Leadership Development: David Graddy Fixes Bad Bosses for 30% Higher Team Output in 90 Days | Ep. 193

David Graddy: 00:00:00

You first must be a connected member of the team so that the team trusts you. Then you step out and you start working to be having influence and being a leader in the team.

Intro: 00:00:14

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D. Ready?

David Graddy: 00:00:41

Ready.

Freddy D: 00:00:54

Hey super fans.

Freddy D: 00:00:56

Freddy D. Here in this episode 193,

Freddy D: 00:00:58

we're joined by David Grady and we're

Freddy D: 00:01:01

tackling a challenge so many service business owners face. Frontline managers who are technically strong but struggling to lead in the trenches.

When leadership breaks down at the team level, performance stalls, morale dips and customer experience suffers.

David brings over 40 years of experience in aerospace, finance systems and IT, serving as a subject matter expert in earned value management after starting his career in retail management.

Now a certified John Maxwell speaker, coach and trainer, and the author of Leading in the Trenches, he equips leaders with practical, battle tested tools to build trust, clarity and accountability. If you want stronger teams and better results, this conversation shows you how to lead where it matters most.

Freddy D: 00:01:53

Welcome, David, to the Business Superfans Advantage podcast. Good conversation that we had before we start recording. You're from Wichita, Kansas. I'm from Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Arizona. Welcome to the show.

David Graddy: 00:02:08

Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.

Freddy D: 00:02:11

Yeah. So we sort of have a similar background. We both started off indirectly in engineering one way or another, and we both got involved with technology.

And then now you've written a book called Leading in the Trenches. And let's go back to what's the backstory? We'll get to how the book came about. But what's your backstory?

David Graddy: 00:02:34

My backstory is working. Coming up in a retail business. First 16 years old, needed a job to put gas in my car. So I started in retail.

And that was the first of it as a stockman walking in as just sweeping floors, emptying trash cans and doing that kind of work. And I found that I really didn't want to do that very long. So the next step in that was to get out on the sales floor, which I was able to do.

And then the next step is a leadership step which was become a part department manager in sporting goods and automotive in this little store that I was working in. And so that kind of wetted my appetite for being in charge and not being the lead dog to a certain degree.

And I also play music and so I always like to be first chair in whatever I was playing. They always get the better parts. I didn't care to be second chair much, even though I have, can do that and have done that in my past.

You have to be a good follower to be a good leader, I think. And so it just, it went from there.

And I grew in the retail space to be a manager at a store level, a co manager at a 70,000 square foot retail store and learned a lot about people and about bosses and just everything about retail. Then I got the opportunity to jump to the aerospace industry. Working for Boeing for a long period of time.

But at first you walk in the door and you're the newbie again and you just ride from there. You learn to do the job you're supposed to do, that you're paid to do.

And then you grow from there to do other things, lead teams and be a manager and, and just work your way through. And that's what I did for 32 years. Implementation teams, software team implementations and that type of thing.

Site focals 4 or 500 people use a set of tools, software tools. So it just all just grew.

And then after 32 years I retired from Boeing and came back to Wichita and joined Spirit Aerosystems doing pretty much the same thing.

And so I've been back growing from the bottom up, but with a little bit quicker pace and a little bit more knowledge than I did when I started for Boeing. So my backstory is just is growth and learning. And the book came out of what I learned and how I learned to do things.

And to the people that I have instructed and taught and mentored and coached over the years, doing the same things that I did to better themselves improves in their, their position, grow their leadership. And so that got me where we're sitting here today.

Freddy D: 00:05:31

Wow, what an interesting story.

And there's some similarities because I started out as a draftsman back in the late 70s, me and this guy that we used to work pretty close together and we became friends, we, our drafting boards were basically in front of one another and we ended up going to Europe for a couple weeks on vacation to tour parts of Europe and he ended up going to Boeing, getting out of the automotive industry and going into the Boeing and was trying to pull me to go with him and I was too chicken to do so. So who knows what that road would have been. But that in turn got me into the computer systems, Computer Aided Design, Computer Manufacturing space.

And so I started as an application guy that was actually a. I didn't have any presentation skills. So they had me installing the software because I was an engineer completely and doing some training.

And my training was horrible until I turn that around. But where to?

The other similarity is that I used to go to a clothing store because I was in my 20s and I always buy these cool clothes and one day I said, hey, you guys need any help? And he says, yeah, we're looking for some holiday help.

