Purposeful Leadership! Feat. Eddie Turner

Authentic Leadership podcast, A podcast we're seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand we are also here as a platform for leaders to come together to unite, to develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette Lane, joined by my co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest, Eddie Turner. He has joined us to have a amazing conversation around purposeful leadership. Eddie Turner is an in-demand leadership development expert. He is the changing the face of leadership and as a principal consultant and executive coach for Linkage Inc., a boutique international leadership development firm. And he is also a certified speaking professional and ranked number six on the top 30 list of motivational speakers by global gurus. Forbes recognized Eddie as the preeminent authority on emerging leaders. He is also ranked as a top 25 thought leader in leadership by Thinkers 360. He is also a certified trainer and master facilitator. He has joined us right here today on the Unscripted, Authentic Leadership podcast. Eddie, thanks for coming on. Lafayette. Thank you for having me and for that wonderful introduction. It's wonderful to be here with you and John, who I've been communicating with a lot, so it's a pleasure to see you and meet you both. And just wonderful to be here. Absolutely, absolutely. Let's get right to the conversation. We're talking about purposeful leadership, and that is your expertize. That is your your background and really what you thrive in talking about. Can you explain to our audience just a working definition of what we're talking about, what we say? Purposeful leadership? Absolutely. Well, I must start off by saying that I'm becoming more of an expert in purposeful leadership. I was an independent consultant leadership consultant for the last eight years and over. About a year prior, I started to work with an organization called Linkage Linkage Inc. because I met the CEO, Jennifer McCullough, and I was immediately fascinated because the company's tagline is changing the face of leadership and the number one way that linkage is changing the face of leadership is with their proprietary leadership framework, purposeful leadership. And essentially, it is exactly the way it sounds. It's on purpose. It's not by accident. It's not through happenstance. Purposeful leadership is about waking up every day with the intention of leading and leading in a very specific way. Amazing, amazing. And so we have purposeful leaders that we have purpose, we have that intentionality. I love that word intention. We talk about a lot about that on the podcast. How important is it for leaders to be intentional in everything that they do as leaders in order to be successful? It is critically important. If we don't have purpose, then we can. We just kind of going with the flow as it were. For example, many people have set New Year's resolutions. Well, if there isn't any purpose behind it, if they're not being intentional, they're looking up and seeing that, hey, it's January the 20th, the month almost over. If I haven't gotten started, I better get started, right? So when you're talking about being purposeful, intentional, you're talking about waking up every day and having an intentional list that you're looking at specific list rather that you're looking at, you're looking at it and saying, how can I measure up? How did I do yesterday? How can I do better today? What would I do with this tomorrow? There are five specific commitments that we look at that makes a leader potential that makes a leader purposeful. So, yeah, if you if you don't have something that you're directing, then you kind of just being driven by the wind as it were. And that won't get anything done. And that is not something that's sustainable for yourself as an individual or for organizations. So you said that purposeful leadership. You have a framework, is that correct? Did I say that right? Yes, we have a framework. Can you expand on that? And I should have had this open, but one of the books behind me, your book called Become the five commitments of purposeful leadership. And essentially, what took place is linkage has for the last 30 years issued assessments to and worked with over 1 million Fortune 500 leaders issued over 100,000 assessments at these data points. And the CEO about five years ago decided, Hey, listen, why not? We've been teaching these other leadership frameworks. Everybody has a framework that they use and leadership, right? But they decide this CEO decided, let's take this. Let's risk research what we've learned from assessing all these top leaders around the globe and see what really is making people successful. And out of that was born this purposeful leadership framework. So there's this empirical body of evidence of this is what works and the five commitments that lead to it is, number one, inspiring. Our research shows that purposeful leaders who are the most successful, they lead by being inspirational. You have to have the ability as a leader to motivate people. