Mash Up Episode ft. Leadership Models w/John Hill

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast

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episode number 178.

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And picking up from our book today as we

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head into what is going

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to be a mashup episode. And normally on mashup

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episodes you wouldn’t have a book. But we need a book to anchor ourselves today.

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So from our book today from the Introduction

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the Argument from First Principles

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the Argument it is hard to write this book about leadership,

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or quite frankly, any book about leadership considering the current pandemic in the world.

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COVID 19 simultaneously changed everything about how leaders operate in

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world and further exposed much of the remaining tenacious mental

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infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution that is still around in small, medium

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and even large organizations, and most of that infrastructure is

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still on display in organizations. Employees are

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at the bottom of the organizational chart believing that they are the foundations on which

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the organization rests, yet feeling as though they are treated as basement

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dwellers. Managers and supervisors are squeezed in the middle

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believing they are the glue that keeps the top of the organization from flying away

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and keeps the bottom of the organization in line. Yet the reality is they

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are asked to care about something they did not initially build and are asked to

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give positive lip service to ideas, innovations and approaches to change

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they know will have a low chance of success.

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Upper management and executives are at the top of the organizational chart believing they deserve

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the status they have and that preserving that status is the only thing that

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matters, yet feeling as though they are in a constant battle with forces

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I.e. governmental regulations, organizational enue, etc.

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The people in the organizational chart below them could never possibly

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understand and that is just the

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infrastructure in our organizations. Then there is the mental

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infrastructure we tend to ignore that affects leaders even more.

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How we teach leadership in academic settings, how we write about

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leadership in books like this, and how we position leaders in our organizations through

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promotion, compensation, merit, competency and other factors

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has not been challenged significantly in the way the COVID 19 pandemic

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challenged leadership assumptions and expectations. In many, many

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years. When our organization had

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physical office space before the pandemic and the knock on effects of social

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distancing, government mask mandates and work from home regulations kicked

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in, I would drive to that office still every

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day. This office was down the street from the abandoned

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industrial residue representing the company that stood, at least in the

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20th century at the pinnacle of industrial revolution assumptions

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about the intersections between work, life, leadership and the corporate social

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structure that company, the internationally known

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IBM, once located in Endicott, New York at its height employed

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14,000 quote unquote IBM men and they were

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majority men who were notorious for wearing the IBM corporate

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outfit of a white shirt, a black tie and and appropriate slacks

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with even their hair trimmed neatly in a corporate approved fashion

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and endlessly conforming but relatively well paid flood of

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men would course and spill through and down the street where my office

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used to be located during lunch hours.

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Their mere presence stood as the primary example of what successful, thriving and

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scalable leadership and management practices could accomplish in the 20th century.

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As did the presence of men working at Endicott, Johnson’s shoe factory, John General

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Electric, Carrier air Conditioning and other upstate New York 20th century

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corporations. When IBM relocated its vast infrastructure

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to Montauk from Endicott and dispersed its people more globally,

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New York State, for reasons both the New York State government and IBM dispute

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fired or early retired many of the people who worked in those buildings, the

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majority of which were abandoned by the time our office was located there

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20 some odd years later this

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is what I am talking about when I refer to mental infrastructure.

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The pandemic wrecked the mental infrastructure of assumptions, expectations and attitudes

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of leadership at all levels in our global society and culture

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and laid bare the frank negotiations between public health, public policy,

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private medical choices, the responsibility to make a living, and the

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responsibility to lead people to do so. Therefore, publishing

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a leadership book is dangerous in today’s world.

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No matter what assertions I may make in this book, they could be frozen in

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time by the reader or dismissed as being just a quote unquote sign of the

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times, or equally as problematic. They

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could be too easily embraced as the holy Grail

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solution to all post pandemic

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leadership problems.

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All leadership, regardless of what

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leadership we pick, begins with a vision.

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By articulating a vision, a leader, intentionally or not, falls into a specific

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model of leadership that encompasses their actions. But

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visions, to paraphrase from the great economic writer Thomas Sowell,

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can either be constrained or unconstrained. A

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constrained vision of leadership acknowledges the fact of the limitations of human nature

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that are beyond the ability of institutions, models, and even leadership visions to address

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and even beyond the ability of themselves as leaders to fix or

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ameliorate. An unconstrained vision of leadership assumes at

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its core that leadership and leadership models can be leveraged to accomplish

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any type of change. It also assumes that all circumstances,

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situations, and environments are mere chains that can be broken off

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if the leader is charismatic enough, knowledgeable enough, or even

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just cares enough about their followers.

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This is a continuing struggle that began when the first man tried to

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organize the first hunting party to kill an animal for food and has

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continued down to this day

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and thus our mashup episode. Today

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for books, particularly great literature, present leaders with

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options around visions and provide a laboratory for leaders to

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experience the strategic and tactical outcomes from either

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a constrained or an unconstrained vision.

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Leaders on the show today we’re going to talk about these visions.

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But just remember, without a vision of some kind,

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your followers will fail. And without a model

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to contain that vision or a model

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to surround that vision, your people will behave in a chaotic

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and a confusing manner.

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And back for this season. And to explore the idea of

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vision models and how literature intersects with all of

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this. And of course, to help me read from my book, which

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I read from the opening here, 12 rules for leaders. The foundation of

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intentional leadership is our co host today,

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John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. Happy New

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Year, John. Welcome back to the show. Happy New Year, my friend. I’m glad to

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be back. This is gonna be a cool topic to dig into. Absolutely.

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So let’s jump right in.

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We’ve read many, many, many, many books on this show. We are now going

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into our fifth season of this show. As a matter of fact, you were,

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you were on in January of last year when we read Confessions of an Advertising

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man with, with David Ogilvy and then continued

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through with our romp through science fiction. And

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then we talked about the book War by Sebastian

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Younger. And of course, you’ll be joining us this year

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on some other books. I’m very excited to have you on around those.

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But most of the books that we’ve covered, both fiction and nonfiction,

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are written from certain assumptions that are either constrained

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or unconstrained, or the author begins with

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either position. They begin with an unconstrained vision, or they begin with a constrained

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vision and then they move the narrative across a continuum.

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For example, George Orwell in 1984

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begins with an unconstrained vision and moves into a constrained one.

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Or the play King Lear by Shakespeare begins with a constrained vision

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and maintains that all the way through the performance

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or Candide, which we covered as one of

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our first episodes of the new season here by Voltaire

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begins with a constrained vision, right? A constrained vision of optimism and

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moves to an unconstrained vision, or an unconstrained set of assumptions about human

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behavior.

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When leaders see a vision presented to them in a particular

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piece of literature that we’ve covered on the show or even hear it

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discussed here, they can obviously make the determination, if there is any

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value for them in leveraging the insights from that particular

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piece of literature. To develop a model of leadership. But we’ve never actually

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talked about that whole vision piece here, right. We’ve sort of

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skirted around the edges of it. And I want to do that because I want

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to talk about that today specifically to start, because one of the things we’re

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going to be doing on this show coming up this year is we’re really going

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to be focusing in on and developing projects around

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models, right? What does a model of leadership look like?

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And so I guess our first question

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for you today is which books have you read

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that presented a constrained or an unconstrained vision of human behavior

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and of human nature? And what do you think of this idea? Am I just,

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like, aiming at something that’s silly and stupid or do I have something here?

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Well, when what came to mind is, as,

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you know, we were talking about, the idea was less about is

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one right and the other incorrect and much more about the

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idea of, like, what happens whenever there’s not alignment between

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the leadership and the people. Right? And coming from sales,

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there’s a lot of ideas about sales. And you know, you got

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to, you can’t pay them too much because they’re going to get lazy. You can’t

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really trust them, you know, and, you know, now, you know, with

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all the digital marketing stuff like this and these big, huge systems and everything,

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it’s like, well, we don’t even need to train them, right? Like, we don’t even,

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we don’t need to find great salespeople. We just need to find people who will

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talk to people, you know, and so there’s, there’s a whole lot of room to

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miss the mark, you know, and I’ve seen situations to, where

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everyone follows the same script. And, you know, the people who can follow

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that script, they, they eventually, after lots of repetitions and

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lots of failure, find a thing that works more often than it doesn’t. You

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know, coming from the military, it’s, you know, you go through a process to

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become what the government needs you to be. So that way, if you’re, you

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know, called to action, you, you can show up in the right frame

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of mind and do what needs to be done. And so it’s

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just this very interesting situation of when, when it’s not

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misaligned is when it goes completely off the

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wall, right? And it’s super easy. And I spent about 10

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years of, well, if you don’t feel my way, you must just be dumb,

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you know, like, and really just kind of short sighting everyone who didn’t have the

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same kind of like thoughts around this kind of stuff that I did,

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right? Like the, the very emotional bombastic leaders

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that just like to like, you know, push and push and push on people. You

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know, the guys who want 80 hour work weeks and, you know, hustle culture at

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large and all of these things. And you know, for some people,

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it, it’s, it’s what helps get them through

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the process, right? Helps them get to success, whatever version of that they’re looking for.

