Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders with Jeff Massone
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
In this episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I sat down with Jeff Massone to explore how organizations can better prepare young professionals to lead before they’re officially in leadership roles. We unpack the difference between coaching and training, succession planning, and how senior leaders can truly invest in future talent.
The Power of a Balanced Leadership Team
A great leadership team isn’t built on one personality type—it thrives on diversity of thought and complementary styles.
Core values are essential and should act as non-negotiable anchors, but diversity in thinking strengthens problem-solving.
Why Jeff Focuses on Young Professionals
Jeff chose to coach rising professionals to set them up before they lead others.
Leadership development often starts too late—after someone’s already promoted.
His approach is about reducing early-stage leadership mistakes and accelerating growth.
Redefining Leadership
Leadership isn’t one skill—it’s a collection of competencies.
No one masters all leadership traits; it’s about choosing a few to improve each year.
Key early skills include communication and integrity.
Coaching creates sustainable transformation, unlike one-off training events.
Coaching vs. Training
Training provides information; coaching ensures integration and accountability.
Jeff uses a hybrid model: part instruction, part mentorship, part true coaching.
Trust and rapport must be built before impactful coaching can happen.
Senior Leaders: Walk the Talk
Coaching initiatives must start at the top—senior leaders need to model the behavior.
Leadership is a journey, not a destination. If senior execs aren’t learning, they’re stagnating.
Organizations should avoid creating disconnects where junior leaders are trained but not supported by their managers.
Creating a Coaching Culture
Coaching isn’t scalable across huge organizations unless leaders are trained to coach.
“Leader as Coach” models allow organizations to develop internal coaching capabilities.
This approach increases the organization’s capacity to nurture talent without relying solely on external coaches.
Key Skills of Leader-Coaches
Listening deeply and asking open-ended questions are the foundation.
Advice-giving should be minimized to empower ownership and growth.
Reflection and thinking time are essential in today’s distraction-heavy world.
Developing Leadership Before the Title
Everyone is a leader, at minimum, of themselves.
Self-leadership involves managing time, habits, and communication.
Leaders can give junior professionals opportunities through project ownership or contractor oversight.
Bridging the Expectation Gap
The shift from school to work creates a challenge—people are used to being promoted based on knowledge.
In the workforce, promotion comes from behavior, communication, and critical thinking.
Many young professionals operate under outdated assumptions about how to succeed.
The Role of Senior Leaders
The best way to support future leaders is to give them access.
Quarterly check-ins, open-door policies, and informal mentorships can go a long way.
Leaders who don’t prioritize people development may not be right for leadership roles.
Book Recommendations & Reading Strategy
Jeff recommends Developing the Leader Within You by John Maxwell for beginners.
He emphasizes reading across many authors (Sinek, Brown, etc.) to form a personal leadership lens.
Use the ACT method when reading: What can I Apply, Change, or Teach?
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Mike Goldman (00:00)
Jeff Messone is a dynamic and accomplished leader with a proven 20 year track record, including professional training as a coach, trainer and speaker on leadership through the John Maxwell team. He helps young professionals accelerate their careers by developing their leadership skills so they're prepared to lead before they have a leadership position. We're gonna have a great conversation with Jeff. Jeff focused on everything around.
preparing and investing in the next level of leaders. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Massone (00:34)
Thank you very much, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike Goldman (00:35)
Yeah, thanks for doing this. my first question, Jeff, is from all of your experience, what do you believe is the most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Jeff Massone (00:47)
There's no question about it. When you have a leadership team, can't have one kind of personality throughout your entire C-suite or executive team. You need a balance of personalities to be able to attack the different issues and problems that face a team in a way that's going to be the most productive.
Mike Goldman (01:04)
Yeah, that's interesting. And one of the things I hear when I think about balance and
We talk a lot, and I'm sure you talk to your young professionals about this as well, with my clients we talk about building a certain culture. And we talk about a set of core values. And I think there's an interesting balance between we need, and interesting your thinking on this, where we need folks to live a set of core values, non-negotiable behaviors, that's the anchor of our culture, becomes our personality of an organization.
