Episode #29： Serve to Lead with James Strock
Episode Stats
Summary
James Strzok is a recognized authority on the subject of leadership. He is the author of several books on leadership, including Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership and Reagan on Leadership. His latest book is Serve to Lead, Your Transformative 21st Century Leadership System. In addition to writing about leadership, James travels the world consulting and speaking to companies on the topic of leadership and can answer those questions.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another episode of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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As men, we all lead at some point in our lives. We serve as leaders in our jobs,
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our communities, or maybe in our families. But what sets apart the truly great leaders
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from the merely good ones? Is leadership a skill you can develop, or is it something you're just
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born with? Well, our guest today is a recognized authority on the subject of leadership and can
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answer those questions. His name is James Strzok, and he's the author of several books on leadership,
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including Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership and Reagan on Leadership. His latest book is called
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Serve to Lead, Your Transformational 21st Century Leadership System. And I just finished reading
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this book, and it was fantastic, and I encourage you all to go get it. In addition to writing on
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leadership, Mr. Strzok travels the world consulting and speaking to companies on the topic of
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leadership. James, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Brett. I'm delighted to be here,
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and I just love the work you do. What a tremendous website, and what terrific information, and what
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great history you share with all of us. Thank you. Well, thank you, sir. So, James, your new book,
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Serve to Lead, you've written about leadership before. Why did you decide to write this book,
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Serve to Lead, now? Well, for a few reasons. One is that whenever I would
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be speaking to groups, many people would try to say, let's get leadership down to one sentence,
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one word. What would it be? And I thought about it, struggled with it, and it became quite clear
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to me that service is the answer. The second reason is that leadership really is changing before our
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eyes right now for a whole lot of reasons. We all recognize the tremendous leadership failures from
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Wall Street to Main Street, from Washington all the way to the Vatican. But there's also
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extraordinary things happening right now, and I think we're going to look back and see this.
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It's not just the end of one era, but the beginning of a golden age of leadership. I felt that really,
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I had not seen a book that dealt straight on with these changes in a practical way that all of us could
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apply, and that's what the goal of this book is. Yeah, that's one of the things I enjoyed about it.
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It wasn't just theory, but it was very practical, you know, things that you just, you can use right
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away, and that's what I really enjoyed about it. Thank you. It's intended to be that way. It's also
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intended to be, particularly because it's built on the strengths the readers bring to it, to really
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become their own book. And it's a book that anybody could hopefully apply at any time of life.
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So you mentioned that we're kind of in a transformational stage in our society and
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government. There's a lot of things going on, a lot of upheaval. What's the difference between
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effective leadership today and how things are now, compared to what effective leadership was 30,
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40, or even 100 years ago? Well, one of the biggest differences that we all see every day
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is in the midst of the information revolution. It used to be that organizations, for example,
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whether it's the military or a company or perhaps a family, would tend to have a person
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like a boss. And the notion was that they knew best what to do and sort of used others to help
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them extend their reach. Today, that's entirely outmoded. And as you know, what happens today is
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that in any organization, there's clearly much greater useful knowledge and value at the so-called
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bottom of the organization. And there's also always more useful knowledge and value outside
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of any organization than within it. So this has entirely changed what people in leadership roles
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have to do, where it used to be about direction. Now it's about empowerment. And that's not just a
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word of speaking. It totally changes what leaders or people we think of as leaders do day in, day out,
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they're going to be effective. And so would it be fair to say some of the problems we've had
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is that people or leaders are applying this old wave, you know, leadership theory from 100 years
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ago, what worked during the Industrial Revolution? They're still trying to apply that to now to the
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new information revolution? Exactly. I think that's a terrific summary. And what's happened is,
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and I think you'll see this in the book, Serve to Lead, on the one hand, some people today might feel
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a little bit at sea, in that things today are quite different than they have been in recent
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decades. However, many of these changes and what they require of people, if they're going to be
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effective as leaders, also open up the experience, knowledge, and history of people much further back
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to the mid-20th century. And that's one of the very interesting things about working on this book.
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And I would add, by the way, that's one of the great things about your website, because you're
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constantly bringing in history in a very useful, down-to-earth, applicable way to let people
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know that some of the things they've seen in their own lives just don't add up to be enough
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to work with. Yeah. And throughout your book, you refer to what you call the four questions.
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What are these questions, and how do they help people become better leaders?
