100: A Mic Flip! Rob Fonte Gets Interviewed

How are the leaders at all levels of management tackling the toughest challenges each day? That's the question, and this podcast is the answer. I'm Rob Fonte, and I'm bringing on the brightest minds in management to share practical solutions to those challenges you're facing. Let's get ready to jam.

Welcome to a very special episode of the Leadership Jam Session podcast.

James.

I'm James Christie, executive producer of the podcast, and today we're turning the tables. We've officially hit episode 100, and Rob and I were kicking around ideas for how to mark the milestone, and we landed on this. What better way to celebrate than to flip the mic and have me interview him? Now, some of you might be thinking, I've attended Rob's workshops. I've worked with him forever. I know his leadership story. While I've known Rob for over a decade, and even I was surprised by a few of the stories he shared, especially what he revealed at the end of the episode, his biggest mistake as a leader, and what he learned from it. This episode is also a chance to start teasing something exciting. The Sarto Leadership Academy.

It's a community that Rob has piloted with a few client organizations over the past year, and soon it'll be available to the public. More on that later in the episode. But first, let's get into it. Rob, welcome to your own podcast.

Thanks, James. This is awesome.

And are you ready to jam?

I think so. When you first proposed the idea to me, I thought it was a great idea. Now that we're recording, I'm not so sure, but let's see where it goes.

So, speaking of the idea, you know, we hit 100 episodes of the jam session. No small feat. We've been working on this for, I'd say, what, over the past five years?

Yeah.

So what's. What was the inspiration for starting the podcast in the first place?

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I can't believe this is the 100th episode. And I definitely want to just take a moment just to thank all of our listeners out there who supported us over the years. Obviously wouldn't be able to even do this episode without all of your support. And, yeah, it's not about what inspired me. It's more about who. Obviously, you know, if you recall, you were the one that planted the seed and approached me about launching the podcast.

And not sure if you even remember, but when you proposed the idea to me, I was like, huh? Okay. Never even listened to a podcast, which is sad to say, at that point in time. And obviously, I always trusted your ideas and I said, all right, let's give it a shot. And we launched without me ever even listening to a podcast, which is crazy in itself. Obviously. I've listened to tons of podcasts since then, but yeah, that's where it started. It was based on your idea and it just fit the whole philosophy. You know, when I launched, my company starts a leadership group, a lot of our clients reach out to, to us because of our approach.

And our philosophy is, you know, some of the best training that, that we've ever gone through is when we just had managers sit in a room and just talk. Right. Like a good old fashioned jam session. And that was the inspiration on the format. Right. Just bringing leaders together and jamming on on topics that we could bring to other leaders in a much broader venue.

And I'm so happy that you were open to receiving some coaching and feedback as we started to develop the podcast along the way.

Yeah, a lot of coaching and feedback and kudos to you for, as you know, it takes a lot of time to put these episodes together and you being the one that does all the behind the scenes, you know, you're stuck with editing all my comments most of the time. So.

All good, all good. It's been a really fun, rich and rewarding experience. And I've been learning a lot, obviously, in the background by your interviews with many different leaders, authors, coaches, and if we look back at the sheer number of episodes and the folks that you've interviewed, I mean, we're probably in close to a hundred folks or more. So tell me a little bit about, you know, something you might have learned from any of those guests. Maybe a surprising moment or a story that you might have picked up from a guest.

Yeah. You know, as I reflect back, we've had a lot of great guests. Right. I've had military officers, two star generals, Navy seal. I've had incredible authors right down to even just, you know, the first line. Leaders in the trenches, emerging leaders as well. And I can't say that there's one thing I learned that stood out the most, because what I have learned is every time I meet with guest or a panel of guests, I always walk away learning something. And I think what I've learned is, and as you know, it takes a tremendous amount of work doing these podcasts, particularly with when I'm traveling almost every week for clients and trying to find time, which is why we don't release that many in a year.

