It is important to thank the leaders, teachers, and mentors that made you who you are today. Without them, you wouldn’t be motivated to lead. Joining Dr. Tracey Jones today is Dr. Madeline Frank. Dr. Frank helps businesses and organizations "Tune-Up their Business". Her speaking and writing reveal the blueprints necessary to improve, grow, and expand any business. She is an Amazon.com Best Selling Author, world-traveled concert artist, teacher, and parent. Her latest book Leadership On A Shoestring Budget is available everywhere books are sold. Listen to today's conversation to become a motivated leader.
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Dr. Madeline Frank - Leaders On Leadership
Welcome to the show where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders from all ages and stages of their life and what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am so excited because I have a very special guest. Her name is Madeline Frank Ph.D. She helps businesses and organizations tune up their business and you’ll understand that shortly. Her speaking and writing reveal the blueprints necessary to improve, grow and expand any business. She is an Amazon.com best-selling author, world-traveled concert artist and I’ve heard her phenomenal CD. She’s unbelievably talented musically and she’s a teacher and a parent. Her latest book, Leadership on A Shoestring Budget is available everywhere books are sold. Madeline sent me a copy and I read it and adored it. Madeline, welcome to the show.
It’s so good to see you. I’ve been looking forward to it for so long.
For our audience out there, Madeline and I are fast friends for several months. She made my day by ordering some books off our website and I got back in touch with her. As I typically do, I included a copy of Spark and some other things and that promoted a sisterhood. We started connecting and she sent me her books had me on her show. I’m like, “I need to have you on my show,” so here we are. You never know how God’s going to connect you with tremendous people.
You’re awesome. I’m so happy to have met you and worked with you.
Thanks. Let’s get right into it. Our audience love leadership and they are seasoned leaders. My father, who loved all things leadership, had a pragmatic approach to leadership. He knew how tough it was. He knew that if you’re going to be doing leadership, there’s a price you’re going to have to pay. The first price he talked about was loneliness. What he meant there is that you’re the one that sets the pace or paves the way. We’ve all heard that. It’s lonely at the top. There’s no one that can lead except for you. Can you tell me about an experience in your life where you knew as a leader that the direction you had to go was the one you needed to go, where and when you knew you had to make your stand?
One of the leaders of my family owned a construction and management company. I was in charge of putting on the new roofs on these two-story buildings. All roofs, as you know, are supposed to keep us dry. Homes and apartments have shingled roofs but these particular roofs have a plastic membrane and have to be put on right so if there are any gaps or bubbles, the water leaks down.
I went down to the job site because the roofers had been working on these two-story roofs. I climbed up the two-story ladder, 26 feet in the air with my camcorder over my shoulder and started to look down at the roofs to look for bubbles and gaps. Suddenly, as I was looking down, I heard a herd of elephants coming towards me. I decided I better stand up straight and see what’s going on here.
I realized it was a head roofer. He was a big guy that looked like a football line back. He was waving his arms and was very angry. He looked like one of those bulls that were terribly angry. He’s coming towards me. He finally got a foot in front of me but I remained calm. I looked him in the eye and stood my ground because he was waving. I didn’t want to fall over off the roof. He yelled at me, “I want $3,000 now,” and I remained calm. I keep looking at him. I let him finish and then said, “Do you remember the $3,000 I gave you three days ago for the roof?” He makes no comment.
Motivated Leadership: Lead by example by putting one foot in front of the other and taking action until you solve the problem. Don't just sit on the sidelines. Stand beside your people and help them get the job done.
I said, “I’m sorry,” and I pretended to put my hands by my pocket, “I don’t carry that kind of money with me. Is there an ATM on the roof?” He looked around to see if he could find one and then he started to move away. I decided to pack up the camcorder and get off the roof as fast as I could. I learned several strategies from this experience. One, stand your ground. Look the toxic person in the eye. Let them vent. Listen then go ahead and comment but don’t step back and fall off the roof. That’s another thing. It’s a terribly exciting job. It is terribly lonely but you have to admit that when it gets finished, it’s such a wonderful thing.
