Jeb Banner thought he was going to be a rockstar, and he worked to make that happen. He formed a band, marketed it, learned the industry, and made connections. All of those skills easily transferred to the business world once he understood that leadership was where his strengths resided. Today, Jeb has founded and grown countless businesses and non-profits, and each experience has developed him as a leader and as a human being. In this episode, Jeb shares why the latter is so important for people in leadership positions. As you listen, you’ll learn how to delegate effectively and why there needs to be more focus on connection and well-being in workplaces.

Today, Jeb has founded and grown countless businesses and non-profits, and each experience has developed him as a leader and as a human being. In this episode, Jeb shares why the latter is so important for people in leadership positions. As you listen, you’ll learn how to delegate effectively and why there needs to be more focus on connection and well-being in workplaces.

After You Listen:

Get your copy of *The Advantage* by Patrick Lencioni and *Being Ram Dass* by Ram Dass

Learn more about Lee Iacocca

Connect with Jeb: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jebbanner/

Watch Jeb’s Ted Talk: Everything I know about business I learned from being in a bandhttps://www.youtube.com › watch

Learn more about Boardable: https://boardable.com

Connect with Craig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigpanderson/

Learn more about ClearPath Consulting and Coaching: https://clearpathcoaches.com

Key Takeaways:

• Create the conditions for success and then get out of the way
• Don’t put leaders up on pedestals; we can better move forward together when we realize we’re all human
• Leadership is a heavy responsibility; give yourself time to recharge to show up fully energized and prepared

Things to listen for:

[02:36] Lightening round with Jeb

[05:22] Leadership lessons from being in a band

[08:27] The demands of running a company

[10:50] Breaking out of leadership myths

[12:30] Balancing reality with vision

[16:22] Advice Jeb would give to his younger self

[15:59] Craig’s takeaways

Takeaways

Craig P. Anderson:

Welcome to the Accidental Leader podcast, the only leadership podcast that shows how today’s successful leaders develop the confidence, competence, and calm to lead their team and organization to success. I’m Craig Anderson and my career journey is a tale of accidental leadership. I started out with a degree in English and a growing comic book collection, and my plan was to be a high school teacher. But what we plan and what happens aren’t always the same thing. A college job turned into a career in education finance, an entry level in my alma mater, became over time increasing leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, including many national leadership roles. As that chapter closed, I spun off a business from a large operating not-for-profit and grew that into a successful business that was named a great place to work in Indianapolis.

Over my career, I’ve learned a lot of leadership lessons the hard way. I created this podcast so you don’t have to. Today I have a great opportunity to have Jeb Banner on the podcast. Jeb is the founder of Boardable. He is a serial entrepreneur and a member of many business boards and corporate boards and community boards as well. And I’m really excited. I’ve known Jeb for a long time. Jeb, when you and I first started working together, I believe you were running a company called SmallBox and then launched Boardable. So could you tell us just in 30 seconds or so what Boardable’s all about so people have a sense for what that project does?

Jeb Banner:

Boardable is board management software primarily in the non-profit but also increasingly the for-profit sector. It helps centralize all of the board activities, creating a system of record for everything that goes on with a board of directors for the administrators as well as the board members. Documents, meetings, everything you can think of voting, it all goes into Boardable and then carrying forward that in terms of creating continuity for future board members.

Craig P. Anderson:

And it’s such a valuable product and I know that you guys put a lot of work into it, and you’ve been around now for…

Jeb Banner:

Gosh, I guess we’re coming up on six years here soon. And I think you were certainly in the first few customers of Boardable way back when, so I appreciated you taking a bet on us and riding that early startup train.

Craig P. Anderson:

Oh, absolutely. It’s been fun to watch it evolve. Jeb, what we like to do here is we really are here to talk about how accidental leaders have evolved. I was an accidental leader, and a lot of people find themselves in leadership roles even though they never planned on it. And today we’re going to dive into your leadership pass, but we always like to open to kick things off with a three-question lightning round. So just quick answers to these three questions. Hopefully, we don’t have a stumper today. So question number one, what is the best book on leadership or business you’ve ever read?

Jeb Banner:

Oh, man. That is a stumper. Boy, there are so many good ones. I’m a fan of all the Patrick Lencioni stuff. The Advantage is just a great playbook for running a business from a leadership perspective. And I think that’s a golden one to go back to.

