Adam Tarnow didn’t plan to become a leadership expert—but his curiosity and drive to be a better boss led him to coach hundreds of professionals to become leaders others want to follow. This week, Adam helps us break down three essential traits every leader needs—and how asphalt pavement professionals can apply them to lead teams, projects, and companies more successfully. He highlights the importance of being realistically optimistic when faced with a challenge and how developing a personal brand can support your leadership aspirations. This episode will leave you with actionable ideas on how to lead with more clarity, empathy, and confidence.
Published April 8, 2025
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thanks, guys! I’m excited to be here. As we were talking before we hit record, I’m from your neck of the woods, so it’s always fun to chat with people with that shared connection. I grew up in the D.C. area—Silver Spring, Maryland, and Manassas, Virginia. I attended Clemson University in South Carolina, where I studied accounting. I’m a third-generation accountant—my grandfather was an accountant, my dad was an accountant, and funnily enough, my birthday is April 16th, the day after tax day. It felt like I was destined to be an accountant!
After graduating from Clemson, I moved to Atlanta and started working in public accounting. About five years in, I hit a bit of a quarter-life crisis and decided I wanted to go back to grad school and explore a career change. That’s what led me to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2002. I originally thought I’d be here for just a couple of years, but here we are—23 years later. This is officially the longest I’ve lived anywhere.
Now, I work full-time in leadership development with a firm called PeopleWorks International. The company has been around for about 20 years, and I’ve been with them for a little over four. I head up our leadership development practice, and I think about leadership all day, every day—so it’s always fun to talk about!
Could you elaborate on some of the early experiences that shaped your leadership skills and helped you develop the qualities you rely on today?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I never really thought about leadership until I got out of college and started my first job. Even then, I wouldn’t have called it “leadership” per se—I think at that point it was just, who are your bosses? Early on in public accounting, I started to connect a few dots that leadership was a thing. Some of the dots I was connecting were there were certain jobs I would work on that were a ton of fun. Fun may be a stretch of the imagination a little bit there, but they were interesting. I would drive home at night feeling energized. I wouldn't wake up the next morning dreading, going into work. And then there were other projects I would work on, there was a complete opposite. Days were filled with tension. I would drive home, anxious, have trouble sleeping that night, waking up the next morning, not feeling excited to go in to work. And as I started to think about it, and I mean, this is me in my early twenties using limited vocabulary and limited ideas, but I started to recognize that this was the difference between the days when I went home feeling energized and the days I went home feeling discouraged was largely due to the boss, the manager that I was working for at the time.
And so that really started my journey of learning. I thought to myself, ‘If I ever get the chance to be a boss, I don’t want to be like that boss. I want to be like this boss’’ So I started piecing some things together to try to figure out what are those characteristics? What are those skills? What are those habits? This word, I know we're going to talk about, what are those styles that, that I found helpful as an employee and how can I replicate some of those when it's my chance to be the boss or to be the leader? This was part of my personal experience and then I started doing some reading and going to conferences and talking about it with friends. Then I started to add some outside influences so my whole perspective on leadership wasn't just basically developing this system that was, ‘Adam's ideal boss’ , trying to add some objectivity to it. And what I didn't know is that journey was going to ultimately be my career. I mean, this was stuff that I just did, really more out of a hobby, for a long time. I just found it interesting, and I found it useful and it helped me become a better leader regardless of what industry I was in. So it was almost utilitarian, in the beginning, and then, slowly but surely I had an opportunity to start teaching others and doing this more professionally. Now it's what I get to do full time.
In your opinion, what are three of the most important qualities a leader should have?
Yeah, that's a deep question. There's one thing that I will note about this is, and this is was when I worked with my clients. I start talking about leadership, I'm getting to the point now where I start every conversation asking a question that is very similar to what you just asked me and there's a couple of different ways that I'll do that. The reason I do that is because what ends up happening if I'm in a room with 17 or 25 leaders and I ask them, 'what are the most important qualities for being a leader,' there is very little consistency, everybody's got an idea. Years ago, the way I used to do it is I say, ‘hey, take all the words that you think make a great leader and write them down.’ And we'd put them up on those post-it note papers. We'd cover all the walls with these papers, with these words that people thought made an ideal leader. And guys, most of the time in a room of 17 to 25 people, we'd get over 50 different ideas. I don't know about you all, but 50 different ideas of what it takes to be a great leader feels completely and totally overwhelming.
