BONUS: Meet the Author in 15 minutes with Scott Jeffrey Miller

In this bonus ‘Meet the Author in 15 minutes’ episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, host Scott Allender talks to Scott Jeffrey Miller. Miller is currently FranklinCovey’s senior advisor on thought leadership, leading the strategy, development, and publication of the firm’s bestselling books. He has written seven books, the latest of which is ‘Career on Course’. Scott Miller also hosts On Leadership With Scott Miller, the world’s largest weekly leadership podcast, and C-Suite Conversations With Scott Miller, a podcast which features interviews with the world’s top executives.

Referenced during this episode:
Career on Course (Baker Books, 2024)

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
 Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

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LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:22

Hey folks, welcome to a special bonus episode of the evolving leader where we get to know an author in just 15 minutes. Discover what they're all about and learn actionable insights for our own respective leadership journeys. And as always, the evolving leader is a show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. So today, we're gonna see how our guest can help us do just that. Today, our guest is Scott Jeffrey Miller. Scott currently serves as Franklin Covey Special Adviser on thought leadership, leading the strategy development and publication of the firm's best selling books. Miller hosts the Franklin Covey sponsored on leadership podcast, the world's largest weekly leadership podcast. And he also authored the leadership column for inc.com. He hosted the weekly I Heart Radio show great life, great career, and moderates Franklin Covey's book club.com series with world renowned authors. He's the author of seven books, including his brand new book that we're going to talk about today, career on course, 10 strategies to take your career from accidental to intentional. Scott, welcome to the evolving leader.

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 1:40

Scott, thanks for the platform in the spotlight looking forward to our conversation.

Scott Allender: 1:44

Likewise, likewise. So one of the things that first jumped out for me when your work hit my desk was what what reads on your website says, just like you, Scott is a mess, and I immediately personally felt seen, but unlike most you say, you own your mess. So can we start there? Can you Can we just start you tell me a bit about your mess and what it means to own it?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 2:10

Sure. That was the title of my first book, Scott was management mess to leadership success 30 challenges to become the leader, you would follow an essence it was kind of a acknowledgement a permission setting, to remind everybody that we've all gotten messes, and everybody knows what they are, we think they don't, but they do. So you might as well just embrace them and talk about them and learn from them and teach through them. Ultimately, I think most of us learn through the mistakes of other people, I learned a lot more from people from their mistakes and their failures in their messes. When I do their successes, I can't replicate their college degree or their IQ or their handsome head of hair like yours, I have to find ways to learn from their mistakes, assuming that they're vulnerable, confident enough to teach me through their mistakes. So I like this idea of just owning your mess doesn't give you an excuse not to learn new technologies or to license bad behavior, but to be vulnerable and transparent enough to say, Hey, Scott, let me tell you, I approach that the similar way and I made some mistakes, let me tell you about them so that you can metaphorically walk around or jump over the pothole that I found myself in.

Scott Allender: 3:24

I love that. I love that we talk a lot about that on the show. So that's that fits right in I know it's gonna ring true with our audience. So let's, before we go forward, let's back up a bit and get to know a little bit more about your origin story. I of course, read a bit about your bio, but let's say let's say we're at a cocktail party, and you get seated next to someone who knows very little about leadership. They're not in the business or the coaching space. And they ask, Scott, what do you do, and why do you do it?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 3:53

Well, at first, I'm a father of three young sons that are 911 and 13. And we're trying to raise them as a gentleman and less gentlemanly world. So what I do is I'm helping to create three young gentlemen. And then to support that effort. I am a seventh time author. I host a couple of podcasts. I own a talent agency. I'm a literary speaking and talent agent. And I dedicated my entire career to leadership development. nearly 30 years with the Franklin Covey company, Stephen Covey, of course, wrote the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I was his chief marketing officer for many decades. And now I'm really focused around helping leaders become better leaders or helping people choose not to lead others because it isn't the right path for them. I'm very passionate around preventing people from becoming leaders of people, because not everyone should do so. I think it's a common misnomer that the next trajectory in everybody's career is to be a leader of people. And that's simply hogwash.

