What Makes a Great Leader? The Power of Reading and Writing by Bobby Powers by Kazuki Nakayashiki

Audio Files

What Makes a Great Leader? The Power of Reading and Writing by Bobby Powers

Kazuki Nakayashiki

Nov 1, 2024 11:40 PM

Summary

Summary of Transcript with Timestamps:

(00:09-00:26) Introduction of Bobby Powers, who has over a decade of experience in managing teams and writing on personal development and leadership. He has read over a thousand books and shares insights through Medium.
(01:01-01:47) Bobby became a writer while in graduate school, initially starting a blog to recommend books on finance and leadership instead of repeating himself. He later shifted to writing his own content after encouragement from a friend.
(03:06-04:29) Bobby highlights Medium as an effective platform for writers due to its user-friendly interface, interactive features, and community engagement. He discusses his experience with other platforms but mainly focuses on Medium.
(07:41-08:39) Building a following on Medium took time; Bobby attributes his growth to consistency in writing, as well as viral articles he produced, particularly a series focused on tips from well-known authors.
(09:44-11:27) Bobby emphasizes the need to generate writing ideas through extensive reading. He shares how insights from books inspire him to write concepts that resonate with readers.
(56:35-48:18) Discussing the responsibility of the Director of Learning and Development roles, he highlights the importance of employee growth and engagement, and mentions various programs he's implemented for managers and new hires.
(47:50-49:41) Bobby wishes to leave a legacy centered on helping people become better leaders and communicators, encouraging them to define their own success rather than conforming to societal expectations.
(50:42) Concludes the discussion, appreciating the encounter and collective learning.

Transcript

Welcome back to Glasp Talk. Today, we are excited to have Bobby Powers, a dedicated learner and teacher with a passion for leadership and personal development. And Bobby has spent over a decade managing teams, building, onboarding, and learning and development programs at various startups and SMBs. And he's also an avid reader and has read over a thousand books in the last 15 years or so, and sharing his insights through writing and public speaking. And as

a top writer on Medium, and Bobby's articles on leadership, self-improvement, and book recommendations have reached thousands of people. And today, we will dive into the wealth of knowledge and experiences. So, Bobby, thank you for joining today. Bobby Powers Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. Glasp Talk Thank you. So, first of all, you know, you've been a writer for over 14 years, 15 years, right? And we'd like to know, like, what made

you become a writer? You know, why did you start writing? Bobby Powers Yeah, yeah, you bet. So back when I was in grad school studying for my MBA, I went to Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. And I was reading all these different books for fun. And all my friends knew that I was an avid reader. And so people would ask me for recommendations. And I kept giving what felt like the same recommendations over and over and over of here are my favorite finance books,

here are my favorite marketing books, here are my favorite books about leadership and leading meetings and all sorts of things. And I realized at the time that rather than just reciting the same list over and over, I should just publish a list online and I should create my own book blog. And so I started running a website back then. And at the time, it was just book reviews. It was just basically business and leadership books. And I would

write highlights of what I took away from that book, and a little short summary or review of the book. And then eventually that morphed into I wanted to write my own stuff. And so back about, I think it was about seven years ago. Now I was on a camping trip with some of my best friends. And my good friend Alex and I were talking about what we want to do in our careers. And I had opened up to Alex and I said, Yeah, Alex, you know, I really

want to be a leadership author and speaker. That's what I want to do. And he asked, Oh, well, what have you been writing lately? And I said, Other than these book reviews, I haven't actually written any of my own words yet. And Alex in his own very kind, gracious way, he pushed back on me. And he said, Well, Bobby, I don't know much about writing. But what I do know is that writers writes, and I think you should probably start writing. And so that was

the kick in the pants that I needed to actually start writing my own content. Shortly after that started writing articles, and now I've published hundreds of articles online and really gotten a lot out of the process for me and hopefully for others as well. Yeah, impressive. And did you start writing? You know, you are a top writer of medium, right? Did you start writing on medium? Or were you writing on your blog? Or website? Yeah, yeah. Good question. So

I actually started doing it on both. So because I already had this blog, I would publish my content on the blog, but then medium allows you to cross post the same kind of content on medium as well. And so medium is really where I focused my efforts for quite a while, because it's a great place to quickly build an audience and connect with other writers, connect with other readers. And so medium was definitely a heavy part of my writing. And for anyone who's listening to this, that is

interested in getting into writing, medium makes it quite easy, because then you have a platform that has built in user interface tools that make it quick and easy to write and publish. I see. So did you try any other platform other than medium? So, yeah, I've looked into others, and I've published occasional articles with different publications or news, like magazines and that kind of thing. But I know a lot of people

use Substack today, I've checked out Substack a little bit, it didn't seem like it was quite the right fit for me. But there are many different platforms out there, obviously, that are catered to helping young writers get started. So medium has definitely been the primary one for me, along with occasional other sites that will reach out and ask me to post for them, or I'll start up a relationship with them. Nice. And what's the differentiator of medium?

