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Classics: How to Successfully Lead When You Are Not the Leader with Scott Mautz, Profound Performance: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Dec 05, 2023

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we’re talking how to lead when you’re not the leader with Scott Mautz. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: Classics: How to Successfully Lead When You Are Not the Leader with Scott Mautz, Profound Performance

In this episode, we welcome Scott Mautz, Founder of Profound Performance and popular Author, Keynote Speaker, and our prior Business Coach! Oftentimes, we think we need to be the named leader in order to lead. This is far from the truth! Being a part of a team comes with many perspectives and having a strong influence over the team drives leadership. Join us as we dig into how to be a leader – even without the title. This episode covers everything from leadership to teamwork. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How do you lead when you’re not the leader?
  • Is it better to be broader or deeper as a leader?
  • How do you get anyone to listen to you in meetings?
  • What are the biggest mistakes people make when trying to lead when they’re not the leader?
  • How do you become a subject matter expert?
  • Why does the team need to succeed for you to succeed?
  • How do you teach others?
  • Why should you build allies?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:02
This is Marketing Smarts – a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader, no matter your level. In each episode, we will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We will also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. And if you miss anything, don’t worry, we put worksheets on our website that summarize the key points. Now, let’s get to it.

Welcome to Marketing Smarts. I’m Anne Candido and I am April Martini. And today’s another Marketing Smarts Classics: How to successfully lead when you’re not the leader with Scott Mautz, Founder of Profound Performance, we wanted to bring this episode back because we are finding ourselves referring to it a lot with our middle management coaching clients. Specifically, the point where you’re referring to a lot is number three about being a teacher. This is a pivotal mindset shift for those who are struggling to gain advocacy and support from their colleagues. When you focus too much on your piece of the pie versus the pie as a whole, you will struggle to show up as a leader. Being a teacher resets the lens and demonstrates to others you get the bigger picture which ultimately leads to that coveted advocacy and support. For more continue listening to the episode. One of the statements we hear a lot from our coaching clients is if I was a leader, I would be doing things so differently. Which April and I promptly reply, you know, you don’t need to be the name of the leader to be a leader. And that usually gets met with a lot of blank stares or prolong moments of silence when we’re on the phone. But once accepted, it can be very empowering. And what usually blows everyone’s mind is when we tell them that it’s generally the non named leader who can actually have the most influence.

April Martini 1:42
Yeah, it’s really so true. And the reason this is true is because as part of a team, you bring a unique perspective that nobody else in that room can bring. And so when you take that perspective, and you cultivate it into expertise, you then have value that commands attention, and then results in influence. And that influence is really the driver of leadership, again, whether you’re named the leader, and I’m doing the quotes here in the room, or not.

Anne Candido 2:08
Right. And we’re gonna dive deep into how you do just that. And to help us with this, we have a very special guest, one of our very favorite people. You’ve heard us talk about him a lot since he used to be our business coach. And he’s also a popular author and keynote speaker, Scott Mautz founder of Profound Performance, Scott, hi, once you introduce yourself.

Scott Mautz 2:29
Hello, everybody. Hello, marketing smarts world Hello, April Hello, and so cool to be here. I’m really psyched to be here to support the topic today, I believe so much about how to lead when you’re not the leader. It’s the whole reason why I wrote my my new book leading from the middle of playbook for managers to influence up down and across the organization. Because I have so much heart for all of us poor bastards who are stuck in the middle and have to leave and don’t feel like they have the title lead leader. So yeah, I’m glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah,

Anne Candido 3:02
it’s good to have some great perspective of what we’re about ready to talk. So can’t wait. All right, so let’s jump into how to successfully lead when you’re not the leader. The first thing is become a subject matter expert. And this can be on multiple different levels. But what must be true no matter what level it’s on is you must bring value to the organization. So here are some examples. Maybe you’re a topical expert, like you have an expert in a particular field like science or math, English marketing, engineering. These are usually in certain professions, like researchers or scientists or professors are tech experts or social media experts. So you have a specific understanding and an innate knowledge of a specific topic that you can bring value to your organization. Or maybe you’re a brand or industry expert. So for example, I spent almost 10 years and fabricare When I was at p&g, I would say that I was a fabricare industry expert. But I was also a brand expert because I worked a lot on tide over about six or seven years on tide. And within the broader category, you could say that in my 20 years at p&g, maybe maybe a CPG expert, right, because I had that full scope of experience there. And then even within that, I was a public relations expert because I was very tuned in to the communications world and worked very much within that. So your expertise can be in multiple different facets, or maybe you’re a skill or a process experts. So for example, it could be woodworker, mechanic, maybe even magician or design thinking like my friend, Holly or an athlete. These are physical or mental attributes to give you a specific skill that you can then teach or practice. A lot of times these people become manufacturing experts or coaches or trainers or consultants. Regardless, you need to figure out what do you want to be known for and why someone would call upon you and that’s really how you develop your subject matter expertise. And Scott, I know you have a lot to talk about. Next one, why don’t you share what your thoughts here are?

Scott Mautz 5:02
Yeah, I just want to build on what you’re saying because for sure not, you know, influences. It is leadership and building your subject matter expertise. So here’s an extra bonus for all your listeners, not only does building your subject matter expertise, not only does it leads to influence, it leads to opportunity as well. And I’ll give you, I’ll give you a simple example. You know, when I was in the corporate world, I started building expertise on leadership, and specifically the slice of how to convert leadership insight into inspiring talks that would help people be motivated to want to learn more about becoming a leader. And, you know, I started developing my subject matter expertise and how to give powerful leadership talks. And I started giving them as a sidebar at work just for you know, for fun, and it turned out shocked to hear at least I wasn’t the worst person, that company, which is a start, we save that for like people from legal or like finance, I don’t know. It, I started getting asked more and more often, hey, can you do, you know, another leadership talk for us and then another in that led to more talks than then that led to man, maybe I should write a book and delve into the expert level even more. And it ultimately created a huge opportunity for me to plan my exit from corporate one day, because because I had planned subject matter expertise. And now that’s what I do for a living, I talk and I speak about leadership and write about it all over the world. And I’m not saying that, you know, developing subject matter expertise means that the only way you can then leverage it is to leave the company and go sell it. I’m just saying it creates incredible opportunity for you within your own organization. And Right, right. I’m sure you guys have seen that as well. April and and when in your own days in corporate.

