Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So Mike it's time we have to do something we should do what's that record podcast.

00:00:07

No, we're must we do it we must be card a podcast.

00:00:12

You don't know how many people even on my normal twitch streams I've got people tuning in simply.

00:00:20

To get me riled up about it I have people tuning in in other avenues even on the analog Joe webinars someone brought nice.

00:00:29

Come on let me be.

00:00:31

You're going to have to resolve should and must in your head at some point.

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Maybe people are just going to keep bugging you until you do.

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It's all the same.

00:00:42

I'll quit.

00:00:44

Should we just jump in today get going?

00:00:46

We could mean I've got to my side of follow up.

00:00:49

Yeah, I've got well technically two I guess but one of them was done last time which is the make a list of should's.

00:00:56

So the other thing that was on my list do was to take the anyagram if that's how you say it not quite any or maybe anyagram and I did that I took a you can find places online to take it for free but I found a legit looking site that had a twenty five dollar comprehensive report sort of one.

00:01:24

And so I have this great big PDF on the different styles there's body types which are eight nine and one there are head types which are five six and seven and there are heart types two three and four.

00:01:39

And then it tells you what your primary type is so I've got percentage scores for all of these I'm not going to share this whole PDF.

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Because that one of the things I learned from this assessment is that it kind of highlights not just your strengths but some of your weaknesses as well and some of the stuff that's in here.

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I'm kind of wrestling with like is that true of me is that not true of me and I think of I'm honest with myself probably some of it is but I don't want to share everything I'm bad at public.

00:02:09

Sure, but I will share my primary type which is an eight.

00:02:16

So in a nutshell says it's you can tell me if this is accurate show.

00:02:20

Okay, strengths authoritative and determined it's on the room full of urgency initiative and resourcefulness it's get things done.

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Encouraging and inspiring ready to make sacrifices for the people and causes that are dear to them make a big impact on their surroundings.

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The challenges it's can be bossy overbearing and confrontational.

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They may attach great importance to their own person.

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They fear being controlled and losing their autonomy can be defined and vindictive to the point of displaying a bad character and can be extremely intense finding it hard to relax and let go.

00:02:56

Yeah, nay.

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I'd say it's fairly accurate.

00:03:00

I would do it.

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There's a couple things in there I think aren't 100% true but overall I'd say it was it was pretty accurate.

00:03:11

Yeah, there's a few of those that I'm like, okay, if that's true I have some questions.

00:03:15

But I think if you look at the overall like if you try to summarize that I'd say it's pretty accurate.

00:03:21

Yep.

00:03:22

So then it dives into portraits fiercely independent go getting an assertive protective inspiring afraid of being vulnerable.

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It gets into the emotional life childhood origins.

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The good and bad in relationships at work all that type of stuff.

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So there's a lot in this particular report which is why I paid for it because I knew like this is a company that wasn't just going to give you your type.

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It was going to kind of help you understand some of your results.

00:03:48

Sure.

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And yeah, it's pretty pretty comprehensive.

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I guess the next step with this would be for you to compare results with the people that you work with or live with.

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For example, the relationships that you have in your life and you can identify like well, I'm an eight.

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So you're this and therefore we should understand that and hopefully makes communication a little bit easier.

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But sure, I have no intention of doing that.

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I just wanted to find out what my type was which tell me who I am.

00:04:16

Isn't it?

00:04:16

I like it.

00:04:18

What else Mike?

00:04:19

That's it.

00:04:20

It's all my follow up.

00:04:21

Wow, that was quick.

00:04:22

All right.

00:04:23

Well, we can jump into today's book.

00:04:24

I think this is this will be a.

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All right.

00:04:30

So the motive by Patrick Lincioni, if you have read any of Patrick Lincioni's books, you know that they're a little different than others.

00:04:40

And this is where Mike's dislike for fiction starts to get a little fuzzy as he smiles at me.

00:04:47

Well, I will say that this story, because all Patrick Lincioni books are split into two sections, the fable and then really what he's trying to teach.

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And the fable section for this one, I feel like this was not nearly as strong of a fable as the five dysfunctions of a team.

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Like when I read that fable, I'm like, oh, yeah, I could totally see how that could happen.

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And this one, there were several points where I'm just like, yeah, right.

00:05:19

Yeah, that's true.

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I mean, there's so the two that we've done for.

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Bookworm because this is the third Patrick Lincioni book,

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which I think puts him at the top of the list of repeat authors.

00:05:34

And we did the five dysfunctions of a team, which I think we did with Josh, Rince.

00:05:39

We did.

00:05:40

Yep.

00:05:40

And the other one we did was the three big questions for a frantic family.

00:05:47

Yes, which led to a lot of really interesting conversations for us with our spouses and our children.

00:05:56

And outside of Bookworm, I've also read his other book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.

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Okay.

00:06:04

Which oddly enough was given to me by the company I was working for at the time and it helped me identify that I was in a miserable job,

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which is a bit of a weird twist.

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Let's see.

00:06:21

I think Patrick's books are.

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I always enjoy the fable at the beginning, like that fiction part.

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I don't know if that's because I just like the story piece of it.

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In this particular case, I think it's about 110 pages long is the fable side and the rest of it's 30, maybe if memory serves those page numbers.

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Don't really mean anything though.

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I had I realized as I was going through this ago, 170 pages should take me about this long and I got through it in about a third of that.

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Yeah.

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He does like the grade school trick where you increase the margins and increase the font size and no one can really tell if you look at a single page,

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but the end result is that the book is significantly shorter.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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It would not surprise me if this is like a 10 to 12,000 word book that wouldn't surprise me.

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It might be a little bit more than that 15,000 maybe.

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I think well, the typical nonfiction book is something like 60,000 words.

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So I think this one's probably about 20.

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I think I've heard 40,000 35 to 40,000 is a 175 normal book.

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Sure, but I think this is about half that.

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Yep.

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So yes, it is it is a quick read the the fable side of it I read in one sitting, which was 40 minutes.

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I mean, that'll that'll tell you right there 40 minutes to crank through 100 pages.

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And I'm not a fast reader.

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That's that's something people don't always catch is like, I don't read quickly.

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So when I pick these 300 page books and each page is like small font, narrow margins,

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getting it done in two weeks is a challenge sometimes.

00:08:01

So yes, I think this is a very easy one to jump into and go through as far as content.

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I think, you know, the trouble with Patrick's books is how do you go through them?

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Like this is always the struggle I find whenever we have this type of book.

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And I think we've said this the last couple of times we've had his books too is how do I go about telling you the story so that you understand what we're talking about without giving it all away.

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Right.

00:08:33

Like because it's it's interesting enough and there's kind of a twist at the end that I saw coming a while back.

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I'm guessing you did too.

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So maybe it's not a spoiler to say it.

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So I'm just going to preface this with we're not going to really hold anything back here.

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If you've not read this and you don't want the story given away, maybe turn this off and go read it first.

00:08:59

It'll take you a half hour then come back and listen.

00:09:02

Yeah, yeah, go take 30 minutes go read the book and come back.

00:09:05

This episode is likely to be longer than it will take you to read the book.

00:09:09

But I think we're going to have to give away some of those things unless you have a different way of going through it.

00:09:17

Like I do not.

00:09:18

So that's totally fine.

00:09:21

One other thing I'll add regarding the Patrick Lindsay only books that we have covered because those are the only ones that I've read.

00:09:26

I felt like five dysfunctions of a team that was a fable that I could see happening in real life.

00:09:34

The three questions of a frantic family that one felt a little bit weird to me because I remember points in that fable where I was like,

00:09:41

that's a little bit of a stretch.

00:09:44

Yeah, this one feels like even more in the.

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In that direction, which makes me a little bit uncomfortable.

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Like I thought I knew Patrick Lindsay when he was and now I'm like, I don't know.

00:09:54

Yeah, yeah, maybe that's a little bit of a spoiler.

00:09:58

That's fair.

00:10:01

That's fair.

00:10:02

All right, so let me just kind of jump in here.

00:10:06

Mike, you can help me tell this story as far as what this fable is

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and what is going on with it.

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And then I feel like once we've summarized this story, which is likely to be the shortest part of the show here.

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We'll spend a lot of time in that last 30 to 40 pages of the book where he's kind of debriefing what we went through in the story,

00:10:31

which is I feel like this is a little different or it's not different.

00:10:38

It's backwards for what I feel we should do because personally.

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I read the first half and I found that the most interesting and then the back half.

00:10:48

Like, okay, I feel like I picked up a lot of this going through the first.

00:10:52

Well, I shouldn't say half the first two thirds going through that.

00:10:55

I picked up all the stuff you're talking about in the last third.

00:10:57

So I feel like I should be spending more time on those first two thirds,

00:11:01

but we're going to spend more time on that third at the end.

00:11:02

I think just because it's laid out in a way that's better for us to to talk through.

00:11:07

Yeah, no, I agree.

00:11:10

Interestingly about the format reading this book.

00:11:15

So the fables at the beginning and that's the majority of the book and then he gets into the lesson and the lesson.

00:11:22

I feel like with five dysfunctions of a team, there really wasn't a whole lot new because he was drawn diagrams and stuff as he was going.

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But with this one, I feel like there's a lot of meat in this lesson section.

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And I kind of had a thought, well, I wish he would have just given us the lesson to skip the fable.

00:11:44

Like, this is where the good stuff is.

00:11:46

Let's just jump right in because the fable didn't really prime me for anything.

00:11:50

Sure.

00:11:50

It was a story that I got done and I was like, no way that ever is going to happen.

00:11:54

Sure.

00:11:56

Sure.

00:11:56

I also know, okay, I'm going to jump in as soon as I'm done saying this, but the conversations and the story that he tells.

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I totally understand how you would say like people wouldn't do that.

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That's not realistic.

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Even though this is supposed to be realistic, it's pretty obvious.

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Like he's trying to tell a story that could be true.

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It's not, but it could be.

00:12:21

Yeah.

00:12:22

If you ever have a chance to sit face to face with one or more CEOs and board of directors for longer than about 20 minutes.

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I would tell you that the types of conversations that are in here may seem far-fetched, but they're not.

00:12:41

The conversations, I agree.

00:12:43

There's a couple specific instances though that no.

00:12:46

Yeah.

00:12:48

Yeah.

00:12:48

Which are kind of key to his story, but.

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Sure.

00:12:52

In my mind, kind of steal from the validity of the point he's trying to make.

00:12:57

Sure.

00:12:58

Sure.

00:12:58

All right.

00:12:59

Let's let's dive in here.

00:13:02

So there are two main characters.

00:13:04

Yeah.

00:13:04

In this story, both of which are CEOs of their respective companies.

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There is Shay, who is the CEO of Golden Gate security.

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Securities security.

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They only really say the end of that like once or twice security.

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And then there is Liam.

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Alcott.

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Does that sound right?

00:13:25

Yep.

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I didn't write last names down.

00:13:28

Liam is the CEO of Delmar.

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Which is a another company that's in the security world.

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So they're both operating in the world of security.

00:13:42

Technology security, I believe?

00:13:45

That part's not important.

00:13:46

Yeah.

00:13:46

Golden Gate's kind of up near San Francisco and Delmar is down near San Diego.

00:13:51

Yep.

00:13:52

So they're not in competing territories, but they're very similar companies.

00:13:58

Yep.

00:13:58

And they're both competing against the big company that is in the entire state.

00:14:04

Yes.

00:14:05

Yeah.

00:14:05

So Shay is, I mean, they're both competing against a like competitor.

00:14:09

Yep.

00:14:10

But they're not competing against each other.

