Mastering Flexible Leadership to Drive Agency Success with Kevin Eikenberry

Drew McLellan:

Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label iq. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid sized agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome, welcome your host, Drew McClellan. Hey everybody, Drew McClellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super glad to have you back. If you are a new listener, welcome. We are here every week talking to folks who help agencies build their business better. How do you build how do you build an agency that is scalable, that is sustainable, that is stable and if you want to down the road, sellable. That’s our focus is how do you run of your business better? And week after week we have amazing guests that help you think about your business a little differently and invite you to do it a little better by just giving you some new ideas to consider. And we certainly are going to do that this week as well. So I’m excited to introduce you to our guest if you are a regular attendee to these weekly gatherings. You know, leadership is something we’ve talked about many times and I think for many of you it just keeps getting more daunting, it gets more challenging as we are more scattered across many places, many time zones, many different age groups. Now many of you have three or four generations of employees in your office or in your company anyway, even if you don’t have an office. And we’re always looking for ways to get better. One of the things that I know about all of you is that you are committed to being great leaders, to being great bosses, to delivering amazing products and services to your clients, but also taking great care of your team. And so that’s why I thought our guest today was such a perfect fit because that’s his area of expertise is helping us just notch up even a little better. You know, I think sometimes when we’re good at something, we sort of check the box. But I think leadership is one of those things we can always get just a smidge better at. And that’s what we are going to talk to Kevin Eikenberry about. So I’m excited to bring him to you to bring his ideas to you, to tell you about his brand new book. So without further ado, let’s welcome him to the show. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Kevin Eikenberry:

It’s a Pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Drew McLellan:

So tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you had, how you have come to have this depth of expertise.

Kevin Eikenberry:

I was born. No, you don’t want to go back that far.

Drew McLellan:

So a little, a little later than that. That started high school at the earliest.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Yeah. So you know, on my podcast, the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, I often ask a similar question. And when someone starts like that, I’m like, oh no, listen. I grew up in a family agricultural business, farm business. So I had the chance to be involved and observe leadership from a very early age. But the other reason that that’s useful is that that led me to know that eventually I wanted to have my own company, which I’ve had for 31 years. But in between, after college, I worked for a major chemical and oil company called Chevron for about eight years. And after sales and marketing sorts of roles, I found my way into training and development. And so about 31 and a half years ago or so, Drew, I left to start a company much like many of those list of you listening, right, had a subject matter, expertise, and then left to start a company that has come to be all about leadership. Leadership and learning. We often say, but we are really in the business, Drew, of making the world a better place by helping leaders be more effective. We think that nothing makes the world better without someone leading us there. So that’s the business that we’re in. We had the chance to work with leaders around the world doing that. Written a bunch of stuff about that, including this brand new book.

Drew McLellan:

So give us the title of the book. I know we’ll talk about it throughout.

Kevin Eikenberry:

The Flexible Leadership, Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence.

Drew McLellan:

So that is certainly a theme, I think, of our world today, that need for flexibility. So I was just going to ask you, how do you think leadership has.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Changed since COVID Well, so before COVID I co wrote a book called the Long Distance Leader. So yeah, before we all knew that everyone was going to have to go home or many people were going to have to go home, I had already written a book about that because I’ve been leading a team at a distance for well over well approaching 15 years now. And in that book we made this statement and we’ve actually the second edition of this book is now out and the statement’s still there. Here’s the statement. Think leadership first, location second. So I want to answer your question about how it’s different, but what I want to say first is that it’s way more the same than different. And too often when what we think about is, oh my gosh, everything’s changing, and then we want to throw everything out or like, what do we have to do? And what we really need to do is there’s a whole lot about leadership that hasn’t changed, isn’t going to change. What’s changed in your question is the context of a world that had to go virtual and now is struggling with what does the future look like since we don’t have to be Right. And so that’s not why the book is called Flexible Leadership, but it’s a perfect example of why we must be flexible. Because I’d written that book, Drew back earlier, a lot of people ask us what was going to happen. Like, during COVID people would say, well, what do you think is going to happen? And I said, I don’t know. But what I can tell you is the future of work will be flexible. That where we work, when we work, how we work, why we work, even might change a little bit. And so those contexts do matter. So in that regard, leadership is a little different in that the context of what people expect from a leader is continuing to evolve. What where people will be working and when they will be working will continue to change. So as leaders, we must be able to lead in situations where we don’t necessarily see people or see people as often as we’d like to or when we’d like to. And so from that context, leadership is a little different, but I never want us to stop thinking about how much it’s really the same. Humans are still humans, right? Group dynamics are still group dynamics. Those things haven’t changed.