April Martini 6:52
Yeah, I think it’s really true. And I think you’re right in that it doesn’t mean you necessarily have to go all on your own or exit or whatever. But I think as soon as you can carve something out for yourself that you want to become the subject matter expert around, the sooner you start to get recognition for it, because you’re building consistency. And you’re making the choice to focus in that area that is unique to you. So in the setup we talked about, you know, you’re you, you’re bringing something unique to the table, when you figure out what that thing is that you have that passion for and that you feel like you have a unique perspective on. It’s not like you can just snap your fingers and be like, Okay, now this is what I’m gonna talk about all the time, right? But when you choose that as your thing, you start to cultivate it with intentionality. And then people start to recognize you for it. And then it to your point, Scott starts to open up this broader path. I mean, you probably started it without thinking necessarily, I’m going to exit p&g At some point. And so therefore, I’m going to start this when I’m 20. That’s right. That’s exactly right. But when you identify the thing, it just it’s kind of like, then you’re like, Oh, well, next, I could try this. And next, I could try this. And then after a period of time, people start to look to you versus you having to sell yourself on it. Yeah,

Scott Mautz 8:08
very, very well said it becomes a magnet for attention, attraction, opportunity and influence. So I’m glad you guys open with this topic today.

Anne Candido 8:19
Yeah, and I think those are all great points. And just to put a point on that, I think the ones that you guys really specified are even like more of the softer areas, right? Where it’s not necessarily like something you go to school for, but it’s something you innately understand. And a lot of times that can show up in a very opposite way. Like, for example, one of the people that I’m coaching, said that in actually I’ll probably tell the story later, is that they were like the no person like, oh, you can’t do that. Because such and such can happen, this can happen. And that can happen. And everybody’s like, Oh my gosh, it’s the no person. And I said, Well, you know what, that’s actually your superpower. So you can look around corners, you can see around corners, and you can see what’s going to happen before it’s going to happen. If you can flip it, then that becomes your subject matter expertise as we’re going to go to this person now because they are able to see around corners, and are productive and helping us figure out how to go do about it. So it can be one of those like softer elements. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a trained element or a skilled element. But it’s something that you innately can see that maybe people can’t see as easily around you.

Scott Mautz 9:25
Yeah, and even and the softer it is sometimes the greater of a reputation you build for having that skill, because it’s unusual in a corporate setting. Right. So absolutely.

April Martini 9:33
That’s absolutely true. Well, and you’re putting yourself out there. Yeah, and all of you corporate friends of mine. I feel like when you do that in those worlds, it automatically helps you stand out because you’re going not against the grain like you’re trying to push up against the machine or anything like that. But you’re you’re proactively offering something outside of what you’re being told is your role.

Anne Candido 9:56
Yeah, absolutely. All right. The second way to successfully lead when you are not the leader is to embrace that the team needs to succeed for you to succeed. Now we all play our own role within a team, right we have results were accountable for and a lot of times that dictates what our success looks like come evaluation time. So when challenges arise, or if something starts interfering with our ability to deliver results, we can become really hostile. We start pointing fingers, we assign blame event to the name leader. And all of this is because we don’t want to look back, we just want to accomplish and deliver what we want to deliver. And we just don’t want to look bad. But unfortunately, the self preservation mode rarely motivates others in helping you achieve your results. So as you’re pointing the finger at somebody else, that person being like, getting really defensive, they’re getting feeling really bad, and they don’t want to motivate be motivated to actually help you achieve what your goal is, and what actually ended up happening. And it creates an extremely dysfunctional team, they hired the whole entire team, and the whole entire team’s culture starts to break down. And the whole mission and the goal, the team starts to break down. And when the team suffers, it’s impossible for any one to succeed. It just isn’t, I just can’t do it right. Now, a leader takes a different approach. When challenges arise, a leader understands that the success of the team is imperative for she or he to be successful to. So instead of pointing fingers, when challenges arise, that leader would say, What can I do to help the team succeed? What does that look like? And this collaboration really can only be accomplished, if that person actually takes accountability for the entire result, you can’t, you can’t achieve that level of collaboration or get those quality results, if you’re only focused on delivering what you are responsible for delivering. Now, a lot of people would say that’s the person who’s supposed to be the leaders job, right? And yes, ultimately, that is their responsibility. But that leader cannot force people to work together, we’ve all been in those situations, when they’re like you and you, you guys need to talk you guys need to make make this work. They can only force that interaction, but they can’t force collaboration, they can’t force the ability to see things through the lens of the other person and build that empathy that’s needed in order to deliver the overarching results. So Scott, what do you have to say about this one?