But when I always sit down with any given guest, I'm always Amazed of just walking away, learning something. I think the thing I'd learned the most is that no matter who I'm talking to, no matter what level the guest is or their background, it always comes back to the basics. Right? The basics of managing people, Whether it's building trust, you know, creating a vision, what have you, they all just have their own little way of a nuance of describing it or sharing stories. And I think what I've learned is everyone has a story to share. And I always look forward to sitting down with people, with guests, because everyone has something to add that I always walk away learning.

I think that is the amazing part of all the interviews is that 1, 2, 3 little gems or pearls of wisdom that you walk away with from the different conversations. Definitely something I've picked up on over the years. Because sometimes you can ask yourself, well, how many leadership conversations can we have?

Right, right.

And you would think before we exhaust the discipline and all the topics and things. Right. But with every conversation, something new comes about.

Exactly.

Whether it's a scenario, a tip, a tool, a tactic. And those are the key takeaways.

Because a lot of times I'm hearing the same things, the same, you know, concept. It's just how they're applying it that I sit back and realize, huh, I haven't thought about it from that perspective. Right, yeah.

All about the perspective.

There it is. Yeah. All right, so let's go.

Let's start at the beginning. Let's take it back a bit. What was your very first leadership role?

And I think 10 out of the 12 sales reps were older than me. So it was a very. Yeah, it was a very intimidating scenario to walk into. Oh, and by the way, the. The informal leader on the team, his name is Joe, great guy. He also interviewed for the position and obviously didn't get it because I beat him out. But he was there within the team, the informal leader, probably 15 years in at that time. So that in itself was another layer of complexity that definitely made it very Intimidating.

Walking into this team, for sure.

So you've walked in to the mother of all leadership situations as a brand new leader. That's how I look at that. My.

My first call with them just, it was a quick, like, intro. I think the regional director coordinated the call and we hopped on and introduced me and I said a few things. There was crickets. There was absolutely crickets on the call because you know what they're thinking. You know, here's a New Jersey, New York guy. Plus, I had home office experience in the organization I worked for and then I was in the field. So here's this home office, New Jersey guy coming down to West Virginia. Yeah.

And look, I've been on that side of things where everyone has sort of their thought of how they want to be led.

Yeah.

Or, you know, well, like you were saying, well, what is this guy going to bring to the table that I don't already know in my tenure of a decade or so in role. Right. So that's a sticky situation. Did you feel like you were ready at the time for that role?

Did I feel as if I was ready? Well, I'll put it to you this way. I was ready for that next step. Was I ready to actually lead a team? I don't know if one is ever truly ready. I mean, I'm still trying to get ready to this day. Even with all my experience. There are days I sit back, James, and I think to myself, good God, do I even know what I'm doing anymore? So I don't know if I was ready to take the team. I think I'm still trying to get ready for managing people, but I was ready for that next step. To be honest, that team, I was, as I reflect back, it was probably the best thing to happen to me.

Because of their tenure. I was always trying to put myself in their shoes. And that's what I would have been thinking, what type of value is he gonna bring? Right. And it forced me to walk into this team with being curious, not walking in with like a, you know, super manager tattooed or trying to leverage the title per se. Right. They were a high performing team. I wasn't gonna come in and change anything. I wanted just to learn, understand.

Right. Figure out how I could bring value to each of them independently because they all have their own, you know, approaches and strengths and things like that. So I took the time to really just learn and figure out how I could bring them value.

So along the way, as you're figuring out learning and how to bring value to your teams, it's oftentimes we follow other leaders and we pick up gems, we pick up pearls of wisdom. We have some what we'll call early influencers in our leadership journey. Right, so who were some of those influencers or mentors that you picked up along the way, and what did you learn from them?

I have to say, well, you know, let's just take a step back. And without question, my mother was a huge influence to me. And as you know, I recently lost my mom. She passed a few months ago. A lot of reflection with that. My mother had just incredible leadership skills. There was, you know, it took me. I don't even know if you know this.