That’s beautiful. That’s what my dad would say. The price of leadership is tough but in the end, it’s so worth it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth paying it. I love that you said you might be the only one at that time to deflect what’s coming and you can’t run back. My dad always said that too. You can’t leave with a committee and you may be the one that has to stand there and answer. Along with loneliness, tell me about a time where you had to get started on leading an action when everyone else was just talking about it, thinking or planning. We’ve all been through that as leaders. We all want to get input from everybody but how do you know when a leader is like, “It’s time to bite the proverbial bullet and we need to pull that trigger and go.”
My greatest enjoyment is helping students by encouraging and motivating them to get their dreams. I received a call from a mother of a high school student. She said to me that her husband’s employer had recommended me as a violin teacher. Even though I was a woman because she would rather have a man for her son, she would try me out. She said, “My son is lazy and stupid.” I said to her, “First thing, you can’t do that anymore. You can’t say that to him or anybody else about him. If you want him to study with me, you’re going to have to say positive things to him.”
The next day, a young man walked in with multicolored hair, an earring and strange-looking clothes with his head down, looking depressed. We began to work on the scales, the etudes, the pieces and the state orchestra audition music that he wanted to try out for in five weeks. He started to play and he played so beautifully. He had so much talent and I told him so. We worked on the materials that day and I could see he was beginning to evolve even then.
“When facing toxic people, stand your ground, look them in the eye, and let them vent. Just listen, then go ahead and comment.”
The next week, a young man with a smile on his face, neatly dressed with his head up, eagerly walked through my glass door. He wanted to get busy with the materials. He’d done tremendous work and I told him so. He began to blossom like a flower. By the fifth week, the day before the audition, he was doing such a beautiful job and I told him so. I said, “You’re going to do wonderfully well tomorrow. I can tell.” He had transformed. It was amazing.
A few days later, I received a call from him. It sounded like there was a smile in his voice. On the telephone, he said, “I made number 1 out of 40 violinists. I’m the concertmaster. I’m so happy,” and I said, “I knew you could do it. I’m so proud of your work.” This young man had transformed because of the honest and sincere compliments I gave him. It helped him transform to see that he was capable of doing the job, which I knew he was. It’s so important to help people by giving them honest and sincere compliments to help them and encourage them to do their best. The same thing we have to do to ourselves, we have to do to others as well. It makes such a difference.
I love your spin on loneliness. It’s not only loneliness as a leader but also keeping an eye on if someone on our team or under our tutelage is lonely because it’s a real thing and then helping them realize they’re not alone and they do have value because that’s what loneliness is. You feel like nobody likes you and everybody hates you. It’s that little diddy as a kid, “I’m going to go home and eat worms,” and then you let them know, “You do have value or worth.” I love your take on loneliness.
Next, we’re going to talk about weariness, which is a real thing. If you’re going to be doing anything worthwhile, you know as well as I do that even in a perfect world there’s going to be times when you’re going to be carrying way more of the load because you’re the leader than other people. How do you handle the pace and this attitude from others that we need not work so hard and take it easy? You see this a lot out there. How do you deal with that?
I don’t pay any attention to people telling me not to work less. You lead by example. You lead by putting one foot in front of the other and taking action until you solve the problem or work out the project and that’s the way I do things. I don’t believe in sitting on the sideline. I believe in leading, standing beside people and helping them get the job done.
Motivated Leadership: Babies have blank pages, and you have to be careful what you write on those pages. You have to write positive and motivating things to give them hope. It's the same way with yourself and other people.
How do you handle the burden and the responsibility of leadership? As they say, heavy is the head that wears the crown. How do you deal with that?
It is a heavy burden being a leader but you’re the one who’s responsible. If something goes wrong, you’re the person. It’s like President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.” One day, I received a call from one of the businesses of the buildings that we rent and manage. He said, “The building is falling apart. We have somebody who doesn’t know how to fix the exterior on the stucco. Come and see what happened.”