Scott Mautz 12:23
Yeah, boy, I, if the viewers could see me, I’m going to sprained my neck from nodding so vigorously. One of the things that I’m really drawn to about what you just said, and as you know, the concept of, you got to understand as a leader, that if you want to succeed, it’s got to be about the team, and that you should be asking yourself, you know, what can you do to help the team succeed? In fact, you know, a pretty interesting thing came out, when we were doing the research for the book, I’m here talking about sharing with you leading from the middle. The backbone of the book is research we did with over 3000, middle managers, people who have to influence up down and across and by default, they need their team to succeed, or they’re not going to succeed, like by mathematical definition. And what we found, as we were interviewing over 3000, experts, you know, people that were perceived widely as excellent leaders from the middle, you know, we’re looking for themes that we could share within the book of, you know, success themes, and how do you do it? Well, one thing we kept seeing over and over again, was a simple sentence that in one way, shape, or form, the most successful middle managers kept asking themselves before they would take an action that would impact the team. And it was just one sentence in some form. We kept hearing it over and over again, am I assisting success, or avoiding failure? And when you stop and you ask yourself that so much of what we do as a leader boils down to one of those two things and, and the answer to the question has, it takes you in very different places and different actions? If you ask yourself, Am I assisting success, what you’re about to do that is engaged in a lot of the behaviors you you’re describing, you’re going to start sticking your neck out, you’re going to take smart risks, you’re going to put your people first you’re going to get them the resources they need, you’re going to invest in coaching them. If you’re avoiding failure, you’re micromanaging. you’re procrastinating. Remember this from our p&g days, April or and rather, you you know, you conduct parallel paths, you cover your your A by having path A and path B and we’ll carry those paths as long as we can. So I don’t have to make a decision. Then when we get to the end of finally make a decision. Avoiding failure or not. Quite often or not. That’s an avoiding failure mindset. So I find simply asking that question, am I assisting success or avoiding failure helps you keep the orientation that it’s not about you, you’re there to assist team success, which ultimately will come back to success for you.

April Martini 14:52
I think it’s so true. And it really is so important. And I think and when you said, you know isn’t that the named leaders do Ah, that’s one of my favorite parts about this one. Because I think this is a really good way to shift your mentality. Again, I feel like I’m gonna be the one about early on in your career, if you can recognize these types of things. But if you can start to understand faster, that it’s not just about you. And I think to all the points you just made, Scott, I feel like once you can see beyond just this is my role. And this is my personal path to success, the quicker you can get to leadership, no matter what your level is within the team, because you can only accomplish so many things on your own. And I think it’s just so limiting. And I know all the reasons, right, and you just outlined some, it’s the big CYA, it’s, you know, well, I’m going to deliver what I’m supposed to deliver. So therefore, I’m not going to get myself in trouble. Rather than you know what, there’s a whole lot better way to be doing this. And we could be more fill in the blank productive, we could do it faster, we could be more efficient. And the person that can shift to that and say, if I could get everybody working and moving in that direction, I’ll look better do better in the long run all of those things, but I will create a better product for my organization. Those are the ones that I think no matter what level manager they are, or are oriented to successfully lead teams

Anne Candido 16:19
will said, Yeah, I think that is a really good point. And frankly, it is the pivot point of being able actually to grow up from that, you know, manager like position to the name leader is when you can actually see the world from that context. And we hear it all the time, when people are struggling to try to get to that next level where they want to be the named leader. And they’re getting feedback like, well, you know, you do a really good job with what you deliver, you deliver, like everything that you’re supposed to be to deliver. But you know, you when you get into a team atmosphere, you’re too direct, or you want to get into a team atmosphere, like you’re the no person or something to that effect. And that’s like a really big trigger for your your managers telling you your feedback that your manager is telling or whoever’s telling you that, that you are not acting like a leader. Yeah. And so that is something that we see a lot. And it’s definitely something that can be modified and change and the behaviors and actions when you are in in the P&G world. Scott, that was a big one that you saw two from, you know, when you’re trying to get your middle managers and your middle leaders up to that leadership level, too. Yeah.

Scott Mautz 17:37
Yeah. And, you know, we often used to say that you could tell somebody was ready for promotion, when they started thinking and acting like a level above them. Yeah. And you know, what, once they start, one of the biggest indicators are that is when they start engaging in all the behaviors that we’ve been talking about here. So yeah, 100%

Anne Candido 17:55
Yeah. And I’m, I’m just sitting here wondering to why I didn’t get asked to be interviewed for your book.

Well, let that one go for now.

Scott Mautz 18:08
Okay. Finally, if you wanted to be number 3001, is that okay, I got it.

Anne Candido 18:12
Yeah, I’ve been excited. I’d be I would have been the model. I understand. That would have been a little difficult to go from there. But Okay.

Scott Mautz 18:19
Understood. Understood. I totally get it. Yeah. The

Anne Candido 18:22
next book, How To lead from way below the middle. Okay, gotcha.

Scott Mautz 18:26
The next book, How to get into a partnership with someone and crush everything you touched by and April. That’s, I love that.

Anne Candido 18:34
Okay, good. All right. Way to cover Okay. All right. The third way to successfully leave when you’re not the leader is to be a teacher. And this is a very, very big one. Because it’s not in a condescending way of like, let me teach you how we do that. You know, we, which we all got, we all just cringe when we hear that. But it’s in a way that explains context so that people can understand the vision, the impact what success looks like, ways we have failed before oranges stories, if you happen to be a founder, teach them your skill, your knowledge and experience this, This all helps to explain the why. And that helps people really understand where you are coming from. And when they can understand where you’re coming from. They can build empathy with where you’re at. And when you can build empathy, you build understanding. So it’s really, really critical to teach. Now, being busy is not an excuse. We say that all the time. I’m too busy to spend time to teach this person or explain this to them. It’s just easier if I do it myself. Or, you know, I’m just gonna give them like the two dues and when you give them just people the two dues and you make it a tactical ask, it does not build that relationship that then builds empathy. You have now a transactional relationship and the transactional relationships hardly ever result into something that’s fortuitously something that’s going to generate an impact for both of you. So it’s really, really important to think about that. In the context of taking the time to actually teach, and this actually includes managing up and Scott, I know you’re gonna have a lot to talk about this, because you know, as we are sitting here are in the middle position or you know, is a leader that’s not the name leader, sometimes we think that our perspective is irrelevant. But as we said, in the very, very beginning, like your perspective is unique to you, nobody else has that perspective. So for you to not share what that perspective is, or try to educate or try to be able to give that context, even to your upper level management, you’re really doing a disservice to yourself and the entire team. Yeah,

