Episode 100 – Jeff Brown – Leaders On Leadership
Aside from experience and the people around you, one of the richest sources of profound knowledge is books. Leading by reading books is indeed a good way to acquire strategies that will help improve your team and acquire values that would help inspire your followers. Award-winning radio producer and host of Read To Lead podcast Jeff Brown talks about this particular leadership style with Dr. Tracey Jones. Known for his habit of reading one book a week, Jeff shares how reading can significantly change how leaders think and act. He also explains the importance of getting feedback from others and how to design your priorities in the most effective way to actually get things done.
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Jeff Brown – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Jeff Brown. He's an award-winning radio producer and personality. He spent years in radio and the music industry. He went boss free in 2013. He launched the Read to Lead Podcast. You know how we feel about that. Learn what Jeff has to say about what it took him to pay the price of leadership.
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We are tremendously excited because our guest is Jeff Brown. Jeff is an award-winning radio producer and personality and a formerly nationally syndicated morning show host. After 25 years in the radio and music industries, Jeff went boss free in 2013 and launch the Read to Lead Podcast, a four-time best business podcast nominee. Jeff has interviewed hundreds of industry-leading authors including Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, John Maxwell, Liz Wiseman, Chris Brogan, Brian Tracy, Nancy Duarte, and Alan Alda. Jeff, we are excited to have you here. Thank you.
I love the energy. Thank you for having me here. I'm excited to be here and humbled and honored to chat with you.
Thank you. I know our readers heard about Read to Lead and they know that's what Tremendous Leadership is all about. I promise I'll try and keep it on the DL, but there are no guarantees because all these books that are part of me are welling up and I can't wait to hear your insights. Jeff, my father spoke on leadership and love leadership, but he was pragmatic. He said, “Leadership is one of the greatest things you're ever going to do, but it's also one of the toughest things you're ever going to do.” He talked about the price that you have to pay if you're truly going to be a leader and there were four aspects to that. I'd like to go through each one of them with you and talk about them.
You have an extensive career in different industries, how you got there, what different seasons you were in. Share with our leaders some of these truths that you can relate to them with. The first price is loneliness. We've always heard the phrase, “It's lonely at the top.” My father talked about the loneliness that a leader feels and how unique that is. Can you share with our readers on some times in your leadership journey where you experienced loneliness, what that was like for you as a leader, and maybe some words if we have some readers that are in that season of loneliness?
This comes from the leadership models that were handed down to me. It was all I had to go on. My mindset, as it had to do with leadership, is leadership was all in a title. I hadn't realized that leadership was earned. I thought of it as this title, this power you wielded over other people. They did what you told them to do. You are the leader so you are the expert on everything there was to be done and everybody else's job was to do what you've told them to do.
I was young and dumb. I didn't know any better. That's what I had modeled for me. That's how I lead early on. Quite frankly, that didn't turn out well. I lost some friendships through that. I struggled early in my leadership career, losing good people because it was my way or the highway type of mentality. It took a mentor coming along beside me, eventually, and shaking me by the shoulders and saying, “I know this is what you think leadership is, but there's a better way.”
I love that you are transparent about that. I look back and I can remember even in my early career as an officer, we were supposed to act like an officer. The book Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell Out of the Way and it's like, “We're not going to war right now.” I remember a couple of people came alongside me and said, “I know you think this is what a leader is supposed to do, but this is not it.” I'm thankful. I'm most thankful, Jeff, that you were open to receive that.
Some of those friendships that I lost, some of them I was able to salvage after some time because they were friends who came back and said, “This is why I left. It's because of your leadership style. It's because of how you carried yourself. It's because of how you treated me.” Thankfully, I was in a place where I could receive that and learn from that and grow from that.
I'm going to give yourself grace too. That's wonderful that people came back and gave you grace. We have to give ourselves grace. Leadership is a journey. All you know is all you know at that time, but that's why we read so we can become more schooled on how leadership is supposed to be. My father talked about weariness. It's tough. There's a lot of responsibility when you're in the leadership role than when you're not in the leadership role you may or may not be aware of. As a leader, how do you stay refreshed and ready for the next challenge that comes your way?