And I ended up going working in a men's clothing store, never sold anything in my life and started to learn some sales. And then eventually in 85 I ended up getting six months of some super high end training and transition in 86 into sales.

So similar story, I pump at 15.

David Graddy: 00:07:13

You've been there too?

Freddy D: 00:07:15

Yep, I've been there too.

So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you've discovered, David, with, you know, leadership and what makes good leaderships and what makes a bad leader. Because there's definitely a lot of bad leaders out there.

David Graddy: 00:07:29

That's an interesting question because sometimes I think you learn more from the leaders you consider bad leaders than the ones you consider good leaders.

And you can tell what a person thinks is important in their leaders by what they're complaining about, when they're complaining about their leader, whether it be they don't communicate to me any or they're never around.

And I think the first thing that is important in leadership is building trust, showing integrity, that's the most crucial thing because that's the foundation to everything in leadership. If you don't have the trust of your team and the people you work with and lead, you're just a positional leader. You can't go much further than that.

And so that's number one.

I think for me, a leader that grows his team, his or her team, not just what I call to the job, learning what they have, what they're getting paid to do, but growing them through the job, giving them opportunities to stretch themselves, go on to team, special teams, help problem solving in certain areas, or even growing to being, doing mentoring and coaching and ultimately leading them into management, into leadership.

That's a crucial piece that I think everybody wants to be given an opportunity and I think a leader that does that will bring people along and they'll follow them, follow that leader more and then if just go do your job, we'll teach you how to do that. And you need those people on the team.

Don't get me wrong you need those people because someone's got to pump out the results and the deliverables but to grow people. And that's one the second thing and third, I think communication.

You want to lose a team, don't communicate, don't be around to give information, answer questions. Those three things are just crucial to being a good leader. And you can lose a team really quick on all three of them.

Freddy D: 00:09:36

Oh absolutely. 100% correct.

And I think the other thing that businesses make a mistake sometimes is they'll take one of their key people and put them into a leadership role and they're not trained to be a leader. And this is okay. Now tomorrow we're promoting you. Congratulations. Yippee yike.

You're now the department head and you got no clue what to do and you start directing people and you do exactly what you said you shouldn't be doing. And that is now you're not empowering people, you're out of your comfort zone and so you think you need to be giving orders.

And that usually backfires very quickly.

David Graddy: 00:10:19

Yeah.

What I've seen is in that situation is most of those type of leaders will revert back to what they did when they were that top notch go to person and that is they do the job, they'll micromanage, they won't delegate as much and they'll be more controlling because that's what they've done and.

Freddy D: 00:10:40

Right.

David Graddy: 00:10:41

And I'm a believer in brain learning leadership as you come up. And there's some things you can't learn until you get the position.

But if you can learn anything coming up that will help you, communications, how to plan and prioritize, building relationships, all of those type of things. If you can learn that it gets you ahead of the game when you do walk in and to that type of situation.

A major thing to, to step into that and not have. And like you said, so many companies just put you there and say go and they don't give any training.

Freddy D: 00:11:17

And I think it's a mistake that they make because the small investment that they would make to train that person. A couple of days I went to Dale Carnegie leadership and management training years ago and it was a three day weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I flew down to Atlanta for it.

But it completely changed my perspective on how to lead a team and learn how to empower people and let them basically come up with the ideas and everything else and get myself out of the way. I'm more of a facilitator and a conduit between them and, and the Executive management team.

That's how I saw myself and that's how I grew teams because I was the backstop in both directions.

David Graddy: 00:12:08

When you step into your first level management position, you're dealing with results. You have your results that you have to put out to whoever, but you also are responsible for the results of your team and what they have to put out.

So you kind of get sunk into, into that work job process and you lose track of the people side of it.

And it doesn't cost anything when they're on your team to do a book club where there's enough books, or do a video, a five minute video off of YouTube just to demonstrate a leadership principle. You can do things that are free and cheap and easy and effective that just benefit you and the team as a whole.

And it's, it's frustrating to me because I've seen too many just not do that kind of stuff. I'm a firm believer in growing before you get there. If you like sports analogies, think of Michael Jordan.

He didn't just walk on the floor first time in the Chicago Bulls and do what he did.

He started when he was a kid and even got cut from his middle school basketball team before he finally, you know, said, I'm going to prove these guys wrong. And so he learned everything ahead of time.