Scott Mautz 20:35
I think that’s exactly right. And, you know, it kind of goes back to something you said, and, and, and in April, tell me how many times you guys heard this, right. I used to hear from young coaches all the time, you know, even when it could get them to a point of, you know, what you just said, you have value to share, you have something to teach, I’d still here. Okay, but I don’t have time. And, you know, my always used to tell him, you don’t have time not to teach and not to coach, right, because of the benefits that it brings. And, you know, easy safety valve is if you literally that, you know, if you literally that week, don’t have time to pull someone aside, and to teach and to share to coach and give, you know, share knowledge. At a minimum, you can do you know what I call looking for well known, proven, teachable moments. And I talked about this a lot leading from the middle. But let me give you a couple examples. Once you become aware of these moments, your brain can kick in and say, Alright, at least in this moment, I need to take the time to teach them to coach others. For example, when when an employee’s a game is not present in a situation. And this happens in the you know, corporate world, small companies, big companies, you got a big presentation, I wish I could tell you that your reputation isn’t built or destroyed and big reputations, but unfortunately, it can be and someone shows up and they’re not ready for that big moment, a little switch should go off in your head, that’s a teachable moment, I’m going to pull the person aside, tell them what it looks, here’s just two other like, here’s a teachable moment when somebody falls short on a risk taken, you can pull them aside not to beat them up and abuse them because they didn’t you know, you got to celebrate failure. But whatever it is, you want to say about the risk that they that they’ve taken and what they can learn from it. That’s a key teachable moment. And I’ll just share one more. And I could do this all day. Another teachable moment is when you have the chance to share the view from the window seat. And this is what you take time to realize that people underneath you are probably wondering what the view is like in your chair. Yeah. And if you go to a big meeting, or you go to a conference and just coming back in downloading with employees, that’s a teachable moment. Well, let me tell you about I was just meeting with the CEO, it was really cool what she said, Let me tell you what she said and why we’re going to do what we’re going to do. And you let people get the view from the window. See, those are just three teachable moments. And I bet if you took some quiet time, you could come up with about 10 others on your own. And even if you have those built in, it gives you a mechanism to make teaching a part of your everyday leadership plan.

April Martini 23:06
I think it’s so true. And it’s really smart. And I think you bring up a good point, which is being a teacher doesn’t mean that you have to plan in detail like you would if you weren’t actual teacher, right? Right. It’s that you recognize and you’re able to recognize those exact moments that you just referenced Scott, be on the lookout for them, and then make them regular practice within the team. And then you don’t necessarily have to be the one doing the teaching all the time. It’s just a practice of the team, which is another area of influence and another skill that you can build more broadly than just you. And I think on the other side of that both of you mentioned, you know, in different ways, the idea that if you let people in and you let them have access to you and understand that your perspective is something they can tap into, that they can learn from, so they’re asking for it or they’re requesting your time or like you said, Scott, you come back from one of these big meetings or presentations or conferences or whatever, that they don’t have the opportunity to go to yet. But they get the view into that the insight into what happens as a result of those types of meetings, and then how it trickles down into the organization and into their job. That can be super powerful for them because they get the bigger picture. And they also understand, okay, if I do this now, this might be what I aspire to. What can I do in the middle to get there? That’s

Scott Mautz 24:33
right. What you described. What does that take? It takes a tent. Yeah. And a little investment in time. What are the benefits you get from it? Yep. Yeah.

Anne Candido 24:41
And I also think it can be very strategic. So I’ll give you an example. Since I was in communications, communications was not a very understood function and if communications public relations, call it what you want. And so what I used to do is every time we had a new ABM, I used to take them out to lunch. And I would explain everything we did all the ways that we can make them really look good. All the ways we can integrate with all the, you know, the actual traditional advertising marketing. And he’d be like, Oh my gosh, you’re so right, because they got it. Like they understood communication because they weren’t coming from the world of P&G, which was already kind of like us resigned to the fact that traditional advertising was the way that you know, we were gonna go and so very impressionable. Yeah. Well, they became then they became advocates for communication. And it not that it was supposed to be done in the intent that I’m trying to push my agenda, but because I believe that was what was going to be best for the whole entire project in general. So they helped kind of like grease the skids. And they helped to like be able to advocate for what the what the work that we were doing. And then also in those moments, I would reciprocate by helping them when they were in meetings and something were to happen. I take them assign, like, you know, what just happened there. Right, you know, and they explained the dynamics of the room. And so actually, I had more ABMs as mentees. And I did actually communications people because they respected my view, and respected the fact that I was willing to take the time to teach them. So it’s amazing how that can also build a very strategic network that can work to many benefits. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Which is a good segue into

April Martini 26:26
what you just set yourself up, are you looking at the script here,

Anne Candido 26:29
I did write the script. But okay. The fourth way to successfully lead when you’re not the leader is to build allies. And I did give just a really concrete example of that. But let me generalize this point. So everybody can understand that the intent, it alleys are essential, really, in enabling leadership. And it’s really essential at any level, but it’s very, very critical as you’re building reputation, credibility, and advocacy. And you can strategically choose them, like I just mentioned, to based on the role you need them to play. And for, I’ll give you a couple other different examples based on the one that I already gave. But if you’re newer to the organization, like if you were that ABM that I was talking about, you may pick an ally, who can help you understand the dynamics and politics of the team, which they chose me. And then in that way, I could help them navigate the conversation to make sure they didn’t unintentionally turn into forbidden waters, make sure they didn’t kiss, speak at a turn, or just give them some perspective, based on what happened in the room to make them better and more proficient in the job that they were doing, or help them be more confident in speaking out or helping them be more confidence in Yes, because a lot of time DBM had to speak first. And that was never an easy place to be I hate that practice, ya know, we always say we consider it a rite of passage, everybody had to go

April Martini 27:44
cringe every time. Like, why do people do this, that guy’s gonna melt into a puddle of sweat,

Anne Candido 27:52
you could just tell like, they’re always like, this could go either way. Just go either with like Russian roulette, but you could just tell what they were right, like the bare metal and say, oh, yeah, they’ll be like, thank God. Scott, you know, you did that to people, you know, you

Scott Mautz 28:06
did it for fun. on the agency side, no one was listening until the most senior person.