It took me 10 years to get my bachelor's degree. And originally, when I went to school, I always worked, you know, in construction, carpentry, even in high school. Always had this dream to build my own house. And an opportunity came along, like at 19, there was a house my grandparents owned. And when they passed, you know, I made a deal with my parents. I was, listen, I'll fix it up. Because it was really run down. I'll fix it up, and then we can sell it or whatever the case may be.

What they didn't know was I was. I dropped out of college, spent all my money from college that they saved on this house. And I grossly underestimated the amount of money it would take and how much time it would take me to build it. And it took me three years, right? So by the time I was 21, I had a house, right? But I was broke. And my mom walked into the house, you know, once, like the day after we completed it, and she's looking around, she said, you know, this is nice. And she looked at me, she said, okay, now what? Right? And she always had a way of just asking me questions that really forced me to think introspectively and on. On where I was headed. One of the biggest challenges I had at that time was benefits as well.

I was living paycheck by paycheck. I had no benefits. And she said, listen, they're hiring in the warehouse. She worked in hr. She was a. She worked as in the benefits department at Sharing Plow, which is a pharmaceutical company back in Data, the makers of Claritin. And she said, they're hiring in the warehouse for temps. I can.

I think I can get you an interview, but it's up to you from then on. And so she got me the interview, and I got the position, and I was a temp, but after six months, you get benefits. That was what was attractive. And the reality is, I wouldn't be here really today, even talking to you if it wasn't for my mother. And it took me two years to get permanent. And I did go back to school. Even as a temp, they pay for college. And I was trying, you know, people say, oh, you're the story.

You're the guy that worked in the mailroom. I was like, no, not really. The people in the mailroom, they were permanent. I was aspiring to get to the mail room at that point in time. But after two years, I did get permanent. And this goes to the other, one of the other leaders that really influenced me. I was hired in a customer service department, and basically it was a group within customer service. They were called marketing services.

So this was the time back in the day, we're dating ourselves. But where the sales reps, they weren't ordering on their laptops, right? They had to call in for all their tchotchkes, right? The tissue boxes, the pens, the golf balls that they would give to the offices. I was the person working in this call center that the reps would call to order stuff. And the manager, her name was Yvonne, God rest her soul, she passed since then, but she took a shot at me and hired me into this department. Now, just think about that, right? That takes some managerial courage to take somebody who was driving a forklift around, you know, just trying not to run people over and hit anything and move them into a customer service where I had to go out and buy shirts, ties. I reflect back, and I give her a lot of credit for doing that. But it also taught me that you have to take chances on people sometimes. You know, leaders just see the potential within their employees that they themselves don't see, right? And for whatever reason, she saw something in me and gave me a shot.

And even from then, it was very interesting because we were working closely with the marketing groups, too. And at that time, Claridin, the Claritin marketing team, was really the premier marketing team in the industry. They were setting the path on doing commercials and all kinds of stuff. And one of the product directors there, who I was working closely with, there was an opening in the marketing team and hired me into Declarin marketing team. Now, granted, I still don't have my degree, right? I'm still going to school at night. And again, he took a shot on me, hired me into the Claritin marketing team, which I don't even know what my title is, but whatever. It was like the lowest, you know, obviously I was responsible for A lot of the ordering of the. All the supplies and working with the marketing teams to figure out, you know, things that they can ship to the reps and customers and so forth.

And I had some incredible leaders there. I remember one time working with the head of marketing, and he would always bring me into his office and just, you know, just, you know, we would bounce ideas off each other. One day he's like, listen, I know you've been doing a lot of work, going to school at night, get your degree. I want you to take your wife out to dinner. It's on us. And that I vividly remember that discussion. And that also taught me that we, as leaders, we make a profound impact on the lives of our employees. And it taught me the value of not only your employees, but their families.

