The discourse with Bob Burg elucidates the essential principle of leadership, which is the imperative shift from a self-centered approach to one that prioritizes the act of giving. In our conversation, we delve into the profound tenets of the "Go Giver" philosophy, emphasizing the notion that true leadership is predicated upon serving others and fostering meaningful relationships. Bob expounds upon the significance of understanding the needs and aspirations of team members, advocating for leaders to engage in genuine curiosity regarding the desires of those they lead. As we navigate the intricacies of leadership, we discern that the most effective leaders cultivate an environment where individuals feel valued and empowered to contribute their best selves. This episode serves as a clarion call for leaders to embrace a mindset of generosity and service, ultimately driving both personal fulfillment and organizational success.

The discourse with Bob Burg elucidates the essential principle of leadership, which is the imperative shift from a self-centered approach to one that prioritizes the act of giving. In our conversation, we delve into the profound tenets of the "Go Giver" philosophy, emphasizing the notion that true leadership is predicated upon serving others and fostering meaningful relationships. Bob expounds upon the significance of understanding the needs and aspirations of team members, advocating for leaders to engage in genuine curiosity regarding the desires of those they lead. As we navigate the intricacies of leadership, we discern that the most effective leaders cultivate an environment where individuals feel valued and empowered to contribute their best selves. This episode serves as a clarion call for leaders to embrace a mindset of generosity and service, ultimately driving both personal fulfillment and organizational success.

Engaging with Bob Burg, a luminary in the realm of leadership and co-author of 'The Go-Giver', presents a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of service and success. Our conversation unveils Burg's perspective on leadership as an act of giving — a philosophy that not only transforms individual careers but also reshapes organizational dynamics. At the heart of this discussion is the critical idea that leaders must prioritize the well-being and development of their team members. By adopting a service-oriented approach, leaders create a supportive environment that fosters innovation and collaboration.

Burg articulates that effective leadership is inherently about understanding and addressing the aspirations of others. This requires leaders to engage in meaningful dialogue, actively listening to their team’s needs and providing the necessary resources and guidance to help them thrive. Our dialogue also touches on the practical aspects of implementing this philosophy in real-world scenarios, offering listeners actionable insights into how they can embody the 'go-giver' spirit in their everyday leadership practices. Ultimately, this episode is a clarion call for leaders to reexamine their approach to leadership and embrace the transformative potential of generosity and service.

Takeaways:

• The Go Giver philosophy emphasizes the paramount importance of providing value to others in all aspects of leadership and business.
• Effective leadership is fundamentally about serving others, understanding their needs, and facilitating their growth and success.
• Creating a culture of learning and curiosity within a team is essential for fostering innovation and engagement among team members.
• Leaders must shift their focus from managing tasks to empowering their team members to achieve their personal and professional goals.
• Understanding that people are motivated by their own reasons, not the reasons of the leader, is crucial for effective leadership.
• Communicating and embodying core values consistently establishes trust and clarity within an organization, guiding all members toward shared goals.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Bobburg.com
• Get his books https://amzn.to/4lika5j
• Charting True North Book https://amzn.to/4jzYoJv
• Missing Link Network - https://www.missinglinknetwork.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Bob Berg
• John David Mann
• Go Giver Academy
• Go Giver
• Go Giver Leader
• Charting True North
• Dale Carnegie
• Zig Ziglar
• Robert Glazer
• Missing Link Network
• Leadership Freak

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing edition of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast. I am your host Jaclyn Strominger and on this podcast we hear from amazing leaders and their game changing insights.

And today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing and speaking with one of my heroes, Bob Burg. If you have not listened to Bob Burg or read any of his books, go get them and we'll talk about those in a second.

But Bob Burg is the co author with John David Mann of the international best selling business parable the Go Giver which has sold well over 1 million copies and has been translated into 30 languages.

And he is the founder of the Go Giver Academy and online resources resource featuring the Success Vault, which is really a great vault of information and an advocate of free markets. And he runs an, he is an unapologetic animal fanatic. Love all animals myself.