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you're a charismatic speaker, but what is it that you do with your life? What is it that you are saying? What is it about your work ethic? In whatever way you can be inspiring? Can you be inspiring? Now, in many cases, it does involve how you speak. So one of the one of the commitments we talk about when we're talking about being inspirational is communicating evocatively. Because that is what gets people going. That is what breathe life into an individual, and it's not just about sometimes we think about leading about leading those that are that report to us from a reporting structure. Many times you must be inspiring to those who are your peers in an organization. Because in our workforce today, we are working across geographic boundaries, working across departments. And so you need to be able to influence those who you don't have a direct reporting relationship with, right? They have just as much authority as you do. How can you get things done through them? And of course, the ability to inspire those above you. You need to be able to get executive teams leadership to buy into ideas and do things that they might not otherwise be willing to do or not. But for your words of inspiration, your your inspirational actions, and that is what moves companies forward. What's your inspirational thing, you're able to engage people so many times leaders get promoted because they were an incredible individual contributor. They were the smartest. The brightest. They will. We will get things done. But it comes to a point that they realize that wait a minute, I'm a leadership now. Hmm. You can't continue to do things yourself. You're going to burn out. You need to get things done through other people by engaging them. There are three other commitments, but I'll stop there. Oh no. Please give us the other three. You don't mind. Absolutely. So once you've been engaging, then you're able to be innovative and every organization must have innovation. If you don't innovate, you will die. We have so many examples of that. And so you must continue to come up with not necessarily always new products, but is a new way of thinking. Is it a new way of getting things done in an organization? New processes, new procedures, so innovation. And then, of course, achieve your able to achieve things if you're leading in this way. Now these are all external to the leader, but no one outside inspiration that we see leaders who are really purposeful and successful within organizations is to become commitment. OK, now we can see the other, the other commitments, but we don't know how a person is becoming a leader on the inside. So leadership is an inside out game. We can't leave with someone else with something we don't have inside. And if we try, we may be successful for a brief time, but eventually. It comes out who in fact, sometimes you may say, well, that's not really who I am. That action that I just committed. Hmm. No, if you did it, that's who you are, right? And as my friend Sean do Iran would say, she's a seven time Emmy Award winner who you are anywhere is who you are everywhere. Mm hmm. So it's important that great leaders start on the inside and work their way out. So those are be the five commitments to purposeful leadership. Hmm. Wow. So you mentioned that last one, you said become that caught my attention because obviously we're huge on personal development. It's it's been a milestone since I for me since I was 21 years old and a life a game changer for just myself reading, listening, attending anything that could help me become a better dad, a better business partner or better husband. All of those things. A lot of a lot of corporate America, as you mentioned. Do you get hired because they were the best doer in their position and then they get hired? I've seen it. I was in it. And then they get they get the promotion, and now they go from the doer to the should be the leader. How does that person prepare themselves in the becoming stage ahead of time? Because often I find they haven't. They've just been grinding it out and they're just great sort of worker bees, in a sense. And then once they get there, the fastest at this, the best at that one, one thing, but they've never had to lead an individual person just themselves. How did how did what can they do to kind of make that next step, ideally ahead of time? Well, John, you're absolutely right. In fact, Jim Quess and Barry Posner and their work, the leadership challenge that they reported and that landmark book that the average leader has worked in a leadership position for ten years before they received any kind of formal leadership training. So you're right. Yes, that person moves from door to a leadership role supervisor manager in sometimes even much higher. And they never received any for to any formal training. So the number one thing I would say we can do is give people training on what is the right thing to do. Otherwise they're just trying to figure it out and think about all the carnage you're leaving behind as you're practicing leadership, truly practicing, trying to figure it out. The other thing obviously I'd say is the executive coaches give them a coach because even great athletes, the greatest among us all have coaches, and that's because you can't see your own blind spots. And so giving these leaders coaching it helps them to develop uniquely on their own as opposed to what might happen in the classroom with a number of other individuals. Eddie, we are in an accelerated