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Josh Schachter
Hey, everybody, thank you all for tuning in.

Today, I want to talk about a really important topic that affects us all. I speak to a lot of customer success managers, Customer Success leaders. And we want to talk about leadership, which is such an important topic, no matter where you are in your career, no matter what you’re doing, not only in customer success, but across the spectrum of different functions out there in the business world. And who better to talk to leadership about then my friend and mentor, Dylan Stafford. Dylan is a professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is teaching a course this summer in 2022, in leadership, and He’s the assistant dean at the business school at UCLA. He’s also the author of a book on leadership building a winning organization, and has experience as an HR and change management consultant, major organizations, and an MBA from Chicago Booth on top of that, so I would say fairly qualified to talk to us today about leadership, Dylan, thank you so much for being on this episode of really appreciate your time today.

Dylan Stafford
Josh, this is great. It’s a little bit early here in California this morning. But this is fun, happy to be here.

Josh Schachter
So I have a quote in front of me here that I’m going to read off of. It’s not a quote on leadership, it’s actually a quote on your course, right? That this leadership course, maybe the most important breakthrough in the study of leadership that we’ve seen yet. And that is from a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, that’s really a claim. I have high expectations for this conversation on really getting the all the, you know, capturing all the golden nuggets about leadership. And the name of your course is, I believe, being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership, subtitle, and ontological phenomenological. If I said that correctly model, first of all, you got to define those words. It’s like you said, it’s too early. It’s too close. Or it’s fancy for me. So but but tell us a little bit about, about what you’re up to in this world of leadership today. And what that course is talking about?

Dylan Stafford
Well, awesome. Yeah. And yes, yes, that is the title. And yes, you pronounced it correctly. Got to have a couple of 50 cent words in there to make it you know, valid. And Professor Michael Jensen, whose quote you read, he’s one of the original authors of the course. And this is a, in my experience, a very unique course, in that it is. It’s kind of like an open software model. This course is currently being taught in about 40 universities around the world, including including USC, UCLA, where I am a co instructor. And let’s see, so the two words, ontological phenomenological. Well, let me just even start with the problem before we get into words, like why another course on leadership? If you go on Google, and you go on Amazon, and you look up, books aren’t leadership, books on leadership, you’ll get 100,000 titles easily. It’s overwhelming. So if the lack of knowledge is the problem, well, then there’s no problem because we have more knowledge to throw at that conversation. But what we look at in the course is, well, is there one common agreed upon definition of leadership? You know, there’s not ask any professor and you’ll get an answer. But it won’t be the same answer you’d get from a different professor, ask any practitioner. Go talk to people in your life that you know, and trust and respect, you’ll get answers. John Wooden will give you an answer from sports. And, you know, Steve Jobs would have given us an answer from business. But none of those answers are the same. So at one level, the experts don’t know what it is they’re studying. There’s not a common agreed upon definition, and the practitioners don’t know what it is that they’re doing. Even though we know that there are crucial times in life where we have to lead. So a metaphor is, if the train tracks already exist, you don’t need management. Excuse me, I said that wrong. You don’t need leadership. If the train tracks are there across the field, you need good management. We need to get the when you get the staff on board the train, we need to make sure we have fuel in the train. We need to make sure we have seats for everybody we need to get the passengers seated. You know, we need to go down the track with efficiency and effectiveness. That’s good management. But when you’re standing in one of these open fields, right like you with artificial intelligence, you know that is an open field. If we’re gonna bring Customer Success utilizing the evolving emerging potentiality of artificial intelligence, okay, there are no train tracks, we could go over that mountain, we could go through that valley, we could go around that river. In fact, the leadership moment. So in these moments where there are no train tracks, and poof, you’re in charge. What is it to be a leader, like to bring that being where people listen to you? And they say, you know, what? Ever the heck they’re talking about, I want to play that game. And they give you time and resources and money and best effort. And then once you get started, what is it to exercise effectively, leadership is a natural self expression. So what is Josh gonna do? Because there’s one and only unique Josh in the universe, and the potential within you is amazing, epic, untapped. And who has access to that as you nobody else is going to get there for you? And if you’re in the moment going, Gosh, what would Steve Jobs do right now? Well, if you even as useful as it might be, we’ll go UCLA for a second, even if I pause, and remember, an incredible John Wooden aphorism, you know, it takes 10 hands to score a basket, right? Like, that’s an epic quote. But if I leave the moment, and go look for a great quote, and then come back to the moment, the moment may be gone. So I may never be as graceful as John Wooden, but my self expression, Hey, guys, we’re in this game, because I invited you all to be here, you all have granted me leadership in this task. Now, who I’m being is that this shall be. And my natural self expression is good, bad or indifferent, using the best and the worst word choices I can come up with, in the moment, not perfect unscripted live on the court. That’s a big distinction we have in the, in the course being on the court, you’re going to get me and you’re going to who you thought you get. And what you get are congruent. There’s an authenticity to it, there’s a foundation of integrity, like I don’t give my word casually anymore. When it comes to leadership, I’m going to slow down, get present, and bring my full self to that conversation. And what we say in this course, is on that foundation of Integrity, Authenticity being caused in the matter, being given being by something bigger than oneself. With those four foundational factors, you can stand in the world and you can be a leader, and you can be heard as a leader, and it can be your natural self expression. So I didn’t get to ontology and phenomenology, let me pause for a minute not be a little junior professor here. But I wanted to kind of paint a picture of what this course does distinctly which is give people access to that. Right, I don’t want to fill up your head with another seven habits of highly effective everything, you know, there’s so much of that it’s all important, it all has its place. In the moment in the field, no train tracks, you’re in charge. Go. This course, gives people access to the being of being a leader, and exercising leadership effectively as a natural self expression.