You know, it is important to reflect and think through all the people who have influenced us. Us, Right. But in addition to that, we should also take the time to pause and just reflect on people who supported us, because I think that's different. Right? Such as my wife, who has definitely. I mean, listen, it's all order to ask your spouse to move, particularly when we moved to West Virginia, you know, as you know, we have twin boys. At that time, there were only 16 months. And to get her to move with, you know, all her family support structure around her, you know, that's a huge sacrifice. I mean, she just started talking to me like a couple of years ago again.

But I do think we have to take the time to also just thank the people who support us behind the scenes. I think every leader wouldn't be where they are without somebody supporting them in their personal lives along the way.

Totally agree. Yeah, I can see, Rob, how you've pulled that through and how that's really shaped what I know to be your leadership philosophy today. And watching and being a part of, not just part of the podcast, but I was part of your workshops, I was part of your ltps back in the day, right. And you know, picking up some of those great traits from really good leaders. But there's also, you know, the other side of that coin, right, where, you know, where you learn things from the sometimes the not so great leader that you pull into your philosophy as well. Why don't you share a little bit about that experience?

Yeah, so when I became a manager, right, that team in West Virginia. I'm glad you brought this up because I always remember this vividly. Fortunately, you know, the shrine cloud that I worked for was very good about investing in management training. And within the first month of taking over that team. I went through management training, which was a week, and we had a new VP that just came into the organization. And he walked into day one of management training. Within the first hour, he walked in. Now, again, none of us ever met him.

He was there like a week. He walked in. The first words out of his mouth. We called them the double pistols. As like, he had his hands in his pocket, he took them out and just, like, pointed his fingers like two guns at us, right? And he sat, and the first words out of his mouth, he said, let me just remind you one thing. Your allegiance is to me, not to your people. Could you imagine? And I sat back, I was like, my allegiance is to you. I don't even know you.

And that's the first. That's the first word you're going to say. Talk about the ego there. Again, classic scenario of, like, just managing through intimidation and fear and just using your position.

Yeah, right.

Could you imagine if I walked into West Virginia and did that? Hey, by the way, your allegiance is to me. How do you think that would have worked? Right.

You could see the eye rolling and the. You'll never build any trust with that approach. Right.

Yeah. Crazy.

And especially in that particular scenario, right, that. That you laid out earlier, that team and walking into your first leadership role. Yeah, no, that wouldn't have gone well.

No. As it is, I was already kind of like, in a rabbit hole. I forgot to mention it is the first thing I did when I went to West Virginia. I wanted to meet with everybody and, you know, work my way through the team. Right. Landed in Charleston, West Virginia, and called Joe. He was the first one I met. Right.

Because I knew he'd be disappointed he didn't get the role. And I just wanted to meet with him, clear the air. And my goal was to, again, just try to get to know him and re. Reassure him that my job was to also help him to get his goal right, to continue to help him with his development, to achieve that goal of his. And I'm in my hotel room and I call up, call him up. And I said, joe, I was like, listen, I just want to meet for breakfast. Just want to get to know you. He's like, all right, let's go meet a Bob Evans.

And now, again, James grew up in Jersey, live in a cave. I didn't really know what Bob Evans was. I thought he was talking about a physician, Dr. Bob Evans. I said, well, Joe, if you want to go meet Dr. Evans, I guess we can do that. But I really just Want to. And there was, like, just, like, silence.

And of course, he was thinking, seriously, this dumbass is my manager from Jersey. Now I have to deal with him as my manager. Right. And how long do you think it took for that story to. To go through the whole district?

We got Wildfire.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Within an hour. Like, you know, if that. So. So, yeah. So, yeah. And then me coming in saying, by the way, your allegiance is to me. Right.

With your pistols out.

My pistols out. My double guns. Right. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, listen, you know, as we've always talked about, you can learn just as much from bad leaders as you can from good leaders, what not to do. You just need to be observant, definitely, and pay close attention to it.

