course Randall and his colleagues have always had an oral tradition of taking a week’s worth of time to sit in a learning environment and behaviors and routines of leaders that they had studied. The digital course allows people to catch up with some degree of speed and review them, learn them at their own pace, and see examples and exercises.
“I believe in the oral tradition, very much out of the Greek philosophy of, if you hear it and you’re able to write in your own words, it has a bigger impact on you”
17:16 Randall’s Initial Interest in Leadership
- While in graduate school, Randall studied, taught, and researched the theories, frameworks, and perspectives around organizational behavior and leadership.
“I was fascinated, first by conflict processes and conflict in large organizations, groups, relationships, then I got into group dynamics and how groups make decisions and some of the things that happened during that decision-making process”
- Randall was asked to start working with a couple of leaders in a large organization, some senior leaders, and he brought that information. He was asked a lot of questions he did not know the answer to. This inspired his new research program where he asked leaders the question,
“What did they do that you and I don’t do?”
19:43 Randall’s Aha Moments
- Randall’s first big aha was that in our culture in particular, we define leadership as synonymous with the results. The idea of actually having followership, people that are willing to do anything you ask of them because they believe in you and they trust and respect you, and in particular, they believe there’s a reciprocal relationship of loyalty that exists that you would do anything for them.
“Results really matter, and in our culture in particular, we almost define leadership as synonymous with the results, but the idea of actually having followership, that people want and respect you and want to be around you, want to follow you from place to place, willing to do anything you ask of them because they believe in you and they trust and respect you, and in particular, they believe there’s a reciprocal relationship of loyalty that exists that you would do anything for them. And so therefore, they reciprocate with that, that followership pieces are a really big deal. So there’s a lot of result leaders that don’t have it at all, and as a result don’t get nearly as much done as they could.”
“You gotta know yourself first, you gotta understand yourself, and then your job is to understand that the difference is that other people bring to bear, and then you need to adapt and flex those differences. And so that’s the idea that leadership is highly situational and highly contingent.”
- Randall’s second big aha moment was while he was studying two specific leaders while working for the University of Chicago. Randall found that they were not only admired in the workplace, but also admired by their kids, their spouse, their friends, within their community and every place they went. Randall discovered that these leaders were committed behaviors and routines and applied them to every aspect of their life.
“When you’re really good at leadership, you do the things that you believe in everywhere, and that was a big aha”
“Excellence doesn’t get turned on and turned off”
What is Leadership
- Let’s define leadership not just as results, but as having an important part of followership also. You must look for both of those qualities when you define great leaders.
- Randall started asking the questions,
- What do those kinds of leaders that actually have results and followership are mostly admired by the people around them?
- What do they do that other people don’t do on an everyday basis?
- How do they make decisions, how do they give feedback, how do they build relationships, what are some of the things they do stylistically?
- What makes them credible?
28:48 The Predominant Paradigm
- When asked why other people aren’t asking the same questions about leadership that he was, Randall says that the other paradigm is too strong and seductive that it shuts down the conversation to look at leaders from a different angle. When you start asking different questions you find really insightful things.
- Asking different questions brings to light new insights that Randall says actually are universal and timeless.
“ If you ask a different question, you find some really insightful things. Behaviors and routines that are in fact universal, timeless, contextually free in the sense that they operate in almost all contexts, that they are somewhat insightful… Profound.”
32:26 Randall’s Exercise With New Employees
“I have to shake them up and because I have to know that they’re willing to wanna learn a whole new way.”
40:08 The Research Process to Uncover Leadership Behaviors
- The first step in Randall’s process to uncover a new leadership behavior is to determine if someone is an admired leader and if they are. Do they have a track record of extraordinary results by what objective measure? Can we make sense of that, and then do they have the level of followership that we would say constitutes an unusual level of people trusting and respecting them in the like? Then they begin a case study of one on that person.