April Martini 28:15
Exactly, that’s the whole.

Anne Candido 28:19
Well, on the other side, too, you know, it’s if you’re presenting something that you know, might meet some resistance, and that was sometimes of what I had to do, I would go and find out allies that were gonna Dorse my point of view and advocate for me in the meeting. So this was really important for me not to come in necessarily, as a lone ranger trying to push a very, say, you know, maybe outside the box kind of approach to things that they weren’t necessarily ready for, or maybe weren’t working with just the behaviors and actions as part of your personal brand. And this is where a trusted ally can be very helpful, and holding you accountable to the way you’re showing up. Because a lot of us, actually all of us have blind spots, and by blind spots, by nature means that we’re not seeing these things. So it’s really helpful to have an ally, who’s going to gently tell you, hey, you know how you just acted that or behaved and that probably not a good thing, that other person reacted like this. And so it gives you feedback that you may not have gotten otherwise. And this is never meant to be manipulative. So please don’t take that away from what I’m trying to tell you because it’s essential to either paying it back or you’re paying it forward. But you got to embrace the fact you need other people achieve your goals and dreams and this is what this is all about. Yeah,

Scott Mautz 29:31
you know, and, and sometimes allies, they’re, they’re often people it’s okay, you know, to your point about being manipulated, it’s okay. But allies are often people that we want to influence, right. But there’s no, there’s no shame in that. And I wanted to equip your audience with a simple tool to help build allies here, especially ones that you want to influence her. And especially often our allies are people that we have no formal authority over. Right. You know, you can’t I think it’s hard to say someone who reports to you as your ally. You have to do what you say. But people that don’t report to you, those are probably more realistically allies. And so if you want to be able to influence people over whom you have no formal influence, I want to share with your listeners, the golden rule of influence, it’s a very powerful tool. And I think they’re gonna find it pretty useful. So it to introduce it, I’m gonna run a simple test with both of you, here’s what I want you to Oh, boy, now we’re being put on the spot. Now you’re being put on the spot. But this is an easy one, we could always get out. This is what I want you to do. I know you’re in your fancy recording booth, but I want you to no one could see you. But I really want you to do this, I want you to when I say go, I want you to close your eyes. Okay. And so here we go. Ready? Go. Close your eyes, both of you. Now, I want you to picture somebody in your work life and your past. Okay, that had tremendous influence over you. But they’re not someone that you reported to, formally, or that or I should say the other way around that that reported to you formally, but they just had tremendous influence over you in your life. So let me know when you have that person visualized. And then you can No, no, don’t keep your eyes closed. Let me know when you have that person.

April Martini 31:10
Well, I already broke the rule. I have my eyes because I had the person but they’re closed again. I

Anne Candido 31:13
have Okay.

Scott Mautz 31:14
Okay. All right. You and you’ve got the person too, right? Yep. Okay, so let me ask you this, with your eyes still closed, and you’re picturing moments with this person? Where they influential over you? Because they did one of any of these four things? Did they care? Listen, give or teach

April Martini 31:36
all of them? And yeah.

Scott Mautz 31:40
And that’s what we find. That’s the golden rule of influence. We found in our research, that the people that are most influential that build the most allies, are the ones that are able to influence those that don’t even report to them. And how do they do that? Well, they care. They listen, they give, they teach, it’s not rocket science here. But it’s really effective. And it’s really true if you stop and think about it.

April Martini 32:04
Well, and I love the term ally in general, because I think to the point you just made it gets it exactly what you’re talking about. You’re not talking in terms of friends, that’s a different definition. You’re not talking in terms of direct reports, you’re not talking in terms of a boss, it’s much more of these people selecting you as much as you select them, because they feel that connection point with you. And it’s based on these four things. I think that you outline around caring and listening, giving and teaching to these people, because they’re feeling well, hopefully they are they’re feeling privileged to be able to spend time with you, because they have that respect for you. And it creates a little bit of a wow factor of I can’t believe this person would take the time to do these four things for me. And so it builds that authentic ally in them, as opposed to something like you said, Scott, that’s forced because of the business relationship.

Scott Mautz 33:07
Yeah. And sadly, April, what you said is true that when you encounter an ally, who you know, someone who doesn’t report to you that cares, listens, gives and teaches. Unfortunately, it sticks out, because it’s not done. Alright,

