Episode 64 – Tony Boquet – Leaders On Leadership
Every leader knows the burden of handling a lot of people and making them work together effectively. Team building is easier said than done, even if a definite objective is in place. Dr. Tracey Jones talks with speaker and author Tony Boquet about what makes leading a team more effective, such as learning how to adjust your goals depending on the people you work with and how to discover your own vision by having a clear idea of your location first. Tony also explains why strong motivation is the only way to change people and how weariness can be eliminated through the people around you – especially your family.
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Tony Boquet – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Tony Boquet. Tony is an author, speaker, teacher, and storyteller. He has decades of experience in the financial industry and he even teaches at The American College of Financial Services. You're going to enjoy what Tony has to share with us about paying the price of leadership.
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I am excited to share with you. Our guest is Tony Boquet. He is a dear friend of the family. He knew my father, a long-time supporter of mine, and an incredible leader. For many years, Tony has been a leader, mentor, trainer, dynamic storyteller, speaker, and solutionary in the financial services industry. He published his first book through Bush Publishing, which I have my autographed copy, and it is titled The Bloodline of Wisdom: The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary. He is a vice president and adjunct instructor at The American College of Financial Services. Welcome, tremendous Tony.
Thank you, Tracey. It's wonderful to be here with you.
Tony, tell people what The American College of Financial Services is.
We are the nonprofit institution of higher learning for the financial service industry. We've been around since 1927 and we started the first designation for our industry, the Chartered Life Underwriter designation. It's been around for many years.
How long have you been teaching there?
I started being a student at the college back in the early ‘80s. That's a long time, Tracey. I had hair back then. Quickly, I started instructing some of their courses because they propelled my career and I saw the vision that if I can help others create a benefit through this educational format, I thought I wanted to be a part of that. Towards the end of my career in the state planning field, I decided to go to work full-time at the college. I've been there full-time as the VP of business development for years already.
Tony, you knew my father from the life insurance industry. You’re always a tremendous leader. For all our leaders out there for the financial services and life insurance, you're going to get some good stuff.
Charlie was an amazing mentor of mine and a wonderful man. I can't say enough good things about him.
He loved you, Tony. I am thankful you are still around to support the next generation of tremendousness. I thank you for all the wisdom. We're going to talk a little bit about the price of leadership. I want everybody to then connect with you so they can be as inspired by all the great stuff you put out as I am. My father came out with a little booklet called The Price of Leadership. It’s one of the speeches that he did throughout his career, and we know that leadership is one of the most joyful, beautiful things.
We're all called to lead. We're born to lead, but it's also one of the hardest things you're ever going to do. There's a price you have to pay for it. If it was easy, everybody would do it. One of the first prices a leadership that my father talks about as a leader is the loneliness that goes with being in the leadership position. Tony, can you share with me throughout your career, the different venues you've been in and different seasons in your life, what does loneliness mean for you as a leader? What wisdom do you have to share with our readers about how they would handle that?
Charlie did a great job of explaining that we're all lonely at times. The loneliness that comes with the price for leadership is not necessarily missing people. It takes so much out of you that it becomes a longingness in your own body and spirit. Sometimes, you long for being able to share things with people that is not the right time. You have to bear that burden yourself, and that's a lonely situation that you put yourself in. Because to bear things before a person's ready to receive it, it's of no value to you and to them. A lot of times, the loneliness is self-inflicted. We bear that graciously because we know that eventually, it will pay off for the student as well as the leader.
Tony, I have never heard it put like that. It is in your soul and it is forbearance. That's an incredible way to put it that as leaders, we have already walked the walk. It's like a parent and a child. You know what's going to happen if they go this route. You have to wait until they're open to receive it like a sponge. Otherwise, it's not going to do any good.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. A lot of times, as a leader, you have to get good at reading your people and you have to be good at knowing when they are ready to receive it. I hired a gentleman once and he used to get upset with me because sometimes when he did good, I would just find something to critique him on, but yet when he did badly, I praise him left and right. He used to come to me and he says, “You're confusing, I can't understand you.”
I said, “Chris, when you're doing poorly, you're beating yourself up way more than I'll ever beat you up, so I don't need to apply that to you. When you're doing good, sometimes we get cocky with ourselves and we become complacent because we think we've reached our destiny when we haven't.” It's loneliness when you have to hold back certain things from people that you're dying to share. You want them to accept it. Sometimes, that's a loneliness you have to accept as a leader.
Team Building: Sometimes, you just can’t share things with others since it’s not the right time. You have to bear that burden yourself.
