On this week’s episode of the Vibrant Leadership Podcast, we speak with former radio producer and personality, Jeff Brown. Jeff is now a “boss-free” entrepreneur and host of the Read to Lead Podcast, a four-time Best Business Podcast nominee. On his show he interviews some of today’s best business and non-fiction authors; on our show, he shares what he has read and what he has learned about leadership, work-life balance, and habits for success.
Jeff’s idea of leadership has changed over the years, from “command and control” to “servant leadership.” His reading and interviews with the likes of Alan Alda, Nancy Duarte, Stephen Covey, and Seth Godin have led him to key leadership insights, including:
-
3 skills all leaders need
-
Why we should default to “no” when we receive requests for our time
-
How to use an “Ideal Week” spreadsheet
-
The DREAM habits for success
-
And more
He also takes a look at the post-pandemic future of business. With part-time of fully remote options becoming the new normal, Jeff considers ideas of time and productivity and cautions leaders not to get into the weeds trying to track the hours of remote employees.
Glean some genius from Jeff, and don’t miss his free book offer for listeners!
Mentioned in this episode:
-
Free Guide: The 5 Key Habits to Becoming Your Company’s Greatest Asset – will be available for free at readtoleadpodcast.com/vibrant
-
Book: Read to Lead: The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career – available for preorder now at readtoleadpodcast.com/book
-
Website: readtoleadpodcast.com
Transcript
Jeff Brown: I think work life balance is indeed possible and achievable. But it takes intention. You have to be intentional about it.
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Vibrant Leadership Podcast with leadership speaker and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome to the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. They call me the vibrant coach and I am delighted to be here today with none other than Jeff Brown. So I got a bio that is long, but I’m not gonna read the whole thing. But but we’re gonna get some highlights because the deal is he’s super impressive. Jeff is an award winning radio producer and personality and a former nationally syndicated morning show host wait till you hear his voice. You’ll know why. Following a 26 year career in radio, Jeff went boss free, write that down. I think that’s fantastic. He went boss free. He’s an entrepreneur in 2013. And soon after that he launched the Read to Lead Podcast so go ahead and get out there and get subscribed to that immediately.
He has gone on to become the four time best business podcast nominee and has featured Jeff’s interviews with today’s best business and nonfiction authors. Okay, so listen to these people he hangs out with it’s very impressive. Alan Alda, those of you who are over 50 know about Mash. There’s Stephen Covey. Everybody knows about Stephen Covey because he lives on. Seth Godin, marketing guru. John Maxwell, leadership guru. Liz Wiseman, also leadership guru and Dr. Henry Cloud, who can to teach you how to get your boundaries in place. Gary Vaynerchuk, Simon Sinek oh my gosh, Brian Tracy, Nancy Duarte, which she is the queen of the slides, and over 300 more, and he coaches successful podcasters and is a leader, obviously in his field. So round of applause for Jeff, we’re so glad you’re here.
Jeff: Well, thank you for having me, Nicole, the thing I think that impressed me most about what you just did was you actually correctly pronounced all of those names.
Nicole: They these people are on my you know, my list of people I want to meet someday. And of course, I’ve read a lot of their books and watch their videos and all that, because I’m just a leadership nut. But let’s start with the first question. Since you’re you’re a leader, you’ve worked with all these amazing authors and speakers. How do you define leadership, Jeff?
Jeff: Well, for me, it used to be because this is what was modeled for me, it used to be command and control type leadership. And when I was younger, because that’s all I knew. That’s all I was surrounded by. And so, you know, your job was just to do what the leader said. And to do it the way the leader said to do it. And it wasn’t necessarily come and share your ideas, because the leader was already the smartest person and knew everything. So you were just, you know, the cog and you just did whatever you were told. But since then, I have learned that leadership, and I’m a particular fan of servant leadership, and that leadership is helpful. Leadership extends grace.
Leadership, defaults to trust, one of my favorite leaders, extended trust by default, and only took it away if you gave him a reason not to trust, right. And so to me, those those three things grace trust, helpful nature, your your job is essentially as a leader, is to make sure that your people have what they need to do what you’ve tasked them to do. And like Liz Wiseman says, In her book Multipliers, you mentioned her name a moment ago learn how to leverage the collective brain power in the room. You’re not supposed to be the one with all the answers. You’ve presumably hired people much smarter than you at least in the areas of expertise you hired them for. And so so don’t be afraid to leverage that don’t be intimidated by that. Learn to make it your your company’s your organization’s superpower.
