Leading Successful Teams with Guest Jeff Boss: MakingBank S1E39

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Summary

Whether you’re a soldier furiously fighting in the heat of battle, or an ambitious new entrepreneur trying to get your business off the ground, learning how to rely on your teammates is essential to success.

Your team has your back, and you—the leader—must trust them as you weave through each and every obstacle that comes your way.

With that in mind, this week we sit down with Jeff Boss, who pivoted away from life as Navy SEAL to life as an entrepreneur and coach.

Over the course of his career, Jeff has come to the conclusion that the key to a good leader is knowing how to “shoot, move, and communicate” no matter the makeup of the team you’re leading.

Jeff works with entrepreneurs to understand this essential paradigm of leadership so they can start being better leaders and elevate the quality of teamwork happening inside their businesses.

On this episode of Making Bank, listen to Jeff as he discusses the three principles that enable a true leader to get their team to rally in times of adversity.

Our highlights include:

·        What makes a successful team

·        Establishing clear communication

·        The performance of a successful business leader

·        Finding joy in where you work

·        Overcoming the ego of a business owner

·        Evaluating your values, self-awareness, and self-talk

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Transcription

I am Josh Felber. Welcome to Making Bank where we uncover  the success strategies, the secrets of the top 1%, so we can help you excel  your life and start your path to success today.

We’re going to talk a little bit about leadership; How  do you lead a team, what are the fundamentals that it takes to lead a team?  For myself, since I’ve owned multiple businesses over the years, one can be  to have be it over 500 people working for us in ten different offices and  it’s such a learning process to learn how to build a team. It’s really  important as you’re building that team, to make sure you have the right core  people around you. One of the things that makes all teams successful, whether  you’re a Navy seal team, whether you’re in the special forces, whether you’re  in corporate America, or just running your own business out there, like you  are, it’s three things.

One is, you’ve got to have self awareness about how  other people look at you, how other people think about you and what your  strengths and what your weaknesses are. Number two, you have to be able to  have open communication with your team, open communication with your family.  Whoever that may be, you’ve got to be able to have the safety to be able to  communicate with each other without some kind of punishment happen if you  bring up something that the other person may not like. Open communication is  going to be very important as well, as you build your team and to create a  strong leadership position, take your leadership position and make it even  stronger.

The third thing is trust. Trust is a major factor when  building your team. Just think about if you are a special forces or Navy seal  team, or whatever that may be, you’ve got to know every single person on your  team you can trust; They have your back, they’re keeping your life safe in  your hands. Just as well as you’re running your business, you’ve got to be  able to trust all the people around you, that they are going to be able to  step up, get their job done as well as bring problems and solutions to you  and how to resolve those.

One of the biggest things I want to start of by talking  a little bit is self awareness and why that is so important. Today we are so  busy, there’s so many distractions that we tend to lose focus on that. The  majority of the people in the population have no idea, have no self awareness  about who they are, how other people perceive them, as well as what their  strengths and weaknesses are, what are those core values and what those  strengths are that have been instilled in you since birth.

We really have to take a step back and understand who we  are before we can go out and lead other people. Great exercise is, sit down  with a piece of paper, list off 15 different strengths or weaknesses that are  things that say strengths and things that you don’t like to do, or maybe just  really bother you. Maybe you’re the person that hates people pointing fingers  ,or cannot stand being late or you don’t like the person that tells that  white lie. Those are really important subjects for you, but make a list of  those 15 strengths that God gave you since you were a little kid.

Then what are those top five things that you really  cannot have happen within your business. By doing that, that’s going to help  you start to create your core heartbeat of your business, of your company. As  being the owner, the leader, you are the heartbeat of your business. That’s  going to help us start to create some self awareness about who we are, what  we can put up with, what we can’t put up with. It’s going to allow us, as we  hire our team, to give those people that are just like us the benefit of the  doubt, because that’s who we give the most benefit of the doubt to,  ourselves.

Number two, open communication. So many times in  business, there’s different silos within our business and that lack of  communication, let alone open communication is what’s going to really create  a major bottle neck for our company. We have to figure out ways that we can  create clear and concise open communication, as well as the freedom for our  team to be able to communicate with each other and/or yourself as a leader,  as the owner of the business. By allowing them to have that freedom, that  openness to communicate without any kind of punishment, without any kind of  retribution or anything like that, then they’re more willing to bring those  items of priority, those really deep down items that need to happen, need to  be discussed through open communication, to help drive your business forward  and to help move your business to that next level. Open communication is a  major factor.

