September 24, 2025 • 32 mins
What’s one way I can compete with yesterday’s version of me today? In this episode, Kevin welcomes Jake Thompson for a practical conversation on building influence from the inside out. They discuss how leading yourself first sets an example for others and highlight the difference between managing tasks and leading people. Jake offers actionable strategies for improvement, like the “Start, Stop, Continue” method for self-improvement and a three-question reflection model after meetings or conversations. Jake and Kevin also discuss common leadership challenges such as giving effective feedback, balancing management with emotional intelligence, and the difference between being nice and being kind.
Jake's Story: Jake Thompson is the author of Lead Better Now: A Practical Guide to Increase Your Influence as a Leader. He is a leadership performance coach and the Chief Encouragement Officer at Compete Every Day, a brand he started in 2011 by first selling t-shirts out of the trunk of his car. Jake has spent more than a decade working with leaders and organizations worldwide on how to get better results for themselves and their teams. He has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, hosts a podcast with over two million downloads, and has directly impacted over 85,000 ambitious leaders. Jake lives in Dallas/Fort Worth with his wife, Elena, and their “kids,” aka rescue dogs, Sugar, Donut, Snacks, & Pop-Tart.
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(00:08):
Leaders
are in the influence business,and that's our focus today.
Influence the practical sources of itand how we can make it a part of our work
as a leader,and how that takes us where we want to go.
I'm confident you're going tolike where we end up today.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
(00:30):
where we arehelping leaders grow personally like you,
to grow personally and professionally,to lead more effectively
and make a bigger positive difference fortheir teams, organizations and the world.
If you're listening to this podcast,welcome in the future,
you could join us for live episode modeson your favorite social media channel
and get all of that informationthat juicy,
(00:52):
wonderful, valuable informationyou're going to get today
sooner, several weeks, soonerin most cases.
You can find out when those live episodesare taking place so you can join us
and even interact with us, bygoing to our Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook
or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin.
(01:15):
And when you do that,you'll be plugged in and ready to go.
If you are,
excuse
me, today's episode is brought to youby my latest book,
Flexible Leadership Navigator Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
(01:37):
Leaders need a new perspectiveand a new set of tools
to create great resultsfor their organizations and teams.
That's what flexible
leadership can do for you,even in a complex and uncertain world.
Learn more and orderyour copy today at Remarkable
podcast.com/flexible.
And with thatI'm going to bring in my guest.
(01:59):
Let him join me on screen.
I'd say on set but there is no set.
His name is Jake Thompson.
He is a leadership performance coachand the chief
encouragement officer at CompeteEvery Day.
A brand he started in 2011 by first
selling t shirtsout of the trunk of his car.
More on that in a minute.
(02:19):
He has spent more than a decadeworking with leaders and organizations
worldwide on how to get better resultsfor themselves and their teams.
Through his entrepreneurial salesexperience, client work, and research,
Jake has built a proven CSR frameworkthat helps leaders
improve their grit,productive habits, and leadership skills
to create more positive influencein their organizations.
(02:41):
He's the author of Lead Better Now
A Practical Guideto Increase Your Influence as a Leader.
As promised today.
He has been featured in ForbesInc magazine.
He has a podcast with over 2 milliondownloads and
is directly impacted over85,000 ambitious leaders.
He lives in DallasFort Worth, the metroplex with his wife
(03:03):
Alina and their kids, aka rescue dogs,
sugar donut snacks, and pop Tart.
There seems to be a theme about the dognames Jake.
Well, I'm so glad that you're here.
Thanks for having me, Kevin. Yeah.
It's funny,the last one. Pop tarts, our puppy.
He's about a year and a half old,
and he went without a namefor a good three plus weeks.
(03:24):
As we could not decide.
I was trying to go off the sweets route,
and my wife is like,we got to stick with the theme.
We got to stick with the theme.
So Pop Tart is his name.
Well, if it was a she,it could have been Little Debbie.
I said that. Could that.
Yeah, that's a good one to add in the mix.
I could give you a list of what you needmore if you need more dogs.
Jake.
Hey, listen, I'm so glad that you're here.
(03:46):
We we we tried to do this earlier.
We had a little bit of a, of a delay,so it's been a while since
I read the book, but I'm excitedto have this conversation with you.
Tell us about the journey to a book.
I guess we'll say,
ss in two parts.
Number one is when you were a kid,you probably didn't
think you'd be doingwhat you're doing now.
And second of all, when you startedselling T-shirts out of the back of your
(04:07):
trunk of your car, you probably didn'tthink you'd end up writing a book.
At least that wasn'tmaybe the first thing in your head.
So tell us just a little bit about thatjourney that gets you right to here.
Yeah.
So interestingly enough, no,I, I never had any desire to write a book.
Growing up, I thought I would be JerryMaguire and going this sports agent route.
(04:28):
The journey to writing a bookis actually pretty interesting.
So my first book is called CompeteEvery Day,
and I was told for yearsI should write a book.
And this is while I was travelingthe country.
We were working expos, races, events,selling the merchandise and apparel,
working with retailers.
And I just kind of put it off,like a lot of leaders,
I was going through that impostersyndrome of like, what do I have to say?
(04:52):
Like, who hasn't already said it?What's out there?
And in 20 1718,we started shifting our business,
really going from the appareland me loosely talking about this mindset
and how you cultivate iton blog posts and social media post
to really training people and coachinga lot more people in that way.
And so as we made that shiftand getting into the speaking realm,
(05:14):
it just made senseto have a book out there that explained
what we believe, how we go about it,what it looks like to compete every day.
And so that first book releaseright in the middle of Covid 2020.
So it was great from that standpoint.
But then, you know, it'skind of like the follow up.
You put a lot of pressure on yourselfthat the next one has to be better
than the first one.
(05:35):
And I try.
To compete competing every. Daybecause you compete, right? Yeah.
And so I struggled for a good twoand a half
ish years of what's the next book about.
Went down a few paths.
Didn't really get excited about ituntil the story that I open this book with
when my wife, my wife walked in my officeupset and just kind of devastated of
(05:57):
what was going on in her careerand not feeling like she knew how to lead.
And she was the only onewho didn't know how to lead.
She'd never been taught it,and she was kind of
in that drowning phase of leadership.
And as we have the conversation, I'm like,oh my God, this is the book,
this is the book.
This is the same conversationI'd had with clients.
But it's funny.
It's kind of like parents, right?
Parents will tell their kids the samething over and over and over again.
(06:20):
It goes in one ear and out the other.
Some random person outthere says the same thing and it clicks.
And for me, I'd had these conversationswith my clients, even though
most of our work was focused on culture,on high performing habits, on mindset.
This whole leadership concept keptpopping up of struggles with training.
And I was like, man, this is it.
(06:41):
And so I just kind of dove ininto writing this book,
and I tell people it's not as glamorousas you think it is.
It's 500 to 1000 words every single dayuntil the first draft is done.
And that's pretty much the process.
Well, I'm glad that you wrote it.
And as you knowfrom the title of our conversation
(07:01):
that I want to focus on influence,
which is obviously one of the key wordsin the subtitle of the book.
But before we go there,one of the things that you say
early and often is that
it has to be about leading selffirst. Why?
Ultimately, leadership isn't about us,and yet
(07:21):
who we arehas a big impact on how we lead.
And so say more about that.
From your perspective, why leading self?
Why do you see that coming? First?
