#377: James McPartland on Leading from Where You Are

James “Mac” McPartland is a keynote speaker, author of the Unopened Gifts ® series, and MindShift & Performance Coach.

In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, James talks about what it really means to lead from where you are, self-leadership, radical responsibility, and communication.

Show notes -> leaderassistant.com/377

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Transcript

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00
Yeah, Jeremy, thank you very much. My name is James McPartland. Those who know me well or get grandfathered in like Jeremy will call me Mac. The quote that I'm bringing to the program today is one by George Bernard Shaw, and that is the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it happened.

00:00:25
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

00:00:41
Howdy, friends. Welcome to episode 377 of the Leader Assistant Podcast. It's your host, Jeremy Burrows, and I'm excited to be speaking with James McPartland today. James is a keynote speaker, author of the Unopened Gifts series, and mind shift and performance coach. It's a lot of credentials after your name there, James, but welcome to the show.

00:01:08
Listen, thanks for having me, and I could listen to you speak about me all day, Jeremy.

00:01:11
Thank you for the interview.

00:01:13
Awesome. Well, what part of the world are you in, and what do you like to do when you're not working?

00:01:19
Half of that question is a lot easier to answer. I'm in Southern California, Orange County to be specific, in a little area that's known for the Real Housewives of Orange County.

00:01:29
We're a cosmetically fit neighborhood.

00:01:32
Not working. I'm fortunate enough to say that given the lifestyle that exists out here, cycling, swimming, running, spending time. I've got two teenage boys who are heavily involved in sports. And doing my best, if you will, to be present for this great game of life because time goes very fast, my man.

00:01:52
This is true.

00:01:52
What sports do they play?

00:01:54
Yeah, I've got a senior in high school who's a basketball player and certainly didn't get the skills from me. Maybe it was mom. And the junior is an exceptional lacrosse player. Oh, nice. I think it's just because he likes collisions. Yeah.

00:02:10
Love it. My, uh, my boys are 12 and 14, 12 year olds, really heavy into club soccer. And then the 14 year old is going to be, he's in club baseball, but he'll be in a freshman in high school baseball next, or I guess this fall or no next spring. Yeah. He'll be in high school this fall, but baseball obviously would be next spring. So it's all, all running together, but yeah.

00:02:33
Good for you, man. Kids are the ultimate clock of life. If it went as fast for me as it's going to go for you or vice versa, where did it all go? Right, right. Exactly.

00:02:43
Well, super excited to have you on the show.

00:02:47
Your assistant reached out, Sarah, shout out to Sarah. Sarah, she reached out and tried to pitch you to be on the show. And I get, you know, probably a couple of these every other day or so.

00:03:00
And, you know, generally they don't pay attention. It's pretty templated. They don't really pay attention to anything. what the show's about.

00:03:10
Hers was definitely a better email pitch than I had seen. So it kind of caught my eye enough to reply and say, hey, you know, and when I do get an email from an assistant, I like to say, hey, why don't you be on the show? Like, I'd like to interview you.

00:03:23
And she did a good job, though.

00:03:26
And maybe I'll have her on the show eventually. But she did a good job of replying and saying, actually, you know, James really has some good topics that are relevant to our role as assistants. And I think you should reconsider. And I thought that was really good, crisp, concise sales pitch to flip that back around and get you on. So here we are. You're on the show. No pressure, right? Sarah talked you up pretty good. So no pressure.

00:03:53
So what I want to do is first just get into your career a little bit. Tell us a little bit about what you do, you know, your career journey and how you ended up where you're at now and a little bit about what you do.

00:04:07
Yeah. Thank you, Jeremy. And thank you for the shout out to Sarah, right? Assistance of all natures make a fundamental difference in life and in business. I don't even think the word assistant is an appropriate one. Maybe it's more executive leader, right? in terms of how it got me here on the show. By background, maybe we'll stay on the professional credential side of things.

00:04:29
I had one of those 20-year overnight successes in business in the manufacturing space of exercise equipment. That phrase, 20-year overnight success, I only thought it'd be a couple of years and I would retire and I'd be playing baseball with you and your kids out in Kansas.

00:04:44
I guess the good news about that journey, which has led to the current

00:04:48
work I do, which is speaking a lot of executive coaching, culture and leadership development work within corporations.

00:04:56
Most of that comes from the learnings of a 20-year overnight success. But to be fair to that process, I can tell you more how not to do it, Jeremy, how to do it. And I guess I'm able to experience here with folks in a multiple of industries, inclusive and exclusive of manufacturing, maybe to point out where there might be some natural landmines that happen in growing a business. We grew it to a couple hundred million dollars.