environment, right? Not just work wise, but just globally, everything is always fast moving at a fast pace. And as leaders, we always have, as you mentioned, the innovative we have to stay on the cutting edge. But what are some principles? What are some ways? What are some keys as leaders that we can accelerate the performance and drive impact to those that we are leading? We accelerate performance and drive impact, which is the tagline I was using before joining linkage. It's my personal tagline is that number one you must continue to put into yourself. So my own way of accelerating impact is I make a certain amount of my income, take a certain amount of my income every year and invest in developing Eddie Turner because again, I can't give out what's what I don't have. So new knowledge, new skills, new tools, because as society is moving so fast, so quickly, it's malpractise as a leadership developer to try to live off what I learned ten years ago. Things change, I need to change, I need to update my thinking, needs to change. What is the latest skills, the latest technologies, the latest thinking, even as I said, with linkage. They have been working for 30 years, it realized. Yes, we've used these theories. They've been great. But what will help us for the next five years, ten years, develop leaders of the future? So we needed a new body of research, and now that's what linkage is offering. So not resting on our laurels, not getting complacent is, I'd say, the number one thing that we must do. one other thing I'd say is leakage in their body. Work found that purposeful leaders were also inclusive leaders. Today, it's no longer enough to have a team that looks just like us. You know, you look at you to your great partners and you're putting great work into the world. You're in 36 countries and 375 different cities with an incredible demographic of people that tune into this podcast that you're producing, but you are different. The diversity of this team is reflected in who you're reaching, and so inclusive leaders are purposeful leaders and purposeful leaders are inclusive. Homogenous teams are outperformed every single time with more diverse teams because there's different perspectives, just different thoughts that allow you to make a better product that allow you to make more holistic decisions. And so organizations of the future are recognizing that it's important to do more than lip service, to inclusion, to diversity. How can they be intense? We've been talking a lot about this and a lot of conversations about being more intentional about it, not just happenstance. Oh, look, we happened to hire who he thinks the best candidate for whatever and added to our diversity portfolio. And I think that's a terrible way of saying it. But that's the best word I can come up with. How can someone be, though more intentional about it, to really understand how an inclusive and more diverse team can? And I love how you said it. New perspectives for developing products and so forth. But how can they be more intentional in developing that? Well. Many organizations have tried to take that approach from a. An enforcement perspective compliance. We're going to roll out a diversity inclusion program. Everybody is going to take it and we're all going to check the box. Yeah, it's mandatory. Where has that got us? It's not working, and it's because people are doing it because they have to, so we don't get sued. But what really has to happen is something that you can't legislate. It has to happen from the heart. Mm hmm. So how do we get people to really feel differently so that they think differently? And one of the things that we're doing at linkage, if I might say, is, you know, like to just even share this with you, if I may. You know, when you are running a program called Leading with Superpowers and Symphony the heart of inclusion, why do we call it that? Because it must start in the heart of each individual leader. Each leader must be able to change internally. And this is a program we are offering as an eight week version, a six week version. That's a public offering. And it's going to be something that people can bring it to their organization. And when you go through this program, in fact, we're even teasing that out as a 50% off discount right now. But when you go through this program, you will be differently and think differently and be different. And one of the reasons why we call it superpowers and symphony is because when you think about a symphony or a band, you think about different instruments, you think about people that are playing this and you think about, you know, I'm a sax player. I love playing my saxophone as a solo artist. But I also like getting with the band and grooving with the band. And I must play differently when I'm with the band and I'm when I'm with myself. But, you know, sometimes with certain bands, you know, when it's jazz, I can improvise, I can go off script, I have to play what's written. And that's a wonderful thing. But sometimes that's not in an organization. So how do we tip people who have the ability to improv and celebrate their uniqueness and learn about it and use it? And I tell them, Hey, no, no, no play what's written? Right. Sometimes we push those people out of organizations and then they go out and start a new