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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by authority and leadership expert Brad. Dude. Brad has over 40 years of leadership, management and consulting experience and he's taught in 30 plus territories.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>He's even taught courses for NASA and the Naval surface warfare. He's not only the author of books, but he's co authored books and he has a screenplay out. So we're going to be talking to him about leadership and books and the screenplay and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So Brad, thank you for joining me.
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> Brad>Very nice to speak with you this evening.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
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> Brad>as you said, I've been doing a lot of in my career, a lot of international consulting work, mostly doing leadership and training, for a variety of government, clients and private sector clients. I was with Westinghouse for a long time and then Macro, International and and some other groups and had very interesting And of course I was with the Peace Corps for a long time when I started my career, both as a volunteer and as a staff member. And that got me into to writing. As I was going to all of these international locations. you know, you have some time to spend and jot down some things that stuck with you and that got me into writing. And so now I'm kind of full time doing doing writing. I've got about seven books out now on on Amazon. And as you mentioned, I'm m working on a number of screenplays right now.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about one of those books, Finding Eden. Tell us about that and the inspiration behind writing it.
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> Brad>Yeah, well, most of my books are about leadership and management. but I wanted to write a novel, kind of based on the experience. A lot of my Peace Corps work was in the Pacific area, South Pacific and in Micronesia. And so I spent a lot of time on islands and kind of saw the kind of cool things about them and as well as the not so cool things about them. And my wife is involved with migrants and finding places for them and dealing with their issues. So I kind of put the two together. So I was inspired to put that together. And Finding Eden is a story about rescued migrants in the Mediterranean who I don't know if you know that at one time, ports of entry were closed to asylum seekers and migrants. And so what do you do with a shipload of migrants and you have no place to go?
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> Brad>And so I put them on an island. but unfortunately you know, it's run by modern day pirates who are into human trafficking. And to me it was about the challenge. I was trying to show the challenges that migrants today have to overcome. Not necessarily pirates, but certainly a, number of different kinds of, and very deadly challenges that migrants face today. So that was that kept me kind of inspired to write that as a novel.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about your book Quick I Need to Be a leader in 30 days to talk about the inspiration behind that. And
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> Brad>My quick book, basically as I was doing training for a number of years at NASA, up in the D.C.
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> Brad>area, these were for a lot of new managers, or team leaders. And mostly they got promoted because of their technical expertise. and that happens in other organizations as well. You know, you're really good at what you do and the boss thinks, hey you, you're good, you need to, to be the manager. And what I found was that a lot of these folks, while great technically, don't have any idea about how to manage and they end up kind of looking over the shoulder of the people they work with. Micromanaging is the term that's used. and so I thought, you know, what our folks need would be a handy dandy. Hey, I'm promoted, but I need to hit the ground running. what could I do in 30 days to really get myself in shape as an effective leader or manager? And so I put that book together and at the end of it I've got what you do every day for 30 days with some activities, with some articles to read, books to read, things, to try out on the job, and with a kind of a schedule to kind of meet with a mentor, a manager or a friend, somebody to bounce off, ideas off of what you've done that week and give you some feedback on it.
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> Brad>So Quick I Need to Be a Leader became kind of a fun book. and it's really based on my experience at NASA and I felt the need for helping people hit the ground running when they get promoted.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Yeah, that was going to be my next question. You taught leadership at NASA for nine years. So talk about some of the takeaways you gained from that experience.
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> Brad>Well, I learned that NASA, is one of the I think it was voted several times as of the best place to work in the federal government. I had. My participants were, scientists, engineers and administrative types, even lawyers. And, you know, they have that thing about fomo, that fear of missing out. The big issue for them was work life balance. how do you stay up on your technology, learn to play the managerial game to try to get promotions and balance that with taking a vacation, taking time off, being there for your family. and that was a real challenge at every level I found. we would have, for an example, executives, come in to talk to our group of managers, and they'd say, no, no, we support work life balance. We want you to take time off. We want you to, you know, be with your family. And after they leave and we talk about it, our participants would say, yeah, but if I'm gone too long, I might miss something. I'm out of the running, and, that's bad for my career. So it was a constant challenge for them to try to understand the game, the career game, as well as trying to balance that with their, with their family life.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk to the listeners about your model, the basic elements of temperament. Tell us about why you decided to create it and tell us what it entails.