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Well, you know, one of the things that Peter Drucker, the great management theorist,
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has been quoted as saying shortly before his death, is that in the future, meaning now,
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questions are increasingly more important than answers. And that sort of thinking is the premise
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for the book, because it's built on questions that can be applied in any leadership situation one
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faces. That also means that each person will come to their own answers. And the people that do it best
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will bring all their unique characteristics and experiences together to come up with answers
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that serve others that no one else has done. So with that in mind, what the book does is offer
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four questions throughout, as you pointed out. The first is the key one. Who are you serving?
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The second, how can you best serve? And that goes to any given circumstance.
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Then the next level up, are you making your unique contribution? And finally, are you getting
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better every day? And if you think, as I hope you saw in the book, about those questions and apply
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them, they can literally structure all of your thinking in an actionable way.
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So James, you talked about at the beginning that there's been kind of a failure of leadership in
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a lot of places in our society. Are there any leaders right now who exemplify the serve-to-lead
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Yes. And let me name two or two types. One is Nelson Mandela, period. And the other is,
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there are a lot of people you've not heard about yet in public forums, but you may be encountering,
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whether it's at Walmart, either as a customer or working there, whether it's at the local church
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or at a high school. I think there are many people who are not yet known in a public way who are
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beginning to apply these things. And as they go, particularly young people, further in their
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careers, you will see it in positional leadership as well, reflecting these changes. But among
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renowned figures, the one that just flies out above all others who's today, thankfully, with us is
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Now, James, you talked about how you like to try to go back to history and take lessons and
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practical lessons from that. And you've actually, your two previous books, looked at two American
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presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and try to extrapolate lessons from their political
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careers. What leadership lessons can a man take from Theodore Roosevelt? You know, we're big fans of
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T.R. is the best, isn't he? T.R. is, he's been well called the most lovable president. And he's just a
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spectacular figure, I think, because of history and the things you can't predict. And because we tend to
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measure presidential greatness by victory in war, particularly, some of his very successes that
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avoided war as president may have held him back a little. But even with that, he's constantly regarded
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in this time period as among the handful of best presidents ever. And I think with really good reason.
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Among his top lessons, the one that he would want everybody to look at his life and take away
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is that character is the fundamental part of everything. And it doesn't matter so much what a
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person accomplishes in a certain way in life. It matters what they are. That's what the lessons
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are. He said that over and over and over again. He also believed very strongly that leaders are,
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to the greatest extent, self-created. And that seems at first a little odd from him, because he came from
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such a privileged background. But from his point of view, and also from the point of view of others who
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were around him, the TR that became famous, that became president, that became the great leader,
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was very much a self-created figure. And he would want everybody, he used to say boys, now he'd say
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boys and girls, to be able to look at that life and get to their own greatest contribution.
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That's right. With this caveat, I absolutely believe that leaders are made, and I can see it in my world
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and in my work, because you can have people make dramatic strides through adjusting habits of thinking
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and habits of living. And it's measurable. You see it. People live it. They're affected by it.
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At the same time, as in anything, there are obviously certain people who are supremely gifted.
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Now, leadership, the nature of the gift may vary how it's valued in a given time, to some extent.
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And I often think of it like basketball. Look, with respect to you, I'm sure you're a fine athlete,
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but I bet that if you had the best coaching in the world, you're still not going to be Michael Jordan.
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But you could be a hell of a lot better. You could become a star. And that's, I think, how leadership is as well.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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Was there a particular moment in Roosevelt's career that, you know, he showcased his exceptional leadership ability?
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It's interesting because, as you know from reading TR and leadership and your own knowledge of Roosevelt,
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that's already very great, he had a number of rather spectacular leadership moments.
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And so I think, to me, what's most interesting is the one that he valued most.
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And that, of course, would be his service in the Spanish-American War in 1898.
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And you'll recall that even after he left the presidency, when he had his choice of honorifics,
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he preferred to be called the colonel, not President Roosevelt.
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Edmund Morris is actually coming out with a new biography about his career after his presidency,
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and it's called the colonel, I believe, or Colonel Roosevelt.
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Absolutely. I'm sure it's going to be spectacular.
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And like I'm sure you have done, I will be one of the first to have that flying my way when it comes out this October.
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Exactly. So what about Ronald Reagan? He's pretty close to us in history.
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I guess we've had some time to evaluate his impact as a leader.