Anne Candido 33:21
enough, right? Yeah. And I think this is where I always cringed when back into the p&g world where people would arbitrarily try to set up coaches or mentors in AI, remember, Oh, you need a mentor, you know, we have these three people pick, I’m like, I don’t have any idea. I mean, why why would they care about me? I mean, what’s the point of that and it felt like it’s more of a check the box instead of somebody that was truly invested in you in your success, which is kind of what puts a bow around all these things. It’s like somebody’s invested in you cares, gives listens and teaches, right. So I think that is like a really amazing way to sum this, this point up and give a little bit more definition to ally and how the Ally can really be like really powerful influence on your behalf. So that’s fantastic. So just to summarize how to successfully lead when you’re not the leader. First, become a subject matter expert. This can be on multiple different levels, but what must be true is it must be a value to the organization. Second, embrace that the team you should succeed for you to succeed take accountability for the team’s results, not just your own. Third is be a teacher. Take the time to explain context vision impact, teach him your skill, knowledge and experiences. Explain the why build allies allies are essential enabling leadership at any level but are particularly critical as you’re building reputation, credibility and advocacy. Alright, we’re gonna move into our next segment, which is in the trenches where we give real world examples specific to industries and situations but but broad application for anyone to digest and put into action and I’m sure we’re gonna have a lot of really Good examples, based on some of our earlier discussions. All right, so our first in the trenches question, I am having a hard time in team meetings, getting anyone to listen to me, let alone getting what I need. What am I doing wrong? I love this one. Yeah, I think we’ve all been there. And I’m in this is where somebody kind of told me very early on in my career, about not worrying about looking good so much and just worrying about being good. And that and what that translated to for me is that we can so wrapped up in making sure when we get into these situations that we look smart, that we say something smart that we behave smart. So we make that impression, but we forget to spend time understanding the key dynamics in the room. So we can actually best understand how to move ourselves towards our objectives. And this is really, really important, because meetings are actually a really good place for this. But only if you observe first and you speak second, which is more about being good versus looking good. And because this is where you’re going to actually find, instead of what you need to try to get what you need, you figure out how you’re going to get it. And that’s the only really big place, you’re going to get that because that’s where the dynamics really come to the forefront. So when you’re in these meetings, you need to take note of who are the decision makers, who are the stakeholders and influencers. And you need to note that they’re not necessarily the name leader, it may the lead name leader may not be any of these, they may just be a facilitator for all intensive purposes. And you really want to look for how decisions are getting made? Is there a prominent voice that is influencing the conversation? Who has the ear to decision maker? Who do they trust, and then probably one of the most big indicators is who is getting the money, follow the money, the money. And then what and then the other part of this is really just understanding then what is the motivation of the stakeholders, and the stakeholders are the people who are going to benefit the most from what is going on, okay. And if your objectives need to align with what is essential to them in their plant, if you’re trying to operate outside of what is actually important to the stakeholders is going to be very, very hard for you to get what you need. understand these dynamics is really the key of getting yourself into the conversations and remembered a lot of these dynamics are happening outside the meeting, the meeting is just the stage for this. So it’s you can you can get a really good picture of what’s happening in the meeting, but you’re gonna have to be doing your homework and doing your research outside as well. You

Scott Mautz 37:31
know if I could add to this, and I want to I want to start by saying this. Here’s the truth. Two things will be the death of us all number one.

April Martini 37:41
Meetings. Yes.

Scott Mautz 37:45
Can we agree to that? Number one is death? Okay. Yes. And then number two is meetings. Yes. You blew the pledge later. But yeah, we I think we can all agree with that. So but why? Why do we all agree with that? You know, I wrote that an article once I got like, 10, zillion views? I think it’s because so many people view the two things is interchangeable death had meetings. You know, what, why is that now all kidding aside, and, you know, the research shows us because depending on the piece of research, you tap into, I should say, anywhere between 60 to 80% of all meetings are seen as completely a waste of time. And it happens because you know, especially leaders, you know, the second part of the your listeners question, they don’t get what they need from the meetings. So let me share one really super power tip, especially for leaders of an organization to help them get what they need for the meeting, you guys kind of focused on, you know, how to get heard. And to be in the meeting. Great. I want to focus on the getting what you need from the meeting. It, I found this to be incredibly powerful. And every meeting with a magic five word sentence, every meeting asked this, who do what, by when. Here’s what that forces. And if you get into a rhythm of always asking that everybody knows it’s coming. So when you ask who’s going to do what guess what everybody pays more attention during the meeting, because they know they might get assigned with a task, and they better know what others they’re supposed to do to be able to carry it out. What do you say, you know, you’re gonna say, Who will do what, you know, you have to drive to conclusions on them and how many times you’ve been in a meeting. And at the end of the meeting, you realize we haven’t even finished discussion and arguing enough to decide what it is we’re going to do next. And when you ask that question, and you know what’s coming, you’re going to try to preempt it by getting to a more conclusive outcome. That of course, the by when part of that question will do what by when? That just as good old fashioned accountability, right? If you put a date and a gate to it, and you say it in front of other people, you’re going to be far more likely to get accountability and you get what you need out of meetings. Boom, five words. That was a bonus. Free of charge.

April Martini 39:59
I will say Two things to this one is I can’t remember a more freeing moment in my entire career than when I did leave the agency world and stopped having 40 to 45 hours worth of meetings a week, I almost didn’t know what to do with my time, I was so giddy. But on the other side of this, the point of this one is, I think if you can become the person to effectively manage meetings, you can put yourself in a really good position. Because as you were talking, Scott, I was picturing different people at different points in my career, who were just the masters of meetings, and they would do exactly what you said, which is assign roles, make sure people were accountable all of those things. But they ran the meeting with intention and purpose. So people were awake, they were willing to participate. They came prepared, and they left knowing what their marching orders were. And the meeting was used for its purpose versus I feel like we’re getting a little bit on a tangent and soapbox about meetings in general, but so many of them are not planned effectively. They’re just thrown on the calendar. It’s like, well, I don’t know what to do with this. So I’m going to schedule a meeting. And therefore we end up in these types of situations.

Anne Candido 41:05
Right off? Yeah, my favorite role is when we actually got into a real discussion, the person who’s writing to me and be like, Why don’t you guys take that offline? I’m like, done now, I don’t want to take it offline.

Scott Mautz 41:20
We parking lot. And you’re left saying like, I think I want to go watch parking lots, as an attendant, do this. Exactly.

Anne Candido 41:28
Like we’re finally getting somewhere. We’re going to take it offline. All bad. All right, our next into trenches question, you mentioned being a subject matter expert. But isn’t it better to be broad rather than deep as a leader. And it’s actually is true that once you reach a certain level, you are becoming more of a generalist, but every successful leader has made their way based on being a subject matter expert. That’s because you actually need to create that value that we’ve talked about, which creates brand love for yourself. And that can only be done if you can differentiate from others. Now, as we mentioned, there’s many different levels of subject matter expertise. And we talked about some of the more softer ones versus more than some of the ones that are more tangible. But just as an example, I Bill Gates, he started as a tech whiz, I mean, eventually he became, you know, the great magnet he is now but he started as a tech was Sara Blakely, of SPANX credits her sales grit to her success. And Tony Robbins, he understands how to get people on stuff that’s really like the foundation of what he has built his whole business around. Right. So I know, Scott, you have an excellent way of probing for this, because I used it on me and I use it on others now, and I use it all the time. And I don’t give you credit at all for it. I do I actually do. I actually do say like, this was the first question that Mike, my business coach asked me when I was trying to figure this out. So we talked a little