And you can learn more about Bob and subscribe to his daily Impact email, which is a daily email that comes to your inbox@berg.com so welcome Bob to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast. I'm like, like, like I said before, I'm in awe. Right. I'm like, you're my hero.

That's so sweet. Thank you, Jaclyn. And congratulations by the way on Charting True North. Wow, very exciting.

I know that's going to sell big and touch a lot of people's lives, you know.

Thank you. Yeah, so it's, it's my new book and I co authored it with somebody that I actually met on a podcast and it is a leadership workbook.

So but speaking of leadership, you have the Go Giver series. You, which is, you've got Go Givers, Go Giver, Influencer selling. I think there's even one on marriage.

Yeah, My co author, John David man and his wife, they did the marriage one. Okay. John David Mann and his wife Anna, Anna Gabriel man. And yeah, they did a fantastic job.

They, they were nice enough to ask me if I wanted to try author. You know, tri. Instead of co author, try author. But I'm not married and I thought, you know, there's a little lack of credibility.

Someone, you know, try authoring a, a book on marriage who's not actually married. But, but no, they have a wonderful marriage, great people and they, they really wrote a remarkable book. They did a fantastic job with it.

So I want to get to, you know, Go Givers again, millions of copies sold. There are companies that, and people that live by the Go Giver philosophy. And so you know, when you're talking about Companies.

And I want to think about more about leadership because this is where we really want to influence great, great leaders. How does, how does a leader become a go giver and not somebody who, you know, just lives that and I guess you could say embodies that.

Okay, so yeah, it's a great question. So let, let's kind of just take the premise of what we even mean by go giver.

And while the, you know, the first book in the series was written for entrepreneurs and we then came up with the go giver leader and and so forth, it's the same it no matter who it is. So a go giver would be someone who has learned or maybe always intuitively knew that shifting your focus.

And I think this is really where it all begins. Shifting your focus from getting to giving.

Now when we say giving in this, in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value, value to others and understanding that doing so is not only a, a more fulfilling way of conducting business, of selling, of leading what have you, it's the most financially profitable way as well. And not for any kind of way out there. Woo woo. Magical, mystical reasons. Oh, just give and do good things and good things will get.

No, nothing like that at all. It's actually very practical. It's very, it's very rational when you think about it.

And that is when you're that person who can take your focus off of yourself and place it on serving others. And as a leader, what do we do? We serve others, right?

So whether we're talking sales, entrepreneurship, leadership, when you can focus on serving others, discovering their needs, their wants, their desires, understanding and helping them to overcome their problems and challenges, when you can make it not about yourself, but about moving them closer to happiness. People feel good about you, they feel great about you, okay? They want to, they want to get to know you.

They like, they trust you, they want to be in relationship with you, they want to follow you, they want to be part of your life, they want to be part of your business or organization. And you know what? They want to tell the world about you. They want to be what we call in the first book your personal walking ambassador.

But it all begins with being sure, internally motivated, but outwardly focused.

So, so I love that.

And when as you're speaking, the, the one of the biggest things that's, that comes into my brain is the difference between as a leader, you know, managing versus leading. And I think there's, you know, I love to say we can manage a flock of sheep, but we need to lead People. Right. We really need to lead people.

And there's a huge difference in there, I think.

So I've heard a lot of people, as well as some really notable leadership management people say there's no difference. I disagree. But I've also heard more say there is. And you know, and, and, and by the way, both are important.

Leaders are important, managers are important. Each have a role. Okay. And there's some overlap, but really, I think leadership's a, A just a different analyst.

It's a difference between mentoring and coaching, if you will. You know, it's. They're. They're cousins, right?

Yes.

Yeah. But when we talk leadership, what we're really talking about is what can you do to. To build others around you.

We're not talking about managing schedules. We're not talking about keeping this here and this there. We're talking about how do you make other people's lives better?

How do you help bring out their best? How do you tap into what drives and motivates them in such a way that you make their lives better and improve the operation of the team itself?

You know, and, and so the, the question I have is, if I'm. If I'm a leader and I'm looking at my team and I need to be that better leader, what is one of the.

What is the first thing I need to do to help lift them up?

