A Geek Leader Podcast - inspiring technical and creative leaders around the world

Things aren’t always going to be good as a leader.  As a leader we must learn to lead in the good times and in the bad.  Leading through a crisis is just a fact that will come along with being a technical leader.  I recently was able to both witness a good leader lead through a crisis and be the leader in a different crisis.  I want to share a few things that I took away from it. Stay Calm. The best way to lead in a crisis is to stay calm. I try to tell my team that no one’s going to die here (we’re in IT not the military). Understand that you’ll get through this and probably have a good story or lesson from it. Don’t worry so much about the cause and never point fingers. Focus on the solution and moving forward. Sweat the small stuff. During a crisis, celebrate the small wins in order to motivate and keep things moving forward. Be overly transparent. Hide nothing about what’s going on.  Let your team know that you’re a human with feelings and emotions too and you’ve chosen to control them and not let them get the best of you. Over communicate. This is a time when its okay to over communicate.  We talk about letting people be creative, but let’s make sure they are fully aware of all the details in in crisis mode. Don’t be afraid to be a dictator. During a crisis is the only time I can currently think of where its okay to be a dictator.  When a decision has to be made and it must be made now, don’t worry about autonomy for motivation’s sake, focus on the task and issues at hand, and be a dictator if needed. Be prepared to pivot. During a crisis, things don’t always go as planned and they usually won’t follow an easy path. Be prepared and expecting to pivot and deviate from you game plan.  Prepare your team for it as well.  Some personality types don’t handle rapid change and deviations too well, prepare them that its going to happen and to plan for the pivots. Document, document, document. Keep track of what’s going on and when.  When you get out of the crisis, and realize you will, nothing is worse than to have no idea what you did to resolve it. Never waste a good crisis. They don’t come around too often, so when they do come around, find what you can learn from it and make sure you and your team learn your lesson. Learning is the most important thing that can come from a crisis.  Celebrate your overcoming of it and communicate what you learned.   Now its your turn. What are other ways you can learn from a crisis or get through a crisis?  Tell a story where you wet through a similar situation.   Be sure to leave a rating and review in either iTunes or Stitcher Radio.  Also please check out my Surviving a 5K Race book to help you get in shape before the holidays. Surviving a 5K Race   I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

As a Professor and a leader, I'm passionate about college student's success both in and out of the classroom. I should be an expert at this, seeing as I’ve been either in college or working for a college (I’m a professor) for more than 15 years.  Here are a few tips that will help students be successful. Stay busy (get involved) – Studies show that students that are involved in more than 1 campus organization or student activity have higher GPA’s than students that are not involved at all (source Department of Health and Human Services).  Plus involvement helps you build social skills, friends and a resume. When I was in college I was president of 5 campus organizations, in a fraternity and played lacrosse. Having little time helped force me to focus on what's important. Make good habits early – You need to establish good patterns in your first two semesters of college.  After that, it becomes increasingly difficult to break bad habits.  Good habits include going to class, reading prior to class, eating healthy, staying active and staying safe. There will be future podcast on Habit forming... stay tuned! Take risks – I need to qualify this one… Take “Healthy” Risks.  Don’t play it safe.  Try new things (not dangerous things).  College is a time to find yourself and to meet your life long friends.  If you don’t take risks and get out there, you’ll be missing out on valuable experiences that you can never get back. Try starting a business, freelancing, meeting new people, just live with no regrets! Don’t delay (major courses, cultural events, etc) – Take your major courses early and get them out of the way. Save electives for last . Sometimes the major courses aren’t offered every semester and if you need to re-take one, or if you mess up your schedule, you might find yourself spending an extra semester or even year in college. I tell my kids.. to delay is to disobey.  Don't Delay! Set goals and set triggers – Set goals for yourself every semester.  Be sure the goals are obtainable.  One study found in the book “Switch” states that if you set triggers, like specific times or places where you’ll work on your goals, you’ll be significantly more successful in meeting them. Set SMART Goals - Specific, Measurable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound. Take notes on paper (or a writing app) then type them up – Don’t take your laptop to class and type out your notes.  One, this is distracting and it gives you lots of opportunities to focus on something on your laptop instead of class itself.  Two, by writing your notes and then typing them up, it forces you to review them. Track your time (see where it goes) – Use a time tracking template to track where your time goes.  I recommend spending one week per semester doing this.  It’s eye-opening how much time goes into playstation and partying. Keeping a time journal is great, and you should record you time every semester as your schedule will likely change. Be safe and don’t be stupid – I’ve heard countless stories of students that did something stupid in college (like drinking and driving) and either killed themselves or put a big blemish on the rest of their life.  You can have fun and still be safe.  Please do so. Don’t ever say “I don’t have the time.” – You’ll understand this one a little bit better after you’ve graduated and have a full-time job with a toddler.  You ALWAYS have the time.  You just need to prioritize it (i.e. Make the time). Try saying, I'd rather ___ than ___. Just don't say you don't have the time. Get an internship or a job in your field while going to class – One of the best experiences that I had in college was working for UAV.  UAV gave me an opprotunity to work on websites, troubleshoot software and develop a love for IT.  It also gave me a really good piece of experience.  I took the job at UAV as an intern and gained valuable experience.  Oh, and I got hired for the internship because the hiring manager liked that I was involved on campu...

