Exploring Leadership Styles with Robert Jordan

The Virtual CPA Success Show: Episode 86

[00:00:20] Jamie: Hello everybody.

[00:00:20] Welcome to today's podcast. Really excited about today's show for two reasons. One, we have a substitute, Jody in place here. Joey Kenny is joining us. And Joey is really like a taller, more, better hair and funnier Jody. So we're in really good hands today. So welcome to the show, Joey. 

[00:00:39] Joey: Thank you, Jamie. Appreciate it. Sorry I didn't wear my Hawaiian shirt. Didn’t realize that was a prerequisite . 

[00:00:45] Jamie: Yeah. So excited to have Joey every day, and he's a key to what we do here at Summit. But he's gonna join in on this interview and today we're interviewing Robert Jordan from Interim Execs.

[00:00:54] So Robert's gonna talk to us about leadership styles, which I think is a really relevant topic right now as people are trying to build their teams and make it bigger. Welcome to the show, Robert, and tell us a little bit about yourself. 

[00:01:05] Robert: Thanks, Jamie. Good to be with you and Joey. As you said, I'm one of the managers one of the partners at a company called Den Interim Execs.

[00:01:14] And because of that work being a matchmaker around the world, organizations that need C-level leaders, we have come across thousands. And that ended up in research on leadership style for winning styles among exceptional leaders. And that led to writing a book called Right Leader, Right Time.

[00:01:33] Jamie: Great. So why don't we start there?

[00:01:34] We've had a lot of people on the show that have written a book, and I think everybody has a different experience. And we know it usually starts with an idea. But if you wanna talk a little bit about that process of writing a book and really how getting all the information for the book came about.

[00:01:48] Robert: Sure. I'm sure I share this with your other authors about what a head banging experience it is to do a business book. And I hope none of the people. I've listened to some of your podcasts. I think you're great. I haven't heard them [00:02:00] all, but I hope none of them actually said, oh, sure.

[00:02:03] This is a great way to make a living, to go write , a business book. In the case of our book my co-author and I, Olivia Wagner and I was the results of six years of research and interviews and writing, and what prompted it was one really negative thing and then one really positive. The negative thing was that in the course of about 7,000 executives showing up on our doorstep over a span of 10 years, that among the majority we saw this pattern that was not so great.

[00:02:36] The majority of executives showing up, while you could describe their careers as okay, you wouldn't say they were exceptional and that was disturbing. And we can talk about that. It was a cautionary note, but when we were looking at the top one, two, 3%, these are exceptional leaders and among exceptional leaders, we saw one of four, what we call leadership styles, referring to a process and approach and the system that these leaders adopt over time and that we could see was contributing to their success.

[00:03:15] Does that make sense? 

[00:03:17] Jamie: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. 

[00:03:21] Robert: There you go.

[00:03:23] Joey: What was the positive? You said you noticed one negative, one positive. What was the positive that you noticed? 

[00:03:27] Robert: The positive is that because they had a distinct style and we gave these four styles, labels, fixer, artist, builder, and strategist.

[00:03:37] Was that because they had committed themselves, their careers, and the kind of roles they were gonna take on to becoming more and more excellent inside one of those dominant styles, they were exhibiting far greater success. At the same point, it's easy for us to say, an organization always let's collaborate.

[00:03:57] We're a team, we gotta act together.[00:04:00] . The reality is for a lot of leaders, that's very hard to do because if you're not secure in your own style, if you're not confident in what you're doing, it's really hard to actually trust other people who may do better than you, who will be doing better than you.

[00:04:15] So there were these commonalities among exceptional leaders, and you do not see that in the average. Joey, if I was to sum up among the average kind of leader, the number one point of failure, it was attempting to be all things to all people. Now, if you say that to somebody, you point out and say, you're really boiling the ocean here.

[00:04:36] That's not an effective strategy in your career. They would deny it. There's these we would talk about these Ds. There was kind of delusion and detours in these career journeys, and you don't see that among exceptional leaders. What among exceptional leaders is a higher degree of accountability and measurability.

