820 Andy Freed: Author of Lead Like the Boss

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms.

0:46Kara Goldin:Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in. Over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber.

1:32Kara Goldin:That's more fiber than 2 cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take. I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it. If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at grooms.co. That's called GOLDEN at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Today, I'm joined by Andy Freed, who is, in addition to a few other things, author of the brand new book, Lead Like a Boss.

2:24Kara Goldin:And as I mentioned, Andy is a leader who has spent more than 30 years helping organizations grow, transform, and align around a clear vision. Andy believes something many leaders overlook, that communication isn't just a skill, It's the foundation. And whether he's coaching CEOs or guiding global organizations, he is with his company, I should mention, Virtual Inc. He's seen firsthand how that strategy works when leaders know how to inspire people. So in Lead Like the Boss, which Andy wrote recently, launched so good. I mean, I honestly, not just because I'm a Bruce Springsteen huge fan, he shares the principal frameworks, including think, feel, do.

3:22Kara Goldin:So I cannot wait to hear him explain a lot more about that whole concept and how to inspire alignment. All these things, whether you are part of an organization or leading an organization, are super important to be able to do. So, Andy, welcome to The Kara Golden Show. So nice to meet you, too. Thanks for having me, Kara. Great to be here. This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms. Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick.

4:05Kara Goldin:That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in. Over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's more fiber than 2 cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take.

4:52Kara Goldin:I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it. If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at grooms.co. That's called GOLDEN at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms. Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple.

5:39Kara Goldin:It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in. Over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's more fiber than two cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take. I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it.

6:28Kara Goldin:If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at Grooms.co. That's called GOLDEN at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. Absolutely. So for listeners who are not aware yet, because it just launched, Lead Like the Boss, how do you describe the core idea behind the book? Sure. Sure. So I'm one of these people who is this close to selling everything I own and just following Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band around the world. I've seen Bruce 95 times live, traveled to Europe, traveled all over the place, to the West Coast, East Coast, all over the world to see Bruce live and enjoy it every time.

7:20Somewhere along the way, I started learning something and not just being entertained. I started watching the way that Bruce interacted with his band. I started to watch the way he interacted with the audience and realized that there's a reason they call him the boss, because he's acting that way on stage and he's taking charge of things and he's, you know, bringing a lot of forethought to it. so about uh four or five years ago i was coming home from a concert and to justify my trip wrote a linkedin post about what i had learned at the show and that you know kind of morphed into this book lead like the boss which talks which kind of follows the arc of a springsteen concert to give lessons on communications and lessons on that every leader can take away whether you're on stage with 20 000 people or talking to one person in your audience i think there's common of lessons you can take away from it.

8:12Kara Goldin:So what do you think most leaders get wrong on this, on this concept? I think the key piece is intention. I think that communication has become so easy. Look, you and I are talking, you're out on the other side of the country and I clicked a button and then there you were on my screen. Or if I need to present, it's really easy to just open PowerPoint and start, you know, I'll take last month's slides, change the title and start making them this month's slides for a staff meeting. It's gotten too easy to communicate. So we've lost the intentionality of coming up with our message, thinking about our performance when we're talking to people, understanding what our audience's needs are.

8:56All of that's gotten lost. So I think the biggest problem we have is that, you know, it's very easy to say, I need to present to my staff, I'm just going to be up there and, you know, that's the equivalent of Bruce just getting on stage and starting to play and hoping for the best. And that's not how it goes.

9:15Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms. Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics, all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in.

9:59Kara Goldin:over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients, plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's more fiber than two cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take. I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it. If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at gruns.co. That's called GOLDEN at gruns.co. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Gruns.

10:48Kara Goldin:Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in. Over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients, plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber.

11:34Kara Goldin:That's more fiber than 2 cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take. I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it. If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at That's coldgoldin at gruns.co. Well, he's such an amazing storyteller, too. So it's, I mean, he's really, he has this engagement and he clearly understands who his audience is, too. So when you started thinking about why it was that you, that what made him so engaging to you, how long did it take before you decided this is my book?

12:42Not long, because I thought it was such a great example. And when I started to just kind of delve deeper into the things he does from start to finish, it just made sense. you know so as an example one of the things i that i opened the book with is talking about how a bruce show doesn't start when he takes the stage you know bruce show starts hours before when he's sitting backstage and with a pen and paper um and it's always just a blank sheet of white paper and a pen he sits and he writes out the set list for the show and that set list is kind of his guide of what the audience will think feel and do during the show um but as he does that There's a lot of forethought of the stories he wants to tell of, you know, one thing I know from reading about Bruce is he likes to open the show really big because he's got anxiety and depression.