Scott Allender: 4:56

I like that. You're saying that. Tell me more about that. How do you help people To discover that if they're if they're actually should be on a leadership trajectory, what's the process? You take them through? How do you message something back to them if they had in their mind that this was their path?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 5:12

Well it's pretty simple, right? I think in most organizations, sadly, the only path to promotion, more influence more power, more money, better title is to lead people what happens is most organizations, Scott lured people into leadership, they lower typically the top contributing individual contributor, individual performer, whether it be the top salesperson, the most creative Digital Designer, the most efficient dental hygienist, and now she or he is running the entire sales team, the entire creative division, and they're running the dental office, when there's no correlation, none zero between what makes you a great salesperson. What makes you a great sales leader. So I tell people that you know, not everyone should be an anesthesiologist, everybody should be a commercial airline pilot. And not everyone should be a leader of people. Because the same skills don't apply. And I don't think most people recognize that is the only career I know, we are promoted in before you have any training. Last time I checked, you have to have a degree to be a chemical engineer. Last time I checked, you have to have a certificate to be a phlebotomist, you need nothing other than great track record as an individual contributor to now become the leader. I mean, think about it, the person who is the most competent checker at a grocery store, right, the retail checking clerk, all of a sudden, he's promoted over 40 Checking clerks, and he has no idea how to lead people, half of which he'll never meet, because they're on the night shift. So I say to people, you should resist the temptation to really jump into leadership by asking yourself one primary question, and that is, do I take delight, and the success of those around me?

Scott Allender: 6:56

So I love that,'taking delight in the success of those around me'. But that sounds like the starting place. Right? So I might take a lot of delight, but I still don't necessarily, as you pointed out, have the competencies, the training to know how to do that. So let's say somebody says, Yes, Scott, I take a great deal of delight. How can you help me become efficient at that? How do you help me become proficient at that?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 7:20

Well, the first thing I would say is, it's about relationships. leader. Leadership is about relationships. That's the business you're in period. Your quarterly results, your EBIT, da, managing the p&l, hiring, terminating, coaching, performance planning, all of that is an outgrowth of how well you are developing relationships. And quite frankly, I think most of us suck at it. I think we think we're good at it. But most of us aren't. You use the word around, how do we get more efficient about it? I actually think the right word is how do we get more effective about it, because most individual contributors, Scott, are highly efficient, right? You managed your pipeline, you closed your deals, you execute your task list, and that's efficiency, which is an important professional competency. But it's also vital to recognize the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. You're efficient with systems and processes and things you're efficient with texting and social media. Submitting your expense report. You're effective with people and relationships. So you have to recognize that with people to quote Dr. Stephen R. Covey fast is slow and slow, is fast. If you want to become a better leader, you have to recognize that first and foremost, you're in the relationship business, you have to behave yourself into a reputation of being trusted by others. Some might trust you because you make and keep commitments. Others might trust you because you don't devolve divulge competent confidences others might trust you because you share the why behind the what you have to selflessly understand what is everybody's sort of professional leadership language, and then become that kind of leader to everybody that's on your team? It's a gargantuan amount of energy.

Scott Allender: 9:12

Yeah so, what's your um, I can hear the passion and what you're you're doing and I've listened to your show a bit and read read your words and and I know that it's deeply purposeful for you. But tell tell the for our audience, what What draws you into this, what makes you feel accomplished and impactful in this work?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 9:32