April Martini 42:55
bit about your thunder. This time, we’ll let you know. That’s

Scott Mautz 42:57
okay. And the first question is, can we agree to terms of payment? Because, you know, I want to know, that’s not the first question I asked. No, no, I, you know, hey, look, I like to ask, we know, when people are like Cabo, okay, what is my subject matter expertise? You just think about this, if you lost your job tomorrow, what could you sell? If all of a sudden, while I didn’t have my job, and I have to like live, I have to pay my mortgage, I have to be able to eat? What could you sell, I promise you, there’s something that you can be able to sell. And sometimes, you know, and in April, people get hung up in. Okay, but you know, what I could sell it has to be earth shattering. And it’s the first time it’s ever been heard on the planet. And, you know, and I draw a lesson from an editor at my first Publishing House, who taught me a really important lesson, who he told me that, you know, look, if you want to get a book published, too many people think that they have to, you know, write the next you know, like a Malcolm Gladwell type book, but something so mind bending, that nobody has thought of it before. And, you know, I entered the the, you know, the world of authorship thinking, I had to create first to the world insights and things that nobody had ever heard before. And you know, when they asked me to write the book proposal, you know, name other books like yours, of course, I wrote that, you know, none, this is going to be unique. And my editor said, that’s a mistake, dude. What we’re looking for is for you to say something like, no, there’s actually like 15 books on the category that I want to write about, because it shows you there’s a market for it. What we’re looking for is your unique spin in your unique take on an existing school of expertise. And I apply that to you know, to other people, as well to get them to understand that, you know, you do have something that you can sell, you do have expertise. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering profound. No one’s ever heard it before. It doesn’t have to be unique to the world. It just has to be unique to you to your taking your spin on it. I promise you. It’s there.

April Martini 44:53
Well, and I love this question and obviously and told me one of the first times we ever met too, so another testament to you Scott about my job, what can I say tomorrow, but I feel like it’s a good one because it puts you in a frame of reference to really focus on and make a decision quickly about what that thing would be. It gives almost like an urgency of, alright, if I had to pick one thing, and that my, literally my well being on it, what would that thing be. And I think it’s a good way to position this and also to speak more directly to the importance of being a subject matter expert through your unique personality, because like you just said, there aren’t that many mind shattering brand new ideas out there anymore. And so I feel like to strive to invent something that’s never been invented is a whole lot bigger of a challenge than to say, You know what I’m really passionate about this. And I’ve been researching, learning about this, doing this, putting it into practice trying these things, all these all these years. And now I feel like I have a unique perspective that I can give back to others the same way, I got a unique perspective from a variety of people, when I started to build my own point of view.

Scott Mautz 46:07
There you go, and you’re all the better for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anne Candido 46:10
And I think that is a really, really, really important point. Because we do hear that a lot. We hear like, well, I don’t It’s not anything different than what everybody else isn’t saying. But it’s like, yeah, well, that might be true. But your take on it could be a different take that gets somebody else to hear it differently. Right. So my experience with P and G and April’s experience with the agency, though we could all be both be talking brand strategy, depending on who we talking to. And based on the experience that we’re using, and based on the the examples we have, and the brands we worked on, people hear that differently. Yes, right. So there’s a gazillion people would talk brand strategy. And if only one person talk brand strategy wouldn’t have that diversity of thought, that allows people to hear it differently, to apply it differently, to see how examples or experiences and failures and successes, how all those translate into something that they can then apply to their own business. And it’s not one person can’t be that for everybody. All right, so our third in the trenches question, what are the biggest mistakes you see people make when they’re trying to leave when they aren’t the leader, or leading from the middle? We’ll see. I’ll throw that in there too. So I’ll start on that. And I invite every April in Scott vet you guys to to gang up on this one too, because I think we all have a ton of examples. So the first one here is they don’t take the time to enroll others. And we talked about being a teacher. And we can be talked about being able to collaborate and in really seeing the the full scope of what the team used to deliver and really building allies in order to enable that. That’s a big mistake. When you don’t enroll others. You forget to check if people are following. We talked about this before that was a mistake. I made very young aware. I was like a team of one and it was in a lot I was charging along. And also I had turned around like How come nobody’s following me how come I’m here on my own and nobody’s helping me and nobody wants it like, so very big indicator that you’re not a leader if nobody’s following. If you’re undermining others, they get the ear, the name leader, we see this happen all the time. Again, it’s like it’s the trying to make people look bad, so you don’t look bad, or trying to accommodate that in a cya kind of way. It never ends well, you get a reputation for being that kind of a person. And it’s just, it just never ends. Well. If you take advantage of other team members, and effort and credit, don’t take people’s work as your own. Again, not a really great way of being able to build community and in that collaboration that you need in order to be able to deliver what you need to deliver. When you take things too personally, this is on the other side of the coin a bit where we think every piece of feedback we think every thing that doesn’t go right is some dramatic pointing of the finger at us saying that we are bad people as individuals. Remember it’s about the work unless somebody is actually pointing the finger at you and saying you’re a bad individual then you know that’s clear, but you need to figure out why. The Fake it till you make it April’s favorite, he’s Yeah, you can speak to this one. I know this one’s one of your favorite.

April Martini 49:29
Well, I mean, I just think it’s advice that so often given and it’s like the worst advice out there. Because if you tell someone to fake it till you make it, two things happen. One, they never actually learned how to do it. And two, they just start impersonating other people or projecting from what they’ve seen before and it doesn’t come across authentically. And it just falls flat. And so I feel like people give that advice is kind of like an offhanded like, oh, just fake it till you make it. It’ll work out and I’m like why it never worked. And then that person goes away feeling like, oh, I guess I did something wrong because they made it seem easy. And it’s not easy. It’s also just a terrible practice.

Scott Mautz 50:08
Right? the only the only people that are good at being someone else are actors. Right? Exactly.