A lot of the things that I really found benefited my leadership journey and growth were not necessarily leadership books. They were often spiritual books, written more around consciousness, more around understanding the human experience, because I think so much of being a leader is about leading humans. And to do so, you need to be able to connect with them on not just a material level, but I think on a spiritual, emotional, heart level too. So a lot of the things that I’ve read have come from that space. I learned a lot from reading Ram Dass’s recent autobiography, Being Ram Dass, about leadership and how he experienced it through his lens as a spiritual leader. So I look at all that stuff as great fodder for my own development. I don’t know if I’d say there’s one book where I’m like, “This is the book.” There’s a lot of really great books.

Craig P. Anderson:

Okay. Question number two, who is your leadership crush?

Jeb Banner:

I admire a lot of leaders over the years. Particularly am drawn to ones that have had a philanthropic direction, like Tom Shoes and Patagonia. When I was a kid, my leadership crush was on Lee Iacocca. I read his autobiography and I still remember phrases like the equality of sacrifice and things like that that he put in there all about building a team. And it’s funny to say this, but that was my first crush. My first leadership crush was Lee Iacocca.

Craig P. Anderson:

That’s fantastic. That may be my favorite one so far. That’s awesome. Okay. Last question. In 10 words or less, how would you define leadership?

Jeb Banner:

Getting out of the way. I think that’s a big part of it. You bring great people together, you give them a vision of what to do, you give them the trust and the tools to do it, and you get out of the way. I’m cheating a little bit, but when I think about great leaders, they create the conditions for success and then they get out of the way.

Craig P. Anderson:

I love that. Great leaders create the condition for success and get out of the way. That’s perfect. Well, so Jeb, we’ve all had leadership roles. My first leadership role was band president, and it was a disaster. So I like to dive in to folks and see what was your first leadership role and when was it?

Jeb Banner:

I think it really was similar to you, in the music space. I was a musician in the rock and roll space more than school band. And I had to be a leader to get what I wanted, which was to have a band. I had to bring people together. I had a best buddy that I bought them a bass. I taught him how to play it. I started organizing concerts in my basement. That led to when I got to college booking shows at a club, and I was the door guy, the janitor, and the booking agent for a while at a club in Bloomington at IU. And I didn’t think about it at the time, but I was building leadership skills, being a band leader and booking all these different experiences. And so I later looked back on that. I did a TED Talk called Everything I Need to Know About Business, I Learned From Being in a Band. And there’s a lot of truth to that still.

And part of it is just I realized that when you’re in a rock band, you learn how to market, you learn how to sell, you learn how to lead, you learn how to support, you learn how to fail because you’re going to fail a whole lot doing that. And so that was my early leadership camp was being in bands, even though I was not consciously aware of it until later.

Craig P. Anderson:

If you think about it, how did you do? How good of a leader were you in that context back then?

Jeb Banner:

Oh. Mediocre. I was successful enough to get things moving forward. I got things done. That’s been always one of the things that I think I do well is I get things done. I move the group forward to whatever we’re doing. If there’s an event, the event happens. It happens usually pretty successfully. As for my own career, I don’t think I was a great success. I’m not meant to be a rock star. I don’t have those kinds of talents. I’m meant to be more of a producer, creator, leader. And there’s different traits that people have they come to acknowledge as they get older, say, “Hey. I thought that I was really skilled in this area, but really the skill I had was adjacent to it.”

Craig P. Anderson:

And I agree. That’s so interesting because sometimes we think… And I see that with accidental leaders is they’re good at something, but what it turns out they’re great at is leading. They just didn’t know it. So maybe they’re really good at accounting or good at marketing, but they’re not getting a lot of pleasure out of it. And then when they move into the leadership side, they become exceptional leaders with some knowledge of the subject matter.

Jeb Banner:

I think that’s right on. I didn’t recognize that I was a leader per se until really my third business, SmallBox, which that’s when I started thinking, “Oh. I’m a leader.” Up to that point, I was just thinking of myself as somebody that was organizing and managing and pushing, and I didn’t have the mindset of like, “No, I’m a leader. I should think of that as the core skill.” And honestly, strengths finder and some other assessments that I did early in my time at SmallBox helped me wake up to that. It’s like, “No, this is actually what I do and I do it pretty well most days. And why not get better at it?”

