[Podcast] Understanding What Makes an Exceptional Leader

Scott Monty, who prior to becoming an executive consultant, was the former Head of Digital Communications at Ford Motor Company and has a knack for helping individuals understand current topics by looking back at history, provides his perspectives on what makes an exceptional leader. He manages to weave in creating journals for his kids, a story about a captain of a ship, a poem, and much more in this episode.

Besides following Scott online, be sure you subscribe to his newsletter, Timeless & Timely. It is by far one of the best newsletters that I read each week.

Note: The episode contains a few sections where the two of us step on each other. This wasn't the case when we sat down for the interview so hopefully you can move past it to the great insights that Scott provides!

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MACHINE-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript likely contains errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.

Welcome to episode number five of the built unstoppable podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levy. And today I'm joined by Scott MonTy, who's a strategic communications and leadership coach and advisor who helps the C suite embrace better communication with timeless and timely advice.

Thanks, Justin. It's great to be with you as always.

So prior to your consultancy, you had the rare opportunity to serve under Alan Malally during your time at Ford Motor Company. What lessons did you learn throughout your time I know you were able to work closely with him and with the senior leadership team. And if you don't mind if there's an example that stands out in your mind or any learning lessons that you took from him, you know, Alan is such a consummate professional and to me, epitomizes what a CEO or really any leader of any level should be

First off, he's someone who makes you feel comfortable when you're around him and makes you feel special, like you're the only person in the room. And that's a special talent to have someone like that. who simply pays attention to you remembers your name, you know is engaged with you and and clearly wants to wants to learn about you, Mike, you can you can tell he's he's listening to you. He's not just going through the motions and asking you questions until, you know he and waits for you to stop speaking until he can ask the next question. He's someone who's genuinely interested. And I think that that friendliness, that curiosity, and that warmth that emanate from him are extremely important in leaders. Because these are I think, some of the attributes that we should try to get out of the people that that work with us. He was he was always referring to what we now call servant leadership. It was about serving first not leading, but serving.

I would tell him occasionally, you know, what a great job you did with this or with that, and he would always respond with it's an honor to serve. It's an honor to serve. And to Allen, he truly was serving as an American and global icon. He was serving the board. He was serving the customers, he was serving the employees. And he viewed himself as a colleague rather than as a boss. And he was out front with everyone and, again, just genuine and caring and empathetic. And I think that that was really, you know, you and I have been friends since your time there. And that was something you always communicated to me, of him while he was there, and of how that built your leadership.

I remember you have talked fondly and often about the Take Your Child to Work Day. And paja by that is just a wonderful example of Alan paying attention to the small details. And again, it this story that I'm going to tell it's an it's an instance of Alan doing something he didn't have to do something that was a minor gesture, but something that really endeared him, to me in particular.

So this was 2013. It was take your child to work day and I brought will and drew with me at the time. They were let's see 10 and seven. And we attended this big speech that Alan was giving in a big auditorium in the conference center on campus. And he finished his spiel and then he turned to the audience, which For the employees and their kids, and he said, okay, I'd like to take some questions from the kids out there. And he went through and I don't remember how many questions he took, but we'll had his hand up there hi and Alan glance in our direction at one point, but he didn't choose well, and will was a little disappointed. And there was a there was a buffet lunch that was scheduled for after that speech. And I don't know if it was Will's disappointment from not getting chosen or if it was simply some kind of nostalgia for lunches he had had before at the corporate cafeteria, but he and drew both said,

Why don't we go back to the, to the world headquarters so we can have our hotdogs and tater tots that we that we remember from the cafeteria. That's all right. So we did that. We had our lunch. We're coming out of the cafeteria and my phone rings. And I pick it up and it's it's Amy from Alan's office. She's his executive assistant, she says Got Where are you? I'm, I'm just coming out of the cafeteria with my boys. Amy, what's up? She said, Come up here right away. Alan wants to see you. I thought, Okay, this is different. I mean, I would go up to his office quite frequently.

