Curiosity #38 - Life's a pitch (and Tami Reiss tells us why)

🎤 Quotable Quote

“You’re not just delegating—you’re deputizing.”
— Tami Reiss

That’s not just a clever word swap. It’s a leadership gut check.

Because delegation says, “Here, do this task.”
But deputizing says, “Here, carry this mission—and represent me while doing it.”

🧠 This week on Leadership Rules, we sat down with the brilliant and delightfully direct Tami Reiss—executive coach, product thinker, and author of the rhyming children’s book What Do Product Managers Do? (Spoiler: it’s secretly for adults, too.)

Tami is one of those rare leaders who can coach C-suite execs by day, build Legos by night, and still explain influence better than half your business books combined.

🔍 This Week’s Deep Dive: Why Tami Says Life Is a Pitch

💡 You’re the product. Own it.
Whether you’re applying for a promotion or trying to convince your partner that you should host Thanksgiving, you’re pitching. Tami’s advice? Make your vision clear—and emotionally compelling.

💡 Influence without authority isn’t optional—it’s essential.
From product managers to presidents, the best leaders win people over, not just by role, but by trust. It’s less “command and control” and more “enroll and empower.”

💡 The LEAD Framework: Simple, not small.
Tami breaks down leadership into four memorable moves:

• Look and Leap

• Excite and Empower

• Align and Activate

• Decide and Deputize
  Yes, we’re making stickers.

One of the most striking moments?

Tami’s reminder that your ability to lead isn’t about how much you do—it’s about how well others lead in your absence.
You’re not building a following.
You’re building more leaders.

🎧 [Listen to the full episode here.]

And forward this to someone who needs to hear:

“You’re not just pitching ideas. You’re pitching yourself. Make it a good one.”

More Musings

🍪 Biscuits with the Boss:

“What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had a leadership ‘a-ha’ moment?”

Tami Reiss writes children’s books about product management and builds bonsai trees out of Lego bricks, so you know she’s not waiting around for a mahogany boardroom to hand out leadership lessons.

This question opens the door to stories from the unexpected:
🚿 In the shower.
🚗 In traffic.
🧸 While negotiating bedtime with a four-year-old.
📉 Midway through a failed launch.
📚 Or yes, while writing rhymes about roadmaps.

The real magic?
Catching those moments when they come—and turning them into something someone else can learn from.

🏅 Whistle. Whistle.

You’re doing too much.
No, seriously.

If your calendar looks like a game of Tetris and you’re the only one who knows how anything works, we hate to break it to you—but you’re not leading. You’re bottlenecking.

Tami Reiss called it out beautifully this week:
Stop delegating tasks. Start deputizing people.

There’s a difference.

Delegation says: I don’t have time—can you do this?
Deputizing says: You’ve got this. Here’s the context. Run with it.

And here’s the kicker: Deputizing takes longer.
You have to slow down to train, transfer trust, and build capacity.

But if you're serious about scale—of your team, your impact, or your sanity—it’s not optional.

So next time you're tempted to say, “It’s just faster if I do it myself,”
picture Roy Kent blowing his whistle in your face and yelling:

“Then don’t complain when no one knows how to lead but you!”

📚Beard’s collection: 

📖 Klaff, Oren. Pitch Anything. McGraw-Hill Education, 2011.
Think pitching is just for Shark Tank? Think again. Klaff breaks down how to frame ideas so they land with impact. Pair it with Tami’s “Life’s a Pitch” philosophy, and you’ll start showing up like the main character in every meeting—even without the mic.

📖 Zhuo, Julie. The Making of a Manager.  Portfolio, 2019.

Zhuo’s book is a must-read for anyone transitioning from individual contributor to people leader—and learning how to influence without formal authority. The perfect companion to Tami’s LEAD framework.

📖 Scott, Kim. Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better. St. Martin’s Press, 2024.
If Radical Candor taught you how to lead with compassion and clarity, Radical Respect shows you how to build teams where everyone actually wants to show up. Scott doesn’t pull punches—this is about rooting out bias, building real belonging, and learning how to work across differences without losing your standards (or your mind). It’s the perfect match for Tami Reiss’s reminder that leadership isn’t just about being heard—it’s about making space so others can be.

🌎 This week in Here - There - Every F’ing where 

Orlando! Thanks to our friend Erin King of The Teacher's Pep Rally Podcast, we joined some awesome educators at the MainStreet PD Conference (EPCOT included!).

We met Trish and team - loved meeting her live and hearing about their cool work for schools!

Heck even R2 stopped by to say hi! We would love to see where in the world you are with Lead it Like Lasso. Tag us on social! It would make our day - we love connecting with cool people!

Barbecue Sauce!

Marnie & Nick

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