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But if you don’t know what to go looking for, right,

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you’re probably going to end up in a lot of situations, environments,

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right, that don’t align with you. And it’s super easy to think

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that, you know, you’re the problem, right. For a long time. Because I would

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have these questions about, you know, should I pitch this person or, or was

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it, was it, you know, not ethical to pitch this person? And

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I would get pressure of like, you always make the pitch, you always make the

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pitch. You know, it was kind of very confusing, right? And it kind of led

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to me spending a lot of time thinking that I shouldn’t be in sales at

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all because I want to do the right thing, right? And now

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most of my stuff is, you know, talking about putting the right thing first,

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you know, which makes me not popular for some of these people who were

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wanting salespeople that are going to be, you know, close at all costs, you know,

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take no prisoners, kind of like sales cultures and stuff like that. And

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so I don’t really know that, you

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know, categorically one is absolutely right and one is fundamentally flawed.

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But if it’s not aligned all the way through, you know, know from the top

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to the bottom, it’s, you know, going to be a lot

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of friction. Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting that you brought up the

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term alignment. So I was writing some things down as you were

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talking. So alignment process and then ethics, right? So

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the, the holy grail of training and development is

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alignment. That’s the holy grail. Because

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once you can get alignment right on any topic, whether that’s sales

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training or leadership training or

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even safety training, right? Once you can get the people

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aligned who are going through the training. And usually that’s what training

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is used for as a tool. Now, sometimes that’s the best tool,

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other times it’s not. We can have a whole discussion about that. But

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invariably the people who are choosing the training, whether

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that’s sales training, safety training or leadership training, are the

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people who are searching for or, or wanting to get

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more alignment. And they do not know how to

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get from misalignment to alignment. They don’t know

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how to cross that, as the technologists say. They don’t know how to cross that

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uncanny valley that exists. Right.

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And I would assert the reason they don’t know how to cross that uncanny valley

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is because the vision has changed, but they don’t know how to say that.

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Right? And so they’ll tinker with the model, or they’ll hire guys like you

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and me, or they’ll talk about ethics. Right?

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Or they’ll create a new discipline

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framework for people who get out of line, whatever line that is.

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Right. They’ll do all of these other things,

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except the one thing that they need to do, which is go

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back and say, we started here. Maybe we started

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with a constrained vision or unconstrained vision, I don’t know. But we started

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here, we wound up here, and our vision

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changed, and we haven’t addressed that successfully.

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Now, I don’t necessarily know that that’s just something for people in the C

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suite to do. Matter of fact, I think because of COVID 19,

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that has now become the purview of everybody in the organization,

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not just the C suite. But on a radical, right,

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I go in a radical direction, right. With that.

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So in thinking about alignment or

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misalignment, right.

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Misalignment can happen in so many different places, right? So in sales, right.

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So many different places. What are some of the places that, as leaders,

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we should be looking for? Not necessarily misalignment,

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but if we sense there’s misalignment there, right. What are some things we should

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be? What are some signs of that?

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Ooh.

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I mean, I think the big stuff is

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the thing. The thing that I hear from. From people over and over and over

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again is like, why don’t my people get it? And it’s like, okay, who

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should they be getting it from? Right? And so there.

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There’s this old line from my sales coach, and he always said, as a

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default, we sell the way we want to be sold to. Right? And adding on

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to that, the. The way that I talk about it now is we. We sell

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the way we want to be sold. We lead the way we want to be

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led. Right? So it’s super easy to just, like, walk around

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because you don’t have enough experience, you’ve not met enough different types of people

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to just go around and be like, well, if you’re here, you must be like

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me. And if you’re like me, you’re going to want to do it this way,

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you know? And I Think. I think most people just kind of get

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stuck there, right? And then whenever they do get frustrated because

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there’s a boiling point, right? People don’t, you know, and this happens all the time

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with founders, right, who are, who are bringing on their first salesperson, right?

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And they forgot that the salesperson didn’t start this thing. And it’s not their baby.

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So we’re not going to have the same amount of buy in, right? They’re going

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to have care, they’re going to have some buy in, but it’s not their baby,

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right? And so the idea, where’s the urgency? Well,

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it’s a job for them, right? This is your passion and your purpose.

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But expecting everyone to come to the same work with the same amount of weight

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is just absurd, right? And this is where hiring

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processes and personality assessments and culture and like

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defining for yourself what’s important to you and the people that you work with and

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the people you surround yourself with on the team become really important. But if you’re

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still running around with this idea of, well, you know, if you want to work

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here, you must just automatically have the same values as I do.

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And then it’s just super easy to like punt it down and be like, well,

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you must be the problem as opposed to like understanding of like, hey,

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did I even line this out clearly? Right, right. Is our, is our

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value word cloud a bunch of table stake stuff like customer service and

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like innovation or is it meaningful and

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intentional and impactful and stuff like that? You know, and

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I moved on this pretty, pretty significantly, right? Because as

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a sales consultant and trainer, like I, I think that everybody

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can do this job, right? It’s hard and not a lot of people want to

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and that’s totally okay. But I think that everybody can find a path to

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sales success if they’re in the right environment, right? And they’ve got good

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coaching and training and development. But there’s a whole lot of people that are still

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just running around talking about hunters versus farmers, right? And well,

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if you’re a sales guy, you should be happy to work on commission. Well, in

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certain situations, like there’s realm where that makes sense, right? If you’re

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on a car lot, I get it, right. If you’re managing an 18 month

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selling cycle to the enterprise, commission only is an absurd

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thing that you’re trying to sell on everybody because you don’t want to pay them,

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right? But if you’re not steeped in this idea, you

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know, you’re just pulling from whoever you’re pulling from, right? So

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I think most people are not running around with their lights on

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until they run into the wall a few times, right? And then

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I think people start to get, oh, you know, maybe that

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whole EOS stuff about like having values that matter. Maybe there’s something to

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this, you know. And you know, I, you know, there while

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I had the idea that if you had good KPIs and you had good reporting,

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everything should just kind of like manage itself, right? And I didn’t

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really think I was going around with the idea of I’m going to work with

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adults who know what they’re doing. But there was a vibe of that, you know,

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and now it’s like performance takes effort, right? Like

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as, as both, you know, like martial arts guys, right? If you’re going to perform

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at a high level, you can’t do the minimum. You got to be doing them,

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you got to be doing more. And you know, there’s a lot of roles

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inside of an organization that are merit driven and performance driven

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roles, which means there’s a gap, right? And if you can’t manage that gap,

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I think, I think everything we’re talking about falls into that gap between

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you’re given a goal, you’re given a big task, and then you have to go

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off and execute that task. And there’s a lot of nuance in how that stuff

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gets done well. And I will. I’m going to go again, I’m a

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radical on this, so I’m going to go even more hardcore on this than even

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John did. John sort of soft shootle this a little bit and made it,

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made it kind of nice. And I’m going to. This is my 1, 2. So

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he’s the 1. Now here’s the 2. Here’s the overhand right from Riddick. Here it

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comes. It’s your fault as the leader if,

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if the organization is misaligned. I’m just going to say it. It’s your fault.

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If you’re looking for someone to blame, go grab a mirror and hold it up

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to your face because it’s your fault. And here’s how I know,

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okay? I know it’s your fault because

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when I was building my first business, I had

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the massive realization that no one cared about it as much as I did.

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Not one employee, not one vendor,

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not one customer cared about it as much as I did.

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And for me to ask them to care about it as much as I did

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was, quite frankly, not the

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correct question. That’s not the correct query,

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right? So if I’m searching for alignment, I’m going to use

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an old school sort of Greek idea here. Physician, heal thyself.

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Right? Like, you got to fix alignment within

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you. And by the way, if you’re misaligned with your project,

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maybe, and I’m in the process of doing this right now, maybe

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you kill the project and go on to something else where you are aligned. Right.

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And yes, I understand you’ve got bills to pay and you’ve got people

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to feed and you’ve got plates to fill and mortgages don’t pay

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themselves and electric bills don’t pay themselves. Themselves. And.

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And kids, braces don’t pay for themselves. I get it. Money doesn’t fall out

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of the sky, nor does it grow on trees. If it did,

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we probably wouldn’t have a, you know, $39 trillion national

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debt. We would just go out and shake the trees. I get it. I

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understand. And because two things can be true at once.

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You have to care. But you can’t ask the people who are following

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you to care, okay, more than you do. They

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can’t get there. They can’t overcome that. But

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what you can do, and this is the. But what you can

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do is you can ask them to buy into

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a vision. You can ask them. And by the way, just like John,

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I’m agnostic. I think that

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constrained versus unconstrained is a binary that just gives us a place to land.

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I don’t care which vision you pick, but I do

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not want you to pick no vision. I don’t want you to just be a

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person out there doing stuff. Right.

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And literature gives you a good container

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for how this particular vision that you have picked, whichever one it

357
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is, may indeed play out.

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So there’s a couple of books that you and I have talked about and I

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mentioned them in the script. I look at Martian Chronicles as

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maybe more of an unconstrained vision, even though it comes off as

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pessimistic and cynical, which we talked about that on our episode

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because Ray Bradbury was pessimistic about human beings. But he was.

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He was pessimistic in an unconstrained manner. Unconstrained

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pessimism. That

365
00:22:48,470 –> 00:22:51,750
might be pretty close to where I’m at, like, these days. Right. Yeah,

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it’s fine. Yeah, it’s tough. You know, people are

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chaos machines is like one of my. One of my favorite lines. And I tell

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everybody, right? Like, you cannot manage the chaos of someone else, you know? Right.

