"Be confident in yourself so you can pour into other people what they need.”

In this episode, our host, Craig P. Anderson, is joined by Steve Rupp, a seasoned real estate coach and passionate leader. Steve shares how managing from a place of confidence and generosity can break the negative cycle of threatened leadership and drive real team success.

Listen in as Steve recounts his journey from his first leadership role as a Boy Scout patrol leader to his impactful career in real estate coaching. He discusses the critical lessons learned along the way, emphasizing the importance of building trust and improving communication through creative team-building exercises.

You'll also hear about the transformative power of mentorship and effective delegation. Steve offers actionable insights on how young leaders can motivate their teams from within and the art of asking the right questions to inspire self-reliance and ongoing improvement.

Things to listen for:

• (00:00) The lightning round
• (02:23) Defining leadership
• (07:09) Leadership lessons from the Boy Scouts
• (11:07) Challenges of young leadership
• (15:19) Scarcity vs. contribution in leadership
• (17:45) The importance of creativity in leadership
• (23:31) The role of curiosity in effective leadership
• (27:14) Steve’s advice to his younger self

After You Listen:

• Get your copy of Leadership Promises for Every Day by John Maxwell
• Connect with Steve on LinkedIn
• Connect with Craig on LinkedIn
• Check out Craig’s monthly free training on holding difficult conversations

Key Takeaways:

1. Be confident and provide your team with the right tools—don't feel threatened. It’s essential for positive leadership.
2. Stay positive and maintain confidence for your team, even during challenging times. Positivity is contagious.
3. Embrace the power of questioning. Encourage self-discovery instead of providing all the answers.
   
   

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

Craig Anderson [00:00:00]:

When I got up in the morning, I just didn't think I had it in me. I didn't know where I was going to find the energy or the path forward for the team.

Craig Anderson [00:00:11]:

Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to.

Craig Anderson [00:00:24]:

There was a time where the team I was leading was going through a lot of transition and change, and it was tough on everyone. It was really tough on me. And I was doing everything I could to try and keep the team going and try and cast that vision for how we were going to move forward. But one morning, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was ready to quit myself. I didn't know how we were going to move forward. But I got dressed, I got ready, and I sat down at breakfast before we started the meeting. And I looked out at that team and I knew what they needed from me was my positivity and my energy.

Craig Anderson [00:01:00]:

And I knew I had to dig deep and bring it out that day, acknowledge the challenges before us. But if I stayed positive, I knew they could stay positive. And that's one of the lessons we're going to learn today from Steve Rupp. Steve is a real estate coach here in Indianapolis, Indiana. Has had a lot of different leadership experiences in his time, and he's going to share for us the story today of his Executive Evolution.

Craig Anderson [00:01:28]:

Steve, welcome to the Executive Evolution podcast. Glad you could be on with us today.

Steve Rupp [00:01:32]:

Yeah, thanks, Craig. Thanks for having me. I'm super, super excited.

Craig Anderson [00:01:35]:

Oh, yeah, I know. I enjoyed our pre call conversation. I think this is going to be a great episode. So why don't we open up right away and dive right into the lightning round? Are you ready? Yeah.

Steve Rupp [00:01:45]:

Let's go.

Craig Anderson [00:01:46]:

All right, question number one. In the lightning round, what is the best book on leadership you have ever read?

Steve Rupp [00:01:53]:

So I'm a big. I'm going to hit two bursts of 1 st on this. I'm a huge Maxwell fan, John Maxwell. So one of my favorite ones is leadership promises for every day because that combines several books together and it takes it down into bite sized chunks. So you can look for each one and read it and comprehend it and apply it and then move on to the next day. And it's a different book every day with that that he compiled. So that's a great one.

Craig Anderson [00:02:18]:

It's amazing. The guy is so prolific and everybody has like a John Maxwell tidbit that they've pulled from one of these books. So what was a big takeaway for you from all your reading of Maxwell's?

Steve Rupp [00:02:29]:

The big one was. Well, and I actually have it right here. One of the, my favorite passengers in this book is when he talks about the heart of a leader and he talks about how the leader has to want to lead. And it can't be because of all the, the glory or, you know, being at the top of the ladder. You're actually at the bottom of the ladder and you have to look at it for supporting your team that way as kind of like an inverted pyramid, so to speak, instead of being at the top of the pyramid. And you really have to want to do it. And there's, and you know, this, there's a major difference between management and leadership. And the, and he really, I think, does a great job with explaining that.