You’ll never have more opportunity for salary negotiation than you do just before you accept you job.  If you already have a job and you’re happy where you work and the idea of looking for something else scares the crap out of you, there’s still hope.  You can still negotiate your salary or other perks at your job. So let’s say job negotiation isn’t what you’re looking for, you can negotiate other things too, basically, everything is negotiable.  If you have skills, you can also barter, which usually requires some negotiation skills. Do your pre-work.  You have to be confident going into the negotiation.  You have to know your facts and be able to answer all the questions on our pre-work checklist: What? – what are you negotiating? Don’t try to negotiate too much, its usually best to pick one or two things and focus seriously on those. When? – When do you need to make a decision, is this something you can wait on, or is time your enemy…or do they need to make a sale and is time your friend? Know this. How? – how will you communicate? Email, Face to face, Phone… technique will vary based on the how… Choices? – Know all of your options, what are your choices here? Goals? – What you really want. People mess up here, if you get your goal, stop… you win, game over.  Don’t get greedy and keep going. Ground? – The lowest that you’ll accept. B.A.T.N.A.? – Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement. Other Info that might be useful… The Ask.  Most of the time you can get what you want, just by asking.  You don’t always need to negotiate, just ask.  I was able to get an additional 10% discount in annual maintenance on a software agreement at the time of renewal, just by sending a simple email that stated: “…since we’ve been such a good customer during our first year, I think it would be great if you could offer me a 10% discount on this.  What do you think?” The reply included a new agreement with a 10% discount applied.  Sometimes, just asking is all you need to do. When doing the negotiation,  a few things matter more than just the words you are saying. Communication is far more than just words.  There’s a 7-38-55 rule which states that 7% of communication is the words you say, 38% is how you say it, i.e. your vocal tonality, and 55% is your body language.  Now, if the negotiation is on the phone, you loose 55% of your communication tools and if its over email, you loose 93%.  Its best, when possible, to negotiate face to face. For more on vocal tonality and body language, be sure to listen to the podcast above. Most people just don’t ask.  The are afraid of rejection.  For those people, please check out Jia Jiang’s TEDx Talk on 100 days of rejection. https://youtu.be/ZFWyseydTkQ If you liked this episode and want more like it, please head over to iTunes and leave me a review, and feel free to tweet to me @johnrouda, I'm pretty active on twitter and respond to most mentions.