But that doesn't mean everybody needs to think in the same way. How do you think about that? Living core values versus we need some diversity.
Jeff Massone (01:43)
When I talk with my teams, know, there's a lot that goes on in project management around standardizations and templates. So I always say to my team, I like flexible standardization, right? So you want to go in with something that says, hey, I know what product I'm going to get from that team, but I don't want to sacrifice the uniqueness of what that particular individual can give. Some people are really great at diving into the details. Other people are really great at nuanced conversations and beyond. So it's the same thing here.
It's that core set of values, those non-negotiables. Patrick Lincione talks a lot about that in a lot of his writings. But also, you want to be able to say, where else can we have that diversity of thought to be able to attack these problems?
Mike Goldman (02:28)
Jeff, you decided to focus a little differently than I focus in my coaching. And I wanna dig into that a little bit. Why did you decide to focus on young professionals in your coaching as opposed to the executives or the business owners?
Jeff Massone (02:45)
Absolutely. From my perspective, you should prepare on your leadership journey before you have the privilege of leading others. And that's not something that's typically been done, at least from what I've seen in my pharmaceutical and consumer products career. Yes, they provide.
some leadership development once you are a manager or a director. But it makes more sense in my mind to say, well, wait a minute, why would you want somebody and set them up for failure for the first six months, first year or longer of their leadership journey by simply not preparing them with some basic skills? Let's get some of those mistakes out of the way early. Let's figure out where they're going to have their strengths and then build on that.
Again, counter-intuitive to what I've seen. But what I believe is that next level. Let's do something different. And it's going to be great for that next generation.
Mike Goldman (03:37)
Yeah, what I love about that is, you know, in my work with senior leadership teams, one of the key issues I hear all the time is how there's no one next in line. We don't have that succession plan. You know, why aren't, you know, and it's typically blamed on other people. They don't take the accountability. So I definitely want to focus there now because we're going to be talking, you know, everything leadership, you know, in this discussion.
How do you define leadership?
Jeff Massone (04:07)
Sure. It's interesting, everybody. It's such a buzzword. It's a big, broad, sweeping word. And ultimately, leadership is a battery of competencies. So John Maxwell wrote 21 Laws of Leadership, and I think there more. So mean, we can agree that there are a dozen competencies that encompass leadership that, by the way, no one person is going to master all of them. And that's why it's a journey. So early on in your career, you want to be able to say, OK, what do I think, based on my role and my remit,
What should I be focusing on? And maybe that's communication. It's probably not vision setting, right? You don't have to be vision setting as a manager necessarily or a senior manager, et cetera. But there are some core things you want to be able to do like communication, like integrity, right? Doing what you say you're going to do. Again, those are just a couple of things off the top of my head. But the idea is you don't want to boil the ocean. Your career is a marathon and not a sprint.
Let's take a couple different competencies to work on in a given year and get them to a better level than where you're at today. And then next year we work on something else. And that's that whole journey piece. One other thing I want to say, Mike, is, you know, typically a lot of leadership development workshops, for lack of a better word, or leadership development programs are delivered in a one day onsite, offsite, three day onsite, offsite.
And while they could be the greatest content in the world, the problem with that is there's no pull through. Now coaching is that engagement that where you see that transformation, right? That's something where I, that's why I love coaching over training. You you could see somebody from when they started and then, you know, where they're at six months, where they're at 12 months, et cetera. And there's a change as long as they're putting in the work, right?