00:14:12

If you follow all of that and kind of Shay doesn't like Liam.

00:14:17

Yeah.

00:14:17

Shay really doesn't like Liam at the very beginning.

00:14:19

A little bit jealous.

00:14:20

Yeah.

00:14:21

Or a lot jealous.

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I think is what it really comes down to.

00:14:25

And Patrick Lencio has a little bit of language in this one.

00:14:29

He does.

00:14:29

Which I was curious of your thoughts on.

00:14:31

Well, okay.

00:14:32

So I am not a fan of the language for no reason.

00:14:38

I feel like this kind of falls into that category.

00:14:40

I get why he used it.

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He's trying to show these are big wig CEOs and they're emotional.

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But that's not the thing that turned me off to this story.

00:14:51

Sure.

00:14:52

Sure.

00:14:54

So he, Shay in the story is the CEO of what I believe is a bigger company than Delmar.

00:15:03

Not by a lot, but by enough and Shay is struggling.

00:15:09

Their numbers aren't as good as Delmar's.

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They're not as good as the other competitors that they're up against.

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And he's feeling a little inadequate.

00:15:23

So he debates reaching out to a consulting firm.

00:15:29

Now this particular consulting firm that he's trying to reach out to happens to have consulted Liam at Delmar.

00:15:37

And it seems like whatever it is that this consulting firm did with Liam worked wonders because Delmar's numbers are phenomenal in comparison.

00:15:51

So, Shay really wants to know what's going on.

00:15:56

So he tries to figure out if he can hire them.

00:15:59

So he reaches out to them says, Hey, can I hire you?

00:16:03

And they say, Well, let me check with my other client first because it's in the same space and usually that's not allowed.

00:16:08

And they reached out and said, Nope, can't do that.

00:16:11

But as much as Shay doesn't like Liam, Liam reaches out and says, Hey, can I come over and let's let's chat.

00:16:21

Yep.

00:16:22

You're you're you're trying to steal my consultant.

00:16:25

Let's talk.

00:16:27

So, so he does.

00:16:30

Shay tries to get out of it, makes fun of him to his wife.

00:16:35

And he ends up starting this meeting, which is where the entire day is spent in a very large portion of the story continues.

00:16:47

You want to pick up from here, Mike?

00:16:49

The other detail I would add is that Liam, they make the point to tell the story that he's British.

00:16:56

And so they kind of alluded to some of the British sayings and accent that he might have and the way that some of the language is used, which I'm not sure why they did that.

00:17:08

That is not important at all.

00:17:10

But whatever, maybe they're trying to they're trying to show that Liam is different.

00:17:17

And so she doesn't really understand him and where he's coming from.

00:17:21

Sure.

00:17:22

Because at the end of the story, they they basically say the basic takeaway is that Liam's not such a bad guy.

00:17:29

He actually shared the the secret to their success and a lot of the misunderstandings that he had about him at the the misconceptions he had about Liam at the beginning of the shade did that those were very untrue.

00:17:42

Yeah.

00:17:43

But that's kind of jumping to the end.

00:17:46

I guess picking up where like Liam comes up and they start spending the day together.

00:17:50

They are making pleasantries at the beginning and Liam is like, well, I'll tell you what they told me and then you can decide if you want to work with them because what he wants to tell him is really not like a secret marketing strategy.

00:18:09

And this reminded me of like a lot of the productivity stuff, how to save three hours a day every single day for the rest of your life.

00:18:17

Two simple life acts, you know, right, right.

00:18:19

That's kind of felt like what Shay was expecting.

00:18:24

And Liam is like, no, I'm going to share you like the real secret here.

00:18:29

They start off by comparing numbers and financials, which made Shay uncomfortable.

00:18:36

Liam was fine with it.

00:18:38

That seemed like a little bit weird and it becomes clear that Liam's company is more successful than Shay.

00:18:47

So he's feeling a little bit inadequate.

00:18:50

He wants to hear what he has to say because well, if this thing is going to make him successful, then maybe you can make me successful.

00:18:57

And it ends up being like not what he expected to hear.

00:19:00

And so the rest of the book is basically Liam trying to get it through to his head that it's not anything in your company.

00:19:09

It's really you and your motive, hence the title.

00:19:14

Until you change why you want to be CEO and that changes how you approach what you do, then you're going to kind of be stuck and floundering.

00:19:23

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of pieces in their conversation and the back and forth that those two CEOs have through that process where Shay is thinking Liam's smoking something.

00:19:38

Yep.

00:19:39

He's like, come on, dude.

00:19:41

Don't tell me you like meetings.

00:19:43

Like, just don't do it.

00:19:45

Yeah.

00:19:46

Those conversations definitely happened in the book.

00:19:50

And they continued to kind of jab at each other.

00:19:57

The trick with CEOs at that level is that they're always posturing in some form or another.

00:20:04

Like there's usually a lot of political moves and they could see that and Lindsay only would point that out.

00:20:09

It's like Liam noticed X, Y, and Z about Shay and Shay noticed X, Y, and Z about Liam, but they don't say anything about it.

00:20:17

So that does happen.

00:20:19

At one point in the midst of all of this back and forth, Shay invites Liam back to his office where he has two visitors waiting for him.

00:20:31

These two visitors are their private equity investors.

00:20:35

Yeah.

00:20:36

So this happened before lunch, basically.

00:20:41

Yep.

00:20:42

So he still doesn't like Liam.

00:20:43

He's not listening to anything that he says, but on the one hand, he does like him enough to call in the investors so that when they get back from lunch, they go into this meeting.

00:20:54

And this is my major issue with the book.

00:20:57

And at this meeting, these investors pitch merging the two companies.

00:21:04

They offered to buy Delmar.

00:21:06

Yeah, they're merging the two, but Golden Gate is through the merger buying Delmar.

00:21:14

And it completely catches Liam off guard.

00:21:18

It has no idea it's coming.

00:21:21

And the investors had even gone as far as reaching out to a couple of Liam's board members and convincing them it was a good idea, which is totally realistic.

00:21:32

Like this stuff does happen and I'm always baffled when I hear about it, but it does happen.

00:21:40

So side note, something somewhat similar happened with the whole Monsanto bear merger.

00:21:49

Okay.

00:21:50

That's partially how that stuff happened.

00:21:52

Well, I may have to amend my opinion about this then.

00:21:55

Yeah.

00:21:56

And I read that I'm like, there is no way that this is happening.

00:22:06

The largest acquisitions in the agriculture world ever.

00:22:10

And that is not far off of how it started.

00:22:14

Wow.

00:22:15

It's crazy.

00:22:16

So I don't understand.

00:22:19

Maybe you can help me.

00:22:21

Sure.

00:22:22

Why?

00:22:23

I don't like.

00:22:26

And also, I don't understand why Liam sticks around because there's no way that he has enough goodwill built up towards Shay to endure this sort of thing when he came up there for something completely different.

00:22:40

At that point, I'm walking and everybody that I know is walking.

00:22:44

Yes.

00:22:45

So, Shay, let's start with his side.

00:22:49

And this is why it didn't even phase me whenever I read through this.

00:22:54

Shay's side of this is that Shay is not a good CEO.

00:22:59

You know, he gets too involved with things.

00:23:02

He leads horrible meetings.

00:23:03

He's got bad etiquette with his workers.

00:23:08

And his company is not doing as well.

00:23:12

Okay.

00:23:13

When a CEO is in that position, they have two choices.

00:23:17

Well, three really.

00:23:18

Either they are the problem and they need to get out of the way.

00:23:22

Two, they have to do some massive change to the company in order to right those wrongs, which can lead to all the reorgs or firing and hiring.

00:23:34

Like it leads to a lot of those things.

00:23:36

Or they acquire something that's doing better than them and incorporate those people and their practices into theirs.

00:23:45

And in Shay's case, he's a bad leader.

00:23:48

Doesn't want to admit it.

00:23:49

Doesn't even realize it to some degree.

00:23:53

And he is causing the issues internally, but he isn't comfortable going through those conversations and having the hard back and forth with his workers.

00:24:05

So trying to do the hiring, firing thing isn't going to work.

00:24:08

He's not going to replace himself because he feels like that is his crowning achievement for the decades of work that he has put in.

00:24:14

So the natural next step is how do I acquire someone who is in better shape than us in order to improve our overall stance and posture?

00:24:22

Okay.

00:24:23

So someone walks in your office that morning and says, "Hey, my company is doing XYZ.

00:24:30

You take them at his word and you call your financial people and you make up an offer to buy their company."

00:24:37

He showed him the real numbers though.

00:24:39

He was looking at the financials.

00:24:41

But this is also like this is, it's very unlikely that this is the first time this has crossed his mind.

00:24:48

He doesn't say any of that in here.

00:24:50

But if you notice, he had a lot of time to consider and think about Liam coming over and he did agonize over that and then resolved himself to say yes to it because he felt that there was some good that could come out of it.

00:25:06

Like it's positioned that way before Liam ever gets to the building.

00:25:10

And my head that means that CEO has got some political movies trying to make before that meeting ever starts.

00:25:16

Sure. I can get on board with that.

00:25:19

I guess when I read this story though, it kind of seemed like Liam got there and he's the one who's like, "Hey, let's talk about financials."

00:25:27

And she's like, "I don't really want to do that."

00:25:29

And he's like, "I can't help you unless you're willing to be transparent."

00:25:32

He's like, "Okay, fine."

00:25:33

So at that point, they bring their financial data.

00:25:37

I don't think he's done his due diligence before Liam gets there.

00:25:43

So within a matter of hours, you're convinced that you're going to spend millions of dollars to acquire this company.

00:25:50

This is not an impulse buy.

00:25:52

Yes.

00:25:53

But there's a very small note here.

00:26:00

So about halfway through the morning, Shea says, "I got to make a 15-minute call."

00:26:06

That's where he talks to those private investors.

00:26:10

Yep.

00:26:11

And in that return, because Liam steps out, goes and grabs something to Munch on and comes back.

00:26:19

And whenever he gets back, he notices that Shea had a full page of notes and his mood had completely changed.

00:26:27

So at that point, he's had a chance to bounce his impulsive idea off of investors.

00:26:34

And I guarantee you, those investors think about this sort of thing all the time.

00:26:38

They're always looking at, "Should I acquire?

00:26:40

Should I fire?"

00:26:41

Like, that is every day they're having those conversations guaranteed.

00:26:44

So breaks my brain.

00:26:47

I am sure in 15 minutes time, it would not take much for them to run the general numbers to decide if this was feasible or not.

00:26:55

Guaranteed.

00:26:56

But even in the meeting with Liam later on, when they actually meet with him, it was like, "We don't have anything formal.

00:27:01

We're just, you know, this is a thing we're working through and we would love to learn more about what's an opportunity here."

00:27:09

So it's not a done deal on their side, either.

00:27:12

True. It almost seems at that meeting, though, it's kind of like a hostile takeover.

00:27:16

Kinda, yeah.

00:27:17

Like, we're going to proceed with this, whether you like it or not.

00:27:21

Because they're not asking him, like, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

00:27:26

Right.

00:27:27

This is what we're doing.

00:27:28

Yeah.

00:27:29

You're not here what you feel.

00:27:31

Exactly. So, if you don't, again, maybe I just don't get it because I'm not in the corporate environment.

00:27:39

Yeah.

00:27:40

I can't wrap my brain around this, like...

00:27:42

Yes. I'm not saying that what they're doing and the way they win about it is right.

00:27:46

They're not just sleeping on it. They're just like, "Hey, we see this thing.