00:05:22
There'll be other problems that surface.

00:05:25
But I will tell you along the way, and really what piqued my interest when Sarah brought this to my attention was, wow, if it wasn't for some of the people, and again, I think using the word assistant from my experience underplays the importance and significance of people in my career. Man, if I didn't have those folks around me to catch me on my blind spots, to remind me of the things I said, and to help navigate specific relationships, And also from that experience currently now and working with other organizations is what I find is the best of assistants really understand the culture almost better than anybody else, almost better than the CEO.

00:06:03
And so anywhere a manufacturing business led to a keynote speaking and corporate consulting opportunity. And maybe you can tell by the books behind me, I continue to be a student, Jeremy. There's a lot to learn in the game of life.

00:06:19
Love it. Love it. Thanks for sharing.

00:06:22
What is or when did you hire Sarah? How long have you been working with her as for as your assistant?

00:06:32
Yeah. Thank you, man.

00:06:35
It's funny when these anniversaries come up, I think, well, where'd those years go? Like, we're just talking about how fast kids grow. Sarah, maybe eight or nine years ago. Wow.

00:06:44
And we have, you know, several members of our team. Sarah came on quiet, introverted, quiet. Doesn't mean anything other than that's just style. And so we were going through this application process and we were meeting lots of people and there were certainly the vibrant types and not so much. But Sarah had this cool, calm confidence and the way she spoke and articulated, communicated actually, was extremely effective. Could get that across verbally, could get it off in written word.

00:07:15
Uh, and as somebody great that comes into your life was able to just clarify communication with me. Hey, this is what I think you're saying. Is this what you're saying? Because if you're going to ask me to do something, I want to make sure I'm clear. So the,

00:07:30
eight years, maybe it's nine. And if I missed it, Sarah, sorry, there's got to be some cake to come, right? Celebrate a few of them.

00:07:37
But it goes fast, man. I guess soon I'll be talking about a decade. That's awesome. That's great.

00:07:43
I love it. I've been supporting my CEO for nine, almost nine and a half years.

00:07:49
I supported my last executive for around six or so years. So yeah, I definitely value and respect those long-term strategic partnerships, so it's great you guys have been building that.

00:08:03
Let's talk a little bit about...

00:08:06
what it really means to lead from where you are. And, you know, obviously, my audience is assistants primarily. So we can tie that in as well. But how, let's just have a conversation, honest conversation about what it means to lead from where you are, no matter your title, no matter your experience, role, etc.

00:08:29
Yeah, thank you. And, you know, in thinking about this conversation, some of the materials I was looking through relative to your journey, you know, there's some catchphrases, right? Leadership is not a title. Leadership is influence.

00:08:42
My experience from any person in any walk of life, a title doesn't is not required. We've all been around somebody who inspires us, engages us, enriches us, or you just feel better when you're around them.

00:08:54
Or put another way is maybe we've all been in an environment or an airplane, somebody walks on and it doesn't feel so good. You can feel that energy.

00:09:03
And so from my perspective, it's how the person first leads themself, how I lead myself, how I talk to myself, the relationship I have with myself, how I take care of myself.

00:09:15
In terms of wherever I am in life as a leader, people hear what they see.

00:09:20
So however I show up is a reflection of the relationship I have with myself. And it's the number one place that I practice leadership in that if I'm not well-versed in leading myself, I don't know how I can lead others along the way. So I guess you'd say, what is leadership? It's a reflection of how you see yourself or the identity you have for where you are now and maybe the role and the life you want to live into.

00:09:47
Great. So how would you say you have refined that over the years? Like, how would you build or develop or cultivate your yourself?

00:10:01
Yeah, full time. Well, I find that I spend the most time with myself. That's the person I'm talking to the most, Jeremy.

00:10:09
Maybe like anything, there's probably things that we get intellectually, but I think until it moves from the head to the heart, maybe the heart to the hands, it doesn't tend to stick.

00:10:19
And maybe over the course of time, particularly when you spend a lot of time with folks, let's call it in a coaching relationship, as that's the way it's phrased. What I understand is that in order to

00:10:32
have an impact or an influence on somebody, for example, if it were you and I, my responsibility to you would be to understand best I could who you are, what you want to get to, what are you afraid of, what do you want to be when you grow up, and try to meet you where you're at. And most importantly is understand where you're trying to get in the future. So if you and I stood on that moon of you and I in the future and look back, we'd have an identification of what we need to do first. So I guess the way I got there was

00:11:02
It was hard for me to ask people to be willing to look at things and do things they weren't willing that it didn't appear that I was going to do myself.