Steve Rupp [00:03:09]:

So this kind of gets to the root of it, in my opinion. One of the things that really spoke to me in the book, Washington, the heart of the leader, and that you truly do have to love what you do to be a great leader. Instead of just doing it for the money or for the recognition or whatever, you should be doing it in spite of that because you really care. Servant leadership.

Craig Anderson [00:03:29]:

I couldn't agree more because until you actually get into that role, you don't know how draining it can be. And it's certainly rewarding and it certainly has a lot of great things to it, but it's a lot. And if you aren't in it for the reasons of you really want to lift people up and guide everybody towards some greater vision for the business, for the organization, whatever you're doing, you're going to burn out in just a few years or you're just going to be terrible at it.

Steve Rupp [00:03:51]:

I would argue that the fuel that is used by leaders is passion, and inspiration versus managers is more money and recognition, right?

Craig Anderson [00:04:03]:

100%.

Craig Anderson [00:04:03]:

I love that. All right, question number two. Who is your leadership crush?

Steve Rupp [00:04:09]:

Yeah. John Maxwell. I mean, as I was thinking about this question, I was thinking about all the different. There's so many great leaders out there that are really preaching what they teach and vice versa. And I mean, I can't think of anybody more prolific than John Maxwell. The guy has literally written the book on leadership, not only one book, but what is he up to? Like 87 or 88 books. And I think he said he has another 13 books in them or something like that before he's kind of finished. But there's so many great people out there.

Steve Rupp [00:04:39]:

But for me, John Maxwell, I gotta go with the goat leadership. It's hard to argue. The guy is just great. He's an inspiration to so many people on so many different levels. And the way that he delivers his lessons is solely John.

Craig Anderson [00:04:55]:

Yeah, it's amazing. And it's just they, like you said, he's so prolific, it's hard to believe anyone hasn't actually read one of his books and he hasn't actually touched on something or seen a quote or watched a video or something. Right. It's just that huge impact he's had on leadership.

Steve Rupp [00:05:08]:

Agreed.

Craig Anderson [00:05:10]:

Last one in the lightning round. In ten words or less. How do you define leadership, Steve?

Steve Rupp [00:05:15]:

Leadership for me, is motivating others through inspiration to take action.

Craig Anderson [00:05:22]:

Love it. Yeah. And it's so crucial giving people that. Why? So they show up every day, you know, I always thought, you know, look, I'm not asking you to jump out of bed, sing a song, do a dance because you're so excited to come to work for me, but I don't want you dragging out either. And I've got to give you a reason to come in. Right. Because work is work at the end of the day, and I want to give you something to say, hey, you're part of something we're building here. So I love that definition.

Steve Rupp [00:05:46]:

Absolutely. It's more intrinsic, and that's the thing I think is one of the biggest differences between leaders and managers is leaders is more intrinsic motivation versus external motivation, which is what managers use.

Craig Anderson [00:05:59]:

Oh, yeah. And managers are driving through title, whereas leaders exist all across your organization. Right. There's people at the lowest levels who are thought influencers, who are leading people and really influence what's going on in the organization. You don't need a title to be a leader. You do need a title to be a manager.

Steve Rupp [00:06:16]:

I think one of the best quotes this is we can, I guess we probably put this at the end of the lightning round, one of the best phrases, and I'm not going to get this exactly right, but it's train your employees so well that they can leave and go somewhere else because people want them, but inspire and motivate them such that they don't want to.

Craig Anderson [00:06:34]:

Right. 100%.

Steve Rupp [00:06:35]:

And I think that's the number one part about a leader, is that you are training them to so they can go other places, but they don't want to because they don't want to leave the leadership that you have. And I just, that's just always stuck with me is that it is being a true leader is it kind of goes back to the heart of the leaders I was mentioning before is that it is truly something that you have to feel called to do, that you are doing it not for yourself, but you're doing it for the betterment of the people that you're leading for a greater bit.

Craig Anderson [00:07:05]:

Yeah. No, I agree. All right. Very good job on the lightning round. Steve, let's dive in. Talk to me about your very first leadership role. What was the first time you actually stepped up into leadership?

Steve Rupp [00:07:17]:

I have two answers to this. One is a fun one. I don't know if you're gonna. If this is going to qualify for what you're looking for or not, but here's the fun one. My very first leadership role, very first, was when I was in Boy Scouts and I was a patrol leader and I was managing or leading ten year old kids as a ten year old. You know, you look back and I'm an Eagle scout, and I've gone all through scouts. I came back as an adult volunteer. I love scouting.

