Brad Englert on Humility, Communication, and Influence in Leadership

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if you show up and you're trying to sell to an organization you haven't

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bothered to read their look at their website and understand what their

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mission is and their values and their vision, you're wasting my time.

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I would've vendors come to me and they didn't bother looking at my website.

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It's like, well, you'd know our strategic priorities for the last

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eight years are on my website.

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you didn't even bother looking at it, you're wasting time.

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What if Navigating Change didn't have to feel like chaos, but

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could actually be a calling?

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This week on Seek, go create the leadership journey.

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I'm joined by Brad Engler, author, advisor, and former Chief

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Information Officer at the University of Texas at Austin Big School.

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With decades of leadership experience at both Accenture and in higher education,

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Brad shares hard-earned wisdom on leading large scale transformation,

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aligning it with mission and how Faith quietly informed his professional path.

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His new books, fears of Influence is a blueprint for anyone called

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to lead with clarity and purpose and complex environments.

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If you're a leader facing change, uncertainty, or high stakes decision

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making, conversation is for you.

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Brad, welcome to Seat Go Create.

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Thanks for inviting me.

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Great to have you here, man.

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You got so many exciting things on your resume and within your book,

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but let's get started here and, why don't you pick, would you rather

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answer do you do who are you?

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Well, I am going to go with the Who are You?

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Because it's really different than, the last 40 years of my career.

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And, I retired from Accenture.

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most partners retired 50, so I was ready to go.

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And then two years later, the university called me and they wanted some help with

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an IT strategy and hour week pro bono.

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So they didn't even pay me until three months later.

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And then I was halftime six months later, full-time, and

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I was there for seven years.

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IT Chief Information Officer.

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But now, after I retired the second time, I really wanted to help

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people, grow in their careers.

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I enjoyed that.

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Through my 40 years.

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It was part of the culture at Accenture was to grow your people.

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And I actually look back at 22 years of annual reviews and I looked at how

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my partners helped me become a partner.

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And yeah, they did a really good job giving me stretch

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roles and things like that.

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So I had all these stories and I thought, and I'm still mentoring two or

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three people a year, but you know, that doesn't scale and I can't clone myself.

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And so I thought, well, I'll just write a book.

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And so I got together with my publisher and the editor was terrific.

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She says, just inventory all your stories.

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And I came up with like 40 to 50 stories and then we just sent it a whiteboard

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and looked at how can we organize these They fell into relationships,

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business relationships, and there was boss, direct reports, executive

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leaders, all your staff, and those are your relationship closest to you.

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And then there was customers, peers, and influencers and strategic vendor partners.

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And the stories just fell into those categories.

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And, she was really good.

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She says, don't write one page until you have the full outline.

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Well, you don't build a house without a blueprint.

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You don't, write a program without a design.

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Yeah.

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and I, since the book has come out, I've created a couple of workshops.

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just did one this week, a one hour workshop.

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And there are a lot of young people there who are early in their career,

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and I just wanted to help them.

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Learn the secret of the importance of investing in relationships.

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And, you know, people talk about networking all the time and you know, to

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me it's superficial and transactional.

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in 40 years I've never been to a networking event where I got a

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customer out of it, and I had one fellow, I had his business card.

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a week later he is calling to ask me to donate to his not-for-profit.

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So I don't even know who you are.

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That would be a no.

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a lot of people who are my vintage are giving it to their adult

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children so they can, 'cause they don't teach this in business school.

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and so I've just, really enjoyed, helping people grow.

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is this kind of a mission for you now at this stage of your life?

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Yeah.

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it really is.

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I've been successful.

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I've been fortunate, very fortunate to have really good mentors over the

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years, and it's a way to pay it forward.

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Hmm.

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That's good.

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so what's interesting is that sometimes relationship people

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aren't considered technical.

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And technical people aren't considered

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Mm. Mm-hmm.

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tell me, it seems as if I'm sitting here talking to a guy that CIO,

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technical background, whatever.

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And we're gonna go over a little bit of background in just a moment.

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'cause I got some questions from kind of way back.

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But I mean, are you a relationship guy or a technical guy or both?

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Or where do you lean?

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Well, probably lean more on the relationship side.

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I had to learn enough of the technology so I could translate

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to my customers or my executives.

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I did a lot of, translation at the university.

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they're brilliant PhDs, who are deans and presidents and,

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but they don't know technology.

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And so I try to use simple words to convey, some complex, terms.

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But I had to learn how to program.

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I had to learn how to design programs.

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I had to learn how to manage programmers and designers.

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And the technology changes over the years, but the principles are really the same.

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for those that might be listening in, y'all heard him say 40 years

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in, business, and the audience knows I'm in my early sixties.

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I'm guessing you're in your sixties.

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is that accurate?

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I will be, 70 in June.

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Congratulations.

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So that's coming up.

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That actually might be right around the time this releases, so it we'll

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Excellent.

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a birthday celebration for you.

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Excellent.

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so one of the things that, I had a conversation recently with some clients

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that I'm working with, and we were talking about some generational differences

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that we're noticing in the workplace.

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Mm-hmm.

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and some of it is related to communications styles and some

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of it is related to work ethic.

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Some of it was related to making, both of us, or we were quick decision makers

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and we were noticing some passivity and younger generations we were dealing with.

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You mentioned that you've got people you interact with that are

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giving book to their adult children.

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Mm-hmm.

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Talk about just some generational stuff.

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Some of these things, I mean, I'm reading through and I'm going Yeah, that's right.

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But some of this stuff could be new for people.

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They've never heard it.

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So just let's start having conversations around the generational

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differences in some of these items.

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Well, certainly at the university I had 330 people in my organization and

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all the way from student workers to, people who were ready to retire and

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been at the university for 40 years.

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So I had to deal with all levels, and I found that there really.

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Three principles that I tried to follow in all those relationships,

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including my students, which was understand their goals and aspirations.

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what's your major?

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What do you wanna do?

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And, what kind of work do you want to do?

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I would have interns working for me who I would help them get an internship

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somewhere aligned with their work.

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Second is setting and managing expectations.

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I was bad at it early in my career.