So let me ask you, looking back, right, so what's one thing that you wish you knew back then that you know now? And you often ask this in your interviews on the podcast. And so I figured I'd turn the table on you as well.

At least for me, anyway. Right. In that scenario, the imposter syndrome takes over. Right. You start to have doubts and you start to question yourself, particularly with a very intimidating team. And again, it was a great team. I still talk to so many people to this day, but I think I would have maybe given myself a little bit of grace, particularly in that first year. You are hit with so many decisions you have to make.

You feel like you're drinking out of a fire hose. You put a lot of pressure on yourself that, you know, you have to know everything. You have to have all the answers. I just wish I would have slowed down a little bit more. Right. And. And maybe reached out to more people, you know, to gain more perspectives. I felt like I had to do everything on my own.

That was all on me. And it took a long time to realize that. That it's, you know, you don't have all the answers. Right. And it's okay. You need to give yourself a little bit of grace, and you're going to make mistakes along the way. And I have made plenty of mistakes. But I think if I would have liked to have just maybe slow down a little bit, take a breath, and realize that I don't have to have all this pressure on me.

Right. There's plenty of others out there to rely on to lean on other managers. Right. Even my reps, A lot of the solutions were within them, too.

You said you made a bunch of mistakes. I know this one might be tough to kind of think through, but what was the biggest mistake that you made as a People leader.

Oh, God. Biggest. Well, I don't have to really think too hard about it. I know I might need to have a drink as I share this story, because I'm already feel like I'm breaking onto a cold sweat, so. And ironically, it was with this team in West Virginia in year one. This was when. And I don't even know if organizations do this now or not, but this was back in the day where you had to like, rank and rate your employees. You had to submit a list.

I had 12 sales reps. I had to rank them, who was my number one all the way down to number 12. And this was where we were getting close to year end reviews, right? And I had to put, you know, next to their names, what their rating was.

And.

And again, this kind of gets back into what I was saying before. You know, you're getting hit with so many things. Your emails. I was in my office firing off a bunch of emails and this request came in from my RD and my regional director. And I had the list and I just fired it off to him, right? And later that afternoon, I get a call. We were at a manager's meeting, right? My. My manager had all of us in, you know, so I was actually at the hotel in the morning just trying to get some of the stuff done. And during the meeting, I get a call from Joe, you know, my rep that I talked about.

And on break, I. I call him and I was like, hey, what's up, Joe? He's like, hey, you sent an email out, but I'm not sure it was intended for all of us. And I said, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you sent a spreadsheet that had everybody's name on it and it looked like you had us ranked.

Oh, there goes the cold sweat.

Oh, I can see your reaction right now, just thinking through this.

Oh, I just. All the things going through my head.

If I had to write, the blood just drained through my body, right? And I'll come back to Joe in a minute. I quickly got him off the phone, right, and came back into the manager meeting and told my regional director and the other managers there. And one of the mentors, Mark Brown, he was my mentor actually. And I just said, I think I just sent that whole spreadsheet out to the team. And my mentor just looked at me and he just like, had that look like, you are the biggest dumbass on the planet and I am stuck mentoring you. I had like. They were like, you need to recall that. And so I tried to recall it, you know, I didn't even know what that even looked like.

And they walked me through it and of course it was way too late. And my, my, My manager was like, well, he's like, I guess I need to call a jar, because I'm not even sure how to, like, what do you do? Handle this. Right. And I said, no, I agree. You know, and kudos. Just to go back to Joe for a second, to his credit, he was doing the right thing and just giving me a heads up. Right. He could have not said anything.

Sure.

Right. And that just goes to the character of Joe. Right. But I mean, honestly, James, like, that night I don't think I slept right. I'm like, am I even gonna have a job? I should be fired. Think about that. Yeah, that is definitely one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. You hear?

You heard it here first, folks. You're not send your calibration list to your team.