Josh Schachter
A lot to unpack there a lot to unpack, lots to unpack. So first of all, you know, that’s silly on me to not have, you know, prepping for this conversation to not even think about John Wooden even at UCLA for 20 years. So

of course, we have to talk about John Wooden, the master. We’re not talking about John Wooden.

I want to talk about self expression. Not at this very moment. But I want to get into that because I think that that is so important. That has held me back as a leader, right? I am somebody who has kind of prided myself in in, in being authentic and being candid, and sometimes being Curt, and having that little bit of grit, that New York, you know, born and raised grit on my shoulder. And it’s gotten me in trouble as a as a leader, right? It’s stunted my own development as a leader. And so I want to talk about that idea of self expression, you know, what are one of the ways that you can be truly self expressive? I think intentionality is something that that for me just came up and what you were saying, you know, you mentioned it’s too late in the moment to think about what would Steve Jobs do? What would John Wooden do at the same time? I think that’s the first step right? It’s just being intentional and thinking to that extent of like, oh, wait, what, in this situation? What should I do as a leader? And anybody who’s interested in this conversation we’re having is already being intentional about their own leadership growth. And then we can talk about trains and on the tracks and off the tracks and I’m sure, I would imagine that even a lot of people are in a situation where They feel like they’re on the tracks. And they feel like they have to confine themselves to the like the directional tracks. But I’m sure there’s ways that you can also create your own little off roading in that sense and paint that canvas of leadership for you and your team. Okay, let’s start with the framework of leadership as you see it. And I want the two minute version of that, because then we want to double click into some of these areas. But you know, what do you see as the major pillars of leadership?

Dylan Stafford
Sure, well, and I won’t go. I mean, I’ll stick within the the course that I’m talking about here, that being a leader in the fact of exercise of leadership course. So we, we don’t talk about pillars, we talked about the four foundational factors, okay. And those are Integrity, Authenticity, being caused in the matter and being given being by something bigger than oneself. So two minute version, integrity is not a moral conversation, the way we have it, it’s a, it’s almost a mechanical conversation, like gravity, you don’t get mad at gravity, gravity just is you jump out of the plane gravity happens. We come at Integrity from a workability point of view. Like there is a design and a structure to things in life. And leadership, we look at it that from that point of view that when I am my word, like trust happens by giving our word and keeping our word. And by honoring our word when we can’t keep our word. So we have an entire conversation about the power of our word, not something optional, but actually, who we are we live and the listening of other people through the language that we share with them. So I don’t know if I could do this in two minutes. Okay, integrity,

Josh Schachter
we can go we can go we can go further than two minutes. And let’s stop right there. Let’s let’s. So let’s let’s, let’s talk about, we can get to this and the other foundations. But let’s talk about integrity. So it’s the power of your word of being true to your word holding your promises. How do you practice integrity as a leader?

