E2A 110: Lighting Fires at Scale: How Saul Brown Turned Two Decades of Leadership Teaching into a Book 

In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan speaks with Saul Brown, Adjunct Associate Professor and Program Director of the Emerging Leader Program at AGSM, UNSW Business School, founder of Saul Brown Leadership, and author of Learning Leadership: The Science of Lighting Fires in Self and Others. Saul shares how his path through surf lifesaving, financial markets, startups, telcos, and leadership development shaped his views on motivation, trust, and helping technical experts become effective people leaders.

Saul explains the central ideas in Learning Leadership, including the difference between being “the fire” and becoming the “ignition” that lights fires in others. He walks through his five-D framework: direction, do, dump, delegate, and develop, and explores why delegation is so difficult for experts whose identity is tied to technical work. He also reflects on turning 20 years of teaching into a book and offers advice for aspiring expert authors: capture what you already teach, and write for a specific person you want to help.

SHOW LINKS

Get the Book: amazon.com.au/Learning-Leadership-Science-Lighting-Others/dp/1998528952/

AGSM Emerging Leader Program: unsw.edu.au/study/professional-development/course/emerging-leader-program

GUEST BIO

Saul Brown is the founder of Saul Brown Leadership and author of Learning Leadership: The Science of Lighting Fires in Self and Others. He is Adjunct Associate Professor and Program Director of the Emerging Leader Program at the Australian Graduate School of Management, UNSW Business School, where he has spent twenty years helping high performers make the leap to effective people leadership. He has worked with thousands of emerging and established leaders across engineering, finance, healthcare and government, and hosts the Leading to Learn podcast. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

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Website: saulbrown.com

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Episode Transcript

Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.

Scott MacMillan:

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast. 

Announcer

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.

Scott:

My guest today is Saul Brown.

Saul is the Adjunct Associate Professor and Program Director of the Emerging Leader Program at the Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales Business School, and the founder of Saul Brown Leadership. He has spent 20 years helping thousands of technical and domain experts make the leap from high-performing individual contributor to effective people leader. And he's distilled all of it into his first book, Learning Leadership, the Science of Lighting Fires in Self and Others.

Saul, welcome to the show.

Saul Brown:

Thanks so much, Scott. Great to be with you.

Scott:

Let's start with you. You know, you've taken a bit of a winding path into this work. You know, surf lifesaving, then financial markets, then telco, and now 20 years of leadership development.

How did you end up here?

Saul:

Yeah, no, that's a good question. It has been a winding path and quite a wonderful one really to look back on. And I guess part of the benefit of writing a book is that you can look back on some of these things.

And yeah, I was a bit surprised to reflect so strongly on those formative years as a teenager really in surf lifesaving and something that's continued to be a big part of my life. And I think that perspective you get in volunteer organizations where people give their time with no extrinsic reward has always been a really interesting point of reflection for me and, you know, maybe speaks to the subtitle of the book, this science of lighting fires in self and others. So I've always been very interested in how you light yourself up, how you light others up.

And early on in, you know, it was Whale Beach Surf Club on the northern beaches of Sydney here where I was and we didn't have enough active patrolling members. And I was part of a group of young people that was trying to make an environment in that club that would attract more members, that would get members to stay. And they're really formative experiences and experiences then that contrasted quite strongly as I moved in, I guess, to my professional career after university in the financial markets where it was very much about extrinsic rewards and much more direction and sort of formal authority and power.

Yeah, so lots of interesting experiences, lots of contrasting experiences. I then worked in some startup tech companies and some big telcos. And there I got exposed to the world of ideas and strategy and technology and disruption and all of these interesting things that, again, have been a big part of my leadership work.

And I think the one common theme through all of this that ultimately led me into this domain of leadership development, I think, is that I was, you know, I've always been a curious observer of these organisational environments that I find myself in sometimes with my university colleagues. We talk about being organisational anthropologists, you know, really interested in the culture, the way people behave. You know, I think it was obvious to me in my professional career that I was more interested in the organisational aspects of being in a bank, of being a trader, of working in a telco than perhaps I was interested in the technology itself.