Well, I mean, in a sense, although it's always about the other person, we still have to work on ourselves and we've got to become equipped. And I remember in, in my case, you know, when I let. Jumped from sales to a sales.

What they called sales management, but what is really sales leadership, I was not good. I was a good producer. I was a really good salesperson. I had learned sales. I had practiced sales. I had done sales. Right.

Then you go up to sales manager, slash sales leader. Well, now it's a whole different thing. I stunk at it. I was just.

I was horrible.

Okay. So I realized that I did not have the knowledge to do this to myself.

So fortunately, one day, a woman who I was dating, her mom got me a book from John Maxwell. Oh, yeah. And it was called Bill. It was actually, I think it was his third book, Building the Leaders around you. Okay. Now, it was a great book.

But I also knew I needed to get his two books before that, I needed Building the Leader, you know, within you. But his first book, that. Which I think was the third one I read of his was the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.

And his first law, which was the law of the lid, was all about the fact that you can only go so far in leadership as your own personal lid. In other words, you had to improve yourself before you could then lead others with any kind of success.

So that said to me, so I, you know, back then it was cassette tapes. And so I, I subscribed to his maximum impact thing that he had, and I would get his tapes and I get his books and I'd say, right.

And so I just, I, I started to really love just the idea of leadership once I realized how little I knew about it and how much I wanted to, to learn about it.

So I think that first part is, you know, doing an assessment of where you are as a leader right now and, you know, making the point to increase or higher, not higher, improve your lid. Yeah, exactly. Okay, now, you know, so you're doing that.

And now the, the question then becomes, well, how do I make other people's, you know, how do I lead my team in order to make their lives better, to help them? How do I help make their lives better as I tie in, you know, my mission or the company mission with their needs, wants, and desires? Okay.

And that's where the focus has to be on them. You know, Dale Carnegie said something of the many brilliant things he said in his career and in his book how to Win Friends and Influence People.

I think his underlying premise was summarized in, in one statement. And, and Jaclyn, that is where he said, ultimately, people do things for their reasons, not our reasons.

Right.

Okay.

And so I think the number one thing a leader can do when they're in now into that part about building others is, is to ask themselves the question, what do they want to do? What are they looking for? I mean, this is so simple, really. I mean, I, I wish I could say something really profound.

There's nothing profound about yet.

But, Bob, it is in the sense that I think one of the things today, and, and correct me if you're, if, if you, you know, if you think differently, but I think one of the biggest things today is that we forget about the, A lot of times leaders forget about the people or that, that you're on my team, but, and I've hired you, I've brought you in, but do I get to know you? Do I ask that question?

Do I spend the time and say to you, if you're on my team, hey, Bob, you know what your, your job is, blah, blah, blah, whatever that is. And yet I want to be curious, like, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go in your life, where do you see yourself?

What are your dreams and aspirations? And if we don't ask those questions of the people that are in our fold, we have no idea really how to lead them.

Oh, oh, exactly, exactly.

And I think a person who is so wonderful, there's a great friend of mine, Jeff west, he had a wonderful sales career as a salesperson and then as a sales manager leader with a major, major insurance company.

I won't mention the name, but it rhymes with halflac and, and quacks like a duck, you know, but, but, you know, one of the things he talks about is what he called the inverted pyramid. And he says, you know, so many leaders come on as though they're at the top and everyone else, you know it. And he says, no, no, invert that pyramid.

He said, you're the servant leader. You know, you're that person who's there to serve them. And as you know, one of the best ways to serve is to find out, what are their reasons?

What do they want? How can I make their lives better? How do I equip them?

Right.

Again, so, so basic and yet. So.

Yeah, it's so. It is basic, but, you know, and, and you just made me think about.

It's like, you know, if you, if you don't understand servant leadership, think about the server who you absolutely love, the restaurant that you love, and what does that server do? They ask you what they want you. They ask, you know, you ask a question. What kinds of food do you like?

How can I help you steer you in the right direction to this menu? Have you been here before?

You know, and they ask questions so that they can understand what you, what you want as a, as, you know, sitting down at that table, but you don't know unless you ask the questions. So I, I think that's where I feel like we, we. We start to. Leaders today forget to ask those questions.