What is unique using medium for you? Yeah, good question. So for me, it's really the UI UX, the user interface and experience that platform as a reader is very smooth, it's very seamless. And so the way that they do, you know, highlighting and commenting, actually, like a lot of the different things that Glasp is quite good at, medium started doing, you know, a number of years ago, and really rose up to prominence quite quickly, because they

made it very smooth and easy to save notes, and to interact with other writers. So that was the main thing that attracted me is I felt like it was equally good for writers as it was for readers. And the fact that it was powerful at both of those things, and it had this community of all these people that wanted to learn and grow, what made it really attractive as someone getting started. I see. So you mentioned that the interactive so part of media, but so what

kind of interaction are you using? So are you doing on media like the commenting or following highlighting? So like, yeah, yeah, primarily the commenting. So the commenting is great. And so if you publish an article on medium, you know, someone can comment and say, this really spoke to me, I've already used these tips in my work. And thank you so much for writing this. And that creates this community feel is that all get those kinds of comments on what I write. And I will give

those kinds of comments on things that I read on there. And that starts up a two way conversation then between writer and reader, which I think is very helpful and very productive. The other thing medium does that's really fascinating for writers. And for anyone that wants to get started on a platform like that, is that as the writer, you can see every section that a reader highlighted. So I have some articles that I've written, and I can see this one sentence was highlighted 50 times,

50 people thought this sentence jumps out. And so then as a writer, you then use that as an iterative process. And then you sometimes write another article just about that concept. And you go even more micro and you say, I'm going to focus on this because that really jumped out to people. So you use it basically as a testing ground. It becomes very iterative of you can see this jumped out, I'm going to write an article about that. And then in that second article,

this jumped out, I'm going to write an article that goes a little bit deeper into this. So that's been very helpful for me as well. Yeah. And also as a reader, I often see, you know, this is a top pilots in someone's boss. And yeah, that's sometimes helps me out. Yeah. This is the most, you know, people attracted polarizing to some people. And yeah, exactly. Yeah. And also you are a top writer, right? On Medium, and you have more than 10 or 11,000

followers on Medium. And how did you become a top writer? And when some articles went viral, or, or some topics went viral, or, or just, you know, increase your followers increase over time, gradually, or could you share what happened? And how did you become a top writer? Yeah, it was a combination of all those things. Really, one of the biggest parts is just keep writing. So I just kept publishing more stories. And I think that's the biggest one is that so

many people myself included, when you start writing online, you think that it's going to be very quick for you to get in front of an audience and build all these people. But it takes a long time. You know, I've been writing on Medium for about six, seven years now. And it took a very long time to get up to over 10,000 followers and build all of this community that we had talked about. But one of the other things is that I was able early on in my time writing

with Medium to land a couple different publications that I worked with, and I was able to do featured series with them. So back early on, I did a series called pro tips, which was every article, I would break down the top 13 tips from one of my favorite writers. And so I had articles that went mini viral, sort of from Stephen King, or Malcolm Gladwell, or Anne Lamott, or these different authors that I really respected. And I would either watch their masterclasses or read their

writing advice books. And then I would try to distill what I learned into 13 of their best tips and overlay my own stories and ideas and examples onto that. And so that featured series with this publication called the writing cooperative, one of the top publications on Medium, that featured series did really well. And I'm really thankful to them for taking a shot on me as a newer author, and really thankful to everybody who engaged in any of the different stories that I wrote on there.

Wow, that sounds really interesting. I'd love to check them out later. And but yeah, and also I see you are accepted into the medium creator fellowship, right? For August to October 2021. Does that help you become a good writer? Or, you know, to write something, you know, like engaging? Yeah, so medium is one of the platforms online that they're constantly trying new things. So they're always trying new programs to try to benefit writers to try to start up new publications

and constantly make their product better. So that fellowship program was one of the things that they did for a few months back a number of years ago, like you said, that they would try to incentivize writers to write more content and to be even more engaged on the platform. So, they had you apply to do that and then anyone that was in that program would get additional tips or emails and support from Medium.