And so when I discovered this world of leadership development as a profession, I thought, wow, this is something that I'm really interested in. And, yeah, that's what I've been doing for 20 years now. It's been a great journey.

Scott:

That's fantastic. And look, you've worked with all sorts of different people from different walks of life, right, athletes to, you know, defence to politicians. And, you know, in that time that you've been working with these folks, the job itself has changed, hasn't it, from leaning on formal authority to more leading through trust, to leading through uncertainty and constant change and disruption.

What does that shift, I suppose, look like for someone who's running a team?

Saul:

Yeah, no, I often talk about that shift that I've observed that you've just mentioned there. And early on, a lot of my work, you know, if I go back 20 years ago, a lot of my work was working with, you know, a lot of men in banks and construction industries, you know, and that were under pressure to shift from being a command and control leader to this new modern approach of creating an environment where people could bring their best selves to work. And, you know, and engagement was becoming a serious business.

We were measuring engagement and we knew that and the science has continued to be pretty clear that empowering people gets more discretionary effort and better performance overall. And that was a pretty difficult transition for some of those people, not just men, obviously, but that seemed to be who I was working a lot with early on. And, you know, I'm very happy to report that over that 20 years, there has been a very significant and positive shift in terms of these leadership management capabilities to empower the team to get the best out of others, to be less about the manager leader at the front with all the answers and more about us together as a team.

I think, you know, that that is now the primary approach. There's always still a bit of lingering my way or the highway directive. Leadership doesn't, you know, sits naturally with people.

And I always admire people that haven't that have had role models that have modelled that that's the way to do it, that are trying to do it in this sort of alternative way. And then the sort of the latest wave, if you like, of approaches in management and leadership, as you've mentioned, there is about we could call it leadership in complexity or adaptive leadership. These terms like agile have become very popular and for very good reasons, because the world has gone a bit crazy.

This historic idea that we could plan and predict the future and leverage what has worked for us in the past each year over and over again and get a little bit better at the same thing. You know, for many organisations, that is no longer the case. And so there's these new approaches that are necessary in leadership, in strategy that are much more based on really paying attention to what's going on in the world, being responsive to that, learning very quickly, not getting too stuck in your own expertise that's of the past.

And, you know, the good news is that that shift to management leadership based on trust is a really critical foundation to be able to do that learning together well. So I think that if we'd have been still stuck in the leader as the person out front model, it would be much harder to get these ideas of learning well, of being agile and adaptable going.

Scott:

Yeah. And, you know, I think that's probably a really good place to pivot to talking about the book, because it really is your answer to that shift, isn't it? And so, you know, tell us about learning leadership for the for those who haven't read it.

What is it about? Who did you write it for? And what do you hope that they walk away with?

Saul:

Yeah, well, as you mentioned there, I work with a whole bunch of leaders. And one of the one of my favourite pieces of work each year is this emerging leader program that the University of New South Wales that I'm, you know, I've had this great partnership with for 20 years now. We run this emerging leader program.

We get somewhere between four and six times a year and we get cohorts, mixed cohorts, people from all different organisations, some corporate, some government, some not for profit coming together. And they all have this common challenge around becoming an effective manager leader. Some of them are early career, some of them are mid-career and still are a bit stuck in sometimes they get sent along because they're still a bit of a micromanager or they haven't quite worked out how to get out of their own way and create an environment for the team to be really flourishing.

And so, you know, that's a big part of my work. It's something that I really enjoy doing because the people that come on this program are very enthusiastic, are very open to learn. That's not always the case with more senior leaders that I work with.

And so it's been quite inspiring for me over the years to see these very talented people from all sorts of different backgrounds come along and get this toolkit that we give them and these insights into what's possible as they transition from being a technical person into becoming a leader. And it's really the beginning of them, hopefully, for a really rewarding career beyond their technical domain. And it's not a straightforward transition from this being a technical expert to becoming an effective leader.