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> Brad>Yeah, there are a lot of models, out there for people to, learn about themselves, when it comes to leadership. There are little tests you can take, give you some feedback. The famous ones are the Myers Briggs type indicator, and there's a variety of others. But when I would bring that up, to our, participants at NASA, they had all I. For Myers Brick for an example, there are 16 boxes that you might fall into. And I'd ask them to raise their hand if they knew which. Which was the box that they're in. And not some could raise their hands, most could not. And then when you ask them, okay, what are those letters in the box mean? Fewer hands went up. so what I found was that a lot of these models are complicated and it's hard to remember. So a colleague of mine and I kind of worked on developing a simple approach of basic elements of temperament. You know, temperament is that inborn part of our, self, part of our mind that influences how we view the world, and it influences how you lead and how you look at people who work for you and your colleagues and your boss and things like that. So we came up with a way, using the. Using the basic elements of. Of our life. Earth, air, fire and water. And we have all four of those elements in us, all of us do, and we're born with them. and for each of us, they're in a different order. Kind of like dinner plates in a restaurant. The first one, whether it's earth, air, fire or water, it's one of those, is your called your dominant temperament. And that's how you view the world, mostly through that temperament. And then you have a secondary, temperament element, a third one, which is kind of neutral. When you see activities, from that temperament, it doesn't bother you one way or the other. And then the fourth one, the bottom plate of the stack, is our shadow temperament. And that's the one that typically gets us in trouble.
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> Brad>Many people don't believe they even have a shadow temperament. and so we spend a lot of time in our, in our books about, elements and our training courses talking about, the shadow. So give you an example. Earth elements are the guys who are kind of the by the book folks. They follow the rules, very traditional, traditionally oriented in their leadership. You know, this is what I want you to do. You go do it, you come back and give me a report kind of thing. Heirs are more, intellectual types. They're the ones in the extreme, don't really would rather work by themselves. and they view competence as the most important element, in their life. If they view themselves as being very competent, and if they think you're not competent, you got a problem with them, they have a problem with you. So that's earth, air, fire. They're the, fun folks, troubleshooters. They don't do things, the same way twice. if you work for a fire, you kind of don't know what you're supposed to do today because it changes all the time. Because your boss is into everything and you never know and he wants to have fun along the way, so you better be able to take a good joke. earth, air, fire, water is the last one. And they're the ones who are, the ones who kind, of get along the best.
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> Brad>They get along with everybody. They get along with the other three temperaments. They are often called in when the other three are arguing with each other. and so what we do is try to get our participants to learn more about each one of those temperaments and kind of figure out what they are, what their dominant temperament is, and especially what their shadow temperament is. And then we work with them. And, it's a lot of fun to kind of read more about it. And some people, that's funny, we put them in groups, in earth, air, fire and water.
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> Brad>And some people say to somebody else, no, you shouldn't be in this group. That's really not you.
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> Brad>And so they learn about themselves. And that's what it's kind of all about. That's what leadership training in my books are all about.
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> Brad>It's self awareness, learning more about who you are, what makes you tick, how you view the world, how you view your, co workers.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, when you taught temperament to your international students, how did they react to it?
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> Brad>I've, done a workshop, all over the South Pacific, on that. And they all fall into the same categories, and they find it fun. There are cultural differences in that. For an example, if you are a water is your dominant temperament, you want to get along. you really care about how the, the organization impacts the people the most.