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And you just have to know that going into it, otherwise you’re just going to

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be upset all the time. But Then you have a constrained version of human

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nature, which is more like Miyamoto Musashi is a book of five

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rings. That’s a constrained vision of. And by the way,

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constrained vision is really focused on trade offs, right? So it does

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the acknowledgment of the pessimism. The Bradbury and I just made up a word

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there, level of pessimism and it

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says that’s baked into the human condition. And

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so because it’s baked in, the only thing we can do is engage in

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trade offs because we can’t, we don’t have, we don’t have access to the

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ingredients. We can’t go in and substitute out

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stone ground, you know, wheat that I raised in my

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backyard for enriched flour in the

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Pillsbury, you know, cinnamon roll,

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roll that I just got. Like, I can’t go in and change the ingredients. I

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00:23:59,000 –> 00:24:02,480
don’t have that kind of power. I’m not the Pillsbury

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00:24:02,480 –> 00:24:06,200
Corporation. And unconstrained vision says we’re going to

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00:24:06,200 –> 00:24:10,000
march on, we’re going to march on the Pillsbury Corporation and we’re going to make

387
00:24:10,000 –> 00:24:11,240
them take the stone ground flour.

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00:24:16,520 –> 00:24:20,240
If a leader picks well. So literature, right? This is where I’m going. So literature,

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00:24:20,240 –> 00:24:24,040
right? So literature helps us sort of

390
00:24:24,040 –> 00:24:27,880
figure out some of this stuff versus

391
00:24:27,880 –> 00:24:30,840
a business book, right? Because business books don’t even talk about

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00:24:31,400 –> 00:24:35,040
visions. You know, I got this idea of visions from, you know, an

393
00:24:35,040 –> 00:24:38,280
economic book, quite frankly, that I don’t think most

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00:24:38,680 –> 00:24:42,360
business leaders would even read unless they were really deeply ensconced in

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economics. And by the way, we’re going to be covering that book.

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Just as a side note, we’re going to be covering that book on the show

397
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next month. So stay tuned for that. It’s called A Conflict of

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00:24:53,270 –> 00:24:57,110
Visions by Thomas Sowell. So we’ll be

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covering that with a guest, not John, but with a guest who

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is going to give us a very, very unique perspective on

401
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that. A person who has actually lived, interestingly enough, an

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unconstrained life. So this should be very interesting talking to this fellow about

403
00:25:12,350 –> 00:25:16,120
this book. What,

404
00:25:16,200 –> 00:25:19,960
what, how would leaders apply this sort of thinking

405
00:25:20,680 –> 00:25:24,400
to. Well, no, actually a better question is

406
00:25:24,400 –> 00:25:27,800
this. Let’s say I go up and pick out, I don’t know,

407
00:25:29,160 –> 00:25:32,200
do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Okay.

408
00:25:33,640 –> 00:25:37,280
And I’m looking for what the leadership vision is in here or

409
00:25:37,280 –> 00:25:40,200
what, what is the vision of the characters in here? How do I spot that,

410
00:25:40,500 –> 00:25:42,660
John? How do I, how do I see that as a leader?

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Oof.

412
00:25:49,140 –> 00:25:51,900
Because I’m trying to use this book to get me to some sort of understanding

413
00:25:51,900 –> 00:25:55,460
of alignment, right? But not ethics and process. That’ll come later.

414
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Or, or maybe it’ll all come in the package together. Because I’m going to see

415
00:25:58,900 –> 00:26:02,460
the ethical conundrums inside of the book. I’m going to those, those things are

416
00:26:02,460 –> 00:26:05,700
presented very baldly in front. But the vision part,

417
00:26:06,220 –> 00:26:10,020
that requires a little bit more, to use a larger term, discernment, a little

418
00:26:10,020 –> 00:26:13,660
bit more intuition into what Philip K. Dick is trying to do

419
00:26:13,660 –> 00:26:17,500
with, with his, with his story there. I think

420
00:26:19,020 –> 00:26:21,819
it, you know, kind of going back to what I was saying a second ago.

421
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Like, I think you, I think you, you can’t. I

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00:26:25,580 –> 00:26:28,660
think when you’re, when you’re in the spot that I was, that, well, I’m just

423
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going to give everyone good instructions. And then it’s on you to not mess up

424
00:26:31,900 –> 00:26:35,090
these instructions. And then when you do mess up, you’re the problem.

425
00:26:35,490 –> 00:26:39,130
Like, that’s where, like, you got to be

426
00:26:39,130 –> 00:26:42,850
above that tier. You know, that, that level of thinking, right?

427
00:26:43,170 –> 00:26:46,930
World is wider. People think differently, right? People communicate

428
00:26:46,930 –> 00:26:50,410
different, they work different. They’ve got different appreciations for things like conflict and

429
00:26:50,410 –> 00:26:54,130
relationships and, you know, culture and stuff like that. And so

430
00:26:54,210 –> 00:26:57,370
when, when it’s just, you know, to put it on the lines of a drill

431
00:26:57,370 –> 00:27:01,060
sergeant, you either like me or you’re wrong, right? If you’re still

432
00:27:01,060 –> 00:27:04,860
in that mode, none. Like, you’re not even

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listening to this show, you’re not reading any books, you’re not doing any of these

434
00:27:07,340 –> 00:27:10,660
things that we’re talking about because you’re just going around and I call it,

435
00:27:12,100 –> 00:27:15,900
you’re a little mini tyrant, right? You’re just going around with your world view

436
00:27:15,900 –> 00:27:19,340
and this is the right one and everything. And so when you’re at that level

437
00:27:19,340 –> 00:27:23,180
and you’re just expecting, right, you’re an expectant leader, right? Everyone

438
00:27:23,180 –> 00:27:26,980
should just come up ready to work. Things from home and other situations

439
00:27:26,980 –> 00:27:30,380
shouldn’t be impacting your performance. And, you know, why don’t people care enough? And all

440
00:27:30,380 –> 00:27:34,060
these other things. I don’t really think that you’re going to get

441
00:27:34,060 –> 00:27:37,380
much done, right? You’re just going to be mad at the world, mad at everybody

442
00:27:37,380 –> 00:27:40,460
you hire. No one’s going to be able to say anything to you because they’re

443
00:27:40,460 –> 00:27:43,620
going to be the problem every time it comes up, and it’s going to be

444
00:27:43,620 –> 00:27:47,300
a recipe for disaster, right? Now, when you’re stuck in

445
00:27:47,300 –> 00:27:51,060
that situation, I met a lot of people that

446
00:27:51,060 –> 00:27:53,780
are stuck in that situation. I still meet people who are stuck in that Situation.

447
00:27:57,150 –> 00:28:00,110
I don’t know really how to get those people to, like, pick their head up

448
00:28:00,110 –> 00:28:03,710
and look around and turn their lights on and be more, More open to it,

449
00:28:03,710 –> 00:28:07,270
right? Like, I, you know, I think reading helps,

450
00:28:07,270 –> 00:28:10,830
but if, if only nerds read, right, you’re probably not gonna, like,

451
00:28:10,830 –> 00:28:14,110
turn. Turn to that and everything. So, you know, I think,

452
00:28:15,150 –> 00:28:18,830
I think great mentorship, I think coaching and development can be great things,

453
00:28:19,070 –> 00:28:22,830
but ultimately, I think people have to run into that wall, right? Like,

454
00:28:22,910 –> 00:28:26,530
when, you know, I just think that most people are just

455
00:28:27,170 –> 00:28:30,810
not fully aware of how wide the

456
00:28:30,810 –> 00:28:34,650
lane can be, right? And so, yeah,

457
00:28:34,650 –> 00:28:38,450
when you’re, when you’re there, it’s just everyone else is the problem, right?

458
00:28:38,450 –> 00:28:42,210
It’s never my fault, you know, and it’s,

459
00:28:42,610 –> 00:28:46,050
it’s, you know, you hit the nail on the head. It’s, It’s. It’s our fault,

460
00:28:46,050 –> 00:28:49,810
right? If. If everyone else is crazy, right? If. And

461
00:28:50,370 –> 00:28:54,010
I don’t really like the whole sales and dating kind of metaphor that everyone

462
00:28:54,010 –> 00:28:57,370
uses, but, like, if you date a whole bunch of people and they’re all

463
00:28:57,370 –> 00:29:01,050
crazy, at some point we need to, like, look at the common

464
00:29:01,050 –> 00:29:04,530
denominator of, like, maybe they’re not all that bad, right?