organization, become our competitor. So how do you celebrate that internally and in use that to be more innovative inside your organization? So understanding everyone's unique music that they're playing, bringing it together so that it creates a beautiful symphony. So starting at the heart, understanding each individual player, using each, each player to their potential. You know, sometimes the violins are going to play a little softer, but we can still let them be loud and be showcased. The drummer who's always playing, keeping the beat, sometimes we let them have a solo spot. And that's what this is about. How do we do this inside of organizations? That's what this program teaches, and I think that's something your audience will benefit from. Mm-Hmm. Absolutely. Now, for the month of February, we are having we're at a series called Black Excellence. We know February is usually entitled Black History, which is great. But oftentimes the message of what black history was really meant to embody gets lost as this of as if it's a thing of the past. And so we retitled it revamped. They called Black Excellence, but we know excellence doesn't just belong to the black community. We want to highlight that this, but we know excellence, is a principal and an act that we all can walk in and our purpose. And so your example of excellence and I want you to really tell our audience, explain to our audience how you felt layered, what living a life of excellence really means to you. Well, thank you, Lafayette. Living a life of excellence means something different to everyone. But I'll tell you, you're thinking about just this week's activities. You know, you're starting the week off. This is Martin Luther King Day and just what it took for it to become Martin Luther King Day. You know, so for me, it just was a day of kind of even just reflecting, you know, I'm very privileged to be where I'm at. I'm sitting where my father grandfather could have never imagined to be sitting and so many others and. You know, what they might have called excellence was the best they could do at the time, they were not given opportunities. So with whatever opportunities we have, what are we doing with them? What are we doing to help other people get the opportunities that they might not have otherwise? So having a set of values, a set of core values that we operate from as an individual and then sticking to them and having a fidelity, a loyalty to them no matter what, because there's always going to be someone something that circumstances temptations, whatever may be, they come up and try to pull us outside of that. So having a set of core values living by those modeling excellence in whatever way we can and then whatever our personal narrative is, whatever our historical family narrative is or cultural narrative is, are we living in a way that would honor those in our lineage where they could look back and look down and say, you know, I'm proud of what you're doing? Hmm. Very cool. I was speaking of excellence and achievement and so forth. You recently were voted number 32 on the 2022 power list of the top 200 biggest voices in leadership to watch. And you just got this, OK? Can you talk to that a little bit? Yes, that was quite a surprise. I received that yesterday. Not even like you're one 99, you know, 32. I mean, I take 200, but that's what I said. Actually, I was surprised where I landed. I would have been happy about number 200. I still tell you I'm one of the top 200. So the people on that list are incredible people. There are people who I look up to. Many of them are my friends and other people who I don't know personally or people I look up to and I study and read. So just really an honor to be on that list. And I was jokingly saying to my wife, You know, I'm on the list for 2020 because of what I did in 2021. So it's going to be a lot of pressure to live up to that in 20. But again, just an honor to have the body of work that I produced be validated by a third independent third party and by my peers. And so it's something that that I I'm humbled by. But it's such an honor, and I'll just continue to use my voice about leadership to influence people wherever I can, because right now our world needs good leaders. Our world is hungry for leadership. And so to the extent that every person that we can touch to help become a more purposeful leader, a more inclusive leader, we make better people, we make better organizations, better communities. And the ultimate goal is to make a better world. Hmm. Well, said congratulations. And now we can say that one of our friends is number 32 in the top 200 left before I could have anybody. Now we have a friend. You do that. And you mentioned something really cool and you said using your voice for leadership, and we talk a lot about people using their voice and speaking up and just using their voice to live out their purpose, and they have a voice and so forth. You know, you've obviously found your voice. And I jokingly earlier said you have quite the radio voice, but even like myself, who doesn't quite have Lafayette's magical voice? Still like to use it? Can you give some advice on how people can step into that and use their voice to actually move forward in their role and their leadership and then their purpose? Well, yeah, I believe that we all