I mean, how many of ushave been in that spot within our career
where the person is do as I say,not as I do.
And how rough is that experience, right?
Feels super hypocritical.
It's not the best set up for us.
(07:41):
And so we always feel hypocritical.
It's like, yeah, the definition very much.
And so it's
you have to lead yourself because whatwhat we're trying to do, right,
when we're cultivating influencewith others is we're asking them,
encouraging them, coaching them upto a new standard of excellence.
And if we're not living at that standard,our words do absolutely nothing.
(08:04):
The other aspect of that is it'sI would say,
impossible to influence peopleby being just like them.
Nobody looks at someonewho's exactly like them and says, oh yeah,
I want more of that.
They look at people who are achievingmore, who seem to carry themselves
differently, who maybe aren't dealingwith battling the same challenges they do.
(08:25):
And so that requires us putting ourselvesin a position to lead ourselves
and continually growin order to start to really earn
that opportunity to influence othersin the direction we want.
Just the same, there's negative influencesall the time, and we see that,
but more often that'swhen people don't lead themselves.
And you see that
almost cyclical within organizationsto where you have managers and leaders.
(08:47):
And I use those terms very distinctlybecause they are
you see them fail to lead their selves,and it's all talk.
And what you should do in the standardyou should have.
But me, those don't count for me.
And so it creates that negative influencewithin the organization too.
And so everything for usfoundationally starts
with the idea of competing with yourself,which is the idea of getting better
than you were the day before.
(09:08):
And then from there,
you can start to do the thingsthat actually help
you cultivate positive influences.
We would say. So you mentioned just now,
the difference between manager managersand leaders.
Describe that differencefor for us from your perspective.
Yeah, from my perspective, managementis task oriented and it's role specific.
(09:28):
You have people that directly reportto you.
You're responsible to make surethat they get their tasks done.
Leadership though is more of a mentality.
And it's the ideathat I want to help create other leaders.
I want to cultivate more people.
And so you have you have peoplethat are great on the management side.
They're organized, they can stick to task,
but they struggle on the leadership side,which is the people side.
(09:49):
They struggle having tough conversations.
They struggle, struggle to give feedbackin a way that actually coaches people up.
They lack some of those that EQand curiosity, they're great managing.
On the flip side, you have people
with great leadership skillsthat are not in a management position.
They do not have those direct reportsin in organizations, though,
those people can still leadand influence others,
(10:11):
even though people don'tdirectly report to them.
I think, you know, some of my work
has been as a fractional performance coachwithin some sales organizations.
I don't have direct reports,
but I'm still a leaderwithin that organization of
how am I coaching and developingdifferent people, adding value to them
and helping them do their workand honestly live more effectively.
And so we see those differently.
And I say that
(10:31):
because a lot of people seem to believeonce you're promoted into management,
you're just automatically a leaderand you are perceived as a leader.
But it is a very different skill set.
And we see a lot of really good managersthat are really poor leaders,
and that creates issuesover the long term of someone's career
when they confuse their managementskills with their leadership skills.
(10:52):
So you mentioned something a minute ago,Jake.
Very specifically, you said somethingabout competing with yourself.
And there's a lot in the book about thatidea.
I'd like you to dive into thata little bit more like what does like
what does that mean?
What does it look like for me?
In my daily work as a leader,
in what ways doI need to compete with myself?
(11:16):
And what are some strategiesthat I could employ to do that?
Yes. I'll step backbefore we dive into that to kind of paint
a scene for everyone.
We're in the process right now.
My fourth book is is getting readyto launch next year.
And a lot of that basisis some of this conversation,
even though we get into itand lead better now and compete every day.
But what the research shows,and more specifically, a very recent study
(11:39):
in the last couple of yearsshowed that people
who are intrinsically driven,they're driven to grow, to improve.
It's them versus them.
It's me versus me every single day.
They fare far better mentallyand even externally, outcome driven.
Their excuse me
externally outcomes achieved, right goalsachieve process, things like that.
(11:59):
They fare far better than the peoplewho are externally driven,
the ones who are only driven by the moneyor the promotion.
So the people who are like,
hey, I've got to beat you,I've got to take you like take you down.
I've got to prop myself up.
In the long run, those people performwell, less, achieving in their goals.
They perform more poorly when it comesto their mindset, their mental health.
(12:19):
Then the people who actually dothe work of competing with themselves
in elite racing, the top performers inthe world are intrinsically
driven to compete and push themselvesto see how much better they can do.
The ones in the mid tier not the bestof the best, the middle ground.
They're extrinsic drivento beat a competitor or someone else.
So they set the stage with that to show.
(12:41):
The research shows this idea of every daycompeting with your past benchmarks,
your past records, your past comfort zonesis what's most effective.
And when we lookinto the definition of compete,
it says to strive to gainor win something.
And we often confuse the definition withme versus you and the outcome, the wins.
(13:02):
But we know as leaderswe don't control outcomes in life.
We only control our inputs.
And that is that striving every day.
So as a leader, waking up to say,how can I compete
today is really asking myself,how can I strive to be a better leader?
How can I strive to be a better spouse?
How can I strive to be a moreimpactful person within my organization?
Because at the end of the day,it's about our intentionality.
You can't go through the motionsand improve.
(13:24):
You have to be intentionaland purposeful in your movement.
So as a leader, it's asking yourself,
where am Inot communicating more effectively?
Like which of my team membersdo I keep having to give
the same advice to over and over again?
Is it my advice, or is it the fact I'mnot asking them questions right?
Where am I not raising the bar?
Where have I found myself comfortable?
(13:45):
Right now I feel like I'mjust clocking through the motions.
What is something I can do to improvehow my team works, how I run meetings,
how I handle client presentationsor prospect meetings?
These are just questions every dayto ask yourself to go into the day,
to be more intentional,to look for those rooms for improvement.
And that's what it looks like, right?
It's not this overly complicated formula.
(14:07):
It's pretty simple,but simple doesn't mean easy to execute.
And we get easily distracted.
We get, caught in just a rhythm of life,of going through the motions
because life is so busythat we fail to be intentional with how
we want to go about our day, andintentional with where we look to improve.
I want to
highlight for everybodysomething that Jake,
(14:30):
he didn't say it directly,but he but he implied it.
And that isif we're going to be intentional
and and you laid out, Jake,a bunch of very specific things
that we could competeagainst ourself about.
But what has to happen in front of thatfor everyone
to make sure that you get thisis that you have to be reflecting.
Like, if you're not reflecting, you can'tbecome intentional about what it is next.
(14:51):
And if you don't sort of know
what your current benchmarks are,even even for things that are harder
to measure,like how good was my last meeting?
If I want to make my next one better,all those things.
So there's there's a piece of selfawareness and a piece of self-reflection
here that has to happenon the front end of all of this.
Anything you want to say about thatbefore we go on?
Yeah, yeah. So
(15:11):
there's two key pieces in our frameworksthat we currently work with teams on.
The first is is what you talked about.
It's clarify the game that you care aboutwinning right at work.
What's the gameyou care about as a leader.
What is ittrying to be the most impactful leader?
Is it developing your people so that theyall get promoted and continue to grow?
Is it whatever the case is, you wantto know the game you want to play,
so then you can start to identifywhat does world class and excellence
(15:34):
look like there? Right.
We're not basing it off of
like what is the best leaderyou've ever met in your life?
What do they do really well?