But it was a way for them to also financially reward those authors for just spending more time publishing the stories that they thought readers would want to know about. So yeah, I'm thankful to have been able to get into that and really just Medium as a whole has been a great springboard for me in developing myself as a writer and trying to learn more. I see. And in general, because it seems like you're covering many topics and in general, how do

you come up with the idea to write on? I mean, you are writing book reviews, it's, you know, it's the basic, you know, your core like writing topics but, you know, other ideas like, you know, like habit rules and so on. And I read your being over doing or something like that. How did you come up with these ideas? Great ideas. Yeah, a lot of it is just I read a ton of books. So you can see I'm surrounded by books here in my little office.

And I read a lot. I read over 70 books per year just because I love learning new things. And I think it's so interesting to learn from the best ideas of all these different fantastic, brilliant people. And so usually what the process is, is I'll be reading a book and it just sparks a random insight in me. And I think, oh, I wonder how I could apply that in my own life. And then I sort of tweak it a little bit.

And then I tweak it a little bit more. And then it kind of becomes a pithy phrase that I live by. So like the one that you mentioned before of being overdoing, I had read David Brooks' fantastic book, The Second Mountain. And The Second Mountain just as a quick 30 second summary is David Brooks, this journalist, he wrote saying that in all of our lives, we have two mountains that we climb. The first one is we try to be really good at our career.

So you peak on that mountain and it's the kind of one that you're successful, you're making money and you're doing well in your whatever your job is. But then after you hit the top of that mountain, you oftentimes see there's something more fulfilling out there that I'm missing. I want to give back. I want to help other people out. And that's The Second Mountain, is The Second Mountain is essentially giving to other people.

And so I read this book from David Brooks. And I thought, that's a great concept. I want to try to live by that more. And I tweaked it and put it into my own language, which was being overdoing. So I think all of us are focused on doing, doing, doing, doing. We're focused on being productive and getting done projects and going to meetings and getting all this stuff out the door. Doing is important. But being is way more significant.

So being is who, what kind of person are you? Who do you want to be in the world? How do you want to show up to the friends, family, and significant others around you? And so to me, this concept of being overdoing really stuck out to me. And it was sort of a tweak on the David Brooks concept. And it was a way that helped me remember it a little bit better. So then I started to write about that. And thankfully, that was one of the articles that ended up catching on with a lot of people

online. I see. And also, you know, regarding The Two Mountains, and I, these, there are two favorite, my favorite quotes, you know, sharing is caring. And also, knowledge is power, then by combining, sharing knowledge is empowering others, right? I love this concept. And yeah, I love The Second Mountain, giving it back to other people, society, community, and so on. Yeah. I love what you said, too. Because those two simple phrases, like you said, when they're wedded together, it's so

powerful. It's that, like, you could build a life on those two phrases of building knowledge, sharing that knowledge with other people. And I think it's so cool what Glasp has been able to build to help people do that. So any, any tools that allow people to build knowledge and share knowledge, I'm forever indebted to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. So but so you are writing a lot of concepts or like ideas, but so where do you keep ideas

to write the next? Yeah, there's, yeah, yeah, there's two primary ways I do it. So one is physical, and one is digital. And for me, personally, they're both very important. So for physical, in every single book that I read, I actually I underline and I put notes in the margins, and I actually use the back cover of every book as a storehouse of all of my favorite tips and ideas from that book. So actually, let me grab, grab an example here.

And we'll see if we can just show people what this looks like. So in the back cover of this book, The Coaching Habit, I have like a one page back cover summary of all my favorite tips. And so if I haven't read this book for it's been six years, I read it November 2018. So this book, if I want to go and refresh my memory on it, because I'm actually I just led a class on asking questions, which is what this book is about.

So if I want to refresh my memory, I come here, open up the back cover, and I have the page number of every one of these tips. And I have a one sentence or a few words summary of what was in that book. And then a few other different key things or like things that that author had recommended that I wanted to try in my life. So that's one way is physical is very, very helpful for me. So I personally read physical books, I take physical notes.

The second way I do it, though, is digital notes. So I use obsidian, love obsidian. I have an article on bobbypowers.net, my website about how to use obsidian as a complete beginner, how to use that as your second brain tool. But for anyone who's unfamiliar, obsidian is a personal knowledge management tool, it's an app that allows you to save notes. And then you can tag those notes and connect all of them to each other.

