Mastering Influence: Building Strategic Relationships for Leadership Success | Brad Englert | Episode 360

Scott McCarthy:
Brad. Sir. Welcome to the show. So good to have you here today.

Brad Englert:
Thanks for inviting me.

Scott McCarthy:
Hey, we’re going to be talking about influence, which is super important for leaders. I’m certain you will tell us why it’s important, but what I’d like to hit first is like, where do people get it wrong out of the gate? Like, where do we mess up when it comes to influence? So why don’t we start there and then we kind of dive in from there?

Brad Englert:
Sure. I think we’re not trained to do reach out to people and I think we get caught up in the day to day minutia and we hide behind our screens or we hide in our office and we just don’t get out there. And I was with Accenture for 22 years, 10 as a partner, and then I was at the University of Texas at Austin as a chief information officer for seven years. And when I got to the university, I asked this old professor, I said, give me some advice. He goes, get out of the office and tell people you give a damn. And that was the best advice because, you know, I’m not asking people to come to me in the ivory tower, but I would get out and go meet with my customers and I meet with my peers and influencers and try to build some relationships. Because you don’t want to show up just when there’s a problem. You want to build the relationship beforehand.

Brad Englert:
So when there is a problem, which will happen, you have some emotional something in the emotional bank account. But people aren’t taught that at the firm. I was taught from day one that the person you’re working with or your client 20 years from now might be your boss, might be your customer, you might be a peer of yours. And the person I started with 27 years later became the chief information officer of a huge organization the same year I became a chief information officer at the university. And, you know, we stayed in touch the whole time and still do. So, you know, I think it’s understanding that relationships are really what bring value and you need to take the initiative to do that.

Scott McCarthy:
Those are some seriously powerful words. Out of the gate. I already love where we’re going with this show. Get out of the office. I don’t know how many times I’ve told people that myself. You have to get away from your desk. Now, I would argue there’s a balancing point because at a certain point, if you’re never behind your desk, who’s doing your job?

Brad Englert:
That’s right.

Scott McCarthy:
Right. But I think, I think the problem is that we still need people to get out. Like it’s too much. And people do need to get out and just interact with others and build, as you said yourself, build those relationships. So what’s scaring us.

Brad Englert:
One is who’s setting the expectation. You need to set that expectation for yourself. And when I was the boss, I set expectation for my direct reports. And IT people aren’t known for their fuzzy, touchy feely type personalities. They tend to be a little sharp elbowed. And so I had seven direct reports and I asked them to go out once a month and meet with their customers. And this one woman who worked for me read my manuscript, said, yeah, you left my story out. I said, what story? The one where you demanded that I go out and with this manager on campus who hated us.

Brad Englert:
I said, oh yeah, that story. She goes, I thought you were literally insane. Why would I go out and meet with someone who hates us? Well, they hated us because of some misdeeds by the prior regime and mistruths. So she went out, she apologized for that and said, going forward we’re not going to do that anymore and shared the values of our organization, which was truthfulness, collaboration, et cetera. And seven months later, that person who hated us became an advocate for us. And her boss, who also had some bad behavior by the prior central IT group, also forgave us and became an advocate. That wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t get out there and if I didn’t set that expectation.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s a really interesting story. So you had this group that hated you guys, your company and you turned them around. 180. Can you walk us through like what that looked like? I can only imagine the hostile environment when you first showed up, but I would love to know what did that look like as you walk through that process?

Brad Englert:
Well, we’ll start with the culture I inherited. The central IT group had a fire drill and reward heroic culture, which is the opposite of me. I want a proactive, customer oriented culture, not a wait till things break and then swoop in like Superman and Superwoman to fix it. And so the first 90 days I met with my direct reports, I met with people across campus and said, what do you want from us? And what they wanted was they didn’t want fire drills, they didn’t want heroics, they hate that. They want consistency and transparency and trust and collaboration. So that became the values of our organization. And anyone joining the organization, we would in orientation talk about the values. And then over time we would be hiring for people who had those values.

Brad Englert:
Three of my seven direct reports self ejected because they couldn’t make the transition from fire drills to proactive customer service. That gave me an opportunity to hire people who did have that culture. So I think. And the number one value for the organization was family first. Well, why would I do that? I live in Austin, Texas. All the multinational tech firms are here, so they’re hiring at much higher salaries than I can offer. But what I can offer is you work at a place with a great mission. You get to meet with incredibly smart faculty and students and serve them.