Like, what are the habits and behaviorsthat they do not
to compare yourself and beat yourself upfor not being at that level,
but to identify if I want to grow,what are the standards they have?
The second part of that,
and this is where
(15:55):
people tend to get surprised,is because my brain is compete every day
and they're like, man,you got to be working every day.
I mean, no, no, no.
There's there's aspects of this, right?
You're competing in the workplace.
But when you clock outand you go to your kid's soccer practice,
you're competing against scrolling socialmedia, your emails or your cell phone
or your kids practicing.
You're watching likethere's intentionality in every venue.
(16:17):
But there's a key aspect in our frameworkof take time to review, reflect,
and rest. Right.
You have to do that.
And the big piece of that is each day
we prescribe it, every weekan exercise called start, stop, continue.
We talked about it in the book of likeevery Friday.
Just reflect back on the week.
What something you didn't do.
You should start doing next week
to be more successfulwith something you did do this past week
(16:39):
that actually hurt your progress,your behaviors, relationships
that you want to stop next week.
And then what's one thingyou're doing well to continue this?
This buildsour confidence and increases it,
but it also puts you in a positionnext Monday to compete
with last week's version by saying,hey, I'm starting this, I'm stopping this.
I'm continuing this on a very other end
as we talked about a meeting, like,how do I want to run a meeting better?
(17:01):
How do I want to do a one on one better?
It's just asking yourself three quickquestions, and I give this to someone
if they're doing sales calls,if they're leading people
and managing a one on one session,if they're training a team,
regardless,it's just three questions afterwards.
What did I do?
Well, even if you absolutely bombed,fumbled all over all of your words,
what did you do well, about setting upthe meeting, preparing the meeting.
(17:24):
Open it. Whatever it wasyou did something good.
What do you want to do better next time?
What's one specific thingyou want to improve on,
and how will you ensure you improve on it?
What are you going to work on?How are you going to plan it?
How are you going to prepare it?
If you get into that rhythm of reflectionafter meetings,
after important situationsand you career, even after a date night,
you take your spouse out on of like, hey,what did I do?
(17:44):
Really well tonight?
Next time, what I want to do better,I want to be more locked in and notice
I was paying attention to my phoneinstead of putting it on do not disturb.
So next time I'm going to put downdo not disturb
those are very specifictactical things that over time
you start stacking those little choicesand those reflective moments.
Great things can happenover the course of a month, a quarter
(18:05):
a year in your career.
You just
laid out three questions to ask ourselves,and one of the things you
you talk about in the bookis this idea that we as mostly owners
and I, to which I would agreeare not very good
at giving feedback.
Why is it, by the way, that
(18:26):
those three questionsare pretty good place to start?
But why is it that most leadersaren't very good at it
from your perspective?
You know, there's a couple of things.
One, I think most of us haven'tbeen trained on how to give feedback.
I think that's a big one.
I think another aspect I should sayis kind of as a part of
that is most of usstruggle to receive feedback
(18:48):
because we attach our identityso closely to our work and our worth.
And so anythingthat's a critique of how we work,
we see is a critique of who we are.
And so our ego is in full protectivemode at that point.
We get defensive, we make excuses.
All of those things.
The other aspect of it is most of usare just going with
what we think or what we've been told,which is the crap sandwich.
(19:10):
Right? I tell you something good.
I tell you the bad news,I tell you something good.
And all of the research
shows people eitherforget the bad and only focus on the good,
or they forget the good.Only focus on the bad.
It actually doesn't work.
What works more effectively is a seesaw.
It's balancing the feedbackthat means to Kevin,
if I have somethingI need to talk to you about that
you've not been meeting the standardsor there was a mistake made.
(19:32):
Yeah.
I need to also come to youwith something very specific.
You're doing well,
and this is where we miss the mark,because typically it's like, hey,
the joke I always make is like,
my wife can tell you, 11 years agowhen we were dating, something I said on
one of our dates that she was like,I don't know if I can date marry this guy,
but she paints it like we were on DallasNorth Tollway at Frankford.
(19:55):
We were at Me Cocina.You just ordered a mambo taxi.
Then you said this and I thought, oh mygosh, I can't, I don't know about this.
And I call my girlfriend.
I talk to like
she can paint the picture beautifully,even though it's been over a decade
and we do that with our negative feedback,we can tell you
exactly where you were, what you did,what time it was all of the things.
But when it comes to good feedback,we say, you're doing a great job.
(20:15):
We're super vague, super broad,great work.
Keep it up versus Kevin.
I just want you to know I appreciateyour consistency and your great attitude.
I know sales have not been going
your way, and no,we haven't been able to close deals.
But you're doing the right things.
And I want you to know that I see itand I appreciate it.
Like that's a very specific pointof positive feedback.
(20:36):
And that's where we miss it. Right?
We've just we try to soften it right.
We try to go around it.
We try to do everything except balance it.
And the one thing I'll say on that note,
as a leader,
the most selfish thing you will ever dois withhold feedback
because you're worriedabout hurting someone else's feelings,
because the fear is not hurtingsomeone's feelings by giving them feedback
(20:58):
that could help them improve
the fears, they're going to look at youdifferently from a social dynamic.
Yeah,and you're more worried about yourself.
I wrote about this
just today and what it came out todayabout the difference between being nice
and being kind, actually,to give people clear space, feedback on
what they're doing well and how they canimprove is being extraordinarily kind.
(21:21):
Yeah, but being nice is I'm afraid to saythat I'm afraid to
how they're going to feelor how they're going to feel about me.
And likeour grandma has told us to be nice.
And there's nothing wrong with being nice.
It's just that it's notthe same as being kind.
And we as leaders can give people very
specific corrective feedback
and do it in a kind way,
and have it actuallyhave a much better chance of success.
(21:43):
Right? Very much, very much.
The other thingI want to say about the sandwich,
and I talk about the sandwicha lot as well.
The other the other thing I would say isfor everyone is listening.
What Jake said, like so often thepositives on the outside of that sandwich
are squishy and fluffy,just like the bread.
Listen,the only reason people want to talk about
giving that sandwich is becausethey really want to give the middle,
(22:05):
because that's the kind ofwe don't order a rice in which we order a
corned beef sandwich,we order a ham and cheese sandwich
like we want to give the middle, andwe think we should put something fluffy
on the outside.
Everything's got to be, specific,clear, meaningful.
Then we got a much better chanceof success, right?
Absolutely. Without it, without a doubt.
(22:27):
I mean, the the beauty of it. Right.
If you think about a team member,think about being in your shoes.
The only way we typically improve
is through coaching and feedback,at which point we improve our reps.
We get more feedback, we improve our reps,
and the majority of peoplewe see are waiting a quarter,
if not a year, for feedbackon how they can improve how they work,
(22:50):
because we think it's got to be a formalsit down.
But if we think we wantour teams to work better,
then why wouldn't we speed up ournot only our rate of feedback,
but why wouldn't it be
one of our core concentrationsto improve how we give feedback?
And here's the thingall of your employees are different.
All of your direct reports are different.
Some people love
hearing the very positive,specific feedback in front of their peers.
(23:12):
Like they really appreciatethat some people
culturally, personally,their preferences hate it.
And so you've got to know your peopleto figure out what's the best way
to let you know what I seeand how I appreciate you.
I think it's really importantto praise peers in front of each other
because you're calling signals to what?
What's important to our culture,what's important to our values.