You know, the C suite floors and world headquarters were on the 11th and 12th floors. My office was on the 10th floor. So I would just go up the stairwell to pop into executive offices as I needed to. And we get up to the 12th floor we walk down the long hallway and we go into the ante chamber where where Amy sits, and she's there at her desk and then back in his framed in his doorway to his office is Alan and he's standing there with his hands on his hips, with a big smile on his face. And we come into the into the entrance and Alan kind of waves us back he goes boys, come on back. So we go in and you know he says hi to them and gets their names. And everything and he starts asking them about their day. What have you seen? what's what's been impressive to you? What do you know about what your dad does? And then he started asking about, about my wife, Mindy, because what does your mom do? What's your name and he sat down and he wrote a quick note to her on Ford letterhead. And then put a big heart around Ford plus multi family, as Alan typically that you put a heart around your name and plus Ford, and, and said, night, be sure to give this note to your mom and you tell her what a great job she's doing with you guys. And then he had us all come behind his desk, he had me sit in the chair and the boys flanked me and he stood behind us and he had his photographer take a photo of us, and then emotion to Amy and she brought in these goodie bags filled with four tchotchkes for the kids, you know, squishies and pencils and key change, you know, Hot Wheels and things like that. And and then he sent us on our way and I thought what what a gesture, you know, hear from the the CEO of a Fortune 10 company, one of the major behemoths of the automotive and financial world. And he took the time to make this little gesture to one of his employees and their kids. He didn't have to do that. He chose to do it and it showed how he paid attention to small things, and how he knew that creating that bond of a relationship with an employee would create loyalty.

I think that that's a great example and what you said around servant leadership. It's become among a lot of terms. It's almost an overused term these days. It's like digital transformation and work from home and diversity, inclusion or you know, any of these terms that we hear companies or Major executives say and then check off the box. There's a difference between doing that and being fat. And I remember back when all this was happening was when the auto crisis was half was, you know, the automotive companies were going through the auto crisis. And I'll never forget you told me go read this book. This is the full story of Ford while I've been there, and that showcases Alan's leadership. And I read it and I took away so many lessons from that, that I've implemented in my career moving forward and that always take with me, and they all came back to you. And they all came back to how Alan walked in the Ford in change his time there. Yeah.

When you consider that He only spent, I guess, eight years there. Total. You know, he took a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy and turned it in the right direction and got people to believe. And he did it partly through the power of his personality, but he did it by showing people the way by giving them a plan. And to Alan, you know, I talked with him last year briefly, just about Ford's direction and trying to do everything right now, you know, trying to be all things to all people. And I think Ford started to turn the corner a little bit on that.

But he said, he said really, it's ultimately about two things, having a plan and communicating the plan. And that's all it is and see Alan had this ability to to boil down a complex situation into something very simple. And that's not easy to do. I mean, and he would do it in a way that didn't make you feel like he was talking down to you like you weren't stupid. He did it in a way that made it feel like you were along on the journey with him. And to him, it was it was about the very fundamentals, you know, is about focus in that plan, you know, just doing a couple of things really well. Having that plan, and just communicating to people. And and he said very clearly, that a leaders job, if done well is at least 50% communication.

They have to oversee people, they have to manage people, they have to work on relationships, but ultimately what comes through all of that is communication. And the way you talk with people, not at people but with people makes a great deal of difference in how you're playing Plan actually gets executed yet now, along similar lines, I know that and we will touch on this in a minute or two. But in your newsletter you've read written so much about your how much you value areas such as duty, honor, and resilience just to name a few that represent the tenets for you of a true leadership.

Now, I agree with your viewpoint on so many of those when it comes to leadership in in slightly different ways. Also, how I've tried approach in my recovery over the last few years from my shoulder surgeries and my brain surgery. But how do you find areas that you've seen throughout your career where those tenets apply?

Maybe during your time out for Maybe the lessons you took from Ford or you know, well done said just and i think it's it's partly from just observing what I did at Ford, I got, you know, a couple of decades worth of, of career education while I was there for six years. But it was during a crisis It was during the auto crisis, the financial crisis.

We were just on the cusp of discovering digital communications, social media, it was a remarkable time. And you cram that all together, and it was like a, like a compression chamber. Or for people that came to this, it was like an instapot versus a slow cooker, if you will, it, it transformed so much of my ability to understand leadership so much more quickly than it would have otherwise. And in addition to that, and maybe this is part of me, just getting older. You know, when I first graduated from business school years ago, I wanted to go into strategy.

Well, you don't see too many newly minted MBAs, you know, 2425 years old getting jobs and strategy, right, you have to go out there and you have to earn your stripes. And the reason you don't get into strategy right off the bat, is because you need to have a fundamental understanding of the entirety of the business. And it's hard to do that unless you've experienced it. And while I was at Ford, being the head of digital and social communications, I became exposed to pretty much every area of the company because everybody wanted a piece of it, and there were ways to apply it.

So it gave me a well rounded view of the company. And at the same time, I think back to my education in undergrad years, where as a classics major, and I have I've always been something in the history of literature junky anyway. But I started thinking back to some of the lessons and some of the leaders I came across, in, in literature and philosophy and history. And I thought, you know, the more I think about it, and the more I see people making the same, please the same plaintive please, in digital and social today that we did even 10 years ago, the more I realized that human nature is constant. And if it's constant within those 10 years, you think back over the course of the millennia of history, it's still constant, we still want the same things.