Steve Rupp [00:07:45]:

I think it is one of the best leadership training organizations for kids out there today. I firmly believe in the scouting movement and what it's done for me. So I had to go back all the way to that because that truly was the first opportunity that was given to me that somebody saw that I had earned to be a leader at a very young age. And so that's what set the stage for the rest of my life. And I'm not trying to advocate or say that I'm some great leader or that I've done it all right, because I've made tons of mistakes. I'm going to make a ton more. And I'm sure there's a lot of people you could talk to are like, yeah, he really screwed up on this one. At the end of the day, that was really my first opportunity to start leading.

Steve Rupp [00:08:25]:

And he even goes back to where. And you'll laugh when you see this, but this is something that applies today. So it goes even back to the duty roster that scouts still use today where, you know, someone's on, like, fire, fire duty, someone's on cooking duty, someone's on cleanup duty, someone's on water duty, all this stuff. And one of the, when I was patrol leader, one of the. You, you assigned the duty chart and one of the kids in our patrol. And this was, keep in mind, this would have been 40 years ago that this happened. I still remember this. And one of the kids was like, steve, I don't see your name on here at all.

Steve Rupp [00:08:59]:

And I said, that's right, because my name is next to every single one of these. And if one of you chooses not to show up or if you need help, I'm the one who's there.

Craig Anderson [00:09:10]:

Yep.

Steve Rupp [00:09:10]:

And that's the way it should be. And they were like, oh, okay, so you mean you'll get up with me and help me collect wood for the fire of the morning before everyone else gets up? If that's what you need. Absolutely. I will do that. And every single one of these I've already done. So you can't say that I haven't done this before. So that's the very first one. And then, if you're looking more for a professional, r1, quickly is when I was given an opportunity to be the operations manager at a branch.

Steve Rupp [00:09:35]:

When I worked at First F America bank, when I was fresh out of the management training program, we had a branch manager who was the external one. They did all the lines of credit for the commercial lines of credit, so forth. And then you have your operations manager who was in charge of running the branch, and we're the ones who made all the orders at central vault for the money. We're the ones who handled all the cash exchanges. We're the ones who managed all the tellers and the internal sales, all that stuff. And I utilized my Boy scout experience for inspiring and leading all the people, ranging from a college student all the way up to a great grandmother. And we had people in between. And so it was really interesting to me, being able that young age.

Steve Rupp [00:10:18]:

I think I was 22 at the time, leading these people, and they hadn't had someone do that before quite to that. That level. It was fun. I hope I inspired them, hope I got through to them. But it was. It was a great experience. There's a lot of things that I would do differently, but we had a great time together, and that was. That was a great learning experience.

Steve Rupp [00:10:36]:

And my first professional role as a leader.

Craig Anderson [00:10:39]:

Yeah. Especially in that one. And I love the Boy Scout example because my example is always band president. Right. So I was, like, 17, and I was a pretty tyrant. It was terrible. I was bad at it. But at 22, right, you're coming out.

Craig Anderson [00:10:50]:

I always find those jobs so interesting because you're 22, fresh out of the management training program, 23, whatever, and now you're surrounded by people who may be your age, maybe way older than you have been around forever. What were some of the challenges to be kind of stepping into leadership at that point in your life?

Steve Rupp [00:11:09]:

Well, the first one was being taken seriously.

Craig Anderson [00:11:12]:

Yeah.

Steve Rupp [00:11:12]:

You know, I mean, I think we've all had that. You know, when you're first starting out, whether, you know, it's your first job or a management role, a leadership role or whatever it is, you're fresh out of college, or let's say you didn't go to college and it's fresh out of high school, you first have to convince yourself and then convince the others that you're working with, whether it's sales or management or whatever the case is that you're doing, your colleagues, that you deserve to be there. And that was me. I mean, I had a lot of self doubt. I didn't know what I was doing. I had a manager who let me kind of let me go, and she was in. Not in a bad way

Steve Rupp [00:11:51]:

She gave me inspiration. She was like, stephen, actually, and this is a true story. I got there one day. It was like on a Friday or something. I started. She was going on vacation the very next day for a full week. And I just got on the branch. I had no idea what she's doing, what I was doing.