Nicole: I love that. So I just I like where you landed, you said leadership is almost a superpower, which I love. And you also said grace, trust, help. Get your people resourced. And then I love Liz’s book. It’s right there on that shelf right there. And I use it all the time with clients. And you said, leverage the collective brain power. Hmm, that is beautiful. I love that definition. Well, today, leaders are challenged every which way. It is an interesting time. I know people are tired of talking about COVID. But I think the real true leaders are they’re coming to the forefront because we really need leaders now. So tell me, Jeff, what do you think leaders need to do in terms of skills? What what skills should they build or put in their toolbox?
Jeff: Well, there’s three in my estimation, and the first one I alluded to a just a moment ago and that’s kind of got ahead of myself a little bit, but trust those you lead to do what you hired them to do. And I think when you do that with that level of trust is going to motivate your team to want to honor it the best that they can, I think it’s also going to make them feel safe, and seeking your advice and help when when struggles do arise. And the question often becomes, Are there going to be the occasional bad eggs to try to take advantage of that trust? Well, that might happen from time to time, but it’s going to be rare. And when it does, I think they’re going to be easily and quickly identified. And as a result, they’re not going to be hanging around very long to do much damage.
The second thing is, don’t ask of your team, what you aren’t willing to do yourself. And I’m not talking about the delegation of things that you’d prefer not to do, for whatever reason, many of them perfectly legitimate. But rather, those sort of all hands on deck type moments. Chances are, someone listening has worked for someone where all hands on deck means everybody but the boss. But sometimes it’s necessary to get your own hands dirty. Sometimes literally, if the situation presents the opportunity, I think if you want to endear yourself to your team fast, show them that you’re not above when appropriate doing quote unquote, their work.
And then thirdly is is look for ways to to spread the the credit and take the blame, if appropriate. When a project goes well, intentionally and publicly identify specific ways each team member played a role. But also be prepared for team members that aren’t comfortable with that. Maybe they prefer a note in private of have a pat on the back as some folks might be embarrassed by being put on the spot like that. At the same time, if results are less than favorable, be willing to admit if and when you could have recognized as the leader potential problems sooner. Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, you know, openly again, if appropriate, and humbly with your team. It doesn’t mean that others are off the hook necessarily.
But neither are you one of my favorite bosses, Matt, who was the guy who led the team at the last radio station I worked for he wasn’t any more perfect than any of the rest of us. But unlike some other leaders I’ve witnessed, he wasn’t afraid to admit or share when appropriate, his own missteps. And because of this, we felt like we were seeing the real man 100% of the time, not some persona, but who he really was. Sometimes warts and all, you know, and that just made us appreciate him even more.
Nicole: I love that. And you know, when I think about the things that you’re talking about. There’s skills, but they’re it’s also like you’re talking about like a leader that has great character, you know, like there. Yeah, so there’s just this great character inside of them, you know, that they they trust, which leads to other good character, which you said was honor, I just I think it does it kind of dovetails or snowballs, right, you got a great leader, you get a great team. So I love that. So what do you believe makes some leaders more successful than others? Why do some struggle so much?
Jeff: I think oftentimes, not all the time. But oftentimes leaders who struggle struggle, in part because their lives are oriented around a single domain. And that domain being work, rather than recognizing that life is made up of, of, you know, several domains. There’s the physical, there’s the marital, there’s financial, spiritual, intellectual, emotional, etc, etc. And many of us, especially high achievers can kind of want to, by default sort of oriented life around work and to the, to the neglect of some of these other other domains. And when those domains, many of them on the on the personal side of life are not in order, when those are out of whack. Good luck, good luck trying to be you know, an effective leader.
So I think we talked about things like work life balance, some people more recently have suggested that there is no such thing. You know, that it’s, it’s more of a sway or whatever word you want to use. I think work life balance is indeed possible and achievable. But it takes intention. You have to be intentional about it. You have to spend your time, let’s say on paper first, much like you do a budget, right? You put your spend your money on paper first, so that you don’t get to the end of the month and wonder where it all went, right? Well, it’s the same with our time, spend your time on paper first.
So you’re telling your time where to go, instead of wondering where it went. And another sort of tip that related to that I would give when it comes to all domains of life work. And otherwise, we often because we want to be helpful, we often default to yes. When requests on our time come in. And if we if we’re going to say no, we feel like we then have to defend that no, no can be a complete sentence. But more importantly, that I think we should be doing just the opposite. We shouldn’t be defaulting to no, and defending yes to ourselves if we are indeed going to say, yes.
