Scott Jeffrey Miller - Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from Our Greatest Minds

2021 FranklinCovey Co.

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ISBN 978-1-4002-2102-8 (eBook)

ISBN 978-1-4002-2101-1 (PBK)

Epub Edition June 2021 9781400221028

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937934

Printed in the United States of America

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Ill admit Im in a bit of an enviable position. Every week I have the opportunity to sit with some of the brightest, most creative, disciplined, and driven people you can imagine and pick their brains for the better part of an hour. They appear as guests on FranklinCoveys weekly On Leadership podcast series, which Ive had the honor to host since its inception. The series goal is simple: bring world-renowned experts into an easily digestible, timely, relevant, and inspiring podcastwhich has become the largest and fastest-growing weekly leadership podcast in the world.

Conducting the On Leadership interviews and reading many of the guests books has been an experience that often leaves me with a sense of awe and humility. I can honestly say that spending time with each of them and with their respective works has profoundly changed both my professional and personal life. So I wrote this book as an homage to that experience by selecting thirty On Leadership guests Ive now deemed Master Mentors, and sharing a single transformational insight from each of them. These insights are often drawn from our interview, but in some cases may have come from a prior or later experience with them. Regardless, the unifying criteria for appearing in this book as a Master Mentor is being a featured guest on the FranklinCovey On Leadership podcast series. If you subscribe to On Leadership, youll recognize that our guests share more than a single insight during their interview. However, I wanted this book to be easily digestible and actionable, so Ive selected a single insight Ive designated as transformationalsometimes against the backdrop of my professional roles as a former corporate officer, team leader, and entrepreneur, and other times through my personal roles as husband, father, brother, son, and friend.

Youll discover that, although the chapters are laid out in a similar format, the content, length, and style of each may read differently. Some are longer and others more succinct. A few even include verbatim transcripts from their interview. Read nothing into those choices. I did my best to represent each person uniquely while creating a cadence that I hope illustrates a transformational insight youll find valuable and applicable in your life.

Ive selected the thirty Master Mentors to cover a wide swath of experiences, challenges, and insights relatable to anyone in a formal leadership role or those working on the self-leadership to move ahead, get unstuck, or open their minds to new ideas and ways of thinking. Depending upon your situation at the moment, some of these transformational insights may hit you as profound, while others serve more as a reminder of what you perhaps already know. Either is fine, as each is beneficial. For a sense of the diversity of experiences and structure youll find in the pages ahead, consider just a handful of the Master Mentors highlighted:

• Nick Vujicic, author of too many books to recall: His chapter highlights a powerful moment of insight while he was a guest at my home. His example will change you forever.
• Stephanie McMahon, the Chief Brand Officer for WWE: Her chapter speaks very little to the content of our interview, which was superb, but rather to the minutes that led up to her appearance.
• Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, and Trent Shelton, author of The Greatest You: These two chapters are fundamentally different from the others in that I included the word-for-word transcript from portions of their interviews so as not to miss any of their voice or nuance.
• Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust: This chapter focuses on an insight and leadership skill I learned from him nearly twenty-five years agolong, long before the first podcast. Not my first podcast, but the first podcast.

And those are just five of the thirty Master Mentors included in this first volume. Narrowing from well over a hundred interviews was no minor challenge, and is why there absolutely has to be a second, third, fourth, and ongoing volumes in this series. Looking forward to Master Mentors: Volume 12 in 2032!

To center the main transformational insight and help it stick in your life, every chapter ends with a summation of the key insight and a question or two to prompt deeper thinking and adoption of the principle/practice. My hope is that in the same way I have made these Master Mentors a part of my life, youll accept the invitation to do the same. Chances are, theres at least one transformational insight highlighted here that holds the potential to profoundly change your life for the better.

Think of reading this collection of Master Mentors like spreading a bet across all thirty-seven numbers on a roulette wheel. If youre willing to give the ball a spin, youre guaranteed to hit the jackpot.

NICK VUJICIC

FRANKLINCOVEY

ONLEADERSHIP

WITH SCOTT MILLER

EPISODE 100

MANY OF THE forthcoming chapters in Master Mentors feature a particular insight Ive taken from either a guests book or their podcast interview. Then theres Nick Vujicic. Theres no such thing as a single transformative insight from Nick. Just being in his physical presence is wholly transformative.

Although Nick appeared virtually on our podcast, as most guests do, several weeks later he was a guest at my home in Salt Lake City, Utah. Although Nick lives in Texas, he was traveling to California and dropped by to join my family and friends for a dinner party of sorts. If youre connected to me on any social media platforms or by chance follow me, you know my family has a tradition of hosting a monthly dinner where we invite someone of unique stature to join us and about fifteen local friends. Each month I invite a mix of local business and community leaders, educators, friends, and professional colleagues to join a featured guest for a few hours of food and conversation. Its been a remarkable experience not only for the invited guests but also for our three sons (ages ten, eight, and six) who meet and sit in on fascinating conversations with celebrities, government leaders, and people weve met who are remarkable in some unique way or have accomplished something truly significant. Weve hosted famous musicians, actors, authors, and politicians. A recent guest was former Utah governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman, who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 and served as the United States ambassador to both China and Russia under the Obama and Trump administrations. You could have heard a pin drop during that dinner as he shared stories of his life as a diplomat. Truly remarkable insights are shared each month from different guests.