In this episode of the Pipelineology podcast, host Gary interviews Robert Heath Sr., founder, CEO, and Chief Vision Officer of Legacy Leadership Consulting Group. Robert shares his extensive background, from teaching and military service to founding his leadership consulting firm. He discusses key elements of effective leadership, including examining expectations, proper delegation, and developing an empowering environment. Robert also introduces his book, 'Why Can't People Just Do Their Jobs?' and explains how the Legacy Leadership Lab helps middle managers become effective problem solvers. Tune in to learn valuable leadership strategies and insights.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:23 Casual Conversation and Weather Talk

01:05 Robert Heath Sr.'s Background and Career Journey

03:35 Leadership Lessons from the Marine Corps

04:51 Founding the Legacy Leadership Consulting Group

09:44 Differences Between Good and Bad Leaders

10:41 Becoming a Better Leader

12:25 The Empower Method and Leadership Tips

15:31 Practical Leadership Examples

17:25 Handling Office Requests and Delegation

18:57 Understanding Team Potential and Overcoming Anxieties

19:49 The Fork in the Road Dilemma

20:48 Listening and Addressing Obstacles

23:45 The Empower Method: Steps to Effective Leadership

27:17 Teaching Problem Solving and Leadership

30:33 Legacy Leadership Lab and Final Thoughts

[00:00:21] Robert Heath: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here. Gary.

[00:00:34] Robert Heath: Yeah, yeah, we just got about, 16 inches of snow over the last two weeks, so

[00:00:47] Robert Heath: Yeah, I got a couple of clients out there, out that side. They were like, really? It's bad. Like, here. Lemme show you a picture.

[00:01:02] Robert Heath: Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:16] Gary Ruplinger: I know for anybody who's not familiar with you, would love to kind of start there and we can, we can go from that.

Some people may say, I have career ADD, I'll let you decide. But I went first. To figure out, you know, how to help. And I became a teacher. I, I was a Spanish teacher for six years, coached basketball, taught Latin dance, did a whole bunch of different things in the school system. Was a school improvement team coordinator and was on the superintendent track.

I remember seeing a superintendent at the time, I was, teaching and coaching in Memphis City School system, which was one of the 20th largest school districts in the country. And I saw a superintendent come in who was qualified, who was capable, who had already turned school districts around before. I got a up close and personal view of what it looks like when someone has lofty ideas and, and, and, and, and, and really a great vision, but isn't able to lead people.

And I, like I said, I was school improvement team coordinator. I was a union rep. I was in all the meetings, I was doing the things. For those of you all that have kids, if you ever see those, those, those posters up around the schools that are like an acronym and they have all these nice words. Yeah. I was the guy that was building those posters and doing that type of stuff.

Like I was all involved. Right. And I got to see how that superintendent was not able to actually turn the people and the people, the, the teachers, the community, everything pushed back and that that superintendent actually wound up getting pushed out of the community. I realized I needed to understand a lot more about leadership if I was gonna try to make a change.

And so there were two things that I decided to go study in what I call my, my leadership sojourn. Number one, I wanted to understand. The levers of power. I wanted to understand the law and how our society ran, where people got power from, how we made rules, how we made laws, how we made change. And so I went and I studied and I got my, my juris doctorate degree at the University of Illinois.

And did a lot of work as the dean's fellow and, and real estate development and, And in sustainable energy law, understanding how to, build sustainable communities, green communities. And then I also went to the greatest leadership training academy, I feel like on the face of the planet, United States Marine Corps.

But it was a great learning experience. I learned a lot. I was able to be a defense counsel while I was in the military and do a lot working in the justice system in the military. But then I was also able, because in the Marine Corps as officers, we are line officers as well as lawyers. So I was able to command a company during that period of time, had a company of about 220 Marines and sailors that then turned into

I had a couple of different leadership, billets. I was the, the chief Civil Law Officer for the Eastern, part of the United States for the Marine Corps as well. And so there were some of the things that we were doing there. And when I got out of Marine Corps, I had I, I felt better at understanding leadership, but not only understanding leadership.