00:27:49

We're going to drop millions of dollars on this. It may bankrupt our company.

00:27:52

Oh, well, it seems like the right thing to do. I guess we should do it."

00:27:55

Yep.

00:27:56

What?

00:27:57

No!

00:27:58

That stuff happens all the time. It just does.

00:28:00

Ugh!

00:28:01

It just does.

00:28:02

How many times do you hear of a company that acquires someone else and one or both go under?

00:28:06

That's common.

00:28:08

So...

00:28:09

Anyway, the other side of this is Liam's side, though.

00:28:12

That's Shay and the investors. Why on earth did Liam stick around?

00:28:16

Exactly.

00:28:17

And it's because he can't leave.

00:28:21

So, I understand, like, he even says, "I really want to punch you in the face right now."

00:28:25

Like, he says that to Shay later on.

00:28:27

And I'm totally with him because to spring something like that on another CEO last minute, like...

00:28:33

Yeah.

00:28:34

Just don't.

00:28:35

But they do.

00:28:37

And the problem Liam has is that they've reached out to two of his board of directors and have their support.

00:28:43

So, from a political stance, if Liam says, "Uh-uh" and walks out right away, he now has to explain himself to his board

00:28:53

why he didn't entertain this when the potential pitch that was given to these boards was phenomenal.

00:29:01

Wow.

00:29:02

So, overall, Liam's investors and Liam's board have a chance of potentially getting a huge payday

00:29:11

and having jobs because they're wanting to bring the whole thing together the way they're talking about it.

00:29:17

So, it's a win-win for the people on the board of directors in the investment side.

00:29:22

So, if Liam just says, "No, we're not doing that because I don't like them because of the way that they brought it to me,"

00:29:29

like, "No, that's not going to fly. That's a pretty big ding on Liam's side."

00:29:32

So, no, he's not going to do that.

00:29:34

Would they really be able to get the support of his board of directors in the hour that they're spending together?

00:29:41

Oh, yeah.

00:29:42

Yeah. That can happen.

00:29:43

Yup.

00:29:44

Oh.

00:29:45

Wow.

00:29:46

Absolutely.

00:29:47

Yup.

00:29:48

I've seen it happen during a 30-minute meeting.

00:29:50

I was there when stuff like that happened.

00:29:52

Oh, man.

00:29:53

Yes, it does happen.

00:29:56

This is why...

00:29:58

All right.

00:29:59

And again, I'm not condoning this.

00:30:01

I'm not telling you this is the right way to do it.

00:30:03

How many books have we read that talk about making good decisions in almost every single one of them is talking about

00:30:09

give yourself time, think about potential scenarios, slow things down.

00:30:14

That's common in the conversations we've had.

00:30:16

So, I'm not condoning this methodology, but it's what they do.

00:30:21

And I think this is why a lot of times you see really bad decisions coming from the boards and the

00:30:28

leaderships of these companies because...

00:30:32

Because they're acting like impulsive toddlers?

00:30:34

There's a lot of last-minute decisions or impulsive decisions or frankly big merger-type decisions made at cocktail

00:30:45

parties.

00:30:46

No.

00:30:47

Everybody's had way too much to drink and they're deciding how much they're going to pay for another company.

00:30:52

Come on.

00:30:53

Exactly.

00:30:54

So, I cannot verify whether what you're telling me is true or not.

00:30:56

So, I'm assuming that it is.

00:30:58

But if this is true, my five-year-old has more self-control than some of these CEOs, which is completely

00:31:03

ridiculous.

00:31:04

I would not argue with that.

00:31:06

But again, this is...

00:31:10

If you operate at those levels regularly, these types of decisions and these types of conversations happen daily.

00:31:18

So, this is just another one.

00:31:21

You just got to work your way through it.

00:31:23

That's all they're seeing.

00:31:25

All right.

00:31:26

Wow.

00:31:27

It's all right.

00:31:29

All right.

00:31:30

Well, let's tell the rest of this story then and then get into some more of the principles here.

00:31:36

Sure.

00:31:37

So, Liam is annoyed.

00:31:40

It wants to punch Shay in the face.

00:31:43

And somehow even after that meeting sticks around because he's like, "No, you still don't get it."

00:31:48

And convinces him that he's trying to be a CEO for the wrong reasons.

00:31:55

We'll get into the specifics, I think, in the next part.

00:31:59

So, I'll skip over that for now.

00:32:01

Sure.

00:32:02

Liam, I'm sorry, Shay ends up going home realizing...

00:32:06

that Liam's right.

00:32:08

He doesn't really want to be a CEO.

00:32:10

Comes back to the meeting that they have scheduled, the teleconference, whatever, the next week.

00:32:16

And is like, "Okay, so let's go through with this."

00:32:19

And by the way, I think Liam should be the CEO, not me.

00:32:24

Yep.

00:32:25

And again, Liam's like, "Well, hold on.

00:32:27

Wait a second."

00:32:28

Because Shay sprung this on him, too.

00:32:31

Yeah, yeah.

00:32:32

Zero people skills here, Shay.

00:32:35

I mean, come on.

00:32:36

How did you ever get married and have a family?

00:32:40

Jeez.

00:32:41

That was before all this.

00:32:42

But, yeah.

00:32:44

The big takeaway at the end is it goes through...

00:32:47

Liam is the CEO.

00:32:49

Shay gets to go back doing what he likes doing.

00:32:53

And it's the best decision that he ever made.

00:32:55

His family is happy.

00:32:56

His wife is happy at the end.

00:32:57

But there is like a little caveat at the very end that Shay says that he does see that someday

00:33:04

he might be willing to do the things that a CEO does.

00:33:07

He doesn't just want the title.

00:33:09

Someday he'll grow up.

00:33:10

Yep, someday he'll grow up.

00:33:12

But, yes.

00:33:14

Yeah.

00:33:15

So Liam does keep him around, it seems.

00:33:18

Oh, where did he even start with this?

00:33:21

I didn't have any part of this as I was reading it in the 40 minutes that I sat down and read

00:33:27

this whole story.

00:33:28

There wasn't a single point in here.

00:33:29

I was like, "Yeah, that would never happen."

00:33:31

Every single point, like, "Yeah, I could see that."

00:33:33

Definitely.

00:33:34

Wow.

00:33:35

All right, we'll have to adjust on the fly then.

00:33:39

That's okay.

00:33:41

I will.

00:33:43

You want to get into the lesson part now?

00:33:46

Yeah, yeah.

00:33:47

I think, you know, maybe...

00:33:48

Because that's the general gist of the story.

00:33:50

There's the two CEOs back and forth, you know, springing some things on each other to some

00:33:55

degree.

00:33:56

And then ultimately what decisions are being made is that Shay is trying to determine if

00:34:02

he should listen to Liam and Liam is trying to help Shay understand that being a CEO isn't

00:34:10

just leading meetings and getting involved when things go awry and, you know, learning

00:34:15

the details of the areas that you really like because that's the area that you climb the

00:34:18

ladder through.

00:34:19

So Liam is trying to help Shay see that.

00:34:22

And at the end of it, Shay finally realizes, "Oh, I'm not made for this yet and needs to

00:34:29

take a step back."

00:34:30

Yeah.

00:34:31

So, if you're not able to do that, you're not able to do that.

00:34:36

So, you know, when you're not able to do that, you're not able to do that.

00:34:41

So, you know, when you're able to do that, you're able to do that.

00:34:46

So, you know, when you're able to do that, you're able to do that.

00:34:51

So, you know, when you're able to do that, you're able to do that.

00:34:55

Shay is a reward-centered CEO in this case or a leader.

00:35:00

And the reason that that is a problem is because they tend to see CEO or that leadership

00:35:06

position as the reward.

00:35:08

They're seeing that as the winning of the ladder climbing.

00:35:14

Yep.

00:35:15

So, when he has reached the pinnacle of now becoming CEO, he sees that as success and

00:35:21

I should be able to sit back and do the things I want to do as opposed to taking Liam's

00:35:27

stance, which is the responsibility-centered viewpoint where I have the most painful job

00:35:33

in the company, not the worst, but the most painful because it's my job to have the uncomfortable

00:35:39

conversations, repeat, you know, the mantras of our company.

00:35:42

And we'll get into, there's five specific things here.

00:35:44

We'll get into those.

00:35:45

But he has very specific roles that he has to fill, all of which Shay is set aside because

00:35:51

they're not fun.

00:35:52

They're painful.

00:35:53

Yep.

00:35:54

So, those are the two different types.

00:35:55

Yeah, I'll share the definitions because I wrote them down in my mind-notifile.

00:36:00

Okay, perfect.

00:36:01

The reward-centered leadership is the belief that being the leader is the reward for the

00:36:05

hard work and therefore the experience of being a leader should be pleasant and enjoyable.

00:36:10

That's usually when you start to take it easy.

00:36:11

That's what Shay was doing.

00:36:13

Whereas responsibilities, belief that being a leader is a responsibility, therefore the

00:36:17

experience of leading should be difficult and challenging and that's where you have to

00:36:20

be willing to put in the extra work during the off-season, if you will.

00:36:26

And he mentions in this section his friend Alan Mulali.

00:36:32

Yeah.

00:36:33

Do you know who Alan Mulali is?

00:36:35

CEO of Ford.

00:36:36

Yes.

00:36:37

Ford Motor Company.

00:36:38

Yes.

00:36:39

Before he was CEO of Ford, he was CEO of Boeing, I believe.

00:36:42

Yeah.

00:36:43

And I got to- He also introduced the 777.

00:36:46

Okay.

00:36:47

Yeah.

00:36:48

He spoke at the Entre Leadership Summit that I got to go to a couple of years ago.

00:36:52

Oh, cool.

00:36:53

And he's an interesting guy.

00:36:54

I can tell you from seeing him present that Patrick Lencioni's depiction of this is accurate.

00:37:01

He had a slide.

00:37:03

I took a picture of it.

00:37:04

I'll try to find it.

00:37:06

He had a slide of 10 bullet points.

00:37:09

So most of the people were presenting.

00:37:11

They've got an hour or whatever and they've got their whole keynote and they're going through

00:37:13

the slides.

00:37:14

It's a clicker.

00:37:15

He's got 10 points on this slide.

00:37:17

He's up there the entire time and he's like, "This is everything I know about leadership."

00:37:21

Yeah.

00:37:22

Yeah.

00:37:23

And he told the story there, which gave a little bit more detail, I thought, than the

00:37:28

book did, but the meeting process that he had at Ford, that is what they did.

00:37:35

In the talk, he mentioned that they had these reports where people were supposed to rate

00:37:41

their different areas that they were responsible for.

00:37:44

Green, yellow, or red.

00:37:45

And remember, he's coming over to Ford in the middle of them losing billions of dollars

00:37:51

and they're having these meetings every week and everybody's areas of responsibility, they're

00:37:55

all self-reporting, they're all green.

00:37:58

And he's like, "This is not all green.

00:38:00

We're losing billions of dollars.

00:38:02

What is the problem and how do we fix it?"

00:38:04

And he shared some of the struggles in getting people to be vulnerable enough to admit that

00:38:10

ham struggling with this thing.

00:38:12

But he said that that was the tipping point for that organization and when they started

00:38:17

to turn things around.

00:38:19

Once one person started doing it, then a lot of people started doing it.

00:38:22

And some people, they never reported a red and that's when he had the conversation that

00:38:26

talk about in this book where, "Well, I still like you, but you can't work here anymore."

00:38:32

And it's really cool to see how these meetings are so simple.

00:38:40

It was literally all the heads of the departments, I forget how many people, they're not giving

00:38:45

a big status update.