So it, you know, very similar in some ways to glass and to Rome research and to notion and all these different knowledge management tools. So I've used obsidian for quite a while to take my notes like from a book like this. And then I will put those into digital format. And I'll save the quotes, I'll save the stories, and I'll tag those. And then I can later use those as a writer. So if I'm writing an article about how to ask better questions, I can then go and pull

up an obsidian, my tag questions. And I can pull in all of the different resources that I've saved for that. And it makes writing way easier for me. So it speeds up the writing process probably two to three times. I see. I like it. So I think so, like back cover concept or back cover idea to keep your memory. So it's like, you know, you're like, pinned article or medium, right? So you have this simple technique.

So to get more out of every book you read, right? Exactly. It's that story. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I like it. You mentioned that, I mean, so do you read Kindle books or only physical books? I only read physical. So I'm a little bit weird in that way. So I actually tried reading digital books years ago when Barnes & Noble came out with the Nook. I was a big Barnes & Noble fan. And so I went and bought a Nook Color, spent $250, $300 or whatever it was on it.

And I started reading on the Nook Color. And then as I was talking to friends about what I had just read on my Nook, I realized I didn't remember. I didn't remember any of the things that I had just read, even if it was like one week prior. And so for me personally, the e-reader just didn't work. And I wanted something more physical that I could actually take physical notes. But I also wanted the power of digital search.

And so this kind of helps me pair both as I have the physical notes in the physical book in the back cover and the margin notes. But then I can save the best ones into a tool like Obsidian. And now it's searchable. And I can find that really easily. So after you read a book, so I'm taking a back cover note, then so you put it in all the things on Obsidian as well. I will. Yeah, I'll put all of the best notes in Obsidian.

So I might have like in the back cover of any book like this, there might be 30 some notes. So I'll usually put anything that's that type of high level note. Those are the things that go into Obsidian, along with my favorite quotes from that book. So it takes a little bit of time to do, but it's helpful because it also helps me refresh my memory on that content is maybe a week after I finished the book, I'll go and I'll

write those notes up. Makes sense. Yeah. Because like, you know, many people read physical books. So and they, yeah, some people take notes, but so it's not like online. So they cannot search which books is from like, you know, and I remember the concept, but I don't remember. So which book, you know, it's from so, right. So yeah, in that, you know, habit, like putting all the concept of ideas on Obsidian is pretty

good. So, and so you mentioned that, so you have tried so Obsidian, your own research and notion, but what made you choose Obsidian from, you know, those three? Yeah, so I did a lot of initial research on those three. I didn't try each one of those tools robustly. I just basically did research online and read about how people are using them. One of the keys for me is that Obsidian saves all of their notes in standard format, markdown

files that are like basic text files. And I don't want to be wedded to one specific platform. Like some of my friends have used Evernote for years. Evernote has a custom file type that if you ever want to leave Evernote, you're screwed. You can't leave Evernote. You're basically handcuffed to them forever because it's a custom file type. But I wanted to use markdown files or something that was like more global, standard file type

that then I could take those with me if I ever want to go to a different platform later. And so that was one big deciding factor. I also really liked the entire. books you want to read next. Do you use Goodreads or Obsidian? Yeah, Goodreads is the main tool I use. And I've tried a lot of different tools over the years. I've tried a bunch of different custom apps and stuff in the past, but I could never find one that quite did what I needed. So Goodreads is the closest fit for me. What

I've done in Goodreads though, is I made it a little bit specific for my use case. So Goodreads has a to be read list, which for me is hundreds and hundreds of books. And there's only a small fraction of those books that I actually plan to read soon, or I want to go buy a copy soon. So I actually have different tags. There's not only to be read, but I have a custom tag I created called to buy. And that has maybe 200 books in it. And

I have a custom tag to buy soon, which I keep at maximum of 30 books. So for someone like me that I read a lot, this is my biggest habit in the world. I needed to come up with a way to be able to take the 600 some odd books that I want to read and filter that down even more and say, what is most important now? What do I need to read based on what I'm going through in life in the next few months? Interesting.

Yeah, I have a lot of like, you know, to want, you know, want to read, you know, in my like, you know, Goodreads, or like Japanese version of Goodreads. It's never finished, right? Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. If, if we ever finish our books list, I'm sure we will probably be dead someday. So I know. So, yeah, you mentioned that. So there, you know, you have like custom tags. So yeah, to buy soon or something like that. But do you have any advice on making filters?