Drew McLellan:

So for the leaders that grew up in a much more inflexible world, right, they got in their car, they drove to work every day, they walked into their office or their cube or their space with the same people, and a lot of leadership was bumping into each other in the hallway. And a lot of communication was sort of felt very random and sort of haphazard, but also sort of was good happenstance. And there was a lot of learning through osmosis and observation. I think a lot of those leaders are challenged right now trying to figure out how to lead in a world where they don’t see their employees every day, and they are, and they don’t know them as well as they did if they were sitting around the proverbial water cooler talking about the movie they all saw on Friday night. So talk about from that perspective, how to wrap your head and heart around the idea that this is New normal. And that the employees who want to do it differently than how you did it aren’t inherently bad or lazy or fill in the blank, but they are different. Yeah.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Because their expectation, the societal view. We could go down a rabbit hole here that I promise I won’t take us down. Unless you want to. But the societal view of what work looks like has changed in the last five years. And what’s possible for work to look like. And so that genie is out of the bottle. Right. We can’t wish that away. That’s real. You know, I was smiling when you talked about. You know, you were basically describing managing by wandering around, which, you know, is a phrase that goes back to Bob Waterman and Tom Peters from Search of Excellence in 1983. And I remember on my podcast when I had Tom Peters on, and he said, so, Kevin, in a world now, how do we manage by wandering around if there’s no one to wander around to? And he said, is it. Is it managing by frequent flyer miles? I said, no. I said, it’s leading by webcam. Right. And. And so. And of course, I just said that in the moment in a conversation that I was having with him. But there’s truth there. Here’s what’s. Here’s the. A big piece of what you’re describing that’s super important for us to think about. And that. Is that what you’re describing about the water cooler, about the. In the hallway, it’s about the serendipitous conversation, is that what naturally happens in human interaction is that we have interaction, Right? Like if. If a leader was doing some of the things you were describing, even if they weren’t doing it as purposefully as they could, they had some clues about their folks. And now here’s more likely what it looks like. It looks like I ring up the boss, and the boss says, hello. And I say, hey, I don’t want to bother you. I know you’re busy. And it could be on the phone, it could be on a Zoom, it could be in a Slack or a Team message, it doesn’t matter. But basically what they’re saying is, I have a question, know you’re busy. Can you give me an answer? The boss gives an answer and we’re done. And we’ve transacted business, but we haven’t interacted. And so one of the things that actually, I talk about it in this book as a flexer, like, should I be transacting or interacting? And the question is, the right answer is not at either end. It’s somewhere in the middle. Like, we could spend too much time interacting with people, talking about stuff other than work and weather, which, as I.

Drew McLellan:

Recall, a lot in the office, right? Yeah.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Sometimes it goes more than we need or we get taught. We get sort of sucked in, and we. And we may be the one doing the sucking in. Like. Like that happened. And I can remember lots of conversations with leaders about, like, how do I deal, how do I extricate myself from the team member that wants to have the long conversation? Like. And so there’s too far that direction. But where we are, where too many leaders are, and many of the leaders you described are Drew, is that they’re too far and we’re just interacting business. So here’s the question. Are you talking with your folks about more than work and weather?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Right. And if all you’re doing is talking about work and weather. Now, I’m not saying there’s never a time for that interaction for that. Just transaction, transact the business, move on. Like, there’s a place for that, for sure. But if that’s all we’re doing, we’re probably missing out on a whole lot of opportunities to build relationship, to improve communication, to build commitment, to build engagement, to build ownership. We go on a long list, and those things won’t happen automatically. So we can. We can create all of those things that we had in the office. If people are at a distance, we just have to be more intentional about it than we did before.