Steve Rupp [00:12:06]:

She kind of gave me an overview and said, steve, I think you got it from here. I'll see you in a week. And I'm like, what am I doing? It was leaning on those people who had been there and being vulnerable and saying, listen, I don't know all the answers. I know I'm young. I'm learning. I want to make sure that we can be the best team possible. And that year and the other two years that I was there, we were the number one branch in the region, and we had some of the best outcomes for team. That wasn't just me.

Steve Rupp [00:12:37]:

It was our team. It was Amy who was the manager, too. I think when you were that young, having someone above you, whether it's a mentor, whether it's a manager, whether it's a leader, whether it's, you know, whoever that is, give you that inspiration or that motivation or that confidence that you need to start and borrow it from them for a minute. And I hate the phrase fake it till you make it. That makes my skin crawl saying that. With that being said, sometimes you almost have to do that. But borrowing that confidence from someone who sees that in you before you even see yourself, number one, that's a great leader, but number two, that is someone that really believes in you, and you can take that as the confidence and the inspiration that you need to inspire other people. And that's exactly what Amy did for me, and I will never forget that.

Steve Rupp [00:13:30]:

She was probably my best manager and leader that I've had because of the confidence that she inspired in me that I didn't have yet myself.

Craig Anderson [00:13:38]:

Jeff. Yeah. And I really love that example because so often I see in organizations, they don't do a great job. Leaders, maybe they didn't grow up with a great mentor in the organization. So they really don't know how to lead. They don't know how to do the tough things. And so when they're bringing up the generation under them, they don't know how to do it. So we start building this generational crisis of leadership in our organizations because we've never done a great job setting people up in those early jobs, and then they don't know how to do it.

Craig Anderson [00:14:08]:

And you just have these significant problems in your business. So to have someone step up and teach you and lend you some of their credibility, some of their strength, their knowledge, that's how we start to build strong leadership that's going to last on our organization.

Steve Rupp [00:14:24]:

I couldn't agree more. And I would add two things to that to clarify or to back up what you just said. Number one, I would submit that those leaders, leaders, managers, whatever their position is, they have to be confident in their position in order for that to be true, what you had said in order to promote that, because if they're not, they are not going to be wanting to make sure that they are giving you the tools and the resources that you need, because they're going to feel threatened. And that was one of the things that I saw time and again when I was in the management training program at the bank was so many of the managers departments that I rotated through. They saw these young management trainees that were hired by the CEO of the bank as threats to them. And so we were relegated to menial tasks that we were not supposed to be doing, per the CEO of the bank. But they felt threatened. And so it wasn't just me.

Steve Rupp [00:15:18]:

It was all of us. We were sharing these stories, and I was like, you know what? That's sad. That is coming from scarcity, not contribution. It is not being authentic. It is not being a true leader. It is a manager. It is small, and it is not doing the world any good by coming at people, at these young, impressionable college graduates. All of us are recent college graduates, and you're not doing us or the bank or yourself any good.

Steve Rupp [00:15:44]:

I'm not here for your job. I am here to get better. And if you don't have the confidence in yourself to pour into me what I need from you as a leader, what I'm looking to you for you're just going to start promoting that negative leadership and negative outcomes that are not going to do me any good. And then what's going to happen is now you're going to start promoting incompetence. And I've seen this happen in so many organizations. And you promote incompetence. Why do you promote incompetence? Because you want to get that person out of your department, and so you promote them because it's the easiest way to do it. The cycle just goes over and over and over and over, and it's awful until they get so high, and you're like, how the heck did they ever get here? And you're like, well, because it was incompetent promotion, and it happens all the time.

Craig Anderson [00:16:31]:

Oh, it's endemic in a lot of organizations and, yeah, it's terrible. So, Steve, as you think about that experience, what was your big takeaway from that leadership role at the bank? Because it sounds like a great experience, but what was your kind of core takeaway?

Steve Rupp [00:16:48]:

My core takeaway was that be confident in yourself to pour into other people what they need.

Craig Anderson [00:16:56]:

Yeah.

Steve Rupp [00:16:57]:

And don't come from scarcity. And don't be afraid that someone is going to do better than you, because a good leader should want the people that they lead to do better than they do, to achieve more than they do. Kind of like a parent for their child.

Craig Anderson [00:17:14]:

Yeah.