Brad Englert:
And oh, by the way, I can promise an eight hour day. This ain’t the private sector. And so I had this network engineer who quit to go to a startup. And I said, look, I don’t say this for everybody, but if you don’t like it, you can come back. Literally two weeks later, he calls and he goes, this startup is a zoo. They’re feeding me and doing my dry cleaning because I never get to go home. I thought by taking this job I’d help my family. They gave me equity, et cetera, promises of equity.

Brad Englert:
But I need to, can I come back? And he did come back, very talented network engineer. He’s still there 15 years later. Because we could offer, you know, not quite what the market could bear, but we could offer that focus on family. And I would, I would tell people, if you have a doctor’s appointment, go to the doctor. If you’re sick, don’t be a hero and come in and get us all sick. Go to the school play, take vacation, go to training. And then I would model those behaviors. Oh, here’s a good one.

Brad Englert:
Don’t check email 24 hours a day. In it, you could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Don’t do it. And so I wouldn’t check or respond emails at 10 at night, nor would I expect them to do so. And that just created, you know, a much more rewarding culture to be working in.

Scott McCarthy:
Absolutely. Like that whole family focus, work, life balance, focus. I think it goes a long way. And I liked your last point there about, you know, not checking emails and responding to emails. Like, I’ll admit sometimes I’ll work late just due to my situation. But one of the key things which I always do is if I’m working late, let’s say it’s after, especially after supper, and I’m sending email, I’ll delay the delivery just till the next morning.

Brad Englert:
Exactly right.

Scott McCarthy:
So I’m doing my thing. But I know I’m not going to be disturbing who is receiving it. Because if I hit send and we’re like, oh, yeah, it’s up to them. They, you know, it’s on them. Well, no, let’s control.

Brad Englert:
Then they’re. You’re setting that expectation. They should be checking it.

Scott McCarthy:
Exactly right.

Brad Englert:
You know, I would go on vacation and I wouldn’t check email, I wouldn’t check voicemail. I said, okay, you, director, you’re in charge. You’re the interim cio. I’m going on vacation. And, you know, they wanted to be a CIO someday, so it was a great opportunity for them and they became one eventually.

Scott McCarthy:
Absolutely. That’s. I think we, we in general underestimate the value of that experience. And probably, and I’d love to hear it from a, you know, a influence perspective. But the trust, when you put so much trust into your team, you know, what does that do for them? How does that enable you? How does, you know, what are the good things that come out of that?

Brad Englert:
Well, you free them up to take chances, be accountable. You provide a safe environment. The prior regime had this. Top management was always right. Everyone else was not always right. The other mantra was, there’s no money. There’s no money. There’s no money.

Brad Englert:
Well, you know what? We had a $40 million a year budget. There was money. It’s what we prioritized. And we talked to our customers and said, what’s important to you? What should we be focused on? And one was a new learning management system which 54,000 students use and 4,000 faculty. We had this clunky old software that just drove everyone bananas. The students always, it’s clunky. It’s clunky and slow. And the vendor was very unresponsive.

Brad Englert:
I would only see the account rep once a year when they wanted their money, which was always 10% more than the prior year. So they didn’t care about us. When we had problems, they wouldn’t respond. And so we went to the market and students and faculty picked the new learning management software, which was very user friendly, industry standards secure, much more secure. And we transitioned over two years. And I teamed up with a peer of mine, the vice Chancellor for curriculum, and her team who helped instructors in the classroom with technology. And my team worked together for two years and transitioned the university. We had an email, went to the president from all the department leads and copied me and the vice chancellor.

Brad Englert:
And I just covered my eyes. It’s like, oh, this is going to be bad. What could possibly go wrong with 54,000 students and 4,000 faculty? And hundreds of courses. And it was the most complimentary email ever about how our teams work together seamlessly to help every department. And they said with humility and with caring and. And even taking things to the vendor to have them change because we’re so big. And we had a big celebration. We invited all the department heads to the bowling alley, and we had pizza, and I made a cake in the shape of a tombstone and put the old vendor’s name on it and put rest in peace.