I play saxophone and have since I was a kid, still play and I still practice today, even today when we get a new piece of music or we're getting ready for a big concert or something. So you're, you're constantly. I learned how to play all the way through my life. So you're constantly learning.

Leadership is a journey, not a destination. You may have a goal to get to a certain point, but once you do, everything changes and you're going to end up having to grow again.

Yeah, always be learning, always be learning something new. I mean, go back to we didn't know Covid was coming and when it hit, look out the change it made and how everyone had to think about business.

Now you're dealing with generations in the workforce. I'm part of the baby boomers.

So as we are going out in the next five to seven years and leaving the workforce and everybody's coming up, the whole dynamic is going to change as much as it's changed the last two to three years. When the Gen Z people really stepping into the workload, into the workspace. So you've got that, you've got AI and how it's impacting everything.

We don't know where that's going to go when it's changing so fast, it's hard to keep your hands around it. I'm trying to get a handle on learning it too. I do.

Freddy D: 00:14:43

Yeah. I want to go back, I want to circle back a bit about what you're talking about with the team and the leadership.

One of the things that I remember that one of our regional managers would do is every Friday we would go to.

Right across the street was a bar restaurant and he would invite the team and we would go and we would set up a bunch of tables and have happy hour, you know, beverages and food. Back then they used to serve, you know, good food. That'd be your dinner, really back in the day. And we would hang out and just have fun.

And that built a camaraderie amongst the team. We ended up going camping together, we would go boating together, we would go Chicago Cubs games together. We were like family in a sense.

We would play poker together and.

But whenever we needed to suit up and get ready for either a technical presentation or I would be traveling to some state for a week doing install and training. When we come back, everybody would be doing whatever they need to do.

We still got together on a Friday when everybody flew back in or whatever and got together and built that bond.

And I think that bond is what I call creates super fans of the management team because we would do anything for our guy because of the way he treated us.

David Graddy: 00:16:14

You don't see a lot of that, as much of that camaraderie in the team world that I've seen. Everyone's a team. We have all hands meetings and different things like that, but you don't see that kind of camaraderie.

It may be just the how old I am and how I do things and how the younger and everyone in between, it's kind of fallen by the wayside. You'll have every once in a while they'll do a.

A team building exit thing where the group will get together and go play miniature golf or go wherever and do something. We did disc golf a while back, which I'm horrible at. So it was entertaining.

So, yeah, building a team has totally changed over the last 20, 25 years because we were a lot like you guys you were talking about. When I first started with Boeing, we were. We would go out, we'd play basketball at the rec center once a week and that type of thing.

So it was an interesting lot more togetherness. I guess it would be the best way for me to say it.

And you don't get that when you're at work, yeah, you're a team, but you don't get the camaraderie, at least not that I've seen.

Freddy D: 00:17:28

Yeah, we used to go out to lunch together, try out different places, and it was just fun. I'm still friends with some of these people 45 years later. So the dynamics you write have changed significantly.

My wife, which works in the other room, she works remotely. She's been going on eight years for a company remotely. But they do things virtually as team events.

So they'll get together and get together, and it's just a fun time together. Sometimes it'll be a meeting and it'll be reviewing stuff.

But once a year, they fly everybody in from the the country down to their office in Coral Gables, Florida, and they get everybody together, and it's usually a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday kind of a event to build that camaraderie, because they know that people are remote, but it's important to bring those people together. And that's why that company's in 11 years, it's north of $100 million in sales, and they're selling hearing aids over the phone.

David Graddy: 00:18:33

That's interesting. I'll give you an example of kind of what you're talking about.

Over my years at Boeing, you work with hundreds of people, people you support, people that you team with. And when I retired, going through that, people leave, people go, people come.

And I moved and did my last four years in Oklahoma City from when I moved from Wichita and lost connection with a bunch of these people. But we had a really close, pretty close team.

When I came back to Wichita and went to work for Spirit, which used to be a Boeing entity, when I came back, a bunch of those people word, Spirit, and when I walked back in the door, it was like we reconnected.

And it was so cool because the camaraderie and the friendships and the connection we had before, I didn't have to walk in and actually really prove myself because they already knew me. And walking in what I knew, how I worked, and the people that didn't know me, they vouched for me.

So it made my life coming back in there a lot more smoother. So connections and camaraderie and team can have a ripple effect way down the line.