465
00:29:04,850 –> 00:29:08,450
I’ve also been in the room where everyone is

466
00:29:08,450 –> 00:29:12,290
feeling such pressure to, like, keep their status and keep

467
00:29:12,290 –> 00:29:16,050
their job, right? That I’ve honestly heard things like, well, you know

468
00:29:16,050 –> 00:29:19,710
what? We just need to let all these people go, bring in new people, and

469
00:29:19,710 –> 00:29:23,470
that’s going to fix everything. Like. And

470
00:29:23,870 –> 00:29:27,510
I was literally. It was a zoom call, right? We’re on the zoom call. I

471
00:29:27,510 –> 00:29:31,030
had to. I had to mute myself and turn my camera off because I, you

472
00:29:31,030 –> 00:29:34,630
know, the. The filter was about to run out, right? Because I was

473
00:29:34,630 –> 00:29:38,190
like, I was. I was so gobsmacked, right,

474
00:29:38,190 –> 00:29:41,950
that this was, like a thing that was actually said, right? Because I’d heard

475
00:29:41,950 –> 00:29:45,390
about it, I’d seen people post on LinkedIn about it and everything else like this,

476
00:29:45,390 –> 00:29:48,880
and I was like, yeah, but, like, you know, I was thinking that if I

477
00:29:48,880 –> 00:29:52,200
kept, like, working with bigger companies and bigger companies and bigger companies, eventually

478
00:29:53,400 –> 00:29:56,360
I was gonna. I was gonna work with people who got it right. And so

479
00:29:56,360 –> 00:29:59,960
this is a big fundraised VC back situation. And,

480
00:29:59,960 –> 00:30:03,560
like, these lines were just being handed out, and I was like, well, there’s. It

481
00:30:03,560 –> 00:30:06,880
was if I had a bingo card for absurd leadership

482
00:30:06,880 –> 00:30:10,480
statements, right? Three weeks into this project, I hit all of

483
00:30:10,480 –> 00:30:14,240
them, right? You were drunk half the time, taking a shot every single

484
00:30:14,240 –> 00:30:18,000
time. Like, one of the things that I noticed was

485
00:30:18,000 –> 00:30:21,120
that, you know, a Lot of people didn’t feel comfortable being open and honest with

486
00:30:21,120 –> 00:30:24,920
the CEO. And so I was like, hey, CEO probably wants to hear

487
00:30:24,920 –> 00:30:28,640
about this, right? And so I was like, hey, not for nothing,

488
00:30:28,720 –> 00:30:30,959
I just want to let you know some of your people don’t really feel like

489
00:30:30,959 –> 00:30:34,760
they can be open and honest with you. And he goes, john, I’m a CEO

490
00:30:34,760 –> 00:30:38,600
of this company. Your pulse should race when you’re talking to

491
00:30:38,600 –> 00:30:42,290
me. And I was like, I have a book you need to read, and you

492
00:30:42,290 –> 00:30:44,490
have 30 days to do it, or else we’re going to wrap this thing up.

493
00:30:44,570 –> 00:30:48,010
Because that’s not how I operate, you know? And

494
00:30:48,330 –> 00:30:51,770
I mean, it’s just until you are aware that

495
00:30:53,450 –> 00:30:57,170
I think. I think everybody takes up space, right? And I think about

496
00:30:57,170 –> 00:30:59,890
this all the time. And, you know, in Jiu Jitsu, one of the things you

497
00:30:59,890 –> 00:31:02,210
talk about is you got to create space so that way you can move, right?

498
00:31:02,210 –> 00:31:05,850
And you have room to work and everything. And most people,

499
00:31:06,330 –> 00:31:09,370
especially these people who were not super aware of themselves yet, and they’re just kind

500
00:31:09,370 –> 00:31:13,010
of going around on borrowed, you know,

501
00:31:13,010 –> 00:31:16,170
motivation and mantras and stuff like this that they got off of Twitter.

502
00:31:16,570 –> 00:31:20,370
They. There’s. There’s no room for them

503
00:31:20,370 –> 00:31:23,970
to think about it any other way, right? And so it’s just, well, I’m

504
00:31:23,970 –> 00:31:27,210
smart. You have a problem with me, you must be the problem. And it’s like,

505
00:31:27,370 –> 00:31:30,650
if that is where you are and you can’t appreciate that, you are

506
00:31:31,050 –> 00:31:33,900
at least 50% of this, maybe

507
00:31:33,900 –> 00:31:37,060
87% of this, maybe only

508
00:31:37,060 –> 00:31:40,540
15%, and just understand that different people need different things.

509
00:31:41,740 –> 00:31:45,540
You’re not ready to lead anybody. You’re not even leading

510
00:31:45,540 –> 00:31:49,299
yourself. Couple of things before we go back to

511
00:31:49,299 –> 00:31:53,020
the book. So you. We are

512
00:31:53,020 –> 00:31:56,660
30 minutes in, and you mentioned Jiu Jitsu before I did, so that is. That’s.

513
00:31:56,660 –> 00:32:00,140
You’re welcome. Thank you. I appreciate. The dam. The dam is now open, sir.

514
00:32:01,890 –> 00:32:04,890
Thank you. Normally, I have to open it myself, but, you know, hey, you did

515
00:32:04,890 –> 00:32:08,570
me a favor this time. Excellent. I love that. And then this is how. This

516
00:32:08,570 –> 00:32:11,730
is how you become a repeat guest on the show, everybody, right? You get to.

517
00:32:11,810 –> 00:32:14,690
You open the can before he does, right? That’s right. That’s right.

518
00:32:15,490 –> 00:32:18,210
And then the other thing is, I think you’re the first guest.

519
00:32:19,410 –> 00:32:23,010
I mean, Tom Libby might have used. No, I don’t think Tom has even.

520
00:32:23,090 –> 00:32:26,830
You’re the first guest to use the term gobsmacked on the show. So

521
00:32:26,830 –> 00:32:30,310
congratulations, you’ve crossed over that divide as well. So there we go. I’m going to

522
00:32:30,310 –> 00:32:33,110
make T shirts later on today, you’ll get one in the mail. There you go.

523
00:32:33,110 –> 00:32:36,790
That’s right. There’ll be. You can get those in the Leadership Toolbox

524
00:32:37,350 –> 00:32:41,030
Shop at Leadership Toolbox Us. No, there is no shop. Don’t go

525
00:32:41,030 –> 00:32:44,790
there. You won’t see a shop. I’ve never been. Actually, I

526
00:32:44,790 –> 00:32:47,430
should probably make T shirts for this show. That would be a really good idea.

527
00:32:47,990 –> 00:32:50,790
But the. The other thing is that

528
00:32:52,640 –> 00:32:56,320
when I think about what this show

529
00:32:56,320 –> 00:32:59,920
does as one of the resources that we provide, what the content of this

530
00:32:59,920 –> 00:33:03,600
show does. Right. You know, I started

531
00:33:03,600 –> 00:33:07,400
out with a vision, and it changed, right? Because

532
00:33:07,400 –> 00:33:11,040
at first, my vision was just, I have a vision for reading

533
00:33:11,040 –> 00:33:14,160
books that I don’t see covered

534
00:33:14,400 –> 00:33:18,160
anywhere else in any kind of way. Right. And I

535
00:33:18,160 –> 00:33:21,210
was like, I’m going to read literature, going to pull lessons from it, and it’s

536
00:33:21,210 –> 00:33:23,810
going to be for leaders, and it’s going to be called the Leadership Lessons from

537
00:33:23,810 –> 00:33:27,450
the Great Books. Cool. That’s a vision. It’s a simple vision.

538
00:33:27,610 –> 00:33:31,330
And by the way, it was a constrained vision. And gradually, over the

539
00:33:31,330 –> 00:33:35,130
course of time, what has happened is the process has become

540
00:33:35,210 –> 00:33:38,290
more constrained, but the vision has

541
00:33:38,290 –> 00:33:41,690
expanded. Right. And I even say it in our opening. Right.

542
00:33:42,330 –> 00:33:45,810
You know, welcome to the. And it even sounds. Again, I get

543
00:33:45,810 –> 00:33:49,420
embarrassed when I say it because it’s so unconstrained. But. But welcome to the

544
00:33:49,420 –> 00:33:52,980
rescuing of Western civilization at the intersection of

545
00:33:52,980 –> 00:33:56,660
literature and leadership. That is an unconstrained

546
00:33:56,660 –> 00:34:00,420
vision. So I want to be very clear. You can

547
00:34:00,420 –> 00:34:03,540
start in one spot and move to someplace else.

548
00:34:04,660 –> 00:34:08,100
Yeah, but you have to start somewhere.

549
00:34:08,420 –> 00:34:11,620
This is the key thing that both John and I are getting to begin

550
00:34:12,260 –> 00:34:16,060
somewhere. And yes, to John’s point, okay, if you don’t want to

551
00:34:16,060 –> 00:34:19,700
read, fine, don’t read. There’s thousands of good podcasts to listen

552
00:34:19,700 –> 00:34:23,300
to. There are hundreds of opportunities to take advantage

553
00:34:23,460 –> 00:34:27,180
for training. There are great resources

554
00:34:27,180 –> 00:34:30,940
floating around on the Internet in terms of workshops and seminars, like

555
00:34:30,940 –> 00:34:34,620
what John does and like what I do. There’s all these opportunities. The.

556
00:34:34,620 –> 00:34:38,380
The problem is not that you don’t have. The problem

557
00:34:38,380 –> 00:34:41,900
is not a lack of resources. That is not the problem that we currently exist

558
00:34:41,900 –> 00:34:44,780
in, which might have been the problem 50 years ago. I’ll give you. That might

559
00:34:44,780 –> 00:34:48,440
have been a problem. Resources were hard to. You couldn’t get them. You know, you

560
00:34:48,440 –> 00:34:52,240
couldn’t. You couldn’t. You couldn’t just call somebody at IBM and be like, tell me

561
00:34:52,240 –> 00:34:55,880
all your secrets. I get it. This is not the

562
00:34:55,880 –> 00:34:59,280
problem in 2026. If anything,

563
00:34:59,520 –> 00:35:03,200
we’re on the far other side of the pendulum, right? Correct.