Brad Englert:
And we all feasted on that. You know, my account rep did not realize he was going to get fired until I fired him. He was that clueless to not know that we’re transitioning for two years. And the new vendor, who I call a strategic partner, the senior vice president for sales, would call me personally every month to see how we were doing. And he said, look, Brad, we’ve got my staff on standby. If you need anything, you let us know. Because he knew if we were happy, all the other large universities would follow. And this was 12 years ago.

Brad Englert:
Well, guess what? All the other universities are now using this product. So because he cared about us, you know, really made the difference. And I still talk to him.

Scott McCarthy:
Caring, you know, just showing you care makes a world of a difference. Whether that is, you know, in this case, between two. A customer and a vendor, or maybe a leader and subordinate, or maybe a subordinate and their supervisor. Well, I’ll tell you what takes the cake was that cake story. That is phenomenal.

Brad Englert:
We had a lot of fun with that.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, my God.

Brad Englert:
And it was right around Halloween, so it was good.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, well played, sir. Well played. That must have been the talk of the town for quite some time.

Brad Englert:
Yeah, that was fun.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s a great way to do it. And probably the biggest thing, though, as you highlighted, the other vendor was completely clueless. And it shows like, you know, you.

Brad Englert:
So I would. I actually identified, you know, my. My biggest vendors, and then I would work with them and try to understand, make sure they understood where we were heading, you know, what our priorities were, and also understand what they could offer. And we would meet quarterly with the account rep, their boss, and their boss’s boss, all except that one vendor we fired. They never wanted to come. And we meet quarterly and just talk about, you know, what’s coming up, how are we doing? Are we paying our bills on time? Because we’re a big bureaucracy. Sometimes we don’t. And I’d have the director of purchasing there and his staff, and then my director of purchasing, and we built a relationship and so when it came to building a new data center, we had budgeted for the old line of network gear.

Brad Englert:
Well, the new line of network gear came out and I just said, guys, we’re only using your product on our network. With their 250,000 devices hooked to this network every day, if you discount the new year for what our budget is, I’ll be the best reference you ever had. And you know what they did that we were able to get the newest gear, which lasted three to five years longer. And of course, you know, it was world class. But if I didn’t have a relationship built, they probably wouldn’t have done it.

Scott McCarthy:
Yeah, no, for sure. This is super interesting. I’m loving all the stories and like the outcomes that you gotten through these relationships, influencing others and such. I’m just curious, you wrote the book all about influencing other people. Are there some common principles that you’ve come to realize that this is what it takes to influence another person to achieve your goal, your intent?

Brad Englert:
Yeah, yeah, Great question. I didn’t discover the principles until I finished the manuscripts 40,000 words later. But I stepped back. And in all the relationships, whether it’s your boss, your direct reports, your customers, your peers and influencers or vendors, there are three principles. One is you have to understand their goals and aspirations and just ask, what are they trying to achieve? Some people are afraid to answer boss. That as the. When I was the boss, I welcomed that conversation. I needed all the help I could get to make my goals and second set and manage expectations.

Brad Englert:
And I was bad at that. Early in my career, I used to say yes to too many things. I got better at saying. I didn’t, I didn’t learn to say no. I learned to say whoa. I’m in Texas. So we can say whoa and you know, better understand what the expectations are and then manage those going forward. And then third, genuinely care about their success.

Brad Englert:
If you do those three things, you will be successful. So I had this type A personality boss. And she, everything she’s is urgent, Urgent. And one night I’m trying to leave to have dinner with my wife and literally five o’, clock, phone rings and it’s her. Brad, I need a white paper. A white paper. And I was a little nervous, but I literally said, whoa. I think, no, she would have set her off like a rocket.

Brad Englert:
So I said, whoa. When do you need this? Oh, oh, let me check my calendar. Oh, I need it in two weeks. Okay. How many pages do you want this white paper to be? Three pages. I was thinking 10. Do you have an example of a white paper that I could use? Yeah, David, I did1an XYZ Corp. 10 years ago.