And so what the book captures is what it takes to make that transition, why the transition is so hard, some practical tools that you need to do it well. And the thing that I was really pleased that I was eventually got on in my process of trying to write this book was that I've written the book as the story of a young lady, Sarah, an engineer who comes on the program. And I sort of tell it as a story as she applies some of these tools and techniques.

Not always it's not always easy for her. But she does get it all going and her career goes from strength to strength, the impact she's able to have, the way she develops her team and brings them along. So, you know, that's what I've been.

It's 20 years this year that I've been part of that Emerging Leader program. So in a way, it was capturing what's been a big part of my life and what I hope can continue to be a really helpful and impactful resource for other emerging leaders like Sarah. I hope to continue being on this program for some time.

I had the pleasure, Scott, you'll be happy to hear of handing out the book to the whole course that attended just last month. So they've now put it as a resource to remember the course. And I'm hoping, of course, it'll be interesting to many to much broader audience, too.

Scott:

That's fantastic. I love hearing that. You're absolutely right.

You know, one of the things in the book I thought that was sort of an insightful analogy or metaphor is that you draw the bit of a distinction between the leader who tries to be the fire and the one who is the ignition.

Saul:

Yeah.

Scott:

Tell us a little bit about those two types of leaders.

Saul:

Yeah, well, I think that we see a lot of these leaders that are the, you know, they are the source of the energy for the team. And I guess what I'm saying is that that's a less sustainable approach than lighting the fires in everybody in the team. So if the leader can think of themselves as the ignition of fire in others rather than the source of the momentum, the energy, the fire themselves.

And, you know, one piece of research I used to use a lot in my work is by Daniel Goldman, who's well known for all his work on emotional intelligence. And he actually looked at different styles of leadership and he had all these different names. He didn't call them the fire and the ignition, but he he identified what he called this leadership style called the pace set up.

And so this person was the person that would be running out front saying, follow me, you know, look how fast we can go. But it was always about that leader out the front leading the charge. And what he found was that that approach to leadership was quite effective at getting things started, but it wasn't sustainable.

And as soon as that person wasn't out front, the momentum would stop. And he contrasted that to two other types of leadership that were more effective that he called leader as coach or a coaching style of leadership. And the other one was visionary, the visionary leader that creates this kind of beacon on the hill that we're striving towards.

And so I think what I'm what I offer in the book is a combination of that visionary approach and the leader as coach. And, you know, I'm pretty confident that that if you can get that going and many people do, that it is a very effective way of leading a team and ultimately developing people that, you know, will go on to be more effective beyond anything that you can kind of encourage or shape or get going yourself.

Scott:

Wonderful, yeah, you know, I love a good metaphor and for a book, it's a really effective way of communicating. The other thing that I really love is a good a good framework. And perhaps that's the former management consultant in me.

But the book is built around, you know, your five D's direction, do, dump, delegate and develop. Could you walk us through them just very quickly, if you would? And, you know, is there one that perhaps is particularly difficult for people?

Saul:

So, yeah, that framework has evolved and I should credit my dear colleague, Humphrey Armstrong, who had the beginning of this before I joined even the Emerging Leader program. He was the program director before me. And some of this is inspired by that Eisenhower matrix of time management and some work of Stephen Covey.

And, you know, early on, it was do, dump, delegate that we had people thinking about what's the real high value work in leadership, what's the low value work and what should you be delegating. But what we found was that people were nervous to delegate, that people would go off on tangents or off-piste or whatever. So, you know, I started to bring in this first D.

The first thing we need to do as a leader, and again, a lot of the research backs this up, is that we need this shared understanding of where we're going. So the first D is all about direction. And I get people doing a lot of work thinking about how they're going to create that shared understanding with their team of where we're going.

And that should not only be clear, but a compelling direction that sort of motivates people. So that's the first D. Then we get into the do, dump, delegate.