I use something called that I learned from a mentor of mine named Michael Hyatt called an ideal week and so I have a spreadsheet that has the entire week mapped out. The perfect week, like what a perfect week would look like. And so when I go to plan any given week, that’s where I begin. Now, I’ll admit that most of the time, I don’t hit that ideal. But if I haven’t identified it, I’m not even gonna get close. And so I start by identifying what the ideal work looks like. And then and then plan for that, and I get a lot closer to it. More times than not.
Nicole: I love it. I love it. And so I think the name Michael Hyatt needs some attention. He is a fabulous, fabulous speaker, author, coach. So definitely go check out Michael Hyatt abeja. He has like some freebies on his website, much like I know you do, Jeff. So I love what you said, I got to tell my time where to go instead of wondering where it went. That was like that’s tweetable everybody. I love it. Okay, so I agree, leaders definitely have to get their idea about what’s ideal in their life. And they do have to have some balance, for sure. For sure. So one of the biggest challenges for leaders going forward, you know, what, what do leaders need to focus on? Do you think like, if we put you in the seat of futurist, when you see out there, what do leaders need to be doing?
Jeff: Well, you mentioned COVID earlier, I think a lot of leaders and a lot of companies are realizing that if they do indeed go back to coming to the office, many of them are at a place where they’re either going to need to make that optional, or have an option where you know, maybe it’s part time in the office and part time at home and sort of this whole idea of working remotely, for part or all the time is is something that so many companies and organizations have been forced into. And and what I would say is, and I’ve seen this happen, and it’s really I think condescending to your staff, when you when you get into a place of trying to track all the hours and make making sure when people are working remotely that they’re, you know, working as many hours as you think they should be and things of that nature, instead focus and concern yourself with results.
We were talking about Michael Hyatt a minute ago, I interviewed Megan Hyatt Miller, his eldest daughter, who is now the CEO of Michael Hyatt and company, they’ve got a new book coming out. And she was telling me that near the beginning of COVID, they began experimenting with something that they wanted to try out anyway, but COVID kind of forced it on them. And that was six hour work days, in COVID sort of necessitated that because you know, many of their employees are parents, and they’re having to deal with kids and not being in school and all the mess associated with that, that we all know so well. And so they went to six hour work days now I believe I’m quoting her correctly, when I say this, it by the end of 2020. They had exceeded their revenue goals for the year by 50%.
After cutting hours, by 25%, from eight down to six every day. So think of that. Well. So so the research shows that, you know, after, you know, there’s those people who are going to again, put the focus of the work domain. And so to the neglect of some of these other domains. The research shows that after 50 hours, any any productivity is negligible. In fact, no, no more productivity comes out of 70 hours versus 50 hours. And similar research shows that as you begin to back away from 50 hours and you get closer to less than 40, productivity actually goes up. And Megan’s results from last year, Megan and Michael’s results from last year prove that that’s actually the case.
Nicole: Yeah, well it just makes makes perfect sense if we slow down for a minute because if I get good and rested when I come back to my desk and sit down, I get ready to make it happen right but if I sit down, I’m fatigued, I’m thinking about what should I do. I don’t want to do anything. You spend 20 minutes debating what to do. I love that absolutely love that. Well, you’ve got just this really great laundry list of people that have been on your show and so I’m curious what what leadership read I don’t want you to offend any of your guests but like when you think about the the greatest leadership books that you’ve read, because your your podcast again is Read to Lead what what books do you just like, these are my standouts.
Jeff: Yeah Liz Weisman’s Multipliers is one of them. You mentioned that book is on your shelf. And that book, she talks about the multiplier leader versus the diminisher type leader that was that was revelatory for me. I’m a big fan of Michael Hyatt’s work. Seth Godin is probably my single favorite interview ever. I’ve had the chance to interview him twice. So Linchpins was a big one for me that he wrote several years ago. He’s he’s writing on a pace of about a book every couple of three years. So any of his 18 or 20 books are certainly worth your worth your time. I love John Maxwell’s work, and then more recently, Atomic Habits by James Clear which came out in 2018, and a similarly themed book Tiny Habits by Dr. BJ Fogg from from Stanford University. All those have have been some of my favorites from the last, those last few from the last couple of years.