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I got much better at it later in my career.

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But, two phrases came up in the book.

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One is, if you're a manager, people are not mind readers,

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so you need to use your words.

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And then the other phrase is, if you're a direct report and you need something from

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the manager, you need to use your words.

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And so I tried to be very clear on when I asked someone

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to do something that I would.

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Discuss, you know, when does it need to be done?

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You know, what's reasonable, what does it look like?

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And not just quickly, say, oh, go do this and have them flounder.

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And then the third principle is genuinely caring about their success.

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I would spend time walking the halls, I call it management, by stumbling around.

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And, I would talk to people, I would walk through the help desk area where

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all the students are, you can be very popular when you bring a bunch of

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donuts to the, help desk area or pizza.

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they're always starving.

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just to get to know, what are people trying to achieve?

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I had someone who, a direct report, I said, do you wanna be a CIO someday

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or you wanna be a technical person?

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they said, well, I really enjoy the technical work.

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I said, well, great, we need you.

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And then another, woman wanted to be a CIO.

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I said, well, when I go on vacation, I'm gonna put you in

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charge and see how you like it.

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So, just taking the time to ask people, what are they trying to achieve?

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Who doesn't want to share that?

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And then being good about if you can help 'em, help 'em.

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And if not, sometimes you know someone who can help 'em.

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So, you don't have to.

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Help everybody.

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I think in the book you said something to the effect, I may be

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getting this wrong, but you something that communication is a duty.

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Mm-hmm.

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it's part of our duty to do that.

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I'm not sure that everyone looks at that, and that could be something

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that might be slightly generational, even though I notice that in a lot of

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arenas, people aren't really proactive when it comes to communication.

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How has your approach to communication changed over your career and maybe even,

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especially during challenging seasons?

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I actually think that challenging seasons is when we learn what we're made of.

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Hmm.

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how, just give maybe a, you mentioned that you were better at it later, so a few

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Yeah,

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let's go ahead and

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I,

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maybe when you weren't so good, because I think that helps the listener

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because they're probably sitting here going, man, I'm not where Brad is.

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yeah.

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some of the challenges you've dealt with there?

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Well, saying yes to everything,

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you know?

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Yeah, I, I, I was really bad about, canceling vacations and, working too

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much and, you know, I loved what I did.

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So part of it was self perpetuating, but I, when I was, a manager, I found a book

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called Managing Expectations that was written by a psychologist who applied her

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psychological insights to it world, and it could be at any organization really.

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And one of her techniques was just say, whoa, not say no, just say whoa.

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And literally the next day, my type A personality boss, she

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calls me up at five o'clock.

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I'm trying to leave to have dinner with my wife and.

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and she, I need a white paper.

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A white paper.

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And, you know, it just sounded really urgent.

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And I was scared, but I said, whoa.

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And I said, when do you need this white paper?

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Oh, let me check my calendar.

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I need it in two weeks.

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Okay, how many pages do you want this white paper to be?

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three.

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I was thinking 10.

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do you have an example of a white paper?

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Oh, yeah.

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Ask David.

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I did one for XYZ Corp 10 years ago.

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Well, guess what?

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I went home and had dinner with my wife.

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Now before I learned to say, whoa, I would've called her canceled

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dinner, upsetting her and me.

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I would have stayed up all night, written a 10 page white paper, and

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delivered it the next day and get yelled at, this is not what I want.

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And it's like, lose, lose, lose.

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And.

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Just by being clear and taking, creating some mental space and

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time to really understand you.

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You say you're a quick decision maker.

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I actually, people like my management style 'cause I'm more of a plotter.

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And so they'd come in with these, problems and they wanted to rush to

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the solution and I said, well, it took us 40 years to get this way.

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Let's understand what the problem is.

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one of my techniques was intentional foot dragging where

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I didn't rush to the decision.

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and I would drag my feet.

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I had a boss who.

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Didn't want me to buy bottled water for my staff.

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Now we were in buildings that were built in 1930s and forties, lead pipes.

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I had one building where there was sediment in the glass

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when, my staff would do it.

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So I wanted to buy their water.

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it was not that expensive.

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but he was a CFO and they're penny pinchers.

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a peer of mine wouldn't buy water for his staff.

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they wanted to drag me down to the lowest common denominator.

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even cut the water in my office and the coffee.

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So I brought my own water and coffee for seven years, but I basically

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ignored the boss for years.

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then the new boss shows up, he goes, what's his water thing?

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And he stopped it.

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I dragged my feet for seven years.

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I wonder if actually when you mentioned that you're a professional

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foot dragger, I almost saw that you might need to trademark that.

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That actually could be a good, leadership or management approach

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and, it is real interesting.

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I often will move quickly I have to force myself to slow down.

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Right.

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the people, really for my spiritual walk.

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Mm-hmm.

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I interact with the Lord, and sometimes on prayer time, the Lord

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says, would you just slow down

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Yeah.

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little

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Mm-hmm.

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I, but before we get too far into here,

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Mm-hmm.

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to back up 'cause I like to understand kind of how people, I

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like to understand their journey.

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Mm-hmm.

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as you're sitting here for those, watching the video, I think over your

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left shoulder, you've got some books on Australia and I read somewhere, I

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think this was correct, that you were a high school teacher in Australia.

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that's correct.

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I was an exchange student in Australia, and I was there when I was, 17 years old.

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And then after I graduated undergraduate, I went back to the same school

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and taught for a year and a half.

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And it was really fun because the students knew, I knew what they knew.

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So even though I, as a yank,

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day ahead of him

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they knew where things were happening.

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So, I've been back with the family probably every five years or so.

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one year I was back, I said to my Australian mom, you know, I'm the

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Chief Information Officer at the University of Texas at Austin.

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She looked at me and said, I didn't think you're that smart.

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I said, I wasn't when I was 17, but I went to college and

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then I went to graduate school.

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Wow.

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so you went over there as an exchange student and then later you went back.

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what part of Australia were you in?

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just north of Sydney, about a hundred miles is a valley called the Hunter

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River Valley, known for their red wines.

