Lean Into Leadership

Rob Brown  00:05

Back again, time for another episode of the truest fan podcast, Rob Brown and Phil Calandra, your chief growth architects here. And we’re excited today we want to talk about step number nine of the truest fan blueprints, lean in to leadership. You know, sometimes we take leadership for granted, we forget that as leaders of our own practice are owners of our business, that a lot of people rely on us. Our team relies on us, our clients relies on us and back at home, our family is relying on us, we forget about the importance of leadership. And as Phil and I were getting ready for this conversation, we talked about leadership, and what would be something really helpful to dig into today, we thought, you know, there’s this great, quote, discipline, which is really critical to a leader is choosing what you want, over choosing what you feel like. And I know, Phil, you and I both resonate with that comment when we relate it to some of the things that we run into as we’re coaching financial advisors.

Phil Calandra 01:24

Yeah, no, absolutely. Right. It’s great to be with you. Again, Rob, I think that when you hear the word leadership and what you are giving us in the opening, the one common denominator was people. Leadership is about leading people. Management, in my view is about processes. It’s about tactics. Leadership is about strategy and involves the human element, like you said, our businesses, our team, our clients, that we that we coach, as well as our family. It’s about leading people to the best possible result and outcome we can we can create.

Rob Brown  02:09

Yeah, and and it’s important to be intentional about that. I think that’s one of the things that we remind folks on this podcast, or that we work with all the time. You know, there are a lot of great concepts. We can talk about dreams and goals and action plans and leadership. And they’re great concepts. But without intentionality, none of them matter. And I’m pretty confident that the intentionality of leadership is the one area that sometimes we put on the backburner, and we don’t have a strategy for doing it. Phil, you’ve talked about that kind of the d3 one talk to you about discipline and leadership. We jump into that a little bit.

Phil Calandra 02:48

Yeah, you know, that’s a concept that I’ve taught. And I’ve spoken on many times. d3 basically is comprised of, you guessed it, three Ds, desire, dedication, and discipline. And that’s in my view, the requirements of quality leadership. Number one, you have to have the desire, you have to have that burning notion and desire inside of you to achieve a given outcome, whether it’s as a father, as a husband, as a business, community leader, as a financial advisor, and then the dedication. Because guess what, it gets hard, right? There are days when you just are not going to be dedicated to the pursuit, you’re not going to achieve your best outcome and your desired outcome. If you’re not dedicated, and disciplined, and I loved your quote, that’s the third D is discipline. Discipline is choosing what you want, over choosing what you feel like. And we’ve said this before, the reality is our own human nature is to gravitate towards what’s comfortable. And it’s not our human nature to dive into things that are uncomfortable. And that to me, sums up the discipline, whether it’s going out for your morning run because the the marathon is in six weeks, or you’re going to do the Ironman race and you haven’t spent the the requisite time in the swimming pool. You have to have the desire to finish the race, the dedication to hit the workouts and the discipline to make sure that you’re sticking with it.

Rob Brown  04:22

Yeah, absolutely. You know, as we love to do on this podcast, I think it’s important to relate this back to things that we see going on in the businesses, of the advisors that we work with. And when I think about leadership in particular, one, one big area of challenge for a lot of advisors right now is building their teams and advisors will talk about like how many people should I have on my team who is the next person I should hire in Then, too often they just kind of go about and see if they can network and look for somebody that they like, that makes sense. And they bring that person on board without consideration for, does that person really fit the seat on the bus that they need to fill. And so that really important decision about hiring becomes this gut feeling. I’ve got this gut feeling that this is going to be right, the right person for the team. And, you know, more often than not, I don’t know what the percentages are, but I’m sure it’s well over 50%, that person doesn’t work out. And they either go away right away, or they stay on board for a lot longer than they should. But yeah, when he takes leadership to say, hey, let’s take time to see what seats we already have filled on the bus, what seats are open that we need to fill in, create the position and take the time to find the right person use a leadership to do that, you ended up with a greater likelihood of success, and a stronger team and better results, usually than you may have thought possible. I’m sure you’ve seen that before. Phil.

Phil Calandra 06:22

Yeah. I mean, that’s right. I mean, it’s like the cogs in a wheel. And every cog has, even though they may look similar, they all have a specific purpose. And and what you said is true. When we’re building teams, if we’re always going for the likability factor, we’d like this person, we have a gut feeling, well, that may not be the right person or the right cog for the wheel. And you as the leader of your business of your firm, is, you’re better figure that out right? Quick, because what ends up happening is you get a team full of people that you like, but you don’t get a team that’s efficient, and rolling down the road, give you an example. You know, we just had Super Bowl Sunday last week. And if we had every single player on the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles, that basically had the same build stature, 40, split speed, jumping capability, what kind of team would that be? That’s not what Super Bowl champions are made of, they have a quarterback who’s got unique skills, then they have the 300 pound lineman that couldn’t run the 40 yard dash in 16 minutes if you beg though. But every person has a different role on the team. And when you’re building out the team, it’s better to go away from the likability factor, and solve for specifically what you need. It’s client facing its back office, it’s somebody that’s doing your accounting, right, the, you know, the bean counter nerd mentality, whatever it is, that’s gonna build a successful team, and you as the leader, firm owner, and champion of your business has to recognize that.

Rob Brown  08:00

Yeah, and that, that is, I think that’s a great example, because I see so much of the opposite of that happening today, you know, too many quarterbacks are throwing passes to defensive ends, oh, actually, they call that an interception. So it’s not even to your own, that’s your own team member. But the same type of philosophy of this idea of discipline of really choosing what you want, versus what you like, and in turn that into leadership applies to a lot of different areas and applies to marketing, you know, we see lots of really sloppy marketing out there, you know, yes, you know, you know, an advisor says, Hey, let’s just, you know, throw this, you know, funnel sales funnel out there, because I was on Facebook, and I saw this ad, and that told me, it would work and generate all of these leads, but it doesn’t, you know, fit into the it really doesn’t fit into the business and the way that it’s meant to grow and serve the clients that you choose to serve. So leadership is required. They’re making those types of decisions.

Phil Calandra 09:12

Yeah, and I think with with, you know, kind of in summing it up if we need to today, leaning into leadership, if that’s something you’re really going to do, if that’s something that you have identified as something as a priority, as we’re still in the early moments of 2023. Then begin to study and look at what true leadership is. There’s a lot of great books on leadership. If you’d like to reach out to us and have a quick conversation about how to develop leadership within your firm by all means, do that get in touch with us at truest fan.com. And, and I think that’s a critical piece because leadership is not always innate. Leadership is not something that always it we can lean into. It’s something And that we have to develop, and it is a skill that can be developed.

Rob Brown  10:05

Yes, absolutely. I don’t think, you know, I’m not we’re not going to solve the art the age old argument of, you know, our leaders born or made. If I had to answer I’d say it’s both. So I think the key is that if you’re serious about building a business, that has purpose where you can have impact over your clients, to be able to contribute to causes you care about to be the best you can be to your family, you have to include leadership. You can’t just stay back and be a spectator lean into that leadership. Thanks for listening. Hey, Phil, thanks for another great podcast.

Phil Calandra 10:50

You bet Rob.