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> Brad>You're concerned about the policies that your, institution has to make sure it's fair. But culturally you might have somebody who's older than you. That is an earth that you have to respect just from a cultural perspective. And that even though you know they're not doing the right thing, you have to go along with it and not make waves. So that's a difference people, have in cult. But in general, people all kind of went into their groups, they all kind of acknowledged where they were. and so it was a lot of fun, to do that.
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> Brad>I think everybody learned a lot.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk about some of the key leadership tools that you think new leadership possess.
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> Brad>well, certainly, new leaders and, and we get into that with the quick, I need to be a leader in 30 days. Certainly, temperament is one because it looks at who you are and, and how you view the world. we also talk, about, power, the types of power that you have. there are three. We think there are three types of power. And when new leaders get in, they think, okay, now I'm the boss, they're going to have to do what I tell them. And that's the lowest level of power in an organization. It's called position power. And this is where people do what you tell them because they're afraid of negative consequences. These are like, examples are military or the police or irs.
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> Brad>You know, if you don't do what they say, you can have negative consequences. Right. for that, the power though, of position power stays with the organization. So if you're an irs, manager, and you can call people in to go over there, you know, force people to come in to talk about their return with you. If you take another job with, as an accountant, let's say with another firm, you've lost that power. You can't call anybody in to talk about their returns. So the power stays with the organization. Another example of that, a friend of mine gave me that story that he had a friend who was an admiral, in the navy. And this guy was very powerful, ordered ships around and stuff like that. And when he retires, he goes home. You can't order ships around anymore. And that is sometimes, an image issue for folks, especially those in powerful positions. They don't have that power anymore. So position power, you got to be careful of it. Many people think that's the end all, but it's the lowest level of power because people do it because they're, they're afraid of you or afraid of negative consequences. The second type of power is competence. Power of competence. And this is power that stays with you. it belongs to you because you've inherited certain traits from your parents. So you didn't do anything. You just inherited that, and your education. And sometimes you didn't even go to the school that you wanted to because your grades weren't that great. But it has an influence. So your inherited ability as well as education kind of multiplied by your personal attitude. And that's something you've got complete control over. You decide what your attitude is, whether you're going to get up and be a go getter or not. All that, your inherited ability plus education times your personal attitude plus opportunity. You know, many minorities and women have had that inherent ability, had a decent education, and had the personal attitude to go get him. But they're never given the opportunity to use it. And so they, America, the world loses out on a potentially great leader. So in our books and our classes that we had, we talk about how important it is for leaders to look for opportunities for their people because that's needed to become a great leader.
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> Brad>The third, type of power is your positive reputation. This is where people follow you because of who you are and what your contribution has been to the organization or to others. That's where we all want to be. Don't we all want a positive reputation? so that reputation, that power goes with you as the power of your competence. You go to another organization, your competence goes with you. Ah, as well as your reputation goes with you. So those are the three types of power, that I have in my books. So, you know, it's that basic elements, it's knowing yourself, it's understanding power and how to use that power effectively is very important. there's also, you know, some. The whole thing about feedback and And getting negative feedback and how to deal with that. You know, there. A Buddha's Brain is a great book, that talks about your inner negative narrative that goes on. You know, we get into these leadership jobs and we wonder, how can I do it? Do I know enough? Are people going to respect me? And it's a negative. And many, all of us have that to some extent. and how do we deal with that? It's normal to be defensive, and receiving negative feedback. But when you become a leader or a manager, people are expecting you to hit the ground running. They don't expect you to say, well, I'm new. I don't know the answer. You gotta at least be willing to be open to that. So, you know, to me that. That whole thing about leadership is the Is being open and having integrity, very important. So those are just some of the things that, you know, I think new leaders need to consider when they take, those jobs.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>We'll talk about your screenplay. Tell listeners about that and where we can check it out at.
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> Brad>Yeah, well, it's, It's. It's not out there yet.