Drew McLellan:

So I want to get to the. So that happened in the air quotes, naturally, Right. So that you would walk in the office some, right? Yeah, hopefully.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

But. But it. You were all in the same place, so it was sort of hard not to bump into each other in the break room, in the whatever and have a brief conversation. And I think what agencies did, certainly right as Covid was happening and then post Covid was we had sort of this forced planned interaction. We played games together, we did trivia. We started the meetings with a describe your worst haircut kind of question. So we sort of had this very structured interaction. Right. And now five years post Covid, I think people are sort of fatigued with, like, the zoom games and the things like that. So how do I, as a leader, create those moments with intentionality, to your point, that don’t feel gamified or forced, that feel as natural as, you know, as it used to before you and I hit the record button. You told me you’re into college basketball. So if we were in the same office, I’d walk in on a Monday. And I would be like, oh my gosh, the game. And we would talk about that for a couple minutes. How do I do that in a natural way in today’s environment?

Kevin Eikenberry:

Let me, I’ll give you three things. The first thing is, what you’re describing is what a lot of people did right away. Like, we, and I would say things that were with great intention and in some organizations worked very well, but they were somewhat contrived. And, and, and the longer we did them, the more contrived they felt. Right. So no disrespect to any of that. And in for many organizations, a lot of those things really helped.

Drew McLellan:

And they’re fun on occasion, right?

Kevin Eikenberry:

And there’s still fun on occasion. So let me give you three things. First of all, the one example, although I’ve never done the haircut one, like, so the first thing is integrate some of that into the work. So like, we have, my team is spread out across the United States and we have a team meeting once a month and we still do one of those things, right? We had our team meeting as you and I are recording this. We’re recording it a few days after the super bowl and our meeting was right after the Super Bowl. So our, our, our thing this time was what’s your favorite or, or most memorable super bowl commercial? So I made it safe. If they didn’t watch the game, it could be an old one. And I didn’t really care. Like really what I wanted was seven or eight minutes of the team just interacting, laughing. Some of those videos got found and put on a channel on our Slack. We use Slack. You could be using teams or whatever. So that’s the first thing. So if you’ve got things like that, that work and they’re integrated and it’s not, we’re doing it and doing it every day. We’re doing it once in a while. We have it as a standard part of our meeting. That’s step one. Number two is I mentioned we use Slack. You might be using teams or whatever. If you have channels and whatever one of those tools you’re using. We have a channel called Water Cooler. We have another channel called General. And in the General channel, you’re going to put stuff about work, but stuff about that. We all need to know about a meeting or about this or about that or whatever. But in the Water Cooler channel, it’s the kind of stuff you would have talked about at the Water Cooler. And people can engage in that as much as they want. They can say, I’m busy I’m not going to look at it now, I’ll look at it later. And I would say something shows up there most every day. Maybe it’s a meme, maybe it’s a video, maybe it’s a thing about the fact that they’re snowed in today. I don’t know what it is. Like there’s that stuff shows up and that makes it more natural. And the third and maybe the most important of those three things, Drew, is that when you have your one on ones with your folks, you need to start with that stuff. Right. So, so here’s my very simple model for doing one on ones non work. Their list, my list. And too often the one on ones up being these are all the things I need to tell you, Drew, as your boss. Like, let’s just go through, here’s my agenda. And so first of all, if, if they know it’s their meeting too. So first of all, if there’s, if they get to go first, many of those should be the same things over time. And so now it’s, we have a real conversation. If I go first, there’s less chance of conversation. But by starting with the non work, which might be 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, all the better. So those are three things I could give you more, but those are three things I think that we can all do and can help overcome some of that gap. Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

In fact, it’s interesting, the one on one meeting model that we teach, the employee owns the meeting, so they come prepared and they drive the agenda. So that to your point, they’re up first, right? Yeah, 100%.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Yeah. Everyone on my team keeps what they call that works that reports to me, keeps what they call a Kevin list. I got a list for everybody. We come in and I say, what’s on your list? It’s, it’s our meeting, their meeting. We’re saying exactly the same thing.

Drew McLellan:

So what’s in it for an agency owner today in this new flexible work world? This idea of embracing flexibility over rigidity, over, over, over. And maybe it’s not rigidity, but it’s that everybody worked the same. We all showed up between 8 and 8:30, we all left between 5:30 and 6. Like we were in the same place. Like there was commonality in the way we worked. And today, to your point, you know, most, most of us have employees scattered, not necessarily all over just the country, but in many cases all over the globe, working, you know, a much broader set of hours.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Yep.