As long as they're doing the things that applying what's being discussed in the coaching sessions, you see that every single time. And that's the difference. So I think a lot of people are just so used to signing that statement of work for a training program. Right. And, and that training program can be quite expensive if, especially if you're you know, fortune 100 company, you sign up for that, but you don't realize that you could be spending a similar amount of money in a coaching program.
and see real change. One of the things I like to say is, for what I've seen on my journey is there are a lot of sales teams that are provided coaching and training in leadership development. And I think that that's great. Most of a company is not a sales professional. I think when you train in leadership development to non-salespeople, you really have the opportunity to change the culture of your company. It's not just...
you know, providing sales leadership training so you can increase your revenue, which we all understand that's necessary. But really when you invest on changing the culture of your company and really having a strong leadership, you know, throughout the organization, up and down the chain, and you change that culture, you increase employee retention, you increase employee engagement. As a company, you're a better partner to work with, and that's gonna...
absolutely have a huge halo effect on your bottom line, even though there's not a direct ROI correlation to providing coaching and training to personnel that are either not leaders yet or not in a commissioned role.
Mike Goldman (07:35)
Yeah, I want to dig into that a little bit more because you and I are aligned. In fact, you know, to me, the word training is like fingernails on a blackboard. You know, and I did it for many years and, you know, it's an issue I have. Not all training is bad training and I've been through some good training, but the challenge I have is twofold. One is what you had mentioned is that training is kind of an event.
and that event goes by quickly and then people go back to work and a lot of times, oftentimes do what they were always doing. So that's one issue. The other issue I've seen that I love your thoughts on, I could remember years ago when I did do some more leadership training for folks, I would go in, I would get hired to do training for middle managers. And I'd go in and train people.
But part of the challenge was the senior leaders weren't very good leaders. They didn't get that same training. They thought their middle managers needed the training. So even if the training was good, the middle managers weren't getting the right, their senior leaders weren't modeling.
the right training behaviors. They weren't able to hold the middle managers, the younger leaders, accountable for leading in the right way, because they hadn't been trained on the same thing they were training. So what part in all this, given that my audience is gonna be a whole bunch of senior leaders and CEOs and business owners, what part do the senior leaders play?
And how could they best play that part in modeling the right level of leadership and holding these younger leaders accountable for executing on what they're learning?
Jeff Massone (09:12)
Absolutely. Yeah, I think obviously it starts at the top in order for whether you're providing this kind of coaching and training to middle management, senior management, executives, there has to be buy in. Right. So the part that the C-suite plays is, yes, this is important. Well, how do you deem that's important? Well, you show that it's important by saying, you know, I am taking my myself and my team through a leadership journey. And that may be coaching. That may be some some other engagement.
You know, we have decided that, you know, my team, my direct reports, et cetera, and so forth, it's going to be throughout the entire organization. Again, I understand that it's hard to be able to provide the exact same thing, especially if you have a really large organization, but you have to start somewhere and you have to set, you basically have to walk the talk. You have to walk the talk because if you're going to provide this kind of training because you think you're...
know, senior management, middle management, what have you, needs it, but we don't. That sends the wrong message. That sends, well, wait a minute, you think you've already arrived? Let's agree that we all have room to improve and show it by saying, you know, this is going to be your engagement that we're going to ask you to join. We have our own and we'll share our best practices at a town hall at some point in the future.
Mike Goldman (10:33)
So what does, so the other thing you talked about is the difference between training and coaching. Tell me a little bit more about your definition of coaching and what does that look like? And let me be, clarify the question a little bit is when you are getting your, you know, these young leaders ready to lead, is that...
Part training, part coaching, is it all coaching? Give me a view of the difference between the two and if they're both involved in getting these folks ready to lead.
Jeff Massone (11:02)
Yeah, I think there's no, there's no one thing that's deliberate. And I think it's always a hybrid. It's always a mix of different things. For instance, you know, when in my coaching engagements, there is a part instruction, right? You have to give some level of context, especially if they're young, if they're newer in their journey of their career. So some training, yes. Right. You train to show that you know what you're talking about, you know, and there's something there to build that trust, to build that rapport.
You know, then, you know, you can kind of blend in mentorship. So mentorship is not really coaching. You're providing some context based on your experiences, but you have to be careful with your experiences because your experiences may have been five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, different manager, different team, different company, different set of circumstances. But there is some value to that level of mentorship. And then there's the actual coaching piece. You know, and one of the greatest things about coaching is really digging deep on what the
coachee wants and really driving those open-ended questions. But I truly believe you really can't get to that space of open-ended questions until that trust and rapport is built up through your initial sessions and conversations in the engagement.