I brought a plastic bag, hopped in the car and went down to look. The person who was doing it, I hadn’t hired him. I don’t know who did but it was my job to fix it. I immediately called on my cellphone an expert who knew how to fix stucco buildings. I said, “You have to come now. I need the help now.” He sorted it out and fixed it. It caused tremendous extra money to do the work to fix the wall but it was worth it. Your job as a leader is to fix it. It doesn’t matter who did the problem, you fix it. It is a wearisome job but when it’s all fixed and looking good again, you get energized by it.
I was on a board where something happened like that. We had contracted out to somebody to do some work and every month, it’s still not fixed so it’s like, “We’re not going with these guys anymore. You need to call somebody else. I don’t care what it costs. You don’t keep throwing bad costs and bad times. Somebody has got to come in and fix it. We can’t keep talking about this.” That’s a great point for leaders.
Some people are like, “We’re going to manage what is.” You need to fix it. If who you hired isn’t getting it done, you need to bring somebody else in to fix it. I had to do that many times. It’s a fact of life. Was it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? They’ve already tried to fix it ten times. The eleventh time still isn’t going to fix it so let’s move on. Tell me about your growing pains and how you stay motivated to keep showing up.
I keep being motivated to work by waking up at 5:30 AM because I want to read books that will feed my mind and give me new ideas that can help solve the problems or show me how to fix something better. I write the ideas down and then I think about them. Many times, I’ll write articles and hand them to people that would be helped by reading that particular thing but I find that it energizes me and gets the day started on a positive note so I can encourage myself and work forward on what I need to do.
One of my favorite lines my father always said was most people have thick skin and a hard heart. When in reality, we need thin skin and a soft heart. Can you tell me how you’ve transformed as a leader in this regard?
I transformed myself when I began to realize that babies have blank pages and that you have to be careful what you write on those pages. You have to write positive and motivating things giving them hope. It’s the same way with yourself and other people. You have to be careful what you write on their blank pages. You have to give them an honest and sincere compliment.
When they’re down or depressed, you have to make them smile so they can think clearly. You have to approach it differently. You and I know we work better when people speak to us with respect and kindness. We don’t work well with people that are shouting and annoying us. This is the thing about the blank pages. We have to stop and think and then say something complimentary or even something simple but calm that person down because when they can’t think, they can’t work.
“It doesn’t matter who caused the problem. It’s your job as a leader to fix the problem.”
That’s us saying that to them. How do you handle the critics, the biting tongues or the critical spirits when it comes to us? Everything that we try and do for others, the opposite, gets returned to us. That can quench our spirit.
Every day to encourage myself, I write on a gratitude list with a full sentence of what I’m grateful for that day, like what’s going to go and what occurs. I learned to do this from Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson, a medical doctor, life coach and best-selling author of the new book, Bouncing Back. She said to me through reading this book that the best tool that she can give her patients and her physicians group that she leads is the gratitude journal.
She has them write the five things that they’re grateful for that day in complete sentences so that you’re pouring out your gratitude and positive things that are taking place so that you’re setting yourself up for success and encouragement and motivating yourself for the day. Before you go to sleep, you read these encouraging statements, savor them and you say, “Thank you,” as you’re reading them. You’re becoming positive inside. As you and I know, you have to work to be happy. It doesn’t happen if you don’t work at it.
That is so encouraging. The gratitude journal is so important because otherwise, we get weary because we think about what didn’t happen and we forget all the wonderful things that have happened so thank you for that. Next is abandonment. This is not a negative abandonment but this is abandoning what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought and need to be focused on. You have a lot of things that you do. How do you stay focused on the best and highest use of your time and what you need to spend time on?
I stay focused because of your dad, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones’ book, Leadership is for You. He told the story about the Ivy Lee method. This method has been around for many years. Ivy Lee was a productivity specialist. I call him the King of Bethlehem Steel. He handed him a sheet of paper and said, “Write the 6 most important things that you have to do the next day and then put the number 1 thing you have to do first then number 2 and number 3.”
Motivated Leadership: It is important to thank people for their work and contribution to the world. People stand on the shoulders of their mentors and teachers who've made them who they are today.