(23:33):
But at the same time, some of your teammembers are really going to hate that.
And so getting to know, like,how do you best want feedback?
Both good constructiveshould always be a one on one setting.
You should never havesome of those conversations
where it could be embarrassingto the person
in front of others,but the positive feedback.
Find out how they want to receive itso that it goes even further
(23:53):
when you give it to them.
And I would say that to your point,when you want to use that
as a way to signal for others,
I've had people that I know whattheir first preference would not be for it
to be in public.
Yeah, I'll tell them.
Listen, I'm going to share thisabout what you've done.
I've already given them the feedback.
I'm going to share it again.
Here's why I'm sharing it.
You've now already heard it, in a way.
(24:14):
And now in my head, because that's the wayI know you'd rather get it.
I'm going to share it again.
But here's my intention in doing that.
I don't want you to take thatin incorrectly.
I want you to see that as only positive
and but make it focus more onwhat they did than who it was.
If you're only doing it once, you'retrying to do both those things at once.
And that's when people get
uncomfortable, right?
Very much, very much.
(24:35):
One of my coaching clients at a globalcompany was talking about he was he'd
praise everybody publicly,
and one of his team members was like,hey, listen, like, I don't want that.
Like I just tell me I did a good jobone on one like this.
And he was like, oh, and to your point,he realized, like he was trying to do
both of, like reinforce the cultureand praise them.
(24:55):
But she did not want that type of praise.
And so he talked about, okay, cool,I'm going to look for other people
doing the same thing that I knowlove that that I can tie in.
But on occasion
I'm going to I'm going to designateand praise you in front of your team.
But majority is going to be one on one.
And to your point, I'm going to tell youwhy I'm going to do it in
front of everybody else is
because I want your behaviorsto be modeled by more people.
(25:16):
And so I've got to showit's important to them.
So yeah, I love that from you, Kevin.
So we've had a conversation,
that I titled Being about influence.
And yet we haven't used the AI wordvery much.
And yet,if people have been paying attention,
the whole conversationhas been about influence.
But before we sort of go into the lastsegment of this conversation, Jake,
(25:39):
is there anything else that I missedor that you really want to say
about influencespecifically before we start to wrap up?
Yeah.
So influence is kind of that outcomethat we don't, you know, we cultivate.
It happens.
It's kind of like planting seedsfor, crops.
My grandparents were were farmersout in West Texas,
(25:59):
dirt plains of West Texas as a laugh.
And and you think about them,their responsibility was to work the land,
prepare the soil, plant the seeds, waterthe seeds, fertilize, try to get sunlight.
But they didn't control the harvest.
They didn't control how big it was.
They didn't control when it came up.They had ideas.
Our influence is a lot like that.
Most people focus on how can I be moreinfluential and don't pay attention to
(26:22):
what are the behaviors and choices I'mmaking consistently to plant the seeds.
And one of the ones that I feel likewe often overlook
is the importance of relationshipsand making relational deposits.
And we talk about it in the bookand in great detail.
But your people don't careuntil they know you care.
And if you care about themand you show them appreciation
and you show feedback, then you'resending signals that you're valued here,
(26:45):
that you're a person and not a numberon payroll, that you're part of a team
and the research is crazybecause between 2021 and 2023, across
a few different industries,
70% of people who left their jobwithout another job in hand did
so because their manager failedto give them feedback or appreciate them.
That's their boss,or they fired their boss.
(27:07):
But that's a solvable problem.
And everybodythat does HR or finance right now
listening to this is like, oh,I know how much that cost.
Like that's a huge numberbecause of replacing them
and recruiting and everything else.
And so knowing that the first stepto all of this,
after you lay the foundationof leading yourself,
the first step is making investmentsin knowing your people.
Once you do that, that'swhere you really start
(27:29):
to cultivate that influence, becauseyou're living at a different standard.
You're telling people,I appreciate you, I value you.
And now when you start to give feedback,now, when you start to do the other things
we've talked about,they're going to be more receptive to it
because they know you care versus you'rejust trying to drive me
forward to make more money.
Speaking of relationship, the
(27:50):
last couple things in this conversationare more of relational, in nature.
And the first of those is Jake,what do you do for fun?
I've got a couple,
movies are a big deal in my household.
Mainly because it's one of the only placesI can kind of unplug my brain.
My my ADHD brain's always running.
I'm always thinking of ideas.
I don't even escape itsometimes at the movie.
(28:12):
But my wife and I love to go to the moviesonce or twice a month.
On a date night, we'll do dinner wherewe can talk, and then we'll go to a movie.
The other thing I just like.
So you can talk for a while,then you're not talking.
Well. We talk for a while.
Like you want to have those conversations,because if you just go to the movie,
like, you're not really gettingthat face to face time.
And so we'll do dinner and then go.
But the other one,I just love being active.
Like I work out 5 to 6 days a week.
(28:34):
I love signing uprandomly for races or events
just to challenge myself physically.
But but that's what I love to do for fun.
And then the last of my wife hada vote. We just travel more.
The more dogs, the harder travel becomes.
That. And that is the problem.
So, what are your, the only thing you knewI was going to ask you is this.
(28:55):
What are you reading these days, Jake?
So I get to go in simultaneously.Typically I do.
I have an audiobook
for when I walk, when I travel,and then I have a physical book as well.
So my physical book actually
sitting right here on the counter,it's called Better Small Talk.
I struggle with small talk sometimes,which ironically, you
you would think I wouldn't becauseI have to do a lot of it with my work.
But I want to have better conversations.
(29:16):
And so I'm reading bettersmall Talk audiobook right now.
I'm really enjoying Ryan LeeksHow to Work with Complicated People.
I made actually made a recommendation.
I see you on there, Jonathan.
Thanks for chiming in. And watching today.
I made the recommendationto one of Jonathan's peers the other day
is a great leadership book,about how to work with complicated people.
And I think Ryan Leedid a phenomenal job with it.
(29:38):
We'll have the links to both of those inthe show.
Notes will also have the linkto Jake's book lead Better now?
I'm going to hold this up.
Jake, will you tell peoplewhere can they go
to learn the more about you, the book,where do you want to point people?
And I'll just hold this up for a second.
Yeah.
So easiest place is probably goingto be compete every day.com.
You can find both our books, my podcastyou'll see
(30:00):
even some of the merch that we startedwith way back in the day is still around.
But then from there you'll find a lotof my speaking information as well.
If you're interested in learning more.
That's place on social is right herewhere Kevin and I connect is linked in.
You'll find me obviouslytagged in this post if you're listening.
Later.
Jake Thompson speaks on LinkedInand Instagram are my two most,
active, I will say channels.
(30:21):
There you go.
So, before I bit,before I bid goodbye to Jake
and all of you,I've got a question for all of you.
If you've been here before,you know what I'm about to ask you.
Here it is. Now what?
What will you do as a result of this?
Listening is wonderful. Watching is fine.
But what matters is what you will dowith what you learn.
(30:43):
So if you're like me, you took some notes.
Maybe you took some notes about thethe feedback sandwich.
Maybe you took some notes.
About that last partas we talked about relationships.
Maybe, there are specific thingsyou want to do in terms
of how you will compete againstor with yourself.
I don't know what those things arefor you, but here's what I do know.
If you will take actionon what you learned today, this will have
(31:05):
been way more valuable for youthan it would have been otherwise.
Jake, thanks for being here.
It was a pleasure to have you.