Mike Goldman (12:19)
So Jeff, if I'm a leader of a mid-market organization and I've got six people reporting to me and they're not leading anyone yet, I want to make sure I've got that succession plan in order for me to grow. want to have people underneath me that are growing. I've got five people reporting to me or six people.
Get them all coaching on leadership? Do I mentor them all on leadership or am I looking for the high potential folks and saying, hey, these two folks I think have the potential, I'm gonna work with them or I'm gonna hire a coach to work with them. How should I be thinking about it? Is it everybody or is it somehow I pick the high potential folks?
Jeff Massone (13:04)
You know, it's interesting. I always say you have to be careful with people that are deemed high potentials versus low potentials or average. You have to understand like what is truly the criteria? Are there checks and balances in that criteria, et cetera? I say that because you may be really losing out on an amazing potential leader by just having these sorts of programs available to...
quote unquote, high potentials. So if there's some way to be able to deliver it to all of your people, you gave a great example. I mean, I think six people is certainly a reasonable number to figure out a coaching program. If you have larger organizations, then you may have to make some decisions on, does everyone get it? We can't really afford, we don't have the budget to give this kind of coaching to everyone. What can we do?
so I think that it's really on a case by case basis, but I always lean towards saying, you know what? Let's provide as many people as possible coaching. But I'll also say too is, and I, you I know of a couple coaches that do this. Look, you can't, you can't possibly, there aren't enough coaches in the marketplace to be able to provide coaching for everyone. So what do do as an organization? Even if you're, you're not a huge organization like Exxon or Johnson and Johnson or Disney, what do you do?
Even small organizations can say, well, wait a minute. How about, you know, leaders of coach program? How about you teach this coaching skill to a certain level of your leaders so that not only are you teaching them in the leadership development competencies, but you're also saying, look, we're going to give you the coaching competencies as well. And there are people that do that specifically. So then you get bang for buck, right? And then throughout your organization,
you now have managers that are coaches, right? And as long as they're living, you know, again, that leadership DNA in your company, right? And if they walk the talk, there's somebody that others will listen to, then you have, then you can actually provide that coaching, you know, for your organization without again, having to continually pay for coaching. So there's some things out there that, you know, your listeners are listening to right now, look into that.
You know, just Google, you know, leader as a coach or manager as a coach programs, because I think that's going to go a long way to having, you know, more bang for buck in your, in your training budgets.
Mike Goldman (15:24)
Yeah,
I love that idea and as many...
companies as I work with and leadership teams I come across, I don't really see it. The idea of having some kind of internal coaching organization. And that doesn't necessarily mean, and I guess maybe a bigger organization could afford the time and the bandwidth and the dollars to do this. That doesn't mean you literally have five full-time coaches on staff full-time. To your point, it may be that you've got some subset of your leaders and managers who
Jeff Massone (15:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Goldman (15:56)
really have the desire and the ability to be good coaches.
You create that internal kind of part-time fractional coaching organization, because you shouldn't need to have to hire. I mean, as much as you and I would love everybody to hire a coach, of course, you shouldn't need to have to hire from the outside. You should be able to build that competency from the inside as well. What do you think it takes for a leader to be, not a coach like you and I trying to build a coaching business, but for a leader to be a good coach?
What are some of the skills or competencies of a good leader that is also a coach?
Jeff Massone (16:35)
You know, first of all, know, part of the reason why a leader in and of itself, him or her has to go through a coaching program is to understand, okay, well, wait a minute, there's leading and there's demonstrating leadership skills, you know, and there's teaching leadership skills. There's, then you got to live them, right? But then you also have to learn how to be a coach. And part of that is listening.