And you're talking, in some of those cases, 20 to 30 years down the line, I'm back with these people. And into some cases, it was like we never really split, right?

Freddy D: 00:19:58

Yeah. I mean, I can talk to some of the guys that I've worked with. And there's like we talked.

It's kind of refreshing to hear other people have experienced those kind of things because I think the generation today needs to kind of look back a little bit about some of the things that you and I have experienced and incorporate that into it, because I think that will lead to better productivity, better engagement in the company and definitely help the company's scale quicker. Because everybody wants to be part of the conversation.

David Graddy: 00:20:32

Yeah. And I think we're at Spirit. Boeing has just acquired Spirit back as of this week.

And so plugging that culture back in the Boeing culture, back in to the Spirit culture, should be interesting to see how it all gels together and we come back together as a company back into that fold, I think it'll be pretty smooth. We're not too far off. When I left Boeing, when I came to Spirit, there was a lot of similarities. Still changes.

So it'll be an interesting next year to two years to see how everything really gels up.

Freddy D: 00:21:08

So let's go into how you worked with the team. And you may have stepped into a role where the team was, eh? And you took that team and spun it around and got them to really level up the.

There are deliverables, I'll put it that way. And to where I would say they became super fans of your leadership and you've transformed them in the department.

David Graddy: 00:21:30

Oh, wow. Thinking about that, I will go back to when I moved from Witta to Oklahoma City.

They were just standing up that site and they had a small group of analysts.

And so when they shut Boeing down here and I moved to Oklahoma City, I walked in and being the tools subject matter expert for earned value management processes, I had to teach those people, that small group what the tools did, what the processes were, how it all fit together, and how they use that to deliver the product to the customer. Over the next four years, that grew from one group to. To five teams.

And I trained all those people and I did a couple of things to try to level that up and get them up and running.

And part of it had to do with the instruction I gave them for the software because they had to know how to use it and what to look for when they were looking at the numbers and what it produced. As I was doing that, I would also mentor the new ones. And they didn't know I was doing this. But I would go to either each of the five groups.

I'd find some reason to go to their team area at least once a week. And I would walk in and as I was talking to them, hey, what's going on, guys? You got any problems?

I would purposely stop at the newer people and ask them, having any struggles? Are there any areas you want to ask some questions on?

I would try to mentor them on the pass by, and I would do that every week for three or four months just to make sure they were coming up and they were learning and they were hitting something. I made sure they were going through three or four cycles.

So if something hit or landed, there was an error or a problem or something they're struggling with, I could help them with. And that took the whole team.

And everyone got better at using the tools, better understanding what the numbers were, how they explained the variances and the problems or the successes that they had. And it just exponentially over the four years where everyone was rocking and rolling long.

And I didn't have to teach as much because when you say superfans one, I went down one row one day and I can't think of the guy's name, but he was new and he had just gone through the training, and he stopped me and he said, what you trained is. Makes it so easy to do the job. Because I gave him the instructions, I gave him the tips that I'd always gave him. Tips. Hey, look for this.

Hey, you need to watch out for this. Be aware of this. And he said, it just makes the job that much easier the way you trained and what you did.

So I thought, in the way you put it, superfan. And I was. And I was. I was glad I could do that for that group. And I had a pretty tight relationship with all those analysts and everything.

And when I retired, there were a lot of those guys still there in my retirement.

Freddy D: 00:24:40

Well, you transformed their lives.

Freddy D: 00:24:42

You taught them a skill that they

Freddy D: 00:24:45

didn't have by learning a new technology and everything else.

So you've really transformed them to be able to do the job that they were looking to do, which they didn't know how to do in the beginning because you had to learn all this new technology. So you transformed them in a very positive way so that they could grow into their careers.

David Graddy: 00:25:05

I tried to teach them what the tool did and then teach them the thinking around it, because you can see the number, but you need to know what the number says, where it comes from, and then how to explain what that number means to whoever you're explaining it to, which is usually a manager, your manager, the next one up the chain. And you need to be able to answer those questions that those managers are going to know.

So being prepared And I learned that from my very first boss when I started at Boeing.

We would put our 10 charts together that were the monthly charts, and he would spend the first 15 minutes just checking numbers and making sure everything was right. And then he would start asking questions. And you needed to know your stuff. And so that's why I taught them.

It's as much thinking about what you are putting out. You have to know what it is and be able to explain it, not just how to mechanically do it. And that's important.