[00:04:55] You'll hear from an exceptional leader. They'll say I took my division from a hundred million to 400 million in six years. That's a form of accountability and among an average leaders, you don't tend to see a lot of specificity, for example. 

[00:05:12] Jamie: Great. Now that, I think that's fascinating and you mentioned the four types of leaders, and I didn't have my pen fast enough, so I only got one of 'em, but I'm gonna have you walk through each of them.

[00:05:21] But take a pause between each so Joey can ask questions or I can ask questions as you talk about that type of leader. But the first I heard was fixer. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the fixer leadership style?

[00:05:31] Robert: Sure, and I can, if you want, I can give you a little description of each.

[00:05:36] The four are fixer, artist, builder, and strategist. In the book, we refer to it a lot as F-A-B-S or fabs. And so for example, there's a leadership assessment that's also coming out as a free three minute tool if you or your listeners wanna try it out. And that's called fab's leadership assessment.

[00:05:57] So fix. Fixer. Fixer [00:06:00] is the energy that loves running into the burning building. Standout example in the world today as we're recording, this is FTX massive global blowup of a crypto platform, and the court instantly appointed a guy named John Ray who we would describe as a classic fixer leader.

[00:06:19] Meaning, for example, in John Ray's career prior to FTX, where was he? Enron. You think about yourselves in your career or leaders, other leaders around you. We all have to solve problems every day, right? We're not trying to pigeonhole any one of us to say, Hey, you're just this and nothing else.

[00:06:37] What we have observed of exceptional leaders is they tend to have a dominant style, or a dominant and a secondary style . So for Fixer, what it means to have that as a dominant style is not only do you love running into the running building, but you need to do that time after time. So you couldn't have taken John Ray after Enron, right?

[00:06:57] It was a massive blowup in the early two thousands ongoing or like a failure like Lehman, right in the great recession. You can't take folks like that are expert in crisis and after the crisis is over or say, oh, we're gonna give you something really steady state now, there are really no problems here for exceptional leaders that will not work.

[00:07:19] Will not work. We had done a prior book before, right? Leader called How They Did It, and it was a series of interviews with champion and company founders and one of the founders we interviewed, he said, if I give a fixer one of my companies and it's not broken, he'll break it just so we can fix it.

[00:07:40] And we tried that. We did a lot of interviews for this book. And when we asked fixers, fixer oriented leaders about that quote, it's like a dig, I thought it was like a dig. Cause I'm not wired as a fixer. I mean to a man, a woman, that the leaders would say, “So what of it,” like to them it's , of course you should break it.

[00:07:59] That's not the [00:08:00] way other leaders think. I help run a company and invest in a lot of companies, and yeah, problems happen all the time, but I don't get my energy off of it. That's where a fixer would say it's like an adrenaline rush. They need this.

[00:08:18] Joey:  So if you're someone who's trying to identify which leadership style you are, what are some of the dominant traits that you look for in a fixer, both positive and negative?

[00:08:28] I think you hit maybe a little bit of the negative, and that fixers will probably tend to find problems when there aren't there. So every, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But what are some of the positives that you'll look and see when you're analyzing these things?

[00:08:40] Robert: Fixers need incredible challenge. And for fixer oriented leaders, they can see this. You see this in their careers early on in their careers. They're smart, they're energetic and someone in the organization says, we got this problem in another country. We have a problem in another division or a problem with a set of clients, and Joey's a really sharp guy and nobody else could solve this problem.

[00:09:03] So let's give it to Joey. And they may even be thinking, you're not gonna, this ain't gonna work. You go in and you crush it. Takes you six months, takes you a year, two years, whatever it is, but you're hooked. You're hooked. And you can't go back to steady state. That's how you know you're wired as fixer. So in all kinds of traits that, that we describe, and if for example, you take the assessment you get a free PDF with this thing and it'll describe each one of the four.

[00:09:34] But fixer tends to be what we would describe as a linear style, which is to say successful leaders. who save organizations, save companies love to do turnaround. They tend to do one at a time. 

