Ignite Your Influence with Andy Neillie: Leadership Essentials in Action

Transforming from a manager into a true leader requires understanding and mastering fundamental leadership qualities. In this engaging episode, we delve deep into the enlightening perspectives shared by Dr. Andy, as he outlines four critical necessities for effective leadership: conviction, competence, character, and covenant. Through storytelling and personal experiences, Dr. Andy reveals how negative encounters with poor leadership motivated his dedication to better management practices.

The conversation traverses the vital vocabulary of leadership, emphasizing how conviction fosters passion in teams, while competence ensures your skill set is matched with your ambitions. Character remains the cornerstone of any relationship and is fundamental to establishing trust within teams. Furthermore, the idea of leadership as a covenant highlights the mutual responsibility between leaders and their followers, forging alliances built on cooperation and commitment. 

Gratitude emerges as an essential element in the leadership narrative, inspiring lasting bonds and loyalty among teams. Whether you're an aspiring leader or an established manager wishing to refine your approach, this episode is packed with insights to elevate your impact and influence. Join us as we navigate the path to becoming high-performing leaders who inspire and empower others. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave your thoughts on this transformative discussion!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 6:05 Meet Dr. Andy: His Journey and Insights
• 13:30 The Four Leadership Necessities
• 26:45 Conviction: Understanding the Why Behind Leadership
• 45:30 Character: The Core of Leadership
• 1:19:00 The Importance of Gratitude in Leadership

Transcript

Nicole Tuxbury: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Dr Andy. So, dr Andy, talk to us. You've got a whole four leadership principles. I'm going to chop it all up. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and let you take it away. Tell us who you are, what you do and who you help.

Andy Neillie: 0:26

Sure Well, nicole, first of all, thanks for having me on your podcast. I've been following you, I've listened into a few of your podcasts. You just had some great guests that you've interviewed. Yeah, dr Andy Neely, I live in Austin, texas.

Andy Neillie: 0:41

I'm passionate about people who are in positions of influence, using their influence well. And, nicole, my story I wish I could say it was strategic and planned out. I just had I had a couple of bad bosses early on. In fact, it wasn't even like early on in my career. This was like pre-career construction jobs, working my way through college. I had become a Christian early in my life and I'm reading the biography of this wonderful servant leader. And then I'm going to work for a guy who's got anger management issues and is throwing tools at us when he couldn't control himself. I thought this isn't the way it's supposed to be and that ignited in me a passion for what makes good leaders good leaders.

Andy Neillie: 1:24

I own some small businesses here in Central Texas where we live. I've got a management team of about seven people that I work with that we're always trying to lead our teams well. We've got about 150 people that work for us. And then I travel a lot and do workshops and conferences and I've written several books. I've got, yeah, you alluded to. I'm pretty convinced that there are these four leadership necessities and, nicole, if you and I can be working on these four areas, we can begin to answer the question am I a leader and not just a manager? Simple model four leadership necessities, not 14, not 44, just four. But simple doesn't mean easy. It's a lifetime of execution. So long answer to a short question. Sorry about that.

Nicole Tuxbury: 2:11

No, no, no. That is fantastic. So tell us a little bit about your story and we're going to get back to the leadership necessities. But I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you came to this. You know, like, from that point that you mentioned of it cannot be like this, and now you're here doing this.

Andy Neillie: 2:30

Yeah, really it was kind of an intersection of my passion around people of influence need to use their influence well. And then I've had people tell me since I was very young, andy, you're a good communicator and really the skill set and gifting of communication, together with the passion around what you and I would call leadership development, this whole thing of trustworthy people of influence and I started speaking about this gosh at this point more than 30 years ago now and you fast forward 25 or 30 years later I've got just about 5 million frequent flyer miles from circling the globe talking with managers and management teams. I've done a lot of work over the years with sales leadership teams globally and then about 15 years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to launch some franchise businesses here in Central Texas where we get to practice these things that I'm pretty passionate about. Along the way, I've written a couple of books and my publisher helped me turn one of them into an Amazon bestseller, so that doesn't really mean anything other than a whole bunch of people that were Kindle subscribers and love dogs paid 99 cents for my book.

Andy Neillie: 3:40

At one point, I think my wife yeah, mr Bestselling author, we spent thousands of dollars on your book so you could give it away at your speeches, and we got one royalty check for $4. So you hear somebody say I'm a bestselling author, nicole. That really doesn't mean much. Wall Street Journal bestseller that's impressive. New York Times bestseller that's impressive. Amazoncom bestseller. You just had a 99 cent Kindle book that you bought some lists to sell to. So I continue to do that. We own this $5 million business here in Central Texas and I continue to travel. I've been in Louisiana and Nashville, tennessee and New York and Las Vegas already this year leading workshops on managers. The real question we're trying to answer is how does a manager know if they're becoming a high-performing leader? And that's what we work on together.