Nicole: Yeah. Fantastic. All right. So tell me about the greatest leadership story you’ve been told? Is there a story that you can recall that you’ve been shared with you that made a big impact? Something you heard about a great leader, what they did and how they lead their team? Do you have a particular story that you like? Well, let
Jeff: Well, let me think here. I can I can, I can think of one in particular, that’s a personal story. And I think back to my favorite radio job. The last one that I worked, I was at this radio station in Nashville for about 13 or 14 years. And one of the things I loved about that culture is that culture there unlike any other radio station that I ever worked for, which is very cutthroat most of the time, it’s very much or what have you done for me lately type of mentality and a lot of places. But at this one, it was very much, it was kind of a Debbie Downer moment, there wasn’t. But at this particular radio station, there was very much a culture of leveraging the collective brainpower of the room.
So when I became sort of a voracious reader, during my early years at that company, I began reading things that would help me be better at my job, social media had begun to spring up and I looked at things like Facebook and Twitter and, and other social media platforms and thought to myself, how is this going to impact what we do? How can we leverage these tools, so I’ve been began reading books about those things. And then as I tried things, and things became successful, sometimes sometimes not. Funny thing is the things that weren’t so successful, were quickly forgotten.
The things that were successful, I began getting questions about, and then that led to being asked to present on these topics to different factions, all because I was reading books on these on these topics. And that eventually led to giving a presentation to the executive team to the president of this, you know, nationwide company, because he had looked at this time was looking ahead to his his vision for the next 10 years. And he was like a good leader does visiting individual radio stations and asking for input.
And so my boss said to me, you’re going to be the guy who represents our station when the President comes, and give your thoughts on where you think that company needs to go, as far as Nashville is concerned, over the next 10 years. And so I had that opportunity to present to him. And then when it came time for him to create his own presentation to the world and to the staff about here’s my vision for the next 10 years, he came to me and said, I want you to be the guy who takes my thoughts and ideas and puts them in presentation form. I’ve seen your presentations, I’ve seen what you can do, I want you to create that for me.
And so through all the reading, I was doing reading about social media reading about how to leverage these tools, reading about how to do great presentations from the likes of Nancy Duarte and others. Or reading how to how to create a compelling presentation. All this reading I was doing led to one thing after another after another after after another, to the point that one guy in a team of a couple 100 people is being invited to do these different things. But it all goes back to intentional and consistent reading and pouring into myself on a habitual basis.
Nicole: I love that story. And one thing that I tell almost on every podcast that I do is we talk about leadership. But inevitably, the guests on the show says, well, this is the book that I got this from. This is the book that I read, this is where I picked this up. And so you, you do have to, and don’t miss this literally, literally, you have to read to lead. And so it just puts you one leg up above everybody, as you said out of a group of 100. And when you were talking, I heard a couple of habits. And one of the things that I always like to look at is habits. And you mentioned two books that are excellent earlier about habits.
But you said you know getting input, and then being able to cast a vision, and then present it in a powerful way. I think those are the three huge skills, habits, whatever you want to call them, that leaders need to have. So I want to go off the board for 20 points and ask you more about habits. Since you’re a big fan of that subject matter and you are an entrepreneur yourself. Several of my listeners are entrepreneurs. What do you think are the habits that are making you so successful? Jeff, what do you do on the daily?
Jeff: Yeah, and and and for me that has come from sort of curating what I’ve learned from these nearly 400 authors now that I’ve interviewed and I have found that there are five things that nearly all these people have in common and here’s those five things. One of them I’ve mentioned. So I’ll be brief on that one. But each of these five things, by the way, spell the word DREAM. So if you want to realize your biggest dreams and your highest priorities, I think you need to do these five things. The first one is to daily invite discomfort into your life. That’s the D. What do I mean by that? I mean, lean into fear. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, do one thing that scares you.
Every single day what what happens when we lean into fear? It’s, it’s scary. But as soon as we’ve done that thing, what often happens is we want to do it again. I remember the first time I got on a roller coaster, I was scared to death. But as soon as I got off, I couldn’t wait to get back on in line, and ride the thing all over again. And that’s the beauty of discomfort is it pulls us outside of our comfort zone, and encourages us to do encourages us to do things that that were once difficult but become easier over time. And so to me, that’s just the only way to live life is outside your comfort zone. So invite discomfort is number one. Two, is to habitualize reading. We already spent plenty of time talking. Nuff said there.
Number three, audit your energy. That’s the E. By this I mean, look at look at your calendar, consider a digital calendar in tandem with an analogue planner like I do. And on your digital calendar. I have tried color coding my calendars in numerous ways that just didn’t work for me. But the one way that does is to color code my activities by energy. What on my calendar gives me energy and do an audit you know about every three or so months. What are my calendar zaps my energy? What on my calendar am I sort of indifferent about? And give each one of those energy types a color. For me, things that give me energy or green. Things that my energy are red. Things I’m indifferent about is orange.