So so yeah, to read next. What is the criteria? That is such a good question. I honestly still struggle with that. One of the filters I decided to do this year is there are so many books that sound interesting. There's so much stuff out there that I want to read. And I'm sure you both have this problem. And so I figured, you know what, it's so hard to decide, I'm going to come up with a theme to guide my

reading this year. And so this year, my theme is I'm reading about the past. And I'm reading about the future. So the past and the future. What I mean by that is I'm reading a lot of biographies, a lot of history books, and then also things about AI. And I'm reading, I want to read more about nanotechnology, I want to read about what's coming in the future. So this theme has helped me really zero in a little bit more. So I'm reading all of these

different books that are informing my understanding of the world and how we got here. Like right now, I'm reading a book about the American War in Vietnam, and the extreme injustices that America committed in Vietnam while we were there. And it's a very sad book. It's a very moving book. It's a book that I wish we didn't do all of this horrible stuff. But it's fascinating to read, because it's part of our history. And it's something we have

to own up to. And that book is called kill anything that moves. And it was a book I'd heard of before. But I thought that's about the past in the future. It's a book that makes sense for me to read now, I want to learn a little bit more about this war that I don't really understand. So that has helped me zero in. So for any of you looking for a way to figure out what do I read next, I'd say come up with some kind of theme and read about

a topic specifically. The author Ryan holiday that I follow, I've followed his work for years, I actually saw some of his articles were recently read by one or both of you on glass as well. So Ryan holiday talks about the idea of swarming a topic that if you want to learn about a topic, let's say it's the Civil War. So another, like past historical topic, read as many books as you can for a couple months about the Civil War, read

novels, read historical books, read biographies, read people's journals, swarm the topic from all these different perspectives. And I think that's a really interesting way to approach it. And so I'm sort of doing my own version of that in my reading now. I see. And, and do you do book club? I mean, to polish your ideas or to get more out of the books you read, you know, or exchanging ideas with other leaders or writers?

I do. Yeah. So I have a few different book clubs I've been in through the years, the longest tenured when I'm in is a group of us that it's about half dozen of us that we meet about once a month. And it started at an old company that I had worked out, we all were co workers there. And we've been now meeting for years, even since we all left the company. So there's only one person there that's still at the company, but our book club continues on.

And we each change, we rotate who's doing book recommendations. And so it's sometimes fiction, sometimes nonfiction. It's just whatever is the the pick of the group and that person that's in charge that month. So that's one group I'm in. I also have a book club that I'm in at work right now that we meet quarterly at my new company. And then I have a friend, my buddy, that he and I meet frequently, and we talk about what we're reading as well. So he and I right now

are reading a book called The Power Broker, about a guy named Robert Moses that helped build a lot of the landmarks and infrastructure of New York City. So that and I will meet occasionally to talk about different books like that. And we just choose one new one each time we finish. I see. And also, you know, when you're reading, or also when you write something, and nowadays, you know, people are using Chachibiti or AI, LLMs. And do you have you

used AI for brainstorming, or to understand more about the book, or writing, you know, like, you know, in your workflow? And, yeah, yeah, I haven't used it too much for anything with writing or reading. I'm a little bit leery of the tool for writing because it's replacing so many different, or it's doing a bad job trying to replace people's jobs with writing, that there's different articles, for instance, on medium that have been shut down because they

were written by a language model tool. But I have I have used it for different practical things, like planning a trip to Paris with my wife. I use chat GPT to help come up with a travel agenda and put in in a spreadsheet, like where what are all the different restaurants we should check out? What are this the open and end times for that restaurant? When do they close? How much does it cost to eat there, that sort of thing. So I've used it for that, but I haven't used it very much

for reading. There are plenty of people out there that will use models like chat GPT to summarize books. I have tried it a little bit for that. But I think the danger of it is that people that use it for summarization, they think that they're getting all the insights, but the insights aren't the summary. The insights are the stories. The insights are the deep examples. It's the human connection in a book. And so for me, AI, I think is it's very, very helpful in some fields, but

it's been misapplied in other fields, like trying to summarize things and thinking that you got the core of the idea enough when you probably the message didn't sink in the same way. Yeah. And I read, I found an interesting course that people think in story. So story, that is the way people can remember things and so on, as you mentioned it. Yeah. The summary or insight itself is helpful, but can't remember, people forget after a week or so. And yeah.