I was really good at teaching and helping other people to become better leaders. And so that's when I decided to start the Legacy Leadership Consulting Group, and that's how we get to today.

[00:05:21] Robert Heath: Well, there was, there was a, there was a couple of things. I think the, the biggest thing, like I said, I was on a leadership sojourn and I, I had been reading a number of different books. I had heard a bunch of different things, right? Memphis is, is the hub of and home of FedEx. Fred Smith is a, a former Marine,

and I had read a number of books from Robert Kiyosaki. He talked about the learnings, the leadership learning that he had in the Marine Corps. He was a former Marine Corps Hilo pilot. Robert Kiyosaki, for those of you all that may not know, he is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, and, Cashflow Quadrant, number of other books.

And so that was something that. I really wanted to understand leadership and learn, and I, I heard that they were the best. And so that was it. Plus it was gonna be a challenge. It was something that I wanted, to challenge myself and to be able to say that I had done something, with my life, those types of things.

So all of those wrapped in together made my decision to go to the Marine Corps.

[00:06:36] Robert Heath: Oh, definitely, definitely. I, I, I think I learned so many lessons and the things that we do now, really, and it was really interesting. I think me being a teacher before I went into the Marine Corps, I was able to go in with a different eye because I was intentionally learning how to be a leader, but not just learning how to be a leader.

But paying attention to what was the difference between good leaders and bad leaders? There was a lot of things in the Marine Corps where you got to see people do it the right way, but you also gotta see people do it the wrong way. You gotta see the consequences of the wrong way and how it impacted people.

Like I said, the first two years I was in the Marine Corps in active duty, I was a defense counsel, so my job was to defend Marines who were accused of wrongdoing. Now, I had my fair share of guilty marines, let's be clear. But I also had a 70% acquittal rate of the cases that I took to trial. Because I was one of those attorneys, I was a officer of the law.

I'm an officer of the court. I'm also a Marine Corps officer, so right. I swore to defend Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic as well. And so when people will come into my office, my first thing that I'm looking at is, first of all, did you do it? Because if you did it as Marines, honor, courage, and commitment is what we need to deal with.

We need to deal with your lack of discipline, your issue before we start talking about. You know, what does the punishment look like? Because for my clients, I always wanted them to know that they were getting the best situation for them. It wasn't just can they prove it? Can that that's, that, that, that wasn't my position.

But then when I had clients that had literally not done what they were accused of, now it's a, it is a miscarriage of justice. The system isn't working. And so it was, it, it was incumbent upon me to move that. And so in the Marine Corps, one of the things that I saw was. As a defense counsel, I got to see when the system doesn't work and how it affects people.

I had clients who had to wait a year and a half, two years, six months as the accused before they were acquitted. And the interesting thing about it is, right, when you're in an organization where your three core values are honor, courage, and commitment, it's more than just a little something when somebody accuses you of something that's dishonorable, right?

It's more than just a little something when somebody accuses you of, of, of breaking the law. And I thought that that was just, it was one of the things that, that, that really hurt my heart. So I got to see it from that perspective. But then I got to go on the other side of the table when I was a company commander.

Now I'm in the room when we're deciding how to deal with things. I had to fire marines. I had to discipline marines. I had to be in, in those conversations. And I felt like I brought a different eye to those conversations. because I understood the others, the, the, the other side. I understood the fallout plus I understood the law.

And in being able to see those vantage points, I also saw the struggles that a lot of leaders had when they didn't have that information. And so largely that helped me to really move into teaching leadership because not only was I able to do it, and I was a, I received the Navy, Marine Corps accommodation medal for my time as a company commander, and, did a, did a number of different things.