564
00:35:03,200 –> 00:35:06,840
We have too many. I mean, way too many. And

565
00:35:06,840 –> 00:35:10,520
not enough discernment, not enough distinction, right? Because, like, you

566
00:35:10,520 –> 00:35:14,370
know, I, you know, I, I follow

567
00:35:14,370 –> 00:35:17,810
a lot of people who make video content, right? And I’ll see people, and

568
00:35:18,130 –> 00:35:21,890
you’ll see people clinging to these ideas that are for a vertical or

569
00:35:21,890 –> 00:35:25,570
for, you know, like, consulting versus agencies, right?

570
00:35:25,570 –> 00:35:27,850
Is one of these things that I, that I talk about with people all the

571
00:35:27,850 –> 00:35:31,570
time, right? If you’re. I was working with a woman,

572
00:35:31,810 –> 00:35:35,570
and she didn’t want to be an agency because all she kept seeing

573
00:35:35,570 –> 00:35:39,330
were these, like, stories about how, like, agencies suck and client work sucks

574
00:35:39,330 –> 00:35:43,060
and just be a consultant and just. And just show them the way, right? But

575
00:35:43,060 –> 00:35:46,900
she hated all of our clients. And then when she could get them to

576
00:35:46,900 –> 00:35:49,900
go off and do the thing, it was never at the level or standard that

577
00:35:49,900 –> 00:35:53,420
she wanted them to be, right? And, and, you know,

578
00:35:54,060 –> 00:35:57,100
I’m a little further down the path. And so, you know, I’m like, why don’t.

579
00:35:57,180 –> 00:36:00,860
Like, why, why be a consultant? Like, why not just

580
00:36:00,860 –> 00:36:04,540
be an agency? Do them, do the work for them at the,

581
00:36:04,540 –> 00:36:07,940
at the standard that, you know, is important, Charge them a little bit more and

582
00:36:07,940 –> 00:36:10,470
do the thing. And she’s like, well, like, agencies suck. And I’m like, where’d you

583
00:36:10,470 –> 00:36:14,310
hear that? And, you know, she. She spouted four or five

584
00:36:14,310 –> 00:36:17,230
really big, you know, influencer names, right?

585
00:36:17,870 –> 00:36:21,550
And. And I was like, okay, that works for some, some people,

586
00:36:21,550 –> 00:36:25,150
but, like, look at the frustration you’re living under. You hate all of your clients,

587
00:36:25,390 –> 00:36:29,110
and you’re frankly not at the level of being good

588
00:36:29,110 –> 00:36:32,590
enough of a conversation, being able enough to get them

589
00:36:32,670 –> 00:36:36,480
into action, into lead to an awareness

590
00:36:36,480 –> 00:36:39,480
of the work and wanting to push that better and everything. So you, for your,

591
00:36:39,480 –> 00:36:43,160
for your own piece, should just run an agency and do it for them.

592
00:36:44,040 –> 00:36:47,560
And she was like, well, I don’t know. I don’t know. And. And she’s like,

593
00:36:47,560 –> 00:36:51,320
well, then why. Why are all these horror stories about how bad it is?

594
00:36:51,320 –> 00:36:55,000
I’m like, because they’re trying to sell you something. They want to sell you

595
00:36:55,000 –> 00:36:58,520
their course. They want to sell you their stuff, right? But, like,

596
00:36:59,000 –> 00:37:02,740
if there’s room for both to be true, you know, like, I’ve

597
00:37:02,740 –> 00:37:06,500
gotten to a place to where I’m. I’m now pretty good about being able to

598
00:37:06,500 –> 00:37:10,020
get people unlocked, and so that way they can go and do their jobs well,

599
00:37:10,180 –> 00:37:12,740
which means I don’t have to do it for them. But that’s a skill set

600
00:37:12,740 –> 00:37:15,900
that you have to, like, learn, and it’s independent of being good at the work

601
00:37:15,900 –> 00:37:19,580
that you’re hanging a shingle for, you know? Correct. A lot of people forget about

602
00:37:19,580 –> 00:37:23,420
these things, you know, and. Yeah,

603
00:37:23,420 –> 00:37:27,220
it’s just if you like, like, my business has shifted pretty significantly because of

604
00:37:27,220 –> 00:37:30,260
this idea. Because when I, When I first went out on my own, I didn’t

605
00:37:30,260 –> 00:37:33,900
want to be a trainer, right? I didn’t want to be a guy who

606
00:37:34,060 –> 00:37:37,900
coached people around this thing. I just wanted to build a CRM for people. But

607
00:37:37,900 –> 00:37:41,420
lo and behold, right, I would start working with the team. I’m like, why is

608
00:37:41,420 –> 00:37:45,140
there no loss column, John? Deals, don’t. Deals, deals.

609
00:37:45,140 –> 00:37:48,060
Don’t get lost. We just give up because we’re not pushing hard enough. And I’m

610
00:37:48,060 –> 00:37:51,740
like, that’s insane, right? That’s insane. And so then, like, you know, coming

611
00:37:51,740 –> 00:37:55,380
around of like, oh, how I use a CRM as a feedback loop and

612
00:37:55,380 –> 00:37:58,940
mechanism so I can’t hide from my results anymore is kind of tied to how

613
00:37:58,940 –> 00:38:02,780
I think about the job, and maybe I’ll have less frustration, right? And then

614
00:38:02,780 –> 00:38:05,700
also pair that with, like, people starting to ask me for some of these things,

615
00:38:05,700 –> 00:38:09,220
you know, and so there’s. I love that idea that

616
00:38:09,860 –> 00:38:13,340
you don’t have to start perfect, but you need to be open to, like, the

617
00:38:13,340 –> 00:38:17,180
right feedback from the right sources, right? As opposed to just, well, you’re wrong,

618
00:38:17,180 –> 00:38:20,860
you’re wrong. You’re an idiot. Right? You’re wrong, you’re wrong. Oh, one

619
00:38:20,860 –> 00:38:24,460
person likes me. Oh, well, you. You get it, bro. No one else gets me,

620
00:38:24,460 –> 00:38:27,700
you know, and everything else like that. It’s, it’s. It’s insane. But

621
00:38:28,420 –> 00:38:32,260
most people want to hang out in that limbo,

622
00:38:32,260 –> 00:38:36,060
the unaccountable limbo. Back

623
00:38:36,060 –> 00:38:39,740
to the book. There’s a way out of unaccountability, by the way. We do

624
00:38:39,740 –> 00:38:43,580
cover that in the book. Back to the book for just a minute

625
00:38:43,580 –> 00:38:47,380
here. 12 rules for leaders by. Well, you know,

626
00:38:48,180 –> 00:38:51,940
so we’re going to pick up with. We’re going to pick up with. With rule

627
00:38:51,940 –> 00:38:55,490
number one. And we’re developed a methodology in this book. And

628
00:38:55,490 –> 00:38:58,410
I, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this with, with. With John on the

629
00:38:58,410 –> 00:39:02,130
show, but it’s a methodology that links vision

630
00:39:03,170 –> 00:39:06,730
to model, and it answers the basic question which floats

631
00:39:06,730 –> 00:39:10,570
underneath a lot of this, which I can already hear leaders asking the

632
00:39:10,570 –> 00:39:12,930
ones who have been with us, you know, 30 minutes in now,

633
00:39:14,290 –> 00:39:17,410
how do I get there?

634
00:39:17,970 –> 00:39:21,340
How does that happen? Because, you know, they’re saying, you got to get there. You

635
00:39:21,340 –> 00:39:23,500
got to get there, you got to get there. I’ve got all these options. Well,

636
00:39:23,500 –> 00:39:27,180
how do I get there? Well, here’s a simple, although not easy

637
00:39:27,180 –> 00:39:30,660
model for how you get there and I

638
00:39:30,660 –> 00:39:34,140
quote the methodology of communicating with clarity,

639
00:39:34,140 –> 00:39:37,940
candor and courage or the three Cs was developed and teased out

640
00:39:37,940 –> 00:39:41,540
through research and development from the work we have done with teams and leaders over

641
00:39:41,540 –> 00:39:45,300
the last 10 years and was meant to clear up the tendency among organizational

642
00:39:45,300 –> 00:39:48,740
leaders to communicate with themselves, their teams and and their

643
00:39:48,740 –> 00:39:52,220
organizational structures with obfuscation, deception and

644
00:39:52,220 –> 00:39:56,060
insincerity. This is a trend that has continued

645
00:39:56,060 –> 00:39:59,020
to grow in the realm of thought leadership and has achieved heights of scale never

646
00:39:59,020 –> 00:40:02,300
seen before or experienced because of the prevalence of social media

647
00:40:02,380 –> 00:40:05,820
platforms. However, leaders need to understand,

648
00:40:05,980 –> 00:40:09,820
wrestle with, adopt and practice intentionally and ruthlessly the

649
00:40:09,820 –> 00:40:13,620
3C’s methodology. This is to

650
00:40:13,620 –> 00:40:17,380
have greater success in defining their roles and responsibilities to the team, the

651
00:40:17,380 –> 00:40:21,100
organization, and the culture. Leaders can extract higher levels of productivity and performance

652
00:40:21,100 –> 00:40:24,820
from teams and organizations to the application of the 3Cs. This will

653
00:40:24,820 –> 00:40:28,500
ensure lower levels of false and real conflict, less political wrangling

654
00:40:28,500 –> 00:40:32,300
over decisions, more accountability, and higher levels of

655
00:40:32,300 –> 00:40:36,020
genuine trust. In the first step, the

656
00:40:36,020 –> 00:40:39,300
leader defines what the problem is they are facing with themselves, the team and or

657
00:40:39,300 –> 00:40:41,900
the organization by first clarifying the issue.