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this was a rural town called Maitland, which is, a lot of agriculture.

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It's all built up now.

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I've been to that wine country.

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Oh, awesome.

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in Australia and New Zealand's reason I'm asking,

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Nice.

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had some friends and we went up to

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I

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wine country and I think we spent the night up there

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Australia's a beautiful place.

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What are some

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Mm.

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either, either from the cultural experience or the teaching experience

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you learned during that season of your life that you've kind of taken

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with you for the rest of your life?

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Mm-hmm.

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you got from that experience?

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Well, I think that's where my desire to help people started.

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It's as you're a teacher, you've got, I had, ninth grade all boys.

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Well, how do you keep them from tearing the room apart?

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And I was teaching science and then I had, you know, 11th grade girls

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and boys, English and histories.

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But the younger guys, I had to really engage them.

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And, you know, I was teaching science and I remember one, guy came up to me at.

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Lunch, you know, on the playground.

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He goes, what's, what's gonna happen in science today?

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And I said, I'm not gonna tell you you have to wait,

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but just, you know, to see people grow and, you know, you have, there's a direct

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correlation and how hard you work as a teacher to how well your students do.

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And I could see that every day.

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you mentioned in your principles earlier you talked about,

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genuinely caring for people.

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Hmm.

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always had that?

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Is it something that's developed over time?

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I know you're, I know you've got a faith component to your

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Hmm.

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What, where, where has that come from?

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Or has it just been a build or give, give some background on that.

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So where do you think that came from?

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Your genuine caring for other people?

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my parents,

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Hmm.

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Tell me more.

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you know, they were, really good about, looking out for people, in our church,

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taking care of the people who didn't have what we had and kind of teaching

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me early on to be more sensitive to the fact that, we were lucky.

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Not everyone is that lucky, so, be sensitive to that.

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Did you grow up, I guess in a church environment and

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Yeah,

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faith was always a foundation of your life.

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yeah, yeah.

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United Church of Christ.

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And did I see from the Midwest.

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I know you've spent, we'll talk about your role at University of Texas soon,

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Mm-hmm.

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I know you spent a lot of time in and around that Austin area.

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You're still there, but I think I saw Midwest.

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where are you originally from?

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Where'd you grow up?

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I grew up, outside of Chicago, a suburb, crystal Lake, Illinois.

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it was a small town, probably 10,000 people.

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now it's of course all built up.

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And then my undergraduate school is shyer College, which is in

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a, at the time, a small rural campus in Mount Carroll, Illinois.

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And really, when I got to finish up my teaching in Australia, I knew I wanted

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to go to graduate school, literally put a map of the US out on the kitchen table and

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said, okay, I don't wanna be cold anymore.

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So I'm going somewhere south of the Mason Dixon line.

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been to Austin before I've been to Florida, and I thought, well,

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Florida's a little too humid for me, so I'll go, I'll go to Austin,

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and that's how I ended up here.

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So you went to Austin.

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Austin kind of became your home now.

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at some point you moved into that, I'll call it the consulting role.

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That's the Accenture.

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It probably, was it Accenture when you started that?

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'cause

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Now it, I joined Arthur.

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It was Arthur Anderson, which became Anderson Consulting,

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which became Accenture.

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When I started there were 40,000 consultants worldwide in Arthur Anderson.

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Accenture now has 700,000 people

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Wow.

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just on.

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point when I came outta Georgia Tech, there was the big seven firms,

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Mm-hmm.

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I'm pretty sure there's been some slicing and dicing.

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And are there three now?

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Four,

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I think four

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yeah.

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So, Accenture, big, big operation.

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started out there.

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I don't want to dwell a lot on this.

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I want to get to some of these fears of influence that we're, we're gonna

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Hmm.

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But what I really love to do is gather some pros and cons.

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Things you really gathered from those years in that experience,

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and maybe some things you left behind and didn't take with you.

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So tell me a little bit about those Accenture years and

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some of the things you got.

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the good thing about being in that consulting role is you see,

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I think you get a glimpse at a lot of different scenarios,

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A lot of different scenarios and a lot of similar scenarios.

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So my practice area was primarily, government and higher education,

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and my clients were University of Illinois, Ohio State, Michigan,

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Columbia, Vanderbilt, Cal State.

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Texas a and m. So the big Publix, big privates, and some, most of those were

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one or two year transformational projects.

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So my years at Ohio State really prepared me for being at the University of Texas

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in Austin as a CIO 'cause I was actually, they hired me to be the Ohio State

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leader of the Transformation Project.

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So I was, I was actually the client, which was really great.

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'cause then I could tell the Accenture partner, I want Christie here on Monday.

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And she'd go, oh, I, I can't do that.

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I see the same report.

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You see, I want Christie here on Monday.

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and was able to assemble a dream team.

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But I learned, you know, especially at the University of what it's like

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on the customer side of the desk.

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And, you know, I dealt with some vendors who, some were very transactional.

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They didn't care about us.

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the one vendor showed up once a year to get their check, which was

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always 10% more than the prior year.

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And these software we're using was the learning management system, which is

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what 54,000 students use, 4,000 faculty.

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It affects everybody.

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Well, they thought we were too big and it cost too much to

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transition to another solution.

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Well, the trouble was the students hated the software.

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It was a 1990s, look and feel.

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And technically they were the customer.

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Right?

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I mean, this is something I think gets

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that's right.

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those environments is are people coming for education and it,

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seems like, I remember when I was at Georgia Tech, I didn't really

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feel like a customer very often,

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Yeah, well,

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but I was the customer sort of right.

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yeah, absolutely.

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when I got to the university, I met with this professor

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who'd been there for 40 years.

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he was an electrical engineer, kind of a crusty fellow.

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I'd worked with them 15 years prior in a statewide network

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project that was successful.

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And I said, okay, gimme some advice.

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He goes, get out of the office and tell people you give a damn.

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And that was the best advice because I then would meet with my peers across

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the university every four to six weeks and just check in always with an agenda.

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And, um, my peers who were my peers, the vice president for public safety.

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Well, it wasn't if something would go wrong, it's when it would go wrong.