For me, it comes down to reading, going back to that. A consistent and intentional habit. I feel like there are a few challenges I'm not ready for or can at least be quickly made ready for in the books that I read, in the books that I enjoy. The more I learn from reading, the more I want to go out and try new things. It keeps things exciting and new in a way. I read a book a week, mainly for my podcast. I don't read fiction. I'm always reading leadership, personal growth, those types of books. If there's something I want to learn about, that's what I go to first. That's my default. When I make my focus in reading, reading never gets boring. I'm always trying to keep things exciting and new, in a way, when I approach it that way.
Leading By Reading: Knock the big ones out of the way of your priorities, and you can knock out 20 of the smaller things.
I love that you talked about it because there's a lot of research into true learning happens when a behavior is modified. You said the A word, the application word. I love that. I was talking to a friend about what we read and I'm like, “I haven't touched fiction in forever.” I'm not anti-fiction. If I read, I immediately have to go out and implement it or tell somebody about it or blog about it. It's ridiculous in church because I’ll write fifteen different pages of notes because then I'm like, “Okay.” That's how I learn it and that's how it becomes embedded in me. “You’re in a rut.” My dad would always say that. As a publisher, I get a lot of, “What if I'm in a rut or writer's block?” Open a book. Pick a book and start reading.
That was the impetus, for me, starting the Read to Lead Podcast. I didn't have, at the time, enough people around me to talk about the books I was reading and to share with. I thought, “I'm going to start a podcast where I can share with the world what I'm learning and what I'm reading.”
Talk with other bibliophiles about that. Did you know that there is a school of psychiatry called Bibliotherapy? I tell people, “Take two books and call me next week.” The person is told to go read books because within the books, you will find the answer. My dad was that.
I had never heard of that.
I was researching that. He would say that if somebody came to him and needed input, he's like, “Go into my library. Pick a book off the shelf, any book. Read it for fifteen minutes.” Every time, they’d look at him and come back and go, “How did you know that's what I needed?” To your point, only you know the answer you're looking for. You have to have the impetus, the action to go ahead and mine for it.
You're right about the application part of the process. I've heard that knowledge is power. To me, that's only part of it. Unless you're ready to put that knowledge into action, you've only taken 1 of 2 necessary steps.
My dad also talked about abandonment. Abandonment is one of those words that has a good side and a bad side. He always said that we need to abandon what we want and like to think about in favor of what we need and ought to think about. I look at that as mission focus, because a lot of things are competing for space in our heads. Can you tell me how you stay on point with your mission and how you abandon the things you need to abandon in favor of what you want to focus on?
I love this topic. I've made some considerable changes in my life in this area. It all starts, for me, with goal setting. I'm about to do a quarterly review, which is going to include determining no more than three big goals for the next quarter. As I sit down to plan a given week, I’ll identify a next step for each one of those goals and those will become my big three for the week. Each day, I'll begin by identifying my big three for that day. These will be in form, more often than, by my big three for the week. Further, when I look at a given day, it's often divided into time blocks. There are meetings and interviews like this one, of course.
As I look at my big three for the day, I make sure to set aside blocks of time I intend to work on one or more of those items. I go far as to schedule those blocks in my calendar so that time is protected if I need to. When the time comes, I put on a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I open up an app like IDAGIO, which features classical music. I focus at will on my phone, something without lyrics in other words, while I work. I'm not certain any of us are ever 100% successful on this.
For me, it's about scheduling. I schedule almost everything. If you were to look at my calendar between meetings and the time blocks for focus that I talked about, there isn't much room for anything else. Keep in mind, those time blocks include times for meals with my wife, free time, time for reading, time to relax, and time to reflect. I'm almost 100% intentional with how I spend my time. That intentionality leaves little room for wasted thinking.
Leading By Reading: Getting a fresh pair of eyes on your situation can sometimes make a world of difference in your level of clarity.