Dylan Stafford
You know, it starts with Oh, Oh, my word matters. Many times we, in the day to day Petey pace, running through life, it’s so easy to nod and smile. And let people think you said yes. When you know, when you step higher and higher in life, when the spotlight gets brighter, when people are looking at you every day, from multiple vantage points, you know, you start to live the fishbowl life of a leader. There’s no off time. You don’t get to go Yuk it up anymore, right, you are a public persona, and your private self and your public self start to align and match in those high intensity moments. And not even moments but chapters I would say because I think people who are gonna be listening to this podcast are on a trajectory, right individual contributor, early manager, director, and then entrepreneur, C suite, leader, philanthropist accountable in life, someone who voluntarily raises their hand and says, Hey, world, I think I can make things work. And I’m willing to shoulder the responsibility that comes with playing that game. So my word, if I’m going to be a leader in life, my word is not a casual thing. I mean, we see this with politicians all the time when they give their word. And then they walk it back. And the trust goes down and down and down. What we work on in this course, is giving people access a to seeing that we are constituted in language. You can’t walk through the forest in the in the world primeval, you know, you could walk through the forest, and there’s a tiger and there’s a tree, but you’ll never find a leadership. You won’t walk through the forest in the original world and see a leader. We made up leader in language, just the way the Greeks made up citizen. You know, before the Greeks came along, there’s no such thing as a citizen. There were kings, and there were subjects. And that’s how society got organized. There were chiefs and there were the villagers. And then the Greek said, now we’re gonna have this thing called Citizen they invented it in language, and it had some responsibilities, and it had some privileges. responsibilities, you got to help run Athens the privileges, you can vote, you can own property, still out of language. The Greeks created this thing called Citizen and we’re still 1000s of years later unpacking What is it? We’re talking about this now in America? What is it to be an informed citizen? What is it to be a participating citizen? Okay, well, leadership’s the same way. You know, we know it when we see it. Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone 2007 onstage? Oh my god. Okay, I think what it is to be a leader is to have a new gizmo, and a black turtleneck sweater. So he’s seen, right, you see, you see the kind of corporate billionaire casual cool dress code, right? That’s the thing. It’s an attribute of leadership that we associate with one instance of leader. But is it my self expression? You know, my next not long enough, I look stupid in a turtleneck. It gives me a double chin. Right, I have never going to be Steve Jobs. And I am not crazy gifted enough to reinvent computing and telephony and internet access and put it all in people’s pockets. Right? So I’m never going to be Steve Jobs. Well, am I disempowered about that? No, no, there’s an integrity in my word, the conversation. You know, I appreciate that kind introduction. I get to be a dean at a business school. We’re creating future generations of managers and leaders for society. That’s what gets me out of bed

Dylan Stafford
at 530. In the morning, Josh, I can’t believe I only let you talk me into this. This is so fun to start early.