I got to see. I was able to help others be better leaders, and that's really what the mission of the Legacy Leadership Consulting Group is. We really work to help leaders see and develop the greatness that's in their team so that they can help ordinary people do extraordinary things.

[00:09:53] Robert Heath: Yeah, I think there's, there's two different kind of streaks if you wanna talk about a bad leader. Generally, I think a bad leader is selfish. I think a bad leader is someone who is in, in, in, in really looking for power and control and authority. They're not looking for. Helping people to be better, helping to get things done right.

My thing, A good leader, good leaders get things done. Good leaders edify, build up, encourage, empower, and so the biggest difference is if you are a leader and you're wondering, am I a good leader? Am I a bad leader? The first question you have to ask yourself is, why are you in charge of the people you're in charge of?

Are you in charge of them so that you can get what you want? Or are you in charge of them so that you can help them get what they want?

[00:10:59] Gary Ruplinger: They just, yeah, I'm gonna start a, I'm gonna start a company and

You're really good at doing your job. Would you mind taking these other four people who aren't really good at doing their job and helping them to be more like you? And of course, that then puts us in a situation where it's like, wait a minute, I don't have the skills to make them better. I'm barely good at making me good.

Right? The. Most leaders, I, I am, I'm a, I'm firmly convinced that most leaders are good people trying to do the right thing, but sometimes they're using the wrong tools and then they default back to their kind of fear setting. They default back to their Let me not get fired setting. And so one of the things that we try to do at Legacy is we really try to help leaders to see what it could be like if you are actually the leader that you need to be for this team, right?

It's not about the hands you're dealt, it's about how you play the cards. And we really believe that while everybody may not be. A fit for your team. Everybody has greatness within them, and so your job as a leader is to quickly be able to discern whether or not this person's greatness is a fit for your team, or whether we need to liberate them back to the marketplace and let them be great somewhere else, right?

Transition into those empowering leaders who actually get the best out of other people instead of just take everything on their back and do everything right. You, you know, those team members that, that generally when they were in school and they were in group projects, the the group got an A, but that's because they took the whole project and did it themselves.

The group didn't actually do anything. Right. That's most of our experience with working with groups. We just take over all of the extra work, but. Once you get to the point where you are actually a leader, where you're actually necessary, the thing that you have to realize is whatever it is you're trying to do is actually bigger than you.

If they need a leader, it's because it's bigger than one person doing it needs a team and. You can do so much more if you can actually get that team to, to make it happen. So the book that I wrote is called Why Can't People Just Do Their Jobs? Because that's a question that I had constantly gotten from a lot of my coaching clients.

And really what I do in that book is I break down a seven step program that's, that's called the Empower Method, where you actually can move from being an executive type doer. Doer, I'm sorry, an executive type leader, more of a doer. Move to being an empowering leader, where you're getting the best out of other people and helping them to become problem solvers instead of you.

Could you kind of maybe kind of cover some of that,

We then expect that they just can turn that potential into energy right now. And so we have these expectations. Someone who has never run a mile can run a 5K in a week, and it's like, hmm, it's gonna take a little bit longer. Now here's the thing, it's not gonna take a lot longer, but it's just gonna take a little bit longer.

So you have to examine your, your expectations and see whether or not they're reasonable, whether they're rational. And what I generally tell people is you have to begin to develop short-term expectations, midterm expectations, and long-term expectations. When you can look at your team and see what your team is capable of with just a little bit of priding right now, that's what you can now hold them accountable for.

Now, when you're looking at midterm or you're looking at long term, you need to think of what are the obstacles that are in their way from being able to do that? And what I tell leaders most often is, you need to stop being the chief problem solver in your organization and start being the chief obstacle remover.

[00:15:30] Robert Heath: No problem. Yeah. And, and, and, and just to give you, give you a, a kind of example, right. I remember when I was, company commander and I was commander of a, headquarters support company, which means that there were a lot of units that were. Technically attached to my unit, technically underneath me, but they actually reported directly for their operational capacity to the commanding general of the base.