00:38:47

They're just coming and giving a very brief green, yellow, red.

00:38:51

And then if it's a yellow or a red, everybody rallies around them and it's like, "How can

00:38:55

we help?

00:38:56

How can we fix this?"

00:38:58

It sounds almost too easy or too good to be true, but it really is the thing that made

00:39:06

the difference.

00:39:07

And so this gets back to one of the points that they make in the fable is, "Yeah, right,

00:39:12

you like meetings."

00:39:15

That's an example of how meetings can be an accelerant to organizational success.

00:39:20

And I've seen that in different levels in the organizations that have been a part of

00:39:24

two, where if you approach meetings the right way, they totally are good things.

00:39:30

And I thought that was a cool example, and I think that's worth unpacking a little bit

00:39:37

that these meetings aren't necessarily bad, but it's totally tied to the perspective of

00:39:44

the leader of the meeting.

00:39:45

If the leader of the meeting doesn't want to be there, if they are a reward-centered

00:39:50

leader who thinks that they shouldn't have to be in this meeting, then yeah, it's going

00:39:55

to be a complete waste of time.

00:39:59

But just slipping the perspective of the meeting leader that has a residual effect and can

00:40:04

totally turn the whole thing around.

00:40:06

It seems Alan, right?

00:40:08

Yep.

00:40:09

Since he took over Ford, this is going to be hard for me to say.

00:40:15

I grew up being a GM fan, so Chevrolet's, GMC's, Buicks, Cadillac, etc., etc.

00:40:24

Being GM, that was what I was a part of, because anything Ford I felt like was being destroyed.

00:40:31

All the Fords I was around, motors blew up, and things were not good, always being worked

00:40:36

on.

00:40:38

So I grew up with a sense of making fun of Ford constantly, and carried that into my

00:40:45

adult life.

00:40:47

Within the last, I would say probably the last four years, I have watched, because I

00:40:53

drive a suburban.

00:40:54

I've got a Chevy suburban.

00:40:55

I'm a fan of the LS, got a 5.3.

00:40:57

I can tell you all these things about it, what rods and compression ratios and stuff.

00:41:01

If you want to get into that.

00:41:02

A bit of a gear head from time to time.

00:41:05

I understand what's going on with that, but I'm in the middle of this conflicted mode,

00:41:13

because I've been watching Ford for four years, and have been watching how they're marketing

00:41:20

side, and how they run their ads, and how they have gotten into good relationships with

00:41:28

Ken Block and DC Shoes and all sorts of things.

00:41:31

They've got these really cool partnerships, and they're building ridiculous marketing

00:41:35

efforts.

00:41:36

Simply to get their name out there more.

00:41:39

They do some things that are just amazing.

00:41:43

I look over at the Chevy side of things, I'm like, "Come on.

00:41:47

What are you doing?"

00:41:49

They're doing a few good things, but Chevy's now copying Ford.

00:41:55

I think it's because of the CEO change, and I've been watching a lot of that for a while.

00:42:00

I'm in the middle of this conflicted mode of, "Should I be switching off of my GM mantra

00:42:06

and looking at Ford a little more seriously?"

00:42:11

To the point where I've debated, my car is at the point where it needs to replace you

00:42:15

before long.

00:42:16

I'm like, "Okay.

00:42:17

Now I have to decide."

00:42:21

What am I going to do?

00:42:23

We'll see if I go that route or not.

00:42:24

He's done a phenomenal job of flipping that company.

00:42:28

You don't have to decide by the end of the episode.

00:42:29

That's the good news.

00:42:30

I know.

00:42:31

I don't have to sit down having Ford drinks and having a random person come talk to me

00:42:36

and then make my decision.

00:42:38

Because you're not a CEO, apparently.

00:42:40

Nope.

00:42:41

You don't board a direct.

00:42:42

There's not a private equity investor.

00:42:44

Nope.

00:42:45

Not a VC capital person.

00:42:47

VC fund person.

00:42:50

Yes.

00:42:51

The thing about all of this is, Alan is not one who, if I remember his background correctly,

00:43:00

he couldn't tell you a lot about vehicles.

00:43:03

That's not his space.

00:43:06

Even in the story, in the fable, Liam was fired as CEO for a company because a younger,

00:43:14

less experienced, less knowledgeable CEO of their competitor did all of the things

00:43:21

that we're getting ready to go through and was able to take over their area.

00:43:29

Liam fell apart as a result of it was fired.

00:43:33

It was that background that Liam is coming to this conversation with.

00:43:39

I know he is talking to a potential competitor, their rivals, I guess, as they were talking

00:43:45

about in the book at one point.

00:43:47

But yes, all of this is say, some of these things may seem ridiculous.

00:43:54

I can't say I've had personal experience with any CEOs who do any of these things or

00:44:01

any managers really for that matter.

00:44:03

Well, having seen Alan present at Anchea leadership and knowing the story there, I feel like gave

00:44:11

a lot more credence to the power of the motive and really the narrative that Patrick Lincione

00:44:20

is telling here.

00:44:21

He kind of name drops Alan Mulally, but I feel like just reading the book, you don't

00:44:25

really get a sense for what really happened there.

00:44:33

You read it and you're like, "It can't be that simple when you see him speak."

00:44:36

You're convinced it really is that simple.

00:44:40

I just wanted to call that out.

00:44:43

I really like the...

00:44:45

He mentions at the beginning, he says, "This is the most important book that he's read."

00:44:50

I think maybe it is because it has the greatest potential impact, especially if Patrick Lincione's

00:44:56

target reader is CEOs.

00:45:02

Getting this stuff and making that switch, that could influence a lot of people in these

00:45:09

organizations.

00:45:11

The big takeaway here before we get into the five omissions of reward-centered leaders

00:45:17

is that this is the switch that does have to happen.

00:45:20

Leading an organization really has nothing to do with it being convenient or enjoyable.

00:45:28

Maybe not just an organization, but leadership in general, that's true.

00:45:33

We haven't covered the five levels of leadership by John Maxwell for a bookworm, I don't think.

00:45:39

I've read it and I don't remember all five levels.

00:45:41

I do recall though that the further up you go, the less it's about you.

00:45:48

At the highest level, really, your only job is helping people get to the level that you

00:45:53

are at.

00:45:54

You're multiplying yourself as a leader.

00:45:57

A lot of people think it's about sitting back and reaping the benefits, and that's not

00:46:01

it at all.

00:46:02

I'll just add that for context.

00:46:04

This doesn't just apply to CEOs and organizations that this is important.

00:46:08

Every level of leadership in every organization.

00:46:11

He even makes...

00:46:12

I mean, it's short.

00:46:13

I wish he would do more of this, but he does make a correlation to a dad with kids at one

00:46:17

point.

00:46:18

Sure.

00:46:19

How this translates to that as well.

00:46:23

I don't think he does that enough to warrant...

00:46:27

You have to do a lot of translating yourself with this.

00:46:31

There's not a lot of explicit...

00:46:34

Here's an example of how this would apply to someone leading a volunteer team, to somebody

00:46:40

leading a 50-person team.

00:46:42

He doesn't make that translation.

00:46:44

He kind of leaves it at CEO level leading 1,000 people or more scenarios, which is actually

00:46:49

quite a small number of people.

00:46:52

Yeah, which is kind of why I said I had the thought.

00:46:55

I wish he would have just skipped the fable and spent more time unpacking the principal,

00:46:59

because the principal is really important, but it feels very narrowly defined.

00:47:03

Sure.

00:47:04

It's almost like he's sitting down to write this.

00:47:06

I got something really important to say, but I'm Patrick Lencioni, so I got to do the

00:47:10

fable.

00:47:11

I got to make up the story.

00:47:13

Yeah.

00:47:14

This is what I do.

00:47:15

I don't know.

00:47:16

I really like the story, but that's me.

00:47:19

But I'm in a very, very different place and have a very different background than you do.

00:47:25

So I think it's going to hit us in opposite ways.

00:47:29

I don't think there's anything wrong with the approach that he took.

00:47:31

I guess if I was writing a book like this, my approach would be, "Okay, here's the message

00:47:38

I want to get out there.

00:47:39

How can I get it to as many people as possible?"

00:47:43

Sure.

00:47:44

And not tell one specific story about one of those people groups that is very, very limited

00:47:50

in terms of the quantity.

00:47:52

Sure.

00:47:53

But...

00:47:54

No, it makes sense.

00:47:55

And I think that one easy way to translate this, if you're in management of any kind,

00:48:02

it's very easy to take this and translate it to that, because you're essentially building

00:48:05

up to be the chief manager.

00:48:07

That's effectively what you're trying to do.

00:48:10

And following these steps or doing these five things that these reward center leaders don't

00:48:16

do, if you're able to do these things, it makes that whole process quicker, easier, and

00:48:22

you're a much better manager overall.

00:48:24

So at any level, outside of absolute bottom, I think these are things that would be extremely

00:48:32

helpful.

00:48:33

Should we get into these?

00:48:35

Let's do it.

00:48:36

Okay.

00:48:37

So these are the five omissions of reward center leaders.

00:48:41

That's the title that he puts on this.

00:48:43

So to use the fable, this is Shay with Golden Gate Security.

00:48:49

And he sees his role as CEO as the reward for doing a good job and having decades of

00:48:55

exemplary...

00:48:56

Is that right?

00:48:59

Exemplary?

00:49:00

Exemplary work.

00:49:02

He's successful.

00:49:03

There's a word I can say.

00:49:07

He is successful in climbing the ladder and he becomes CEO and he sees that as success

00:49:12

and a chance to take a step back.

00:49:15

And he's going to milk it for all it's worth.

00:49:18

Yeah.

00:49:19

Yeah, he's going to milk it.

00:49:20

And that is what he has been striving for.

00:49:22

So it is reward.

00:49:25

And that's how he has seen it.

00:49:26

So these are five things that people who have that mindset, who feel like they've achieved

00:49:32

leadership in some way.

00:49:33

And it doesn't have to be CEO.

00:49:35

You could see it as, "I am now the leader of the childcare workers at our church."

00:49:43

And you can see that as a reward.

00:49:45

Not everyone would see that particular one as a reward, but some people could.

00:49:50

And if you do see it as that, these are five things that you're very likely struggling

00:49:55

with or don't even realize that you should be doing.

00:49:59

Anybody who's focused on a title is probably...

00:50:03

Yeah.

00:50:04

I'm committing at least some of these.

00:50:06

Correct.

00:50:07

Yeah.

00:50:08

The first of these is developing the leadership team.

00:50:12

Now if you are the first step up, I feel like this doesn't necessarily apply, but if

00:50:18

you're the second step up, it certainly would apply.

00:50:22

But developing the leadership team, the way that I understood this from his point here

00:50:29

is you're essentially helping your leadership team become better at being leaders themselves.

00:50:37

You're helping them learn what it is that you're doing.

00:50:40

You're going through these five things.

00:50:41

You're working through how to help them become a responsibility-centered leader as opposed

00:50:46

to a reward-centered leader.

00:50:48

So you're helping them build up into a very similar role that you're currently in.

00:50:54

Yeah.

00:50:55

That's the way I see it.

00:50:56

That's why I think that this applies to anybody who's not on the lowest rung on the ladder

00:51:03

if you are going to view it in terms of a hierarchy.

00:51:06

So I think as long as you're not, as long as there's somebody below you that you can

00:51:10

pull up, you should be doing this.

00:51:13

Yeah.

00:51:15

And when it says developing, it can be taken a lot of different ways.

00:51:20

So as an example, I had a manager who did this particular piece well.