Dylan Stafford
But I get to be a leader in my hula hoop in the world that I traffic in, I get to be a co instructor on this course. I get to offer access to the being of being a leader and exercising leadership effectively. Okay, that’s who I am. You know, I’m 53 years old, I’m married. I got two kids. I’m not fancy anymore. There’s no mystery. You know, I used to have been married 19 years this year, I used to think, oh, you know, what I was doing took me forever to get married. Oh, my God took forever, I guess 3233 When I got married 34 Maybe, you know, because I used to I was just I didn’t know what it was to like, surrender, you know, and I was always afraid, oh, man, every other person gets divorced. I don’t want to get divorced. And so I just put it off forever, because I was trying to get it right. And now it’s just like, that’s not even a thing. You know, if she dumps me, that’ll be because she has great taste. And she finally figured it out. You know what I will but I’ll have that 19 year rut, and it’ll be epic. And my life is never gonna dump me. Right? Who I am publicly and who I am privately. It’s the same dude. I’m not trying to wow anybody anymore. You know, I get up, I work hard. I’m learning I’m growing. I’m a student of life. You know, but I’m not more than I am. I’m not less than I am. You know, what you get? is what you get. So your your the question you prompted me with is, you know, what is it to honor our work. And what we look at, in this course, is we distinguish that who we are is our word. And as we honor our word, not keep our word. Because two things can happen at the same time, that displace your ability. Okay, I’m a parent, and I’m an employee. Okay, I’ve got two accountabilities, I’m Edina, UCLA, and I have two children. Okay. When I have an important meeting, and I have a sick child, you know, I gave my word to be at this important meeting, I’m going to call in sick due to the superior commitment of you know, I’m a parent. So what am I going to do when I can’t keep my word? Well, I’m going to honor my word. And how do I honor my word is the second I realize I’m not going to keep my word again in communication. Hey, I am so sorry, I gotta cancel this meeting. Tell me the impact. What can I do to make that right? Here’s what you could count on me for going forward. Not the details, not the story. Not a good excuse, not the justification, happy to provide all that but not leading with all the shuckin and jivin of coming up with an appropriate excuses big enough to justify breaking my word. No, I am breaking my word. I’m in communication about it. I’m not honoring the commitment that I made. But I’m honoring my commitment that you can count on me as my word by saying I’m not keeping my word.

Josh Schachter
So it can be little things too. So you actually just recalled for me when I was at UCLA Anderson I don’t recall which which course this was in but this idea of drop the story, just drop the story, right? And that’s the same thing of just honor your own word, right. Have that integrity. And it made me think for a moment I felt a little shame because one of my Achilles heels. I’ve wrestled with this my entire life and I still am. I’m late. I’m late. And on Zoom. It’s better because I’m not about 10 minutes late to a meeting, but I’ll be one minute late or 90 seconds late, right. And even little things like that, I guess what I’m trying to say my takeaway of what you’re saying about this integrity, staying true to your word is, doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, necessarily, it can be the little things just like that, right? Just just just showing up on time, or however that manifests for you. But that is a certain form of integrity. And as a, I won’t call myself a leader, because it feels in this conversation it feels doesn’t feel appropriate, but as a, as a head of this company. I do I realize now in talking to you, I look at others, are they on time, right. But as as a form of that’s leadership, that’s a certain sense of leadership, oh, this person is ready to take it to the next level. They’re prompt, they’re, they have, you know, they they’re holding their, their commitments, like, you know, and that’s one of a million different things. But I think it’s a really good point that you raised around integrity. And I want to segue that for you, because I have a general idea of of your, your one of your other foundations, which is authenticity. And I think you actually segwayed it yourself already. I think, you know, integrity, sounds like it goes hand in hand with authenticity. With that. That’d be correct.

Dylan Stafford
Oh, 100% Yeah, those are the first of the four first two of the four foundational factors of the course and we define authenticity is again, it’s that alignment, that who I who I put myself out to be is who I actually am. And you know, just let me circle all the way back to ontology phenomenology. So we don’t just leave that on addressed. ontology is the study of being and phenomenology is the model one uses in studying being so ontology is how, how is a human being being when a human being is being? So if you ever had a thought, what is it like to be a fish? Or what would it be like to be a bird? That’s an ontological inquiry? And phenomenology is a way to access that phenomenology is about phenomena things as they arise. So what would a fly on the wall? Observe? What would a video camera if there was a video camera in the room? And boop, Dylan is being a leader, and exercising leadership effectively is his natural self expression. What would that video camera capture, and one would capture would be a person using language. speaking words, body language, actions, like you just said, being on time can actually be an act of integrity. So that’s the that’s what’s different about this course, is we’re not, we’re not trying to communicate a lot of knowledge about the attributes and traits of leadership, we’re actually providing access to the being of being a leader. So I just want to circle back to that. And now back to Authenticity. Authenticity, is that alignment, who I who I allow you to think I am and who I actually am. hos, I’m trying to minimize variance. And part of that is consistency. It’s, it’s, I like, I love the expression, you know, and this is a John wouldn’t be quick, but don’t hurry. You know, in a version of that is sometimes in life, we have to slow down to go fast. And I think for a lot of people in your in your audience. You know, we work our ass off in our 20s and 30s, individual contributor, you know, 80 hour weeks, give it to me, I’ll do it. You know, willing to jump willing to leap out of the plane, not even sure if I know how to open the parachute, starting your how many companies have you started, career pivots, all the things that you’ve done? In the 15 years, I’ve got a chance to watch you be on the court. Oh my god, I’m gonna lose my train of thought. Sorry, I tried to do too much too quickly.