I was that kind of dotted line guy that technically they could tell me to go and pound sand if they wanted to, but my boss was their boss, right? So I could go talk to my boss and then they get in trouble. It was one of those types of things. And so in our office I had a staff and I would. Give them the task of the day, what they were supposed to be doing.

But then sometimes, every once in a while, a major, a lieutenant colonel will come in the office and they would want something stacked right away. We need it done. Now, if I'm not in the office, my team is now stuck figuring out do they make me upset by shifting the plan of the day, or do they make this major who outranks me upset by telling them no?

because the captain said no. Right. And initially I was frustrated because they kept deferring to the upper rank, but I realized that is actually the best thing for them to do in a vacuum. They're keeping me out of trouble and they're keeping themselves out of trouble, but I needed them to not do that.

because oftentimes they were deferring to something that I would've been comfortable telling that person. No. And so what I had to do is I had to give them a different system so that they could be successful. I had to give them what they needed to say to the people that came in and asked for that. And so initially I talked to my staff sergeant.

I said, Hey, here's the deal. This is the plan today. These are the things that I need you to get done. because this is in my larger plan that they know nothing about. You stick on this. If somebody comes in the office and asks you for anything, you feel free to tell them, this is what you gotta get done. This is our normal standard procedure, et cetera.

And if they keep pushing you get me on the phone, you let them know, Hey, I can call the the skipper right now. I'll let them know whatever you need, and then you can talk to him. 70% of the people that we're pushing and uga, uga, we need to get this done. As soon as they said they were gonna call me, guess what happened?

[00:17:52] Robert Heath: Oh, don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. You just go ahead, get to me soon as you can, staff Sergeant. Which is what I knew because they were just trying to do something. Because I wasn't in the office. It's not, they were nefarious, they were bad. They were, they were using the tools they had available to them. The other people that get on the phone,

again, 90% of them don't really need it expedited once I explained to them that our system is the fastest way that it's gonna get done. What you think is expedite is expediting, isn't actually expediting. It's just us looking fast in front of you, so your thing can go wait over there. Right. And once they understood that, then they were fine.

He understood the system better, but that took a little bit of time for him to see it work before he was comfortable using that tool himself. And so that's kind of what I would recommend to, to, to, to anybody that's, that's wondering why their team might be underperforming right now, oftentimes our expectations of what they're capable of doing are much higher because we see their potential and we have to remember that they don't know what they're capable of.

[00:19:35] Gary Ruplinger: To how, how do you

What I, I like to call this the, the fork in the road dilemma, right? While you're in the car, they will always go right at the in the road. because that's the way they're supposed to go. But as soon as you get out of the car, they're gonna go left. because that's their default. That's where they always go. And if you are the type of leader where everything works when you are around and then when you're on vacation or when you go away, everything goes, you know, haywire. This is the reason why. because you have taught your people to do the right thing when you are around. When you have to developer systems that your people understand how to do the right thing and are comfortable doing the right thing when you are not around.

Because.

We're, we're giving orders, we're giving information. But it's really important as a leader when something's not working for you to realize that whatever the obstacle is, is. Definitely not obvious to you. Otherwise you'd be addressing it. Right, and so one of the reasons why the book was titled, why Can't People Just Do Their Jobs was One, because that's a question that a lot of people have, but it's also the red flag to every leader that if you are wondering why somebody can't do their job, you actually need to answer that question. And the best way to get the answer to that question is to ask the person.

Why didn't you do this? You idiot. That's not a good idea. Right? You probably shouldn't do it, right? Why are we still waiting here? You idiot. No, just not, not, not a good thing, right? What's taking so long? You idiot. Not a good question, right? But if you can actually be curious and say, Hey, what's keeping you from being able to do this?