[00:09:48] Joey: Interesting. It's interesting. Jamie and I both like to talk about sports a lot and whenever I think of a fixer I think of English soccer where there's certain guys they'll bring in, if your team's about to get relegated, they bring in this person this [00:10:00] guy is the specialist in saving this team from relegation.

[00:10:02] I'm like, that's a fixer. That's somebody who says I've gotta win six of my next nine games. I haven't won any all year. And we're gonna, go-go gadget copter this team together and win six of nine and stay up. So I like what you're saying there, where it's this person thrives in that type of 

[00:10:18] Robert: Yeah.

[00:10:19] Arena. We, and I'm not a, I'm not a sports guy and we're not trying to make more of this model than we think it applies in business organization. But at one point, I interviewed a former major league relief pitcher, one of the pitchers from the White Sox. And he originally, he was just a starter and he did okay, but he thought he was gonna get cut and he had a chance to become a relief pitcher and he jumped at it cuz he wanted to stay in the majors.

[00:10:45] And to a sports ignorant person like me, it's yeah, you're a pitcher, you're a pitcher. He was like no, you don't understand . He said, if you're a starter, you're pacing yourself cuz you're gonna go the whole game. You hope to go the whole game. He said, a relief pitcher. He said, you have to go crazy.

[00:11:01] He said, you have to bring everything you have basically into one inning and just go nuts. And he said, if he said, if I was having a bad day before the game, he said that anger was the greatest thing in the world, that he could bring to bear. And said it was really interesting that even in what he was doing, that there were these same elements.

[00:11:20] Like for example, what you hear about fixer oriented leaders is one thing they love it is generally because the building's on fire. They get alignment from stakeholders far faster than in businesses they're growing or steady state. In businesses that are doing okay or better. Everybody has a say in how you're gonna continue to grow and what should the new products be, and acquisition strategy and all that.

[00:11:46] You know what I'm talking about. When the ship is sinking, everybody gets a line very. And it's interesting that, for example, those leaders, they love that sense of how do you align [00:12:00] everyone around you much faster. 

[00:12:02] Jamie: As long as it doesn't last too long, right? 

[00:12:04] You don't want the ship sinking for three years cuz then people get burned out. Like I think that's yeah. I was a fixer for a good part of my career. In accounting, I'd come in and I'd find the messiest accounting clients I could, or companies I could, and that's who I'd work for and definitely enjoyed it.

[00:12:17] But yeah, like you said, if you do it for too long, you get a little burnt out. So let's move on to the next one, which I'm really curious about hearing is the artist. So let's talk a little bit more about the artist leadership.

[00:12:26] Robert: Yeah, artist leadership, Jamie is the one we say to your peril, if you're wired this way this is my wiring.

[00:12:34] And the reason we say to your peril is because the artist leader views the world as a blank canvas or a piece of clay to be molded. Now, that's all wonderful. We live in an age of, and this isn't necessarily entrepreneurship, but standout leader like Elon Musk. This is someone driven by innovation. Historically,

[00:12:54] Thomas Edison, artist leader, Steve Jobs artist leader. That's all well and good. That energy, though, has to get matched up with an ability to actually execute. And for a lot of artists, leaders, they're the renegade on the team. They're the rebel. They're not necessarily agreeable. They're capable of these discontinuous leaps that are not necessarily logical, especially for stagnant businesses, though they're vital,

[00:13:19] doesn't mean they're going to be liked,

[00:13:24] doesn't mean that every idea is gonna work, most are gonna fail. That is part of artist wiring is that it has an entire, like for example, fixer. Fixer, you can't fail a lot and be a fixer. Fixer, you can't screw it up. Market forgiveness of fixers who screw up not high. You can't sustain that as a career. Artist?

[00:13:49] Oh my God. The romance around, Elon, and I'm not talking about Twitter. I'm referring to SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company. As these are standout examples of an individual who is [00:14:00] changing the world. And argue either side of it, but I think for the better. I think he's an incredible innovator.