Nicole Tuxbury: 4:33

That is amazing. That is just fantastic. Let me ask you this what advice do you have for entrepreneurs? I know it's going to be a little bit of a pivot here, but we'll come back what advice do you have for entrepreneurs who want to do what you're doing and who want to speak and to train at these corporations and to have five? How many miles did you say? Five million, ten million, just? A lot of millions of miles.

Andy Neillie: 4:58

First of all, nobody should want to have five million frequent flyer miles. That's far too many miles. I don't travel much internationally and that's really where the miles total up. I don't travel much internationally anymore. You know, nicole, you asked such an insightful question. Here is not the right answer.

Andy Neillie: 5:16

I run into a lot of people who they don't want to work for anybody else. So their real reason they want to be an entrepreneur is just because they want to be an entrepreneur. And I would say very strongly to them if you're not passionate about some type of wrong that you think needs to be righted or some type of value that you think needs to be delivered, needs to be delivered. Nicole, part of my problem with celebrity influencers today is you put up a TikTok post and you get 10,000 followers and they call you a celebrity influencer, but you really haven't added anything of value to anybody's life. You know my story really is I will go to my grave saying nobody should work for a bad boss. That's what lights my fire. Kind of the rest of the story developed simply because God gifted me a little bit as a communicator so I can write and I can speak well, and so you put those two together. So I think I would say and you know it's interesting because I know you mainly serve entrepreneurs and part of it is you got to lead yourself.

Andy Neillie: 6:29

Well, first, I was with a guy over Christmas. That is a young guy and I asked him what he did and it was very clear that somebody had told him I should say I'm a digital marketer and that you can hire me to get your social media coverage expanded. Well, nicole, somebody like you has got good expertise in that area. He just didn't really want a job is what I got the sense and so he was calling himself a SEO expert and a digital marketeer. Now, what are you passionate about? What do you think you could bring to a client base or a customer or your part of the universe and make it better because of the time you spent?

Nicole Tuxbury: 7:03

Yeah, and I want to jump in and say it's not that you don't have a boss. When you jump in, you think you don't have a boss, but when you get serious, you realize that you are the boss, and now you have double responsibility, cause, on top of being the boss, that's like. This is the assignment, this is what needs to be done, these are the rubrics. Now you're the one that's got to go and be like all right, now let's go get this done. So can you talk to me a little bit about leading yourself?

Andy Neillie: 7:31

Yeah Well, and I think you know it's interesting because these four leadership necessities, the third one of them is the character point. You'll never be a better leader than you are a person, and the very thing you're talking about. And actually you have some other bosses as well, because when you're an entrepreneur, you're your own boss and then you've got clients and customers who are either going to be happy or unhappy with what you deliver and they'll decide very quickly whether they retain you or not. So all of a sudden you go from having one boss nine to five to you and a bunch of other bosses 24, seven so you've you've got to lead yourself first, and you know I've been doing this a long time, nicole, and still for me it's the basic blocking and tackling I I call it the leader's hour. It's not a 60 minute hour, but most good leaders I work with they're up early and they do some things before their day starts. That helps them start their day well A lot of times.

Andy Neillie: 8:29

It includes some physical fitness, maybe some spiritual disciplines, planning, taking a look at what's on the upcoming calendar, prioritizing ABC, things like that. I see you nodding your head. It's the stuff that you and I both know to do that. People just they think, oh, if I could get cooler, I'd move away from that. No, you never move away from using your leader's hour well, and so you start your day off well and you wrap your day up well and and you try to look that boss that you mentioned in the mirror and say did I, did I do a good job today? And none of us are every perfect. One of the one of the core values that I try to live by is extend grace to the teachable and man. I screw up a lot, but tomorrow's a new day and I can start that day off and hopefully try to be a little bit better tomorrow absolutely, and giving yourself credit for being that leader and for being the worker too.

Nicole Tuxbury: 9:23

Right, because if you're at the computer and you're planning and you're doing like you know, the boring stuff, that's still work, that's still stuff that has to get done, and so giving ourselves credit for that. So I think that's a big deal. So talk to me about the four leadership necessities, because we got to know, so let's go through them.

Andy Neillie: 9:42

Well, so we already talked about leadership, necessity number three. Let me start back at the top. Leadership necessity number one is this passion. We've already talked about it's, conviction, it's. Are you seeing the bigger picture? Do you know the why behind the? What you and I both know?

Andy Neillie: 9:58

Simon Sinek made it famous in his viral video 15 years ago now I think, in his book Start With. Why are you passionate about what you're doing? Does it energize you? Do you see the bigger picture? Do you know how it's impacting the world around you? Are you a person of conviction and strategic thinking at some level? Now I want to put a little caveat around that, nicole.