Freddy D: 00:26:04

Sure. I'll share kind of a funny story.

As I mentioned earlier, I started as an application guy and I didn't have presentation skills because I used to be an engineer.

Well, we got taught to use the software and then I got sent to go install the software and teach people how to use a CAD system, which was teaching people going from two people would think in 3D but draw their drawings in 2D, 2D drafting. Well, now I was going, okay, David, you know, you can think in 3D

Freddy D: 00:26:34

and skip this 2D step and you

Freddy D: 00:26:35

can go right into computer and design in 3D. And had to give people their mindsets around. And I'd have the manual and I'd be like, I remember distinctly.

I won't mention the company name, but it'd be like you and I sitting together. And I have the manual says, okay, you need to go to this command string over here on this page and all this stuff.

It was absolutely horrible, but you didn't know any better because you were just learning. But I was a paragraph ahead. And to teach you how, it was absolutely the worst training I could have done.

I got sent to a second company and this time I was doing it in front of a group. And the end of that day. I've shared the story many times on the show.

That manager called me over and said that was the worst effing training he's ever seen in his entire life. And he basically said, I'll give you a little tomorrow to figure it out.

Otherwise I'm going to call your boss and have your effing stupid effing rear end. I mean, it's burned into my brain. Fired. And I slept well that night.

And I came up with engagement training back in 81, where I would turn around and put stuff on the marker board and it says, okay, David, this is the command string to create a box. Do you agree with that? No, I think that looks right. Mike, do you agree with David? Well, no, it's missing a syntax. Steve, do you agree with Mike?

That's missing a syntax. I got everybody into the conversation and where I'm going with this is later on it completely changed the whole dynamics of the training.

And then later on, college had bought our system and I was one of the best known installers and trainers in the Midwest because of that large company. That little company I'm talking about is Eaton Corporation, the one that told me I was going to get fired.

And at the college I came up with a method which was really, because I was out hanging out on Friday nights and I had Saturday morning training from 8 to 12 because I had the preferred hours. We had 8 to 12 and from 1 to 4. And since I was the senior guy, I had to pick. But I'd be out playing at the clubs Friday night.

So I came up with a clever idea and I turned around and says, all right, everybody from 8 to 9, you cannot ask me any questions. You have to either go to the manuals or amongst yourselves and figure out the exercise that I put up here to design this gizmo.

And because you don't want to be going to your manager not knowing how to research and do the stuff, meantime I was back there drinking coffee, gluing myself back together so I could teach the rest of the class. But I had the most sign ups

Freddy D: 00:30:53

for the advanced class because actually people learn something.

David Graddy: 00:30:57

Yeah.

When you teach past the book, that's where they learn because they learn how to think about what you're teaching them, not just how to do what you're teaching them.

And that's, that's where I think you grab people and you make super fans out of them because you help them understand something more than just click, click, click enter.

Freddy D: 00:31:21

Right. And that's why I got the most signups for the advanced class.

And back then the four hour class was, I think it was 90 days, four times a month on a Saturday. It was 500 bucks back in those days. So it was not a little money.

David Graddy: 00:31:35

A lot back then.

Freddy D: 00:31:37

Yeah. And I was getting paid 25 bucks an hour, which was a lot of money for teaching.

But I had, you know, people were learning because of the fact that they knew this was an up and coming industry. And so this was a skill set that they could market themselves to get jobs into that industry.

Everything was transitioning to cad, which I'm sure you're familiar with. So I rode that wave.

David Graddy: 00:32:00

Wow, that's good. Yeah. I remember CAD cam in the engineering world at Boeing for years.

Freddy D: 00:32:06

Yep.

David Graddy: 00:32:07

So I'm somewhat familiar with it. I didn't do the engineering myself. But I've dealt, I've worked with engineers. So.

Freddy D: 00:32:14

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about the book. What made you write the book? And let's talk a little bit about what's in the book.

David Graddy: 00:32:20

I told you earlier, the book is based on my experience coming up in organizations and wanting to learn training. Wanted to learn, being trained to be a leader and learn to before I get there.

I've always thought, my philosophy has always been learn something before you need it. And learning leadership was something I was always interested in.

And I never saw or didn't seem as much as I would have thought should have been done. Training of people, giving opportunities to people to learn leadership and be in situations where they can demonstrate it.

So one day I was talking to a young man not long ago and he was asking me questions about leadership because he wanted to be a leader. And he would come to me and hey, I'm in this situation, what do I do? What do you think?

