2419 - Servant Leadership Unlocking Employee Potential for Team Success with National Academy of Leadership Development's Scott Doggett

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Scott Doggett. Scott, you are a fellow Orlandian. Is that what we call each other? You know what? I've been here 20 years and I don't even know that answer. That sounds good. Yeah, we'll just say it is. You are the founder of the National Academy of Leadership Development. You are the author of the book, Priceless, See People Differently, Lead People Better. I absolutely love it. Can't wait to talk about servant leadership. But Scott, first off, thank you for joining us.

1:24Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here with you, Josh. Yeah. And before we get going and talking about your superpowers and talking about your book, Priceless, I always love hearing what leaders do when they're not at work. And as we're recording this, when you popped on, immediately I said, man, that guy's got a lot of running medals behind him. And as a fellow Orlando, and we discovered that we've run, maybe not the same year, but I've run the Disney Marathon, but you've actually exceeded the marathon. And you're also a new runner. And like me, you're not a spring chicken. You're not in your 20s.

2:05Do you mind sharing a little bit about your, just a little quick bit about your running experience? Because I think you started this about six years ago. I did. Yeah, I'm kind of new to it. Six years ago, I was not in great shape and I couldn't run around the block and was really figuring I need to do something to save my life, really. So I found the Couch Potato to 5K app. If anybody out there is trying to make a change physically, I would highly recommend it because it really did change my life. And it got me to a point where I could run a 5K. And then I just, I got addicted to it and I wanted to see how far I could push it.

2:40and as a kind of a learning and development guy, I'm a true believer that anybody can learn any new skill. It doesn't matter how old you get. And so I kind of applied that and kept pushing myself. And so I got up to the half marathon and full marathon and ended up doing the Dopey Challenge about a year ago at Disney and haven't stopped. In fact, this Saturday, I'm doing my 50th race since the beginning of this journey at SeaWorld, which I'm really excited about. That's remarkable. Well, congratulations on that. We have very similar stories. I started about 10 years ago. I don't run like I used to.

3:18I do some other stuff now. But what blew my mind, and I'm sure you have an observation on this as well, as someone similar to you, at my heaviest, I was very uncomfortable and painful to run around the block. and then you know it's just mind-blowing how the body will adapt and the body just like the mind and the soul and all of that other stuff it will adapt and it will do things that like to me i'm like i don't know how i'm able to do this you know i remember the first time i was able to run to the back gate and back which is a four and a half mile trek and i'm like i didn't stop to walk once and And I had to pinch myself.

4:02I'm like, how did I just do that? And I'm sure you have a similar observation. It's such a great feeling, right? But so much of it's mental too. Like I remember thinking after that first 5K, how do people do a 10K? Like, how do you do that twice? And then even after my first half marathon, which is a huge accomplishment, thinking there's no way I could do a marathon. Like, how does anybody do that twice? But then you do it, right? You just, you go out there and you condition and you follow the plan. And it's amazing what the human body and the mind can do when they kind of work together. Yeah.

4:35And really, there are some excellent, that app that you had mentioned, what was the name of it? It's the Couch Potato to 5K is what got me started. But then on the Disney race website, they have race plans to get you ready for the half marathon and the marathon. And that's what I use to prepare for those longer races. Yeah, as long as you follow the plan, you know, unless you truly have, you know, some debilitating, you know, physical, I feel like most people are a vast majority people can probably do a five or 10k pretty easily and maybe even a half marathon. and you'd be surprised, you know, a full marathon.

5:16My first one, this was way back in the day. I was watching The Biggest Loser and it was, which is not a good show. I admit, I know that now. But, you know, those folks, you know, when they got to the very end, they were down to like four of them. They said, okay, guess what? You guys are going to run a marathon. And I thought, I was like, man, if those guys can run a marathon, why can't I? And so it's just modeling knowledge. And so that's all I did. Scott Galloway, God bless his heart. He recently passed. But Scott Galloway method does kind of a run walk to kind of train yourself for it. And that really, really helped me.

5:54That's why I followed. So, Scott, thank you. Scott Doggett, thank you so much for sharing your story. I could talk the whole podcast, a few podcasts on this topic, but I obviously want to talk about the work that you do with the National Academy of Leadership Development and, of course, your book, Priceless, See People Differently, Lead People Better. Would you mind maybe just giving us an overview of your work today? Yeah, so our academy is, we're really creating a movement around this country in a day and age where, you know, automation is taking over and AI and so much stress right now in the workplace.