658
00:40:43,110 –> 00:40:46,790
Clarity in conversation, thinking, speaking, and writing to make thoughts, feelings, and

659
00:40:46,790 –> 00:40:50,430
motives known to the other party is critical. Clarity applies both to

660
00:40:50,430 –> 00:40:54,190
thinking and communicating. Establishing clarity as the shared

661
00:40:54,190 –> 00:40:57,750
organizational goal of all individuals requires ensuring team members feel

662
00:40:57,750 –> 00:41:01,430
comfortable with communicating until a shared understanding is established.

663
00:41:01,910 –> 00:41:05,270
A leader’s commitment to transparency contributes to clarity.

664
00:41:06,630 –> 00:41:10,120
Candor in a conversation, being candid with empathy and a focus on

665
00:41:10,120 –> 00:41:13,880
intentionality are also critical for success. Candor contributes to

666
00:41:13,880 –> 00:41:17,320
an individual’s credibility and trustworthiness. Your employees and

667
00:41:17,320 –> 00:41:21,120
colleagues must believe you are honest, forthright, and sincere. This means they must

668
00:41:21,120 –> 00:41:24,960
believe you are speaking your truth and the truth, or

669
00:41:24,960 –> 00:41:28,640
at least not lying, about circumstances and conditions, no matter how difficult they

670
00:41:28,640 –> 00:41:31,960
may be, and that you are doing so with their best interests

671
00:41:32,600 –> 00:41:36,120
in balance with your interests and the organization’s interests in mind.

672
00:41:37,560 –> 00:41:41,200
Courage in a Conversation Having the courage to neither delay nor avoid the

673
00:41:41,200 –> 00:41:45,040
conversation is critical to achieving success. Bernay Brown

674
00:41:45,040 –> 00:41:48,520
describes courage as a quote, unquote heart word. Although the

675
00:41:48,520 –> 00:41:52,280
contemporary definitions focus on bravery and heroism, Brown encourages

676
00:41:52,280 –> 00:41:56,000
us to remember, quote, the inner strength and level of commitment required for

677
00:41:56,000 –> 00:41:58,280
us to speak honestly and openly about who we are

678
00:41:59,640 –> 00:42:03,460
and about our experiences, good and bad. To be

679
00:42:03,460 –> 00:42:07,020
courageous about confronting the problem with themselves, a team and or the organization,

680
00:42:07,500 –> 00:42:11,300
a leader must ask the following questions. Am I ready to confront the other

681
00:42:11,300 –> 00:42:14,980
party without escalating? Am I offering a solution to the problem or just providing

682
00:42:14,980 –> 00:42:18,819
feedback? With no solution? Am I able to emotionally address

683
00:42:18,819 –> 00:42:22,620
the reactions and consequences of this confrontation in a healthy

684
00:42:22,620 –> 00:42:26,180
way? Now let me skip down a couple of paragraphs.

685
00:42:26,180 –> 00:42:29,700
Many leaders struggle with the basics of establishing clarity, engaging with

686
00:42:29,700 –> 00:42:33,420
candor, and responding and planning intentionally with courage for many reasons. However, the

687
00:42:33,420 –> 00:42:36,760
number one reason is. Is. Wait for it. Ego

688
00:42:37,960 –> 00:42:41,720
leaders. Egos cloud their inner monologues, causing a lack of clarity

689
00:42:41,720 –> 00:42:45,160
in their thinking, which leads to a lack of clear writing and clear speaking.

690
00:42:45,640 –> 00:42:49,320
A sure sign of a leader who has abandoned their roles and responsibilities

691
00:42:49,320 –> 00:42:52,920
is the presence of jargon heavy language that serves only to confuse,

692
00:42:52,920 –> 00:42:56,200
misdirect and there’s this word again. Obfuscate an issue.

693
00:42:57,160 –> 00:43:00,880
Ego rears its ugly head when leaders are pressed to be candid and usually about

694
00:43:00,880 –> 00:43:04,720
small issues or matters at hand. Being candid requires having a healthy dose of

695
00:43:04,720 –> 00:43:08,270
self awareness. Furthermore, leaders struggle when they lack

696
00:43:08,270 –> 00:43:12,030
clarity in themselves, necessary to accomplish the goals they seek and

697
00:43:12,030 –> 00:43:15,790
the honesty to talk about them. Candor is also a problem because

698
00:43:15,790 –> 00:43:18,950
it is often mixed in with the desire to be liked and to not

699
00:43:18,950 –> 00:43:22,670
offend. This desire then results in hard conversations being

700
00:43:22,670 –> 00:43:26,270
avoided, hard decisions being made at the last possible moment, and

701
00:43:26,270 –> 00:43:30,070
allows people to elevate themselves in status rather than being directed to

702
00:43:30,070 –> 00:43:33,910
do the hard work of emotionally maturing and growing or leaving the

703
00:43:33,910 –> 00:43:37,710
organization. Being candid also requires a measure of vulnerability and

704
00:43:37,710 –> 00:43:41,390
exposure, which means trust must be reciprocated. If the

705
00:43:41,390 –> 00:43:45,070
leader is covering up, so will every other subordinate leader

706
00:43:46,110 –> 00:43:49,830
and to close. Finally, the courage or heart to think, write, say

707
00:43:49,830 –> 00:43:53,630
and act in an ethical, moral and social fashion means more than just bending to

708
00:43:53,630 –> 00:43:57,270
the whims of the crowd. Sometimes the crowd is

709
00:43:57,270 –> 00:44:00,970
wrong. The team often needs to be

710
00:44:01,130 –> 00:44:04,810
led to where it does not want to go. Sometimes the

711
00:44:04,810 –> 00:44:08,490
courage to lead in this way results in burnout, personal acrimony, hazing,

712
00:44:08,650 –> 00:44:12,490
appeals to the dominance hierarchy and all other manners of commonly accepted social

713
00:44:12,490 –> 00:44:16,250
and political negative outcomes. Keep in mind, the courage to lead

714
00:44:16,250 –> 00:44:19,890
in this way sometimes results in excellence, achievement, and moving the team past the mere

715
00:44:19,890 –> 00:44:23,630
accomplishment of a result and toward the accomplishment of

716
00:44:24,020 –> 00:44:26,500
of something greater.

717
00:44:30,980 –> 00:44:34,500
This is the linchpin. This is the.

718
00:44:35,940 –> 00:44:39,500
Yeah, linchpin. I think that’s a good word. That’s a Seth Godin word. This is

719
00:44:39,500 –> 00:44:43,300
the linchpin. Clarity, candor and courage that exists

720
00:44:44,260 –> 00:44:47,300
as a. And maybe even a lynching is a good word or the best word.

721
00:44:47,300 –> 00:44:51,100
Maybe it’s a bridge exists as a Bridge to go from vision to a

722
00:44:51,100 –> 00:44:54,930
model. What do we do in order? How do

723
00:44:54,930 –> 00:44:58,290
we get to where we can have a model of

724
00:44:58,290 –> 00:45:02,130
leadership? A model is a framework fundamentally, and it is

725
00:45:02,130 –> 00:45:05,810
developed after a vision and it exists to provide boundaries for

726
00:45:05,810 –> 00:45:08,970
visions, whether they are constrained or unconstrained.

727
00:45:10,490 –> 00:45:14,290
In the 20th century, most leadership models are

728
00:45:14,290 –> 00:45:18,010
based on research from examining group dynamics in a post World War II,

729
00:45:18,560 –> 00:45:21,280
mostly male dominated, mostly corporate America.

730
00:45:22,800 –> 00:45:25,280
This is reflected by the way in some of the literature that came out of

731
00:45:25,280 –> 00:45:28,560
the late 20th century as well. Noir literature, spy,

732
00:45:28,560 –> 00:45:32,360
espionage, thrillers, even in cinema and in

733
00:45:32,360 –> 00:45:35,440
the movies, which you know, I love. If you’re listening to this show, the man

734
00:45:35,440 –> 00:45:39,240
in the Gray Flannel Suit, if you’re a person

735
00:45:39,240 –> 00:45:42,880
who watches science fiction or thriller stuff, Twilight Zone, Albert

736
00:45:42,880 –> 00:45:46,430
Hitchcock Presents the Outer Limits all presented

737
00:45:46,510 –> 00:45:50,350
this conformist vision of America

738
00:45:50,670 –> 00:45:53,790
where as I said in the opening, the edge cases

739
00:45:54,350 –> 00:45:58,070
were merely that, edge cases. Now, all

740
00:45:58,070 –> 00:46:01,070
this began to unravel in the 1960s and the 1970s

741
00:46:01,950 –> 00:46:05,590
and well, so did those

742
00:46:05,590 –> 00:46:09,430
models, right? And models based in 20th century Psychological

743
00:46:09,430 –> 00:46:13,160
and organizational research do hang on

744
00:46:13,160 –> 00:46:16,760
though, and they still influence how leaders leverage communication,

745
00:46:16,760 –> 00:46:20,280
emotional intelligence, persuasion, influence, motivation,

746
00:46:20,280 –> 00:46:23,920
accountability, discipline, trust, and even responding or reacting to change.