I mean, even thinking about it, I'm just ready to like double check.

Was that measured twice, cut once on that email?

Let me tell you, ever since then.

Sure.

Even to this day, I have a delay on my email. You know, my email system. Yeah. That. Just because of that. Still just to double check. And I, you know, I, I really slowed down after that. I was very cautious.

I didn't get fired, which was a good thing, but I should have, quite honestly. Yeah. And again, with one of the most tenured teams, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, geez.

It was interesting, though, what happened next. The employee who was actually number 12 on the list called me the next day, but nobody else did, which was very interesting. Nobody ever said anything. And again, by that point, I was probably about, like, probably about like, I don't know, between six to nine months. In maybe nine months. And by that point, I had a pretty good footing in the team. And they all realized I was, you know, I was very objective, didn't have any favorites, called it like it was. I think people probably sat back and looked at that list like, yeah, he's pretty much got everybody.

Yeah. They knew where they stood, right? Yeah.

And the person who was number 12 called me and I was really planning to be with her the end of the week. And I was already planning to have a kind of like a come to Jesus meeting with her. And she said, you know, I saw where my name was and I'm really concerned. And I said, well, we're going to talk about it, you know, at the end, you know, when I'm with you over the next couple of days. And and it was a classic scenario. She was very young in her career, I think might have been her first job in industry, and just picked up some really bad habits from, from people that she worked with. Actually was a previous manager. And we realigned, so she, I picked that area up.

She was just somebody who needed a lot of coaching that she never got before. She ended up becoming one of the top reps, believe it or not. So it worked out much better than it probably should have, quite honestly, with sending out a calibration list to your whole team, I would definitely not advise that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's wise counsel.

Yes. Yeah.

All right, so here we are. We fast forward.

Yeah.

Years later, you work your way through organizations. You end up with your very last role in a training role at a small organization, somewhat small organization, lean and mean type of organization, where you're building out leadership development programs.

Yeah, right.

And you're really building out first line leadership, second line leadership coaching, so on and so forth. And then you turn around to me one day because we sat side by side, right, together. I was running the commercial function, you were running the leadership development function. And you said, james, today's the day I'm going out on my own.

I said, what? What?

I know what that means. Right. We know what that term means. Like you're going out on your own. It's like, what happened? Would you get fired or something? Like, what do you mean? Like, no, I'm just going out on my own. And then you show up and start the Sarto leadership group.

Yeah.

Tell me about that story. Why did you start Sarato?

Yeah, well, if you remember, I was brought back in from the field. I was a regional sales director then brought back in and to continue doing the leadership stuff that I was doing years ago. And, and you know, at that time, James. Right. The. If you remember, the organization was going through so many changes. Right. The culture was changing.

So many people were leaving. In fact, I don't even know if you know this, but I was even interviewing externally for like, heads of sales positions. And, you know, so many people were leaving that were, either, you know, participated in my training workshops or coached by me or, you know, were managed by me that were now dispersed across so many other organizations. I mean, what I'm doing today was really supposed to be what I would thought I would do when I retire one day after industry, you know, work for a company consult. And I took a step back and I was like, I was like, well, I mean, I, you know, I could take on a head of Sales position. It was a pretty good chance. I, you know, it was looking pretty promising, but I sat back and I was like, you know, timing is everything and I feel like I could just make a bigger impact doing this. Love doing this.

You know, I love being a, you know, sales leader as well. But I just felt like I could do more with this and gave it a shot and have never, knock on wood. I've been very lucky, very fortunate. You know, there's not a lot of people who go out and start an organ organization or a company like this that, that make it. And I've been very fortunate and I've never looked back.

So throughout that time, you know, you've had the opportunity now since you said sort of make that broader impact. And I know you've, through your clients, you've been able to help develop and coach, you know, at this point, thousand leaders or so.

Yeah.

So what still keeps you motivated? Right. And this kind of goes back to how much can you teach about the same concept over time? But yeah, what still keeps you motivated?