When you are in the teacher role, which is what a leader is, you are different. I think of Jesus and they call him a teacher. He's there to pour in, but he's also a little bit separated. When somebody is down, that's when you lift up and when somebody is riding high, that's when you keep them from smacking their head.
Keep your head down.
I never thought about that. That's good. Awesome, Tony. You're tremendous.
I learned from the best tremendous.
It keeps flowing and pouring. Tony, the next thing he talked about was weariness. I'm sure you know a thing or two about being in the career field, especially where you work on commissions and have to build your own business and paychecks, nothing's guaranteed. How do you deal with weariness? What does this mean for weariness as a leader? Maybe you're growing your team or you're talking about even trying to pour into people when we thought everybody wanted to hear our wisdom and they don't want to hear it. How do you handle that?
It gets forward, Tracey. It’s difficult. Weariness in Charlie's speech on The Price of Leadership speaks so well to that. It's easy to understand when he lays it out. It’s simple. The weariness that I felt as a leader was, how do I overcome when I'm beaten? At night, you get to the point where you're mentally drained because you have to be at your best all the time as a leader. It becomes draining. Like Charlie, my family suffered from that. No matter how hard you try, it's difficult to not show that weariness to your people. During the day, everybody thought, “This guy's always on fire,” but yet, at night, I was off. It was totally draining.
The weariness does weigh on you after a while, but it's rewarding that you're willing to take that weight of the weariness. You're willing to bear whatever price that is. You try your best to balance. In my book, I speak about the balance of the personal, professional, and spiritual. When I was young and I was working with your father and talking to your father, I didn't understand that. I was young and impetuous. I was everything I shouldn't be. It was hard to understand the personal, professional, and spiritual balance.
Once I got that and understood that, the weariness went away. Weariness left me because I wasn't struggling to take all of that weight myself. Whenever you relieve some of that tension, the weariness is gone. It also comes with success though. In my first management position, I was 23 years old. I was young and foolish. A lot of adjectives that I can put on myself, none of which would have been a leader. Those early days, I thought I had to do it all and the weariness was unbelievable. Because you'd get back at night and all you could do is lay down your head, sleep like a baby, and cry every two hours.
Tony, I'm glad you said that. I can remember watching my dad. He would be on the road 250 days a year speaking, traveling, and selling. I remember when he comes home and just be out. I love how you talk about your family. That's not necessarily a bad thing because family should be a source of replenishment. You don't want to be exhausted that you don't have time for your family, but I can remember as a child and a young girl understanding, my dad's got grit and he's changing the world. He's out there and he's going to be tired when he comes home, and that's okay. Sometimes, people try to shield everything like, “I don't want to put this on my family.” Your family is there to be a support structure to build you up. You can go home and be yourself with your family.
If it wouldn't have been for my wife, I wouldn't have been successful in my career. No doubt in my mind. She handled the home life. She was a stay-at-home mother and she handled things that frankly, I didn't want to handle. If she wouldn't have been there to handle that, I don't know what I would have done.
That said the same thing about mom. The reason he could go out and burn a candle like he did, and of course, he got replenished spiritually, was because he had a great life partner that was home taking care of this aspect of it. He didn't have to come home tired from work and then be tired because he has to deal with home. They both were tired, but then they would come together and then had that spiritual basis where they continued to get the replenishment.
I'm glad you said that because a lot of times, people are like, “You don't want to put this on your family.” It's not putting on your family. I got hitched and I did that because two are stronger than one. A cord of three strands is not broken. The more you covenant with people, the stronger you become. They get to share in the tiredness of you. They don't only want to hear about the good stuff. They need to be there when you're tired and you don't know what to do.
All of my successes, she shared with me. We were able to go to conferences all over the world. That was my gift to her for all the times that I wasn't there and it was her reward more so than myself because I wanted her to enjoy some of the rewards that I earned. It was a blessing in many ways.
Gloria used to say that. She never wants to complain. She's like, “I'm just along for the ride, and what a ride it was.” You're right. That's good because it's not always the traditional age that comes home. Sometimes, you work hard to meet a goal, and then you’ve got these trips. You’ve got to fellowship, see all over the world, be with other people, and realize, “We're in this as little units altogether.” That's a beautiful thing.
We talked about loneliness. You gave me a great insight into that. You gave me a great insight into how you define weariness and how you handle that. The next point he talked about was abandonment. My dad would always say, “We need to get rid of what we like and want to think about in favor of what we ought and need to think about.” How do you stay focused, Tony, on what you need to stay focused on? You're in the business of helping people and many people need help. How do you stay focused so your resources stay on target and doing the most good for the most people?