Do an audit and look at how things are lining up. Is there a lot of red? If so what can you do to change that? Can you bring a little orange into something that’s red, can you take something that’s red and make it a little more green? You know, when I first did this, just a few months back, I was delighted to see a lot of green. But that wasn’t an overnight thing it took time to get there. The A is to welcome on a regular basis accountability. I think it’s important to have a group of people you trust sort of a board of directors, if you will. Unofficial board of directors that you meet with on a regular basis, if not weekly, then maybe bi weekly or monthly. Each of you pouring into one another’s life think mastermind group.
That’s sort of a great example of something like this, where you’re encouraging one another, you’re challenging one another, you’re holding each other’s feet to the fire to make sure you’re doing the things you say you’re going to do in your personal and professional life. And the M, the last one is to dominate mornings. I’ve got a morning ritual that I go through every day, this is different depending on your season in life, or how much time you can commit to it is going to depend on your season life. But I’m at a place where I dedicate three, three and a half hours to my morning ritual. Starts at 5, ends at about 8:30 on most days. And there are sort of a smorgasbord of things I might do during that time. I used to think I had to do all the things. And that was very regimented as to when things happen.
But now I look at all the things I could do to start my day to pour into me, you know, self care type things, what are all the things I could do, which among those things do I want to do this morning, today. And so I focus on those and tomorrow, it may be different, but I’ve identified a list of things from which to choose. So I’m not starting with a blank slate. So invite discomfort. That’s the D. Habitualize reading, audit your energy, welcome accountability, and dominate mornings. Now, if you want to go into more detail on that, I have actually put together just for your listeners, a short ebook that outlines each of those more specifically. So you just go to readtoleadpodcast.com/vibrant, and you can get the written summary of that for free.
Nicole: That is fantastic. Okay, we’ll put that up on the screen for sure. I love that. And so I have one final question for you, Jeff. You know, there’s somebody out there listening right now. And let’s pretend that you are mentoring this single special listener, and you’re going to give them like one more piece of advice so that they could lead vibrantly. What would you give them?
Jeff: I would ask them to audit their own life and this is similar to what I was saying a moment ago but audit their own life and determine whether or not they are taking time in the beginning of the day for that self care time I talked about a moment ago. If those listening you’re like I used to be you know you got up your alarm goes off with enough time for you to shower and get dressed and grab something to eat real quick and get out the door. I did that for decades.
And only in the last seven or eight years have I changed my my mode around mornings and making sure that before I get out the door I’ve spent at least an hour if not more time, on just pouring into me doing you know writing in a gratitude journal, exercise those types of things. Rather than just rushing out the door, and I think if you’ll take time to do that, it’s kind of like oh, you know, the flight attendant say, put your own mask on first before putting on somebody else’s. So many of us start our days not having done those things. And we wonder why we’re tired or we’re irritable or whatever. It’s because we haven’t taken time oftentimes, to pour into ourselves first. So that would be my single piece of advice.
Nicole: Yeah, I totally love it. I have a quiet time every morning. I’m up at five in the morning as well. So I totally relate to that. And I have a stack of books that’s big. And, you know, my children walk in and they’re like, are you reading all of those? And I’m like, yeah, I got I read a little here. I read a little there. It’s like kind of whatever mood I wake up in is what I grab up for. But I absolutely adore that. And I know that these listeners, the special one that was just listening. Plus everybody else who will listen to this podcast has just absolutely gleaned some genius from you. So Jeff, I’m so grateful. If people want to get a hold of your podcast or get a hold of you personally, would you like to share how we contact you?
Jeff: Yeah, the website is readtoleadpodcast.com and remember for that free resource just ad /vibrant after that if you want to check that out. So readtoleadpodcast.com. You can email me directly Jeff@readtoleadpodcast.com and in August, at the end of August, I hope you’ll check out a book I’ve got coming out called Read to Lead, The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career. So it’s a book about making the most of your reading habit, how to make it a habit, how to put what you read into practice, that sort of thing. And you can find out more about that at readtoleadpodcast.com/book
Nicole: That’s awesome. Okay, well, I am excited. I’m gonna go get my pre order done on that immediately. So again, thank you so much for being on the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. Jeff, have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everybody for listening.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com, and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDtalk.