Drew McLellan:

How is a leader, how do I have to be different in this flexible work world that I am, whether I danced in or I got dragged in, I’m in it. So you’re in it.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Right. And so the first thing is, as I said earlier, you can’t wish it away and like, oh, it’s going to get better, it’s going to get different. Well, I suppose you could, you could only hire people that live two miles from you. That’s probably not what you’re going to do. Right. So the first thing I would say is related to this, especially the more flung you are. Like, my team is there’s three hour time difference from one end to the other across the continental U.S. but we work with clients around the world. Right. And so what I would suggest, number one, is that if you’ve got folks who are many time zones, they’re in Europe and you’re in the US or you’re in Europe and they’re in APAC or what? Doesn’t matter what, what the difference is. What I would suggest is, number one is that you need to flex the time that you meet with them. Sometimes you might need to have a meeting with them, or you’re one on one with them at a time that’s more convenient for them, not necessarily more convenient for you. That seems simple. But chances are based on culture of where people come from and the fact that you’re the boss, you have to remember this. You’re like me, all of you listening, like, you’re not only the boss, but your name is on the door. And if your name’s not on the door, you’re signing the paycheck, literally or figuratively. Right. And so there’s always a power differential between us as leaders and those we lead. But when you happen to be the owner, I think the risk is that gets even bigger. And then you got people in cultures for whom they might be more deferential than you might even think they would be. And so that simple thing of saying be willing to flex for your meetings, like if you aren’t the one to suggest it, they may never ask for it. Suggest or ask for it. Right. I mean, I know that that’s just a very simple sort of blocking and tackling thing, Drew, but that would. That’s literally the first thing that comes to my mind in that regard. And it’s just an example though. Right. And so when we think about flexing, we’re not just thinking about flexing the whens and the where’s of the work, but the how of the work. So as leaders, what do we need to do? How do we need to flex? What would be our natural approach or our personal preference based on what the situation calls for, the context of a situation as we’ve talked about, or the needs of our folks?

Drew McLellan:

I think a lot of agency owners, if they were given a truth serum and they knew no one could overhear them, would say, God, these employees are so needy. They are like, they have personal problems every day that they bring into work. They need more flexibility than we ever had back when in the day. They want more and more and more, and I don’t know how to give them enough. No matter what I give them, it’s not enough that that unvarnished. That’s what they would say if nobody else was eavesdropping. Help us understand why we feel that way, and how do we get beyond that feeling? Because I think there’s some resentment in the leadership ranks of agencies today of, I’m trying my best to be a good boss. I’m trying to be understanding. But, man, every day there’s something.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Three things. Number one, you’re in the spot that you’re in as an owner, which means that you may very well think about the world. Well, you definitely think about the world differently. And you may think about work differently than your folks. Didn’t say better. I said differently. So the first thing is people can be highly committed to their work, and that’s what we want. I realize that, but it might not look exactly the way it looks to you. So the first thing is we have to recognize that their perspective is different than ours. The second thing I would say is if you are of a certain age, and I know most of you are listening to this, you’re not watching us, but Drew and I are of, generally speaking, a certain age. And if you are of a certain age, which means you’ve been in the workplace for more than a decade, let’s just say the workplace that you came up in didn’t have that flexibility in most cases. And so that’s what we did, because that’s what we did. We never even saw the possibility of something different. We never saw the possibility of, like, can I shift my day so I can go to the dentist as an example? Like. Like, we didn’t even think about that because it wasn’t something that was on the table. So the reality is, and I think in those kinds of examples, for the better, it’s different now. So we shouldn’t be looking at folks and say, well, why don’t they see it the way I see it? Because it would be impossible for them to see it the way we see it because they’ve got a different lived experience than we had. And so we’ve got to be careful not to be living in the good old days. And by the way, the good old days weren’t as good as we think they were. The further away from them we get, the more good we feel like they were. So, and so the third thing then is as leaders, we are in the. Well, so here’s my definition of leadership. Reaching valuable outcomes with and through others. And what you’re describing, Drew, this thinking that no one wants to talk about, right. Is that there’s this tension between getting great work accomplished and the people that are doing that great work. And so we have to put all of that in context. Right. So. So the third thing I would say is put those things in context. And I will say if you’re calling them needy, it’s probably not helpful, of course, because you’ve now labeled them in a way that you’re looking at every request through that lens. That’s likely not helpful. How do I think about, how do I manage the tension between getting great outcomes and getting those folks or having those, or helping those folks make that all happen? And I think when we put it in that context and know that there’s going to be tension and sometimes it will be hard, we’re much better off. But in the old days when it was command and control and that’s. I mean, leaders didn’t have to think about that necessarily. Actually, the best leaders did. Right. But the context has changed such that that that needs to be on the table more than it ever needed to be before.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I think some of it is back when, back in the day, if you had a flexible or a good leader or boss, they were the ones who brought up the flexibility. You did not dare ask for the flexibility. And I think the big shift is.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Can I tell you a story about that? I’m going to tell you a story about that as an employee. So. And especially since you already brought up college basketball. And as you started to say this, this story comes into my head, it is 1987, okay? I have moved from the Midwest, where I grew up and everyone to the, to the San Francisco Bay area working for Chevron. And my boss knows that I’m a college basketball fan. He knows I’m a Purdue fan. And it’s the first week, it’s the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament. So for anyone that knows this, if you don’t know this, just follow with me for a second. So we were playing a game that started at like 10:00 Pacific Time in the morning, and my boss comes to me the day before and says, I don’t expect to see you until about 1. I’m like, what are you talking about? He says, well, Purdue plays in the morning, so here’s what’s expected of you. You’re just stay home and watch the game. And then you are to call us and tell us if they won before you get on the BART train and come to the office. Well, first of all, I remember that story and it was a long time ago. Lesson one. But lesson two, how did that change my relate. Would I have ever. Would I have asked him for that?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. No.