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What lessons in leadership can men take from Ronald Reagan?
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Well, first, I guess, let's talk about men and men and women.
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And I've got to say, I don't know how you think of it.
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I've noticed sometimes on your outstanding website, some people take offense.
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Sometimes they'll say manliness or whatever, and I'll be womanliness or something.
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Well, a number, I don't take offense at it. I think it's great.
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But I also recognize that a number of things that traditionally might be called manly traits in the good sense,
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also women can have in a similar or their own way.
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Reagan, when my book first came out a decade ago,
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a lot of folks did not recognize yet universally how consequential he was.
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And, of course, now everybody does, from all political parties,
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no matter whether they like his views or not or what he did,
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they recognize he is the very model of a consequential president.
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And James McGregor Burns, one of the great historians who politically disagreed entirely with Reagan,
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said that he, along with Franklin Roosevelt, would stand as the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century.
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and it's going to come out again with an update late this year for Reagan's 100th anniversary, centennial.
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And it's, by the way, got some very exciting new parts to it.
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But I think that perhaps the biggest lesson goes back to your prior point,
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and that is that he was also, to a very great extent, self-created as a leader.
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He used to always say that he would try to make it look easy, but it wasn't.
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And Reagan made a study of leadership, a study of leaders.
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In fact, there are several contemporaries of his who wrote about situations
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where they saw him observing leaders such as Eisenhower in public situations.
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They study very, very carefully in a way most people don't.
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And, of course, Franklin Roosevelt was his ultimate idea of kind of how a leader did the job.
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Not Roosevelt's policy, but Roosevelt as a leader,
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which in turn, you'll recognize, connects him in a sense to T.R.
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So what was Reagan's defining leadership moment?
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If you ask most people, they would point to his public address in October 1964,
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where he spoke on behalf of Barry Goldwater's sinking presidential campaign.
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Goldwater and the campaign went to a record defeat.
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But Ronald Reagan, who went on television to raise money for the campaign right before the election,
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And from that began to be lifted rapidly in many people's minds toward the political elective route
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that he had considered off and on for the prior 20 years.
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But he actually then would take within two years running for governor of California.
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And, of course, he first ran for president before he was governor, even two years.
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But I think Reagan, I would argue that what I find a really hinged time of his life
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And that was very much outside of his worldview at that time.
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And I needn't add, at that time it was also politically deadly, so it was thought,
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He also lost a baby girl shortly after her birth with Wyman right before the divorce.
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He began to be fighting communists in Hollywood, and that was not just a little debating society thing.
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There were people who threatened to disfigure his face with acid.
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And my guess is it was that period in which a lot of the traits that became so important for him,
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If you look at key times in his presidency or in his life, for example, 1976, where he was losing every primary to President Ford,
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almost in an embarrassing way, people all urged him to get out.
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And he just sat there literally in his sort of granite-like way and just said, no, we're going to see it through.
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In the early 80s, when the economic situation was grievous, the international situation was very tough,
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he was, again, very self-contained, able to withstand that and hold to his views and work through it.
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And likewise, late in his term, when you had a whole series of tough things happen, with the stock market crash,
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you had problems with his immediate staff, you had the Iran-Contra affair, all this in the 96-97 period,
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losing his party control of the Senate, his mother-in-law died, his wife got cancer.
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He got through all that and then had a last burst where he basically dispatched the Soviet Empire to oblivion
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and, in so doing, reconfigured a lot of the political alignments because he wasn't entirely supported in that by his own side,
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So that's a long way of saying I think that self-containment, that remarkable power to be engaged in the world
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but to maintain that kind of separation may have really been tempered in that immediate post-World War II period.
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Before we leave, any parting advice to our listeners on how they can improve their leadership skills today?
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Well, you might imagine, I think the best possible way is to read Surf to Lead.
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And the reason I say that is, again, I think the focus, if they could do one thing beginning this very moment after listening just to your outstanding podcast
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and always reading your great website, it would be to begin by asking that one question, who are you serving?
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And that one question, and the book can help you then really work it through how it plays out in real life,
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can begin to change your whole world and make your world a better one because you're serving others.
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It's just a terrific delight to be with you, and I love all the work you do.
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James is the author of the book, Serve to Lead, and you can purchase his book on Amazon.com.
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And for more information about James' book, check out jamesstrzok.com.
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Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.