Steve Rupp [00:17:14]:

You know, you hear that all the time, right? Parents. You know, I want you to do more than I do. I want you to achieve more than I did. I don't want you to be where I am today. I want you to be more successful. What if we had every manager and leader out there, took that mentality to the people that they lead, they inspire. They're in a position to impact. It would completely change in a generation, or maybe less, the leaders and the managers that we have today that are moving up the ranks.

Steve Rupp [00:17:45]:

So that's the one thing that I learned. The other thing was be creative. It can be fun for you. It can be fun for the people that you lead to be creative, and it doesn't have to be some rote thing that you do and follow this pattern. And anyone who knows me knows just how ironic that is because I'm a huge systems guy and I love systems and models and I follow them. But at the same time, with that, you have to be willing to adapt. Give you a really good example of one of the things that I did at the branch. And you could say, this is silly, but we were trying to.

Steve Rupp [00:18:16]:

I was trying to get our team to come together. And I said I was a great grandmother all the way down to a college student and everywhere in between. So what we did was, one of the things was I blindfolded all of them or half the team? The other half was not blindfolded. And I set up a bunch of obstacles in the lobby of the branch. Think about the people who are walking by. There's a big plate glass window in front, and they're like, dude, this guy's crazy. What is he doing? I don't want to put my money in the break where he's leading these people blindfolds. So the point was that the people who are blindfolded had to be coached through, by voice, this obstacle course of the person, the one person who was not blindfolded.

Steve Rupp [00:18:53]:

And I'm sure you've seen that before. This is not new, but it was something that they had to trust another person. And what I did was I tried to pair up the people at the biggest age differences who are least likely to trust each other because of their generational differences. And so you had to have the college student talk to the great grandmother and find a way, a common communication that she could understand what the college student was saying. It was communication. It was trust. Blind to trust, literally. And it was confidence because they knew, and every one of them figured out a way to get through the obstacle course.

Steve Rupp [00:19:30]:

That's an example of what I'm talking about, of being creative. And I'm not saying that's the best way to do it or the only way, but that was a way that I had at the time. Some 22 year old whippersnapper who didn't know what he was doing, took a playbook out of my Boy Scout leadership training of, how can you get people quickly to start to begin the cycle of trust? And you know what? As silly as that exercise may seem to some people, it worked. Now, did they all trust each other immediately? No. But it started that bond that got us to where we were and why we were able to get to the top of the region, you know, for that, because we worked together. We were a cohesive team.

Craig Anderson [00:20:09]:

Yeah. It creates the bonds that are going to get you through the tougher times. So, okay, so now you've advanced through your career, you know, you've done a lot, and now you're in the entrepreneurial space. You've led a lot of teams. Talk to me about how leadership shows up in your life today.

Steve Rupp [00:20:26]:

So, as a, you know, I'm a real estate coach, today. So I left a 25 year career of real estate sales. I left it in spite of comfortable. I was making money. I, you know, I knew what I was doing. I mean, after 25 years, I hope you're doing. You're doing well, whatever it is that you're doing. So.

Steve Rupp [00:20:42]:

Yeah, but I just felt it was something. I needed something more, and so I decided to just quit cold turkey, had a buddy of mine buy my business from me and got into real estate coaching. So, leadership for me right now is doing what I do every day with my coaching clients, and that is trying to ask really good questions to help them self discover where their next stop and their path is and keeping them moving forward but inspiring them through actions that I've taken in the past. And a lot of people choose coaches for different reasons. One of mine is just because I've been doing it for a long time, and so they know that, but then I have to earn that. Every single call I have with my clients is be that leader and not sometimes they're freaking out. It's like, I can't believe all the changes are happening in real estate or I'm having a bad month or a bad whatever, and you can't let that affect you. You got to stay positive.

Steve Rupp [00:21:35]:

And so it's that. That leaders. The leadership principles of, you have to stay positive for the people that you lead, the people that you look up to, and you have to find that inner strength to just keep going and make sure that those people don't see you questioning yourself. Even though sometimes I'll get off of calls and I'm like, man, I feel like I could have done better. And then you get a text 20 minutes later from that client and says, dude, that was a great call. Thank you so much. Yeah, you know, so it is. You got to have that confidence in yourself in order to.

Steve Rupp [00:22:08]:

In order to be the best version of yourself for the people that you are leading. That's the way I am today and what I am. When I was running a real estate team, you had to come in and manage all these different personalities, different people, between salespeople and administrative people. We had virtual people, we had local people, and all over the place, and it was managing the different generations. And same thing with my coaching is I've got some people who are fresh out of college that are coaching, and I've got other people been in the business for 20 plus years that are older than I am. And you have to figure out how to communicate with them because I all communicate differently, and they respond differently to different things. So, like one, I might inspire one way to do something to get him to do what he wants to do. This helps another, I might use something completely different in order to achieve the same result, but you can't take the same road.