Honestly, it's, it is when I walk into a room to facilitate. Right. Or it is just the, I guess the joy of being in a room with, you know, first time leaders, emerging leaders, and in some small way helping them with their development, being able to kind of help shape and mold and put them on the right path. I mean, listen, I, you know, I don't really work with executives as much as I used to, quite honestly. I still do, you know, more for my current clients as a favor. But the reality is I love working with first time leaders, emerging leaders for sure, because I just feel like I can help them the most and put them on the right path. There's so many, you know, leaders that I come across that and I've, I've gotten a lot more forgiven, if you will. I mean, listen, we all know there's a lot of bad leaders out there.

Right. And the reality is I sit back and I can't fault them to some degree because they've never been properly taught. You know, it's learned behavior, it's, and so forth. And not a lot of organizations invest in the type of training that we offer. Right. And so when I'm done with workshops and you know, it's the anecdote statements that I get from a lot of the participants just in terms of how they see things a little bit differently or a different perspective, it's, that's what kind of motivates me. Yeah. If that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing I would say is that it's very humbling every week when I work with Emerging leaders, you know, and again, our Emerging Leaders is the most sought after program. Right. A lot of clients come to us because of that. And then within the Emerging leaders program, we use some of their leaders to help coach them. I walk out of every session just learning something new. It's a very humbling experience and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of managing. So, yeah, I think that's what.

It's the impact and it's the. And it's what I get out of it too, the learning. Because the learning never ends.

In all your teachings, all the time that you spent with multiple organizations and such, what's one belief that you have about leadership that you think people most often get wrong?

I think what most people get wrong is they forget that the basics still hold true. Right. And what I mean by that is because as I said, if I go back to what we were just talking about with the emerging leaders, we have hand selected leaders within your organization that sit in on these sessions and serve as coaches. And in nine times out of 10, 99% of times, these leaders, these coaches walk out learning just as much. And they'll tell me that, you know, there are just things that, that it's a good review. Some of the things I knew that I just haven't like leveraged as much as I should. And I think what happens is we get so busy. Right.

Time is our biggest enemy as leaders. You know, for those that have been through my workshops, you heard me say this time and time again. And I think the biggest mistake we make sometimes is we don't take the time to just pause and reflect and just revisit some of the basics that we probably just either forgot about or just we know it's there, but we haven't leveraged. Right. Taking the time to like even just recognizing and appreciating your employees. Right. Or their families and what they do. Right.

Like how my manager at that time said, hey, go out to dinner with your wife, it's on me type of thing. You know, it's some of these basic core principles. Finding opportunities to build trust. What motivates employees, how do you bring value? I just think that we at times don't pause and reflect enough. Including myself.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm aligned. Yeah, I would agree.

Yeah. And sometimes, yeah. And sometimes there are, you know, there are times where I start doing something and I sit back, I'm like, why am I doing this? I shouldn't be Doing this like my employee, I'm like taking an opportunity away from them. Right. So I just think we need to slow down at times.

Yeah, yeah, I love that line and I. Because I use it often as well. When you jump into solution for people, you actually taken away the opportunity of learning for them.

Yeah. And look, it's all good intent. We want to tell. Right. We want to just help them. And I think, you know, again, that goes back to the basics. Right. It takes more time to see if they can come up with their solution or to really talk through it, to figure out which path do I need to take, Do I need to tell them how to do it, or do they just need a sounding board.

Right. And that's why I think a lot of the mistakes are just we just sometimes need to go back to just some of the basics. The other mistake I think we make is thinking that there's nothing else we can learn. Right. Or that we've seen it all. That's where EOs get into way too. Right. And I mean, listen, just when I think I've seen it all, there's always another surprise waiting for me around the corner.

Right. And I think again, just goes back to just taking the time and making sure we are always, we always have that learner's mindset approach. We could always have something to learn. Right. Yeah.