Then number three is trust. We’ve got to be able to  trust our team, know that our team is out there, they have our backs, we have  their back and everybody’s moving in the same direction. They’re moving the  business, they’re moving their area that they’re focused on in the direction  of the mission, of the culture of the company. Knowing if I’m not here for a  week or I have to go out of town or my family’s sick, I trust and know that  they can run the business, that they can move it to that next level and I’m  not going to have to worry about coming back and finding things falling apart  everywhere. Trust is a very important factor in leadership and growing your  team as well.

I’m really excited. Up next we have a excellent guest on  our show today. He is a Navy seal corporate trainer, consultant and a leader  on leadership and creating the optimal team for your business, for your  company. I’m excited to bring Jeff Boss on the show next and I hope you stick  around and we’ll be right back. I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making  Bank.

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Josh:  am Josh Felber, you’re watching Making Bank. We’re coming back today with an awesome entrepreneur. His name is Jeff Boss, he’s an executive coach focused on communication and decision making, as well as a former Navy seal. I’m really excited to have him on Making bank today. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff: Thank you josh, thanks a lot for having me, I’m excited  as well.

Josh: For sure, man. I’m really intrigued with your  background, it’s really cool because we align on a lot of different things  with high performance, peak performance, coaching and everything. I’d really  like to dive into exactly what you’re doing today and then how your past and  how your background, from where you came from, relates to your successes and  helping other people have successes. If you want to start off, give us a  quick overview on what you’re specifically focused on today.

Jeff: Sure, thank you. I am focused on individuals and teams  specifically. Leaders, anywhere from high potentials up to executives and  then the team leaders who run say for example a team meeting, a subset of a  business, the team as a whole. I focus on communication and decision making  of both.

Josh: Awesome. Then you go into a specific company, take a  look at how their team is operating, how they’re connecting and interacting  with another through communication and that whole decision making tree, and  then help them become more effective in that. Is that a good overview?

Jeff: Exactly. We start with the individual and then from  there if they are running a team, then it’ll proliferate from there. For the  most part it’ll start of individual and the gradually move to a team, because  you really can’t lead a team until you lead yourself.

Josh: Definitely, that’s the case for sure. Tell us a little  bit about your background, we mentioned Navy seal and you have tons of  different accolades with your schooling and I think I saw something where  you’re in Harvard business right now?

Jeff: I dis-enrolled from it. Just to be completely transparent, I didn’t like the content, I didn’t like the learning environment.

Josh: I find a lot of that with people I’ve interviewed a lot is with the whole school process and lot of the content like you said, is becoming either dated or it’s just not where it needs to be with the way things are moving so fast these days.

Jeff: It was completely dated, they were doing things that we  did three years ago and they’re siting that as the [fourth 00:10:25] and I  don’t mean to belittle Harvard because it is a name but to me it was just  that, it’s a name. The content, I was pretty disappointed.

Josh: Okay man, then we’ll just jump over Harvard. Lets dive a little bit into your background. As a Navy seal, why did you want to head down that path?

Jeff: I knew what I didn’t want to do, I knew that I didn’t  want to go to work in cubicle, wear a suit and tie and do the same thing  every day. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just wasn’t for me at the time.  Now it is, now I’m good with it. Back then, to be quite honest, I wanted to  jump out of planes, blow things up and carry a gun and do fun things, which I  thought were fun at the time, so that’s what I did. I went into a house state,  I enlisted after that. I didn’t want to be an officer because I wanted to  stay operational, I wanted to kick in doors and do the fun thing, so that’s  what I did and I don’t have any regrets. Stayed in for 13 years, got out in  June 2013.

Josh: Wow, that’s awesome. I was kind of the same way when I was a little kid growing up, that’s what I wanted to do. Then I got into the whole business and owned 15 different companies over the years. Then when I was 29, I’d sold a company. No, I was 28. I was like, “Man, I really want to go do that,” so I enrolled, I dipped in through their [delayed 00:11:57] entry program. I started training and actually my friend that I mentioned earlier when we were off camera, we both were training together and I ended up blowing out my knee, water skiing.

Jeff: Oh, no!

Josh: I was in the whole program and went and got ACL surgery, went back and got all my waivers because I was 29 at that point. Got all the way, but they would not give me one for my ACL. I went though five different doctors through down in Tennessee, all over, and just could not get in. My friend obviously went in and he’s [Asian 00:12:28] and everything. I was so bummed but it made good turns in my life and everything too. I’m glad you’ve got the experience and have that part of it.

Jeff: If you want, I’m happy to come up and give you the  experience. Could just stay up for 5.5 days, we’ll spray a hose cold water on  you.