This is exactly what I had to do with my staff sergeant And I say, Hey, what's happening when. I leave the office and you and, and then you don't get the plan of the day done. He's like, well sir, somebody will come in and this will happen. And he explained the system and as soon as he explained it, I was like, that makes sense.

If I was you, I would probably be doing the same thing. In that situation, I wouldn't do the same thing as me, but you are not me. You don't have the same authority that I have. You didn't go through the same things that I did. You didn't get appointed company commander like I did. You are the staff sergeant.

If I was a staff sergeant with none of the authority that the captain has, I would've probably done the same thing. And so now let me re-envision what my expectations are because I was expecting you to act like a captain instead of expecting you to act like a staff sergeant and me to give you the leeway that you needed to be the best staff sergeant you could be.

[00:23:45] Robert Heath: Yeah, so I'll run through the really quickly, the seven steps just so that everybody's got them. So it spells out em Empower E-M-P-O-W-E-R, right? So the first one, like we said, is examine and evaluate your expectations. The second thing is you have to measure their expectations. Like I was telling you, most people don't understand what they're capable of.

They don't know. because they've never done it, but we've seen ourselves fail at it enough times that we know that you don't have to be as good as you think you need to be. Just, just right here, you'll be fine. Right. So the M is manage their expectations. The P is then, use proper delegation, right?

You've got to use the proper delegation principles and a lot of people don't delegate properly, and that's why they wind up getting so frustrated and so stressed. Then the O is you gotta optimize your environment for growth. What does that mean? You've gotta set up an environment where it's okay for people to fail because failure is actually a stepping stone.

To growth, you have to have a growth mindset and realize that they're learning, they're, the, the, the failures that they're going to have are gonna be your biggest opportunities to help them rethink what they thought worked and then get them to discover what actually works and that's how they grow. So, E-M-P-O, W is you have to watch and learn.

You have to give them the opportunity to try. And fail, and you get to then learn where their obstacles are. because those are the things that you can't see until they start making the mistakes. You don't know what's keeping them from being successful until you watch them. I always say we as human beings are really great leaders.

Every one of us, right? Especially those of you all that are parents. I want you to think about how you taught your children to walk. Now, here's something that no one ever did and was successful at teaching their kid to walk. No, no, no, no. You can't do it that way. You gotta put your left foot in front of your right foot and you gotta move here.

And every time you gotta make sure you balance your weight and you gotta have it 50 50 ratio. Did no parent ever successfully, right? But instead, no. What do we do when we, when kids are learning to walk, we, first of all, we demonstrate walking, so they get to see it. Second, we create an environment. This is the optimizing your environment for growth, right?

We create an environment where there's no catastrophic failure. We move all of the knives and sharp things and corners and edges, and we cover up the plug outlets. We make sure the kids can't kill themselves. And then we let them explore. And when they fall down, we encourage them for having tried. We get them back up and we tell them to keep going.

Great job. And they get nothing but encouragement for doing what they're supposed to do. We don't even pay attention to the falls because we know that the falls have nothing to do with the walking except for helping them to learn that it's part of the process. And amazingly, everybody's kids learn to walk. Without any formal training in walking. Isn't that amazing? Right. That's the type of leadership that we have and that's why the W stage you have to watch and you have to learn how to lead them better, which then takes you into the last three, right? Or the last two. So we have the second E, which is engage their inner problem solve.

Instead of you being the problem solver, instead of you being the one with a solution, what you want to do is be a great question asker. You want to engage their mind and help them to discover the solution to their problem that you already know exists. Because here's the key thing as a leader, that you need to know.

As long as you are the answer person, they will never be able to do things without you. You will never be able to go on vacation. You'll never be able to take a sick day. You'll never be able to leave the office because as soon as you leave, the answers have left. But when you can engage their inner problem solver, when you get them used to, when you are around solving their own problems, guess what they do when you're not around?