So do is all about once we've got that sense of direction, what's my role as the leader? What's the high value work that I should prioritize? And typically it's not in the weeds doing the tasks.

It's all of those other things to set the team up to do that well, to stay connected to what's coming over the horizon, to opportunities and problems. Really, to bring that alive, we've got the dump, you know, that's the shadow side of the high value. It's what are the low things that might, low value things that might distract you or take you away from the high value stuff.

And how do you get better at saying no, or at least having some negotiation conversations about some of that? And then there's work that you should be doing. This is really the key bit and probably the bit that people find most difficult, which is the stuff that the team should be doing.

But your job is to delegate it to them in a way that sets them up for success. And then we used to get a lot of people saying, but the team's just not ready for me to delegate to them. So we brought in the fifth and final D, which is about development.

So we'd say, well, it's your job over time to get them ready to hand more often. And I really do subscribe to this idea of doing yourself out of a job over time. And that's not so you can have your feet up on the desks, let's say, but it's because there's a whole bunch of other bigger strategic challenges that, you know, that warrant attention, the future of your business, the, you know, the problems that you never quite get around to.

And so, you know, that that's the five days. And the idea, Scott, is that that's the downstream platform that we need to get in place, which then creates capacity to work on this upstream strategic value add. And that's an endless path for you, for leaders to be leaving the business or the government department in better shape in the future than you found it.

Scott:

You know, I really appreciate that final D that you've added to this, because I, you know, I hear a lot of pushback from people around the delegation, because just as you said, they feel like, you know, there's not a person on the team that can handle some of the work that needs to be delegated. But highlighting that fact that people need to be developed so that they can take that on, I think that's a really, really thoughtful and insightful addition to, you know, some of the standard advice that's given in the area.

Saul:

Yeah. And, you know, I might just add there that in the book, I talk a lot about the excuses that people come up with of why they cannot delegate. And, you know, I've had 20 years now of hearing those excuses or the resistance to the idea of delegating.

And I'm endlessly fascinated by people who think I don't want to overload the team or they're just not ready for it yet, or it's faster if I do it myself. Or some people just love doing the technical work. So much of their identity has been invested in that over time.

And so one of the things that, you know, I try to capture in the book, but you don't make this transition just by reading the book. You need to put these ideas into practice over time. And so what I've seen over 20 years is people that I've encouraged to look, why don't you just give it a go for a month and see what happens?

Could you just treat it as an experiment? And it's amazing how mostly people find that actually not only is the team willing to take on more responsibility, they have really responded in a positive way by having more responsibility. Or, you know, I was worried about what would I do if I wasn't doing this, but now I'm starting to develop this new identity and get excited about this pathway of leadership and thinking more strategically.

So, you know, sometimes we've got to prove to ourselves that what's holding us back is not as kind of real or dangerous as we think in this work too.

Scott:

And this is your first book, and like you said, you spent 20 years really teaching this material to people live in a room. What was the hardest part about getting all of that onto the page? You know, I'm curious whether anything maybe worked out in the classroom that you couldn't make work in writing or by contrast, maybe some things work better in writing.

Saul:

Yeah, no, it was a really, really interesting process. It was, you know, I think Ernest Hemingway once said that change happens slowly at first and then very fast. And so that was my writing process.

I think I'd written about a hundred first thousand words of this book before I was got some momentum. And, you know, I think I first met you, Scott, in the expert author community here in Australia. And I was in this group with other aspiring writers trying to overcome.

I had this idea that I wanted to write the book, but needed some help on how to get started. And for me, you know, the thing that worked for me was that. I love I do these beach walks every morning, and what I started doing was while I was walking, I dictate my ideas for the next section of the book.

And I had this little app that would then turn that into a nice piece of text. And I'd come home and spend an hour on developing that further in some way. And that same piece of technology I was using helped me or keep my ideas a bit organized, which was also very helpful for me.

Yes. So in the end, that was sort of the process. And, you know, it's it's the book itself is true to the course that I run.