So I've spent the last five or six years of my career since retired from the firm after 25 years there writing, speaking keynoting podcasting, interviewing, being interviewed about how to be a better leader, how to be a better contributor, how to manage your career, more deliberately, more intentionally, as opposed to kind of leaving your career up to chance and to accident. I've just seen so many careers over the course of my professional journey. anywhere, people, they're quitting their boss, I get it, or they're leaving for two more dollars an hour or 10 More $1,000 a year, they're usually running from something versus running to something. And so this most recent book career on course, I co laid it if you will congealed, 10 strategies that I think can help take your career much more intentional while still leaving room for serendipity, which is important, all careers, and how to along the way, lead up, lead over lead down and build a career that you're proud of. And that actually knits together a lot of the episodic skills that we find when we're bouncing around every 18 months, which I highly discourage people from doing doesn't mean you have to stay in one company for 25 years, like I did. But if you think about it, the average career span is now 18 months, and you're going to have close to a 50 year career. Assume you know, early 20s to perhaps even early 70s, you're gonna have 25 jobs, that's 25 cultures, 25, leaders, 25 processes, I can't imagine having to learn how to get along with 25 different leaders over the course of my career. No, thank you.

Scott Allender: 11:13

So give us if you would, you talked about the 10 strategies, without giving it all away in too much detail in our limited time. Can you give us a outline a high level synopsis of these 10 strategies?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 11:26

Yeah. Number one is know your professional values. This is somewhat controversial. Most people have heard the idea of having a list of personal values. Most people haven't written them down and committed them to memory by the way your values change with your roles. I know my values. They're committed to memory, Phil Powell PHILPAL purpose health integrity, loyalty, positivity, abundance and learning. Those are my seven personal values. But I also have three professional values, maximize my income, work with a brand I like and trust and respect, and work with people that I like and love. And you have to have two sets so that you know when they are aligned and when they are in conflict. Number two is about deciding if you're a specialist or a generalist, there isn't a right or wrong. My brother was a chemical engineer, he got the badge, therefore favorite child, I was never anything my parents could understand. I was a realtor. And then I was in sales and marketing and an author and a podcaster. And a thought leader in air quotes. Now I'm an agent, just a my parents have no idea how I earn money. The third strategy is to really become more self aware what it's like to work with you what it's like to lead you what it's like to be married to you what it's like to partner with you on a project, what it's like to go to sales call with you. So this is probably my favorite chapter is because most of us in my experience aren't remotely as self aware, as we need to be. If we believe we are in the relationship business, and whether you are a formal leader or not. If you're working with vendors and clients and suppliers, if you're collaborating with people in your company, Oh, you are in the relationship business,

Scott Allender: 13:07

I think it would be a great place to land the show with some more of your insights on how people might do that. Jean and I talk all the time on the show about awareness. We've studied it, we've written about it. You know, the the research out there suggests that only sort of, you know, around 15% of people are truly self aware. So, you know, we think we know all these things about ourselves. But I love the word that you're using right there, which is study. How do people really study in a way that they are open to receiving and understanding and doing something about maybe the less than desirable attributes that they discover as part of this study? What is the what is the way you would encourage somebody listening right now to begin studying themselves in a new way?

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 13:59

A couple of thoughts, I'll try to keep it brief. One is, first to recognize that you're not the best at everything, and it's okay. You're going to have deeply ingrained personality traits and communication styles and personality styles. Quite frankly, they're probably imprinted on you from your parents, or your caregivers, and they were coping mechanisms. Second is to ask other people that you trust people you trust that have your best interest at heart. Ask them, what's it like? What are some things I do that bug you? What are some things that I do that diminish my credibility, or their behaviors and patterns you see in me that are holding me back for what you think I could accomplish? Find some people in the book, I call it your team of eight for personally for professionally, go to them and say, what are the things I do that delight you? And what are the things that I do that annoy you? And then write them down? Don't deflect them, ask for more content. Next.

Scott Allender: 15:02

That's really good. Really helpful. Scott, thank you so much, folks. Order your copy right now of career on course 10 strategies to take your career from accidental to intentional. It is really insightful, really actionable. And Scott, we appreciate you spending a bit of time with us today.

Scott Jeffrey Miller: 15:21

My honor. Thank you, Scott.

Scott Allender: 15:23

Thank you