6:31And especially coming out of the COVID era where there was so much damage done to workplace culture. So we really formed with a purpose of really bringing humanity and that kind of that love back into the workplace so that employees can feel seen and valued and respected and we can bring culture back. So we're all about servant leadership. That was my inspiration for this has always been focused on the employee experience and seeing people based on their worth as human beings, as leaders, and treating people based on that and based on no other factor. And so that's what we teach. And we're really trying to help organizations create that people first culture so that they can really get the best results possible and results that can help, you know, lead companies into the future and not just right now people are just scraping to get through the year.

7:23But if companies really want to grow and be around for years to come, I truly believe this is really the only way to do it. Well, give us what is servant leadership? So servant leadership is I think it's undervalued. It's underrepresented. I think it's misunderstood. But at the end of the day, it's a perspective of what is the role of a leader and looking at like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself as my role is to serve you, those team members that have been entrusted into my care. My job is to make sure that you, the employee, has all the things that you need to be successful. And there's a lot.

7:59There's the tools. There's the training. There's the appreciation. It's the respect. It's the communication. There's all kinds of things that employees need to feel empowered, to feel equipped to do their job. And so that's my primary job. It's not for you to serve me, but it's my job to serve you. And when we do that, employees then feel really good about being at work. And that is the only way to get employees to feel really engaged and want to give their all and to give that discretionary effort. You can't force that. You can't buy that. You can't punish that. The only way to get that extra love and that extra effort is by earning it through this type of leadership.

8:46Yeah. Well, and I think it's such a great season for this because I think that there are, you know, I'm seeing some culture that I don't really like, you know, where it's a little bit more transactional. It's, you know, especially if we are kind of moving into a little bit more of an employer's market, so to speak. um yeah man i don't even know where to go with this but can you talk about your observation your your much more uh uh tuned in observations of where we are culturally right now are we you know maybe seeing some turbulence right now in terms of like decisions around how we do culture yeah i think there's been again there's been there was a disruption obviously during covid where we ended up having to send everybody home and figure things out just to keep the doors open, right?

9:47And so we took our eye off of the people. We ended up stripping away a lot of cultural programs from our workplaces. And so a lot of companies are still trying to kind of recover and come back from that. And now we've introduced AI into the workplace. And now everyone's trying to figure that out. And so people are worried. Employees are stressed. So I just spoke at an AI conference, an IT conference, not a few weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale. And it was the hot topic. It was, there was this trend of this AI adoption failure rates are extremely high. I mean, 80 to 90 % failure rates with these AI pools that are being introduced into the workplace that aren't being adopted.

10:29And people are scratching their heads and it's not the technology, The technology, yes, it's not perfect. In fact, it's far from perfect. And it'll be some time before we get to a point where it is. Some people think it's the training, that we're not training people on how to use the tools effectively. but far more than that it really is a human uh condition right it is that people are afraid of it they are stressed because they they don't know what it means for their job for their sense of worth and their value as a human being coming into the workplace so people are resisting it and we're not addressing it as uh as a leadership community and uh and i think what i'm seeing is a lot of companies a lot of leaders are positioning it as hey y 'all you better learn this or else you're going to become obsolete and that's just creating even more fear versus maybe setting it up as hey this is a new tool let's figure this out together and let's invest in ourselves and our skills and making it a more positive experience because at the end of the day it's not going away but how can we use this so that it's not a scary experience and how can we use it so that people can work on more creative type work or more value added type work and and use it in conjunction with and use it to help augment what we currently have, but not something to replace us as human beings.

11:52Yeah, yeah. Well, Scott, I'm so grateful for the, it's almost evangelism to treat others with kindness and as a leader, what an opportunity we have. How hard is it to shift culture when you're working with somebody? I think first it's understanding what culture is. I think sometimes we think that culture is what we say it is or what we want it to be. So we hire these fancy firms to come in and help us write our values and mission statement. And, you know, we kind of define what our culture is. But at the end of the day, the reality is culture is what I, the employee, think it is. It's based on my experience every day, right?