I even get the same question actually with books that I write the book summary on my own website online is I'll write a summary of here's five minutes, 10 minutes of what the biggest takeaways are for me. And I'll occasionally get comments from people saying, oh, this is really helpful. Thanks for writing the summary. Do you think I still have to read this book? It's like, well, yeah, I mean, there's, it's a 250 page book that has so much depth and insight and wisdom. You

should still read the book. I just gave you the very, very tippy top of the insights that came out to me and it might be different insights for you. But also I think one of the interesting things for knowledge is that knowledge is not, it's not passed through just pithy statements. It's passed through the emotion and the feeling and the story of if I, if I read someone's summary that has a one sentence explanation of a topic like the book, atomic habits, great book, fantastic

book. If I read someone's one sentence summary about what an atomic habit means, I'm not going to learn much from that. If I read James Clear's explanation for why atomic habits are important, why we have to do small chunks of a habit in order to actually adopt the habit. Now it's sinking in deeper. Now it feels like it strikes the emotion and the core more in me. And it makes me more likely to actually do that. So I think summaries can never fully substitute. And anytime

we look to them to do more than they can, it's actually a big disservice to ourselves. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Agree with that point. Yes. And So sorry, this is a little bit different topic. But you know, seems like you have been a position of director of learning and development at several companies. And I am curious about what that role is, and what kind of job, you know, what kind of responsibility do you have?

I mean, is it related to reading, learning, or is it different learning and development? And sorry, I was wondering and curious about that part. So those three buckets at a high level, new hires, managers, and then everyone across the company, we basically run programs for all of them. Like we just finished up a new manager boot camp, that my company Jitasa, we have employees across five different countries. And we have brand new managers in all of these countries that are trying to figure out how to lead for the first time.

So we did three days of zoom calls and trainings with all of these managers together, trying to talk about different things that you need to learn as a new manager. So that's one example of the kind of program that I do. Also, every time we have new hires start, we run the new hires through specified training about our core values in our company, which are very important to us. We train new hires about their specific roles of what they need to know for we do bookkeeping and accounting for nonprofits. So we train people about how to do that. And then we run programs like we do a talk series every month called Jitasa journeys, that we talk about each person's career story, what's the journey you've taken in your career, we interview different leaders about what that journey looks like, and what they've learned in their career so far.

And so that the audience is everybody, whoever wants to join can join and learn about the career story of our COO, or the director of client services or whoever else we're interviewing. So is it common for like, you know, companies having like L&D roles? So yeah, because I have never talked to people or like, you know, a person doing that, you know, roles. So yeah, you are the first one. So just curious, like, is it common thing?

Yeah, it's becoming quite a bit more common. So I would say 15 years ago, the role didn't exist in many companies. And in the last 10-15 years, more and more companies have seen the need for it. They've seen the need for it for a few reasons. One is that a lot of employees, if they don't feel they're growing, they leave the company. And so if you're not investing in these people, and they don't know that you're trying to create a career path for them, they go somewhere else that they are being invested in. And so more companies, especially a lot of like newer, fast paced tech companies, that's where it's been very common to have L&D roles.

Those companies realize, let's get in front of it. Let's be proactive. And we'll hire someone that can focus on the needs of those employees, and train, develop and coach them in a little bit better way. So I'm glad that exists. But just like you were saying, okay, it's the type of thing that years ago, I had no idea that this was even a role. And it took me a long time to realize that there are people doing L&D.

So is it related to HR? which is kind of ironic. But then I started to realize that HR and a lot of these like more people first tech companies was actually a great place to be, specifically if they had L&D type roles that I could step into, and I could try to help people feel more engaged and connected with the company. Yes, thank you for teaching about it. And, you know, you're teaching so leadership for management only in management for management managers, right? So, so in your perspective, so what kind of like, you know, character, characteristic, or like, you know, what kind of skills. So do you need to read us need to learn

to be a good leader? Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So there's unfortunately, so many things, right? There are a lot of different things. If I was to whittle it down to a few, I think one of the biggest things is that you would exhibit confident humility. It's a phrase I think about a lot. It's another phrase that it came out of past books I read as like this idea that you have to be both confident and make decisions. But you also have to recognize you might be wrong and you have to be humble and look for ways to grow and improve.

And so I think that's one of the biggest traits that managers of all sizes, any any past tenure of manager needs to be good at is confidently humble. So you basically make decisions in your areas of strength. And if you have an area that you feel weak, or you feel like you don't know enough, rather than just blindly making a decision and exposing your people to a bad decision, ask questions, ask your team, what do you think we should do? I don't know a good answer to this. What do you think?

And so I think that balance of the two confidence and humility is really, really important. So that's one of the biggest things I would say. I would also say courage. So managers have to speak up and they have to say the unpopular thing. One past boss and mentor of mine, a guy named James, he used to say that you should say the one thing that everyone is afraid to say, because that's probably what needs to be said in this meeting. And I think that that's a manager's job. Anyone who's a true leader, they will share feedback, they'll share ideas, they will challenge authority when they need to. And I've had plenty of times I've had to do that in different positions when I've disagreed with someone who's an executive or higher up in the company.