00:51:25

I feel like he struggled at some of the others here, but his particular tendency was I was

00:51:32

a data analyst and he was overseeing me and he was constantly trying to help me develop

00:51:38

people skills so that I would be better at working with my teammates.

00:51:42

Like that is what this is referring to.

00:51:44

So like you're helping your people get better at interacting with other people or getting

00:51:49

better at their job, making sure they're trained well enough, make sure they have the

00:51:52

things available to them that they need, like that's the sort of thing that you're doing

00:51:56

to develop them to help them become better in their job.

00:52:00

Exactly.

00:52:01

There's a couple of questions that he gives in each one of these, which I thought were

00:52:04

cool.

00:52:05

I think in terms of action items, the asking these questions about yourself and your own

00:52:11

leadership positions in your own organization would be a very valid one.

00:52:15

I did not write that one down, but that's kind of what they're there for.

00:52:20

So for this one, he says, do you feel that spending time developing your team members,

00:52:24

interpersonal dynamics is superfluous or a waste of time?

00:52:27

And do you organize team building activities for your team that are fun, but that largely

00:52:31

ignore uncomfortable conversations about their collective behaviors?

00:52:35

So the big thing here, I think, is the communication about the important stuff.

00:52:42

That is what develops a leadership team.

00:52:44

It's not making sure everybody's happy and no one's focused on the problems.

00:52:47

It's not ignoring something that's going wrong.

00:52:49

It's recognizing that and being able to deal with it in a healthy, effective way.

00:52:55

Exactly.

00:52:56

So this is a big one.

00:52:57

And I think that's why it's first on the list.

00:53:00

So developing the leadership team is number one of the omissions.

00:53:04

They don't do this.

00:53:05

So you can easily flip this.

00:53:08

So instead of saying this is five omissions of reward-centered leaders, these are the

00:53:12

five musts of responsibility-centered leaders.

00:53:17

It's true.

00:53:18

It's true.

00:53:19

I can't let it go.

00:53:21

The second of these is managing subordinates and making them manage theirs.

00:53:29

And it's kind of odd to think about, "Okay, what do you mean by managing?"

00:53:34

Well, you're making sure that they're doing their job.

00:53:38

You are, you know, a lot of times you'll see like, "Don't babysit."

00:53:42

And Shea says this a lot in the fails.

00:53:44

Like, "I don't want to babysit my people."

00:53:46

Like, "I spent good money to find the right people and I got the right people.

00:53:49

I don't need to be on them all the time."

00:53:51

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that.

00:53:53

And it drives me nuts.

00:53:54

Yes, you do.

00:53:55

Because I've seen the turnover that comes from that approach.

00:53:59

Right.

00:54:00

And I get it.

00:54:01

You know, you wish you could just tell people, "Hey, here's the job and they're going to

00:54:05

show up and they're going to do it with gusto every single day for the rest of their lives."

00:54:08

It's not going to happen.

00:54:10

Recognize that and set yourself up for success by knowing what's going on.

00:54:14

Yes.

00:54:15

You got to keep yourself in the loop.

00:54:17

But you have to be smart with the way that you do that.

00:54:21

We get to that one in number four.

00:54:23

And you have to be willing to keep yourself abreast of other areas as well.

00:54:33

So by managing subordinates, you have to know what they're all doing.

00:54:37

The way I tend to think about this, and this is different because I'm going to be talking

00:54:40

about hardware here.

00:54:41

And in the world of being an IT director at a church, it's important that I have an overall

00:54:47

view of the entire building's technology.

00:54:51

I can't just be paying attention to one.

00:54:53

I can't just pay attention to video signals.

00:54:55

I have to know where all the audio signals are.

00:54:57

I have to know where all the data signals are.

00:54:58

I have to know where the firearms are and where all the contacts are for security systems.

00:55:03

Like all of those things play into how I set up the networking and the structure in that

00:55:08

building.

00:55:09

I have to know where all those pieces are so that I can make better decisions in one small

00:55:14

thing like where do I record an interview?

00:55:17

Like in the building.

00:55:20

That simple question, I'm taking all of that stuff into account.

00:55:25

And I think of this very similarly to that.

00:55:28

If you're able to kind of keep tabs on what everyone on your team is up to, when you're

00:55:34

asked a simple question, you know if it affects four of your 16 members or not.

00:55:40

Like you have a better view of that.

00:55:41

So you're able to make better decisions as well.

00:55:44

So this is kind of a sidestep or a side effect of keeping an eye on managing your subordinates.

00:55:51

But it is still important.

00:55:53

When I read this section, I kind of thought this is sort of like parenting.

00:56:00

So the questions that are associated with this.

00:56:03

Do you believe that providing individual guidance and coaching to your people is somehow beneath

00:56:07

you or not worth your time?

00:56:09

Do you feel you should be able to trust them to manage themselves?

00:56:11

Do you justify not knowing what your direct reports are doing by claiming not to want

00:56:15

to be a micromanager?

00:56:16

And maybe it's just a season of life that I'm in where I have a son who's about to turn

00:56:21

13.

00:56:22

But I'm not just going to at the time he turns 13, disconnect and not care about what's going

00:56:29

on in his life.

00:56:32

Maybe who follows me and knows anything about the intentional family stuff that we do and

00:56:36

all the systems that we put in place.

00:56:38

Those have been building a platform for this very moment.

00:56:43

That was the whole goal.

00:56:44

The whole time was that when they got to be this age, they would feel comfortable talking

00:56:49

to us about anything.

00:56:50

And so to kind of abdicate that and just be like, okay, you go, just go do your thing.

00:56:54

Figure it out on your own.

00:56:55

I kind of can't wrap my head around that.

00:56:59

But somehow in a workplace environment, it's okay.

00:57:01

Yes.

00:57:02

What?

00:57:03

So weird, but it happens.

00:57:07

That's what he's saying.

00:57:08

Don't do that.

00:57:09

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:57:12

Number three here, having difficult and uncomfortable conversations.

00:57:17

Nobody likes this.

00:57:18

Well, I shouldn't say that.

00:57:19

There is one person that they mentioned towards the end that actually likes doing this.

00:57:24

Like in Lindsay Oni's career, he's run across one person.

00:57:30

So this is not common.

00:57:31

I'll say that.

00:57:33

But there are a lot of things that this leads up to in the book.

00:57:37

It Liam refers to this as having conversations about things you feel like you should never

00:57:40

have a conversation about.

00:57:42

One of his team members was humming during a meeting unknowingly.

00:57:46

I do that.

00:57:47

He had to pull him aside and have a conversation about it, making sure people aren't checking

00:57:51

their phones during meetings, making sure people aren't checking email and typing on

00:57:54

their computers and having no phones, allowing policing all of those things leads to a lot

00:58:00

of these difficult and uncomfortable conversations.

00:58:03

So you have to bring this stuff up in order to keep people in check.

00:58:07

And by you doing that, it sets the precedent for everybody down the ladder and down the

00:58:12

chain to do the same.

00:58:14

You know, this is mentioned in the previous one, managing subordinates because if you're

00:58:18

managing your subordinates, they'll have a tendency to manage theirs, but you also have

00:58:22

to make sure that they're managing theirs.

00:58:24

This is the same.

00:58:25

Like if you're going to have these difficult and uncomfortable conversations, it tends

00:58:28

to lead your team to do the same, which by proxy means if they're able and willing to

00:58:34

have difficult and uncomfortable conversations, when you have difficult things come up for

00:58:40

the entire company and things you don't want to talk about, people are more likely to work

00:58:44

through them before it's a true problem for the entire company like failing.

00:58:50

Yep.

00:58:51

Now you said at the beginning that people don't like having these uncomfortable conversations.

00:58:59

I have a confession to make.

00:59:01

Are you one of these people?

00:59:02

I am totally that guy.

00:59:04

You are.

00:59:06

Ugh.

00:59:07

Yep.

00:59:08

I am that guy.

00:59:10

In fact, like I enjoy this and I think I just enjoy seeing the result of it because I

00:59:19

think it's always a good thing.

00:59:21

But like if we go out to eat with a large group of people and most of them, I don't

00:59:26

know, I will be the one who pushes past the pleasantries and the small talk and talk about

00:59:35

the life mission, you know, all the taboo stuff.

00:59:39

Like what do you think about this?

00:59:41

You know, I'll just go from zero to a hundred and sometimes you see people's faces and they're

00:59:46

like, did you just do that?

00:59:49

He jumped in.

00:59:50

Yeah, I did.

00:59:51

I'm waiting for an answer.

00:59:52

And all the introverts are like, thank you.

00:59:55

Thank you.

00:59:56

I get it.

00:59:57

I get a strange thrill out of that.

01:00:01

But I think it's tied to the good that comes from it.

01:00:04

Like I'm thinking of a situation specifically last winter where go out with a bunch of people,

01:00:12

big group, you end up not sitting by the group that you came with.

01:00:16

So these people, you have no idea who they are and kind of awkward, like who's going

01:00:22

to talk first, you know, and I'll just dive right in.

01:00:26

And it was kind of cool.

01:00:27

Like that specific example, the level of the conversation that we got to by the end of

01:00:32

the meal that there was no way we were going to get there unless I pushed it.

01:00:39

Sure, sure.

01:00:40

And we had a shared experience.

01:00:42

We were at a conference together.

01:00:43

So it was kind of easy for me to reference like what the speaker was saying and like,

01:00:48

hey, what are your opinions about this?

01:00:49

But yeah, again, these are people you don't know.

01:00:52

You don't talk about religion.

01:00:53

You don't talk about politics.

01:00:54

Like, yeah, let's talk about that stuff.

01:00:58

And it's tricky though.

01:01:00

It is difficult, which I think is why a lot of people don't like to go there.

01:01:04

It's very easy to say something stupid in those situations that shows that you aren't

01:01:09

really listening or you have your own biases.

01:01:14

That becomes evident pretty quick.

01:01:15

Sure.

01:01:16

So you do have to really have a genuine interest in the other person when you do that.

01:01:20

It's not something you can just kind of set in motion and walk away from.

01:01:24

You got to be involved in the process.

01:01:26

Right.

01:01:27

But that doesn't intimidate me.

01:01:28

So I kind of like doing it.

01:01:31

I should have known this, but it also doesn't surprise me.

01:01:37

All right.

01:01:39

So Mike likes the difficult, uncomfortable stuff.

01:01:41

Yep.

01:01:42

Yep.

01:01:43

What's not pretend this stuff doesn't exist.

01:01:44

Let's just talk about it.

01:01:46

All right.

01:01:47

All right.

01:01:48

And you called me out on it too.

01:01:50

Like you were totally willing to do that.

01:01:53

Yeah.

01:01:54

A couple of cool quotes I thought from this section, page 148 says, "One of the main responsibilities

01:02:03

of a leader is to confront difficult awkward issues quickly and with clarity, charity

01:02:09

and resolve."

01:02:10

And that is a better encapsulation of what I'm talking about than I just described.

01:02:15

Because you're tackling something that is sensitive.

01:02:17

It is going to be awkward.

01:02:19

And so you have to be clear.

01:02:21

You have to communicate that you are preferring the other person that there's this charity.

01:02:27

Like you're thinking about them and their wellbeing, not just yourself.

01:02:31

And then resolve kind of like getting to with the intention of getting to a solution or

01:02:36

a resolution within this specific instance, you know, stuff that's going wrong on a team.

01:02:41

Sure.

01:02:42

And then on page 150, I thought this was a gold nugget that I want to call out.

01:02:48

Failing to confront people quickly about small issues is a guarantee that they will become

01:02:52

big issues.