At that point I sat down and said, if I'm sitting across the table from somebody, a young person, and they're wanting to be a leader and they don't really know where to go or what to do, what would I teach them? What would I show them, what would, how would I coach them? And that's was what basically drove the book.

And I sat down and thought, what do they need to know? What do they need to learn? What's a growth plan look like? And that's what precipitated the book coming out. So I sat down and started writing.

Just my own experience. This is what I do, this is what I've done. How did I learn how to communicate? How did I learn within the situation of being in a team?

Because my philosophy was you first must be a connected member of the team so that the team trusts you. Then you step out and you start working to be having influence and being a leader in the team.

And once you do that, that building relationships, probably your problem solver, you help make decisions, you're continually showing good integrity instead of bad integrity. All the things that I do every time I get a new manager and I walk through myself learning, what's this guy?

Are they sharp, are they dull, are they hot headed, Are they calm? Do they ask questions? Do they just give directions? And you want to learn about your boss every time.

And I've had 37 direct reports over my 46 years working. And I don't know if that's a lot or not, but it's a lot for me.

And so every time you get a new boss, it's a new day and you get to learn about them and you get to hopefully impress them. And so you just learn.

So I sat down and wrote the book and got it published and I've done some speaking on it and it's led to my next opportunity to write. I wrote that one and self published it. And now I'm getting ready to work with John Maxwell's publishing company to help me publish my next book.

And that's a really big deal. I'm working with two, three members of his writing team and he has a publishing arm of his overall company that he started two, three years ago.

I'm working with them and they're going to help me publish my next book, which should be really, really exciting to see how that comes out. That book's going to be. I've made this decision to step into that first level management position or leadership position. What does that look like?

Because some companies have leadership training, some don't, some get their people leadership training and some don't. And I'm always, what do I need to learn? And you find out when you step into that, what are my responsibilities? Who do I report to? Who's my team?

What are their responsibilities? And you work your way down through those questions and then you start learning.

And if you have the communication, if you have the decision making, if you have all those things behind you already, it makes you ahead of the game when you get to that first step, because you already are communicating to people. You're already problem solving and you know how to problem solve and you can teach it. You just want to make sure you teach it so that they do it.

Because delegation is one of the things they don't teach you. When you're in the trenches doing the

Freddy D: 00:36:33

work absolutely right, you get caught up and you end up doing a lot of the stuff yourself instead of delegating. And when you delegate, you are basically maximizing the productivity of everybody.

David Graddy: 00:36:51

And I'm a believer in you delegate to help somebody grow. That's your intent. Yeah, you can delegate just to get rid of something off your plate, but that doesn't really serve an effective purpose.

You have to delegate with intent. And the intent is to help somebody grow. They have a growth plan that says, I want to do A, B, C, and this fits into B.

Then delegate that, make sure everybody knows that they're responsible for that, and then let them go. But you always help them. So delegation is one of just one of those things that's kind of Funny to. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.

It just depends on leader.

Freddy D: 00:37:33

Yeah.

But the other thing I want to emphasize that sometimes when you delegate, you also need to empower because they may come up with a better approach than you could have thought of. And if you didn't empower them and basically allow them to be creative, you may never have gotten that great idea.

There's a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. I'm sure you've read it and heard about it.

David Graddy: 00:38:00

Heard the writer speak. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:38:02

11 Madison park here in the restaurant.

And they took a staff member and put him in charge of the fine crafted beers because they found out that this person loved craft beer empowered them and they completely leveled up themselves because of the fact that they were empowered.

David Graddy: 00:38:20

It's effective if you use the strengths of your team to make yourself better. And if you're a good leader, you know the strengths of the people on your team. That's why you're delegating that way.

That's why you're offering opportunities to get outside of that, what you do and get them into something that they can effectively do. Hey, John, over here. You have a skill that would be great on this team we're doing for three months over here. Can you go over here and do that?

And you do that to help the team, but you also do. Let's see what John can do. If John does that really well, I wonder if he could actually lead a team next time and if he would be interested.

Because a lot of people will not even think about, can I be a leader? But if you as a leader, go to him and say, hey, I've got an idea here. I've got an opportunity for you. Would you lead this team? Well, I don't know.

I just don't know. If I do that and you tell them, I know you may be apprehensive, but I know you can do it.

And what you don't know, I can help you with and see what they can do.

