President and CEO of First Command Mark Steffe Says: Don’t just tell people to get to a better place — help them.

Episode 62

Mark Steffe believes that business leadership is like coaching a youth baseball team. Sometimes you just have to confront the obvious. Mark recalled that once while coaching a youth team, he tired of watching how comments from the stands were impacting his star pitcher. If the pitcher was struggling, there was always that parent who would yell “Throw a strike” – making it even more challenging for the pitcher to do just that. So he approached the pitcher with a dare: the next time a parent yelled about throwing strikes, Mark offered the pitcher $100 to tuck his glove under his arm and look at the parent and say, “No kidding!”

The pitcher, who happened to be Mark’s son Jack, never collected the $100, but as Mark shared in this episode, “throw strikes” has grown into something of a sporting metaphor at First Command Financial Services, which maintains more than $35 billion in managed accounts and mutual funds and has more than $62 billion in life insurance coverage in force for some 280,000 military families.

“If Jack’s not throwing strikes, it’s not because he doesn’t care to throw them, or he doesn’t want to throw them. Something’s wrong with his mechanics,” he explained. “What Jack doesn’t need is a coach or a parent shouting ‘throw strikes.’ He needs his coach to get out of the dugout, call timeout, walk out to the mound and help him adjust his mechanics.”

The same thing is true in business organizations. When an employee isn’t performing up to snuff, Mark wants his supervisors to avoid telling them to sell more, deliver more, get better results, work harder, and the like. Instead, he wants the leaders to “roll up their sleeves, get their hands a little bit dirty and help people get to a better place—not just tell them to get to a better place.”

Listeners will enjoy learning how to be an agile leader, motivate with mission, and make love a core value.

You will learn:

4:00 How to become a more well-rounded teammate.
5:00 How to ensure your message is effectively received.
10:00 How playing basketball shaped Mark’s goal-setting technique.
18:00 How to take a group of individuals and make them a team.
21:30 How to navigate leadership transition.
23:00 The traits Mark learned from former CEO Scott Spiker.
26:00 Do not shy away from constructive feedback.
27:00 How to maximize your talent.
28:00 Mark’s experience coaching his kids’ sports teams.
36:30 How to be a better listener.

Resources:

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.
First Command is committed to coaching our Nation’s military families to become financially disciplined and confident. Learn more.