I think so. And then what do those questions do? When you do it successfully, it leads you to know what they, what they need and how best to equip them.

A couple of great friends of mine, Marnie Stockman and Nick Coliglio, they wrote a great book called Leave It Like Lasso, which was based on the, you know, I don't know if you watch the, the show, if you, if you were.

I love that. I love the show. Great quotes. Like, oh, oh, just brilliant. Yeah, we're talking about not judgmental, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so my favorite scene in the whole thing was when he bought A book for everyone on the team.

And each one of those books was the book that person really needed to. To read.

Right.

And he could only know that through first getting to know them all, observing them, being curious, not judgmental.

Right.

And, and, and then getting them what they need that tied in. You know, he could have gotten everybody the same book and said, here's a great book and everybody. No, but he got everybody individual.

I thought that was brilliant.

You know, is so. It is. It is truly brilliant. And I think, you know, and there's. There. I love that show. It's.

And I'm so happy that it's coming back and there's so many great quotes in it and we've. It's a, It's a, It's a show that I love to repeat, you know, watch again and again.

Not because I know what's happening, but because I love the Nuggets. It's the Nuggets. And it's, It's a great. And so I, My. I've watched it twice with my son, like the, you know, episode.

Oh, good for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you said something also, you know, Dale Carnegie had, you know, great words and, and I love one of the things that he said. And I think this is also kind of key when it comes to leadership is.

And being a great being in that servant role is when you, you want to hire people who are actually smarter than you.

Oh, yeah, right.

That's one that stuck out to me. And that you hire them so that you can help bring them up.

And you've got to remember, in order for you to grow and, and move up, you want to help the other people around you grow and move up.

Right, Right. And you. In. In the culture is one of. Of doing that. Dan Rockwell, who.

Who writes the, the Leadership Freak blog, which I think is in every civilized country there is and some countries that aren't even that civilized and, and they read it everywhere. But one of the things he says is, is be a learn it all, not a know it all.

Yeah.

And when you can have a. When you can create a culture of being learned at alls, you know, now you're really so far ahead of the game.

And as we know, you know, leadership does be. You know, you can, you can lead from anywhere and have a certain amount of influence, but the culture of leader, the culture of a company come at.

Starts at the top and trickles down.

Yeah.

So when you have a leader who is a learn it all and not only talks about it, but actually shows that when they communicate their desire to learn.

Well, now you've got a whole bunch of people who are now looking at that and saying, oh, yeah, okay, that's acceptable, you know, at learning, asking questions, admitting I'm wrong and trying to grow is not something that's punished, it's something that's rewarded, you know.

Right. Key thing, reward. And that's a huge, that's a huge aspect of it, you know, and. You know, you know, I know that. And you.

This is actually in some of the things that you've talked about and I.

One of the things about leading today and people share this and, and I think it's important to kind of bring up is so many people think that they have. Or that, that when they're thinking of serving, it's doing for other people. But in actuality, we're not doing the work for them.

Right, right, right, right, right, right. No, we're equipping. We're, you know, we're creating the environment for them to, to succeed.

And that doesn't happen by just doing the things for them. And that was another thing I had to learn big time.

You know, I was that person who said, no, if it's going to be done right, I'm going to have to do, you know, and you can't grow that way. You cannot scale that way.

And so talk about that a little bit more because they're talking about scaling and leadership and, and where that. Because, because that's also. There's scaling ties when it also ties into burnout or if to helps reduce burnout, too.

Yeah, yeah. Well, when you've got people. And I mean, I'm very fortunate.

And now at this point in my career, in my business, we have, I have, I don't think any employees, but we have a team of people that work with us. So. So yeah, while we're paying them, it's still a volunteer army when you think about it, because it ain't right. So, so right.

Which is, which is wonderful. And we have such wonderful people on, on the team. Okay.

But if I was to try to do what they do and try to do their job, it would, it would not come out right because they're really good at what they do. You know, I'm good at a couple things. Okay.