It's the only way you really know if the person has the moxie to step into a role like that or step into a role of a leader is to give them a chance and let them show themselves.

Because if you plug them into the leadership spot and it doesn't go well, that looks bad for a lot of reasons, but it looks bad for the person because they may not have wanted to be there anyway. And you put. And so you find out those things ahead. My dad, they wanted him to be a manager.

He bucked rivets as he Said for years at Boeing here in Wichita, I worked for 30, 35 years building planes. He taught the new people coming in to build doors and stuff for all the different planes and they wanted him to be a manager.

And he stepped into it and he figured out really quick, this is not for me. And he asked him to be pulled out and go back to what he was doing because that was not his personality.

Freddy D: 00:40:22

Right.

David Graddy: 00:40:23

So finding if you can do that is, I think, really important. It's a good leader because they're testing and they're seeing who can do it. A good leader always is looking for the next leader.

A good leader to step in. Yeah. To replace themselves sometimes, if they're willing to do that.

Freddy D: 00:40:39

Yeah.

I mean, that's where you get a great leader, is that they look to replace themselves because they may be going into another role with the company and so they want to pull somebody out.

David Graddy: 00:40:49

Yeah. One of the bosses I had was always talking. She's trying to work herself out of that job because there's always the next job up.

And so that's where she was. That's what she was trying to grow to. So she was always trying to find the person to pick up.

I was one of those people in her secession plan until she retired.

Freddy D: 00:41:09

Yeah. There you go.

Freddy D: 00:41:11

David, it's been a great conversation as we come to the end here. How can people find you then?

David Graddy: 00:41:16

Go to davidgrady.com d a v I d G-R-A-D-Y.com. that's my website where they can pick up my seven practical actions to lead where you are before you have the title.

Nice little leadership guide to get you a quick start. They can also pick up my book and I'll hold it up here. Promo time. Leading in the trenches.

A strategic guide to becoming the leader you want to be and your team needs. You can get that at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all the places you get ebooks.

And if you have a question, a comment you want to ask me, something about leadership or leadership development, you can just send me an email@leadavidgrady.com and then you can get me on LinkedIn.

Freddy D: 00:42:08

We'll make sure that's in the show notes.

Freddy D: 00:42:10

Great conversation.

David Graddy: 00:42:11

I'll contact you back when my next book comes out.

Freddy D: 00:42:15

That'll be great. Love to have you on the show.

David Graddy: 00:42:16

Down the road, we can step it up to the next level of being a first level manager. Sure.

Freddy D: 00:42:22

Well, thank you so much for your time and we'll go from there.

David Graddy: 00:42:25

Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Freddy D: 00:42:28

You as well.

Freddy D: 00:42:31

What a powerful reminder from David in this conversation as he shared leadership isn't about titles. It's about preparation, trust and growth long before you ever step into that role.

From sweeping floors in retail to leading aerospace teams, David's message is clear. Learn before you need it. Delegate with intent and build people, not just processes. For service based business owners, that insight is gold.

Too many founders promote their top performer into leadership without equipping them to lead. And what happens? Micromanagement, bottlenecks, burnout.

But when you grow people intentionally, when you mentor, empower and delegate to develop, you don't just build teams, you build momentum. That's how you create buy in, that's how you create ownership, and that's how you create superfans inside your own organization.

And that's exactly why leadership conversations matter. Because predictable growth doesn't happen by accident. It happens when you decide to lead differently.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If this conversation got you thinking about where your business could be not just this year, but three years from now, don't let it stop here.

Too many service based Too many service based founders get stuck in feast or famine revenue, marketing that doesn't convert and teams that depend on them for every decision. You don't have to build it alone. Join the Entrepreneur Prosperity Hub on Skool.

It's free to join and it's where I mentor founders who want predictable growth, stronger teams, smarter AI driven systems, and a business that actually scales.

You'll get the Service Provider Prosperity playbook, weekly growth strategies and direct access to other growth focused entrepreneurs inside live virtual sessions designed for real collaboration, not small Talk. Go to schoolskoo.com eprosperityhub and step into a smarter way to grow. Thanks for tuning in today.

I'm grateful you're part of the Business Superfans movement. Every listen and every action brings you closer to creating your own superfans.

Be sure to subscribe to the show as we've got another great guest coming up and I'll speak to you in the next episode. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer to lasting prosperity.

Intro: 00:45:08

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