At the same time, changing mindset is the hardest part, right? Kind of similar to changing identity for some people. And how would you encourage people to do so? I mean, how do you evaluate? How should they evaluate? Oh, I'm doing better or not. And do you have metrics to follow? Yeah. How do you do that? I think that kind of change can only happen if you're actually getting feedback from other people and you're open and receptive to that feedback. So one of the things I always coach our managers to do, regardless of whether they just became a manager or they've been managing for a long time, is in your one-on-ones, ask your people for feedback.

You're probably giving them feedback, but you should also be receiving feedback. And so ask, what can I do differently as your manager? And how do you feel I could improve in the way I'm leading our team? So those types of questions, if you open up your heart enough to actually hear what somebody's saying, I think that can pierce through and that can change you in a different way. But yeah, it's a tough thing for sure. I don't think there's any silver bullet for it. There's a phrase from, I think it was a movie I watched a long time ago. It's, there's no silver bullet. We're going to have to use a lot of lead bullets. We have to use a lot of these small little changes because there's no one big quick change.

And so I think for new leaders, it's asking feedback, it's reading books, it's personal development, and it's looking for ways that you can open up yourself a little bit to be more open to coaching and changing who you are and how you lead. Yeah, definitely. And I know some people more like take things personally, like, you know, responsive and to defense themselves. If they get feedback, Oh, seems like, you know, it's awesome. I got a defense myself. And yeah, but yeah, need to change that part and gradually. And yeah, that's

Yeah. And I have trouble with that too. Even to this day, if I get to get feedback from someone, my gut reaction sometimes is to be defensive. And so what I try to remind myself and what I try to remind our managers is whenever you get feedback, the first thing out of your mouth should be thank you. It's very simple, right? Very, very simple, easy tip. But what I've noticed is that by saying thank you, it actually calms you down a little bit because it puts you in the headspace of being grateful that this person had the courage to share. And I'll sometimes even say that I'll say, even if I don't agree with maybe some aspects of this, and we can figure out what the best solution is. I am so thankful you told me, because I know it takes a lot of courage to say that. And so thank you for doing this.

Now let's try to figure out how do we make this better. And I think one other key with that is that anytime you get feedback from somebody, that you're trying to basically sit on the same side of the table with them to solve the problem, rather than looking at them as an opponent of yours. That like this person sharing feedback. person sharing ideas they're not the enemy they're actually on your side they're trying to help out

they want to make you better and that's a great powerful thing yes thank you thank you so much yeah yeah thanks i like and so do you have any like book recommendations for like first time or second time startup like co-founders you you definitely are not asking for personal experience are you i want to read something yeah so one of the best books i found is actually a book called startup ceo the author name i think is matt blumberg if i'm remembering right startup ceo

it's essentially like a book that every chapter is about a different element that you need to know as someone founding a company it's everything from the legal forms you have to fill out the way you should think about hiring employees when and how to create your own core values and your company norms how to create an employee handbook how to find product market fit it's like all of these different things everything from operations to hr to legal and compliance stuff

so that book i've recommended to past friends of mine who've started companies and they found it really helpful so that's one of the ones i would start with you mentioned matt blumberg yeah matt blumberg i believe okay i think yeah i discovered it yeah at the same time sorry this is a random question but you know k has read 4,000 books in his life and i've read you know i think yes not not much but you know every time i read books and i kind of energized it energized me and

motivated me and i thought i learned a lot from the books but when in reality you know when goes back to work and i can't apply what i learned meaning if you can't apply meaning do i really learn and how how do you change how do you fill in this gap and do you have any advice to i mean oh since i learned two things i can apply and yeah there is a there's a big gap between those two or there can be right so that's actually one of the ways that the back cover comes in for me

is that in the back cover of a book i will often have a section that i say what i want to do differently with this information some version of that phrase and i have a bullet point and list of the different things i want to try and so i think it's one of the things where the faster you can apply one thing from that book the more likely that book will actually bleed into you and what you're doing and so i normally in the back of these these different non-fiction books specifically i'll

have a list and it'll be everything from like try doing this in the next meeting that i lead or ask this kind of question in a retrospective with the team when we're looking back on a project we finished or it might be like launch this project i read about a project in this book and i want to launch a similar project to my company and see how it goes so usually when i'm reading i'm reading with a lens for what can i apply today what can i apply tomorrow and i think