Kevin Eikenberry:

No.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Was that an over the moon moment for me with Steve? For sure. Right. Did it cost him anything? No, it paid him many, many dividends for a fair.

Drew McLellan:

And that was in a corporate environment.

Kevin Eikenberry:

That was in a highly corporate environment. That was like, make sure the tie is on before you at the end of the game, before you go get on the train. I haven’t thought of that story in a while, but it’s a perfect example of that, of being flexible, knowing what matters to people and leaning into those things. And the other thing, as an agency owner, you might be older, which means you’re at a different life stage. So you maybe have sort of forgotten what it was like when you had a kid in first grade with a snotty nose. Right. And a bit of a cold. And yeah, you lived it, but you’re kind of not there anymore. We just got to be careful and aware of those things. And that doesn’t mean we have to, quote, give in. But what I’m really saying is don’t think about it as giving in. Maybe the biggest idea in the book, Flexible Leadership, is the idea of we need to stop thinking about either or and start thinking both. And so this idea of transaction or interaction, it’s both. And this idea of outcomes or others, it’s both.

Drew McLellan:

And yeah, yeah. I know that you believe that leadership is sort of a balance of mindset, skill set, and habit set. So we need to take a quick break and then when we come back, I want you to talk about sort of that blend of skills.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Okay?

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops and you can see the whole schedule@agencymanagementinstitute.com on the navigation, head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account Execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody. No matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check them out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back with Kevin Eikenberry and we are talking about today’s leaders and what that looks like today, how to be a flexible and effective leader. So before the break, I said that one of the principles that Kevin talks about is that effective leadership, not just leadership, but effective leadership, is a balance of mindset, skill set and habit set. So Kevin, talk to us a little bit about that troika of, of talents.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Oh, bonus for the use of the word. I love that. So, so here’s the thing. So what we were talking about before the break, this idea of either or both. And that’s a mindset. And so I can give you a bunch of skills, but if they don’t match your mindset, doesn’t matter what the skills are. Like, you’re probably not even going to care. Like, so the first thing is the mindset has to match the skill set that you want to build. Like, if you’re, even if you’re listening to us now and you’re like, well, I don’t want to be a flexible leader. I want to be consistent. I want to be, I want to be rock solid. I want to be steadfast. I’m going to have, I have a way of doing it. I have a leadership style. This is how I lead. If that’s your mindset, first of all, I would urge you to think about it differently, which we could do if you want. But if that’s your mindset, it doesn’t matter what else we talk about because the skills won’t make sense to you. They won’t matter to you. They won’t be meaningful to you. So whatever you’re doing for yourself or with those in your agency that you’re leading is we have to make sure that the mindset that we’re creating for us as leaders matches the skill set that we want people to build. Right. Like, if we believe, if our mindset is that I’m supposed to have all the answers. Listen, I’m the agency owner. Like, I’m supposed to know all this stuff and people I am the fount of all knowledge, then it doesn’t matter what skills I teach you about collaboration because it doesn’t match your mindset. I’m using extreme examples to make the point, right? So mindset must match the skill set. And we’ve been talking about skills and whatever leads leadership skills you want to build. That’s important. All of you have been to a workshop conference, read a book, listen to a podcast, and said, like, that’s really good. I want to do that. Awesome. But here’s the thing. If we don’t have the habit set to go with it on the back end, those skills that you’ve put into your toolkit will get dusty or rusty. Like, they’re not going to get used, right? So even if I believe in them mindset, even if I now have them skillset, I have to go use them. And that’s the, what we call the. Not just we, but lots of people call the knowing doing gap. We’ve all been there, right? We leave the workshop with good intention, but we have to change the habit. We have to start to try things, reflect. I mean, we could talk a whole lot about habit if you want, but fundamentally, without the troika, we won’t have success for ourselves or in anything we invest in for the leaders in our agency. Right? Like, if we’re not hooking all those things together, that’s one of the reasons why so much leadership development ends up not getting as much return on the investment as we might want, because we haven’t integrated the learning back into and expected that learning back in the workplace.