Craig P. Anderson:

So you talked about SmallBox. Let’s talk about in your current leadership roles, what is your leadership role today? What all does it encompass?

Jeb Banner:

I don’t have one today. It’s a wonderful break. I’ve been in leadership roles really for 20 years straight, starting with my first company, Stuffy, back in 2000. And then through anti [inaudible 00:08:45] the auction house in really 2003 to 2006, then SmallBox, then Boardable. The only official leadership role I have is serving on the executive committee and board of United Way, but that’s not the same as being an operational leader inside of a business.

I was pretty worn out. Leadership is not just a day job. It’s something that is pretty consuming, as I know you know. And it is something where I didn’t recognize how much rest I really needed to get recoiled, if you will, to go back into the game. And now I’m starting to feel like I’m finally at the recoiling side of it after leaving the business in a full-time capacity in April.

I’ve had a marginal role helping out with some things, but I’m not operationally in a leadership role really since April. And I needed serious rest. And I had a lot of mixed feelings about that because I’m not wired to idle. I’m not wired to not go and build. And I kept reminding myself, “No. You’re not going to go build something new. You’re going to rest. You’re going to have space and time. And you’re going to reflect and you’re going to approach this with more intentionality than you have your previous businesses,” which were built almost in a reaction to the situation I was in with my life. “Oh. Shit. I need to make money,” kind of situation that was often happening.

I’m fortunate not to be in that, and that’s a privilege. And I was like, “Don’t squander this privilege of having the space to think about this and to go with a great amount of intentionality and be highly conscious of your decision-making right now.” So you’re catching me in this in-between space and I’m starting to have some clarity on that. And by end of year, I hope to have made a move in a direction.

Craig P. Anderson:

That’s awesome. And I think you hit on some important themes there about leadership is that people think, “Well, if I’m in charge, I’m the boss and people have to do what I say and it’s going to be great.” But nobody really understands until you’re there the weight of it, of carrying that leadership role. It’s a heavy burden. And if you’ve never had it, it’s hard to understand. And that break is something most people probably don’t take. They finish one job and go to the next.

Jeb Banner:

Yeah. I think humans are still unfortunately wired with a master-slave mentality of like, “Oh. That’s the boss. That’s the master, and I am the servant. I’m the one that does the bidding.” And I think we’re starting to break out of that mindset of, “Hey. No. Leader is an important part of a team, for sure, but they are not the guarantor of success, if you will. They are a quarterback, but they’re not necessarily running down the field. They’re maybe calling the play,” to use a sports analogy. But I think the more that we can break out of this mythology around leadership of putting these leaders up on these pedestals that put them into pressure positions which are unhealthy for them mentally and spiritually, that put pressure on them to feel like they have to almost be like the pope and never make a mistake. It’s this really strange spot to be in.

And I’ve experienced that, especially with younger employees, less experienced. They tend to idealize leadership if they admire leadership. And I have to remind them, “Hey. I’m not any real different than you. I’m just at a different stage in my career and I just have certain skills and strengths and you do too. And we’re just two human beings trying to figure this stuff out together, and I don’t want you to mistake me for the second coming of anything here.” And that’s important to remember. But humans are wired, I think, for that hierarchy. And there’s value in that organizationally in terms of management. But I think also, it’s important to break away from that when you’re having those one-to-one conversations.

Craig P. Anderson:

I agree. So when you think back to some of those early leadership roles, Jeb, what lessons impacted how you are leading today? And I know you’re not in a leadership role today, but sooner or later, you will be again. How did those early lessons really change and drive your leadership?

Jeb Banner:

My father was a leader. My dad was an entrepreneur and ran a automotive remanufacturing business in South Bend. And he ran it in a very unorthodox style. And I grew up working for him and he taught me a tremendous amount directly and indirectly. And a couple of the lessons he taught me, which I still go back to, is just the importance and power of delegation. You asked me earlier that question about leadership. And really, getting out of the way to me is setting others up for success with the clarity they need to know what success looks like and also the accountability to keep them on the rails. My father was very big into that and did that with his business.

The other thing that he emphasized to me was the importance of telling yourself the truth. And he said, “You’re going to, at times…” It was really interesting. He says, “At times, you’re going to lie to other people,” which is a funny thing to say, but he said, “You’re going to not always tell the truth.” He says, “But always tell yourself the truth.” He said, “Don’t get into a game of not knowing what is real and what is true.” As a leader, I’ve just come back to that again of when I get off the rails myself, it’s when I’ve told myself a story which has some little white lies in it, some hyperbole about what I want my preferences to happen. And those start to become a reality versus what really is going on.