They ask themselves the same questions that you would ask them if you were there. And now you have a group of problem solvers instead of just problem spotters. So then the last thing that we put in our empower method is R. You have to reinforce and reward what you want to continue. So many leaders are really good at pointing out what's messed up, but what we've learned from educational development psychology is that positive reinforcement is the best behavior modification tool known to man.

It's a lot easier for my brain to figure out, do this thing again. When I get a reward for doing this thing the first time, it's a lot harder to figure out what the good thing is when you just tell me about the bad things. Right. It's like that person that you've been with in the car or whatever, and you said, man, I'm hungry.

And they're like, yeah, I'm hungry too. Let's get something to eat. You pick and you say, Hey, how about, how about you get burgers? They're like, well, no, no, I don't really want a burger. I had a burger yesterday, and they're like, all right, let's go get some steaks. Well, no, I'm not really trying to do red meat right now.

That's it. You know, and like I said in the book, it goes into depth with that. And, and that's a lot of what we teach leaders. how to move from being kind of a doer to more of an empowerer. Someone who can walk away in your team is actually able to act for you where right, the definition of the word empower is to enable someone to act and make decisions on your behalf.

And that's what we really wanna be as leaders.

[00:30:14] Robert Heath: No problem. It's called Why can't People just do their jobs? It's available on Amazon. and it's the, the, the subtitle is the, the Empowering Leader's Guide to Getting More Done With Less Stress and Getting the Best Out of Everybody that you lead.

[00:30:46] Robert Heath: Yeah, I appreciate that question. Well, we, we, we work with companies all the way from kind of small business owners up to, billion dollar corporations. Really what we're focusing on our sweet spot this year. One of the things that we're really trying to, that, that we're really in, in love with is this program that we've launched called the Legacy Leadership Lab.

And you know, one of the things that we've seen working with a number of my C-Suite clients is that a lot of executive leaders are struggling with their middle management. They've got a lot of middle managers who have come up through the ranks as good producers, as good, workers. And again, they're those professionals that were good at what they did, but now they're in charge of other people.

And they're the bottlenecks, right? They can't get decisions made. They come with ideas. They're great, what we call problem spotters. They're great at saying, Hey, here's a problem and here's an idea. Can we do it? But. Anybody that's a decision maker, especially a p and l stakeholder, knows that it's not a question of can we do it?

It's a question of should we do it and why should we do it? Right? And that's the part that they wind up having a problem with. And so what winds up happening is they get this stack of ideas that they've already got to deal with, and then their problem spotters bring them a bunch of other ideas, and they're not vetted, they're not actionable.

But then the problem spotters are getting frustrated because they're like, they never listen to us. They never do what we're talking about. And so we developed the Legacy Leadership Lab really to deal with those two problems, to teach these problem spotters, how to actually become problem solvers. So we teach them structured problem solving and how to make problems happen.

I mean, how to make solutions happen. But then we also teach them how to articulate their solutions and their process in a way that moves p and l stakeholders to action so that they're no longer the one who knows what should happen, but can't convince anybody else because we believe that being right isn't good enough if you aren't right.

And able to get other people to act differently because you're right then your being right doesn't impact the world. And so the Legacy Leadership Lab is designed to help those, those, those middle management problem spotters turn into problem solvers, turn into value ads for the organization. So anybody that's interested in that you can hear more about the program at our website is tll cg.com.

Again, the Legacy Leadership Consulting Group, our acronym is TLLCG.com. You go on there, there's a couple videos, couple case studies, and if you're interested in the program, you can apply. We have a, we have an application process because we wanna make sure that the program is actually valuable for your organization.

And so we're, we solve certain types of problems if you have a six figure problem or more, that's what we're looking to solve, with this program so that you get all the value that you need out of it.

[00:33:20] Robert Heath: Do Their Job"

[00:33:31] Robert Heath: Yes, sir.

[00:33:36] Robert Heath: Appreciate you having me.

[00:33:43] Robert Heath: All right. Thank you, brother. Take it easy and make sure you be blessed by the best.