00:11:10
I think in the relationship that we've built in the prior work I had as a CEO and in the current work I do is, and let's suppose it's you and I, I would look at a relationship with you, Jeremy, and say, well, we're going to practice. Occasionally I get to play teacher. Then you get to play teacher. Then we both get to play student.

00:11:29
Maybe we both try to play teacher, but there's a learning engagement that goes back and forth, has nothing to do with book education. Most of it is, you know, life experience.

00:11:39
So I guess what I would tell you that sticks would be most like any great quotes. Somewhere along the line, I heard or evolved the phrase, people hear what they see. And it made me wonder, particularly when I had children,

00:11:52
What do people see in me? Are my words consistent with my behaviors and the things I'm suggesting to people? Would they know that those were priorities for me if I never used words to tell them, if they just followed me around?

00:12:06
That's great. Love it.

00:12:09
I noticed that just to shift gears a little bit, or it's related to what you're talking about, but I noticed on your website, which I'll share in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/377 for those listening.

00:12:24
The you work with athletes and I would love to kind of, you know, we just mentioned our boys, our kids are athletic and all that, too. But I'd love to hear kind of in your work with athletes, how much of that.

00:12:43
cross um not really cross industry but you know what i mean like from professional circle and executive assistant roles to working with athletes how much of that is relevant and you know transferable basically does that make sense yeah yeah thank you for the question my friend

00:13:07
What's been what's really interesting about working with a let's use professional athletes, whether it's the NFL or the NBA, like any of us, we're all you know, it's all human beings.

00:13:18
Right. And what's interesting about it can happen in the corporate world with a high level executive position.

00:13:26
male or female and a senior ceo or ceo role where you know there's this um pedestal aspect that can go along with it just by default well professional sports you know let's just say that's amplified then if you add social media to it right almost people seem untouchable those relationships are built by referral because i imagine there's a lot of people trying to you know take money from others, perhaps, or take advantage. What I find with athletes, one, is they're male and or female the same.

00:14:00
Ultimate students, willing to train, willing to do what it works, willing to practice, really try anything. I'll see if it works. If it does, I'll stick it. If not, I'll discard it. That's a brilliant part about working with athletes. Two is, my experience has been, for those that really want to understand the benefit of coaching, it's to understand how to take that platform

00:14:20
and use it as a force for good somewhere in life. I've built this community. I've built this level of awareness. I've built this recognition.

00:14:28
I don't know what to do with it.

00:14:30
And if I come off the field or come off the court, the question people always get, hey, what are you doing now? What are you doing with your life? Or you should be retired. And there's these expectations put on people, probably like you build in your relationships. What the individual, I believe, call it athlete, call it corporate executive, is looking for a place they can be themselves.

00:14:50
open their kimonos and say, I'm kind of scared. I don't know exactly what to do here. Is it safe?

00:14:57
And not to tell the person, no matter where they are at a high level, of how great they are. They already know that.

00:15:04
It's about how to take that platform and that greatness to use it to the benefit of other people, right? So if you're going to leave your paw print or your footprint or your cleat print, right, or your business card someplace, how is the world a bit of a better place by virtue of the gift you've been given through this platform? So maybe the simple version, what's great is if we do, hey, let's try these exercises, go through this workshop, let's read this segment, let's watch this video clip, because what you might appreciate in the

00:15:33
let's call it in the coaching model, you spend maybe one hour with a person, an athlete. Let's say you get one hour with that person a week. Well, there's 168 hours in a week. So you get one hour and you're trying to override 167 other hours of conditioning.

00:15:49
to make a behavior change going forward. So we try to keep tasks between conversations so that the momentum stays. And the great thing about athletes is give me the assignment, tell me what to do.

00:16:01
I don't make them sweat in there as much. Well, maybe the questions make them sweat, like you're making me sweat, Jeremy. Yeah.

00:16:07
Yeah. I mean, that sounds like, you know, assistance even to relate it to them from what I've heard in my years coaching assistants and being an assistant is like, oh, you know, what are you going to do next? Right. Like, what do you it's like, well, what if I like being an assistant? What if what if what if I want to be an assistant for my career, you know, and then just.

00:16:32
Going back to your point about, you know, making a footprint, leaving a business card in the world, whatever.

00:16:39
Talk a little bit about navigating the tension between, you know, supporting others, helping others, but then also advocating for yourself.