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And how do we work together to make sure we keep people safe?

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the provost for curriculum, it's her and her office that helped

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me select the new solution.

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So when we took the solution to the president, he said, well, what

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did the students and faculty think?

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Well, they selected it, they unanimously endorsed this

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decision and he said, let's do it.

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Each of these projects took two years to implement.

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'cause we're so big, it's like an aircraft carrier, you gotta

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turn it miles from the, port.

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And, we changed all the phones, 21,000 phones to voiceover ip.

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We, changed out email systems.

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We had custom built email system that was 18 years old.

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We replaced it with UT branded Gmail,

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Faculty and staff, box for file sharing.

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So over eight years we've moved as much as we could to the

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cloud, including HR payroll.

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So in March, 2020, my successor increased the VPN increase, the zoom,

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and 70,000 people went online to do teaching, learning, research and work

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that

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feel good about that.

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That timeframe seems significant,

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Yep.

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But if I had stayed in my office, I wouldn't have known she was in pain

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trying to change this intractable system and then got her support and her team

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support to implement over two years.

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And at the end of the two years, this email came.

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Across it was to the president and she and I were copied on it.

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It's like, oh, I'm gonna get fired.

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And it was the most heartfelt warming email.

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It was from all the department leads complimenting her team and

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mine that we helped them over two years make the transition.

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And because it was such a better product, it was a natural pull.

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But they said something like, you know, this sounds like an

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arcane IT project, but it wasn't.

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This is the lifeblood of the university and they.

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Thanked us for not only being helpful, but working with the vendor

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to change things to make it better.

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the vendor ended up selling to all the research one universities like

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us, so they knew, it was important.

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The senior vice president for sales would call me once a month

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just to see how things were going.

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My other vendor, when we finally fired them, never even saw it coming.

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They were so clueless and we had a big celebration, invited the department

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leads and my staff and her staff.

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We have a bowling alley on campus, so we had bowling and pizza and actually had

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a cake with a tombstone shape that had the rest in peace for the old product.

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that's a good tale of two cities there.

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It's the best of times and then kind of the worst of times

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That's right.

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Coming head to head.

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you mentioned something at Accenture you work with, higher education,

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but you also worked with government.

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what are some things that you could share?

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There might be things you can't, but what are some things that you could share about

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the type work you did with government?

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Because I've got a, there's, there's something that's been nagging

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at me about government, things that I'm gonna follow up with.

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But tell me a

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Mm-hmm.

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about what you did with government, entities.

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probably what I enjoyed the most was helping them with strategic planning.

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It's kind of a dirty little secret that people don't have a strategic

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plan, and so often they would reach out and ask for our help to plan.

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I had one, Agency, it was a retirement agency and the

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executive director was retiring.

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He wanted to leave it in good hands to the next executive director.

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So we reviewed all, the agency, came up with recommendations and

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then a plan for how to move forward.

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And I thought, yeah, that's really good stewardship.

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we had one university system, 15 campuses, 250,000 students.

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We went to all the campuses and created an IT strategy.

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And the number one priority was, the network.

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The network in Texas, in West Texas.

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They were swinging lanterns to get the network to work.

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And the second priority was they wanted library materials.

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Available through the network, a digital library.

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This is in the nineties.

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And third was distance education.

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to the credit of the board.

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They funded the network and then they funded the digital library.

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So 15 years later, I met the University of Texas at Austin.

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one of the things the faculty love was the digital library that we

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had implemented 15 years prior.

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Yeah, that's cool that, I guess the reason I was going there, but

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it doesn't sound like you did a lot of work at the federal level.

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you

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Oh, no.

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Tapered off, but part of this year, we're recording this in

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May, late May, I guess, of 20, 25.

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People are probably gonna be able to listen to it in June or something.

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this whole doge government efficiency thing is going on and, I'm a strategic

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guy also, and, as an industrial and systems engineer, I love talking about

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efficiency, effectiveness and all that.

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Mm-hmm.

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sort of enjoying what's going on, but I haven't gotten enough information on it.

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And I was just wondering, you really think that government

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can be effective and efficient?

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Sounds like you've done that at some of the state and local levels.

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Do you think we

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Mm-hmm.

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federal level?

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Well, actually worked for the federal government for five years.

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I came to Austin, I needed a job, and so I started work at the IRS as a tax examiner.

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Oh boy.

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And yeah, we had production quotas.

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We had, you know, if you didn't meet your quota, you got fired.

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So, this was early eighties and then I became the payroll officer.

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And when I became the payroll officer, we were automating from

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punch cards to online data entry.

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And this is really how I got into it in the first place.

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I was the user, I was the customer.

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And I said to the programmer, I want the screens to default

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two weeks with all eights.

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So if someone's perfect attendance, they just hit enter instead of typing

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8, 8, 8, 8, 6,000 times, twice a month.

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And we had 6,000 employees and the guy had a short sleeve

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white shirt, skinny black tie.

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A big, thick black glasses and yes, a plastic pencil protector.

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And he said, no, I can't do it.

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So he scurried off and he scurry back the next week and go, okay, I can do it.

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So he is taught to say no to anything I asked for, and then asked

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the boss if the boss cleared it, then he could come back and do it.

Speaker: 00:31:19

And that's actually why I, I needed to get some technical skills.

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So I didn't have a guy like that hold me hostage for the rest of my career.

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And that's what attracted me to Arthur Anderson, which had

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a three year training program.

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That's interesting.

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So that was a good experience working in the federal

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Yeah, well they were good because it was a union shop and.

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It was an eight hour day and that was it.

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And I was going to grad school three years part-time, working

Speaker: 00:31:49

full-time grad school part-time.

Speaker: 00:31:51

They would allow me to use my vacation to take classes at Tuesday at 2:00 PM and I

Speaker: 00:31:58

was at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Speaker: 00:32:00

Wilbur Cohen was the HEW secretary.

Speaker: 00:32:03

Ray Marshall was a labor secretary Barbara Jordan was a

Speaker: 00:32:06

congresswoman who was on faculty.

Speaker: 00:32:09

Well, I could go to their classes even though they were in the middle of the day.