Team Building: Loneliness is self-inflicted, and you bear that graciously because eventually, it will pay off.
One of the things I found amazing about Charlie in this speech is abandonment is 1 of the 3 human fears. We only have three fears. We fear harm, whether it is bodily harm or spiritual harm. Harm is overcome by courage when you have that fear. Abandonment is only conquered through community. That's the only way we can overcome that abandonment that Charlie spoke about. Of course, the third fear is unworthiness, and that's love. Love conquers unworthiness. With abandonment, one of the things that I think about all the time is how I was able to bring teams together and build up my fear of abandonment. It was an internal fear that you have. Am I leaving them in the right place or will they leave me? Will I be able to leave them or will they leave because they see it differently than I see it? That'll go into a little bit more discussion when we get to the vision. Anytime you have a team, you have that abandonment issue. Whether you will leave them or they will leave you, it's always present.
You know me, I like stories. When I was in my first agency, I was leaving a group of about 74 individuals at the time. I was still a fairly young man at 26 or 27 years old. I remember back then, I gave a Christmas party every year for my people and I got gifts for them. Toward the end of the Christmas event, one of my sales managers invited me to go to the conference room with him. He wanted to talk to me separately. We were holding it in one of my larger offices. He brought me into the conference room and there were the other five sales managers that worked for me. On the conference room table was a wrapped gift, and they said, “This is your Christmas present from us.” I thought, “That's nice.” I started opening the gift and it was Tony Robbins’ 30-day development Personal Power course.
One of the speakers told me at that meeting, “Tony, we love you. You're one of the smartest people we've ever worked for. If you don't take this Personal Power course, we're all quitting today. We're leaving.” This was from someone I viewed as a close friend. He was one of my mentors and I was his supervisor now, but he had mentored me in my early career. I thought highly of this gentleman, and he says, “We're not joking. We will terminate our contract if you don't do this. Because we think enough of you, we will all be here with you and we'll take this course with you.”
I asked, “What's wrong? What am I not doing right? You are all making more money than you've ever made in your career. You're all successful.” We just finished one of the best years. We were in the top three of the company we worked for. I said, “I don't get it. Why am I such a bad guy that you say you're going to quit?” He says, “Tony, you think only of yourself. You terminate people because they're not doing what you want them to do and they have a life outside of this company.” He was 100% right. That act of a gift changed my life because I did take that Personal Power course. I learned an awful lot about me and about leadership.
It was emotional for a lot of those sessions because I recruited into this business all of these men and women. They were there with me going through this. Some of them drove two hours just to come to this meeting, so it was an inconvenience for them. I didn't take it lightly, Tracey. It changed my life. In all essence, through the actions that I was doing, I was abandoning them when I thought I was leading. I thought I was doing a good job in leadership because we were hitting all the goals. The following year was our best year ever because of them. It added a new meaning to what it meant to be abandoned. It was an interesting time in my life.
Thank you for that transparency and sharing that. I've had a couple of people not as pronounced as that, that I was in charge of leading, came and gave me constructive kindness where they told me truth and love, but let me know in uncertain circumstances. “I know where your heart is, but you have got to change, or else, you're not going to be leading anyone.” I’m thankful that you had people like that. They were invested in you and they helped you abandon the bad parts of being a leader.
We all have that. You learn it. I always say, “If you want a better leader, be a better follower.” The fact that you had people that were invested in you and let you know exactly what you need to do and what we need to abandon. Not everything we focus or think we're doing needs to make the cut to the next level of leadership. Dad would talk a lot about that. You learn to unlearn what you thought you knew and relearn what you needed to learn.
Your point to that, Tony, I never thought of abandonment like that. Out of the three fears, that's my one fear. I was talking to somebody about that fear of abandonment. Do you think that that drove you as a leader going through that, that you were focused on end results? Break that down for me, Tony, because a lot of us are in leadership positions where we have to meet goals and stuff. Should you be keeping people if they are not meeting the standards? Unpack that for me.
That what my thinking was back then like, “What am I doing wrong? I'm goal setting. I'm hitting my goals. I'm exceeding my goals.” One of the things I didn't understand was my goal should have been less than their goals. In other words, if Tracey works for me, if my goal is for you to make $80,000 a year to make your piece of the pie to fulfill my goal, then your goal has to be more than $80,000. If you want to make $60,000 and I'm not okay with that because of the results it would take to get there, then I have the problem, not you because you only need to earn $60,000 a year.