Right? Some of the best coaching engagements I've been a part of as a coachee is they've just listened and asked questions and they're there to really help you draw out your answers, help you develop answers for your own. Once it comes from you, from the person that's being coached, they give you the answers. You're giving your coach the answers. It's nothing to remember. It's because of that process, because of what your challenges are. It's your answers.
That's hard, that sounds easy, but it takes a long time to be able to develop that skill. A lot of role playing in your program, right? From people that likely and probably best not from your organization, maybe other CEOs that are learning the skill together, right? So you're not being judged by your own team members, but that takes a while. And I think what you mentioned there, but it's very important.
You know, so have the CEO go through that and they understand, okay, wow, this is different. Being trained as a coach is different. But then you can say, I have that buy-in. I think we can. We're probably not going to have a coaching organization in our company. We probably can't afford that, you know, with our headcount planning, et cetera. But we can certainly have those internal fractional coaches, right? We see, you know, in sports, particularly baseball, they use that as a player coach, right? And you think about that, that yes,
they're leading, they also, it's people that have the heart for it, that actually care about developing those next generation leaders, or taking those mid-level leaders and helping them get to those executive ranks. But I think that's really what's important. It's really separating out leadership development from the actual skill set of coaching.
Mike Goldman (18:39)
Yeah, and that skill set of coaching is a tough one because to your point, it's about asking questions. It's not about giving advice. And man, that's really hard, especially from, you know, old gray hair guys like me that wanna give advice all the time. It's a hard thing to do. And I think while there may be a subset of folks in your organization that could be part of this kind of, you know, internal coaching organization, I think every leader needs to learn how to be a coach.
because that's the way you surface the right action. Help other people surface the right action for them and they own it. Not because you told them what to do and you're modeling a way of thinking. So all that's great. So when we talk about these younger professionals that may not be leading yet, how do we teach someone, how do we coach someone
to lead before they're actually leading? we coach them on something they're not doing yet? As senior leaders, do we need to experiment and give them chances to lead? How do we coach them on something they're not actually doing yet?
Jeff Massone (19:47)
Well, first of all, when I host events, I ask the entire room, say, yeah, raise your hand if you're a leader. Right? So of course, everyone's a leader, right? Because you're at the very least, you're leading yourself, truly. Right? But besides that, if you're a parent, you're leading your children. Right? There's no doubt about it. So you're leading your children. There are other avenues where you could be a leader if you're also a coach on the sports team, et cetera.
you can always draw a parallel to somebody who doesn't necessarily have that positional leadership title at their job, right? But you're leading someone, if not only yourself. So right off the bat, you have something to start with. So let's go with, okay, okay, I'm not a parent yet. I don't coach of any sort. I just have a job and I'm not leading anyone. Great. Let's go into the fact that you are leading yourself.
What are some of those activities and choices that you're making to be able to lead yourself well? Right. And then you go down that track, you know, in terms of your time management, how is your time management? Are you leading your time management? Well, right. Are you leading, you know, the right habits to be able to make yourself successful professionally and then on from there. But of course, you know, if you are a parent, you can go down and say, well, you're leading your kids, et cetera and so forth. How does how is that going? Right. And going from there.
In terms of opportunities, I think the best opportunities you can give one of your team members that aren't meeting anyone yet is contractors. A lot of times, it's not a full-time employee that someone's overseeing, but they're giving somebody a third party that says, you know what, they're not on our payroll fully, but we have a group of contractors, and I think that this is the right opportunity for you to try out overseeing personnel, and we take it from there.
Mike Goldman (21:36)
The other thing I've seen too, and I've seen this done not just with individuals but groups of folks, specifically groups of some of the real high performing, high potential folks, is give them a project to do. You know, I had one client that...
we did in creating their core values, we used something, and this is a Jim Collins thing called the Mission to Mars exercise. So, and it was defining who were their best people that had the best characteristics that really got to the heart of...
what made them great from an organization and from a culture standpoint. And they took a lot of these high performing, high potential folks. They created something called the Mars Team. And the Mars Team would get together once a week. And their job was to make sure that the core values of the company were alive and well in the organization. And they had not carte blanche, there was some things.