So let me ask you, Rob, what's next for Sarto Leadership group as you continue to work on helping folks develop their leadership skills?

So over the years, a lot of our clients always asked us, what's next? Particularly when we wrap up an emerging leaders program, we're always asked, what's next? How do we continue with this? And this was something that, that I brainstormed with you. And years ago, you know, you came up with the idea of an academy. And I'm really excited to say last year we launched the start to a leadership academy. And we launch as a pilot with a number of our clients. And this is really the idea behind this, James, that you and I talked about was really kind of design a community based on helping individuals, whether it's emerging leaders, current leaders, giving them a venue to help grow. Now, again, you know, obviously you have like LinkedIn and a lot of other platforms out there. And again, the academy has some of those features built into a digital courses, but we wanted to take it a step further. And so we provided some other resources, such as the off the Rails, which is one of our most popular resources, built into the Sarto Leadership Academy, where I bring on a guest Panel.

It's my same panel. And we bring on a leader that comes on to talk about an employee that has gone completely off the rails. And you'll never know who, who the leader is because we turn him into an avatar. We modulate their voice. You never know who it is. These are the type of scenarios that we wish we could teach in training. It's a type that you wish you could hear about, but we never do. Right.

So now we're able to provide this where you'll hear my panel talk through how they would handle the scenario. By the way, my panel has no idea what the scenario is. When they come on, I know what it is, but they don't. And then we always provide a recording of it and a one page resource in addition to that. The other feature that we built in is a live jam session every month where I will host a discussion with either members of my team or guest speakers. And this is intended to be interactive with all our members in the academy. You can come on and ask any question you want of the guest panel or the speaker who's with me. We always record it too because we know that there's going to be competing priorities and we always provide a key takeaways resource as well.

And so this academy is really designed to help individuals just continue with their development, but also provide some other features that I don't think you'll see out there with some of the more commonly known resources.

I think it's great. I mean, I'm a member, I got to experience some of the features there. And I remember. Was it Captain Abashoff.

Yeah.

As sort of the kickoff there for the live jam session.

Yeah. When we launched it last fall. Captain Abershoff is the author of it's your ship. It's one of the required readings in the in our emerging leaders program. And he came on last fall when we launched the academy for the first live monthly jam session that we did with all of our members. And he just did an Q and A. That's all it was. It was a Q and A with all of our members and they could ask whatever question they wanted of him.

It was a fantastic discussion. So the idea was, how can we provide other resources beyond just the podcast, which is a public venue that we can provide exclusively some other resources to our members.

When do you envision that being launched? You said internally. So when do you envision that being launched? Publicly?

Yeah, our goal is by September to actually launch that publicly to anybody who wants to join it. Right now it's exclusive to some of our clients as we're doing the pilot and we're fine tuning things, we feel by September we should be ready. That's the goal, to launch it publicly to anybody who's interested, anybody who's interested in who's listening right now. This podcast, we'll send out more information on it and what the membership fees will be, but we're looking to launch it in September.

Very cool. Good stuff. Well, Rob, look, thanks so much one for pulling back the curtain with me and, and we got the opportunity to dig into your journey up until this point. And for everyone listening, thanks so much for being part of the Leadership Jam Session community and for checking out the podcast and following. So whether it's your first episode or your hundredth, we're just glad you're here. So be sure to follow Rob on LinkedIn. Stay tuned, because very soon again, we'll be opening up the doors to start to Leadership Academy. And again, it's the space for leaders like you and me, honestly, to continue learning, growing and jamming together.

So, Rob, thanks again.

Thank you, James, and again, appreciate just you having the vision and the idea so many years ago. And as you said, definitely want to thank all of our listeners out there who supported us over the years.

All right, thanks again. Talk soon.

Thanks. Thanks so much for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with a friend or colleague who you think might also get some value from it. I'm Rob Fonte, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Leadership Jam Session podcast.