I've been looking forwardto this conversation.
Thanks so much for having me.
And sorry
for the difficulties we had last time,but man, I'm glad we got it working today.
And this is great. Things happen.
Things happen.
You know what, everybody,if you enjoyed today, do two things.
(31:27):
Number one, make sure you're subscribed
wherever you're watching your listeningso you don't miss any episode.
And number two, if you really love this,invite someone else to listen.
And then you can share with each otherthat you are now
what's and hold each other accountablefor those improvements.
That'd be a fabulous thing to do.
And then you'll be back.
You can be back with me next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(31:48):
Thanks, everybody.
Leaders
are in the influence business,and that's our focus today.
Influence the practical sources of itand how we can make it a part of our work
as a leader,and how that takes us where we want to go.
I'm confident you're going tolike where we end up today.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
(00:30):
where we arehelping leaders grow personally like you,
to grow personally and professionally,to lead more effectively
and make a bigger positive difference fortheir teams, organizations and the world.
If you're listening to this podcast,welcome in the future,
you could join us for live episode modeson your favorite social media channel
and get all of that informationthat juicy,
(00:52):
wonderful, valuable informationyou're going to get today
sooner, several weeks, soonerin most cases.
You can find out when those live episodesare taking place so you can join us
and even interact with us, bygoing to our Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook
or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin.
(01:15):
And when you do that,you'll be plugged in and ready to go.
If you are,
excuse
me, today's episode is brought to youby my latest book,
Flexible Leadership Navigator Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
(01:37):
Leaders need a new perspectiveand a new set of tools
to create great resultsfor their organizations and teams.
That's what flexible
leadership can do for you,even in a complex and uncertain world.
Learn more and orderyour copy today at Remarkable
podcast.com/flexible.
And with thatI'm going to bring in my guest.
(01:59):
Let him join me on screen.
I'd say on set but there is no set.
His name is Jake Thompson.
He is a leadership performance coachand the chief
encouragement officer at CompeteEvery Day.
A brand he started in 2011 by first
selling t shirtsout of the trunk of his car.
More on that in a minute.
(02:19):
He has spent more than a decadeworking with leaders and organizations
worldwide on how to get better resultsfor themselves and their teams.
Through his entrepreneurial salesexperience, client work, and research,
Jake has built a proven CSR frameworkthat helps leaders
improve their grit,productive habits, and leadership skills
to create more positive influencein their organizations.
(02:41):
He's the author of Lead Better Now
A Practical Guideto Increase Your Influence as a Leader.
As promised today.
He has been featured in ForbesInc magazine.
He has a podcast with over 2 milliondownloads and
is directly impacted over85,000 ambitious leaders.
He lives in DallasFort Worth, the metroplex with his wife
(03:03):
Alina and their kids, aka rescue dogs,
sugar donut snacks, and pop Tart.
There seems to be a theme about the dognames Jake.
Well, I'm so glad that you're here.
Thanks for having me, Kevin. Yeah.
It's funny,the last one. Pop tarts, our puppy.
He's about a year and a half old,
and he went without a namefor a good three plus weeks.
(03:24):
As we could not decide.
I was trying to go off the sweets route,
and my wife is like,we got to stick with the theme.
We got to stick with the theme.
So Pop Tart is his name.
Well, if it was a she,it could have been Little Debbie.
I said that. Could that.
Yeah, that's a good one to add in the mix.
I could give you a list of what you needmore if you need more dogs.
Jake.
Hey, listen, I'm so glad that you're here.
(03:46):
We we we tried to do this earlier.
We had a little bit of a, of a delay,so it's been a while since
I read the book, but I'm excitedto have this conversation with you.
Tell us about the journey to a book.
I guess we'll say,
ss in two parts.
Number one is when you were a kid,you probably didn't
think you'd be doingwhat you're doing now.
And second of all, when you startedselling T-shirts out of the back of your
(04:07):
trunk of your car, you probably didn'tthink you'd end up writing a book.
At least that wasn'tmaybe the first thing in your head.
So tell us just a little bit about thatjourney that gets you right to here.
Yeah.
So interestingly enough, no,I, I never had any desire to write a book.
Growing up, I thought I would be JerryMaguire and going this sports agent route.
(04:28):
The journey to writing a bookis actually pretty interesting.
So my first book is called CompeteEvery Day,
and I was told for yearsI should write a book.
And this is while I was travelingthe country.
We were working expos, races, events,selling the merchandise and apparel,
working with retailers.
And I just kind of put it off,like a lot of leaders,
I was going through that impostersyndrome of like, what do I have to say?
(04:52):
Like, who hasn't already said it?What's out there?
And in 20 1718,we started shifting our business,
really going from the appareland me loosely talking about this mindset
and how you cultivate iton blog posts and social media post
to really training people and coachinga lot more people in that way.
And so as we made that shiftand getting into the speaking realm,
(05:14):
it just made senseto have a book out there that explained
what we believe, how we go about it,what it looks like to compete every day.
And so that first book releaseright in the middle of Covid 2020.
So it was great from that standpoint.
But then, you know, it'skind of like the follow up.
You put a lot of pressure on yourselfthat the next one has to be better
than the first one.
(05:35):
And I try.
To compete competing every. Daybecause you compete, right? Yeah.
And so I struggled for a good twoand a half
ish years of what's the next book about.
Went down a few paths.
Didn't really get excited about ituntil the story that I open this book with
when my wife, my wife walked in my officeupset and just kind of devastated of
(05:57):
what was going on in her careerand not feeling like she knew how to lead.
And she was the only onewho didn't know how to lead.
She'd never been taught it,and she was kind of
in that drowning phase of leadership.
And as we have the conversation, I'm like,oh my God, this is the book,
this is the book.
This is the same conversationI'd had with clients.
But it's funny.
It's kind of like parents, right?
Parents will tell their kids the samething over and over and over again.
(06:20):
It goes in one ear and out the other.
Some random person outthere says the same thing and it clicks.
And for me, I'd had these conversationswith my clients, even though
most of our work was focused on culture,on high performing habits, on mindset.
This whole leadership concept keptpopping up of struggles with training.
And I was like, man, this is it.
(06:41):
And so I just kind of dove ininto writing this book,
and I tell people it's not as glamorousas you think it is.
It's 500 to 1000 words every single dayuntil the first draft is done.
And that's pretty much the process.
Well, I'm glad that you wrote it.
And as you knowfrom the title of our conversation
(07:01):
that I want to focus on influence,
which is obviously one of the key wordsin the subtitle of the book.
But before we go there,one of the things that you say
early and often is that
it has to be about leading selffirst. Why?
Ultimately, leadership isn't about us,and yet
(07:21):
who we arehas a big impact on how we lead.
And so say more about that.
From your perspective, why leading self?
Why do you see that coming? First?
I mean, how many of ushave been in that spot within our career
where the person is do as I say,not as I do.
And how rough is that experience, right?
Feels super hypocritical.
It's not the best set up for us.
(07:41):
And so we always feel hypocritical.
It's like, yeah, the definition very much.
And so it's
you have to lead yourself because whatwhat we're trying to do, right,
when we're cultivating influencewith others is we're asking them,
encouraging them, coaching them upto a new standard of excellence.
And if we're not living at that standard,our words do absolutely nothing.
(08:04):
The other aspect of that is it'sI would say,
impossible to influence peopleby being just like them.