00:16:54
Especially as assistants, like we're so focused on. All right, I got to make sure James is where he needs to be. I got to make sure he's got what he needs. You know, it's Saturday afternoon. And even though Sarah may not be working, she's probably thought about. Oh, is James traveling this weekend? Does he have what he needs? You know, how do we how do we balance that and navigate that tension between, hey, you know what? I'm supporting this executive. I'm supporting this team. I really care about them and I'm helping them achieve their goals. But I also have my own goals and have to care about myself and advocate for myself.

00:17:32
Great point, because maybe most of us learn nobody's coming by to be in charge of us, even if they're our executive assistant. Right. We're essentially in charge of ourselves. Maybe we got a support squad around us, but we're the people that say if we have the benefit of it, we still have to do the thing, whatever the thing is. Right.

00:17:51
If it's plausible, given your community and for those that maybe this question really applies to is, with the relationship that the assistant has with the senior executive, he or she, are their values clear? Are their priorities clear? And let me broaden it out. And this is maybe not applicable to everybody, but it's worth considering. Over the years, most of us have heard the phrase, hey, it's not personal, it's business. Jeremy, I think it's all personal.

00:18:23
If you're a person, how could it not be?

00:18:26
And when we get emotional and riled up and upset, it's not like, okay, I'm just going to stop doing that. Why? Because we're passionate. We put our heart and soul into it. And so wherever we have a specific dynamic or a relationship that's working or not working, we co-create it.

00:18:42
The good news about that is we can do something about it if it's not to our benefit.

00:18:47
What I often suggest to folks that are in the roles, the valuable roles that you're describing, can they get a perspective from their executive? What's most important to them? What's their own value structure?

00:18:59
What fuels them? What gives them energy? Maybe if it's a business relationship besides quarterly earnings and hitting KPIs and making sure there's cash in the bank, that's very important.

00:19:10
But does the person have a child that they want to get to the game for? Like you've got a baseball game this afternoon. Is there something they know that maybe they've been told or told themselves? You've got to get on the treadmill three days a week.

00:19:23
If those components are built into the relationship, the individual themselves has then a chance to practice the same priorities. Hey, I'm glad you said that because what's important to me to do blank, I need to get my exercise time with my child because that gives me the energy to

00:19:38
to make sure I'm doing the functions we require.

00:19:41
Because if we can have those honest conversations, I can't give my best unless I'm at my best. And if I'm just over indexing on the business side of things, I'm actually going to burn out. I'm going to become sort of resentful and respectful to everybody.

00:20:00
We train people on how to deal with us.

00:20:03
And so in building a relationship, or rebuilding a relationship. First, I have to retrain myself on how I want to show up.

00:20:10
How do I want to show up? How do I want to communicate? How do I want people to see me? What are the practices? And who can help hold me to do those? Because it's very hard to make modifications.

00:20:21
And perhaps with that, whomever you're reporting into is, I'm working on these things to better myself because if I can do this, I'm going to be better for you. Because for that person that they're working with,

00:20:35
Look, everyone's radio station is tuned to WIFM. What's in it for me, right?

00:20:39
So if the work I'm doing to develop me is to – if I said to you, Jeremy, you and I are going to build a relationship. I'm going to work on getting super fit, and you're going to benefit. You probably said, dude, knock yourself out. I'll drive you to the gym, right? Here's your salad, right? So how does –

00:20:55
Please.

00:20:56
No, I just say that reminds me a long, long time ago, when I was first getting into my assistant career, I talked to another assistant.

00:21:02
And they mentioned specifically, you know, my executive, we work a lot, we work hard, we're, you know, it's not a clock in clock out nine to five situation. But he's like, my executive knows that I'm much more

00:21:21
productive, much more friendly, um, and pleasant to be around if I get my 3 PM in the afternoon workout.

00:21:35
And, and so he was, he was just like, it's just, it's, we've, we've communicated that it's clear, like, Hey, I'm going to be offline from three to four, four 30. Um, but that's what I need to keep my high energy level, to keep me healthy, and allow me to work at a high capacity for a long period of time.

00:21:58
You know, and to that really important point, what I think is also very helpful is and maybe it's a practice.

00:22:06
Sometimes we'll think in our head, well, I can't say that to the person and I can't do that. And we'll have the conversation with ourself without having it with the other person. And so my encouragement to people is give the other person permission to say no. They might, but don't say no for them.

00:22:22
It's all the framing. Right.

00:22:24
I want to approach our relationship this way. And if I do, I think I'm going to be even more beneficial to us. The person is going to hear that.

00:22:31
It's not I want to go work out because I'm trying to get away from you.

00:22:35
That's probably how you not want to phrase it. Right.