have something meaningful to say we have something meaningful to contribute to the dialog around us. Sometimes it's about a current event. At other times, it may just be about life in general, about the best course of action that should be taken wherever you find yourself having an opinion. Use it. Share it. Sometimes people are. They feel inadequate. They don't feel like they're important enough for, or they don't like the tone of their voice, their physical voice. But we're talking about using whatever media you can. There used to be a time to get your opinion out. You got the hope that the local editor would publish your article blocks of deputized everyone as a journalist, as my communications professor Charles Whitaker at Northwestern would say, podcasts have turned all of us into walking media stations. Yeah, right? YouTube is called YouTube because you can publish your own videos. And some people have done better that than others. But there's so many pieces of media to where we can all get our voice out. There was a unique group of people that want to hear from us. You all are proof of that. But how you've gotten out, as I mentioned your your data points earlier. So use your voice, find the media that's best suited for your voice and. Be pleasantly surprised by the results. You know, Eddie, you wrote a book entitled 140 Simple Messages to Guy Emerging Leaders, 140 actionable leadership messages for emerging leaders and leaders in transition. Can you tell us kind of what was the inspiration behind the book? As you can see in the book, we had plotted so clearly my first book, because now as I look back, I never would have called it that. It's a long title. It's a muscle, right took you to with it, so it should have been called emerging leaders, which was the first to do, I want to call it. But I made it 140 simple messages because it's just short tweets, right? There be because my theory was at the time, many people won't read a scholarly book, but everybody will make time to read the tweet. And at the time I have been publishing for Forbes, I had publish, I believe, 30 or so responses to their Q&A series. And I was always capped at 400, usually the 400 words born of characters, networks, 400 characters. So I saw the value. In short, pithy messages and 80,000 people, 100,000 people were reading those. And so that was the motivation for the book. It's it's done. It's exceeded my expectations. It's been an international bestseller, but also it gave me an opportunity to pay homage to people who I respect. So I quote a lot of people here that I love and respect and learn from. And that was the other part of it. And I quote these folks all the time in my speeches and in my coaching sessions. Wouldn't it be nice to have one central place that I can share with other emerging leaders? Here's what guy did he turn his life? This may just be about you. Isn't there some uniqueness with your book as well? I believe I saw a clip when you were discussing it. It might have been on another show where you left space for comments or thoughts. Is that right? Yes. And so that format was unique to my publisher, but I just kind of took it in more leverage. So for example, you'll see a number 76, there's lines under each one. And I always enjoy when people were taking the time to write notes in the air about how they're applying it or why it was meaningful to them. And they send me those they were posting them online. And that just just also validation to me of the concept of this and how it was really helpful to especially some of the younger emerging leaders. But I also noticed, in fact, I was interviewed recently by Franklin Covey. So even senior leaders were finding value in the book and applying it to their life. Can you leave our audience one last actionable leadership message? Yes. I just wrapped up my podcast that I ran for three years. The title was Keep Reading and I named it Keep Leading because I believe, as I would always close out, that leadership is about action. It's not a government we put on or take off. So I'm going to be a leader now. I'm not going to be leader. I'm going to go clown for the go do whatever. No, you must always be leading. And as I mentioned earlier, you must update your skill set. It's a continuous action. We don't make it to a certain point, and they feel like we can rest on our laurels or we shouldn't. I see that sometimes in my coaching feature, so I help you to get back on reignited. So whatever you doing, I always say keep believes it's a continuous process. Stay connected with Eddie. There's several ways that you can do that on all social media platforms. He's at her Eddie Turner Jr. That is at Eddie Turner Jr on social media and as he has mentioned, his company there www.linkageinc.com Stay connected with unscripted. We're @unscriptedleadership on all social media platforms. Check out our website unscripted-leadership.com. You can find our podcast wherever you get your podcasts available on all streaming platforms. Again, we say thank you to our amazing guests. Eddie Turner for having this amazing conversation, for purposeful leadership. As always, we're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges connect and walls divide until next time. We pray that you'll be the leader that God has called you to be. God bless.