13:33And he said, if I open the show and give everyone their money's worth in the first five minutes, now I can relax. You know, so he likes to open the show big. Then there might be a moment where he wants to take it down and tell a story, as he said, because he's a great storyteller. Then there's a moment where he wants the audience to participate. All of that has a lot of forethought. And all of that is, you know, going through a script before he even starts playing. You know, for me, that's the difference between opening PowerPoint and cranking out slides and sitting down and thinking about what do I want my audience to think, feel and do.

14:09So that was the first lesson that I took away. And as I started going deeper, there's just more and more along the way that are great parallels for how every leader can communicate.

14:20Kara Goldin:So you just mentioned it, but think, feel, do. When leaders are planning out a message, this message, their message and a presentation with think, feel, do, can you think of an example in your practice where it was just night and day at one of your clients was able to use this? I mean, I can think of examples from clients. I can think of examples also from, you know, just internally on the company and just, you know, internal things that we do. For me, you know, the whole idea of think, feel, do is it's a three-legged stool and you need all three. You need to think about what do you want your audience to think?

15:02How do you want them to feel? And what do you want them to do at the end of the end of a conversation? You know, so it could be as simple as something like if I'm talking to my company about changing the health care plan. On one hand, I want them to understand what the plan is and think that it's a good option. But if I don't address the feeling side that for people, this is highly personal, that, you know, it's their health care. They're worried about, are they going to have to change doctors? Is it going to cost more? Is my kid going to be able to get the meds that they need? All of those things are part of the feel side of it.

15:38And unless you address that, they're never going to be ready to hear the think part. And then at the end, it's making it explicit. Well, what am I supposed to do now? And so often the CEO will present and then the action step is unclear and people leave the room doing all different things and they're not aligned. You know, so it doesn't take a big, you know, kind of apocryphal changing the world message for this construct to work. It's about having the forethought and intention to really think about all three.

16:12Kara Goldin:So you talk about timing and order. And a little bit you talked about in the set list that, Bruce, and I think it's a great example. But if you don't have the timing and the order correct, I guess, why does that matter so much? Yeah, it's really easy to lose people. And it's really easy to start to talk to people before they're ready to listen, before they're ready to hear you. And I think that the mistake that a lot of leaders make when they're communicating is they're so worried about what they want to say that they forget about what the audience needs to hear. And if you don't get that timing and order right of addressing things right off the bat, addressing people's fears right off the bat, and that's often a big part of it, and recognizing that if you're a leader communicating with an audience, sometimes there's fear.

17:06Well, what's he going to say? Is this going to be the announcement of the layoffs? Is this going to be the announcements of restructuring? Or is the company doing okay? So sometimes it's about having that timing and order of understanding that first I need to make people feel safe. And Simon Sinek, that's Simon Sinek's famous TED Talk, is great leaders make people feel safe. And between Simon Sinek and me, we've sold millions of books together. together. You know, so, you know, you might have a slight edge on me. It's similar to my combined total of Super Bowl rings with Tom Brady. You know, together we've done really well.

17:46But the idea that you need to make somebody feel safe before you can deliver that message is, I think, something that's so important. And if you're not doing that, things can get misconstrued.

17:58Kara Goldin:so and so how do you do that if the message is that you just need to show up to like in the case of bruce he's not necessarily making people feel safe when he goes out on stage he's really there to entertain and to you know storytell and do these things but what is there is there room for people if they know that, you know, things are going well or people are there to entertain? I mean, what are those different, I guess, forums where people might need to be showing up at leading like the boss? You know, so I'll start with, you know, for Bruce, it's more than just entertaining. Like, so if you look at his new tour is the No Kings Land of Hope and Dreams tour, you know, so it's got a clear political bent and he's willing to use his voice towards that, But he's trying to have people feel empowered and feel that there's something that can be done if you feel that things aren't going in the right direction.

19:02So there's a clear element to how he's feeling on this. And his last show, his last tour was all about, you know, kind of his mortality as the last man standing from the first band he was ever in. And, you know, so it was kind of a field that went with that. I think just about any message that you're delivering has some element of that. You know, do you want your audience to feel that, you know, back to the health care? I want them to feel that I care about this as much as they do. You know, that's the thing I want them to come away with. You know, if it's, you know, some of the other messages we have with organizations might be more technical.

19:44and we work with a lot of technical groups that are doing things like cybersecurity and various internet functions. But when you're working with those groups, it's also about, well, what do I want somebody to feel? I want them to feel that, what's this technology going to let me do? So the idea behind, for example, like mobile payment and the idea of paying for things with your cell phone. Well, I want to feel that I can now travel the world with just my phone and like I can feel more energized and I can feel more independent, you know, because something's out there that works is safe and interoperable.

20:22So I want to feel that that technology is safe. I want to feel that that technology is ubiquitous. You know, that's different than just the facts. And then the do is, well, you should be using it. You know, so you can use that, you know, that example in any number of places.