“We’re trying to now collect data about who they are and what they are”
- Randall and his team look at any interviews, documents, articles, reviews, and any other artifacts on the leader and then they conduct interviews with the leader and their friends and family members. After the interview process, Randall then studies and observes the leader.
“Every leader we study, we have either a big file or a small file, depending on what kind of access we can get, and whether we’re able to study them more regular, rigorously or from a distance”
- When studying the leader, Randall is trying to figure out two things
- What they do as leaders everyday
- What they do differently that others don’t do
“You can go backwards and look at all of those individual leaders and then start to look for patterns, and by the patterns aren’t always obvious, and once you see them, they smack you in the head, but until you see them, they’re really blind”
- Once Randall has uncovered the pattern and behavior, he then makes sure that he can articulate it to someone else so that it has face validity.
“I just want to find the patterns of what the best leaders do and share what those best leaders do with other people, and then put that in my own life and hopefully impact other people’s lives with it”
47:14 Randall’s Inkling of a New Routine
- Randall explains that his new inkling on the notion of “debt in relationships”is not “ready for prime time” but he describes the concept that he has uncovered so far.
- Randall describes how the richest relationships are mutually beneficial to both parties and if there is an unequal balance in a relationship, whether it is favors owed or random acts of kindness, the relationship becomes uncomfortable.
“There’s a reciprocal exchange of value in the relationship, so the idea of debt that one individual inside a relationship owes the other at debt creates an inbound, creates a discomfort.”
- Sean asks Randall about how to not feel this imbalance or ‘debt’ in a mentor relationship and Randall says that the best way to pay back a mentor is to tell them what they did that impacted you.
“Not everything they say and do is gonna have an impact, but when it does make sure that you tell them, and that’s the biggest reward for them as a mentor.”
55:48 Storytelling
“I think the ability to bring ideas alive and have them remembered falls on one of two thing. Either stories or models. And that’s how we learn, we learn through stories and we learn through models. Now, I find models even more interesting from a leadership standpoint, but stories are really, really powerful, I like to tell them, and I think every other human being likes to tell them”
57:39 How Randall Defines Success in Life
- Randall explains how it is important to understand the predispositions from your DNA. While your values are generally stable, what you like, dislike, and care about can be constantly changing and adapting.
- Randall explains the epiphany he had that “Success in life is really about how many people you matter to.”
- He has interviewed countless people, many at the end of their lives, and has found that the value of their life is measured on the quality of the relationships within their life.
“You’re important to those people because of who you are and what you are, and how you engage them, and when I had that idea around that, that’s what success is, it changed a lot of things for me”
1:01:55 The Difficulties of Studying Early Leaders
- The leaders that are very early on in their career are typically the ones that have had difficulties finding value when studying. They don’t know what they don’t know and Randall has found wisdom and experience come together.
“I’m more likely to find insight with people that are either right in the throes of an issue or that have seen that issue many, many times”
- Randall talks about why he loves to interview people who are parenting teenagers because it brings out the best and the worst in them.
“In the leadership world, I find that wisdom and experience comes together, and so at least in my personal experience, I’m more likely to find insight with people that are either right in the throes of an issue or that have seen that issue many, many times. When you’ve seen something many, many times, you start to see your own patterns as to what works and what doesn’t work, or what is important and isn’t important. And so when I can find somebody later in their careers or after their careers that are still cerebral, connected to their work, to those ideas, and then I can ask them for their insights I can find sometimes much more insightful things, but again, it’s a pretty big mix. I’ll learn from anybody from anywhere and they see something valuable, I couldn’t care less where they are in their life journey, if they do something valuable and I can see it then great but it’s not the most”
1:04:23 Randall’s Book Recommendations
- Randall reads so many books he says you would need a whole entire show just to discuss books.
- Randall describes himself as a contrarian and says his favorite contrarian biography is the Bruce Springsteen biography, Born to Run.