Josh Schachter
Be quick, but don’t hurry. Be quick, but don’t hurry.

Dylan Stafford
Sometimes you got to slow down to go fast. Like when you start to trick when you when you take those stair steps into these next chapters of life, launching another company, you said Why don’t like to use the title leadership because that for this conversation, that’s a little but I am running this company. You know, like you’ve you have the humility to get like maybe that’s not the word I want to use. And at in parallel, there are people who count on you. They are actually looking at you, Josh, where are we going to lay the train tracks. And you’re saying, Look, I got an idea of where we want to go, but I’m not sure the best route. So let’s, let’s map that route together collaboratively with the wisdom of the team. Yeah, and that dance of here’s, here’s a mountain that I want us to get to. And then here’s this big open field. And we’re a bunch of smart people and we’re all committed to getting to that mountain. And maybe we want to snake along the river and maybe we want to drill a tunnel. Let’s let’s look at that. Let’s talk about thought that?

Josh Schachter
Well, there’s another piece in there also, which is the the dance with uncertainty and having a vision, right. And for me, those are two really important points that you just brought up. Is, is I think as a leader, having that vision at whatever level of leadership, you know, that you are at. But, but communicating that vision, first of all, figuring out that vision, and then communicating and communicating and communicating and making sure that there’s alignment on that vision. And then yeah, just doing a little dance around uncertainty when you zig and zag on your way to get there. For me, those are really, really important points you brought up. Yeah.