20:36Kara Goldin:So we're all living in at least a hybrid environment, many totally virtual environments. What do you think technology, you know, it's definitely made communications easier, but it's often worse. And what do you think it is that we could change there in our leadership practice? A few things. One, I think on the Zoom calls and the Teams calls and all the things that we're doing, again, I'll go back to the whole idea of intention and, you know, intention and preparation. So one is understanding the call isn't just about the content, it's about the relationships, and that's what you're trying to build.

21:21So sometimes the five minutes before the call, when you're talking about just how your weekend was and all of that, we lost that with Zoom and Teams. You know, we got very transactional and we went from going to conference rooms where it was natural to have some small talk as you were getting together to just everyone dials in at three o 'clock and then everyone clicks end at the end and you don't know anybody. You know, so I think one thing that I would be building, you know, look to build in is the trust and relationships that come from building those kind of side conversations that in my mind are anything but side conversations.

21:59They're central because they're how you build trust. The other piece I'll say is just preparation. You know, the number of Zoom and Teams calls that I'm still on, and we're now six years past the start of pandemic. for God's sakes, everyone should know where the mute button is on Zoom by now. And you should know that if you're going to be on an important meeting, maybe you should be reasonably well lit. You should be in a place where people can hear you. You know, you shouldn't have the dog bursting in. You know, I'll tell you that I've been to 95 Bruce shows and I've been able to hear them every single time because they care.

22:39and they know that's part of the job is lights have to work, sound has to work. There's a light check and a sound check before. There's no reason that leaders can't have that. And that's part of your bag of tricks now in a remote environment is make it work and make it work well. Because if people can't hear you, they're definitely not listening.

22:58Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. I couldn't agree more. And I think it's definitely something that people have gotten much better about, but it's still missing in many people's life. And it's also understanding that the technology can only get you so far. You know, there is a time that you need to meet somebody face-to-face and connect in a different way. You know, just the notion that eye contact is impossible on Zoom and Teams. Eye contact is such a key part of communication, and you cannot look at the camera and look person's eyes at the same time, hard as he tried. You know, so, you know, just things like that are missing and different from how we're communicating now.

23:46Kara Goldin:I loved your point about acknowledgement as well and how that's such a leadership lever. I couldn't agree more. I have four kids, but one of my kids is just recently, just a little over a year ago, started at Rivian and they have these team virtual calls and his manager is constantly calling him and other people on the team out on different things that they've done, mostly done well, but he also talks about he does the bad with the good. And when you do the good, then I think people don't feel shamed, right? That they don't think he's a jerk. They think he's authentic and he just wants everybody to be a little bit better.

24:40Kara Goldin:But why is that so important in your mind to be able to do that? No, I mean, it's more than a hundred years ago, William James, who was the father of American psychiatry, wrote that the deepest human need is the need to be appreciated. And that's worth kind of stopping on. The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated. So that means that Like a deeper need than money, a deeper need than sex, a deeper need than, you know, than anything is that need to be appreciated. That people just feel that, you know, you're appreciated for what you do. So one of my favorite moments of every Bruce show is at the very end of the show when, you know, the music's basically done.

25:23Bruce retreats to the back of the stage and he shakes the hand and gives a hug and whispers something in the ear of every member of the band as they file off the stage and this last tour he was playing with 19 people on stage and every one of them whether it was Gary W. Talent that he's been playing with since 1973 or some of the folks who were in the horn section who he just started playing with on this tour every one of them would get something that, you know, a handshake and something that he would say to them every single night. And when you hear them talk about it, I heard them interviewed on George Stephanopoulos' show.

26:01They said, what the band members say is, for 10 seconds every night, Bruce Springsteen makes me feel like the most important musician on the face of the earth. Like, imagine that being your mantra as a CEO, that you're going to make your team feel like the most important team on the face of the earth. How much more do you get out of them for that? How much are they willing to go the extra mile? And how much does it also go to not taking it for granted that whether you've been playing with this person for 53 years or playing with them for, you know, 53 days, you're still going to acknowledge and show them that appreciation and how much that can matter to them.

26:41You know, they say that the task of a leader is to make more leaders. works, you know, that's how you do it, is to start showing that kind of appreciation and start building people up. And I love how Bruce does that. It's something which I think every leader should be very conscious and intentional on.

26:59Kara Goldin:When you were writing Lead Like the Boss, did anything surprise you as you were really digging into this concept? Obviously, you've seen him over 95 times, and you are very familiar with the show, even though it changes along the way. But was there anything that was kind of surprising in his leadership that you picked up on? I mean, I think one of the things that surprised me, and there's some things that I don't really use as well, and that you wouldn't associate it with a rock star. And one thing that Bruce uses as well is silence from time to time. You know, there are times when he just quiets the cry down, and you can hear a pin drop in an arena.