Jeff Massone (22:33)
and
Mike Goldman (22:33)
Some things at certain levels they had to get approved, but this group, and it was about six or seven people on this little team, this group had the ability to just go and get stuff done. And it was a great chance to see who kind of rose to the top. And a great chance, not only to see who rose to the top, but a great chance for all these folks to learn how to solve some problems the organization was going through and really start leading.
Jeff Massone (22:58)
Yeah, I'll say, mean, certainly my 20 year project management career is a lesson in leading without authority. Right. You know, you'll give someone, you know, a project team and deliverable and outcome, whether, you know, in consumer products world, it was an actual product, right? A new product launch. And that those are awesome experiences. But I think that's really a great way. I love that example of, know, giving people, if they're not project managers, just give them a project that they can lead and see what they can do. I think, you know,
I want to get out as the true north of a good leader is if someone will listen to you even when they don't have to. Right. And we can all really take a step back and say, well, wait a minute. And how far am I along that? Can I truly say that people will listen to me when they don't have to?
And that takes a lot of reflection on that. And how would you really know, right? So in my mind, the best way you would know that is if somebody from another part of your career or your life is calling you for your input and advice simply for that, knowing that you can't help them positionally, there's nothing you can do financially for them, they really want your counsel, right? They want your counsel on something.
Then, you know, that's a great indication of, like, I haven't heard from this person in seven years and all of a sudden they're reaching out to me. They valued my leadership from when they were on my team. That's that true north. Now, a lot of times you're not going to get that opportunity, but you could still be asking yourself that question. Are they really just listening to me because I'm their boss and they have to?
or do they respect my leadership and they're listening to me because of that? I think there's a lot of people out there that may not have had the opportunity to ask themselves that question, but you really should be asking yourself that question on a regular basis. And I think for all of us, there's all room to improve. there's gonna be, ideally you want as many people as possible that have reported to you in some way, shape or form to be able to, if you were to ask them, well,
Do you listen to, you so would you listen to Jim, you know, if, if, if, if you didn't have to, right. You can think to yourself, would Mary listen to me? I think so. What about Joe? I don't think so. Okay. Okay. What happened in your interactions with Joe? Like what was, what was there that you think would stop Joe from reaching out to you again? It's, that kind of that self reflection time that I think it's great in commute, right? One of the things.
I think coaching does really, really, really well is teach people how to think. And unfortunately, right now we live in a society where there's so many distractions to actual thinking. When I, when I get started on a coaching engagement with a client, say, some, do me a favor, but let's start on this journey. Right. If you could, if you could stop watching the 24 seven news for 90 days, that's not going to help you think critically. Right. It's not going to be focused on, you know, what's in front of you.
in terms of your challenges at work, your challenges personally, right? So just stop doing that, right? Because it's distracting. And then I go one step further, you know, can you maybe do a social media diet for that same amount of time? Because again, that's distracting. That's not helping you think. You got to create space in your day-to-day life where you just have thinking time, right? There's no better time to do that, especially now that there's the return to work.
your driving places, turn the music off. I listen to amusing sports radio, turn that off too. Just think, right? And you can really, and you can use that time to have that reflection. How am I doing in this season?
Mike Goldman (26:35)
So Jeff,
Jeff, when you think about the biggest challenges that these young, these young professionals have, and you make me think about this because I know distraction is one of them and that's what you're hitting on. But when you think about these folks that you've worked with over the years, what's, and I'm sure there's not a one size fits all, everybody's different, but what's that one?
big obstacle. You when you think of a young professional building leadership skills, what's that one biggest obstacle they've got to get over that seems to be the biggest challenge for many of them?