747
00:46:23,920 –> 00:46:27,640
And by the way, even if those models have collapsed, which I would assert

748
00:46:27,640 –> 00:46:31,440
they have, and this is why we’re in a chaotic period. Like John previously mentioned,

749
00:46:32,640 –> 00:46:36,400
the people who are reacting to the chaos are reacting in

750
00:46:36,400 –> 00:46:40,140
a way that indicates that they want to return to

751
00:46:40,140 –> 00:46:43,820
the stability, psychically return to the stability of some of those

752
00:46:43,820 –> 00:46:47,620
models. However, models based

753
00:46:47,620 –> 00:46:51,380
in literature allow leaders to navigate outlier situations, those

754
00:46:51,380 –> 00:46:55,180
edge cases and hard circumstances that didn’t exist in the mid 20th

755
00:46:55,180 –> 00:46:58,940
century. This is because the 21st century edge cases, the

756
00:46:58,940 –> 00:47:02,700
outlier situations and the unusually hard circumstances have moved from the

757
00:47:02,700 –> 00:47:06,440
bottom to the top of the leader’s to do list in a world driven

758
00:47:06,440 –> 00:47:10,160
by a roiling red ocean rather than a

759
00:47:10,160 –> 00:47:13,320
blue ocean, a calm blue ocean of

760
00:47:13,400 –> 00:47:14,760
dynamic change.

761
00:47:20,040 –> 00:47:23,840
So we’ve got a model, we’ve got a bridge between vision

762
00:47:23,840 –> 00:47:27,440
and modeling. We’ve got some

763
00:47:27,440 –> 00:47:31,210
literature, we’ve got some books. I know

764
00:47:31,210 –> 00:47:34,530
you said only nerds read, but we have audiobooks now,

765
00:47:36,210 –> 00:47:38,530
so it’s not only nerds that listen. So

766
00:47:39,970 –> 00:47:43,210
if we were to compile. I’ll ask you a question that’s not on this list.

767
00:47:43,210 –> 00:47:46,930
If we were to compile a list of books,

768
00:47:47,090 –> 00:47:49,330
like if we were to walk into a leader’s

769
00:47:50,690 –> 00:47:54,530
corner office, whatever, right? Whether it’s on

770
00:47:54,530 –> 00:47:57,770
the third floor of a 12 floor building or the 12th floor of a 12th

771
00:47:57,770 –> 00:48:01,490
floor building. If we were to walk into that leader’s office,

772
00:48:01,970 –> 00:48:05,770
what books should we. What literature? Not books. What literature should we expect

773
00:48:05,770 –> 00:48:09,410
to see on their bookshelf? John, what would be some recommendations?

774
00:48:09,570 –> 00:48:12,130
Expect to see. Yeah, Expect to see.

775
00:48:14,450 –> 00:48:17,890
And not leadership books. Right? So like extreme ownership is not allowed to be on

776
00:48:17,890 –> 00:48:21,010
the list. Extreme ownership cannot, cannot make the list.

777
00:48:21,730 –> 00:48:24,490
Extreme ownership could be on. Could be on your list at. Could be on your

778
00:48:24,490 –> 00:48:27,940
shelf at home. I would maybe expect that at a leader’s home, but in their

779
00:48:27,940 –> 00:48:31,500
office. Right. If they’re really paying attention to what we’re trying to do

780
00:48:31,500 –> 00:48:35,100
here. Like if I were

781
00:48:35,100 –> 00:48:37,540
walking. And I’ll just give you an example, if I were walking into that leader’s

782
00:48:37,540 –> 00:48:40,740
office, I would expect to see Sense and Sensibility on

783
00:48:41,219 –> 00:48:45,060
the bookshelf because that’s

784
00:48:45,060 –> 00:48:48,060
how you learn about emotional intelligence is through Sense and sensibility. My daughter is actually

785
00:48:48,060 –> 00:48:51,740
reading Sense and Sensibility right now. Like, that’s, that’s what I would

786
00:48:51,740 –> 00:48:55,490
expect to see. I would expect to see. I would expect

787
00:48:55,490 –> 00:48:55,970
to see.

788
00:48:59,410 –> 00:49:02,770
Oh, I would expect to see Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein.

789
00:49:03,250 –> 00:49:07,010
That’s going to tell me something, right, about that leader and about how they’re leading.

790
00:49:08,130 –> 00:49:11,890
I would also expect to see maybe 41 stories by O. Henry.

791
00:49:11,970 –> 00:49:15,570
Right. Because that’s a nice little dip into a pool

792
00:49:18,050 –> 00:49:21,650
of how people engage with each other who are of different classes.

793
00:49:22,340 –> 00:49:26,100
I would expect to see east of Eden by John Steinbeck because there’s an

794
00:49:26,100 –> 00:49:29,540
interesting idea in there about Tim Scholes and about

795
00:49:29,700 –> 00:49:33,540
how vision moves through time across generations.

796
00:49:33,860 –> 00:49:37,260
Right. So those are just some examples of things that maybe of books that I

797
00:49:37,260 –> 00:49:40,900
would, I would expect to see that would not be business books.

798
00:49:41,140 –> 00:49:44,460
But what would you. Maybe I shouldn’t say expect. What would you like to see?

799
00:49:44,460 –> 00:49:47,780
Maybe that’s. That’s a better question. Well, I mean,

800
00:49:48,680 –> 00:49:50,840
I don’t know if we talked about this when we talked about Stranger in a

801
00:49:50,840 –> 00:49:54,280
Strange Land, but that was the book I saw on my wife’s shelf

802
00:49:54,520 –> 00:49:58,160
that indicated we, you know, we’re gonna have some

803
00:49:58,160 –> 00:49:59,880
cool conversations, right? Yeah.

804
00:50:01,960 –> 00:50:05,720
I would say, I’d say anything historical

805
00:50:05,720 –> 00:50:09,360
that’s not like a McGraw textbook would be

806
00:50:09,360 –> 00:50:13,040
super helpful. Right. Like, you know, just the, just the idea that we’re,

807
00:50:13,040 –> 00:50:16,840
you know, ramroded with the idea, you know, through, you know,

808
00:50:16,840 –> 00:50:20,640
elementary school, middle school and high school in most situations of we’re perfect

809
00:50:20,640 –> 00:50:23,600
as a nation state. We don’t ever make any pro. We don’t ever make any

810
00:50:23,600 –> 00:50:27,160
really big mistakes. Right. So, you know, we’re always going to be

811
00:50:27,160 –> 00:50:30,840
okay. And we always learn from these mistakes that we have made and

812
00:50:30,840 –> 00:50:33,880
everything, which, you know, just if you can zoom out a little bit, we can

813
00:50:33,880 –> 00:50:37,520
see how just untrue of a statement that is. Right? So,

814
00:50:38,720 –> 00:50:42,440
and then, man, I’m going to be kind of one note on this, but

815
00:50:42,440 –> 00:50:45,800
like, I would love to see any version of

816
00:50:45,800 –> 00:50:49,430
philosophy. Like, I don’t even really care which one it

817
00:50:49,430 –> 00:50:52,310
is. Like, I’m a big fan of stoicism. You and I have talked a lot

818
00:50:52,310 –> 00:50:56,150
about like martial arts philosophy and Musashi and the art of the samurai or the

819
00:50:56,150 –> 00:50:59,790
way of the Samurai. Excuse me, but

820
00:50:59,790 –> 00:51:03,070
like, you know, anything in that, in that space, right?

821
00:51:03,470 –> 00:51:07,190
Something that is going to, you

822
00:51:07,190 –> 00:51:10,870
know, hopefully get you to kind of think about why do you think the way

823
00:51:10,870 –> 00:51:14,510
that you think. Right. You know, I’m, I’m very.

824
00:51:14,910 –> 00:51:18,050
One of the things that I see on a lot of people’s shelves which when,

825
00:51:18,050 –> 00:51:21,770
when I look at their actions and I look at how they actually move, you

826
00:51:21,770 –> 00:51:25,490
know, I’m, I’m kind of confused that the Bible is on some of the shelves

827
00:51:25,490 –> 00:51:28,210
of some of these people that I see because it’s like, well, I don’t really

828
00:51:28,210 –> 00:51:31,890
see you acting like anything that is in this book

829
00:51:31,890 –> 00:51:35,650
from my reading of it, you know. And

830
00:51:35,650 –> 00:51:39,410
so anything in the military

831
00:51:40,690 –> 00:51:44,290
section, right. Like, I really like military sci fi,

832
00:51:44,290 –> 00:51:48,140
right. For some reason I think Game of

833
00:51:48,140 –> 00:51:51,740
Thrones, right? Just like the, the, the

834
00:51:51,740 –> 00:51:53,900
fanaticism, right? And, and those things.