Steve Rupp [00:22:59]:

And so that's been a really interesting learning process for me on how to do that and showing up with a blank notebook. And like I said, I love my systems and models, but you can't show up when you're coaching someone. And I don't care if it's a formal coaching relationship or if it's a manager coaching subordinate, or if it's a leader coaching executive team, or whatever the case is, it all starts with an open notebook and then asking engaging, thought provoking questions to help them self discover where they need that conversation to go.

Craig Anderson [00:23:32]:

And I'm glad you kind of came back to where you started around the questions and the curiosity, because to me, in the people I coach in my practice, curiosity is such a misunderstood or underutilized leadership skill. We so, you know, and it's kind of, you also have a sales background through real estate, and there's studies that show in sales where salespeople, when they're brand new, they don't know anything. So they ask tons of questions and they become very good at sales because they ask so many questions. Then as they start to know the answers, because while I've seen everything, they cut off that piece of the process and that curiosity goes away and their performance drops. I think the same thing happens with leaders when they start making assumptions about why people are performing or underperforming why things are happening. They start to lose their edge because they've lost their curiosity. And I love that. Curiosity is such a bookend of how you see leadership right now is coming in with that.

Craig Anderson [00:24:32]:

Even if you do know a lot, you still want to come to the table with that blank notebook and ask questions to elicit the information that you need to help them get where they want to go.

Steve Rupp [00:24:41]:

What I found is that the more educated you are, the more knowledgeable you are, the more experienced you are, the harder it is not to just do the easy thing, and that's to solve the problem that the client, subordinate, whatever is coming to you with, because that's the easy path. The hard path, and I am still working on this, the hard path is to bite your tongue because you know the answer and you could give it to them like that and bite your tongue and just start asking questions to lead them down the path to self. Discover where you're trying to get them, and it might take you a half hour, an hour to get them there something where you could have just in 5 seconds said, this is what you need to do. But my question then is, which path are they going to be more invested in?

Craig Anderson [00:25:29]:

Yes.

Steve Rupp [00:25:29]:

The long or the short. And so it's that long path to go on that they get to. They appreciate the destination more and they appreciate the path and what happened, what they saw along the way, versus you just getting them to the finish line, cutting that ribbon for them and saying, here you are, they won't appreciate it. It's all like kids, you know, same thing. The older that. The older you get, the more you realize, at least I realize, is that people are much more willing to do something if they feel like they're the ones that came up with the idea. Yeah, same thing with people that you lead.

Craig Anderson [00:26:06]:

And I see so often, like, people moving into new leadership roles and now they have to start delegating and they get into this mindset, you know, that I've got so many things pulling at me, it's just faster to do it myself, which in the moment it probably is.

Steve Rupp [00:26:19]:

Absolutely.

Craig Anderson [00:26:19]:

But if you don't take the time to teach, to train, to help them get through the. Teach them the thought processes to solve problems and get things done, when you don't make that investment, you are costing yourself so much as a leader because you start, need to start pivoting in a leadership role away from day to day more towards focusing on the future and get your people trained and help them get to be excellent at doing the things that need to get done. It's almost. We talked about training leaders, right. It's an investment in time, and it's an investment in asking questions and helping people see there and see the way and get there. That's how we start building a great team underneath us. And so now that they understand how to ask those questions, that prepares them for leadership. Right.

Craig Anderson [00:27:01]:

These are all the things we can do as leaders to help train people to grow. It's so both easy and hard to get people to kind of come around to seeing that way of thinking.

Steve Rupp [00:27:12]:

100%. Very well said.

Craig Anderson [00:27:14]:

Fun times. So, Steve, if you could jump in a time machine and go back to either yourself as that scout leader, patrol leader, or in that first job as a branch manager or operations manager. Excuse me, what's the one piece of advice you would give yourself that would have helped you the most in that first leadership role?

Steve Rupp [00:27:35]:

I'll do. Can I do a one, a and one b, I'll allow it.

Craig Anderson [00:27:39]:

I'll allow it.