[00:14:07] One of the characteristics of artist leaders parallel play, they need multiple canvases to paint on at the same time, every artist leader we interviewed very successful people who have multiple companies and serve on tons of nonprofit boards and all of that we say, and when we would ask them, , can you do just one thing at a time or does it have to be these multiples?

[00:14:30] And we have people jumping out of their seats I have to have this multiple input. It's a different kind of wiring fixer, linear artist parallel. Do 

[00:14:41] Joey: you feel like the artist is the archetype for what people think of when they think of founders in 2023?

[00:14:46] Robert: It can be Joey, but it's not necessarily.

[00:14:52] For example, if we wanna talk a little bit about builder. Builder is the energy that sees the product service team nascent, small, not at scale. And what turns on builder is get to market domination, could be scale, but get to market domination. And typically with a lot of builders when they get to market, domination.

[00:15:18] you'll see them rotate off. They need new team, new project, new division, new company that they have to go do it again. And so the overlap here between any one of these and founders or entrepreneurs is we just think it's an overlay no matter what kind of organization. The final style, if I can jump ahead a little bit to strategist, this is the leader at scale.

[00:15:43] This is the leader at large or really complex organization. And for this leader, the language is completely different. It's all about loyalty. It's about being mentored. It's about mentoring other people. It's cross-training within the organization. It tends to be much higher [00:16:00] longevity. The key trade is fixers.

[00:16:03] Artists and builders, they tend to be inside of a team or an organization. That's five people, 10 people, 50 people, a hundred. But they probably all know each other. Stephen Covey, the guy that wrote Seven Habits, he had this wonderful phrase, personal span of control. And those styles tend to be that there's a personal span of control that you know me and I know you and that personal relationship is gonna work for both of us.

[00:16:30] Strategist is at an end of size and complexity where they can no longer rely on personal span of control for everything thatthey want to get done. Far more vast organizations. One of the leaders we interviewed for the book was the under secretary of the Department of Defense, and she had responsibility for the Navy.

[00:16:53] So she imagined, an organization in the hundreds of thousands. And her description of leading in terms of trying to influence systems of systems is nothing like what you hear in terms of the challenges or success from fixers artists and builders. Does that make sense? 

[00:17:14] Jamie: Yeah, definitely makes sense.

[00:17:16] So now that you've described all four . I guess the first step would be is understanding who I am as a leader. But then the next step, which I think might even be more challenging is as I'm trying to find that right leadership role is figuring out the organization that I'm possibly moving into or that I'm in and making sure it's the right fit.

[00:17:32] So what do you recommend in the book as well as to people you work with in terms of finding that right fit to make sure that you're not an artist in a place that needs a fixer? 

[00:17:41] Robert: You're heading on a key question, Jamie, for all of us in our careers and I don't wanna make light of this because one of the big things we say in the book is that exceptional leaders reject more of what is not for their highest and best use.

[00:17:59] That's really [00:18:00] easy to say. So hard to do when you were early in your career, right? You need the job, you need the income. This is crazy. Somebody's saying, oh, you should reject what's not your highest and best use. But what happens over time is that as you, as your career goes on and you have more and more success, that there's a path for all of us.

[00:18:23] We see this and that your decisions become more and more intent. , you choose A over B, you choose C over D, right? And that is a process of coming to your own highest and best use. Does that make sense? So it's not that it's easy, it's not that it's instantaneous. One of the quotes from a minister that we put in the book was, just because you have a song to sing doesn't mean you don't have to learn how to sing it.

[00:18:50] So you're on the journey. and that journey is gonna be an exploration. And the biggest challenge in there is you or me. It's not external to any one of us to go figure out what that is. 

[00:19:05] Joey: That's advice that I wish I had at, mentioned it earlier, a younger point in my career when I was coming up in the accounting industry, I did not feel comfortable saying no to something that wasn't a great firt

[00:19:17] At the time it was what you were mentioning, man, I need this job. It's coming out of 2012. The recession isn't, it was still floating through New Mexico in ways that it was late. But that's a great advice, I think for young accountants or really young people anywhere.