Dan Pink gave what might be one of my favorite TED talks of all time as he explained the puzzle of motivation (It's also one of the most viewed with over 14 million views at the time of this posting).  This talk made me want to read his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. This book changed the way I motivate my employees and teams.  It also inspired me to use the information in the book to motivate not only the people that reported to me, but others above me, and to the right and to the left. I liked this book and Dan's TED Talk so much that I incorporated it in my own TEDx Talk in 2015.  In this book Dan tells us that our thoughts on motivation are wrong and that business doesn't do what science shows it should do.  Dan talks about several research studies that have been done on the science behind motivation.  Motivating others is a huge part of leadership.  Leaders are required to influence others.  There are 2 ways to influence others, either to manipulate them or inspire them. Dan states that we can use Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose to inspire and motivate others. Autonomy Humans are designed to be self-directed.  I have a 5 year old and an 1.5 year old... I see it first hand.  The innate desire for people to control themselves is real and starts from the time kids can crawl. There are some ideas in this book that I don't necessarily agree with 100%, but that's just because I haven't tried them yet.  There's an idea of a ROWE, Results-Only Work Environment, where people don't have schedules and they do what they want, when they want and they are only held accountable by their results. I think this might work for Sales, but I don't see how it could work for jobs that require heavy teamwork and communication, like project management or software development, but maybe I'm wrong.  But you can motivate others, by giving them freedom and holding them accountable to high standards.  Give your people autonomy over Task; What they do, Time; When they do it; Team, Who they do it with; and Technique, How they do it. Mastery Mastery is being Good at something that matters.  In software development its about giving your team the tools and opportunity to learn and work with the latest and greatest.  In this book Dan Pink says that Mastery abides by three rules: Master is a mindset - you must have the ability to see your skills as improvable. Master is a pain - its hard work and requires effort, and determination, its a process not a project.  Master is an asymptote - its not possible to fully achieve, so it can be frustrating. Purpose Purpose was the hardest for me.  This book talks about purpose is not being about profits, but more about being part of something bigger than yourself and making a difference.  For me it was hard to find that in my work, but I did find it eventually.  Stepping away from this text, I came up with my own formula for finding purpose, its perspective plus teamwork.  For me and my team, we served together and that made a huge difference in our purpose.  We also adopted the mission statement of "Making Life Easier" and applied to all work we do. To buy this Drive on Amazon, click here.

In Todd Henry's book "The Accidental Creative" he talks about five elements of Creative Rhythm.  As an IT Leader you're called to make creative decisions and come up with brilliant solutions at a moment's notice.  In a future episode I'll do a full book review of "The Accidental Creative," but I feel the 5 elements of creative rhythm is worthy of a show by it self. Creative Rhythms are important because as leaders we must understand that we can't go all-in 100% of the time and expect to maintain our productivity, mind, and joy for our work. Consistency is important, and if we understand our rhythm then we can adapt to it and maximize it. "What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while." -- Gretchen Rubin The Five Elements make up the acronym F.R.E.S.H, which stands for Focus, Relationships, Energy, Stimuli, and Hours. One thing I noticed about all of these is that they are all finite resources.  We only have so much focus, we can only maintain so many real relationships, we only have so much energy in a day (without Red Bull), we can only consume so much stimuli, and we only have 24 hours in a day. "Mediocrity doesn't just HAPPEN, it's chosen over time." -- Todd Henry If you would, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher and subscribe and leave me a review and rating.  Thanks so much!

If you do want to be a leader, you have to train. You have to work hard at it. It’s not just something that you can just try to do without work. Have you ever run a marathon? It’s not something that you can just go out and try. You have to put in a lot of time and effort to train for marathons. Becoming a leader is the same thing. You have to train hard. There is a difference between reading leadership books and training. Reading books is education, not training. Let me ask you this: Do you want your kids to go through sex education or sex training? In order to truly understand and be able to do something, you have to train for it. Most companies have ‘training programs’, but they are really just education programs. Until you actually go out and practice building relationships and inspiring people, you’re not really training to be a leader. One of my favorite stories is about Picasso. He was pretty famous later in his life. People knew who Picasso was before he died. He didn’t just die and then become famous. Picasso had a drinking problem and he spent a lot of time in bars. Usually before he left he’d doodle something and give it to the bartender for his fee because the bartender knew the drawing would be wroth more than the bill. He was leaving one of these bars and a lady stopped him and said, “Oh, Picasso, Picasso, I’m such a huge fan of your work! Can you please draw me something?” She handed him a pad and a pen, so he spent thirty seconds drawing something. He ripped the drawing out, handed the pad and pen back, held the paper out to her, and said, “That’ll be one million dollars.” She said, “Picasso, that took you thirty seconds.” He replied, “No, ma’am, it took me thirty years to learn to do that in thirty seconds.” That’s the way that leadership works. It takes a lot of work for you to get to the point where you can actually lead someone. You can’t just go out one day and lead. You have to train for it. While you’re training to become a good leader, you need to understand that it’s a process, not a project. We are all creative in the strictest definition of the word. We create for a living. We create solutions to problems. Our projects have a start and an end. Leadership doesn’t work that way. There is no end; the end is a mirage. You’re only going to get better the further along you go in the journey. Don’t get frustrated; just understand that leadership is a process without an end.