Speaker: 00:32:13

So they were, helpful in getting me where I needed to get to.

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Yeah, that's good.

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Yeah, I'm intrigued by what might be going on.

Speaker: 00:32:22

'cause we know government can keep getting bigger and bigger and so I'm

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hopeful that maybe we'll see efficiencies.

Speaker: 00:32:30

Maybe they need more people like, you in there.

Speaker: 00:32:32

I'm not sure about Elon Musk.

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He's slicing and dicing and all, but

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Well,

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not

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know, there's,

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But sometimes you

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yeah,

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Right.

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I've never been a fan of fire ready, aim, you have to plan it out,

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Yeah, I think

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I'm confident, you know, I've seen where that retirement agency, we had a

Speaker: 00:32:50

recommendation of how they could manage their cash better and it came from

Speaker: 00:32:56

the woman in charge of cash management and I gave her all the credit, but

Speaker: 00:33:01

they basically paid our fees with implementing that one recommendation.

Speaker: 00:33:07

right.

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Well, very good.

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I wanna go over to, the thing that was interesting to me about the book as

Speaker: 00:33:13

an author myself, I'm always intrigued by titles, but subtitles seem to mean

Speaker: 00:33:17

more to me, and I'm sure when you're working with your publisher, y'all

Speaker: 00:33:21

are having these conversations about, gotta grab people with the title.

Speaker: 00:33:25

to me, subtitles, tell me more about what the book is really about.

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So your subtitle is to Create and Nurture Authentic Business Relationships.

Speaker: 00:33:35

And what's interesting is up at the top there

Speaker: 00:33:37

Mm-hmm.

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to me that's more the title, but we have to come up with these catchy

Speaker: 00:33:40

flashy titles and stuff like that.

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I'm gonna pick apart some of these words and I want you to tell

Speaker: 00:33:46

Sure.

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a little bit more about 'em.

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I want to designate, first of all we define an authentic, that's a word

Speaker: 00:33:55

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:33:55

throw around a good bit in our culture today, How do you define that?

Speaker: 00:33:59

It's a relationship where it's mutually beneficial and you're helping each other.

Speaker: 00:34:06

And it's something that lasts over years and sometimes decades.

Speaker: 00:34:12

So a good example is I had a really good client.

Speaker: 00:34:17

I worked on three or four successful projects with 15 years later, she calls me

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out of the blue and it we're talking, it's like we hadn't stopped working together.

Speaker: 00:34:29

You know, it's, that's your litmus test.

Speaker: 00:34:31

And she goes, you remember my son Bryce?

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I said, yeah, I met him when he was five years old.

Speaker: 00:34:37

Well, he's an attorney now and he wants to apply for a job at the university.

Speaker: 00:34:42

Would you talk with him?

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And it's like, of course I will.

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You know, not a problem.

Speaker: 00:34:48

I talked to him and I said, okay, Bryce.

Speaker: 00:34:50

All the lawyers in higher ed talk to each other, find that organization

Speaker: 00:34:54

and you'll know all the issues.

Speaker: 00:34:56

So when I had a contract with Google, I got the contract for

Speaker: 00:35:00

University of California at Berkeley.

Speaker: 00:35:01

I didn't start from scratch.

Speaker: 00:35:03

You know, my lawyers reached out to them and So it is just

Speaker: 00:35:07

being mutually beneficial.

Speaker: 00:35:09

one thing I've observed that a little bit in that, and I also oversee some

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sales organizations and people that are constantly churning through relationships.

Speaker: 00:35:21

Yeah.

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a,

Speaker: 00:35:23

very costly.

Speaker: 00:35:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:35:24

every day you wake up, it's a brand new day.

Speaker: 00:35:27

I gotta go out and earn new business today,

Speaker: 00:35:29

Right.

Speaker: 00:35:30

to as someone almost 70.

Speaker: 00:35:33

I'm guessing you've had the cumulative effect in authentic relationships in your

Speaker: 00:35:38

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:35:40

So Accenture has about an 80% client retention rate.

Speaker: 00:35:47

People love to be successful, so they reach out.

Speaker: 00:35:51

If you're successful with a client, they're gonna come

Speaker: 00:35:54

back and ask you to help again.

Speaker: 00:35:56

There are metrics about, you know, if you have an 80% retention versus 50%.

Speaker: 00:36:01

I mean, you can put numbers to that.

Speaker: 00:36:03

there was a sales team that had a 50% churn rate.

Speaker: 00:36:08

I met with their manager and his salespeople didn't

Speaker: 00:36:12

know any of the customers.

Speaker: 00:36:14

And they didn't know why it was important to know any of their customers.

Speaker: 00:36:19

And so we kicked them in the rear end and said, get out and talk to people.

Speaker: 00:36:25

So I think, um, you know, success, breed success and people, you

Speaker: 00:36:31

know, if you have a trusting relationship, then that will continue.

Speaker: 00:36:36

Well, the trusting relationship, but also it goes back to that

Speaker: 00:36:38

one of those third principles.

Speaker: 00:36:39

You actually care about the success

Speaker: 00:36:41

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:36:42

And I've even maybe making it even more succinct, you just care about others

Speaker: 00:36:48

versus you look at, I joke about it at times, has a dollar sign on their forehead

Speaker: 00:36:54

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:36:54

that's where some people go through a churn because everything is transactional.

Speaker: 00:37:01

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:02

do think maybe like a foundation of what you're talking about is

Speaker: 00:37:05

that heart level truly caring

Speaker: 00:37:09

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:09

other people.

Speaker: 00:37:10

People can sense that.

Speaker: 00:37:12

I mean, that's where you get authenticity.

Speaker: 00:37:15

You know, if you show up and you're trying to sell to an organization you

Speaker: 00:37:18

haven't bothered to read their look at their website and understand what

Speaker: 00:37:23

their mission is and their values and their vision, you're wasting my time.

Speaker: 00:37:28

I would've vendors come to me and they didn't bother looking at my website.

Speaker: 00:37:32

It's like, well, you'd know our strategic priorities for the last

Speaker: 00:37:36

eight years are on my website.