But it is it goes it covers off quite different things. For example, in the course, I had always referenced some of the science that underpins this approach of empowering people. The self-determination theory, one of the most robust psychological frameworks that exists by Dickey and Ryan.

And, you know, normally I just mention that as a passing comment in the course. But the book enabled me to go much deeper into that. There's a whole chapter on the science that underpins it.

And equally, there are a lot of experiential components that I do in the course that I don't really refer to in the book. So, you know, I hope people still come on the course. I hope that the complementary things, the course and the book.

I mean, just one example is there's really a central activity that we do in the course where we've primed people for two days that the work of leadership is to get the work done through the team, not to do it themselves. And then we give we make some of them the leaders and some of them the operations team, and we give the leaders the task. And their job is to delegate it off.

And this, you know, nine times out of 10, they go away and they try to solve it themselves. And it's a great aha moment that there we go. This is deeply ingrained in us.

So, you know, so it's been I feel like it's a great complementary thing, the book, actually.

Scott:

Wonderful, wonderful. I really love that. Those really tangible exercises and bringing those into the book, I think are really effective.

So a lot of people listening may have their own, you know, 20 years of experience in their own discipline and maybe have been thinking about writing a book, but haven't taken that leap yet. Knowing what you know now, what would you tell them?

Saul:

You know, I spent two years trying to think about how do I write this book before I really got going? And the thing that was helpful for me in the end was just to go back to being true to what I say on this course, what I say to my clients and to just literally speak it and record it. So I would say that if you've got a version of that, you know, I wonder now whether it would have been helpful to somehow record me in the course and have that as a transcript to start with.

I didn't do that, but I did it on my own outside of the course. And the other thing that. You know that Kelly and others on this expert author community used to talk a lot about was being really clear on who your audience was, and, you know, I kind of at some level never believed that at the time because I was kind of had this fantasy that my book was going to be relevant for everybody.

And yet, sure enough, you know, I was I was a bit stubborn with that. And in the end, I thought about. The people that come on the course that.

That get the most out of it and that had most inspired me and these characters, Sarah, the engineer that I ended up writing about, I had a very clear picture of a lady that was Sarah that had come on that was a little bit nervous about stepping into leadership that was super smart, had so much to offer. And I followed how she's really put it all into practice and in such a positive way. So that was a really helpful thing.

So that'd be the two things I'd say. You know, if you can capture what you're already doing as an expert, just get that on paper in any form to start with and have that client or that person that, you know, is a great case study or that inspires you in what you do as the audience that you're trying to write for.

Scott:

That's wonderful advice. I'm a big proponent of that, you know, identifying who it is that you're writing for. So thank you for raising both of those.

So for anyone who wants to get their hands on learning leadership or follow your work, what's the where's the best place to find you?

Saul:

Well, yeah, you can find me at my website, SolBrown.com, and I'd love to hear from anybody that's interested in my leadership work or the book. So SolBrown.com, the book's available online and I assume you can ask for it in most bookshops and they'll be able to track that down. Certainly, it's available in multiple formats on Amazon.

There's an audio book coming at some point when I get organized with that. And the other thing I just say to people is to, you know, I'd also like to just acknowledge the AGSM Emerging Leaders Program and would encourage people to check that out, come along if that's a relevant thing for them, or maybe they could send their team leaders along as part of their development. We get people from all over the world, certainly from the Southern Hemisphere, we get a lot of people, but increasingly we get people visiting from all over the world on that course, too.

Scott:

That's wonderful. And we'll make sure to put those links in the show notes so that it's very easy for people to to follow them. Sol, thank you so much for joining us today.

You know, what what stays with me through this conversation is that leading well and staying a learner turn out to be the same job, really. And, you know, 20 years of teaching people how to do this and now anybody can pick up the book. So I really appreciate you sharing it with us so generously.

Saul:

Thank you, Scott. It's been great to be with you.

Scott:

As we wrap up this episode of Entrepreneur to Author, remember this. Now is the time, time to write, time to publish and time to grow. I'm Scott MacMillan.