00:22:37
Right. Totally.

00:22:38
Awesome. What about the term radical responsibility? That was something that your amazing assistant, Sarah, mentioned that you could talk on. So talk to us a little bit about what that means. Radical responsibility.

00:22:52
Yeah. Thank you, my friend. If I were to simplify, if I just use the coaching part of our business, and if I think over, gosh, hundreds of examples,

00:23:05
What do I think people want? Let's call it on the other side of the table or the other side of the screen. What I think people are looking for is a higher sense of control in their life.

00:23:16
And when things fall out of control, that's when most of our anxiety ramps up. And radical responsibility is an attempt in the communication process by which we say to someone, practice this, and it's all practice.

00:23:31
Look at where your life is. We create a scoreboard for them, right? Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all the buckets.

00:23:38
And most people look at that scoreboard and they kind of cringe a little bit. This is not where I thought I'd be at this phrase or stage of my life.

00:23:44
And we say, okay, great. Take 100% responsibility for that.

00:23:48
Well, often the feedback is, yeah, but my boss is this way and this is going on and you don't understand this. And that's probably all true. However, even if you take 100% of your 50%,

00:24:00
There's something you can do about it.

00:24:02
And that's taking that feeling of control back.

00:24:05
So it could go to the extreme when there's pushback on that. It could be, hey, we just had a massive tornado roll through our town and it wiped out four or five homes and there's damage to the infrastructure and our Internet's out. Now, how am I responsible for that? Well, there's a distinction between being responsible for something and responsible to it.

00:24:30
So if I'm responsible to it and I'm a member of the community or a member of the company, I could deliver water.

00:24:37
I could go help clean up debris. If it's within an organization whereby which, hey, I don't control the sales department or manufacturing missed their schedule,

00:24:47
Maybe I'm not a salesperson or a manufacturing person, but there's probably somebody I know along the way, maybe someone in accounting who's been burning the midnight oil, who would benefit from the Starbucks being delivered to their desk. Say, look, I appreciate the extra effort you're putting in. So it's taking responsibility for the company or the community. And action cures anxiety. It's when we get stuck in our head, which is getting behind enemy territory, that the demons tend to, at least in my case, rule the day.

00:25:15
Yeah.

00:25:17
Love that. That's, as a parent that is very, a parent of a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old, the radical responsibility is tough to get the kiddos to do. But yeah, it's a good reminder.

00:25:35
Awesome. Well, I really appreciate it, James. We could talk a lot more.

00:25:40
You know, as I think I mentioned earlier, my son's baseball practice is here in a little bit and it got moved up early. So appreciate you being flexible with your time and chatting. But I'll definitely share all of your social links and all that fun stuff.

00:25:57
at leaderassistant.com/377. But if you could tell the assistants listening, you know, one thing to remember and then one place to reach out and say hi and find out what you're about, what would you what would you tell them?

00:26:12
Yeah, look, thank you for the opportunity. And anybody tuning in, whether they're barreling down the road. or wherever they may be at the moment, what I think makes a difference is there's often a misunderstanding with the role or the label that goes along with it. And maybe that's viewed as undervalued or underappreciated. And that might be the case by others.

00:26:33
And yet people are going to think what they're going to think.

00:26:36
What I work closely with individuals is to think about identity. Identity is what I identify with and how I see myself.

00:26:45
And if, in fact, there's that sense of maybe I'm not appreciated or, man, this is harder than I thought it was going to be, what is helpful to all people is a compelling future. What am I trying to build? What am I trying to live into? Who am I trying to become? Then there's something I can learn and there's something I can take greater responsibility for in terms of equipping myself to play the game going forward.

00:27:10
As well as consider how have I trained myself to see myself? Are people a reflection of how I'm seeing myself?

00:27:18
And there's a chance for me to retrain myself if I choose to and others around me. Or put another way is maybe individuals have greater agency over this experience than maybe they've otherwise had the chance to see until they had a chance to tune into shows like yours. So... and in terms of coming by to shake and howdy probably the easiest thing to do if it's not too much of a tongue twister and hopefully it's in the show notes jamesmcpartland.com that takes to the website the social channels information on the book and come meet sarah who's obviously the celebrity on today's program i've been honored to you know have anybody come in take advantage of the resources there's lots of free stuff

00:27:58
Awesome, James. Appreciate it. And again, another shout out to Sarah for setting this up and being such a great strategic partner to you. We really appreciate you taking time and wish you the best of luck.

00:28:14
You're doing great work, man. Thanks for including us. I appreciate it. Take care.

00:28:27
Please review on Apple Podcasts.