Josh: What Mark Divine’s doing on. No it’d be fun, it’d be a good experience. I guess while you were in the Navy seals, how did what you’ve learned through that whole process, as working in a team, because that’s what you guys have to operate in, that team situation. How did that give you the strategies and the mindset, because I saw you had a great e-book on the mindset and everything, to you now go out and start teaching in the whole business realm and in entrepreneurs and peak performance.

Jeff: Yeah, quick question. When I got out of the Navy, I  worked for the McChrystal group in management and consulting. I was there for  about 1.5 years and got a pretty good live of the lands as far as diversity  across business sectors go. Worked in agriculture, finance tech, oil and gas.  The same problems and the same challenges rose from industry to industry and  it all came down to communication and decision making. The three things that  we had to do on the battlefield as seals where shoot, move and communicate.

What I found in working in business is that it’s the same  exact recipe for success. Not literally but say for example, when you shoot a  gun,. I don’t know if you’ve shot a gun but there’s a number of performance  criteria that you have to hit. There’s goal setting, there’s focus, there’s  impulse control, there’s habits. If you want to get into the spiritual realm,  there are personal values depending on what you’re shooting at, sot here are  a lot of criteria, all four pillars of what I call performance, that really  comprise ones being. It’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

I found that the same thing, no matter what industry  you’re in, people are the same, they’re all the same. Different but the same.  I would see executives come out of meetings, red in the face, full of  emotion, ready to burst. On the battlefield, I can be telling a joke nest to  a guy in a gun fight, so the question is why. It comes back to those  performance criteria; Impulse control, self confidence, how you manage  yourself. Those play into individual leadership which ultimately scale into  leading a team. How you get to the end state of success, it’s all the same.  End state may be different, battlefield versus boardroom, but how you get  there, same principles apply.

Josh:  Awesome. Hey, Jeff, we’ve got to take a quick break. Can you stick around?

Jeff: I’ll be here.

Josh: Awesome. You’re watching Making Bank, I am Josh Felber  and we’ll be right back.

Welcome back, I am Josh Felber and you’re watching  Making Bank. We’ve had the honor and the privilege so far to speak with Jeff  Boss and he’s been filling us in on how to communicate and how he  communicated on the battlefield, and how that translates over to executive  decision making, being able to work with your team and be able to  communicate. Whether he was telling a joke on the battlefield, how that  translates over into your business and to be able to tell a joke and be able  to communicate with your team in a cool-hearted manner so it makes you more  successful. Jeff, welcome back.

Jeff: Thanks Josh.

Josh: When we left off you were jumping into a couple of different strategies on what you utilized when you were on the battlefield. You were able to maintain composure, stay calm and focused. Communication is critical when you’re on the battlefield and if you’re not able to communicate with your teammates, that’s actually going to jeopardize your guys’ situation out there, right?

Jeff: Absolutely. Communication is everything, whether it’s in a team, in a marriage for example, or in business. I will say I’m divorced, by the way, it’s a long story. It just highlights the importance of it, communication is everything, that goes for non-verbal as well. For an entrepreneur out there, my first recommendation is that you clearly have a vision for how you define your company, what success looks like. My recommendation is to share it with everybody, have everybody on the same page as far as what your expectations are and what your criteria for success are so that they can go out and act with equal autonomy.

Josh: Definitely. I was talking to a good friend of mine the  other day and he was saying, “You want to find that heartbeat of the  same other people on your team,” and then that way, that communication  that you have is going to allow you to really sync up. That’s that person  that I would give whatever, if they have something that come sup and they’ve  got to take off, I’m there for them. Just like you guys are there for each  other on the battlefield or when you’re on a mission, you know 110% that all  these six other guys on my team, have my back. I don’t even have to think  because we’re all thinking in the same thing.

Jeff: You just touched on a really important point when you  mentioned heartbeat, and that’s consistency. Heartbeats are ideally  consistent. When you apply that to the company, the organization, and you  look at their cadence of say meeting schedules, they’re anything but  consistent and it erodes trust. It does because if I’m working on say project  A and I’ve been working away all morning and then somebody says, “We’re  having a meeting right now.” I’ve got to drop what I’m doing and divert  my focus and attention away to this meeting that somebody didn’t properly  plan for, and that erodes trust.

With building up that cadence, their heartbeat, another  action step is to have the same meeting every week and label that meeting as  a meeting to make a decision, to inform, to take action, to share  information. Have the same meeting, same participants and the same decision  makers every week.

Josh: By then setting a standard every week, the that’s going  to allow all of our employees, our team, everybody that’s part of our  company, be able to stay in sync, is what you’re saying. Then that’s going to  allow us to, we know every time we have this meeting, this is the outcome  that we’re looking for from that.