Speaker: 00:37:38

you didn't even bother looking at it, so you're wasting my time.

Speaker: 00:37:42

we're really describing, maybe 80 or 90% everyone who reaches out to me on

Speaker: 00:37:49

LinkedIn, because I've got some things in my bio that are very attractive

Speaker: 00:37:56

to, I guess, people that wanna connect with you and then immediately try

Speaker: 00:38:01

to sell you something in my inbox.

Speaker: 00:38:03

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:38:04

going, you could tell it's auto, and I'm going, that's

Speaker: 00:38:07

not the type person I want to

Speaker: 00:38:09

No.

Speaker: 00:38:09

And you brought up something earlier, you said people, the reason that a, you know,

Speaker: 00:38:14

there's such an, high retention rate, I guess, at Accenture is that they help

Speaker: 00:38:20

people be successful, but I also think.

Speaker: 00:38:22

People want to be successful, but they don't wanna be around jerks.

Speaker: 00:38:26

I mean,

Speaker: 00:38:26

Yep.

Speaker: 00:38:27

we're achieving some degree of business success, I still wanna feel good

Speaker: 00:38:31

when I go home at the end of the day.

Speaker: 00:38:33

Right.

Speaker: 00:38:34

right.

Speaker: 00:38:35

One of my best clients was a large research university in the Midwest,

Speaker: 00:38:41

and they were great leaders.

Speaker: 00:38:44

The CFO, provost and President were from the beginning.

Speaker: 00:38:48

You know, it's hard to change everyone's payroll and accounting, and it

Speaker: 00:38:52

sounds boring, but affects everybody.

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But they w from the beginning, were so supportive and they

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would say to the campus, they're gonna be problems in the future.

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We're gonna get through 'em.

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Just hang with us.

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it's not a failure, it's just these things are hard.

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And when I first interviewed with them, I was having lunch with the

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provost and the CFO and I said.

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You know, you have all the,

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things you need to be successful.

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I'd love to come help you.

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help, this was in October, I said, but next June I have a

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vacation plan to Australia.

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And I was supposed to go last year, but I had to cancel it because of business.

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So my wife and I have already bought the plane tickets.

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We had the passports for us and the boys.

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I need to go for three weeks, you know, and they said, oh, sure, that's fine.

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And so started working with them and in March we hit our first big milestone.

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We're meeting with the president.

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CFO and Provost, and we're giving him an update.

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And Mr. President, I wanna remind you, as I did the last three months,

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that in June I'm gonna be going to Australia on vacation, his hands

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started shaking just like I'm slow, motioning canceling my vacation.

Speaker: 00:40:17

Whoa.

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And the CFO goes, and Provost Bo said, wait, Brad, hold on.

Speaker: 00:40:24

Mr. President, when Brad joined us in October, he talked about this vacation.

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It's important to him and his family.

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We should uphold our commitment.

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Diane's gonna be in charge.

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He's confident, she'll be fine.

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we should let him go.

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And so my client defended my vacation, which was awesome.

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And 10 years later, my wife and I are back in the city, that city, and we had.

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Dinner with the CFO and then his spouse we talked about that situation.

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He goes, Brad, when you were gone, we were scared to death,

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but that's the quality people.

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even though they're scared to death, they trusted me and upheld their commitment.

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that mutual accountability is part of an authentic relationship.

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Right.

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And the other, the other two words that I just wanted to ask you

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about is, uh, well, you, the title said How to Create and Nurture.

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Mm-hmm.

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what do you wanna say about those two words?

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Create and nurture?

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Because we joked earlier about the networking events.

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You know, the ones where you put your

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Yeah.

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on and you grab you a boatload of business cards that be dating ourselves.

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'cause I'm not sure people carry around business cards

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I think they do actually.

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Some do.

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they're digital, you know, on their phones and

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Yeah.

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you know, and they go out to these events where they spear people and all of that.

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but whatever you wanna say here about creating.

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And nurturing those relationships.

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Well, let's start with create.

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You need to be strategic and intentional with the relationships you're trying

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to build, so you don't have to build relationships with everybody.

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yeah, your boss is obvious, your direct reports is obvious.

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with customers less obvious.

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So you might have, you need to look at your customer base and prioritize

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who are your best customers?

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Who do you wanna work with, you know?

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And then some customers you don't wanna work with.

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I'm not the believer in the customer's always.

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Right?

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same thing with vendors.

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I was spending Tens of millions of dollars a year on network

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gear and all sorts of stuff.

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Well, I got to know my strategic vendors and ask for a mutually

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beneficial relationship.

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So the creating part is first be strategic and intentional of who you're

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going to build a relationship with.

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And there was a chief financial officer in a large organization, his chief of

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staff who's been there 30 years, had the trust of everyone in the organization.

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And she and I helped with the transformation project.

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I went to another similar size organization, talked to the chief of

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staff of the CFO, and she literally said, I've only been here a year.

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I'm not very influential.

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I'm working on dinky little projects.

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You shouldn't waste your time talking to me, which was awesome.

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So that be intentional of who you wanna work with.

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And this is something I coach my direct reports nurture is getting in front

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of people in a consistent manner.

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So just put it on your calendar.

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I had on my calendar meet with the VP of public Safety every

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month, always in his office.

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So I could walk across campus and see people and see his team

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and always have an agenda that you send out before the meeting.

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'cause that's when you can make sure you're thinking

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ahead about, you know what.

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Every year I was irritating someone changing their phone or email,

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you know, so you get ahead of it and tell people what's coming.

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And then they were good at sharing feedback with me, how my staff doing,

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you know, the vice president for facilities, we had a terrible relationship

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with, because we were bad partners.

Speaker: 00:44:36

And so I, when I got there, I apologized for all the bad behavior in the past and

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said, I want to be your best partner.

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You know, we're building a $32 million data center.

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I wanna be your best partner on this.

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And we work to do that.

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But every month I'm in their office talking about things, and then I

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ask my staff, my direct reports to meet with their peers across campus.

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Seven to 10 people every month or every six weeks, depending on

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how closely you work with them.

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And this woman who worked for me reminded me of this story.

