Robert L Phillips Motivates!Robert L Phillips Motivates!
J Hirtle The Last Storyteller
Motivational speaker Robert L. Phillips shares how leading yourself first can transform teams, habits and everyday decisions. The conversation covers connection-centred leadership, a 21-day framework for change, and the realities of self-publishing his book, *The Reconnection Architect*.
36:31•27 May 2026
Leading the Hardest Person: Yourself – Robert L. Phillips on Connection and Change
Episode Overview
- Leading yourself is the hardest and most important leadership task, because every decision you make starts there.
- Simple, intentional connection – like short one-to-one chats about life outside work – can dramatically shift team morale and culture.
- Internal resistance shows up differently in each person, so it often needs to be handled case by case, with patience and timing.
- Forming a new leadership habit benefits from a 21-day focus, giving enough time for real change without becoming stale or forced.
- Independent authors and speakers need to actively talk about and share their work, using relationships, events and online tools to reach readers.
“The hardest person to lead is yourself.”
What drives someone to seek a life of better leadership and deeper connection? This conversation between poet–host J Hirtle (Jim) and motivational speaker Robert L. Phillips centres on exactly that, using leadership as a bridge between personal growth, faith, and everyday life. Robert shares how a wise army mentor once told him, “The hardest person to lead is yourself,” a line that became the backbone of his book *The Reconnection Architect: A 21-Day Journey to Transformational Leadership*.
You’ll hear how that idea shaped his approach to leading teams, especially when he took over a struggling company on the south side of Chicago. High turnover, low morale, and plenty of internal resistance were the norm—until he started doing something surprisingly simple: 15‑minute one‑to‑one chats just to get to know his people as human beings. Those conversations, built around questions like “What are your goals outside of work?” and “Do you have any children?”, slowly rebuilt trust.
Staff started going “above and beyond”, and colleagues eventually nicknamed him the “connection architect”. Robert explains how those same habits can help anyone wrestling with burnout, disconnection, or the daily battles in the “man in the mirror”, whether that’s in a workplace, family, church, or personal recovery journey. He also breaks down why his book is set over 21 days, crediting a strict third‑grade teacher who taught him that forming a new habit takes three focused weeks.
The chat shifts into practical advice for indie authors too, as Robert and Jim swap stories about self‑publishing, using services like Fiverr, and the slightly awkward art of learning to proudly talk about your own book. If you’re trying to lead others while still learning how to lead yourself, this conversation might get you asking a gentle but important question: what would change if you treated connection as your first task every day?
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