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> Brad>It's still in the writing phase. I, In here in New Orleans. I live in New Orleans and there's a. A, Group of the International Screenwriters association of which I'm a member. And we meet monthly and, and give each other feedback and talk about screenplays and things like that. So I'm writing a screenplay on my novel on Finding Eden.
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> Brad>I think it makes a great screenplay and I've gotten really good feedback on it and so I'm, doing that. I've got others, as well. Another screenplay I have is about, It's called the Kwajalein Warning and it's an action adventure, as Finding Eid is an action adventure. This is an action adventure based on my time in the Marshall Islands where I was a volunteer, where missiles are still being tested in the Kwajal and Atoll.
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> Brad>ah, I don't know if you're aware of it. It's the largest atoll in the world. So it's like a floating bullseye target about 2,000 miles south of Hawaii. and missiles get fired from testing.
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> Brad>Missiles get fired from California and they shoot them down and come down, in the lagoon and. And the people that the Marshallese that lived there, they work on Kwajalein island kind of as, oh, kind of a labor workforce. Labor workforce. And so they live on. They can't live on the island because it's military, but they live two miles away and go there by ferry boat. And so it's a story about the challenges they face as well. The island that they live on is called Ebey, which should have about 500 people living on it, but there's like 13,000 people living on it. So it's become almost like a slum. So that's a story about what happens when a group decides to make a warning that they don't like that anymore. So some of the things I really enjoy, action adventure movies. And so a couple of my screenplays are action adventure oriented.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.
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> Brad>Well, after my screenplays are finished, I'm going back into writing the next novel for Finding Eden, which is called Leaving Eden. And so it tells the continuing story of what happens to the migrants who end up on that island, after they have dealt with the pirate, infestation there. and what happens when groups of Africans and Arabs and Asians all living together, how do they get along and what systems do they have to put together and what are the challenges they face. so that's, that's my next, my next, next task. Several people who've read Finding Eden, have, have asked for another novel, what happens next? So I think I need to do that. So I'm looking forward to doing that. That was a lot of fun to do the research, to be as accurate as possible with the challenges that migrants are facing today.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to. Though I should. Contact info.
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> Brad>Yeah, I've got a website, ah, braddude.com it has links to Amazon, to all my books, as well as a little temperament quiz. people, even though, during my time at NASA we didn't really want to have a quiz, but I've been yelled at so many times that just give us a little quiz so it'll help us understand the four elements. So I do have a quiz on my website as well. and when you click on it and leave your website, you'll get more information about each one of the four temperaments. so it's a lot of fun. Very easy, easy reading. but there's so there's that website.
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> Brad>I'm doing some TikTok videos as well. Go to Brad dude author, and see there's about 30 little short videos I've done that kind of talks about leadership books and I'm in different locations and I did one during Mardi Gras last year and we have Mardi Gras coming up again in New Orleans. So I'll do some more. So those are some of the things that that you can do to to stay up with what I'm doing.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>We'll close this out with some final thoughts.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
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> Brad>I hope listeners will take a chance on on picking up a copy of one of my books and leave me a review. I'm got a number of reviews so far and I'm always interested, in and getting more both on leadership books as well as on my on my novel. one leadership book I have is called the Great Shadows five, Christmas, Secrets. it was really good for stocking stuffers for Christmas. Kind of a booklet that is for people to read to their kids to talk about temperament and how they interact with their other kids and with adults and things like that.
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> Brad>So do pick up a copy, go to my website braddew.com and leave me a review. Appreciate it.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, go do that and check out everything that Brad's up to and please follow rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Any leaders or future leaders, potential leaders. I also would like you to go to www.craveball337.com follow the show, leave a review, share the website to everybody you know and sign up for the Living Dream with Curveball email list. You can do that at www.craveball337.com. Thank you for listening and supporting the show And Brad, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me.
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> Brad>Thank you appreciate it very much.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.craveball337.com until next time, keep living the Dr.