Jeff Massone (27:09)
But I think it's that transition from school to work. When you're in school, you're literally promoted every year. And perhaps you come straight from a graduate degree. So you not only had 12 years of school, you had 16 and maybe 18. So you almost had two decades of getting promoted, quote unquote, every year. And then you're in the workforce. And then it's a different set of skills. You're not getting
paid and promoted for what you know, you're getting paid and promoted for what you do, you're getting paid and promoted for how well you communicate, you're then ultimately getting paid and promoted for how well you think. So it's really getting over that barrier of that transition of how am I going to get promoted, right? That's really, that's really, I think, the common thread that's amongst all people is knowing you're going to completely different game.
than you were throughout your entire life, really.
Mike Goldman (28:09)
So they're coming in with the wrong expectations, you think?
Jeff Massone (28:13)
Absolutely.
And I don't think it's even today's generation, right? I think that's been going on for, you know, at the very least 50 years, if not a lot longer, you know, they're expectant entitled, right? And a lot of people have, you know, labeled millennials and now Gen Z with that, you know, those characteristics. But, you know, I can say that, you know, I saw them in, you know, Gen X, right? I proudly and candidly say I'm a Gen X and I had that level of, you know, again,
entitlement and expectation of, you know, where's my promotion? Right? Yeah. I didn't realize that I was, while I was hitting my goals and in some cases, exceeding my goals, I was still really the same person that walked in the door. haven't shown any growth. Right. And that's a different level of thought. What do you mean growth? Right. Like I did what you asked me to do. Like, where's my promotion? That's a different thing. You guess you're great. you know, you're, getting your bonus.
You know, you're on the team, et cetera, but you haven't shown me anything different that you can go to the next level. Right. That's the difference. Right. And when you tell people that it's very eye opening, you're like, well, I've asked a lot of people that have coached. Do you, do you think you're different, you know, than when you walked in the door of your company? And then there's always that pause. And then I think about it. Not really. I'm just, I'm just kind of.
know, and, know, chugging along. That's really that barrier that everybody has. That once you open that awareness up, then you can say, now I get it. It's more than just meeting and exceeding expectations.
Mike Goldman (29:52)
What's the most important thing a senior leader can do to best support their younger professionals in growing? Not what they can do to actually go in and train them or coach them or mentor them, but as a senior leader, what's the most important thing I can do to invest in them?
Jeff Massone (30:13)
Honestly, I think the easiest thing and I don't think there's any expense to it is access, right? Providing the younger generation, your younger employees with access to the most senior people in the organization. And again, fully understand that some of the senior folks in an organization maybe aren't, that's not their thing, right? They're really not that interested in giving to the next generation, but find out who is, right?
You know, get that core group of people throughout your organization, you know, again, small, mid-size, even large organizations that are willing to kind of pour into that next generation and make it comfortable, right? Make it, make those doors that you always say have an open door policy. Well, show like how, how does somebody who's 25 years old and three years out of school truly, you know, knock on that door, so to speak, you know, virtually or otherwise and make that connection.
And have a relationship right be open to a relationship. We all know that everyone's busy, right? Everyone's super busy executive. I'm triple booked, you know eight hours, know eight hours a day, know five days a week. There's time, you know figure out some time carve out some time. We know that you're not going to have one-on-ones with you know junior employees on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. But what kind of quarterly check-ins can you have? What can you do that fits your schedule?
to be able to give that access to you and the other executive level folks in your organization.
Mike Goldman (31:38)
I'm going to say something even stronger than what you said. I firmly believe and see and in my mind know that the number one driver of profit growth is people growth. And if you are a senior leader and people growth kind of isn't your thing, then you shouldn't be a senior leader.
Jeff Massone (31:50)
Thank
Mike Goldman (31:57)
You know, I happen to think one-on-one meetings, weekly one-on-one meetings with your productive one-on-one meetings with each of your direct reports is critical. And Marcus Buckingham, who's an author and speaker that I love, I saw him interviewed a number of years ago and he said, look, you know, how many people could you have regular weekly effective one-on-one meetings with, you know, every week consistently? If your answer is I could do that with 12
people then congrats you can have 12 people reporting to you. If your answer is I am so busy I can't meet with any of my folks regularly every week one-on-one then you should have zero people reporting to you. That's how important it is.