Ben Franklin did that too. I don't know if you've ever read any of his stuff. He'd even schedule naps. It's important. I talk to a lot of people. The word singularity or priority, we should focus on that one big thing. One thing in a day. For those of us that tend to take on too many things, we're always told, “Pare it down to the one big thing on that day.” Can you explain how three works for you? Do you rack and stack them? Are you working on them at the same time? Are you linear, 1, 2, 3? Explain the three.
It’s linear, for me, by and large. I may have any number of tasks that I need to accomplish in a given day, but I look at what I want to accomplish and I decide, “If I only accomplish three things of this list and still feel like I had a successful, productive day, what would those three things be?” I limit myself to those three things. Once those three things are complete, if there are other things on that list I still want to tackle, then I give myself permission to do that. I limit myself to those three things. I call them my big three and that's about from Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus mentality. They could be relatively minor things. Each of them, though, is something that's moving me forward on one of my major goals for that week or for that quarter. Does that help?
It does. You have three things that are not tactical. The bigger goals, where do they land? Do you pick one of them at a time? Do you have several of those at any one given time?
I usually don't allow myself. I think in quarters. I treat a quarter like a year. Setting annual goals, the timeframe, it's too far out. We end up taking ten months before we start getting serious about that goal over there because we've given ourselves twelve months to do it. Brian Moran wrote a book called The 12 Week Year. I think of my year in three-month time blocks. I allow myself to set, usually no more than, often two and sometimes three goals that I want to accomplish in that time. For example, I'm working on a book and I started writing that book in May. I had a goal I wanted to reach by the end of June related to writing that book. It wasn't finishing the book. It was, “I want to write X number of words by the end of June.” July, August, September, I had another writing goal. The manuscripts are due November 1st. I'm breaking it down into these quarterly chunks and deciding what’s my goal for these three months, related to that goal that may not be fully due for completion during this quarter but what part of it is? I break that down and go from there.
I love how you said, “I had a lap.” Ten months until you get serious. I ask people that. I'm like, “If a year from now you’re in the same position, what are you going to do?” “There's no way I’d do that.” I love the quarterly. I love the chunking. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I'm a project manager at heart. Any problem can be resolved if you escalate early enough and put the right resources on it. You have to deconstruct it down. I like that. That does explain it to me. Thank you because a lot of times when people say one thing, I'm like, “There's a lot of other things in any given day that I need to do.” I love the prioritization. Otherwise, we tend to pick up the stuff that's not what we need to focus on. Once you knock the big ones out of the way, you can knock out twenty of the smaller things because you got that momentum going.
The last one he talked about was vision. You talk with a lot of visionary leaders. To mere mortal leaders, they look at this and say, “They got the extra dumping on the head from God about seeing things that we don't see.” My dad would always say, “Vision is nothing more than seeing what's out there and then doing what needs to be done.” The application and the action. Can you tell me what vision means for you? You’re quarterly crunching through honing your vision. I can tell that from what you say. What would you encourage for our leaders to get clear on vision? That's the biggest thing everybody wants.
This is something I struggle with. For that reason, I've gotten to a place where I am not afraid to ask others for advice and that includes asking others, “What do you see as my strengths?” I have this vision or version of myself in my head, but how am I coming off? How do you see my strengths? Others who have been where I'm trying to go. Getting a fresh pair of eyes on your situation, sometimes, can make a world of difference in your level of clarity. I find that others to be, I used to struggle with this, more than willing to lend an ear and share what they know. The problem is we're often too afraid to ask. People want to be asked. Most people enjoy helping others. We have to learn to get over our own hang-ups with the asking part.
I love that you talked about you having this version of yourself, but how do you see me? Every little thing that you get closer to, your true vision or your singularity, you're more comfortable asking. It is remarkable. People can look at us and go, “Tracey, this is where I see the passion come out in you.” You're like, “What?” We don't see it. We can't truly ever see ourselves the way other people do. I love that you brought that up. I love that you admitted that you struggle with it. This is the one thing that I and everybody else I work with on our webinars and stuff like that, it's exhausting. It's frustrating. It's part of the journey. It's a process. Your vision is constantly working its way out.