reading with that lens and then putting the notes in the back it helps you hold yourself a little bit more accountable that this isn't just a good hypothetical idea this is a tactic i actually am going to apply in my tool about today yeah i think it's really really helpful yeah advice and yeah thank you thank you for that and since our audience are like aspiring writers and avid readers and do you have some advice to those people who start writing something like you become a top writer

medium and so on and and like you know what kind of habit or rules uh to make their life more effective you know to work effective and so on do you have some advice yeah what i would start with is what advice my my friend alex shared with me that i mentioned at the start of writers right that's the biggest impediment for most aspiring authors is that they think they have to have all this knowledge before they get started and i would say you don't need to have knowledge before you get

started you should just start writing today whatever it is you're passionate about whatever it is you want to write about just start writing and i would also encourage you to start publishing so it's really really scary the first time to hit the publish button like i remember my first medium story which was not a great story but it doesn't matter that first medium story i was almost like shaky hitting the publish button because it felt really scary to do that and i had one of my best

friends read over the story i had i think my wife or somebody read it right over the story and i was so nervous um so i would say actually write actually publish um but then another component of it would be you have to give yourself a lot of tolerance and grace that you're going to make mistakes so i i've heard the advice from people before and i think it's fantastic advice that if what you're writing today doesn't disgust you two years from now you're not growing fast

enough so what you write today should not be very good when you look back on it two years from now because you should be getting better and better and better every day every year and so i actually write with that lens i think you know what i may not be proud of the story a year from now but i'm proud of it today this is the best story i can write today and so i'm going to actually publish it today and then when i look back at it a year from now i think oh i would have written that a

little bit differently i i'm a better writer now than i was then and that's great that is exactly what you should be feeling because you should see the growth and evolution so i think that's one of the biggest things and then also there's a really good book out there called steal like an artist by austin cleon very short little book it's like a little square book it's maybe 150 pages and the whole genesis of that book is the best writers the best artists the best poets the best

musicians they're all taking ideas from other people and packaging them in their own way rather than that being bad that's actually good that's how art works you need to credit your sources you need to thank those people but you should steal like an artist the best artist steal and so that's another thing i would say is that if you read something that really inspires you write about that share that and then put it in your own words and try to come up with a little

bit better more meaningful way of saying that that will connect with the next reader yeah i love the quotes from steve jobs you know connectivity is just connecting things and connecting dots and yeah kind of packaging and also someone's work is someone's footnote right and we are putting footnotes to each other and yeah that's kind of yeah i love the concept yeah i love that quote you just said i don't think i've heard that someone's work is someone else's

footnote that's a fantastic yeah yeah yeah i love that too yeah and yeah so and and this is kind of last question and a little bit heavy question but you know since grasp is a platform where people can share what they are reading learning as the digital legacy and i want you to ask you know what kind of legacy impact do you want to leave behind or for the future generations yeah yeah the the best answer i have that would be i want to help people become better leaders

learners and communicators so that's actually a commitment that i have on my blog so on bobby powers.net i write that these are stories these are articles for people that want to be leaders learners and communicators so if i were to leave any legacy it i would want it to be that by reading what i've published there are more leaders out there in the world even just one more leader out in there in the world there are better communicators out there in the world there are people that can

do these things in a slightly better way than they could before so that would be the the biggest answer that question the other way that i would like to impact people is i think it's really really important for people to be focused on not someone else's definition of success but your own definition write your own path write your own what makes sense to you and when i think about this topic i think about there was a young college student named sean that i was coaching i was

mentoring back years ago and sean was trying to decide between all of these different career paths that sounded really interesting and exciting he was deciding if he wanted to go to grad school if he wanted to jump into he had an internship opportunity with this company that partnered with starbucks was like a close partner of theirs and then he was thinking he could go back to his home country in africa and he could help start a business in africa with some of his friends that

he had had grown up with he was trying to decide between all these different things and he said what's the best path and he and i talked through that and had a really good rich discussion about legacy and success and what do you want to do with your life and what he ended up landing on and what we kind of landed on together in this conversation is that success isn't one box to check success is not a role it's not a title like i used to think i want to be a ceo someday horrible goal i don't

think anyone's goal should be i just want to be a ceo arbitrarily better goal is how do you want to impact the world how do you want to help people out and so rather than aspiring for a position i realized i want to actually aspire for a life impact goal what impact do i want my life to have on other people so for me **JASON LENGSTORF** Yeah, I did too. Yeah, it was great to spend time with you both. Thank you again for having me.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Share This Audio Transcript & Summary 📚

What Makes a Great Leader? The Power of Reading and Writing by Bobby Powers

00:00

50:46