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She read the manuscript, said, you didn't put my story in there.

Speaker: 00:45:13

I said, what story?

Speaker: 00:45:14

when you demanded that I go out and meet with this manager who hated us.

Speaker: 00:45:21

Oh yeah, I remember that.

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and you said you'd rather have us in the tent than outside the tent So she

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went out and met with this person.

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They hated us 'cause her past transgressions, not being truthful, not

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doing what we said we were gonna do.

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So we apologized for all the past transgressions and said

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we really want to get better.

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And as we got more customer oriented, more proactive, that

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person could see us improve.

Speaker: 00:45:49

Over months, and after about eight or nine months, she became an advocate for us.

Speaker: 00:45:57

Well, that wouldn't have happened if my direct report was hiding in her

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office, hiding behind the screen.

Speaker: 00:46:05

Hmm.

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So that's the nurturing part.

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It is.

Speaker: 00:46:09

That's good.

Speaker: 00:46:09

Thanks for clarifying those two that kind of triggered something in me.

Speaker: 00:46:13

When you talk about apologizing, one of the things in the book you

Speaker: 00:46:16

emphasize is, I think the word humility is a leadership trait.

Speaker: 00:46:20

I think it's something that maybe we all as leaders have to work on.

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Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:46:25

root of humility, I think is that caring for others

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Yeah.

Speaker: 00:46:28

others.

Speaker: 00:46:29

But can a leader remain humble without compromising, the confidence that

Speaker: 00:46:34

they need to share or even clarity of vision and maybe even decisiveness

Speaker: 00:46:39

that we talked about earlier.

Speaker: 00:46:40

what are some ways that that leader can remain humble, especially as

Speaker: 00:46:47

they're elevated in organizations?

Speaker: 00:46:51

Well, there are kind of two types of leaders.

Speaker: 00:46:55

There's the imperious leader who you need to come to them and supplicate, and

Speaker: 00:47:01

they are the smartest people in the room, in their view, very one way direction.

Speaker: 00:47:08

They don't care about you.

Speaker: 00:47:10

I was always trying to be the humble practitioner who is a team player.

Speaker: 00:47:17

I wanna be the coach.

Speaker: 00:47:19

I want a coach of the team, so that the team's successful, I'm successful.

Speaker: 00:47:24

And so I think just leaning on the expertise of your staff, leaning on the

Speaker: 00:47:32

expertise of people at the university.

Speaker: 00:47:35

there are a lot of really smart people there.

Speaker: 00:47:37

So when we were trying to pick software to encrypt laptops, I had the IT

Speaker: 00:47:43

directors help me pick the software

Speaker: 00:47:48

and you know, it's bringing the best minds to bear on these topics.

Speaker: 00:47:52

Not, me, being in the ivory tower just announcing things.

Speaker: 00:47:58

I found it.

Speaker: 00:47:59

This is kind of what helps, this is kind of what I heard you say, and I think it

Speaker: 00:48:02

relates to my It's kind of admitting that you don't know everything and that you

Speaker: 00:48:08

Right.

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people.

Speaker: 00:48:10

That's right.

Speaker: 00:48:11

and I think in our world sometimes we see leadership examples that

Speaker: 00:48:15

maybe don't portray that, and we think that might be success

Speaker: 00:48:20

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:48:20

up to, our political offices, especially at the higher ups at times.

Speaker: 00:48:25

I like that humility.

Speaker: 00:48:27

my theory is that if you do not live out humility, it'll be forced upon you,

Speaker: 00:48:33

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:48:35

you know?

Speaker: 00:48:35

Well, and you mentioned, you mentioned apologizing.

Speaker: 00:48:39

We have a quarter million devices hooked to the network every day.

Speaker: 00:48:43

What could possibly go wrong?

Speaker: 00:48:45

Something will go wrong, so my approach was it's not if something will go wrong.

Speaker: 00:48:51

But what do we do when it goes wrong?

Speaker: 00:48:53

And how do we keep it from happening again?

Speaker: 00:48:56

And we became much more transparent on, sorry about that outage.

Speaker: 00:49:01

Here's what happened.

Speaker: 00:49:02

This will keep it from happening again.

Speaker: 00:49:05

Please forgive us.

Speaker: 00:49:06

And some people hang onto these things For years, I had someone who was mad

Speaker: 00:49:12

about a transgression 15 years prior, and I literally just went to him

Speaker: 00:49:17

and said, I'm sorry that happened.

Speaker: 00:49:20

It was inappropriate.

Speaker: 00:49:23

Can you please let it go?

Speaker: 00:49:26

So you just have to be open and honest about it.

Speaker: 00:49:31

Yeah, I think all of that's good.

Speaker: 00:49:33

Brad, one of the things in the book you did is you kinda laid out, I

Speaker: 00:49:37

believe it was 10, I'm actually going back here to the comments wasn't

Speaker: 00:49:43

there 10 areas that you addressed?

Speaker: 00:49:45

Was that correct?

Speaker: 00:49:48

For,

Speaker: 00:49:49

the sphere?

Speaker: 00:49:49

Well, you've got part one, the internal sphere of influence.

Speaker: 00:49:52

right,

Speaker: 00:49:53

and then

Speaker: 00:49:53

which is your boss, direct reports, executive leaders and staff.

Speaker: 00:49:59

And then external is, customers, peers, and influencers and,

Speaker: 00:50:03

strategic vendor partners.

Speaker: 00:50:05

Right.

Speaker: 00:50:06

Exactly.

Speaker: 00:50:06

in looking back, this is kind of the, this is the trick question

Speaker: 00:50:10

to authors that put a lot of their time, energy, and effort into a book.

Speaker: 00:50:16

If there's anything that you would want to add to it now,

Speaker: 00:50:20

looking back, what might that be?

Speaker: 00:50:22

Anything you would be like, you know what, this is maybe something I've

Speaker: 00:50:25

observed or learned since, or it's the rest of the story or anything like that.

Speaker: 00:50:30

And I know that's a tough question for an author to say, this is

Speaker: 00:50:35

something that else, maybe it's your next book, I don't know.