And I'm, I, I feel very confident with those couple of things, but I'm not confident that I can do a whole bunch of different things because I can't. Can't. Okay. So I've got to be able to, to lead them to understand what it is basically I am looking for and then let them do it.

It means I also have to be unattached to the idea that there will be mistakes made.

Now that's not, that doesn't mean you, you abdicate responsibility for that happening, but it means you've got to be okay with people making mistakes. Okay. And being able to decide first of all what you're going to correct and bring up and what you're not. Okay? Because you have to make the decision.

If I'm too specific about this and it's not a hill worth dying on, it's not a, is that going to discourage them more than encourage them, you know, so you want to make sure when you're going to, to, to respectfully call out on those things that are non negotiable. Right. You can't do that all the time. Right.

It's got to be so that they know, hey, if he's saying this and he's saying this about this specific thing that he was not happy with, okay, it's a big thing.

But if you're picking apart everything they're doing, not only, you know, are you, are you not going to be as effective, but they're going to start walking on eggshells and they're going to be afraid of making mistakes and then they're not going to do the things they do well. Really well. That was tough for me. But I, but I say this as though I was always good at it. I was not. I was not.

This is something I really had to work on because it's like, well, how can you not point it out if it's, you know, how can you not, you know, I was just attached to it having to be perfect and everybody doing things as I would want it to be done. That's not, that's not how you scale.

Right. And key thing that you just said, there's a couple, I think there's a lot of key lessons in there.

It's as, as you said, as I want it to be done, I want.

Right, right.

And so letting people know that they can make mistakes and let them know that, you know, maybe you gave them the procedure of how you have had it done, but they might actually get it done differently, end up with the same outcome or maybe a similar outcome.

And that's still okay because by allowing them to think and, and do it the way that it works best for them, magic can happen and you might find something and learn something new.

Oh, gosh, absolutely. And I, I, I always loved what Zig Ziglar said be, be, be flexible on strategy, but immutable on principle, you know.

And so, you know, so when it comes to the values of the company and what I'm looking to accomplish and what we're looking. No, there's a certain part that, you know, the values are the values and those will not be compromised.

But in terms of the strategy, I had to learn to be flexible.

Yeah.

And that's, you know, I want to actually kind of stick stuff, stay on the values part for a minute because I think that's something that is really important that maybe that, that I have seen. Like, you know, I think about my career. When I first got into the corporate world, I was in magazine publishing.

And I think back to the first company I worked for, I had no idea what the values were. I had no idea what the values of my management team happened to be.

That's something.

Yeah.

I then even the, even the other companies that I went to, I remember one company you saw, if you ever saw the CEO walk in the, walk down the hall, you're like, oh, gotta go. And, and I think about how, like how wrong that is. Right.

And so, you know, and I don't mean that values just, you know, a lot of times what I see happening now is that people will write out their values and the mission of the company.

They put it on a pretty plaque and, or, you know, or they write it down in their, their operating, you know, to create their business plan and then they forget about it. And I think it's, I really truly believe that values have to be front and center.

Absolutely. Robert Glazier.

Bob Glazer does a Friday forward calls it email and he's got a couple books out now and his latest one is on, on, you know, on creating values and so forth. If you get a chance to look him up, I mean he's done some, there, there's a few people actually have done some great work with that.

But he is really, he, he runs a nice sized company in the Boston area, which you and I are both familiar with. And, and, and, and the, the, that, you know, having those values and being able to effectively communicate them is something he has really ma.

Very, very successful. His company is very successful. And I know he credits a lot of it to that.

Yeah. And I think it's so important. Yeah.

So, you know, if I, if you're, if there's a leader today, how do you, what do you think is the best way for them to communicate those values?

Well, they say when you do that, that, you know, that you can't.

They say you can't over communicate them because like an advertising campaign, it takes a while for it to sink in, you know, and I've always thought that advice was pretty good because we know that nobody is thinking about something as important that's important to us as much as we're thinking about something. Right. That's important to us.