It comes down to the two things that your father talked about. I had an epiphany preparing for this interview that my podcast has helped me to live out those two things that he talked about. It's the books you read and the people you meet. Through my podcast, I've been reading a book a week and meeting some pretty amazing people doing it. They are continually stretching me, the books and the people. They’re helping me, sometimes, make some critical decisions. I depend on those people and those books for their expertise and experience. The wisdom is invaluable to me.
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
That's great for our readers out there. You think you'll be a true leader or a success when you know it all. When I went back to school to study leadership, it’s when I started understanding it. It's not like, “There’s so much more to learn.” It's a healthy growth. We're always learning. Years from now, we'll look back at our podcasts from years ago and go, “I was pretty old school then. Now I'm this.” I love your attitude about that growth. Jeff, we've covered the four different prices of leadership. I thank you for your input on all of them. Is there anything else you would like to talk about with our Leaders on Leadership podcast? Give the old pitch for knowledge and grow in the old cognitive efficacy kind of thing.
I hinted at it a little bit earlier. Oftentimes, I'll have people ask me, “Jeff, how is it you read as much as you do? It would get boring after a while.” I hit on this aspect of it and that is to decide what it is or choose something, whatever that might be, that you want to learn more about. Choose books that are going to help you understand that thing better or teach you about that thing. Maybe something work-related and maybe something around your home. Maybe something relationship related. Find books that are going to teach you about that thing you want to learn more about. Learning, growth, and leadership are all part of that too. It’s going to become something that you'll find is fun to work on. It doesn't have to be drudgery. It doesn't have to be boring like a lot of people believe it to be.
Did you always like reading when you were younger?
No.
A lot of people think if you're not five and going into rooms and reading versus playing kickball, you're not born a leader. Tell me how you evolved as a reader?
When I was five, that was me. I was much into books and my mom instilled that into us, primarily. I was reading a lot. There was something about school, to be completely honest. This is not a knock-on teachers, certainly. My sister is a teacher and an excellent one at that. I had some great teachers. It was the institution. It educated the desire to read out of me, unfortunately, as odd as that might sound on the surface. At least from my age and maturity level at the time, you're being forced, for lack of a better word, to read things that I was not interested in reading.
I went through much of middle school and high school not reading much at all. I graduated college with the mindset of, “Thank goodness all the learning is over. That season of life, I don’t have to do that anymore.” Ten years later, in my early 30s, I've got a mentor around me who reads himself. He models that. He offers to bring books into the workplace and suggest we read them as a team. We formed a book club. At first, I'm skeptical. I did have this desire. I had things that I was being asked to do in my position that were new to me, things that I had never been asked to do before. I was being stretched for one of the first times.
In this book club, I began reading a book called Purple Cow by Seth Godin. That was my introduction to the book club. Good to Great by Jim Collins was another. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Pat Lencioni. I'm like, “There are books like this out there? I devoured them.” That was 2003-ish, something like that. I've been an avid reader ever since. I credit that mentor and also, primarily, Seth Godin, for rekindling that fire that was in me as a 5, 6, 7-year-old but had been blown out and didn't come out again until I'm in my early 30s.
I love that even though you were in a specific niche industry, you still were reading personal development and leadership books. I was always in technical fields and it's like, “I have to read regulations and cost analysis and government contracts.” That's the technical stuff. People are like, “I don't have to read that other stuff. I'm not in charge of everybody.” I'm like, “You're around people. These books are about how you become a better person so you can interact with other people because that's the tough stuff about showing up for work.” The job is fun, but it's always all the other lovely people.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
John Maxwell says, “We all have some level of influence.” Regardless of who we are, we've got influence and our job is to wield that influence wisely.
Even showing up as a person, the atmosphere you bring into the room can robust the team or start to drain it. I love that he picked that stuff. Was it a voluntary book club?
It was. It was not one of those strongly encouraged type things. Your people have to want change. Because he was my mentor, supervisor, and my boss, he had modeled it first before even making the suggestion. He said, “I would be willing to buy these books if you guys would want to read them together as a team. If you want to do that, that would be cool. No pressure. It’s up to you.” He made it easy to say yes. He had modeled that previously. He was someone I looked up to and I thought, “I want to be like him. If this is a part of the process of getting there, then I’m all in.”