Jeff: Exactly, that’s the heartbeat. You mentioned individual heartbeat, that’s the organizational heartbeat.

Josh: Right. Then as leaders, as executives of the company, what makes that up would be our core beliefs and our values and our character that everybody else is synced up with, as well. Then that’s going to help us produce the best outcome overall.

Jeff: Yup. I can’t stress core values character enough. Fit is everything. One orange amongst the whole group of apples and it’s just odd.

Josh: I was working with a client the other day and he was in  that same position; The whole team was flowing and the guy had great  qualifications, he worked hard, but there was just something that was missing  out of it. They finally had to sit down and when they went through  everything, that character and those beliefs and all that. They realized that  he wasn’t beating that same beat as everybody else, so they had to let him  go. When they did, he was like, “Hey, I want to thank you because you  know what, you just helped me realize I don’t want to be in this same  position for the next five years or ten years, and not end up in the best  position for myself and my family.”

I think it’s very imperative as business owners today,  to make sure that we do have the best communication with our team, moving  forward. That’s going to help open up our companies to the best opportunity  for a success overall.

Jeff: Absolutely, yeah, doing so in person versus a virtual  team. Like you said, as business grows and becomes even more turbulent, it’s  going to be even more challenging.

Josh: For sure.

Jeff: Consistency is everything, it’s key.

Josh: Definitely. Tell me a time, whether it was in the Navy  seals, whether it was in your business, creating your business and  everything. Was there ever a time when you just felt like, “Man, I just  want to give up.” Maybe it was hell week.

Jeff: No, I can’t say that there was ever a time that I wanted to just throw up the white flag and say, “All right, I’m out of here.” I will say that in my first hell week, I was rolled back midway through hell week for a stress fracture in my femur. I was rolled back to day one, had to go through it again and graduated with 236, my graduating class. I started with 234 and I won’t even go there, [missing 00:23:03] the discovery video, see my bald head at it. Anyway, I was rolled back midway through hell week and I remember, aside from being completely let down because that was my goal, my dream and vision. Totally depressed and the alternative was to either go out and be on a ship or stick with where I was. I believed my purpose, my values and everything that I ever wanted to do at that point in my life was be a seal, so just stuck it out and stayed with it.

Josh: That mindset you created for yourself, your whole core, your inner beliefs, your inner being, you were so congruent in what your outcome was, that that gave you that focused mindset to push through and continue to continue to push through that. How do you take that and then translate that to help a business owner who’s struggling or help an executive having problems with his team?

Jeff: Great question, a couple [ones 00:24:07]. You want to  align values with their behavior and their behavior with the values of the  company. They all have to almost form three concentric circles with  “Fit” being right in the middle. Maybe two concentric circles, I  was a Spanish Major, not math. You want ideally, because at the center of  that bulls-eye of those three is the target, and that’s where fulfillment is.  Personally I’ve never worked anywhere that hasn’t been fulfilling or  somewhere that I haven’t enjoyed. The second that I stopped enjoying it, I  left. I think aligning those three personal values with personal behavior,  and then personal behavior with organizational values, that sustains success.  That keeps the fire going and it avoids complacency, avoids chaos. When you  have those three aligned, it’s everything.

How do I do it? Start with the individual and you want  to identify what’s important to him or her and why. A lot of times I think  people will name off things that should be important to them, for fear of  social judgement, but oftentimes they’re not when they really reflect and dig  deep. That’s a good question, why is that important to me? I don’t know, why  do I feel the need to speak up every single meeting, I don’t know. So you  scale that back and match it with your behavior and then look at how their  behavior aligns with the strategies of the organization, to achieve their  objectives.

Josh: Like you said, they kind of give you those surface answers because they don’t want to open up and be that vulnerable person, to really dig in deep and [understand 00:26:04]. How do you get them to start to break through into that?

Jeff: I think that’s the art of being a coach. You know just as well as I do that when there’s emotion, you go right to it, because that’s where behavior change, resides. When there’s hesitancy or a sigh, or something that causes them to really reflect, you can tell, you can read body language pretty well. That’s the art and signs of being a coach, is knowing when to ask a little more, not push that person over the edge but get them right to the tipping point where they want to reflect on why they shouldn’t jump.

Josh: What was your biggest success so far in your career, or your lifespan?

Jeff: It was definitely being in the seals and being at the command I was at, it was the top of the top seal team out there.

Josh: What was one of your biggest take aways then from being in the seal team, that has helped you through life? I know you mentioned the communication and things like that, but really deep down, what was that core piece that you took away that’s really transformed your life overall?