Drew McLellan:

So what do I have to do differently in all three of those areas? Like how. How do I practically apply that? So, for example, if after listening to this podcast, somebody’s like, you know, I have had the mindset of, my employees are a little needy, and my God, all they do is ask me for more things. No matter, you know, the only thing I haven’t provided is foot massages. And that’s the next request I’m sure I’m going to get.

Kevin Eikenberry:

And that is.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right. Not touching anybody’s feet. What do I have to change first? I’m assuming it’s mindset. So how do I go from mindset to skill set to habit set? Like, give me. Give me a practical roadmap of how to change something about how I lead.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Well, yeah, so the first thing I would say is look at the results you’re getting as a leader and say, how’s that going for you? How’s that working for you. Right. And if you see gaps or if you have a coach that helps you find those gaps, or you ask your team or get some feedback one way or another. Self reflection is super important, but necessarily somewhat limited. But self awareness is actually enough to get us here. If we see a gap, then we can say, oh, there’s a gap here. So I probably need to think about this differently, because if I don’t think about it differently, the chances of me doing something different are not very high. Which leads to the first part of what we would say the approach would be, which is intention, right? So if you’re blissfully unaware that there’s an issue, or you’re blissfully unaware that it’s possible for us to flex how we lead, then we’re not likely going to change. Right? So we have to get that part first. So I do think it starts with mindset, but I’m guessing a lot of people, because they are consumers of your show, Drew, that means that they have sort of an achievement mindset. Most of you listening want to help your agency get better, get better results for your clients, better profitability. You could have lots of reasons why, but chances are you have that or you wouldn’t be listening to us right now.

Drew McLellan:

And I think they want to be a good leader and boss. I think they want to have a great culture in their hearts. I know that’s true. So I do think that. I do think they have the desire to lead even better than they do today, regardless of how good they are at.

Kevin Eikenberry:

I’m sure that that’s right. And so if that’s really you, then it’s probably not as much a mindset issue other than maybe around a specific blind spot along those things we’ve been talking about. Right. Like, that’s probably not the gap. And the gap might be in skills. Obviously, we’re talking about some specific skills in relationship to the book Flexible Leadership. But whatever it is, right, the last book you read, the other thing that you’ve been thinking about, like you may have a set of skills or you’ve got a way to go get them, whether it’s to go read our book or my book or whatever that might be like, I think that a lot of times the gap is the third one. Like, I know these things. I understand the merit of trying these things. I don’t know how to try it, or I’m afraid to try it, or.

Drew McLellan:

In many cases, consistently try it. Yeah.

Kevin Eikenberry:

To try it. I forget to try it because I operate on auto response. I operate based on the leadership style that I’m told that I have or the assessment set I have. And so, like, that’s how I lead. And so the habit set is a huge piece of this, right? Like, back to intention. Be intentional enough to say, okay, here’s what I would say or do next. Is that my best option? Right. See, as leaders, we are in the influence business, right? If leadership is about outcomes and others, all we can do is influence. We don’t have control. And so then the question is, it’s almost like, what’s the best choice I can make to improve my odds of influence? Right? And that isn’t guaranteed. Isn’t always what you would naturally do. Guaranteed.

