Why Great Leaders Sound Repetitive

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with brand architect Jim Wagner to break down the connection between championship coaches and business leaders. We talk about what it really means to lead high-performing teams, why repetition builds trust, and how asking the right questions creates confidence in first-time managers. I share my framework for intentional decision-making, the role humility plays in leadership, and why emotional clarity is essential when priorities shift. Jim also opens up about his MBA students and how he’s helping them transition from strong performers into strong leaders. Together, we explore how values, communication, and consistency drive both personal and team success.

Transcript

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0:00.0	To start, I'd like to get your perspective on this whole parallel I'm drawing between championship
0:04.3	coaches and leaders of high performance business teams. But before you answer that, let me give you
0:09.0	a little bit of background also. I've downloaded your current book. I've downloaded the decision
0:14.0	making book, which I'm reading that one a lot deeper right now because I think it's more pertinent
0:18.1	to what I'm trying to do here. Watched a lot of your videos, subscribe, you know, in the last week since I got introduced.
0:26.7	I'm a student now, but can you give me what your perspectives are on this parallel that I'm drawing between championship coaches and business leaders?
0:37.4	Yeah, the first thing to parallel is a desire that you must be what you can be.
0:42.5	A lot of times as leaders, we look specifically on the capabilities of what they can do as a
0:48.3	teach, a mentor, or a coach.
0:50.7	And as a leader, we need to be truly an intelligent follower.
0:55.0	And the proof of being an intelligent follower is the ability to have a desire that we must be what we can be ourselves.
1:02.0	Because if we're going to teach someone, in other words, be able and capable of knowing something so well that we can have the patience, the annoying capability
1:14.4	of being repetitive and honest enough to help teach someone what we know.
1:19.4	It's not a one time, and this is one of the difficulties in secular education in America,
1:24.6	is we think we can just say something one time and we absorb it, know it,
1:29.3	can execute on it. And it's not true. The great coaches are annoying. They're honest and repetitive.
1:37.2	And they utilize that desire that they have to be what they must be to inspire other people
1:44.0	to have the desire that they must be what they must be, to inspire other people to have the desire that they must be
1:45.8	what they can be. The second thing beyond the teacher is the mentor. I think in order to be a
1:54.3	great leader, that we actually have to know where it be, where somebody wants to be. So if you look at the great coaches,
2:03.0	as well as the great leaders, they actually had to be able to walk the walk. They need to know
2:09.2	the plays. They have had the losses themselves. And I think that's really important. The
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