01:02:53

Because I've seen so many people who are like, "Oh, that's not that big a deal.

01:02:58

I don't want to confront that.

01:03:00

Let's just let that go.

01:03:02

I'll pretend I didn't see that.

01:03:04

It'll be fine.

01:03:05

It's never fine.

01:03:07

It's going to come back and bite you at some point."

01:03:09

Well, it's good to know you're willing to do this.

01:03:11

Yeah.

01:03:12

Yeah.

01:03:13

So this is my jam right here.

01:03:16

Let's make things awkward.

01:03:18

All right.

01:03:19

Number four.

01:03:21

I referenced this one earlier.

01:03:24

Running great team meetings.

01:03:26

The unfortunate thing here is he doesn't say what that is.

01:03:29

Yeah.

01:03:30

He does say that he could write an entire book about that one.

01:03:36

Part of me would love to read that.

01:03:39

Just to see, okay, what's your story going to be on that one?

01:03:43

So I think that would be fascinating if he hasn't already.

01:03:47

It would not surprise me if he hasn't.

01:03:49

What has he got?

01:03:50

11 books, 12 books.

01:03:52

I think this is the fourth I've read.

01:03:55

The 12th one is the meeting.

01:03:57

Yeah.

01:03:58

The meeting.

01:03:59

Yeah.

01:04:00

His titles are getting shorter.

01:04:01

Yeah.

01:04:02

So he mentions running great team meetings and Liam talks about how he loves his team

01:04:09

meetings and that there are two hour meetings every Monday, which I thought was interesting.

01:04:17

But Shay talks of his loathing of meetings, even though Patrick Lincione is saying, you

01:04:25

know, you have to be willing to run great team meetings.

01:04:28

Yeah.

01:04:29

I, you know, I've read and studied a lot about what makes great meetings.

01:04:34

And even when I've been a part of meetings that other people run that follow the principles

01:04:41

that they say you should do for meetings, I still find myself like, okay, what's going

01:04:45

on here?

01:04:46

I still don't want to be there.

01:04:49

And it's still not fun.

01:04:51

So I'm not sure what he would qualify as a great team meeting.

01:04:57

Maybe you have experience with this almost every time I've been a part of some team meeting

01:05:02

of some kind.

01:05:03

It's never been pleasant.

01:05:04

I don't think I've ever been a part of one that I'm like excited to go to or I think

01:05:08

is going to be super productive.

01:05:10

I usually see them as a waste of time and I'm going to have to make up for that lost

01:05:14

time.

01:05:15

That's usually the way I see it.

01:05:16

Do your meetings typically have goals?

01:05:19

Like we're going to meet about this and have a decision by the end?

01:05:23

Or is it more like the status update meetings?

01:05:26

It's usually like status update of sorts.

01:05:29

Granted, those status updates, like the time where you go around the room and you tell

01:05:35

us what's going on and you tell us what's going on and you tell us what's going on.

01:05:38

Like those pieces are actually quite small in general for what I've seen.

01:05:44

The ones that always take the longest are like, okay, we're all collectively working

01:05:48

towards these 12 things where we add on those 12 things, which is good to know.

01:05:53

That's a status update meeting.

01:05:54

Yeah.

01:05:55

It's not what I'm saying is it's like it's not you give us an update on what you're doing.

01:06:00

Here's an update on what this entire team is working on.

01:06:03

But the goal of that meeting is to communicate information to team members.

01:06:07

Yes.

01:06:08

So it's still a waste of time.

01:06:09

Yes.

01:06:10

It could be done in an email.

01:06:11

Yeah.

01:06:12

If you had sent me four bullet points, it told me like what our progress is, how well

01:06:17

it's going and like that's all I would need.

01:06:20

I'd read that.

01:06:22

Exactly.

01:06:23

So I think part of this maybe is just the meetings that you've been a part of.

01:06:26

I have been a part of good meetings and I think there's a couple key components to it.

01:06:36

Number one, there should be an outcome from the meeting, not just there.

01:06:41

Now you're up to speed.

01:06:42

Like a decision that's going to be made for scrum.

01:06:47

That's one of the beauties of the scrum model, in my opinion, is that every time you have

01:06:52

a meeting, everybody is getting together and everybody has input and you are deciding

01:06:56

as a team, this is what we are going to do.

01:06:58

Sure.

01:06:59

So I have other issues with scrum, but that part of it I think is solid.

01:07:04

The other thing that needs to be present in a meeting for it to be effective is there

01:07:10

has to be a leader obviously, the CEO in this case.

01:07:14

And they have to be able to listen and take in input from everybody in the room.

01:07:22

They may not decide in everybody's favor.

01:07:25

You're not going to please everybody.

01:07:26

You're not going to decide in everybody's favor.

01:07:28

But everybody has to feel that they have been heard.

01:07:33

So you can't walk in with a preconceived notion, this is what I think we should do.

01:07:38

But just in case I want to hear what you have to say.

01:07:41

Like people have to feel like they have an active part in the process.

01:07:46

And this is where I think it's Jeff Bezos who talked about disagree but commit.

01:07:51

That's easy to do when you feel that you've been heard, that your input is valued even

01:07:58

if the decision doesn't go your way.

01:08:02

You're able to feel good about the outcome of the meeting if you're able to share your

01:08:05

piece and you feel like people have at least heard what you've had to say and it's been

01:08:09

weighed and considered appropriately.

01:08:12

And then the other thing that I think is kind of like a tactic that makes meetings better

01:08:18

and improves the relationship so the people that are in the meetings, something I picked

01:08:21

up at AE and I brought over to Blonk Media and I do it with my discipleship group too

01:08:26

is this whole principle of gratitude.

01:08:29

Like at the end of the meeting, just sharing what you're grateful to for somebody on the

01:08:34

team, like the Blonk Media one we had to record this couple of days ago, I shared that I was

01:08:41

thankful to Isaac because he totally helped me.

01:08:43

I had this idea for this thing in my head and I'm like, I don't know how we're going

01:08:47

to build this and he sat down and took like two hours a part of his day and like basically

01:08:52

built it for me.

01:08:53

And like, here's how you do it.

01:08:54

I'm like, oh, that is so sweet.

01:08:55

And it was really cool because I was like, I'm not sure if this is going to work.

01:08:58

It'd be really awesome if we could publish this thing and he basically built it for me.

01:09:01

So then me expressing gratitude in front of everybody to Isaac for helping me out with

01:09:05

that thing.

01:09:06

Like that does something in those relationships and it makes the next meeting that you have

01:09:11

better in my opinion because you look forward to meeting with these people.

01:09:15

These are people who care about you and it kind of diffuses and disarms the while I've

01:09:20

got my agenda and I got to fight for getting my way and everybody else kind of doing the

01:09:25

same thing.

01:09:26

This is pretty much exactly where we are at politically nowadays.

01:09:30

By the way, I think it was leaders eat last by Simon Sinek where I first heard the story

01:09:35

of how the Republicans, the Democrats in the United States, they used to all live in

01:09:41

D.C.

01:09:42

They used to all go to the same schools.

01:09:43

They used to all go to the same churches.

01:09:44

And then there was this bill passed and they didn't have to be there as often.

01:09:47

So what do they do?

01:09:48

They go home to their home districts and they raise funds for the next campaign and they

01:09:52

basically just show up when they have to vote.

01:09:54

And basically that was kind of the point where people started attacking each other because

01:09:58

they viewed it as an us against them.

01:10:00

Yep.

01:10:01

That's really toxic.

01:10:02

Yeah.

01:10:03

It's a cookbook, right?

01:10:04

Leaders eat last?

01:10:05

No.

01:10:06

I think that's where I found it.

01:10:07

Oh yeah.

01:10:08

That's right.

01:10:09

I found it in like the food section.

01:10:12

Oh wow.

01:10:13

Gotta love that.

01:10:15

No, I think you're absolutely right.

01:10:17

You know, I don't see, I don't see meetings as a thing I've ever had a good experience

01:10:23

with.

01:10:24

I think there are definitely great ones out there.

01:10:29

The meetings, I shouldn't say this.

01:10:31

They're not really meetings.

01:10:32

They're just like passings in the hall that I've had before where I end up going into

01:10:38

a room and having a 30 or 40 minute conversation with someone when we're talking is like,

01:10:45

how do we do this?

01:10:46

What is the answer?

01:10:47

What decision do I need to make here?

01:10:49

I don't know.

01:10:50

There's a whiteboard in that room.

01:10:51

Let's go.

01:10:52

Yep.

01:10:53

And then the two of us go in and hash it out and try to figure it out.

01:10:56

I don't really think of those as meetings because it's not on the schedule.

01:10:59

There is no agenda.

01:11:00

There's nothing to it.

01:11:01

And it was just a happenstance thing.

01:11:02

They totally could be though.

01:11:04

It's just people typically are like, I'm thinking about this now.

01:11:07

I need to solve this now.

01:11:08

But if you can train yourself, it's like, well, we have this meeting next week.

01:11:11

I'm going to put this on the agenda and we'll solve it there.

01:11:13

You can do that.

01:11:14

Right.

01:11:15

Right.

01:11:16

But that was corporate.

01:11:17

You know, everything's last minute, right?

01:11:19

You're a murderer.

01:11:20

Decisions last minute.

01:11:21

So this is, this is a thing.

01:11:23

I don't, as far as like a scheduled time to sit down and do those things, it's completely

01:11:28

foreign to me.

01:11:29

I would love to see a culture that operates that way, but I have yet to find it personally.

01:11:37

So I don't know.

01:11:39

It's a thing.

01:11:40

You know, Lindsey, I'm saying like, this is something you have to do.

01:11:42

Like if you're going to be a responsibility centered leader, this is a thing you have

01:11:46

to get good at.

01:11:47

Yep.

01:11:48

And like what you're saying, like you have to decide what your goals are, what decisions

01:11:51

you're going to make and put your team together to make those decisions.

01:11:57

That's probably the easiest way to say it.

01:11:59

That's my summarization of what you're saying.

01:12:02

Yep.

01:12:03

Exactly.

01:12:04

Yeah.

01:12:05

There's a quote in this section, by the way, that again is really powerful.

01:12:09

I think page 156, what is tolerated at the top of the company is often the ceiling of

01:12:15

what can be expected deeper within it.

01:12:18

And his point when he's making this is that if you don't like meetings, nobody who attends

01:12:23

your meetings is going to like them either.

01:12:25

Sure.

01:12:26

This is a much broader, has a much broader application in terms of like the values and

01:12:34

the vision for the company and the further you climb up a ladder, there's more temptation

01:12:40

maybe to gloss over some of the stuff that's going wrong instead of correcting it.

01:12:44

But that stuff is cancer to an organization if you let it stay.

01:12:50

The last omission of reward-centered leaders here is communicating constantly and repetitively

01:12:57

to employees.

01:12:58

Again, I've not seen this one.

01:13:02

But what he's getting at is that when you have a set of goals, a mission, a set of statements

01:13:12

that are important to your company, a mantra of sorts, and principles that are important

01:13:18

for your employees to act within or to follow.

01:13:24

These are things you need to mention every chance you get the opportunity.

01:13:32

You need to always incorporate them into a conversation when you have them with have

01:13:39

conversations with employees.

01:13:41

These are the things you just have to always repeat.

01:13:45

Always.

01:13:46

So that every time people are given the opportunity to have a conversation with you or that they

01:13:53

have an interaction with the higher ups, it's 100%.

01:13:57

This is our driving force.

01:13:59

This is what we're shooting for.