[00:19:30] Robert: If you and I would've known each other in 2012 and we had done this book, then I wouldn't have necessarily said, hey, reverse course here immediately. I think these are more subtle. When we were first working on the book there was a book, we had book agents and publishers and all that.

[00:19:46] And one of the book agents was like, hey, is this really the case for myself? This was a really successful agent. And I said let's look at it. Look at your career. And he had been New York Times editor and then become a major [00:20:00] agent. And as he was thinking about it, he was like, I can see how this path was forming.

[00:20:07] And look at the word decision. We make decisions about our career. Decision is a word coming from the Latin, which means to kill off. That's what it is. And so in a way, that's what you and I are doing in our careers as we progress, we kill off certain options.

[00:20:25] We live in the age of FOMO which is the inability to decide. This is made much harder because we're all distracted. We're all looking at these, our phones 200 times a day, and it makes it hard to kinda listen to this the internal, the still small voice in you which says, this is the direction I need to go.

[00:20:50] Jamie: Also I think, I mean as you look at leaders, especially of larger organizations or organizations that are even not so large. You look at these leaders and they have wide range of experience. And I think sometimes it's having those experiences that aren't the best fit, that really you learn from and that you can take into those things.

[00:21:07] It's, again, I talked about my experience a little bit and going in and being the fixer and figuring it out. I did that two or three times, but I'm like, do I really wanna make a career of this? That's where I found a little bit more stability in what I'm doing now.

[00:21:17] But I think that you look at leaders and you learn from each experience that you do. And that's why, again, , look at the execs resumes of all these companies. It's super long and it's vast and it's not doing the same thing over and over again, at least early on in their career. 

[00:21:31] Robert: Yeah. I think for a lot of leaders that, as I said, we're not trying to pigeonhole anyone into one.

[00:21:37] We would say that we are all combinations of the four to infinite degree. The parallel we would say is just like d n a, they're just four kinds of proteins. They're called nucleotides that make up all of biological life. Whether it was your cat, the oak tree outside or any of us.

[00:21:56] It's just infinite variation of four [00:22:00] proteins. And it's the same with leadership style, but there is also this thing that if you start thinking about this and looking at it, you'll see there is a pattern, there's a rhyme and a reason to certain people. And then you can see how it is they have success or don't.

[00:22:16] So I'll give you one example, and this is not to pick on her, Cheryl Sandberg, who was at Facebook now Meta arguably one of the best builder leaders of the modern era. She joined Facebook when it was small, couple hundred employees. This sounds like a lot. A hundred million in revenue. But in seven years it was 70,000 employees.

[00:22:38] It was 70 billion in revenue. That's one of the most incredible builder leadership journeys you could imagine. Clearly they're at scale at that point. The thing that's interesting is she stuck around another seven years and that’s where things didn't look so good for her. Cambridge Analytica scandal election problems the pivot to Meta that didn't really perhaps resonate with her.

[00:23:06] See, so it's interesting this builder wiring and also her own statement, cuz I think she said at the outset, she was gonna sign up for a five year tour of duty.

[00:23:17] Jamie: Yeah, no it's sometimes trusting that gut. And I know I’m going back to sports again, I know Joey and I talk about this all the time, but Bill Barr ourselves got into that routine where he refused to coach a team for more than three years.

[00:23:27] Cause he's after three years they stop hearing my voice and what I'm good at goes away. And I think that's exactly what we're talking about is knowing your knowing there might be term limits on any role. You happen to find. 

[00:23:38] Robert: That's interesting you say that because among fixer leaders, what you'll tend to hear is there's this subtle shift when there's a go forward team and they start running with the ball faster and faster on their own.

[00:23:51] Fixer isn't needed anymore. That's the point where they need to leave or get ready to leave because if they stay, they will start [00:24:00] breaking things all over again. 

[00:24:03] Joey: How do you prepare a fixer for that shift? Because I imagine that shift is subtle, but it's an important shift.