Andy Neillie: 10:22

I, by nature, am not a passionate person. While I get indignant about bad bosses, I'm kind of an introvert and I'm kind of a librarian kind of person. I'm not the guy that's at the front firing things up. I know some people like that that they just wake up passionate. I'm not one of those. And for some of your followers who are saying you know, I'm just not Andy's, saying you got to have conviction, I'm not a passionate person, I would say to you get involved, do something with excellence, work hard, put your hand to the plow and if you're doing a meaningful thing, conviction grows. So the first leadership necessity you got to have some conviction. The second one is this whole area you talked about in terms of doing those things that need to be done and considering it fruitful work. You've got to be competent in what you do, conviction and competence. And if you're managing a small team as an entrepreneur, you've got a couple contractors working for you. Are you helping them excel at what they do? This whole area of execution and competence.

Andy Neillie: 11:25

The third one we already alluded to fair-minded, honest, other-oriented this character piece. You'll never be a better leader than you are a person. I was working with a technology firm in Southeast Asia in Australia a number of years ago and I had the frontline workers in front of me and their managers were in the back of this workshop setting, as managers oftentimes do. One of them was on their laptop and at some point something came up on the laptop that was not work related, that was inappropriate, that the manager shouldn't have been spending nine to five time. I can't even remember the exact details, but Nicole is very interesting to me because that compromise of this person's character somehow came out and it filtered through the entire workshop setting. And Nicole, I will maintain to this day. I saw that manager lose the right to lead that day because of a character shortcoming. You'll never be a better leader than you are a person, and for the entrepreneurs that listen into you, that translates into how you treat your customers and your clients. That translates into how you treat your virtual VA if you're using any of the oversee VAs or contract workers for you. So that's a third one character.

Andy Neillie: 12:42

And then the last one I struggled with for a long time. If you look at my early stuff 10 years ago, I was trying to find four Cs conviction, competence, character. And so I called it consistency, consistent communication, communication. And then I realized, nicole, if you've got a couple of people working for you and you're the leader that you need to be, you're engaged in a covenant with them. Kind of an old-fashioned word, although Guy Ritchie brought it into our more modern nomenclature with a kind of a brutal Guy Ritchie movie, but a good movie a couple of years ago here in Texas, where I live, if somebody's going to get married, love and affection, richer and poorer, sickness and health, all the romantic stuff there's a personal side, what people don't realize. There's also a legal document that's signed by an officiant and recorded with the county clerk. There is both a formal and a personal side to that covenant.

Andy Neillie: 13:38

And when I realized, nicole, people that are good leaders, they're engaged that way with their clients, with their employees, with their contractors. Yeah, you told me you'd have this part of the project done by Thursday. Your kid got really sick and you missed a couple of days of work. We still got to get it done. But I understand, if you've got employees, it's the manager that somehow balances the tension of a project deadline with the need for PTO because somebody's got an ailing parent at home, and the tension of formal and personal relationship. Brene Brown, in one of your recent podcasts you mentioned one of her great quotes. I think she's done a great deal bringing that back into the forefront of our thinking that leadership is hard because it's a balance of. We've got a mission to fulfill and I've got people I need to take care of, and so I think the right word is covenant Conviction, competence, character and covenant. You want to know if you're becoming a high-performing leader and not just managing things in front of you. Are you growing in those four areas?

Nicole Tuxbury: 14:50

That's amazing, and it's about. It's not about doing those things, it's about becoming those things you know, like with your example about the laptop, because what is in us overflows right, and so that you know it comes out. Right, it comes out. So I want to know, though what part does gratitude play in all this? What part does gratitude play in leadership?

Andy Neillie: 15:16

yeah, so I think probably that that whole piece of recognizing, first of all as a as a christian who's trying to live out my faith, and just recognizing I'm grateful to god for the, the, the breath that I breathe and the passion he's built in me and then that whole character piece of recognizing I couldn't do it on my own. I've got people around me that are making things happen. I've got tools that make my job easier and my work go faster. And Patrick Lencioni wrote that wonderful book, the Ideal Team Player, a number of years ago and he talks about the ideal team player being humble, hungry and smart. And I think gratitude comes in when you and I recognize, as humble beings, that we can't push the ball forward in the universe without the cooperation of others around us. And so it should. I think humility and gratitude probably go together hand in hand, because you know the Gordon Gekko of Wall Street, the, you know that kind of beat your chest leadership. You know that died in the 1950s with our parents and our grandparents I think.

Nicole Tuxbury: 16:34

And I think of your example of balancing leadership with deadlines, but also with the people, and thinking about the gratitude as someone who's working for someone who can balance that out, and the gratitude that you have towards a leader who does that and that inspires commitment. That inspires like sticking with you, like you know. That's how you show people that you're there for them, right, and then they return that favor. I think that's so important.