In other words, prioritize them and then he said, “Tomorrow, first do the first thing until you’ve completed it fully and then do the second and third. What you don’t finish, put those on the top of the list for the next day and then add three more.” This is how I stay focused on what I have to do for the day. It keeps me positive and moving in the right direction so I don’t get sidetracked.
I couldn’t agree more. That Ivy Lee method, for those of you that are reading, I’ve talked about it numerous times. Madeline talked about it. It is sheer brilliance. There are little templates online that you can do it automatically but I do it old school. Today is already in the can. The preparation for how great tomorrow is going to be starts today. It’s a productivity expert. To me, that’s the ultimate focus tool. I adore it. How do you ensure you do more every day to be a success than you do to be a failure? My dad would always say that to me. I thought he was the most successful man in the world and he’s like, “I could be so much more successful. I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than success.” How do you balance that out?
Thinking I’m starting that day learning new things, writing down the ideas and also the gratitude journal, I stay in a positive frame so I can handle whatever happens plus or minus. You and I know that when you’re discombobulated so to speak, you don’t think clearly but if you’re working to be on an even keel, you’re focused. You’re here in the now so you can do the work.
I call that spinning. People are like, “I’m spinning,” and I’m like, “We need to be very focused.” How do you give up being discouraged? You’ve already alluded to a lot of this but I love this question.
I don’t think of discouragement. The idea is to always think forward. You don’t go back. You want to take what you have to work with and you want to get all the facts down on the piece of paper so that you can figure out how to fix the problem. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
That is true and discouragement is an emotion. You don’t operate from that. My dad would say that. Make a decision, make it yours and die by it. There was no other option. Once you do that, you cut the thumb sucking out because you’re like, “That is non-value added.” It is what it is. Let’s learn from it, pick up and go. Lastly, he talked about vision and this is good after abandonment. He always said the vision is really seeing what needs to be done and doing it. There’s nothing more than that. It’s not just sitting there spinning, thinking, wishing or feeling. How do you gain clarity?
The most important thing is to thank people for their work, which we do at our show as you know because we’ve interviewed you as an engineer, a leader, a veteran and a teacher who teaches so many leaders how to think and the best way to proceed. We want to honor people and thank them for contributing to the world. We also honor scientists, medical doctors, chemists, biologists, all of these great people who’ve invented cures for diseases, new products to keep us safe and who made a change in the world for the better to help all of us and mankind.
“When you’re discombobulated, you don’t think clearly. But if you’re working to be on an even keel, you’re focused.”
What all these people have in common is the fact that they began playing musical instruments as children and they continued to play them to work on their different investigations. It helped them to think better and to concentrate. Like we had mentors that meant so much and helped us when we were down and didn’t believe in ourselves, we have these great and wonderful people who’ve inspired us, helped us and we have to give the gratitude back.
We stand on the shoulders of the mentors and teachers who’ve made us who we are now and who encouraged and inspired us when we had no inspiration at all. We didn’t feel like we could do it but they lent us their belief and it finally would kick in and we were able to do our work. That’s what we do. We pass on the torch to the next generation. You and I and all the others.
Vision is meant to be shared. It’s not just ours. It lights the way for everybody and vision builds. You have a Ph.D. too. You contribute that one new drop of knowledge into the existing sea of knowledge. You don’t own it and it’s a beautiful thing. What is one of the greatest epiphanies that you had while building your organization?
My greatest epiphany is what positivism and will do for other people. You can have somebody come into the building and look like the worst thing in the world happened to them. The first thing you want to do is smile at them and give them a compliment for even a simple thing, like, “What a beautiful shirt you’re wearing.” You want to see them curve those lips up a little bit. You want to see them look a little bit happier or tell them something funny. The whole idea is to change, as it goes, the sourpuss into something more positive. You and I know we can’t work with a sourpuss. You can’t get anything done. You have to change them.
How do you grow in wisdom, which is another word for vision?
Leadership On A Shoestring Budget By
I keep learning and growing every day. It’s a matter of learning new things to get excited about seeing something in a new way. I love to learn new things, read books and listen to podcasts. Anything that will make me be better and more knowledgeable is important.
We have covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment and vision. Is there anything else that we have not touched on from a leadership perspective that you would like to share with our tremendous audience?