So, if I had to distill it down to just three. The three that I think are incredibly important. I'll lean on Kouzes and Posner’s research from the leadership challenge because it's as close to objectivity as I think we can get with how long that they've been studying effective leadership. They've identified five characteristics and I'll just rattle off the top three because I think they are in forced ranked order, but number one, you've got to model the way so you have got to walk, your talk. You've got to have a character that matches, your capabilities. And so it is who you are as a leader, I think is incredibly important. My friend Tim Spiker would talk about, you being, inwardly sound and others focused. That's that same idea that Kouzes and Posner find in their research, that you are modeling the way, you inspire a shared vision. So there's some aspect of inspiring others that is going to be incredibly important, lots of different styles and ways you can do that. But that, that absolutely is a piece of it.
So you're modeling the way, you're inspiring a shared vision. and then I'll probably put on there as number three, and I may be skipping their order a little bit, but I like encourage the heart. This is the idea that you're being others focused in your leadership. Those are three that I see that are incredibly important.
What are some of the memorable things from your hosting experience in the podcast that you have?
Yeah, a couple of the things that, this one may be totally out of left field, but the episode we did where my cohost Clay, we talked about how a leader should leverage AI was incredibly useful for me. And so that was one that I've been learning right now and trying to use that tool more and more to help me on my leadership journey, to help me as a teacher, all kinds of things. With that one, some of the things that, just like putting together content, but I do think this relates to leadership. Anytime we put out an episode that tells a story about something that we've learned, those episodes seem to do better than the ones where we just go, ‘Hey, here's a felt need’ and ‘here's our three thoughts on this felt need.’
Again, I think for us as leaders, we can really model the way and encourage people and inspire shared vision by just telling our own stories, and very specifically, a lot of the lessons that we learn on our leadership journey, they usually involve some sort of a failure and people really like those stories. Not because they like seeing us fail, but just because they want to know that we're normal, we're just a regular person and we've gone through some things. So those are a couple of things that I've learned, you know, just one super practical on just using AI as a leader. And then the second one would just be the power of story when it comes to being able to develop and encourage people.
What are some of the main pieces of advice that come from your book that would help listeners develop themselves and stand out?
Yeah, so we published a book in 2022. So that means we wrote the book in 21, right? So we're getting close to four or five years since we've actually written it. And we've just learned a ton since then. And I see now why authors will publish second versions of the book. 'Cause you can go back and correct all the mistakes or say things differently based on new information and new research and all that kind of stuff. The book is called The EDGE and the EDGE is an acronym stands for energy, diligence, growth, and endurance. And we just said ‘Hey, this is the simple way for a young professional to stand out in a noisy world’ right? Employee engagement statistics are low. What bosses are looking for nowadays is not just skills, they're looking for emotional commitment. So what does that mean? That means show up with energy, be diligent towards your work, have that growth mindset, always be looking to growm and then develop endurance because life throws you curve balls. There's good days and bad days, and you've got to be able to develop endurance there. That's some of what we're trying to teach people there with that. I think if I could go back and redo the introduction and maybe even it would change the title and all that. I think what we're really teaching people is how to develop a strong personal brand. Nowadays that personal brand is incredibly important, and that is the one thing that you will carry with you regardless of where you're working.
So your first job out of school, you're starting to develop that brand, and you own that brand. Nobody can take that from you. That's something that you will carry with you throughout your entire career. So these are some very simple ways to develop your personal brand, and I really, really like what, Alison Fregale over at University of North Carolina. She just wrote a book, that came out late last year called Likeable Badass, which is such a great title. And, so what she is basically talking about is this ability to develop status, which is kind of a weird word to say, but it's another way of thinking about personal brand. Status is a felt need for a lot of us. It is an asset for our careers and so Fregale, and what David Morrison and I were trying to do with our book was just demystify what does it take to develop that? We think it takes energy, diligence, growth, and endurance to be able to do that.
Is there a particular book or mentor or even a quote, that you feel had a significant impact on your leadership journey?
I feel like, if we're just getting really personal, one of the biggest changes to my leadership probably happened during 2020. As we all know, that was a crazy year for everyone. I very specifically remember March of that year when everything was starting to shut down, the future was as uncertain as we had seen it, maybe since 9/11 and observing a few leaders in my sphere of influence. One was a gentleman in my neighborhood, one was a client, who were approaching the exact same situation that I was facing, but with a completely different perspective. That was very challenging for me to watch them and just go, ‘why are they handling this situation different than I'm handling it?’ Again, very similar to what I was doing when I started my career, just trying to connect dots. And examine and study this and figure out what it is. The conclusion that I came to was what they were choosing optimism and I was giving into pessimism. That personal journey for me of trying to become a more optimistic leader has been very transformative for me as I've gone through all that. What I wanted to do was I studied all that and thought about if I can answer this question or what is the answer to this question: is it possible to be optimistic without faking it? Because I don't want to be that bury your head in the sand, ruinous, optimism. I don't think is helpful.