So, I mean, the leadership does create the value system and whether it's that one leader or whether that leader was bringing in a, you know, a team around them to determine what, you know, to, to, to communicate, to, if I'm using the right word, demarcate, you know, to, to put those values down on, on paper, you know, and then it's a matter of, of, you know, creating that environment where those leaders are able to continue to, you know, to, to the people who report to them and the people who report to them to make sure those values trickle down. Yeah.

You know, and, and, but again, I, you know, I'm not sure you can, you know, maybe you can over communicate if you're just, you know, saying it, you know, again and again and again and again. But boy, it'd be tough to do, you know, it would be, it would be. But I think it's that combination of speaking it and living it that, you.

Know, is so important. Right. Speaking it and loving it, you know.

You know, Bob, I could talk to you for hours because I think the whole philosophy go givers is so important and to help others.

And you know, I, I've got, I've listened to the series, I've got the endless referrals because I'm like, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big believer in networking. And so I have another company called Missing Link Network. And, and I truly believe that networking is, is not.

And I, I say this to people all the time. If you're walking into a room to network, it's not about you, it's about the other person. What can you do?

Oh, exactly.

Make it about the other person. And don't. And, and not to be the monkey, you know, that's always looking around too.

Right.

You know, be focused on the person that's in front of you.

Yeah. Oh, that's the, you know, that, that's the key. I, you know, I, when people say networking, they have different.

People have different definitions and they're usually unconscious definitions.

But so many people think networking is about, you know, handing out a business card to everybody you meet and saying really clever things like, hey, you know, if you were Somebody, you know, needs a witch. Mahousi. Feel free to call any time. Anyway, any. Danny, hi. You know, and, or let's do lunch, you know, and that's, that's not networking.

That's, that's actually, I'm not sure what that is, but it's not what we would consider networking. Like, like most things, we need to define really what it is.

My personal definition of network, I'm not saying this is the only definition, but it's just mine is simply the cultivating of mutually benefic give and receive, win win relationships. And the emphasis is on the give part. And from that very first moment you meet that person, how do you communicate value to that person?

Well, you become, as you said, making it about them. You're interested in them, you're asking them questions.

Not, not, you know, salesy intrusive, invasive type of questions, but questions in which you ask them about themselves and that they enjoy answering and that they feel good about. And it begins to establish that. So you know, it's all, it's all about how we define and then how we go about living that definition.

Yeah. And it's so true.

And we need to, and that also goes back to, to me, the values is that as the values, each and every one of us has certain values that we embodied and we need to live those. Live those. We don't want to be the used car sales 1. At least no one, I think wakes up thinking I want to be used cards.

Like that kind of what we did think about. Nothing against used car salesman, but, but.

The stereo, the stereotype. The caricature. The caricature, yeah.

The character of that. Right. The crazy avatar of that. Right, right. So, you know, we don't think about that and we want to be that person that people think of.

You want to be the person that we think of. If, you know, you're thinking about, oh, what's a great book to read? Oh, Bob Burke has great books to read or great leadership.

Like who, like you want people to think of you. And a lot of that is just because you make them feel good and, and, and you didn't come at them with a pitch.

Yeah, absolutely. Sure. Yeah.

So Bob, what's. What's next on your agenda? What's. You know, and what is the best way for people to connect with you and, and, and besides going to your website?

Because we know that we got to go to. We gotta. You guys all need to go to get, get his daily email.

Well, thank you. Yeah, that, you know, that's pretty much the best place to. To find me this Burg. Burg, excuse me dot com.

So yeah, and again, I wish you wonderful success with your new book. I just love the idea of it and I just, wow, excited for you. I know you're gonna do great things with that.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Well listeners, if you have gotten value out of this as I'm sure you have, please do me two favors. One is hit.

Subscribe to the podcast number two, please go to Bob Burg's website berg.com and subscribe to his daily email and connect with him. And if you have not read all of his books, do me a favor, go on to Amazon. They actually have a whole gift set of them. Get that, get that thing.

I'm going to put a link in the show notes on that too.

Thank you. That's very kind.

Thank you so thank you so much Bob for being an amazing guest and thank you listeners. This is the unstoppable leadership spotlight where we hear from game changing leaders and their remarkable insights. So thank you so much.