If that's what's going to drive you, then I'm putting my weight on your shoulders. If you needed to make $130,000 a year in income, that means your goal would be much bigger than my $80,000. If I'm managing to your goal, not mine, then there's no push and there's no shove. It’s just together pulling. That was the thing I didn't get. Everybody had to meet my objectives, and my objectives may have been too much for some people.
You thought everybody should be on the million-dollar round table and other people may have been like, “No, I'm perfectly fine at this level.” Is that what you're saying?
That's exactly right.
When I was in the Air Force, I remember one time, I'm like, “Doesn't everybody want to be chief of staff of the Air Force or four-star?” They're like, “No. Some of us just want to launch and recover jets for twenty years.” I'm like, “Point taken.” As leaders, we're like, “I keep getting people raising up.” There are some people that will land and be good at what they do right there, and that's okay.
As long as their place is above the minimum standard I have.
I'm glad you said that. I talk a lot about organizational citizenship behaviors and that's where you're a great citizen in the organization, but the understanding is you meet the bare minimum threshold. That goes without saying. You're getting paid, so you have to at least perform at this level. We're adults. We're talking about the above and beyond. If you're a good performer and you're a good solid person at this level and you're meeting the standards, that's okay.
Team Building: Understanding your current location will help unveiling your vision.
I’m glad you unpacked that because some people would be like, “I had hit the standards,” but it was your standards that they were not hitting. You had this team of five men or women that honestly, is a drumline. There are some people you can keep pushing. I know my dad was tough on me, but because he knew, “I'm not letting you get away with this. You have it in you.” That is a leader. You need to realize who has it in them and who doesn't.
That comes with coaching and supervision. That's all part of the chores that make up what we do.
Thank you for breaking that whole thing down and sharing that with us. That must have been a Christmas party you never ever forgot.
I will never forget that. 1988 to be exact.
I'm glad they did that to you. That's cool.
It wasn't that evening, though. That wasn't happy.
I tell people they could have quit and gone to somebody else, or they could have gone to your boss and gotten you fired. I'm thankful for the people. One of my enlisted guys told me this in the military. “We'd applied Turkey,” and I'm like, “If the enemy would have shot me, that would have hurt less than what he said to me.” I was thankful he let me know because I was trying to be all officery and I didn't realize I'm not patent and not everybody relates well to patent.
The last one he talked about Tony was vision. He says the fourth price of leadership is vision. My father always said he had a pragmatic, realistic thing. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade and he's like, “I'm a simple man with drive.” He called vision simply seeing what needs to be done and then doing it. Talk to me about vision. How do you hone your vision? How do you cast it? How do you refine it? Share with me what that means.
I have an interesting look at vision. I see vision as a natural law. I relate it to personal, professional, and spiritual. We all have a vision. We're at a location. Think of yourself as in a location, whether it's your beautiful home, where you are spiritually, or where you are in your career. You're in a location. That location will give you the ability to see certain things. If you look out of that lovely window behind you, you will see whatever's there and that's going to be your vision, but your location matters.
If you don't know where your location is, then you can't see where you are. For a vision, it starts with motivation. You have to be motivated. The motivation should change your perspective. You start with a vision, find the motivation, that changes your perspective, and then that perspective drives you to a new location. When you have all of these things in place, my vision will continuously be changing because my location is continuously changing. We have to start with motivating people and we have to be good at motivating them because one thing I learned early in my leadership roles is I can't change anyone but myself.
If I can only change myself, then I need to be able to motivate people to change their perspective, and then that will change their location, and that'll change the vision. If you and I are in the same window and we're all looking out at the same thing, we will see the same vision. We have to get people into the same location. As a leader, your job is to bring them to the location you are today so that they can see the vision you have. We can only do that. We can't physically pick them up and bring them to where we're at.
We'd like to sometimes. Sometimes, I'd much like to do that but we can't. We have to do it through motivation. Hopefully, that motivation is going to change their perspective where they see what you see. One of the things that stuck with me early in my career is I couldn't understand why people wouldn't buy-in to what I was selling. I didn't understand it. Why would you not do this? It was my father who told me a simple thing that never clicked.
He says, “When you're selling something, you have a vision in your head that if they don't act, this is going to happen, and all of it’s bad. You see all of these bad things that if they don't act, this is going to happen to them. You have to take those visions that are in your head and plant them into their head because if they love whatever they're trying to change and they see the negativity, they're going to want to do it, too. They're going to feel the same way you do. They're going to want to change. We have to get those images out of our head, and that's where motivation comes in.”