01:14:00

This is what our goals are so that everyone in the company can rally around the same thing

01:14:05

and work towards them together.

01:14:08

Without that, people are like, "Wait, what is that?

01:14:10

I was that way in corporate."

01:14:11

It's like they gave us our great big mission statement.

01:14:13

They did a whole reorg to follow that mission statement.

01:14:17

What are we doing again?

01:14:19

Which is vague and...

01:14:20

Yeah, it's like, "Okay, we're going to feed the world great."

01:14:23

Yeah, how do I actually fulfill that in my day-to-day?

01:14:26

Yeah.

01:14:27

Yeah.

01:14:28

Okay.

01:14:29

So somebody explained that to me and we got the big mission statement.

01:14:32

We did the big reorg and then I don't think I heard about that mission statement for another

01:14:37

18 months after that point.

01:14:39

It's like, "Okay."

01:14:40

So that was cool.

01:14:41

Woo hoo!

01:14:42

Done.

01:14:43

Did you get home now?

01:14:45

I think that reports out.

01:14:46

I think I'm done.

01:14:47

That was my experience.

01:14:50

But that's because they weren't repeating this.

01:14:52

It wasn't being communicated regularly.

01:14:54

This is why I am such a big fan of the concept of core values instead of a mission statement.

01:15:00

Sure.

01:15:01

I feel like core values force you to get more specific and usually my experience anyway,

01:15:08

they make it easier to see how you should be living those out, whether it's an organization.

01:15:15

We've got core values for our family.

01:15:17

It's framed and hanging in our living room wall.

01:15:20

But if we just frame it and hang it and never talk about it again, it does absolutely nothing.

01:15:25

Like you were talking about people just forget about it.

01:15:28

So you have to keep repeating it over and over and over again.

01:15:32

And that does two things, I think, as a leader, if you're constantly talking about your core

01:15:39

values, you're reminding yourself of the core values and you are kind of subconsciously

01:15:47

pushing yourself to be in alignment with those core values.

01:15:51

But more importantly, you are communicating it to everybody else.

01:15:56

And this is where the whole idea of communication, I think a lot of people don't get it.

01:16:02

Sure.

01:16:03

The Princess Bride, you keep using that word.

01:16:06

I don't think it means what you think it means.

01:16:08

Yes.

01:16:09

I think a lot of people think communication is well.

01:16:11

I told them or I sent an email.

01:16:13

I said it once.

01:16:15

That's it.

01:16:16

And again, any parent knows, you can't just say something once.

01:16:19

You got to say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

01:16:24

And there was an episode of the Sean West podcast that really, it was really, really good.

01:16:29

It's actually called the communication episode.

01:16:31

So I'll grab a link to that and I'll put it in the show notes.

01:16:34

Sure.

01:16:35

Sean McCabe in that episode talks about how you have not communicated your vision to your

01:16:40

team until you hear it spontaneously coming back to you from their mouths.

01:16:47

So it has to be natural to them.

01:16:50

And until that happens, you have to keep sending the broadcast.

01:16:54

But just because you're sending the broadcast, you cannot assume that it has been received

01:16:58

and that it has been recognized.

01:17:01

That was kind of pivotal for me in my understanding of communication.

01:17:04

I feel like that's made being apparent a lot more tolerable because otherwise I'm the

01:17:09

type of person who's like, well, this is what you should do.

01:17:12

Why don't you do this?

01:17:13

What's wrong with you?

01:17:14

And I apply that to myself too, by the way.

01:17:16

It's like, well, I know what to do.

01:17:17

Why don't I do it?

01:17:18

Yes.

01:17:19

Yes.

01:17:20

And when you recognize that, well, maybe I didn't communicate it effectively.

01:17:25

Has nothing to do with the amount of effort that you put in, has nothing to do with how

01:17:29

greatly you feel you delivered the message.

01:17:33

Did they actually receive it?

01:17:36

You have to pay attention to that sort of stuff.

01:17:38

And I feel like this is the kind of thing where leaders maybe can just assume like, well,

01:17:43

I told them once I should shouldn't have to tell them again.

01:17:46

You always have to tell them again.

01:17:47

And it's not that's not a knock on their character or who they are as a person that

01:17:51

you have to do that.

01:17:53

So those are the five.

01:17:54

Do you have anything else to say about this?

01:17:55

Because I feel like it ends there.

01:17:57

I mean, there's some slight wrap up comments, but they're super minor.

01:18:02

But the main thing here is that those five omissions are also the five tasks.

01:18:07

Yep.

01:18:08

If you want to be on the positive side.

01:18:10

So developing the leadership team, managing subordinates and making them manage theirs,

01:18:15

having difficult and uncomfortable conversations, running great team meetings and communicating

01:18:19

constantly and repetitively to employees.

01:18:22

Those are the five things he's getting at throughout the rest of the book.

01:18:27

Now I feel like maybe this is starting to get into like style on rating because we're

01:18:32

not quite there yet.

01:18:33

But it feels like traditional Patrick Lindstioni would have said the five motives of an effective

01:18:41

leader or something along those lines.

01:18:44

Yep.

01:18:45

But instead he just calls it the motive, which is maybe it's maybe he's becoming modern.

01:18:51

That's what he's doing.

01:18:52

Yeah.

01:18:53

So this is kind of the reason I say like maybe you should have chucked the fable for this

01:19:01

one because there's so much here.

01:19:02

I agree with him that this is the most important book that he's written.

01:19:07

But maybe it's so important that you should have followed a different formula.

01:19:11

I would have much preferred the James Clear approach where he's talking about his four

01:19:16

laws of habit formation and he talks about them through the lens of building a positive

01:19:21

habit or breaking a negative habit.

01:19:23

You basically left with the negative stuff here and there's totally room for here's what

01:19:27

the positive application of this looks like.

01:19:30

You could even have different questions for each and every one of these I think.

01:19:35

And that would have been a lot better way to end it I think in my opinion instead of

01:19:41

just focusing on here's all the stuff that's going wrong.

01:19:43

Sure.

01:19:44

Like here's the positive picture that you're heading towards and you feel maybe a little

01:19:48

bit better about yourself and more inspired to keep going if you have at least a small

01:19:51

win in any of those areas.

01:19:54

Yeah, for sure.

01:19:56

I have one action item here.

01:19:58

You don't have any on the list at least not that I've seen.

01:20:00

I do have one.

01:20:01

Okay.

01:20:02

It's not what you think though.

01:20:03

All right.

01:20:04

So I have one and I think I need to actually turn it into two because one is change the

01:20:12

way I lead teams of volunteers.

01:20:14

I have three different teams that I am the top leader for.

01:20:20

I don't think I've been leading them very well and I don't think it's because I see

01:20:24

this as a reward centered.

01:20:26

This is one of my complaints with the boat.

01:20:27

I'll get to this in a second.

01:20:29

I don't see it as a reward centered thing, but I also don't see it as a responsibility

01:20:33

centered thing.

01:20:35

So I have some questions there, but I need to change the way I need to lead teams.

01:20:42

I want to change the way I lead my family to because I don't feel like I do a very good

01:20:46

job of this.

01:20:47

I tend to do a lot of things inadvertently or I abdicate certain roles that I feel like

01:20:52

I should be leading.

01:20:53

So I just need to reevaluate those in light of this and I don't know what that means tactically

01:21:00

or practically, but I need to think through that.

01:21:05

Those are my two.

01:21:06

All right.

01:21:07

Well, having seen the way that you lead your family, I would say that you are maybe not

01:21:15

as far off on that one as you think you are, but I support you in the action item anyways.

01:21:21

That's the kind of thing that I like to do is like, I suck at everything and I need to

01:21:25

just reconsider everything.

01:21:27

But if I could encourage you a little bit, you know, maybe there is some room for improvement

01:21:31

that you'll find for going through this action item, but it's not like you have completely

01:21:36

abdicated responsibility.

01:21:38

Sure.

01:21:39

I might be saying that simply because we're in the middle like you called me earlier,

01:21:46

it's like I'm in the middle of putting flooring down in our main level in the house.

01:21:49

So I have the house completely torn apart and the girls want to hammer nails and they

01:21:55

want to do things and they're like, what are you doing?

01:21:57

And they got their head over your shoulder and it's like, I'm trying to do something

01:21:59

very detailed.

01:22:00

Please don't bump my arm.

01:22:02

Yeah.

01:22:03

I mean, I'm kind of in that mode.

01:22:04

So I've been a little bit testy with them in the last couple of days.

01:22:08

So that might be what's.

01:22:09

Sure.

01:22:10

On my mind.

01:22:11

Well, cut yourself a break, but yeah, go ahead.

01:22:16

The other thing regarding the way that you lead a team of volunteers, I want to touch

01:22:19

on this real quick because I think there's something interesting here.

01:22:21

You mentioned that it's not a reward center thing, but also it's not a responsibility

01:22:25

center thing.

01:22:26

And this raises the question of how can you lead effectively when you are in the middle

01:22:34

and you don't have a clear vision being passed down to you?

01:22:39

And this is not a simple solution, but if I were to give one piece of advice to people

01:22:45

in that position, not necessarily you, but if this fits, I guess, whatever, I'll just

01:22:49

talk about it from my experience where when I have felt like no one's communicating to

01:22:55

me, I can sit there and I can be upset that I feel like my leaders should be communicating

01:23:00

the vision to me, but they're not, or I can just suck it up and go ask them.

01:23:06

Right, right.

01:23:07

Because just because they're not communicating it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't

01:23:11

exist.

01:23:13

And it's easy to just say, well, that's not my job.

01:23:18

And especially when you've got multiple things that you're involved with, and that's not

01:23:22

part of the job description, you just kind of abdicate that, but it always ends up better

01:23:27

when I just suck it up and take responsibility for it and be like, I would like this, I'm

01:23:30

going to ask for it.

01:23:32

Regardless of whether I think they should be giving it to me on a regular basis or not.

01:23:36

I will say like one thing I've done, because I understand like I haven't had a clear vision

01:23:41

handed to me.

01:23:43

I will say that like all three of those teams are all technical, like they have their own

01:23:47

tech focus.

01:23:48

So it's three different teams in three different areas.

01:23:51

And I set one.

01:23:52

Like, okay, I don't have a clear vision.

01:23:55

Here's what I see.

01:23:57

Sure.

01:23:58

And this is what I want my that like the sound team, I want you guys to work towards this.

01:24:05

And that is what we talk about.

01:24:07

But I haven't been very good at empowering them.

01:24:10

Sure.

01:24:11

In that specific instance.

01:24:14

But you know, that's just one example.

01:24:16

Like, okay, I feel like I don't have a clear vision given to me.

01:24:21

But granted, it is a church, so you can make some pretty good guesses as to what that is.

01:24:28

Yeah.

01:24:29

But I'm translating that to what happens on a Sunday morning and what is the vision for

01:24:32

that team.

01:24:33

Even though like if they gave me the overall church's vision very clearly and repeated

01:24:37

it all the time, I'm not sure it would change the vision that I've given that team.

01:24:42

So.

01:24:43

Yep.

01:24:44

But it's easy to just kind of walk away from it.

01:24:46

Yeah, it is.

01:24:47

It is.

01:24:48

Like, oh, it's not my job.

01:24:49

Somebody else do it.

01:24:51

Yeah.

01:24:52

I'll go grab a donut.

01:24:53

Well, I'm kind of challenged now that you've shared your action items.

01:24:56

But once I went through it, I actually didn't have any other than he references a book called

01:25:02

The Advantage, which I want to read.

01:25:05

Yeah.

01:25:06

Yeah.

01:25:07

So that's my official action item.