So I began to explore, you know, what I learned at Ford, what I observed over the last decade or so in the communications and marketing space, and I reflected that on what I had learned or what I continue to learn by being a voracious reader, and realize that there's a balance here between history and the present and the future.

Now, that's Actually is a nice segue because you have a weekly newsletter called timeless and timely and as you turn it on the signup page your goals to make sense of today with lessons from the past is that where you're coming where you pull from his you know history buff and and everything you learn during your career and and trying to meld those two together or you also looking at it from a different angle when you approach your research for

Well, the way I do it, Justin and I do the free newsletter every Wednesday, and then I offer a bonus issue for people that are paid subscribers on Friday. You know, some additional insight that you wouldn't get otherwise. Is I start with an issue that I identify that seems to be plaguing the modern leader.

So whether it's motivating your staff or operating in a crisis or Dealing with ignorance among the employee base, you know, and how does the modern leader begin to address that. And rather than simply give a prescriptive, you know, here are the 10 things you need to do, or whatever, I look back at history, because what is history, but a collection of stories, and what is a good communicator or marketer, but a storyteller. And so, bridging those two ideas together with a concept of the week, whatever it happens to be, I usually am able to land on some kind of example, whether it's from a book, you know, a, an old work of fiction, whether it's from a philosopher, a poet, historian, you name it.

I look for leadership lessons that we can, we can kind of land on tell a story about and say, All right, here's how that applies to the leadership of today. And in addition to that, Try and pepper it with relevant quotes to kind of inspire people and help them kind of crystallize some of these lessons into pithy phrases as well. You are very good at that as someone that has known you for very, for several years.

So, if you had to provide some practice someone with one practical tip, they may be just out of business school, they may be fresh in their career, or moving over to a different industry moving up from startup to uh, you know, enterprise, anything like that. You were to give someone one practical tip that they could use immediately in their career. Where would you land on?

Well, I would say be, be a voracious reader. When everything these days is is video or I mean look, we're listening right now but look, you can you can quote unquote read via an audiobook. I know you know commuting time is down and and podcast consumption is down as a result but we still have opportunities to consume audio content. And to me reading is one of the best ways to do that. And when you do read, get outside of your your zone of comfort get outside of your industry.

Now, of course you have to read to keep up on what's going on with your with your company, with your industry, etc. But if you can get a different perspective, you know, read, you know, I don't I don't care whether it's something from a different industry if you want to stay in the business field, read, you know, a certain kind of novel or read biographies or read history, just to give yourself a different perspective on things. To me.

That's what opens up the mind to different thinking. To curiosity, which I think is one of the hallmarks of a good leader and certainly a good marketer and and to allow yourself to explore ideas that you wouldn't have necessarily explored if you just stayed in your lane.

That's really interesting. And I think a great point, because I'm also a heavy reader, you know, my wife and I read before bed every night, and those typically be more. Those are typically more fiction books, and there's a lot of studies on why you should read fiction before bed instead of non fiction books. But I read a lot of history books, biographies, things of that nature in as well.

I have firmly believed in, say, several human resources, folks throughout industries, you know, we could disagree agree to disagree. But I've always thought that you should hire across industries. So, again, I've spent my career in b2b high tech enterprise, I should be attractive to someone in CPG because I bring a wealth of ideas in different angles of looking at something into CPG which have stayed in their lane, hire after hire after hire.

Unfortunately, in that those scenarios, that doesn't happen, they just want to stay in their lane and hire someone that they like that mold that they're used to hiring. But it's it's exactly what you know, I I can see with what you're saying of kind of getting out of your comfort zone getting out of your lane. I do it with books, but also I I think that there is also area to be had or an argument to be made within the work environment, within hiring and within industry and things of that nature.

Now, as someone that has known you for several years, you know, we both kind of grew up in Boston together. And I've learned a ton from you whether you realize it or not, but I've realized a ton from you, and have grown a lot, both in my career, but also personally just the way you carry yourself and always trying to be a consummate professional and that's across your life, not just necessarily at the workplace, but it just is you it's always been your true authentic self at all times there. There is no different switch with you. How are you trying to pass that down to your children don't pass Those values as they grow into their own

Yeah. It's It's frustrating and difficult someday. I've got a 14 year old and an almost 17 year old now. And they don't really want to listen to mom and dad anymore. They they think they know everything. And it's the classic Mark Twain ism. When I was 14 years old, I thought my father was the stupidest man I ever met. And I was surprised when I turned 21 how much he learned in seven years. I just feel like we're at that point with our boys.

So you know, I mean, you do what you can you try. And obviously you have to you have to live what you believe but at the same time, and when you're in a family. And this gets back to what Alan says about communication being so important. You need to talk about you need to provide a narrative track as to why you're doing certain things. It's not enough to just to trust that the kids are going to pay attention to you and watch what you do. Because in my experience, teenagers really aren't all that observant. Or if they are, they just don't care.