We all are afraid of something.   Being a leader demands bravery. In this episode I talk about getting over FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). I list and explain these 4 steps for dealing with fear: Play it out. What's the worse that can happen? What's the likelihood of that thing happening? How can you reduce the likelihood of that happening? If the worse happens, how can you recover? We need to understand that everyone deals with fear.  The most successful people just "do it anyway." Getting over the imposter Syndrome.  Check out this article from StartupBros on getting over.  I pulled a few examples from it in this episode. "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less" - C.S. Lewis Links: Imposter Syndrome Ted Talk 21 Proven Ways To Overcome Impostor Syndrome from StartupBros Notes to a Software Team Leader

In this episode I talk about likability.  Being liked at work is actually pretty important.  A lot of people believe that being good at their job, or having some special skill will help them get ahead.  But the truth is that likability plays a huge role in where you end up. People want to hire people they like and promote people they like.  Don't you want to work with people you like too?  Yes, its important to have skill, but talent will only take you so far.  To advance your career even farther, you mush be liked.  Take a listen to this episode and let me know what you think, also do me a favor and head over to iTunes and leave me a quick review, even one sentence helps.  Thanks so much for listening!

I listen to a lot of audiobooks.  About a year ago, I listened to Simon Sinek's Leaders Eat Last audiobook.  I loved this book.  In my opinion its better than his first best seller, Start With Why. In this book, Simon Sinek tells the story of Johnny Bravo, a military pilot and how he risked his life to defend ground troops in battle. He uses this story to illustrate the idea of the “Circle of Safety.” Circle of Safety Simon tells us that we should focus on helping those around us and under us instead of one-upping them. He uses our biology and our history as hunters and gatherers to show how this behavior affects our brains. “The whole purpose of maintaining the Circle of Safety is so that we can invest all our time and energy to guard against the dangers outside. It’s the same reason we lock our doors at night.”  One of the parts I really liked about this book is when Simon talked about our environment. I’m a believer that a happy and safe environment can help encourage and inspire those entrusted to our care. Simon also shocks us when he talks about how being happy at work can make you live longer… and of course the reverse, how stress is literally killing us. Just like, Start with Why, Simon uses biology to explain motivation that we once attributed to psychology. He uses our 4 happy chemicals, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin to explain how the chemical reactions that occur encourage leadership and motivate those around us. He then explains how to use those chemicals in our motivation… Here’s a brief run-down. Endorphins & Dopamine, these are chemicals that are used to mask pain and make us feel good after we’ve achieved a goal. Endorphins are what causes runner’s high. They mask the pain we feel in our body when we’re working hard to achieve something. They are also highly addictive, which is why you can get addicted to running. Dopamine is a chemical that gives you the satisfaction of completing a goal or task. We can get this as we accomplish things. This is the same chemical that is produced when you abuse cocaine or alcohol. We can structure our projects and goals as small chunks and give this feeling of satisfaction to our teams, encouraging and motivating them to continue achieving and move closer towards our end goal. Serotonin and Oxytocin are the chemicals that involve trust and belonging. To get these juices flowing, Simon says you have to get on the floor, away from your computer and talk to your team and get them trusting you. Show them that you trust them. That’s most important. When he tells the stories of Johnny Bravo and the other marines, he ask them why they would risk their lives for their fellow marines, and the answer is simple, because they would do it for me. Trust works both ways. Lastly, Simon talks about building a long-term leadership strategy. He says that the “Welch way” is wrong. We need to inspire, not manipulate with fear. We need people to trust us, not be afraid of us. Simone says that good leadership is like exercise. You have to do it regularly to see small changes, but after doing it daily for a long time… when you look back on where you came from, you’ll see a huge difference, just like you do when you exercise. You don’t see the daily improvements, but you do see the big differences after weeks of training. You have to train to be a leader. If you’re interested in this book and more, check out the video below and get the book on Amazon here. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRcHdeUG9Y

Having Difficult conversations is really important.  I don't think anyone would argue that. Many times we feel awkward and don't want to have the conversation and things go from bad to worse... or they just never get resolved.  This podcast is to give you 3 tips on having difficult conversations that I got from Ash Beckham's Ted Talk from a few years ago. I hope you guys like this one and get something from it.  Please leave me a note in the comments below and better yet, subscribe and review the podcast in iTunes.