Drew McLellan:

Talk a little bit.

Kevin Eikenberry:

I’ve got you stung, stumped.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I’m thinking about, like, how. So if it is that I operate on autopilot or I’ve been. I’ve owned the agency for 20 years. I’ve been doing it a certain way for a very long time. How do I begin to chip away at the lack of habit in the space that I want to improve in?

Kevin Eikenberry:

That’s a great question. I’ll give you, like, three things. Number one is you need to have someone holding you accountable. Like, if you said, hey, this is the thing I want to work on, then is there someone that you can talk to about whether that you’re doing that or not? It could be your spouse. I mean, I suppose it could be your dog or your parakeet, but probably better if it’s your spouse, a friend, feedback, perhaps a coach, another business owner that you know. An accountability partner would be one thing. The second thing I would say is that you send a really strong message if you share with your team, hey, I want to get better at this. I’m just going to make up an example. I know that sometimes in meetings I talk too soon and too much. And because of that, I’m probably not getting all of your input. And so I really want to work on that. And so, team, I want you to hold me accountable for that. When you see me doing X when I said I wanted to do Y, I need you to tell me. I want you to tell me now if you truly want that and you really state that. And the first three times or the first time even, that someone gives you that feedback, you thank them rather than rolling your eyes or getting defensive. Like, you start to change your culture, number one, but you also start to get the feedback that you need so you can make the change. So an accountability partner, accountability with your team. And the third thing I would say is, you know, there’s. There’s lots of great stuff that’s been written about habit in the last few years. So we’ve got some stuff in this book, but like, there’s whole really good books. The most famous of those is Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Kevin Eikenberry:

It’s not the only one. Study a little bit more about habit formation and habit change. So those would be my three tangible things I’d encourage you to do right away.

Drew McLellan:

I think for many of us, we grew up in the business and we were sort of thrust into leadership in some ways. So we might have been a leader in another agency before. By hook or crook, we ended up.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Running our own shop accidentally, reluctantly, maybe even. Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That’s why we say most agency owners are accidental business leaders is because in business owners, because it wasn’t necessarily by choice. And so I think this is one of those things that feels like a soft skill that we think as long as we have the title or the role, we’re leading, and we’re so busy trying to learn all the things all the time that I think sometimes we forget that this is a learned skill, too, and that it is. It is a muscle that we have to exercise and that we can get better at it or we can change the modality in which we lead if we choose to do so.

Kevin Eikenberry:

I agree 100% and all I would say. Only thing I would add to that, Drew, is this. So, yes, I believe that the skills of leadership are learned. They are skills, which means they can be learned. And I would say this, that leadership is also not a position. You have a position of leadership as an agency owner in your case, your cases. But leadership isn’t a noun, it’s a verb. And if you think you’re leading but no one’s following, you’re just taking a walk. And that’s not what you want, Right. You want people to choose to follow. And so if you. If you don’t feel like they’re choosing or you’re looking around and it kind of feels like you’re taking a walk alone, it’s time to stop and think about some of these things. And they are skills and you can learn them. And hopefully some of the stuff we’ve talked about today helps you with that a little bit.

Drew McLellan:

So we need to wrap up. But if you were going to sort of put a pin in this conversation, and I’m. I’ve listened to this and I’m like, yep, I see some blind spots. I see some places I can get better. What would be the first thing you recommend that I if I want to be a better, more effective leader today.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Go do something right? Like it has to move from deciding to doing. And so on my podcast, I always ask people, now what? What are you going to do now as a result? And so that’s what I’ll say here. Like, what’s the thing that you heard or what’s the thing that you came to realization of as you listened? Go take some action on that. You own an agency, but you have agency to take action. So do that.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, do that. Awesome. Kevin, if folks want to learn more about you, if they want to find you on your podcast, if they want to get a copy of the new book, what’s the best way for them to learn, to continue to learn from you?