Dylan Stafford
And thank you for that pause. So I could catch my train of thought just to just to give a short on authenticity, the access to being authentic, is being authentic about our inauthenticity. So it’s this kind of paradoxical thing. Like it, let’s go back to being late. Hey, guys, I screwed up my calendar. I’m embarrassed. I’m not even embarrassed. That’s because that’s that’s a different world. I’m so sorry. What impact did that leave you with that? I’m 10 minutes late. Again, no story, drop the story. Who you can count on me for next time is to put a cushion in. Here’s a here’s a blast from the past Carla hain, who was senior associate dean, when you were at Anderson, I still get to work with her. She’s still one of my mentors. And I’m honored that you call me a mentor. Just gotta say that. That was an epic highlight of my day worth getting. Ready for just to hear that. Thank you. Whoo. All right. I have purpose. I did one thing well, this lifetime. But Carla Haynes still one of my mentors, she promoted me to Assistant Dean a decade ago, she’s she’s still on our faculty committee. Five minutes early. Always, always in person, and she’s carried it straight over into zoom. She is always the first one there. So her on time is five minutes early. And she is a busy human being. You know, she’s $1,000 An hour expert witness, she’s got a multi continental footprint. She has a voice in her field. And she’s always five minutes early. Just always. And you know, it’s like, it’s a thing. Like her ability to manage herself consistently. That work habit is known. It walks in the it walks into the occasion, just when you see her on your calendar, you know, so, you know, there are people who think leadership is the attributes of charisma, given the big speech, the Obama mountaintop moment that make people feel tingly all over. But what about when Obama leaves the room? Right? One fingerprint of leadership is that people keep swinging the hammer, even when I leave the room. Right? It’s not they don’t just swing the hammer when I come and give a big speech. But no, I’m like a lion on that mountaintop that we all are creating together. That’s a future that we all created in language. And I’m willing to keep swinging the hammer, even when nobody’s looking. I want to give my best effort because I’m aligned on that future. And I’m gonna give my blood sweat and tears, my oil and best effort. And we created that in language just to throw this when we talked about this in our prep the other day, a great example, we given the courses, you know, 1960 JFK Rice University, hot summer sun. And John F. Kennedy said, you know, look, we can put a person on the moon and bring them back safely. Not we can’t, we will, by the end of this decade. And, you know, just historical moment to go back in time. Where was the American mentality? Well, in 58, or 59, the Russians, Sputnik. It’s the malaise after the war. You know, we just won the Second World War. And now it’s 1518 years later, it seems like the Russians are ahead of us. And he just made this up. He just said, that’s a mountain. But it wasn’t just any mountain. It was a mountain that people could get excited about aiming their energy at. There was no such thing as JPL. There was no brain trust over here in Pasadena. There was no such thing as NASA. There was no Houston to call with Houston, we have a problem. There was no congressional authority for the budget. He used language like what’s the phenomenon? What do you see in the videotape you see a man squeezing his lungs and making molecules of air vibrate in his throat and emit these little All phonemes that people could hear upon which they give millions of dollars, hundreds of 1000s of hours and a decade of their best effort, including, you know, rockets that blow up and the loss of human life, they don’t give up on this opportunity to fulfill that future. And that future was not going to happen until he brought it into being. So. And that outlived him. Right. an assassin’s bullet did not kill the dream that he shared, that a decade’s worth of American energy went into fulfilling. So, you know, that’s what we’re talking about in this course, is what’s what’s your moonshot? You know, I mean, it’s it’s whatever each of us has, you know, I think of this course, is a wonderful access, you know, we work I love the equity, diversity, inclusion conversation about how do we get people in the room where it happens? You know, Hamilton, I want to be in the room where it happens, right? How do we look for the talent across our entire society, independent of socio economic starting point, color of skin, who you like to kiss, none of that stuff is important. What’s important is that talent is distributed equally throughout humanity. There is something in each of us, not everybody wants to be a leader. But if you want to be a leader, doesn’t matter, your starting point, doesn’t matter what your immutable characteristics are, that you have no control over anyway, it’s, are you going to raise your hand and say, excuse me life? And if and when you raise your hand, are you going to be somebody that people listen to? Yeah. That’s what we’re empowering in this course. giving people access to the levers and dials such that when leadership is called for, I have access to walking on the stage of my own life, raising my own hand, using language, saying a future that wasn’t going to happen otherwise, and having the people around me go, Yeah, let’s play that game. Come what may? You know, successes, failures, all of it, right? Because it’s always all there. Nobody just you know, most modern, you know, most overnight successes take 15 years. Right? Okay, well, let’s have those 15 years be as impactful as they be. Yeah, so that’s kind of what this kinda that’s what this course is providing access to. I feel like I’m saying a bunch of words. Let me pause for a second

Josh Schachter: oh it’s great it’s great it’s great i’m i’m gonna i’m gonna wrap us up there dylan because this leadership i mean this is a this is a days long weeks long course long conversation right um uh and this is just scratching the surface of that as as we knew we’d only be able to do um but i love it i i love you know at the highest levels you’ve got your your structure of integrity authenticity and then all the different double clicks within that thank you so much for for sharing that wisdom and um we should do this again we should have a follow-up conversation on leadership because like i said there’s there’s so much more to scratch the surface of 

Dylan Stafford: well yeah just just on my side to land the plane thanks for being here and i love customer success as you know it’s it’s two words i’ve not really heard put together so you know you’re you’re dwelling in a world and you’re creating a conversation and being a leader as you always are i love watching your career ever since you were in school over a decade ago i wish i had more josh’s to hold up to inspire future generations because i love how you are on the court for people who are interested in the course our website is beingaleader-ucla.com pretty simple all one word beingaleader-ucla.com and yeah just just following your career has been epic and i can’t wait to see you know where UpdateAI is going to go next and yeah this has just been a blast josh so thanks for having me

Josh Schachter: thanks dylan have a great day

Dylan: you too