Anne Candido 50:13
And even not then either. Yeah. Some of them are pretty bad actors. Scott, what other ones do you have here that you’ve seen? Yeah,

Scott Mautz 50:25
I just I want to, I’ll just add one, I’ll build on what April was talking about authenticity. We see this, I saw this in, in my experience, my three decades experience, we saw this over and over and over research, that some of the middle managers that struggled the most were the ones that chased approval instead of authenticity. And they assume because they’re in the middle, and yes, they have to influence up down and across, that requires everyone approving of what they do. And so much of our self esteem, we waste so much time, so much time and energy, pursuing some version of something other than who we really are in a need to get this approval, that it does not have the impact we think it does, when instead if you just chase authenticity, being who you are, you will people will take notice it, you know, good work, can’t hide good workers, most even more, so can’t hide. So you know, just sticking to chasing authenticity versus approval is what I would add. Yeah,

April Martini 51:24
there’s just it’s, there is no easy way to do well, really anything I feel like, like you found anything, and it doesn’t go well. But I definitely think when we’re talking about becoming a leader, and leading with intention, and like you just said, authenticity, Scott, you have to take the time to develop your style, and it has to come from who you are as a person. And then like you said, everything, you’ve learned everything, you’ve experienced all of those different things. But from the very beginning, if is if it isn’t something you inherently believe or feel, then your style is always going to feel off to other people. Because like you said, it then isn’t authentic. It’s like, people sniff out authenticity quicker than anything else. And so the minute you’re acting, or badly acting, or you know, pretending to be on stage or pontificating in front of people, all of those different behaviors that have driven me crazy over the years, you see people either like slowly backing away from the table or, you know, looking away or looking at their cell phone, you know, disengaging because they can feel that that is not actually who you are.

Anne Candido 52:34
And there’s no trust there, which is the foundation of being able to lead is you have to build respect, and you have to build trust. And if you’re perceived as an inauthentic person, you’re never going to be able to generate that. And that’s why we say it’s really important to really, really cultivate your personal brand, really be very clear about what those personal brand characteristics are. And then understand that you can change your behaviors and actions, you can’t change your personal brand characteristics, but you can alter your behaviors and actions that are still in line with your characteristics. Based on feedback you’re getting, what we see, right, the breakdown really happening is when people get some level of feedback, and they feel like then all of a sudden who they are is somehow bad or incomplete or not good enough. And so therefore they tried to act like somebody else. Or they try to behave in some place in some other way that’s incongruent with their personal brand characteristics. And then that results in a level of inauthenticity that everybody can like, sniff out. And the second it’s just like, oh, yeah, yesterday, that person was direct. And today, this person is like, being all kinds of nice and like it like it just doesn’t work. People slip it on the second is

Scott Mautz 53:44
anything more transparent than when someone’s not being transparent? We’re pretty smart human. We’re pretty smart race, if you want to call it you know, we we’ve stuck around and we beat out the animals for a reason. We pick up pick up all these things.

Anne Candido 54:01
Yeah, I think that’s right on, especially if you want to stick it out. Now, if you want to just pretend you know that, you know, what you see at face value is what it really is. And yeah, about good luck to you. That’s a different podcast for a different time. All right. Our third and final segment is usually a real world example. We’re brand new is doing this well or not? Well, we have an amazing brand, who’s doing as well. And that’s you, Scott. So we’d love to to turn this over to you just to give any other thoughts that you have or any kind of themes, you want to make sure that everybody takes away and obviously tell us more about where people can find your book where they can find you and more about what profound performance does.

Scott Mautz 54:38
Yeah, cool. I appreciate you having me here today. I love your show. I love what you you’re doing. And you know, I just want folks to remember that. You know, if you lead from the middle, you’re you’re not stuck in the middle you have a chance to lead in every direction and a middle manager is it’s anybody who has a boss and is a boss right who has to lead up, down and up across the organization to be successful at that. And you know, if people want to learn more about, you know, they can check out my book leading from the middle a playbook for managers to influence up down and across the organization, I humbly offer that I’m proud to say, I think it’s hit number one in multiple categories, because it fulfills an unmet need, right? How many books have you YouTube, heard about and read about that are about the C suite, you know, in top down, or, you know, here’s how to get off to a fast start in your first 90 days on the job. Nobody writes about the you know, the people in the middle because it’s not as sexy. But it couldn’t be more important to an organization success. And the book really dives into it. And if people want to learn more about that, you know, you can find me at ScottMautz.com. And I put together something for your listeners today a special little gift, if you will, of if they go to ScottMautz.com/FreeTools. They’ll get a free 30-page companion workbook and a free access to my complete leadership toolkit. It’s the workbook that goes along with the book leading from the middle. That’s it, Scott notes.com forward slash, free tools, no spaces between free and tools, and they’ll they’ll download that. So thank you so much for allowing me to be on your wonderful show. Ladies. I really enjoyed it.

April Martini 56:15
We knew you were We were your favorite. Yeah.

Anne Candido 56:19
Always am. I’ll be looking for that request for interview for the next book.

Scott Mautz 56:24
Yeah, okay. Fair enough. It’s our I’ve already booked it so we should be good. It’s all good. Good, good

Anne Candido 56:31
deal. So just to summarize how to successfully lead when you’re not the leader. Become a subject matter expert. This can be on multiple different levels. But what must be true is it must be a value to the organization. Embrace it, a team you succeed for you for you to succeed. take accountability for the team’s results, not just your own. Third is be a teacher. Take the time to explain context vision impact, teach them your skill, knowledge and experiences and then explain the why. Finally, build allies allies are essential enabling leadership at any level but are particularly critical as you’re building reputation, credibility and advocacy. And with that, we’ll say go exercise your Marketing Smarts!

April Martini 57:10
Still need help in growing your Marketing Smarts? Contact us through our website: ForthRight-People.com. We can help you become a savvier marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now, go show off your Marketing Smarts!