Brad Englert:
Well, guess what? I went home and had dinner with my wife. Before I learned to say whoa, I would have called and canceled dinner, upsetting my wife and me. I would have stayed up all night and delivered the next day a 10 page white paper and get yelled at because I didn’t take the time to actually understand what was needed. And it takes some courage. You know, you’re trying to give some mental space and time to make sure you understand what’s going on.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s a great story. And I want to dissect that further from two different angles. So first let’s, let’s dissect the whoa side because many people out there would be very nervous and you hinted at yourself you were at the time a bit nervous to do that. So when we’re doing that, when we’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, or you know, no, no, no, what’s your advice? Or how can leaders out there go about basically achieving the same thing you achieved there? What’s your advice to them to be able to do that? One, to maybe even first off, how do you get the courage? And two, do it in a way where it doesn’t come across as being negative, but rather being positive in the end. So that’s part one. I’ll be quiet for now. But then I want to look at this from a different side too.

Brad Englert:
When I was the boss, I tried to be very thoughtful about when I asked someone to do something that I was very clear on what was expected, what kind of resources they might need and what kind of schedule would be. You know, I didn’t just bark an order and walk out the door. You know, it’s like, let’s have a discussion. And a woman who worked for me said that what I would do with her is slow her down and by slowing her down because she would want to rush right to whatever the solution to the problem was before fully understanding the problem. And so I think just providing the mental space and time to really have that dialogue. I had a brand new director who joined us and he inherited a project that was due, quote, in the summer and then this was spring and it was probably our first one on one. And he said, brad, I don’t think I can meet this deadline with quality. I think we need to revisit it.

Brad Englert:
And the first thing I thought was or said was, well, thank you for having the courage to say something. Hitting a date with poor quality is not what we’re about here. And you know what I said it’s taken us 40 years to get like this. What’s another six months? It’s like, yeah, of course you can relook at it. And of course he did. And of course nailed it with quality.

Scott McCarthy:
It’s amazing. You basically hit both questions or both angles. I want to look at fat at the same time in that I wanted to also look at it from the leader’s perspective of like, okay, how can I slow myself down so that I’m not having that effect on my team? Right, because kudos you in your situation earlier that you talked about when your boss had called you looking for the white paper and then later you had talked about, okay, you looked at it with the citrus and clarity. But many people out there wouldn’t necessarily be able to do that right away. And my fear often is for leaders out there is that this energy like your boss had at that time, well, that gets absorbed, right? That gets transmitted across and suddenly you get wound up because your boss is wound up. And suddenly that thing you just talked about which was so important, that is quality can diminish because we’re all spinning, we’re all wound up and the reality is we’re not actually focused on what truly matters. Thanks for that. So we talked about some key principles there like knowing your people and their desires, supporting them and such.

Scott McCarthy:
Now when we’re talking about leaders and trying to influence our team, because one of the biggest things I hear still is my team isn’t achieving the results. We’re not cohesive, we’re not doing this, we’re not doing that. I need to motivate them, I need to get them to gel. Like, what’s your advice to leaders out there from an influence viewpoint of, okay, this is how we get our team moving forward?

Brad Englert:
Well, one thing is you need to have a strategy. You know, what are you trying to achieve? My first year we developed a five year plan for actually three year plan for IT strategy. These were big initiatives that affected everybody. Moving 21,000 phones to voiceover IP, moving to the new learning management system, new student email, new faculty and staff email. These were, you know, you’re basically irritating everyone on campus a couple times a year. So you need to get out there and talk about that. And so one of my directors said what was good about me expecting them to go talk to customers is they had to know what the major initiatives we were working on. And even though as the network person working on voice over ip, I had to know about the learning management system.

Brad Englert:
I had to learn about know about the email system. I had to be accountable for all our priorities and communicate and discuss that with customers. So I think having strategy and updating that every year and communicating what those priorities are help keep people rowing in the same direction. And you know, a dirty little secret is a lot of people don’t have a strategy. And you know, I had this executive took over a $3 billion a year organization. The first thing I’m going to do is do a strategy. Five years later, no strategy. You know, it’s like they were rudderless, you know, so I think make sure you’re clear with what the goals are.

Brad Englert:
I wrote a blog once a week for eight years and I talked about the values of the organization. This went out to 330 people in my team and about 300 other people on campus or other campuses interested in it at ut and I would talk about the values. I would give shout outs, kudos to staff who were providing proactive customer service. I would apologize when we screwed up and say, you know, I’m sorry we had this technical outage. You know, it’s not a matter of if things will go wrong, but when and how we deal with it. This is what we’re doing to deal with it in the future. You know, please forgive us for screwing up. And I think that helped keep everyone rowing in the right direction.