Nobody looks at someonewho's exactly like them and says, oh yeah,
I want more of that.
They look at people who are achievingmore, who seem to carry themselves
differently, who maybe aren't dealingwith battling the same challenges they do.
(08:25):
And so that requires us putting ourselvesin a position to lead ourselves
and continually growin order to start to really earn
that opportunity to influence othersin the direction we want.
Just the same, there's negative influencesall the time, and we see that,
but more often that'swhen people don't lead themselves.
And you see that
almost cyclical within organizationsto where you have managers and leaders.
(08:47):
And I use those terms very distinctlybecause they are
you see them fail to lead their selves,and it's all talk.
And what you should do in the standardyou should have.
But me, those don't count for me.
And so it creates that negative influencewithin the organization too.
And so everything for usfoundationally starts
with the idea of competing with yourself,which is the idea of getting better
than you were the day before.
(09:08):
And then from there,
you can start to do the thingsthat actually help
you cultivate positive influences.
We would say. So you mentioned just now,
the difference between manager managersand leaders.
Describe that differencefor for us from your perspective.
Yeah, from my perspective, managementis task oriented and it's role specific.
(09:28):
You have people that directly reportto you.
You're responsible to make surethat they get their tasks done.
Leadership though is more of a mentality.
And it's the ideathat I want to help create other leaders.
I want to cultivate more people.
And so you have you have peoplethat are great on the management side.
They're organized, they can stick to task,
but they struggle on the leadership side,which is the people side.
(09:49):
They struggle having tough conversations.
They struggle, struggle to give feedbackin a way that actually coaches people up.
They lack some of those that EQand curiosity, they're great managing.
On the flip side, you have people
with great leadership skillsthat are not in a management position.
They do not have those direct reportsin in organizations, though,
those people can still leadand influence others,
(10:11):
even though people don'tdirectly report to them.
I think, you know, some of my work
has been as a fractional performance coachwithin some sales organizations.
I don't have direct reports,
but I'm still a leaderwithin that organization of
how am I coaching and developingdifferent people, adding value to them
and helping them do their workand honestly live more effectively.
And so we see those differently.
And I say that
(10:31):
because a lot of people seem to believeonce you're promoted into management,
you're just automatically a leaderand you are perceived as a leader.
But it is a very different skill set.
And we see a lot of really good managersthat are really poor leaders,
and that creates issuesover the long term of someone's career
when they confuse their managementskills with their leadership skills.
(10:52):
So you mentioned something a minute ago,Jake.
Very specifically, you said somethingabout competing with yourself.
And there's a lot in the book about thatidea.
I'd like you to dive into thata little bit more like what does like
what does that mean?
What does it look like for me?
In my daily work as a leader,
in what ways doI need to compete with myself?
(11:16):
And what are some strategiesthat I could employ to do that?
Yes. I'll step backbefore we dive into that to kind of paint
a scene for everyone.
We're in the process right now.
My fourth book is is getting readyto launch next year.
And a lot of that basisis some of this conversation,
even though we get into itand lead better now and compete every day.
But what the research shows,and more specifically, a very recent study
(11:39):
in the last couple of yearsshowed that people
who are intrinsically driven,they're driven to grow, to improve.
It's them versus them.
It's me versus me every single day.
They fare far better mentallyand even externally, outcome driven.
Their excuse me
externally outcomes achieved, right goalsachieve process, things like that.
(11:59):
They fare far better than the peoplewho are externally driven,
the ones who are only driven by the moneyor the promotion.
So the people who are like,
hey, I've got to beat you,I've got to take you like take you down.
I've got to prop myself up.
In the long run, those people performwell, less, achieving in their goals.
They perform more poorly when it comesto their mindset, their mental health.
(12:19):
Then the people who actually dothe work of competing with themselves
in elite racing, the top performers inthe world are intrinsically
driven to compete and push themselvesto see how much better they can do.
The ones in the mid tier not the bestof the best, the middle ground.
They're extrinsic drivento beat a competitor or someone else.
So they set the stage with that to show.
(12:41):
The research shows this idea of every daycompeting with your past benchmarks,
your past records, your past comfort zonesis what's most effective.
And when we lookinto the definition of compete,
it says to strive to gainor win something.
And we often confuse the definition withme versus you and the outcome, the wins.
(13:02):
But we know as leaderswe don't control outcomes in life.
We only control our inputs.
And that is that striving every day.
So as a leader, waking up to say,how can I compete
today is really asking myself,how can I strive to be a better leader?
How can I strive to be a better spouse?
How can I strive to be a moreimpactful person within my organization?
Because at the end of the day,it's about our intentionality.
You can't go through the motionsand improve.
(13:24):
You have to be intentionaland purposeful in your movement.
So as a leader, it's asking yourself,
where am Inot communicating more effectively?
Like which of my team membersdo I keep having to give
the same advice to over and over again?
Is it my advice, or is it the fact I'mnot asking them questions right?
Where am I not raising the bar?
Where have I found myself comfortable?
(13:45):
Right now I feel like I'mjust clocking through the motions.
What is something I can do to improvehow my team works, how I run meetings,
how I handle client presentationsor prospect meetings?
These are just questions every dayto ask yourself to go into the day,
to be more intentional,to look for those rooms for improvement.
And that's what it looks like, right?
It's not this overly complicated formula.
(14:07):
It's pretty simple,but simple doesn't mean easy to execute.
And we get easily distracted.
We get, caught in just a rhythm of life,of going through the motions
because life is so busythat we fail to be intentional with how
we want to go about our day, andintentional with where we look to improve.
I want to
highlight for everybodysomething that Jake,
(14:30):
he didn't say it directly,but he but he implied it.
And that isif we're going to be intentional
and and you laid out, Jake,a bunch of very specific things
that we could competeagainst ourself about.
But what has to happen in front of thatfor everyone
to make sure that you get thisis that you have to be reflecting.
Like, if you're not reflecting, you can'tbecome intentional about what it is next.
(14:51):
And if you don't sort of know
what your current benchmarks are,even even for things that are harder
to measure,like how good was my last meeting?
If I want to make my next one better,all those things.
So there's there's a piece of selfawareness and a piece of self-reflection
here that has to happenon the front end of all of this.
Anything you want to say about thatbefore we go on?
Yeah, yeah. So
(15:11):
there's two key pieces in our frameworksthat we currently work with teams on.
The first is is what you talked about.
It's clarify the game that you care aboutwinning right at work.
What's the gameyou care about as a leader.
What is ittrying to be the most impactful leader?
Is it developing your people so that theyall get promoted and continue to grow?
Is it whatever the case is, you wantto know the game you want to play,
so then you can start to identifywhat does world class and excellence
(15:34):
look like there? Right.
We're not basing it off of
like what is the best leaderyou've ever met in your life?
What do they do really well?
Like, what are the habits and behaviorsthat they do not
to compare yourself and beat yourself upfor not being at that level,
but to identify if I want to grow,what are the standards they have?
The second part of that,
and this is where
(15:55):
people tend to get surprised,is because my brain is compete every day
and they're like, man,you got to be working every day.
I mean, no, no, no.
There's there's aspects of this, right?
You're competing in the workplace.
But when you clock outand you go to your kid's soccer practice,
you're competing against scrolling socialmedia, your emails or your cell phone
or your kids practicing.
You're watching likethere's intentionality in every venue.
(16:17):
But there's a key aspect in our frameworkof take time to review, reflect,
and rest. Right.