Jeff: Great question. I would say humility, because there’s  entirely too much ego in this world, let alone from one business to another.  Ego incites turf wars, it clouds peoples thinking which impedes their  judgement and performance. I can’t stand arrogance. The guys I was working  with, if they’re not arrogant then there’s no reason for anybody else to be.  What I did and where I came from, it’s just a different job. Some people put  it on a pedestal, all they see is [equalize 00:28:06], or even less, who  knows. I just see it as just another job and that’s where I came from. People  come from construction, whatever.

Josh: Definitely. Then when you encounter that in the businesses that you’re working with, like you said, there are a lot of people and I run into them, they have that ego and it does block. It clouds that vision, it clouds their ability to even lead successfully. How do you help them break through that, because that’s usually something, it’s been there for most of their life.

Jeff: Yeah, it has. I think, with people like that, some people need a kick in their butt, some people need a pat on the back. With overly loud personalities and egos, they need a wake-up call. A lot of times I find that people are self centered because they’re masking something. They’re hiding behind something so they’re projecting some other sort of strength that they want people to see. As a coach, if we’re contracted then that’s when you start asking some more difficult questions.

Josh: Can you give us two or three action steps. Something the  entrepreneurs, our audience here can go out start applying today. It could  be, “Hey, I want to start to be able to communicate with my employees  better,” or, “How do I figure out what my core values are?”  Maybe something we can give them they go and take away and they can start  applying today.

Jeff: So three things. I would say values, self awareness and  self talk. I’ll hit on self talk last because it’s the most important, I  don’t want anybody closing out of their screens. Values, look at your  hobbies, look at your interests, the books you read, the people you hang out  with, the places you go, the activities that you do on daily basis and look  at the trends that are shared amongst all of them. What are the values  implicit to all of those, their importancy and why. You’ll find that there is  a trend, whether it’s learning, self improvement, fitness, music. There’s  some sort of trends and the key is to ask: What’s important to you, what does  the world need, what will the world pay me for and how can I serve others? In  the center of all those circles is your purpose.

Moving on to self awareness. I don’t think anybody would  be set back with… Maybe a better way to say it is, I think everybody could  benefit from more self awareness, including myself. The take away is to look  at how people respond to you, look at how people react. Are they looking away  from you when you speak, are they paying attention, are their eyes furrowed?  Are they coming to you or are they waiting for you to come to them? Still, ask why. What’s the driving motivator behavior behind all of this?

Then look at the self talk behind that awareness. Self  talk is the voice inside your head amongst all the other voices inside your head, my head at least. That’s this saying, “I can’t do this,” or,  “I’m not good enough,“ or, “Maybe they’ll choose somebody  else,” or, “Why me?” That’s the negative side, the flip side  is, “I can do this, I’ve got this, I’m going to nail this.” Look at what sort of self talk is going in your head when challenges are crossing  your path. Being aware of that self talk and reversing that self talk, that  self talk is everything. You can tell your mind anything, thew mind doesn’t know anything other than what you tel it and you can choose your thoughts, so  you choose what you want to tell your minds and your body will follow.

Josh: Definitely, I agree 100%. For me, I’m a very optimistic,  I’m driven, I’m focused and you still have those times, you’re like,  “Ah, man,“ you have that little bit of self doubt or something  slips in. The difference is cutting it short and maybe for 30 seconds,  “Ah, I’m moving on.” You know it’s not going to get you anywhere to  stay in that same spot mentally. I think those are three key points to start  to become more effective in who you are and moving yourself forward towards  success and everything.

Awesome man, we’ve got to wrap up here in a minute. Give us one technology or one thing that you can’t live without.

Jeff: I’d have to say the iPhone. [Bank 00:33:18] in probably ten years.

Josh: A lot of people run their businesses off of it these  days so that’s for sure, man. Jeff, tell our audience, where can they can  some more information on you? I know you have a book out, you have an e-book  too as well. Let us know where we can find you.

Jeff: Yeah, thank you. My website is www.adaptabilitycoach.com  On there you can find links to my book which actually just came out on  hardcover today. It’s called “Navigating chaos – How to find certainty  in uncertain situations”, talks a lot about the things that we discussed  in this interview. I have an e-book as well called “Managing the mental  game”. That talks about how to build mental fortitude, includes a whole  lot of different exercises for doing so. It’s $5, you can get that on my  website as well, so adaptabilitycoach.com.

Josh: Awesome man, well thank you. I really appreciate you  coming on today, it was an honor to have you on the show.

Jeff: Likewise, thank you Josh, appreciate is, have a good  time.

Josh: You’re watching Making Bank and we were here with Jeff Boss today. I want you to get out and be extraordinary.