[00:24:07] Robert: If you're good at it, you have to know it. One of the veteran fixers we interviewed he said we asked people about their best days, their worst days. And he said, the worst day is the day I leave. Because you've bonded with this team and you accomplished something incredible because you saved the organization and you gotta go. You have to go. Look guys, there's no way we couldn't have written this book 30 years ago. The world wasn't, we were still 30 years ago in this mindset of lifetime employment. You get outta school and can I get a job at General Motors and just stay there, advance, but stay there.

[00:24:47] Now you know, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, he had a speech he gave to new employees, which is, we understand this is a tour of duty for you. You may stay here a long time. It may be not so long. The presumption was nobody's staying here forever. And so how do you maximize that experience for the company and for the individual?

[00:25:09] This is radically different kind of world in terms of how we are all working and employed and see ourselves. And even more so now since the pandemic because there is so much more that is remote. 

[00:25:25] Jamie: Yeah, for sure. So you were leading right into my final question. So one of the things that we like to do is talk a little bit about something a little off topic.

[00:25:31] So you mentioned Joey's cat earlier, and I'm not sure if those on the listeners noticed, but my dog was going a little nuts earlier as well as we had someone come into our front door. Let's talk about being remote and the animals you have in your house. And if you don't have any animals in your house and you can talk, tell a story about maybe your favorite animal or a call you were on, where someone's animal was was a big part of the show.

[00:25:51] So I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with Joey just because we've already seen your cat. But if Joey, if you wanna tell us a little story about your animals in your house and how they've interacted while you're working at home. 

[00:26:00] Joey: Yeah, so I'm still relatively new to the work from home game, but my wife has been doing a remote accounting job for four years, so at some point, I'm pretty sure every one of our three cats has been on a video call at some point.

[00:26:15] And what's great is they're all really good at putting their butt right in the camera for everybody to see, because of course they wanna face us, they wanna face us directly in our face and get all the attention that they deserve. I will say it is nice to work for a group and I think as we're getting more in the remote world, people are getting more comfortable.

[00:26:33] Just this is, these are our lives, these are our animals. This is as much a part of our life as anything. So always good when one of the cats joins the call and says hey to everybody.

[00:26:43] Jamie: Hi, Robert. How about you? Any pets at home? 

[00:26:47] Robert: Hi, Jamie. You gave me the opening, so I don't, this is now we're gonna go into two hour podcast because We're gonna put up for you guys so you can see Norman.

[00:26:52] This is Norman, the Bernadoodle, and Norman and I share an Instagram account that has nothing to do with business. It's called Nomanclature norman dot on Instagram. And Norman is my secret agent element because in my spare time I paint, and so I've started to have more and more gallery shows and who can resist Norman look at that?

[00:27:16] Norman and I are pretty tight. Great. So by the way, I'm gonna give you all a business idea, okay? Here it is. It's a free gift to all of your listeners. Seriously, someone could do this. All right. I saw Jamie, you worked for Frontier. Okay. Here's the idea.

[00:27:37] All right. Anybody listening and you do this, you're welcome. All right. I was complaining to someone because Norman weighs 30, 35 pounds, right? Unless you're gonna fake it with this service animal stuff you can't get. Wrong. So Norman can't fly on a commercial flight. Okay?

[00:27:55] Someone needs to start a puppy airline. And what it is. is [00:28:00] you can fly with your dog or cat. That's it. Here's the human seat. And then there's the seat for your dog or cat. Come on. We're talking about so many millions of people that have pets that would love to fly with them. I drove four days with Norman, just now Chicago to California.

[00:28:18] If somebody would've said, hey, there's a flight Tel, it's you know the puppy airline? Oh my God. 

[00:28:23] Jamie: So airlines, you're the flight. , their biggest expenses are obviously the planes and then the fuel. So I think that company, their third largest expenses would be the insurance for when the dogs are getting in fights throughout the flight.

[00:28:38] Robert: Maybe you have to have a carrier.

[00:28:41] Jamie: I have to figure out some kind of a Yeah. Insurance policy there, but no I love it. 

[00:28:44] Joey: Or each seat is its own pod. Kinda like we were doing in the pandemic when we were going outside to eat, and it's we've got a little dining pod here.