Andy Neillie: 17:05

Yeah, I think Stephen Covey said it more than 20 years ago People join jobs for the organization. They leave because of their boss. You're exactly right. We flip that. You know you have people that want to work with you. I'll sign up again with Nicole because she made me feel good about myself. She helped me do what I needed to do better. That's leadership. I echo what you said and it's always a journey right. As I heard somebody say a while back, leadership is always a series of commas. It is never a period. Anybody that says is always a series of commas. It is never a period. Anybody that says I'm a leadership expert probably that whole gratitude and humility thing you and I just talked about. They're missing something there. Other people can call them that, but I think there should be a bunch of humility around that, because you owe the world around you a lot for what you've become.

Nicole Tuxbury: 17:55

And it just made me think of something funny. Like I don't call myself a genius, but my clients like to. So when they call me a genius I'm like, oh thanks, you know. But I'm not like I'm such a genius, unless I'm joking around, you know.

Andy Neillie: 18:08

Probably a year and a half ago, where, as they were kicking off their meetings, their manager came in and handed out new business cards to everybody. This was a sales organization, so they're client facing, they're out selling whatever it was and everybody's business card.

Andy Neillie: 18:24

It said trusted advisor. What was their job description? Trusted advisor? Oh, I just hated that, you don't. You don't get to call yourself trusted advisor. You don't get to call yourself trusted advisor. You don't get to call yourself genius. You don't get to call yourself expert. Others may choose to based on your humility and passion and hard work and the gratitude you bring to the world, but yeah, leave that up to somebody else. You don't. You don't get to call yourself a trusted advisor that's, that's interesting and it is.

Nicole Tuxbury: 18:52

There's something, there's something just like off about it. Right, like you see it, and you're like well, I don't know if I can trust you, like what, like, I don't know you you know, yeah, it just gives up those, those. So that's very interesting, yeah, and I see how that plays into leadership, um, and into the role of being right, and that's how we are able to be instead of just doing or trying something. Okay, that is all amazing. So, dr Andy, let me know how can my audience stay in touch with you?

Andy Neillie: 19:27

Well, a couple of ways, Neely Leadership. And the good bad news is my name is spelled distinctly enough that if you get it wrong you won't find it. But if you get it right, I'm the only one. N-e-i-l-l-i-e, neely Leadership. I've got a website and up at the top of the page they can sign up and just grab 15 minutes with me to pick my brain. I love talking with people about this kind of stuff. You and I both know I've also.

Andy Neillie: 19:48

I've written a little eight page e-book called the three imperative leadership conversations how to hold a hard conversation, how to hold a coaching conversation and how to hold a threefold affirmation conversation. I think about a lot of your entrepreneurs. This could be a very practical book because they have to have conversations with clients, right, and they need to have conversations with vendors and suppliers that they support. So they can get that ebook at leadershipmaterialscom, a simple leadershipmaterialscom website. A couple of years ago my coach said Andy, your problem, you're going to put up this ebook. There aren't any good websites left. And I Googled and played around and I found leadershipmaterialscom. He said, man, buy that, that's a great landing page. So they go there that eight page ebook.

Nicole Tuxbury: 20:33

Yeah, that is fantastic. Yes, guys, that's a great tip. Like if you go and you're looking for a domain and you find one that is just like, like that's just so SEO rich, right, like that is just like the most obvious thing you can think of, grab it, like do not let that sit there, because that is that is a beautiful $30 a year.

Andy Neillie: 20:51

whatever they want, just to hold on to that.

Nicole Tuxbury: 20:56

Yep, $15 a year, whatever they want, just to hold on to that. Yep, yes, yes, yes, okay, so big business lesson there, all right, dr Andy. Now, as we're signing off here, I want to know do you have any final tips for the audience? What's like the big, best, juiciest tip that you have for your clients?

Andy Neillie: 21:08

Well, I think it's what you kind of let in with and what we've been talking about the whole time this idea that you'll never be a better leader than you are a person. It starts with me Turn inward before you turn outward. Make sure you are doing the things that communicate humility that would have other people trust your expertise. Be the person, as you said, nicole. It's really about being be the person. We're never going to be perfect. We all stumble, but to the best of our abilities, be the person. As you said, nicole. It's really about being be the person. We're never going to be perfect. We all stumble, but to the best of our abilities, be the person that you would want them to feel good about working with, and I think that's part of the growth of leadership. When you're doing that well, you're on your way to becoming a good leader.

Nicole Tuxbury: 21:53

I love that. That is fantastic. Thank you so much, dr Andy. This has been absolutely amazing and we will see you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. Bye, that's the wrong thing.