Kevin Eikenberry:

Well, you can probably get to know all that stuff by going to Kevin ikenberry.com K E V I N E I K E N B e r r y.com if you’re a LinkedIn person, we post stuff there, have a newsletter there. I’m, I’m active on LinkedIn and be happy to have you actually reach out and connect with me there. Just say, hey, I found you on the Build a Better Agency podcast and I’d love to be connected, man, I would love that. I’d be happy to do that. But specifically as it relates to this book, Flexible Leadership, you can obviously go buy a copy wherever you buy your books and we’d love for you to do that. But I have a gift for you all for being here. The one idea in the book we haven’t really talked about a lot today is confidence. We’ve bumped up against it without talking about it. But I have a gift for all of you. I created a masterclass a couple of years ago that we sell every day for $79. That about building our confidence and helping build the confidence in others. And I want to give it to all of you for listening to us today. And so if you go to kevinikenberry.com gift you can get that for free. There’s some more stuff there about the book as well. So, you know, that’ll connect you back to the book as well. But kevininconberry.com gift or go find a copy of the book wherever you buy books.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. We will make sure all of that is in the Show Notes as well. So if you guys are on a treadmill or driving and can’t jot that all down, just head over to the show notes and you’ll be able to get it, too. Kevin, this has been a really great conversation. I am grateful for you sort of helping us kind of twist the lens a little bit and see our role as leaders differently and encouraging us that it’s not a static skill. It is a. It is a skill set and a habit set, and as you say, a mindset that is changeable for better results. And at the end of the day, as a business owner, as a leader, and I think as human beings, we always want to get better. And so I’m grateful that you gave us some very specific tools to try and be even better leaders than we are today. Thank you for. Thanks for being on the show.

Kevin Eikenberry:

Well, I hope it was helpful, and you certainly made it easy, and this is a very enjoyable conversation for me, and I hope people find it valuable.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it was for me, too. All right, you guys. So, you know, my whole thing with this podcast is these are not passive events. These are not things that you should just listen to and then put away. I really do want you to do something after every episode, to Kevin’s point, like, now what. What are you gonna do? And so I’ve been, as Kevin and I have been talking, I’ve been jotting down a few things that I can do better as a leader in our. In our organization. And I suspect you have, too, either mentally or you literally have been jotting them down. Pick one. Pick one. And like Kevin said, many of you are in one of our peer groups, many of you are in one of our coaching programs. Tell somebody, talk to somebody about how you want to get better, how you want to change a mindset, how you want to add to a skill set, how you want to build a new habit. Just own some change that you want to make a tiny little change. And then do the bravest thing of all. Tell your team, Tell them that this is a place that you want to get better and ask them. And by the way, none of your employees are going to go, hey, you keep interrupting me. They’re just not going to do it. So give them a safe word. Just say, every time I interrupt you, say rhinoceros, and then I’ll know that I’ve interrupted you. Like, make it easy for them to help you be better and make it a little fun and take some of the edge off of it, but do something. I know a lot of you are brilliant leaders. I know that. I see it every day. But I don’t care how good you are, we can always get a little better. So use this episode to get a little Better. Okay. All right. Two things before I let you go. And you know what they are if you’re a regular listener. First of all, huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label iq. They have been the presenting sponsor, I think almost since we started the podcast. They’ve been with us a very long time. They do white label design, Dev and PPC for agencies. They partner with agencies. They were born from an agency that couldn’t figure out who to partner with to do those things. And they said, you know what, we’re going to build a sister company because we have a need. And now they help hundreds and hundreds of agencies all over the globe actually do web design, app development, regular design, ppc. So whether you have a team on your in your shop and you just need some extra hands or it’s not something you offer internally but you want to bolt it onto your services, head over to whitelabeliq.comami to learn more about them and how that they work with AMI agencies every single day. And last but certainly not least, I love having conversations with people like Kevin. It is one of the best parts of my job. I don’t get to keep doing it if you don’t listen because if it’s just me and Kevin, Kevin has better things to do than just talk to Drew. But when he talks to all of us, people like Kevin or Game to have these conversations. So I am grateful that you afford me the opportunity to meet all of these smart people, to tap into their wisdom, to tap into their experience so that we all get better. So thanks for listening. I’m going to be back next week and I hope you will too. Until then, have a great week and.

Kevin Eikenberry:

I’ll talk to you soon.

Drew McLellan:

Thanks for listening. That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Amount Agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways we serve small to mid size agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.