Brad Englert:
Long ago when I was a mid level manager, I actually thought when I asked my direct reports to share information with their teams that they would actually do that. Guess what? Didn’t happen. You know, one person kept the information for power, the other was just clueless that they needed to tell their team what the priorities were. The third one just, you know, didn’t do it. So, you know, it’s like, I’m going to do the blog. So I’m sending the messages out. 200 words, you know, not a lot of words, but consistently so everyone knows where we’re going.

Scott McCarthy:
That communication piece is just so crucial. Just like. And the second thing I wish I heard there, which to me is absolutely necessary, is that humility. Like, hey, sorry, we, you know, sorry thing, things went wrong, my bad. And you know, like I remember saying to my team one time like hey, crap happens. Like that’s right.

Brad Englert:
And how we deal with, how do we deal with it?

Scott McCarthy:
When it happens, how do we deal with it?

Brad Englert:
And that’s one of my strongest relationships on campus was the vice president for campus safety and he had the police department, he had, you know, any big event, our Teams worked together to keep things safe. And I would meet with them once a meet once a month. The first thing we did was tested all the emergency operations centers to make sure they were working. One of them was not working. So we got those up and running. We tested them every 90 days. And we would tabletop exercise scenarios with his direct reports in mind. And we would tabletop power outage, hurricane, ice storm, cybersecurity attack.

Brad Englert:
A year later, after the power went out scenario, the power went out. So we generate our own power. The failover from the other utility didn’t work. We were without power. Now, when you’re in the emergency operations center, if you don’t have power, you don’t have a network. But we had cable TV and we had copper phone lines, which of course kept working. And we were connected to executive leaders and worked it without power. Another one, we had a bomb scare.

Brad Englert:
I’m out on the mall with just my phone. It’s like, oh, crap, they won’t let me in the building. So we had a standard operating procedure. Whenever there’s a crisis, we all hop on a conference call bridge, which is connected to the emergency management center, which is connected to the leadership. And we worked that bomb scare. I worked it from the mall. But you have to practice, practice for the unanticipated.

Scott McCarthy:
You know, you got a military background, because that sounds a lot like a mill how a military person would look at these.

Brad Englert:
The vice president for safety was a decorated war veteran, Vietnam war veteran, got his PhD at the Ohio State University, which was one of my best clients. So he and I bonded immediately and we just helped each other.

Scott McCarthy:
Yeah, absolutely. Shows I say that because I have a military background, so I could. He was like, oh, yeah, tabletop exercise.

Brad Englert:
Now, this guy was a war hero and, you know, couldn’t have had a better partner.

Scott McCarthy:
Awesome. Brad, this has been just a phenomenal conversation. And I know we’ve covered a lot of ground, but yet we’ve only scratched the surface. Before we wrap up here, is there any, like, one last thing. Let’s say that you’d like to leave with the. With the audience before we wrap up the show today. Yeah.

Brad Englert:
Be strategic and intentional with whom you’re building relationships with. You don’t have to. Your boss is obvious. Direct reports is obvious. But you don’t have to meet with all your customers. Who are your biggest customers. You don’t have to meet with all your vendors who are your biggest vendors. So be strategic and intentional and then just get out there and do it virtually or in person.

Brad Englert:
And it’s easy. The technique is so easy. Just put it on your calendar. Recurring item every month I’m talking to the VP for public safety in his office. And then prior to that send the agenda, get some feedback and that just becomes part of your routine.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s solid advice for the leaders out there listening to the show. Brad, love it. Absolutely love it. Final question of the show. Where can people find you? Follow you, be part of your journey. Shameless plug all over to you.

Brad Englert:
I’m on LinkedIn and I encourage people to connect there. My website is Brad Engler.com and I’m going to send you a link to my website that’ll give your listeners free sample the book, another tab how to buy the book and a third tab how to schedule time on my calendar and you can put that in the show.

Scott McCarthy:
Notes will do as always for you, the listeners. Easy. Just go to the episode number in digits, go to leaddumpboss.com forward/the episode number in digits and the links that Brad will provide me will be there. Right sir. Thank you again for taking time in your schedule and imparting your wisdom. This was awesome. I love it.