You’ve covered it.
You’ve covered a lot of stuff. I have lots of notes. I’m always glad I record this because I’m like, “That’s gold.” I know our audience probably knows this but I played violin too. I could have used you as a coach because I made county orchestra but not state. I’m sure if I had been under your tutelage, I would have. What is the best way for our audience to get in touch with you?
I would say to go on to one of my websites, www.MadelineFrankViola.com or to go on to my other site, which has a lot of the articles that I write and that would be www.MadelineFrank.com.
You mentioned your book on Amazon, Leadership on a Shoestring Budget. You have other books, though. Do you want to tell our audience the titles of those?
One is called Musical Notes on Math. It’s how to teach your child how to do fractions and decimals the easy way through the rhythm of the music. My young son came home one day and he was quite upset and almost in tears. He couldn’t understand what fractions and decimals were. Here he was in a public school and the teacher didn’t know what to do so I got to thinking. I remember what my professor at Juilliard said, “Rhythm is math. Math is rhythm.” My hobby was collecting math books at the time of all things so I grabbed a sheet of paper, drew a circle and a whole note that’s four counts held. I said, “4 over 4 is equal to what?” He said, “One.” I said, “One whole. A whole note in music is four counts out,” so I explained to him that 100 pennies over 100 pennies is 1.
I started dividing 1/2 plus 1/2 is 1 whole and I did the fractional equivalents. I broke it down and made it easy because he was taking the violin and I showed him the equivalent so he could see it. Suddenly, the light bulb went on and he started smiling and looking cheerful. We worked on this for a couple of days. I got a call from the teacher, who said, “Would you come in and help me?” I said, “Fine.”
I went in to show him my little method. A couple of days later, I got a call from the dean of the college that I teach locally. She said, “Are you working with one of your kids to show them equivalent-themed fractions and decimals to the rhythm of music?” I said, “Yeah. How did that get to you?” She said, “One of my students is a teacher at the local school and he’s trying to use your work for my class. You’re going to publish it now, aren’t you?” You and I know I haven’t given it a thought but that’s when I decided I was going to publish it because maybe it would help some other child that didn’t understand it.
For our audience out there, you check that out too because I was good at math because I played the violin in second grade and then the cello. Math is beautiful. Like music, it’s like a recipe. You follow what you see and that’s how you get it. I love that. Where can our audience get some of your recordings?
I love to play and see people smile. I’ve had the pleasure of playing all over the world. If you’re interested, go on my website and you’ll see the link for Madeline’s Midnight Melodies. That was a recording I made for my mom, who had certain things that she loved so I put many of those pieces on there. Some of them are helpful. I used to go and play in hospitals to help people get better sooner. It was important to me. I would ask them whether they liked classical or jazz and then I’d played them a piece. It’s amazing how when you play the right music that they love, they can get better.
One of my dad’s little speeches was called The Three Therapies of Life and music is one of them. He loved classical, big bands, bagpipes and he would say that there are times when his heart was so broken but he put on music and that was such a blessing and healing sound to him. Humorous, beautiful people but music is one of the therapies of life and I love that. Get better sooner and music does that.
Please be sure to connect with Madeline. She is an amazing resource. If you have kiddos out there with math, get her book. If you’re running a business on a shoestring budget, I read both those books. I have her CDs and she is a tremendous individual. If you liked what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss another issue. Leave us a comment and the honor of a rating. We’d be so thankful for that. Please reach out and drop us a comment about what you thought. We hope you got some tremendous value about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. Madeline, thank you. It’s so gracious to have you here.
You’re awesome.
That’s right back at you. It takes one to know one. Tremendous tribe, thank you so much for everything. Keep on paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of your day.
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About Dr. Madeline Frank
Madeline Frank, Ph.D., helps businesses and organizations "Tune-Up their Business". Her speaking and writing reveal the blueprints necessary to improve, grow, and expand any business. She is an Amazon.com Best Selling Author, world-traveled concert artist, teacher, and parent. Her latest book "Leadership On A Shoestring Budget" is available everywhere books are sold.