01:25:09

I will, I think, be thinking about this sort of stuff too.

01:25:13

But there wasn't anything specifically in here that was like, oh, I want to change that.

01:25:18

Now, granted, my perspective is a little bit different here too.

01:25:24

I have shared recently action items about like not dreading certain meetings.

01:25:32

And so I've kind of made some of these adjustments already.

01:25:36

I understand what a good CEO looks like, the Alan Mulally example.

01:25:42

And I kind of implicitly try to be better at that all the time, but I don't have an

01:25:49

action item associated with.

01:25:50

Yeah.

01:25:51

I'm trying to do this specific thing.

01:25:52

So sure.

01:25:53

Sure.

01:25:54

All right.

01:25:55

Stylen rating.

01:25:56

As far as style, like I've always like, I enjoy the fictional story that goes with

01:26:03

Lin Cioni's books.

01:26:05

I resonated with a lot of what he was saying from a personal stance because I've been around

01:26:11

a lot of that sort of thing in consulting roles and such.

01:26:15

And I don't think he's far off as far as, you know, realistic scenarios goes.

01:26:23

I think it's pretty much spot on from that stance.

01:26:26

So that's just want to say that the whole basis of this is a reward centered leader versus

01:26:35

a responsibility centered leader.

01:26:38

And one of the things I specifically remember from one of the books we read, Decisive, Chip

01:26:44

and Dan Heath, is that anytime you find yourself presented with an either or scenario question

01:26:52

whether there's something you're not considering.

01:26:55

So whenever I'm presented, ever since we read that, which was way back towards like the

01:26:59

beginning of book, I was a long time ago.

01:27:01

I still remember this is that whenever I see myself and trying to pick between two things,

01:27:07

I'm constantly trying to see is there a third, fourth or fifth option here?

01:27:11

Like what are the other options we're not talking about?

01:27:14

And every time I've seen in books one side of the other, like I've never really found

01:27:18

myself in a spot where I was like, okay, there's this or this.

01:27:21

What are the third, fourth, fifth options?

01:27:24

I haven't really found myself in a spot where I would say there are others.

01:27:28

I think in this case, I do.

01:27:30

I think there's some cases where I'm personally in some leadership positions where I don't

01:27:38

see it as like I'm not being a responsibility centered leader, but I certainly don't see

01:27:44

it as a reward centered leadership position.

01:27:47

It kind of feels like I was put there and don't really want to be there in any way.

01:27:52

So it's certainly not a reward, but I'm not taking responsibility for it either.

01:27:57

So it's almost like there's this complacency leadership as well.

01:28:02

And I'm saying that saying that about myself very pointedly.

01:28:07

And it kind of it bothered me that he didn't mention that.

01:28:12

It seems fairly straightforward.

01:28:14

I mean, I run across tons of managers who were there because they got promoted out of

01:28:18

their skills based job.

01:28:21

I don't want to say skills based because management is a skill.

01:28:24

So they get promoted out of like the technical side of things into a management role.

01:28:30

And it was simply because they were the best on a team and they're like, well, you must

01:28:34

be great at leading teams because you're good at doing development.

01:28:38

Obviously you're good at leading people because you can write code.

01:28:40

So those are obvious translations.

01:28:43

So anyway, that whenever people get promoted into those, like they some, I mean, they're

01:28:49

saying yes to it, but I don't think they're necessarily wanting that in a lot of cases.

01:28:55

They just don't feel like they can say no.

01:28:58

Yep.

01:28:59

And I know that that's true.

01:29:00

So I feel like there are a lot of managers in that position who don't want to be there.

01:29:04

So it's certainly not a reward, but they haven't taken responsibility for it either.

01:29:08

So I don't think it's either or I think there's a middle ground, but he doesn't address that

01:29:12

at all.

01:29:14

And it kind of bothers me.

01:29:16

So from a style stance, I love his style.

01:29:19

I've always loved the, give me a story and then explain what you're talking about it.

01:29:23

I feel like that is the place of like these business personal management books.

01:29:26

I feel like I wish more would do that.

01:29:29

I feel like it drives the point at home a lot better.

01:29:32

But as far as like the content itself, like I got a lot out of this because I feel like

01:29:37

it's, I mean, it's obviously prompting me to reconsider my role as the leader of our

01:29:43

household.

01:29:45

Not many books have done that.

01:29:46

So I think it does have quite a bit of weight in that, but I feel like it's missing a core

01:29:52

point here is like, okay, what's that middle ground?

01:29:56

I wish he would have covered that more because I think it's fairly substantial.

01:29:59

Sure.

01:30:00

So all of that to say, I'm going to put it at four O. I, I, if he had addressed that

01:30:05

center point and explained it, I feel like it would be a five O to me.

01:30:10

So I feel like there's some very, very good information in here and some things that I'm

01:30:13

going to remember for quite some time.

01:30:16

But there's a missing pillar here that has me wondering because I find myself in that,

01:30:25

you know, that middle ground that's not discussed.

01:30:28

So I wish there was more on that.

01:30:31

So for all, that's where I land.

01:30:33

All right.

01:30:34

Well, I really enjoyed the, the lesson and the reward centered versus responsibility centered

01:30:44

leadership stuff.

01:30:46

I feel like the lesson part of this, there's a ton of gold here.

01:30:51

I got quite a few notes from that, almost nothing from the, the fable piece.

01:30:55

Sure.

01:30:56

So I had some issues with the fable, as I mentioned, which I have held on to for nine

01:31:04

days at this point.

01:31:07

But I think you convinced me that it's not as far-fetched as I thought it was.

01:31:12

So I'm willing to say that the, the negative reaction I had to the fable isn't, isn't the

01:31:19

fables fault.

01:31:21

I do wish that he would have devoted more time to the, the principles in the, the lesson

01:31:29

section.

01:31:30

I feel like what he has to say about these is so good.

01:31:36

And he's really kind of just scratching the surface left me wanting a lot more from that

01:31:41

part of the book, which is why I say maybe we should have checked the formula and you

01:31:44

should have just talked about this.

01:31:45

Sure.

01:31:46

I don't know.

01:31:47

There's definitely a case to be made for keeping it the way that he, he has also, I

01:31:51

also, but I want to read more about this topic and I don't think it necessarily needs to

01:31:55

be found in another book.

01:31:57

I think it's, it kind of leaves you wanting more, which sometimes is a good thing, but

01:32:02

in this particular case, it's a bad thing.

01:32:05

I think because it's kind of like it really wasn't addressed fully.

01:32:11

So I was ready to give this 3.5.

01:32:13

I'm going to bump it up to four and take out my bias towards the fable.

01:32:20

Like I said, you convinced me.

01:32:21

But I, and I, so I do like the, the material.

01:32:24

I do think this is a valuable read, even if you're not a CEO, if you're interested in

01:32:28

the topic of leadership at all.

01:32:30

But I also don't think it's Patrick, let's see, on his finest work.

01:32:34

And it feels kind of light to me.

01:32:37

Yeah.

01:32:38

Not just because, yeah, he had space, not just because it's a quick read.

01:32:43

I don't know.

01:32:45

He, you know, he never intended to address this topic as seriously as we wanted him to.

01:32:51

And I can't really fault him for that.

01:32:52

But that's my impression after going through it is I wish he would have.

01:32:55

Yeah.

01:32:56

So I read the entire book in an hour or 15 minutes.

01:32:59

We've been recording for an hour 35.

01:33:04

So we have more to say about this than he does.

01:33:06

Apparently.

01:33:07

Apparently.

01:33:08

He doesn't equal quality.

01:33:11

This is not edited down either.

01:33:13

All right.

01:33:14

So we got two four O's.

01:33:16

We'll put it on the shelf.

01:33:17

What's next, Mike?

01:33:18

The next thing we're going to do is episode 100, which is going to be a little bit different.

01:33:23

It's going to be a lot different.

01:33:25

We're not going to say exactly what we're going to do, but we did talk about it earlier

01:33:28

today.

01:33:29

It's going to be exciting.

01:33:31

There will be some sort of draft style thing.

01:33:36

And it'll be a lot of fun, I think.

01:33:39

And it's not best books.

01:33:40

Nope.

01:33:41

I'll say that because everybody thinks it'll be best books.

01:33:44

Right.

01:33:45

Right.

01:33:46

It's not.

01:33:47

I think this is better.

01:33:48

I think this is way better.

01:33:49

I'm excited about this.

01:33:51

This was going to make me think a lot more though too.

01:33:53

Yep.

01:33:54

You're going to have to put in some prep time, but at least you won't have to read a book

01:33:58

for this one.

01:34:00

The one after that, then we'll pick up with the normal cadence where I pick Joe picks

01:34:05

and we just alternate.

01:34:07

So the one after that for episode 101, that is going to be never split the difference

01:34:11

by Chris Foss.

01:34:14

So if you want to follow along, you can pick up that one.

01:34:18

Do you have a book for what's coming after that or having you thought that far?

01:34:21

Okay.

01:34:22

I do.

01:34:23

I didn't put in the show notes because I forgot to write it down.

01:34:25

I had this one sent to me by a listener, I think, on Twitter.

01:34:31

I think you were tagged on this too.

01:34:33

It's Pick 3 by Randy Zuckerberg.

01:34:36

You can have it all just not every day.

01:34:39

And when I first saw this, my brain saw Mark Zuckerberg.

01:34:43

Yeah.

01:34:44

It's not.

01:34:45

It's Randy Zuckerberg.

01:34:49

But it intrigued me when I saw the title to New York Times bestseller and such.

01:34:52

So it intrigued me.

01:34:54

So I'm curious what Randy Zuckerberg has to say about it.

01:35:00

So yes, pick three.

01:35:01

All right.

01:35:02

You got any gap books?

01:35:03

I don't.

01:35:04

Do you?

01:35:05

I do.

01:35:06

I am in the middle of reading board and brilliant by Manush Zomerodi.

01:35:15

I think is how you say the name.

01:35:17

Okay.

01:35:18

Manush is a host of the WNYT.

01:35:23

I don't remember.

01:35:25

New York City, like public radio podcast.

01:35:29

What's it called?

01:35:30

I'll have to find the link and put it in the show notes.

01:35:34

I think the idea though, being that we're so busy that it is hindering our creativity

01:35:43

and actually a key piece to being creative, hence the title, board and brilliant, is being

01:35:48

able to disconnect from things.

01:35:50

So very on-brand with the digital minimalism and the deep work and the focus and all that

01:35:58

type of stuff.

01:36:00

It's an interesting read so far.

01:36:02

And there's a lot of science behind it.

01:36:04

So it's a much thicker, much slower read than the Patrick Lonzio, the only one that we just

01:36:12

went through.

01:36:13

All right.

01:36:14

Well, if you want more of Bookworm, there are more things that you can get if you go

01:36:22

to club.bookworm.fm.

01:36:27

From there, you can sign up for a membership.

01:36:28

You can also get there Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:36:32

But if you sign up for a membership, it's five bucks a month, and you get access to a really

01:36:38

slick wallpaper that Mike designed and put together, you get access to some old Gap Book

01:36:45

episodes that I did a while back.

01:36:47

Mike's been posting his My Node files and such.

01:36:50

So there's just a few extra perks that come with that.

01:36:53

So if you're interested in supporting the show, and this also helps us keep the lights

01:36:57

on, again, Bookworm.fm/membership, and we would greatly appreciate that.

01:37:01

All right.

01:37:02

So if you are reading along and you want to get a head start, pick up, never split the

01:37:08

difference by Chris Phos, but otherwise we will have something special for you in a couple