[00:28:50] You can make it all, you can see through it, everyone's interacting

[00:28:55] Jamie: That's actually, I'm just pitching a dog park in the air. And that's just, that just sounds like a fun little experiment. 

[00:29:00] Robert: I don't think this is a carpeted cabin. I don't think it's a carpeted cabin I'm picturing here.

[00:29:07] Jamie: Yeah. Not at all. And the cleaning crew would've to jump right in. Yeah there's, this is a good idea. 

[00:29:12] Robert: coming out 

[00:29:13] Jamie: You're talking to CFO consultants here who are gonna sit here and we could talk about this in the next 45 minutes with us asking a bunch of questions, cuz that's just how we operate.

[00:29:21] But I wanna make sure we we don't run too much over on time, 

[00:29:24] Robert: So if we're ready, you wanna start, we can form BLLC let’s do it. 

[00:29:27] Jamie: There we go. Awesome.  Great. Yeah, so anyone that listens, knows I have a ton of pets. I’m gonna talk about 'em all but I have normal pets like my dog who always sits right next to me.

[00:29:36] And then I have some more exotic pets like bearded dragon and a turtle, and mice and hamsters, pretty much any pet you can imagine. We have in our house our family's big animal lovers, but luckily none of mine really are able to jump up on the screen and show their butts. But blossom does tend to bark when someone rings the doorbell, so I have to have my mute button really quick when that does happen.

[00:29:56] Jamie: That's coming to the end of this episode. As always let's end with giving [00:30:00] our listeners that final thought. And Robert, when you talk about your final thought, you can talk about how people can get ahold of you and how where to find your book. So we'll let you start. 

[00:30:05] Robert: Thanks Jamie, and thanks Joey. People can reach me at Interimexecs.com. 

Jamie: Great. Any final thoughts for our listeners? 

Robert: I would, my one repeat which again, easy to say, hard to do, is over the course of your career, the more that you can reject what you feel is not for your highest and best use, the better off you're gonna be.

[00:30:30] Jamie: Great. Joey, what'd you take away from this podcast? 

[00:30:33] Joey: What I took away is that A, I've gotta spend a little bit more time on the assessment. Would you mind telling us where to find that assessment again, Robert? , 

[00:30:41] Robert: the assessment is at rightleader.com, and you'll see an assessment tab and just click on there.

[00:30:45] It's about three minutes. 

[00:30:46] Joey: Perfect. I think that's the very first thing I'm gonna do as soon as I get off this call and see where I fit in. And again, as someone who also identifies as a fixer, it's hard for me to sometimes say no to things that maybe need fixing. We'll really refine trying to get in the right seat at all times.

[00:31:03] Jamie: So first off, I wanna say Joey's in the exact right seat. So if he takes that test and try to switch jobs. Robert, you're in big trouble. I'll tell you that much. Cause I can't live without Joey. 

[00:31:12] Robert: It'll be our fault doing. It'll be our fault. Just wrongly calibrated test. Sorry Joey.

[00:31:17] We have to follow my sword there, . Awesome. 

[00:31:20] Jamie: Yeah, no, my, my final thought was, yeah I think it's important to know who you are and what your style is as someone that does a lot of hiring both at our organization and then with my clients. I think one of the worst mistakes you can make as a hiring person is to put someone with the wrong personality in the wrong role. So I think that is a big key when it comes to filling, especially those higher level seats. You wanna make sure that you understand where you are as an organization and get the right person in that role. I think that's something Robert might be able to help with.

[00:31:46] So feel free to reach out to him. But yeah, definitely appreciate all you bringing this to the episode. And Joey, thanks for filling in for Jodi. I may have to bring you in more often cause this is way more fun than when Jodi's on here. I doubt I'll listen to this and hear that, but wanna make sure everybody knows so.

[00:31:59] Joey: [00:32:00] Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate the chance to hop in and say hi. 

[00:32:01] Jamie: Yep. Thank you Robert, too.

[00:32:03] Robert: Thanks, Jamie. Thanks Joey. 

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