And I think the best leaders balance a reality with vision of saying, “Yeah. I’ve got this really tough situation here. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. And I have a vision for how we can get out of it, how we can move forward. And we’re going to always stay grounded in reality while we’re reaching for the stars.” And that’s really tough. And I think that leadership in general is managing a lot of tensions and paradoxes. And that’s one of those. You’re managing that reality versus that vision. So my dad taught me a lot of that. I wasn’t really thinking that I was learning something, and I had no idea that I was bound to be an entrepreneur. I thought I was going to be a rock star, which of course, didn’t work out, thankfully. And later, when I started to do businesses myself, I came back to a lot of those lessons. And so I just wanted to honor him by just sharing a couple of those stories.

Craig P. Anderson:

That’s great to have that in your background. And I love that idea of being true to yourself. I think so many times, the leaders go south when they start believing their own press and really start believing they have that infallibility, which you were discussing before. We’re not infallible, and it can be really dangerous to not have that grounding.

Jeb Banner:

Yeah. It’s really important. On that note, Craig, to create a culture where people feel safe to call the BS even with you and say, “Hey. You said this in a meeting,” or, “You said this in a conversation with me. I don’t think you’re right. I think you’re speaking more from what you want than what is.” And to create a culture where people feel safe to speak up and to speak truth to power is a really important thing. And too often you see that is squashed because of the fear of loss of control that many leaders have because many leaders struggle with that fear of losing control, losing control of the narrative, losing control of the perception they have. And you see that, and there’s a dark spiral that happens there that can often be rooted in narcissism as well. And that’s something to guard against.

Craig P. Anderson:

That’s a great point. And it is so important to create that culture around you, and not always easy. Sometimes, I would feel like I would implore people, “Just tell me what I need to know,” and people even shy away from it. So it is a challenge. Well, Jeb, the last question for today is, if you could go back in time… I’ll give you a time machine… what one piece of advice would you give your younger self in those early leadership roles?

Jeb Banner:

I think a lot of it would’ve been around my own mindset, my own mental health best practices. I think in many places, many times, my heart was in the right place. I had the energy, but I didn’t necessarily know how to steward it. And being able to be fully present in a business and with others is really valuable. That presence is gold, and it engenders that across the business. So those mindfulness practices that I embraced the last six or seven years have really transformed my experience as a human and me as a leader. I would’ve liked to have begun those sooner, but I didn’t. And I’m grateful for the fact that I began them when I did. And I can speak to the experience of coming into it as well, which I think has valued for a lot of people as they go on their own journey of living more conscious lives.

Craig P. Anderson:

As always here on the Accidental Leader podcast, I like to give you three key takeaways from our interview. And I like to frame them in the three crucial areas for accidental leaders as they grow into more confident and competent leadership of confidence, competence, and calm. So today in our interview with Jeb, he really pulled out some great themes in this area, in the area of confidence, hiring the right people, getting them together, and then getting out of the way. That is such a level of confidence that you will have as a leader when you realize, “I’ve brought the right people together. I just need to get out of their way and let them succeed.” Competence, he talked about the power of delegation and setting people up for success. Delegation is such a crucial skill as a leader in doing it the right way so you stay in control and aware of what’s going on without actually having to go through all the work. So great suggestion there around competence.

And then calm. Something we haven’t heard much about is this idea of mindfulness and meditation. And Jeb touched on over the last few years how that’s really changed his approach to leadership and his managing the weight of leadership. So meditation and mindfulness as a calm technique. So again, when leaders are successful, for accidental leaders, that transition of confidence, competence, and calm is what really helps you move fully into your potential as a leader.

Are you an accidental leader looking to level up? A great place to start is by leading better team meetings. If you’d like help with that, go to clearpathcoaches.com/bettermeetings to download my 10 Rules for Better Meetings. Your team will thank you and you will feel a lot more confidence, competence, and calm in your next leadership team meeting. Thanks for listening today. And remember that leaders aren’t born, they’re made. You can go from accidental leader to the greatest of all time leader. It just takes confidence, competence, and calm. We’ll see you next time.