Steve Rupp [00:27:41]:

So, one a, that I realize is that you can't want something more than the person that you want it for. They have to have that internal fire motivation. Now, you might be able to stoke the fire, but they're the ones that have to keep it going. And if they don't want it, it really doesn't matter. And that's, you know, and that for those of us who really, truly want, can see the opportunity in people and see the potential of people, and you're like, oh, man, there is so much more that you could give and you could do and accomplish if you just see what I see. But until they see it for themselves, it doesn't matter how much you want it. So that, that's my one a, and that's very frustrating. Then my one b is kind of getting back to what we talked about before is learn to ask good questions.

Steve Rupp [00:28:32]:

Asking good questions is more important than knowing the answers. When you're young, that's the only thing you want to do, is just, well, give me the answer. I just want to get it. Well, you probably know more than what you think you do if you had somebody who was going to help guide you down that path of self discovery by asking good questions along the way. And I'm still learning, and I am. I'm still perfecting that craft. But it is an art, 100% it is. So I would go and I would study as many the art of asking questions as much as I can.

Steve Rupp [00:29:05]:

And Phil Jones has some great books out there. If you've read some of his, they are outstanding. And, you know, real estate is one of the books that he wrote it for. And he is an amazing, amazing author and amazing speaker. And so he, I think, has some outstanding questions. Not just real estate, it's other stuff, too. So to anyone who's watching, if you haven't read any of Phil Jones books, he really gives you great questions to ask. He situationalizes them such that you know when to ask them and what situation calls for certain questions, and then you just get them down.

Steve Rupp [00:29:38]:

And it really helps to leapfrog you forward a little bit during the question processing as you're learning how to do it.

Craig Anderson [00:29:45]:

Fantastic.

Steve Rupp [00:29:46]: Awesome.

Craig Anderson [00:29:46]:

Well, Steve, thanks so much for sharing the story of your executive evolution today. If people want to find you online, learn more about your coaching practice, learn more of kind of how you're seeing leadership, what's the best ways for them to find you?

Steve Rupp [00:29:59]:

Easiest way is on the web@steveruppcoaching.com. rupp is Rupp, just like Rupp arena. If you're a UK fan, or even if you're not a UK fan, easy name to remember. And if you happen to have the name of Rup, they are really, really, really good to you. During playoffs when UK is in the tournament, I will just tell you, oh my.

Craig Anderson [00:30:23]:

We're going to have to have an offline conversation. As a Gator fan, I can't get behind that, but I will support you.

Steve Rupp [00:30:28]:

For the purposes of. I didn't say I'm a UK fan.

Craig Anderson [00:30:31]:

Okay. I love it. Well, Steve, thanks so much for being on. We'll drop all those links in the show notes so people can find you. Have a great one and we really appreciate the time today.

Steve Rupp [00:30:41]:

Awesome, Craig, thank you. I appreciate you.

Craig Anderson [00:30:47]:

Steve, thanks for all your insights today. I really appreciated the passion you brought to the conversation and your interest in how well thought out you have been about what leadership means to you. As always on executive evolution, I like to bring out the key points I saw in the interview from the perspective of confidence, competence and calm in the area of confidence. I really liked what Steve talked about, especially for those of you listening who are new to leadership roles or in that very first leadership role. Steve talked about, if you're not feeling that confidence yourself, where is that leader who appointed you? Who puts you in that position? Where can you borrow confidence and strength for them to replace what maybe you don't have in your own self yet? So look for that confidence. Build from those around you, from your mentors, from the leaders who place you in that position to give you the confidence to lead your team forward in the area of confidence. And we've touched on this one before on the podcast. That idea of you have to ask questions to lead your team.

Craig Anderson [00:31:47]:

Competence isn't telling your team what to do. Competence is helping your team get there so they can figure out and buy into the way forward, asking the right questions. That's what's going to get your team there so they're the can make better decisions in the future so you don't have to. And that's a sign of great leadership competence. And then in the area of calm, it was interesting because sometimes as leaders, we see potential in people and we get frustrated and disappointed in them when they can't step up into the areas we believe confidently they can step up into. And that can get frustrating. We have to maintain our own sense of calm by realizing we can't get everyone to accept and embrace their full potential. We can give them every opportunity and every resource.

Craig Anderson [00:32:31]:

But they have to make those decisions themselves. We can't do everything as leaders. So again, thanks, Steve, for sharing the story of your executive evolution today. As always, remember, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest of all time leaders. All it takes is developing your confidence, competence, and calm. See you next time in executive evolution.