Are you still in touch with him? Do you know where he is?
Absolutely.
He knows where you are, I’m sure. He's happy.
We texted. He's in Dallas, Texas. He's not in Nashville anymore where I reside and where I first came in contact with him. He knows I'm writing a book. I've also already let the cat out of the bag that he's in the book, rightfully so.
You named a couple of other books. Are there any other books that you would recommend that you've read? You read a book a week, what's something that you would love to share with our readers?
If you haven't read the book by Liz Wiseman called Multipliers, I would highly recommend that. The subtitle is How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. One of the reasons I love this book is because this leader I talked about, his name is Matt, he exemplified what a multiplier type leader is. That's someone who isn't afraid and understands the value and how to leverage the collective brainpower in the room.
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
I was, in my early days, as I referenced, the type of leader who was put off or intimidated by those young whippersnappers around me who knew more about something than I did. He wasn't that type of leader. He wanted smarter people than him in certain areas around him. I realized the value in that. Liz talks about that difference between being a multiplier type leader and leveraging the collective brainpower for everybody's benefit and giving credit to the folks that helped make that a reality and diminisher type leaders. The type of leader I used to be.
Jeff, how can people get in touch with you?
You can always write to me directly, Jeff@ReadToLeadPodcast.com. I'm on most social media platforms as @TheJeffBrown, because Jeff Brown was taken long before I attempted to grab my name because it's such a common name. @TheJeffBrown on most social platforms or Jeff@ReadToLeadPodcast.com.
Where is your podcast carried? Is it across all the ones for our readers out there?
All the major platforms. The website, ReadToLeadPodcast.com. You'll find it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, about everywhere you listen to podcasts. Search Read to Lead and you'll find it.
Thank you again, Jeff, for being our guest and sharing your journey about what books have made you and how you evolved as a leader. It’s great insights. I know our readers are going to be robust and helped because of this.
Thank you, Dr. Jones. I appreciate being invited on and it's a thrill and honor for me to be here.
You're welcome, Jeff. For our readers out there, you learned about Jeff’s podcast, you learned mine, please hit the subscribe button. Do us the honor of a rating and leave us a message and share us with another leader that might realize that books can make them a more tremendous leader. Thank you all so much for reading and for paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day.
Important Links:
Apple Podcasts - Read to Lead Podcast
Stitcher - Read to Lead Podcast
Google Podcasts - Read to Lead Podcast
@THEJeffBrown - Jeff Brown Twitter
@TheJeffBrown - Jeff Brown Instagram
About Jeff Brown
More than anything else, I love helping others realize their full potential. I do that primarily through public speaking, the mastermind groups I facilitate, membership platforms I've created, my courses, coaching, and consulting.I am the host and creator of the Read to Lead Podcast.
Launched in July of 2013, Read to Lead is a top-ranked business and career podcast in Apple Podcasts (Top 3 Career / Top 10 Business) and Stitcher (Top 3 Business & Industry).
Read to Lead is a four-time Best Business Podcast nominee: 10th Annual Podcast Awards (2015 and 2018) and the Academy of Podcaster Awards (2015 and 2016).In May of 2020, my podcast lead to me signing a book deal. I will release Read to Lead (the book) in the fall of 2021.
The Read to Lead Podcast enjoys the distinction of being an iTunes Essentials podcast (Book Lovers). As well, Read to Lead made Inc. Magazine's list of 20 Best Business Podcasts of 2015 and Hubspot Marketing's 10 Best Business and Management Podcasts of 2016.
Read to Lead has also been featured in the blogs of Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and Jeff Goins to name a few.I have had the privilege to speak at numerous conferences across the US, sharing the stage with well-known keynoters such as Michael Port, Pat Flynn, Roman Mars, Aisha Tyler, John Lee Dumas, Marc Maron, Jordan Harbinger, Jeff Goins, Chris Ducker, Ray Edwards, and Sarah Koenig.
I serve as coach and mentor to dozens of podcasters and business owners across the globe including the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and the UK.