There's there's a comedian on Twitter whose bio says, My kids, if my kids knew there was a light in the oven, they leave that one on to write, they just don't observe the world around them, they have to talk about it. And to me, I realized that time is fleeting, and that these moments that I'm so invested in right now, that they may not have the same level of investment in either and this goes whether you're talking about your family, or whether you're talking about employees might people may not have the same kind of passion and vision that you do. And, and it comes down to communication. So for each one of our kids, I have a leather belt. bound journal that I started the day they were born. And I started doing it as kind of dated entries. But I realized that there are some times in life where I'm not consistently writing to them. So I don't date them. But I just write thoughts and write things that are important to me. And then I value my kind of like I do with my newsletter in this journal with them, and when they turn 18 years old, they are each going to get their journal to take with them. And someday when I'm long gone, and maybe they have kids of their own, they'll be able to look back in this personalized journal to see what are the values that we had as a family, what are the things that we wanted to pass down to them, and to me, that'll be kind of a, a timeless and timely contribution to, to their family life.

That's amazing. And of course, it's a leather bound journal with you and If I know you all know if it's probably with a fountain pen or something very specifically selected that dates back, it's not just with something you picked up at CVS or we've we've met before anything of that nature. I think you I, if I remember correctly, I think you wrote my wife a letter on letterhead and with a very nice pen when I was in the hospital or when I was first home and recover. And so I've even seen those those letters besides SR office on video and whatnot.

So, a question that's very important to me. And something I ask everyone is, what does being built unstoppable? Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, Justin, when I hear that phrase, I immediately think of you, you know, I mean, you've built Your brand around it. Um, you know the trials and tribulations you've been through in your life and not not just with your health in recent years, but you throughout your entire life have created that, that brand, that personality that I think we can all aspire to. So I think for as much as you compliment me for offering some sort of inspiration or something to build on for you, I think you continue to do that, for me. And for a lot of people around you whether you realize it or not. So, to me it's built unstoppable can be summed up in one of the virtues of leadership that I think are so important and that is resilience.

And if you want to add a second word, you can say endurance as well. And endurance is important because at one point in my newsletter I wrote about Ernest Shackleton, who sailed on the endurance from England to Antarctica and it was his goal to get to, sorry to to cross Antarctica on foot bisecting the South Pole. He never got there because his ship got trapped in ice and his mission went from trying to accomplish that goal to simply trying to ensure that all of his crew came back alive. And, and he saw it through. He absolutely saw it through and and he was successful at it. And to me, his leadership just personified resilience. And how did he do it? He listened to his team.

He created a sense of optimism and shared purpose when it could have been really easy to get depressed and you know, really desperate about where you were. He watched for morale when it was flagging. And tried to keep it up and focused on the goal and got everyone aligned around that same goal and had fun. In the process. They were out on the ice floes, you know, throwing a ball around and enjoying physical activity, when they were at the same time trying to fit for their lives. He, he showed the team that he trusted them with greater responsibilities, right that he let them get outside of their comfort zone or out of their area of expertise and mixed mixed teams up, you know, he could have been very hierarchical about a very British Navy, command and control.

But he mixed the teams up and allowed them to do things that he could see they had natural talent for. And all of those things together, gave them the resilience that they needed to take what was literally a life and death situation, and to turn it around. And, to me, all of this is embodied in a poem by William Ernest handily called Invictus you've probably heard before and it's just a few stanzas long. Out of the night that covers me, Black is the pit from pole to pole. I think whatever God's may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell collective circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears, Looms but the Horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years, finds and shall find me on afraid. It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments to scroll, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

Well, first of all, I have to thank you and for the comments, you Know Me enough to know how I feel about that. I try to stay humble about it. And what I've been through through each phase of my life has just been what I would hope anyone would deal with or the decisions that they would make. Though I realized a lot of other people take that road less traveled or choose that other option. But I think that that word endurance and that story of the ship endurance I've read that book before and and it's an incredible story that I would highly recommend anyone read it The story is a page turner as you read that book. So, I think that resilience and endurance or are they go hand in hand and they both are good examples. What built unstoppable mean? So thank you.

Where can people find you? Sure. I am at Scott monti.com which is where I post all the essays from my newsletter and if you want the full newsletter, you can subscribe there. And I am Scott Monty on, you know most of the major social networks. Awesome. Well, Scott, thank you for stopping by today. I appreciate everything. All the knowledge, all the history and, and thank you Justin for doing what you do and creating a destination that people can rally around as they try to build their lives as unstoppable as well.