12:30It's what I'm walking around, the stories that I'm telling myself. And that is based on the leadership behaviors of all the leaders walking around and how I'm being treated and what's being focused on. And so I think versus defining or helping leaders understand what culture is and how it's created and what your role is in influencing that. And also understanding that everything that you say and do as a leader creates a story in my mind. And it's either a positive story or a negative story. And that is what influences the amount of effort and my performance. right so i think so often if i don't perform at the level that you want or i don't behave the way you want me as a leader you attack that and that just ends up making my story even worse and so it has a negative right it does more damage than it does good versus if you treat me well and you treat me based on my worth as a human being right i'm good my story changes and now i say okay i'm being treated with respect and my leader cares for me and a servant leader does they care for your success.

13:39They want you to grow. They want you to write. And so I feel that and it's genuine. Then, oh, that story is so much more positive. And now I want to try harder and I want to give those ideas that are going to help us do better. And that's the direction we want to head. So the subtitle of Priceless, your book, is See People Differently. What does that mean? I think so often when we see anybody in this world, we automatically put a label on them, right and it's because our mind works so fast right our brain works at a rate of 2 000 words per minute which to me just blows my mind uh literally because we can comprehend about 400 of those words per minute but we we think at a rate of 2 000 words per minute and um and so when we see somebody we automatically put a label on them and i think as leaders we tend to either put a uh like a personality trait label on them like oh here comes chatty kathy uh or oh here comes my top performer or up here comes my underperformer and whatever that label is however we see that person is how we treat them and how we treat them is how they start to feel so if i see you as an annoyance i'm going to treat you like an annoyance and i'm going to be a little bit short with you and i'm going to try to shoo you away and that's going to make me feel like oh i'm a bit of annoyance and and right and that just has a whole impact on my again my experience my sense of worth And versus if I can see you first and foremost as a priceless human being, right, based on your worth and not based on any other factor, then I'm going to treat you that way.

15:14And you're going to start to feel that way. And so that's when we talk about seeing people differently. And this applies not just at work, but in life in general. If we can just remind ourselves that everybody is priceless, right? Separate the behavior. Separate the performance. Separate the personality. Great. Right? Nobody's defined by their worst moment or their, you know, nobody's perfect. So separating that from their worth is the first step. The second step is recognizing that, and this is where leadership gets hard, is that every single person on your team is so uniquely different, right?

15:50And it's getting to know your people and understanding that they have different strengths, different desires, different ways that they like to communicate, different ways that they like to be recognized. And so it's your job to find all that information out so that you can lead them in a much more effective way. Scott, tell me about how you work with leaders or organizations. So, yeah. So we've got a lot of we have a whole ecosystem of resources and products that I have a faculty, a growing faculty, about 20 right now. how leadership gurus, people that are far more talented than I am in this space, executive coaches and folks all over the country that are just passionate about servant leadership and culture building and helping leaders and organizations build this type of people first culture.

16:37And so we'll go in and for those organizations that see this, the value in this and see how results come from people, right? And you can't get results without having an engaged workforce. We have a beautiful, amazing one-day workshop experience. I think it's more of like a retreat experience than it is a workshop. And I also think it's kind of like the Ebenezer Scrooge experience where we bring leaders through, we force them back into their past, and we make them relive some experiences that they've had, bad and good as leaders, so that they can kind of connect with that. And then we bring them to the present day, and we look at what are the challenges that we're faced with, like with this AI.

17:18We talk about AI and we talk about what is that doing to the employees and the stress levels and how can we position this. So we talk about that and how to leverage that. And then we end with bringing them to the future. And we talk about legacy. We talk about the ripple effect of leadership and how what we say today can last for not just today, not just for the week, but a lot of the things that we do and say can stick with people for decades. And so we talk about legacy and we talk about at the end of this, when you retire and you have that retirement party, what do you want people to stand up and talk about the impact that you had on them as a person?

17:56And so anyways, that experience is designed to hopefully inspire a reset or a different perspective. And then we've got these amazing faculty members that can help stay engaged with these organizations and help them build plans to continue that journey. But my focus is to help just get in there and hopefully just start that journey with as many organizations as we can. Yeah. Well, Scott Doggett, you're the founder of the National Academy of Leadership Development. Your book is called Priceless. See people differently, lead people better. Your website is nationalald.com. Scott Doggett, thank you so much for joining us.

18:37Thanks for having me.

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