Jeff Massone (32:37)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.
I've heard Marcus speak a couple times and I remember him answering those kinds of questions. know, I think he even says, you know, there is that with his research at ADP, I think there's that sweet spot of five to eight. You know, but again, if you can manage 12, then that's great. But whatever you can manage, you do manage weekly one on ones. And if you can't...
Even when is bold to say one one talk then don't leave people right if if that bothers you if that's not part of your day-to-day how you see your job then you know find a role where you don't leave people I think a lot of organizations some of the bigger organizations which I give them credit I know J &J does it Merc's done it They they allow a professional track quote-unquote so you're able to grow in the organization without having any direct reports Because you've deemed you said look that
Mike Goldman (33:08)
Right?
Jeff Massone (33:30)
really don't want to do that. That's not my thing. So you do want to give people opportunities to still grow in an organization, even though they don't have direct reports, because what had happened previously is you're getting promoted and you're getting a team and then you're getting multiple teams and you're leading leaders. And you never really wanted that, but that was the only way to get promoted. So to be able to kind of tease that out and say, well, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense.
You know, you're getting promoted because you're a really great chemist or you're a really great finance person. And you're awesome at what you do in that skill set, but you really don't like people, right? To me, like, how do you get around that? Where you make those professional tracks and you make those leadership tracks.
Mike Goldman (34:14)
So I have a feeling I know what your answer might be, because I know you're a John Maxwell guy and a John Maxwell fan, but what's the one book, if you could recommend one book to a, you know, someone who wants to lead or someone who's started leading and they want to learn more about leadership, what's that one book you'd recommend that would have the biggest impact?
Jeff Massone (34:36)
I think it was so John Maxwell has his book, Developing the Leader Within You, right? So I think that's that's the place where you start. Right? Yes, he has I referenced the 21 laws of leadership book. And that's an important book, too. yeah, especially if you're not leading at the developing leader and you as to where I would start. But I'll also say this, you know, and I get, you know, coming from the Maxwell organization, there's a lot of, you know, coaches that in that organization that
Mike Goldman (34:48)
And I've got that behind me somewhere.
Jeff Massone (35:02)
for some odd reason, only reading Maxwell content, you really have to read as much content as possible, through as many authors as possible, so that you can cherry pick the best of the best from all the great voices like Simon Sinek, like Brene Brown. I mean, there's a ton. know, a lot of people say there's too many leadership books out there. If you're a leader, you should be reading them all. Some of them aren't great reads, but a lot of them are.
There's truth when you make that meta analysis of all the things that are being written. Find out what works for you in your organization and go. again, if you're not leading people yet, still read as much as you possibly can. It's going to trigger some things in your work experience that you never would have before. when you do read, and again, whatever level you're at, you apply the ACT method. What can you apply?
from what you're reading, what can you change from what you're reading and what can you teach? When you read from that lens and that frame, then you can make it actionable, right? So in a coaching environment, that's what we do is like, what's relevant? How do you make this content relevant to where you're at in your career and the different problems you're facing? Same thing when you're reading a book or listening to a Ted Talk or a podcast.
Again, what can you apply, what can you change, and what can you teach? But please, everyone out there, and I know a lot of your audience is senior, but those that may not be senior, and you just kinda happened upon this, read as many different leadership authors as you can. It's gonna enrich your leadership journey, and you're gonna be that much better off for it.
Mike Goldman (36:43)
Beautiful. Jeff, people want to find out more about you and your coaching. Where should they go?
Jeff Massone (36:49)
Sure, it's preparedleaderconsulting.com. Again, that's preparedleaderconsulting.com. And just a bit about me and again, my vision of really equipping that next generation before they have the privilege, and I do mean privilege, of leading other people.
Mike Goldman (37:06)
I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. These young folks will be there one day. You need to help them. We need a great leadership team. Jeff, thanks for helping us getting closer to that place today.
Jeff Massone (37:18)
Thank you very much, Mike.