Speaker: 00:50:37

Oh, I think I'm one and done.

Speaker: 00:50:39

you're, you're like a one in a, you're like, these guys that play college

Speaker: 00:50:42

ball for one season and they're

Speaker: 00:50:44

That's right.

Speaker: 00:50:46

anything,

Speaker: 00:50:46

you know,

Speaker: 00:50:47

back on it.

Speaker: 00:50:48

I was really pleased with my editor.

Speaker: 00:50:50

It took me five years.

Speaker: 00:50:52

So we started before the pandemic and then pandemic hit and she had a young son.

Speaker: 00:50:59

It's like, look, I'll call you in a year or two.

Speaker: 00:51:04

but I thought about it every day because I had the full outline, I had a direction.

Speaker: 00:51:11

And then what the publisher did, which I'm sure you had the same

Speaker: 00:51:15

experience, is it went through at least three substantial edits and each

Speaker: 00:51:22

editor had a different angle to it.

Speaker: 00:51:25

I had one say, well, Brad, I'm sure you feel better after writing that story,

Speaker: 00:51:29

but I don't think it adds to the book.

Speaker: 00:51:31

Why don't you take that one out?

Speaker: 00:51:33

And he was right.

Speaker: 00:51:35

You know, it was like, it was kind of a. Inappropriate,

Speaker: 00:51:40

but I felt better writing it.

Speaker: 00:51:43

but I think that allowed me to, and I was able to share the manuscript with

Speaker: 00:51:48

a lot of people who worked with me at Accenture and the university, and they all

Speaker: 00:51:54

brought up different angles and things.

Speaker: 00:51:57

So, nothing pops into my head at the moment.

Speaker: 00:52:00

Who would you say the book is for?

Speaker: 00:52:02

define the audience That you really, either you are writing it to them.

Speaker: 00:52:06

'cause sometimes when we're writing we've got someone or some type person in mind or

Speaker: 00:52:12

what you've observed as it's been released are gaining a lot of benefit from it.

Speaker: 00:52:17

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:52:18

I decided for people who want to, Be in the C-suite someday.

Speaker: 00:52:23

they're managers.

Speaker: 00:52:25

I got a lot of feedback from middle managers because

Speaker: 00:52:27

no one ever talks to them.

Speaker: 00:52:29

managing up and down I had a lot of positive feedback from middle

Speaker: 00:52:33

managers and people in the C-suite.

Speaker: 00:52:36

They said, geez, I wish I had read this 30 years ago.

Speaker: 00:52:40

I could have used some of these ideas.

Speaker: 00:52:43

on Amazon.

Speaker: 00:52:43

It's a bestseller in three categories, leadership, training, mentoring and

Speaker: 00:52:48

coaching and customer relations.

Speaker: 00:52:51

those were my target areas.

Speaker: 00:52:52

So I feel good about that.

Speaker: 00:52:55

Well, tell us where people can find, and I know Amazon, obviously that's a

Speaker: 00:53:00

place they can go get the book, but I believe you got a place people can connect

Speaker: 00:53:04

with you and maybe read a sample of it.

Speaker: 00:53:06

So give us all that info now.

Speaker: 00:53:08

And I got one more quick question before we wrap up.

Speaker: 00:53:11

I'm gonna send you our.

Speaker: 00:53:13

Customized link to my website that's tied to your web, podcast.

Speaker: 00:53:18

It will send your listeners to, free sample the book, how to buy the book,

Speaker: 00:53:23

and how to schedule time on my calendar.

Speaker: 00:53:26

Very good.

Speaker: 00:53:26

And is that your, is that your personal website?

Speaker: 00:53:29

Go

Speaker: 00:53:29

Yeah, it's www brad engle.com.

Speaker: 00:53:34

Perfect.

Speaker: 00:53:34

And I think you said maybe you'll do a slash seat.

Speaker: 00:53:36

Go create,

Speaker: 00:53:37

Yes.

Speaker: 00:53:37

that might be listening and don't have the visual and the links that

Speaker: 00:53:41

we'll include, we'll do that and make sure, I'd love for people to connect

Speaker: 00:53:45

and get the book or connect with you.

Speaker: 00:53:47

I know that there'll be people that'll really resonate with

Speaker: 00:53:49

your style and personality.

Speaker: 00:53:52

Brad, just, you got one more quick tip that maybe we didn't

Speaker: 00:53:56

cover that might help people?

Speaker: 00:53:57

There's the book against Fears of Influence that just might help 'em.

Speaker: 00:54:00

Just before we wrap up and I finish this up here, just something

Speaker: 00:54:04

Yeah, it, it, uh, back to my professor.

Speaker: 00:54:07

Get out from behind your screen.

Speaker: 00:54:09

Get outta your office and go Tell people you care.

Speaker: 00:54:14

That is a great tip.

Speaker: 00:54:15

Brad Englert, thank you.

Speaker: 00:54:17

Thank you for writing this book.

Speaker: 00:54:18

Thank you for taking your extensive career that spanned from Chicago to

Speaker: 00:54:22

Australia to all over and writing this book, spheres of Influence.

Speaker: 00:54:25

I'm holding it up for those that might be on, YouTube.

Speaker: 00:54:29

It might be a little fuzzy there.

Speaker: 00:54:31

And again, I love the subtitle, how to Create and Nurture

Speaker: 00:54:33

Authentic Business Relationships.

Speaker: 00:54:36

We'll have a link down below or you could jump on Amazon and, I appreciate you Brad.

Speaker: 00:54:41

Great.

Speaker: 00:54:42

listening in.

Speaker: 00:54:43

This is Seat Go Create.

Speaker: 00:54:44

We've got new episodes every Monday I am so thankful for all

Speaker: 00:54:48

the comments and everything that we keep seeing over on YouTube.

Speaker: 00:54:51

YouTube's really growing right now

Speaker: 00:54:53

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:54:53

I appreciate that.

Speaker: 00:54:54

Love what's going on with all the podcast channels.

Speaker: 00:54:56

thank you for all of that and just keep listening and sharing and we will see

Speaker: 00:55:01

everyone next week on Seek Go Create.