I ended up coming up with this term called realistic optimism that I think better talks about the target of where I'm going. I was greatly influenced by Churchill's quote, and I'll probably butcher it, but the difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the pessimist finds difficulty in the midst of every opportunity, but the optimist finds the opportunity in the midst of every difficulty. That really spoke to me because it was like, okay, to choose optimism doesn't mean that I ignore all the hard things that are going on right now, all the bad things, it just means I believe there's an opportunity in here and I'm going to go find it. That's been incredibly transformative in my own journey, personally and professionally. Everything from my kids are acting up to, I just lost a client to, and then everything in between. That just keep going, don't give into pessimism, there is an opportunity in the midst of this difficulty.
Could you share a little bit about the evolution of leadership, what that looks like, and how things are changing for leaders?
This is a lot of fun to talk about because this is where we get to all be futurists a little bit, we get to look back on our experience and then just project this out and see where things are going. Here's where my thinking is with this, cause I'm in the middle of thinking through all of this. These are like early drafts of a book, if you will, on ideas. I think the evolution that we're getting to with this is, it is incredibly helpful and very healthy. I think we're going to get back to the point where we've realized that leadership is a role, it's not a reward. Again, when I ask people in those classes that I teach, ‘what did 18 year old you think it meant to be a leader?’ I'm shocked, but I'm also not shocked at how many people, when we were 18 years old, we thought the leader was just better. They were just better. So therefore, if you were rewarded with leadership titles or responsibilities, that was a reward basically for being awesome. I think what we've seen in the late 90s and the early 2000s was really the elevation of this idea of leadership where we really idolized who the individual leader was. I don't think it was helpful and more than anything else, I just don't think it was true.
I just don't know of any organization that was able to accomplish something great because of one person. You know, the old classic argument about was it Tom Brady or Bill Belichick and Tom Brady? That's why they won all those Super Bowls, because it was him. And I'm like, listen, I think if Tom Brady is intellectually honest, he would recognize that he was playing a role. That's all he was doing. He was playing his role. And if he didn't have wide receivers, if he didn't have running backs, if he didn't have a defense, if he didn't have an offensive line, then Tom Brady, we're not talking about him, right? But because he played his role well and other people played their role well, they went on to accomplish really, really great things. So that's where I see this idea of leadership going. It's incredibly helpful. It's like, listen, I'm not smart. I'm not better. I'm just playing my role and you need to play your role. And if we play our role the right way and we're all taking our role responsibly, then it can be very rewarding. So in some ways, this idea of maybe the turning down of leadership and the turning up of teamship. I think that's where, I hope I continue to see that trajectory, because it, again, it feels true. and I think it's, we're due for a little correction on that.
If you could summarize your journey in one sentence, what would that sentence be?
I'd have to go to chatGPT to get that down to one sentence. I'd have to upload all of my thoughts and go put that all in one sentence. Let me try, and I reserve the right to change this! Let's just pretend like this is a book and I can release a second edition later: that the unexpected path towards meaning, in your work, is going to be found in taking initiative for the benefit of other people. Is that, is that okay? I mean, I literally just totally made that out. I mean, these are pieces of ideas that I use, but I've never put them together like that.
You know, we all want meaningful work. I love that. I've just read a couple of books early this year by Abraham Maslow, who was the guy that created the Hierarchy of Needs, and he talked about this age of self actualization that we live in. This dude wrote in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and to go back and read what he said back then about where the true heart of the average employee is. He was decades ahead of his time. There was this fundamental belief, and I think this is a real challenge for us as leaders and managers that are listening to this is do you believe that everybody wants meaningful work? Or do you believe that they just want to punch the clock and then go home? Your belief about people is going to largely influence the way that you approach them, and the way that you manage them. I mean, if we think most people are looking for some meaning at work, then that really changes our approach. For ourselves, even as leaders, I think we want something that's meaningful and I think the unexpected path, to get there is found not in creating your own little kingdom, but it's going to be found in serving other people. So I think that path of taking initiative for the benefit of others. I've got a suspicion that when we all get to the end of our career, that's probably the stuff we're going to look back on with a tremendous amount of pride and joy is the people that we helped and the people that we serve, not what we accomplished and all the money we made.