You have to do that.
And the big piece of that is each day
we prescribe it, every weekan exercise called start, stop, continue.
We talked about it in the book of likeevery Friday.
Just reflect back on the week.
What something you didn't do.
You should start doing next week
to be more successfulwith something you did do this past week
(16:39):
that actually hurt your progress,your behaviors, relationships
that you want to stop next week.
And then what's one thingyou're doing well to continue this?
This buildsour confidence and increases it,
but it also puts you in a positionnext Monday to compete
with last week's version by saying,hey, I'm starting this, I'm stopping this.
I'm continuing this on a very other end
as we talked about a meeting, like,how do I want to run a meeting better?
(17:01):
How do I want to do a one on one better?
It's just asking yourself three quickquestions, and I give this to someone
if they're doing sales calls,if they're leading people
and managing a one on one session,if they're training a team,
regardless,it's just three questions afterwards.
What did I do?
Well, even if you absolutely bombed,fumbled all over all of your words,
what did you do well, about setting upthe meeting, preparing the meeting.
(17:24):
Open it. Whatever it wasyou did something good.
What do you want to do better next time?
What's one specific thingyou want to improve on,
and how will you ensure you improve on it?
What are you going to work on?How are you going to plan it?
How are you going to prepare it?
If you get into that rhythm of reflectionafter meetings,
after important situationsand you career, even after a date night,
you take your spouse out on of like, hey,what did I do?
(17:44):
Really well tonight?
Next time, what I want to do better,I want to be more locked in and notice
I was paying attention to my phoneinstead of putting it on do not disturb.
So next time I'm going to put downdo not disturb
those are very specifictactical things that over time
you start stacking those little choicesand those reflective moments.
Great things can happenover the course of a month, a quarter
(18:05):
a year in your career.
You just
laid out three questions to ask ourselves,and one of the things you
you talk about in the bookis this idea that we as mostly owners
and I, to which I would agreeare not very good
at giving feedback.
Why is it, by the way, that
(18:26):
those three questionsare pretty good place to start?
But why is it that most leadersaren't very good at it
from your perspective?
You know, there's a couple of things.
One, I think most of us haven'tbeen trained on how to give feedback.
I think that's a big one.
I think another aspect I should sayis kind of as a part of
that is most of usstruggle to receive feedback
(18:48):
because we attach our identityso closely to our work and our worth.
And so anythingthat's a critique of how we work,
we see is a critique of who we are.
And so our ego is in full protectivemode at that point.
We get defensive, we make excuses.
All of those things.
The other aspect of it is most of usare just going with
what we think or what we've been told,which is the crap sandwich.
(19:10):
Right? I tell you something good.
I tell you the bad news,I tell you something good.
And all of the research
shows people eitherforget the bad and only focus on the good,
or they forget the good.Only focus on the bad.
It actually doesn't work.
What works more effectively is a seesaw.
It's balancing the feedbackthat means to Kevin,
if I have somethingI need to talk to you about that
you've not been meeting the standardsor there was a mistake made.
(19:32):
Yeah.
I need to also come to youwith something very specific.
You're doing well,
and this is where we miss the mark,because typically it's like, hey,
the joke I always make is like,
my wife can tell you, 11 years agowhen we were dating, something I said on
one of our dates that she was like,I don't know if I can date marry this guy,
but she paints it like we were on DallasNorth Tollway at Frankford.
(19:55):
We were at Me Cocina.You just ordered a mambo taxi.
Then you said this and I thought, oh mygosh, I can't, I don't know about this.
And I call my girlfriend.
I talk to like
she can paint the picture beautifully,even though it's been over a decade
and we do that with our negative feedback,we can tell you
exactly where you were, what you did,what time it was all of the things.
But when it comes to good feedback,we say, you're doing a great job.
(20:15):
We're super vague, super broad,great work.
Keep it up versus Kevin.
I just want you to know I appreciateyour consistency and your great attitude.
I know sales have not been going
your way, and no,we haven't been able to close deals.
But you're doing the right things.
And I want you to know that I see itand I appreciate it.
Like that's a very specific pointof positive feedback.
(20:36):
And that's where we miss it. Right?
We've just we try to soften it right.
We try to go around it.
We try to do everything except balance it.
And the one thing I'll say on that note,
as a leader,
the most selfish thing you will ever dois withhold feedback
because you're worriedabout hurting someone else's feelings,
because the fear is not hurtingsomeone's feelings by giving them feedback
(20:58):
that could help them improve
the fears, they're going to look at youdifferently from a social dynamic.
Yeah,and you're more worried about yourself.
I wrote about this
just today and what it came out todayabout the difference between being nice
and being kind, actually,to give people clear space, feedback on
what they're doing well and how they canimprove is being extraordinarily kind.
(21:21):
Yeah, but being nice is I'm afraid to saythat I'm afraid to
how they're going to feelor how they're going to feel about me.
And likeour grandma has told us to be nice.
And there's nothing wrong with being nice.
It's just that it's notthe same as being kind.
And we as leaders can give people very
specific corrective feedback
and do it in a kind way,
and have it actuallyhave a much better chance of success.
(21:43):
Right? Very much, very much.
The other thingI want to say about the sandwich,
and I talk about the sandwicha lot as well.
The other the other thing I would say isfor everyone is listening.
What Jake said, like so often thepositives on the outside of that sandwich
are squishy and fluffy,just like the bread.
Listen,the only reason people want to talk about
giving that sandwich is becausethey really want to give the middle,
(22:05):
because that's the kind ofwe don't order a rice in which we order a
corned beef sandwich,we order a ham and cheese sandwich
like we want to give the middle, andwe think we should put something fluffy
on the outside.
Everything's got to be, specific,clear, meaningful.
Then we got a much better chanceof success, right?
Absolutely. Without it, without a doubt.
(22:27):
I mean, the the beauty of it. Right.
If you think about a team member,think about being in your shoes.
The only way we typically improve
is through coaching and feedback,at which point we improve our reps.
We get more feedback, we improve our reps,
and the majority of peoplewe see are waiting a quarter,
if not a year, for feedbackon how they can improve how they work,
(22:50):
because we think it's got to be a formalsit down.
But if we think we wantour teams to work better,
then why wouldn't we speed up ournot only our rate of feedback,
but why wouldn't it be
one of our core concentrationsto improve how we give feedback?
And here's the thingall of your employees are different.
All of your direct reports are different.
Some people love
hearing the very positive,specific feedback in front of their peers.
(23:12):
Like they really appreciatethat some people
culturally, personally,their preferences hate it.
And so you've got to know your peopleto figure out what's the best way
to let you know what I seeand how I appreciate you.
I think it's really importantto praise peers in front of each other
because you're calling signals to what?
What's important to our culture,what's important to our values.
(23:33):
But at the same time, some of your teammembers are really going to hate that.
And so getting to know, like,how do you best want feedback?
Both good constructiveshould always be a one on one setting.
You should never havesome of those conversations
where it could be embarrassingto the person
in front of others,but the positive feedback.
Find out how they want to receive itso that it goes even further
(23:53):
when you give it to them.
And I would say that to your point,when you want to use that
as a way to signal for others,
I've had people that I know whattheir first preference would not be for it
to be in public.
Yeah, I'll tell them.
Listen, I'm going to share thisabout what you've done.
I've already given them the feedback.
I'm going to share it again.