- Among other favorite books, Randall lists
- Management of the Absurd
- A Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership Everyone who comes into contact with Randall has to read Chapter 3 on Thinking Gray.
- The Talent Code.
1:07:57 Ego is the Enemy
“Listen, the number one thing that gets on everybody’s way is ego.”
- When working with leaders across all industries, Randall has found that the best leaders he has worked with want nothing to do with being well known, famous, or high profile.
“Ego is definitely the enemy, and it closes down a lot of things. It makes it so that people feel like they own things, they don’t reach and seek information. When you become senior in an organization, everything is filtered for you… You get very small pieces of truth, and so if you’re not out there pushing against that and trying to find the more candid and unbridled views of things, and you’re gonna wind up operating from limited data in much of it, false.
- Randall describes walking into some leader’s offices and it feels like a shrine. His first conversation with these leaders is about whether leadership is about them or the people on their team.
“I think you have to see yourself that your work is tremendously serious and important, and you have to see yourself as less so”
1:12:30 Developing Talent
- It’s about the importance of dialogue within the organization. He sets aside a quarter of time weekly that is dedicated to a set of conversations with the team and they also participate in clinics where everyone asks questions about a particular situation.
“When you get a lot of other smart people that are really experienced talking about something, all of a sudden, light bulbs go off and people get better really fast”
- Along with dialogue, Randall believes models are a vital component to developing talent within a team. Randall and his team will often videotape great conversations to study.
“The more models you can collect and create for other people, the better they get really fast”
1:15:34 The “It” Factor
- It’s no secret that there is a certain ‘it’ factor that separates the elite leaders and athletes from others. Within leadership, Randall says that this ‘it’ factor is dependent on executive presence. Within sports, Randall describes this ‘it’ factor as being able to make extremely difficult things look incredibly easy because their skill level is top tier.
“The majority of people that have ‘it’ from a leadership standpoint have executive presence and gravitas. It’s all about the way that you balance this idea of markers or cues of status, and then markers or cues of being relationally attractive to other people”
- For athletes who have the “It” factor they make the realy, really hard look easy because their skillfulness is at a different level.
1:19:02 Randall’s Biggest Challenge
- The biggest challenge is having to sit down with a leader who does not believe in the importance of coaching or advising. Randall likes the challenge and believes that he’s “best when people who think coaching, advising and getting better as leaders is a bunch of horse shit.”
“Once we start talking about issues around leadership, and they realize that there’s somebody else out there, in this case me, that knows as much about leadership and about how to be effective as they know about what they know, they go, Okay, now I want an advisor”
1:22:16 Randall’s Top Leader He’s Worked With
- Dick Morgan, the CEO of Con Edison as the most extraordinary leader he has worked with. Dick Morgan was so admirable that he was asked to come out of retirement twice and had an Arnold Palmer level persona within Con Edison. When 9/11 happened, Dick went to the towers and saved the Con Edison people, passing away afterwards.
“I was really honored because I was asked to put together having studied him, his principles that were spoken at his eulogy, and 8000 people attended his funeral”
1:26:38 Randall’s Favorite Historical Leaders
- When asked what leaders he would like to study and work alongside from history, Randall names Ghenghis Khan and Meriwether Lewis.
- “Ghengis Khan was one amazing leader in so many ways, what he did to rally the different tribes, and the kinds of ways that he did war, in the way that he rewarded people and how he acknowledged people”
A book Sean and Randall recommend to learn more about Ghengis Khan is Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford .
1:30:22 Randall’s Course Admired Leadership
- Randall’s digital course, Admired Leadership, is a series of 10 modules of leadership with 10 behavior routines in each module. You don’t have to go in order to get value out of the course and there are exercises, examples, and study questions in each module.
- Sean said this is hands down the best leadership course he’s ever taken.
“Most of us wanna be better leaders, but we don’t know how, and so we read and we talk about it and we attend conferences, and Admired Leadership is how. It’s the actual actions, great leaders and things that you and I can do tomorrow.”