My friend Zig Ziglar was amazing at planting those images in people's minds, so they were motivated to change their perspective, thus changing their location, and then changing their vision. It was revealing when I learned that. In business, you hear leaders saying, “This is the vision for the company.” If you hire 400 people, do they all have that same vision? They may all be in the same location and they may all be in the same building physically but if they look out the window, they will see something completely different. It was an interesting dichotomy that helped me tremendously.
You get to look at people and make sure that expectations and what's important to them are aligned and congruent because the sooner you understand if you're all singing to the same sheet of music, the better. Otherwise, you're going to find out, “It's not going to work. Yes, now they can see it.” I love that, Tony because as a leader, that's the question every leader asked. “Why aren't they picking up what I'm putting down?” Everybody out there, that's why you're reading.
The Bloodline of Wisdom: The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary
Dad used to say that. “You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink, but you can put salt to make them thirsty.” That planting images, and then change that perspective. That relieves you as the burden of the leader from dragging people. It's up to you. Everybody, all I could do is set up the enabling resources and construct, but then it's your choice to change your perspective or go to an organization that is more aligned with your perspective. There's nothing wrong with that, too.
I've helped a lot of people find other work and they're still friends now. In essence, I terminated them, but I found them another home that's a better fit for them. There's nothing wrong with that.
You are in sales. You got to have the perspective for that as opposed to some of them who may want to be more CPA or into creative design. Everybody is wired and coded differently. We've covered the four prices of leadership. Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with our readers?
Whenever I speak on leadership, I tell a story about my first experience with a leader. This was one of my early bosses. This gentleman took me on my first interview as an insurance agent and I walked into a home. It was a senior citizen, an elderly lady that was there. We were selling them a life insurance policy. Before we walked through the door, my boss gave me some great information. He says, “You know nothing about what we're doing. I don't want you to say anything to the client except thank you, hello, and goodbye. That's it. I will handle the rest.”
I said, “I can handle that.” He said, “Take a lot of notes because eventually, you're going to have to do it, so I expect you to take notes.” I go to the kitchen table with this elderly lady and my boss. I'm sitting there and there's a bowl of peanuts on the table. I love peanuts, so I start eating peanuts. All the time this guy's talking to the woman, I'm eating peanuts. I ate the entire bowl of peanuts. After the lady had to get up to go get her purse to pay us for the premium, my boss turned to me furious, Tracey.
He says, “You realize you ate the entire bowl of peanuts. When she comes back, the first thing you better do is you better ask her if you could replace those peanuts. You will buy her another bag of peanuts. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I love peanuts. I can't help it.” The minute this lady walks back in the room, I deeply apologize for eating all of her peanuts. She was gracious, Tracey. She said, “That won't be necessary. I've already sucked all off of them.”
Tony, you had me hook, line, and sinker. You’re like that telling me those stories. You're awesome. That's good to remember, but I do love peanuts.
Now I leave peanuts that are still in the shell.
Tony, where can people connect with you and get your book? You're on LinkedIn. I love your content on LinkedIn. How do they reach out to you?
LinkedIn is a good source. I am active there. It’s under Anthony Boquet that they can reach me there. I also have a website for the book, the Modern Solutionary. They can go to ModernSolutionary.com, or they can reach out to me through the college. I do work for The American College. If you're in the financial service arena or if you touch money, the courses we teach can help you tremendously. We teach anything financial and of course, we have a great leadership curriculum. We also have a Master's in leadership that's second to none. Feel free to reach out to me. If I can help, I'm more than happy to do so.
Also, you have outreach to veterans through the Penn Mutual Center for Veterans Affairs, which you got me on the board of that. We give scholarships away to veterans that are looking to transition out of the military and come into the financial services industry. American College is phenomenal and it’s a joy to serve with them. Tony, I can't thank you enough for what you've taught me and what you've shared. It’s great. It's been way too long since we've caught up. Keep doing what you're doing. What an inspiration you are to many people.
Thank you, Tracey. You're the inspiration and I can't speak highly enough. Keep doing what you do. You're touching lives and you're changing lives.
Thanks, Tony. To our tremendous readers out there, check out Tony, and please give us a rating wherever you're following us, YouTube, Anchor, and Spotify. We love to hear from you. Thanks, everybody, for reading what it takes to pay the price of leadership. Tony, you are the greatest. Have a tremendous day.
Important Links:
The Bloodline of Wisdom: The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary
Anthony Boquet - LinkedIn
YouTube - Tremendous Leadership
Anchor - Tremendous Leadership with Dr. Tracey Jones
Spotify - Tremendous Leadership with Dr. Tracey Jones