Here's why I'm sharing it.
You've now already heard it, in a way.
(24:14):
And now in my head, because that's the wayI know you'd rather get it.
I'm going to share it again.
But here's my intention in doing that.
I don't want you to take thatin incorrectly.
I want you to see that as only positive
and but make it focus more onwhat they did than who it was.
If you're only doing it once, you'retrying to do both those things at once.
And that's when people get
uncomfortable, right?
Very much, very much.
(24:35):
One of my coaching clients at a globalcompany was talking about he was he'd
praise everybody publicly,
and one of his team members was like,hey, listen, like, I don't want that.
Like I just tell me I did a good jobone on one like this.
And he was like, oh, and to your point,he realized, like he was trying to do
both of, like reinforce the cultureand praise them.
(24:55):
But she did not want that type of praise.
And so he talked about, okay, cool,I'm going to look for other people
doing the same thing that I knowlove that that I can tie in.
But on occasion
I'm going to I'm going to designateand praise you in front of your team.
But majority is going to be one on one.
And to your point, I'm going to tell youwhy I'm going to do it in
front of everybody else is
because I want your behaviorsto be modeled by more people.
(25:16):
And so I've got to showit's important to them.
So yeah, I love that from you, Kevin.
So we've had a conversation,
that I titled Being about influence.
And yet we haven't used the AI wordvery much.
And yet,if people have been paying attention,
the whole conversationhas been about influence.
But before we sort of go into the lastsegment of this conversation, Jake,
(25:39):
is there anything else that I missedor that you really want to say
about influencespecifically before we start to wrap up?
Yeah.
So influence is kind of that outcomethat we don't, you know, we cultivate.
It happens.
It's kind of like planting seedsfor, crops.
My grandparents were were farmersout in West Texas,
(25:59):
dirt plains of West Texas as a laugh.
And and you think about them,their responsibility was to work the land,
prepare the soil, plant the seeds, waterthe seeds, fertilize, try to get sunlight.
But they didn't control the harvest.
They didn't control how big it was.
They didn't control when it came up.They had ideas.
Our influence is a lot like that.
Most people focus on how can I be moreinfluential and don't pay attention to
(26:22):
what are the behaviors and choices I'mmaking consistently to plant the seeds.
And one of the ones that I feel likewe often overlook
is the importance of relationshipsand making relational deposits.
And we talk about it in the bookand in great detail.
But your people don't careuntil they know you care.
And if you care about themand you show them appreciation
and you show feedback, then you'resending signals that you're valued here,
(26:45):
that you're a person and not a numberon payroll, that you're part of a team
and the research is crazybecause between 2021 and 2023, across
a few different industries,
70% of people who left their jobwithout another job in hand did
so because their manager failedto give them feedback or appreciate them.
That's their boss,or they fired their boss.
(27:07):
But that's a solvable problem.
And everybodythat does HR or finance right now
listening to this is like, oh,I know how much that cost.
Like that's a huge numberbecause of replacing them
and recruiting and everything else.
And so knowing that the first stepto all of this,
after you lay the foundationof leading yourself,
the first step is making investmentsin knowing your people.
Once you do that, that'swhere you really start
(27:29):
to cultivate that influence, becauseyou're living at a different standard.
You're telling people,I appreciate you, I value you.
And now when you start to give feedback,now, when you start to do the other things
we've talked about,they're going to be more receptive to it
because they know you care versus you'rejust trying to drive me
forward to make more money.
Speaking of relationship, the
(27:50):
last couple things in this conversationare more of relational, in nature.
And the first of those is Jake,what do you do for fun?
I've got a couple,
movies are a big deal in my household.
Mainly because it's one of the only placesI can kind of unplug my brain.
My my ADHD brain's always running.
I'm always thinking of ideas.
I don't even escape itsometimes at the movie.
(28:12):
But my wife and I love to go to the moviesonce or twice a month.
On a date night, we'll do dinner wherewe can talk, and then we'll go to a movie.
The other thing I just like.
So you can talk for a while,then you're not talking.
Well. We talk for a while.
Like you want to have those conversations,because if you just go to the movie,
like, you're not really gettingthat face to face time.
And so we'll do dinner and then go.
But the other one,I just love being active.
Like I work out 5 to 6 days a week.
(28:34):
I love signing uprandomly for races or events
just to challenge myself physically.
But but that's what I love to do for fun.
And then the last of my wife hada vote. We just travel more.
The more dogs, the harder travel becomes.
That. And that is the problem.
So, what are your, the only thing you knewI was going to ask you is this.
(28:55):
What are you reading these days, Jake?
So I get to go in simultaneously.Typically I do.
I have an audiobook
for when I walk, when I travel,and then I have a physical book as well.
So my physical book actually
sitting right here on the counter,it's called Better Small Talk.
I struggle with small talk sometimes,which ironically, you
you would think I wouldn't becauseI have to do a lot of it with my work.
But I want to have better conversations.
(29:16):
And so I'm reading bettersmall Talk audiobook right now.
I'm really enjoying Ryan LeeksHow to Work with Complicated People.
I made actually made a recommendation.
I see you on there, Jonathan.
Thanks for chiming in. And watching today.
I made the recommendationto one of Jonathan's peers the other day
is a great leadership book,about how to work with complicated people.
And I think Ryan Leedid a phenomenal job with it.
(29:38):
We'll have the links to both of those inthe show.
Notes will also have the linkto Jake's book lead Better now?
I'm going to hold this up.
Jake, will you tell peoplewhere can they go
to learn the more about you, the book,where do you want to point people?
And I'll just hold this up for a second.
Yeah.
So easiest place is probably goingto be compete every day.com.
You can find both our books, my podcastyou'll see
(30:00):
even some of the merch that we startedwith way back in the day is still around.
But then from there you'll find a lotof my speaking information as well.
If you're interested in learning more.
That's place on social is right herewhere Kevin and I connect is linked in.
You'll find me obviouslytagged in this post if you're listening.
Later.
Jake Thompson speaks on LinkedInand Instagram are my two most,
active, I will say channels.
(30:21):
There you go.
So, before I bit,before I bid goodbye to Jake
and all of you,I've got a question for all of you.
If you've been here before,you know what I'm about to ask you.
Here it is. Now what?
What will you do as a result of this?
Listening is wonderful. Watching is fine.
But what matters is what you will dowith what you learn.
(30:43):
So if you're like me, you took some notes.
Maybe you took some notes about thethe feedback sandwich.
Maybe you took some notes.
About that last partas we talked about relationships.
Maybe, there are specific thingsyou want to do in terms
of how you will compete againstor with yourself.
I don't know what those things arefor you, but here's what I do know.
If you will take actionon what you learned today, this will have
(31:05):
been way more valuable for youthan it would have been otherwise.
Jake, thanks for being here.
It was a pleasure to have you.
I've been looking forwardto this conversation.
Thanks so much for having me.
And sorry
for the difficulties we had last time,but man, I'm glad we got it working today.
And this is great. Things happen.
Things happen.
You know what, everybody,if you enjoyed today, do two things.
(31:27):
Number one, make sure you're subscribed
wherever you're watching your listeningso you don't miss any episode.
And number two, if you really love this,invite someone else to listen.
And then you can share with each otherthat you are now
what's and hold each other accountablefor those improvements.
That'd be a fabulous thing to do.
And then you'll be back.
You can be back with me next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(31:48):
Thanks, everybody.
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