835
00:51:55,980 –> 00:51:58,460
I think, I think military is a really interesting

836
00:51:59,580 –> 00:52:02,540
lens to look at this, right? Because you know, everyone,

837
00:52:03,260 –> 00:52:07,060
I, I was working for someone and this is a long

838
00:52:07,060 –> 00:52:10,260
time ago, and they were like, john, you’re in the military, right? And I was

839
00:52:10,260 –> 00:52:14,070
like, yeah. They said, wow, that’s hard to believe.

840
00:52:14,790 –> 00:52:17,750
And I was like, why do you say that? And they’re like, well, seem to

841
00:52:17,750 –> 00:52:21,590
speak your mind a lot. And I’m like, you know, we’re not still in, in

842
00:52:21,590 –> 00:52:25,310
there, right? Because yeah, this is, this is

843
00:52:25,310 –> 00:52:28,430
back home. I’m allowed to have thoughts and opinions here, right. I’m allowed to be

844
00:52:28,430 –> 00:52:32,110
an individual, you know. Yeah. And you

845
00:52:32,110 –> 00:52:35,190
know, so I think, I think people

846
00:52:35,590 –> 00:52:39,270
should read widely, right? And, and try different things,

847
00:52:39,610 –> 00:52:43,050
you know. But I, I know that, you know, reading is a, is a skill

848
00:52:43,050 –> 00:52:46,770
as much of it, as much of it is like a hobby, right? And the

849
00:52:46,770 –> 00:52:50,370
more you do, the better you get at it, the easier it becomes to kind

850
00:52:50,370 –> 00:52:53,530
of pull your ideas out and be like, oh, how did I get here?

851
00:52:54,010 –> 00:52:57,050
Right? Why do I, why do I feel this way, you know?

852
00:52:58,410 –> 00:53:02,050
But I think it’s. There’s so much other stuff going on, it

853
00:53:02,050 –> 00:53:05,770
becomes very easy, right? In a. In a line that we talked about in the.

854
00:53:06,090 –> 00:53:09,840
In the kung fu school that I came up in. Always a good reason not

855
00:53:09,840 –> 00:53:13,640
to go to class. It’s always a good reason to not pick up the book,

856
00:53:14,200 –> 00:53:17,240
you know, but largely

857
00:53:18,120 –> 00:53:21,240
it. It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about with people. Like, what do

858
00:53:21,240 –> 00:53:24,360
you read? Right? Oh, I don’t read business books. Cool.

859
00:53:24,839 –> 00:53:28,640
That’s not what I asked. What. What do you read? You know, and

860
00:53:28,640 –> 00:53:31,280
diving into it, one of my. One of my favorite series of books. This is

861
00:53:31,280 –> 00:53:35,050
like fantasy. It’s by Robin Hobby. And there’s

862
00:53:35,050 –> 00:53:38,650
this guy, and he’s a. He’s a royal bastard, right? And so in this

863
00:53:38,650 –> 00:53:42,250
universe, all the royal bastards were trained as assassins, right? Because you have access and

864
00:53:42,250 –> 00:53:45,250
everything else like this. And this guy becomes kind of,

865
00:53:46,770 –> 00:53:50,569
for lack of a better term, you know, brainwashed into just,

866
00:53:50,569 –> 00:53:54,290
like, letting the crown, right, Just control

867
00:53:54,290 –> 00:53:57,650
him and control his life and control his actions, right? And everyone is like, why

868
00:53:57,650 –> 00:54:01,500
do you keep going through this for a family and

869
00:54:01,500 –> 00:54:04,940
a group that’s never done anything for you, right? And you can see that.

870
00:54:05,900 –> 00:54:09,620
That stalwart resoluteness, right, that is

871
00:54:09,620 –> 00:54:13,260
often lauded, right? But when you’re on the other end of that

872
00:54:13,260 –> 00:54:17,020
stubborn, you know, rigidness,

873
00:54:18,140 –> 00:54:21,740
it doesn’t make any sense, you know? And so I think. I think we only

874
00:54:21,740 –> 00:54:25,540
get there by exposing ourselves to, like, lots of things, right? Reading as widely

875
00:54:25,540 –> 00:54:29,350
as possible. That’s why I love this show that you do, right? And I love

876
00:54:29,350 –> 00:54:32,750
that it’s not focused on just like, well, here’s the. Here’s the flavor of the

877
00:54:32,750 –> 00:54:36,590
month in the business book, you know, because, you know,

878
00:54:36,590 –> 00:54:40,030
there’s a lot that you can figure out. The Patrick Rothfuss has got these great

879
00:54:40,030 –> 00:54:43,390
books that my wife hates. She hates these books, right?

880
00:54:43,710 –> 00:54:47,430
Because in her. Her opinion, it focuses way too much on the. On

881
00:54:47,430 –> 00:54:50,910
the economy and this. In this world and universe, right? And I’m like,

882
00:54:52,840 –> 00:54:55,920
but we spend so much time talking about how much more expensive things are, right?

883
00:54:55,920 –> 00:54:59,600
So, like, there is. There is a parallel here, you know? Yeah. And

884
00:54:59,600 –> 00:55:03,440
I think. I think you can read for lots of reasons, right? She likes

885
00:55:03,440 –> 00:55:07,080
to read just for, like, entertainment and escape and, you know, that’s okay.

886
00:55:07,080 –> 00:55:10,680
But I think if you’re trying to lead other

887
00:55:10,680 –> 00:55:14,520
people, right, you have a. You have an obligation to kind of

888
00:55:14,760 –> 00:55:18,360
zoom out, right? We’re really good at selling ourselves

889
00:55:18,360 –> 00:55:22,000
on literally anything we want to be sold on, you know,

890
00:55:22,720 –> 00:55:25,920
And Going back a minute, you talked about IBM a second ago.

891
00:55:26,880 –> 00:55:30,280
One of the favorite things that I’ve ever learned about IBM, right, is they were

892
00:55:30,280 –> 00:55:33,920
known for keeping their goals super low. Yeah. Their sales people.

893
00:55:34,160 –> 00:55:38,000
Right. And then putting massive accelerators on

894
00:55:38,000 –> 00:55:41,720
top of those goals. So that way people would be excited to go out and

895
00:55:41,720 –> 00:55:45,440
overproduce to go make more money. Now let’s juxtapose that with all the

896
00:55:45,440 –> 00:55:49,020
people that are like, well, we didn’t hit goal last year, so let’s just add

897
00:55:49,020 –> 00:55:52,700
20% to this year’s goal. And then we’re just going to write everybody off who

898
00:55:52,700 –> 00:55:55,580
doesn’t hit this goal. Right. And they’ll just keep moving it and moving it and

899
00:55:55,580 –> 00:55:59,060
moving it up and everything else like this. Right. And so I just think about,

900
00:55:59,060 –> 00:56:02,740
like, that was a strategic decision. And I can imagine the person

901
00:56:02,740 –> 00:56:06,100
who came up with that idea stood in front of that, that board,

902
00:56:06,660 –> 00:56:09,860
hey, here’s what I want to do, guys. I want to take like

903
00:56:09,940 –> 00:56:13,660
30% off of our goals because here’s what I think is gonna. Like, do you

904
00:56:13,660 –> 00:56:17,460
think that guy was on anyone’s Christmas card list? Right. And I’m assuming it was

905
00:56:17,460 –> 00:56:21,060
a guy because it was a long time ago. But, like, look at,

906
00:56:21,060 –> 00:56:24,900
look, we still talk about them, right? The, the old line in sales that

907
00:56:24,900 –> 00:56:27,380
we, that we talk about all the time is like, no one ever got fired

908
00:56:27,380 –> 00:56:31,220
for buying IBM. Right. Still a mainstay, you know. And

909
00:56:31,220 –> 00:56:33,580
it started from one strategic decision

910
00:56:34,860 –> 00:56:38,540
that most people have never even heard about, never even thought, never

911
00:56:38,540 –> 00:56:42,320
even tried. And instead they go the other way. Well,

912
00:56:42,320 –> 00:56:45,000
in a strategic decision based on.

913
00:56:46,280 –> 00:56:49,400
Because I’m going to keep banging this drum based on a specific vision

914
00:56:49,880 –> 00:56:53,480
of how people should show up. So the vision comes first,

915
00:56:53,480 –> 00:56:55,880
then the strategy, then the tactic. Right?

916
00:56:58,360 –> 00:57:02,160
And that vision, I would assert, comes out of, as I said

917
00:57:02,160 –> 00:57:05,730
in the opening, a combination of, of,

918
00:57:05,730 –> 00:57:09,490
of seeing people as widgets, which was what Henry Ford brought

919
00:57:09,490 –> 00:57:13,210
us. One person’s as good as another person. We’ll just pay him enough.

920
00:57:14,170 –> 00:57:16,970
Health care will be a thing that we’ll give them for free because it doesn’t

921
00:57:16,970 –> 00:57:20,730
cost us anything for free, doesn’t cost us anything more, you

922
00:57:20,730 –> 00:57:23,770
know, and one person is good, as good as another.

923
00:57:25,930 –> 00:57:29,650
A combination of that and the Frederick Winslow Taylor scientific

924
00:57:29,650 –> 00:57:33,460
management, you know, approach, which you combine

925
00:57:33,460 –> 00:57:36,660
those two things together. And the scientific management

926
00:57:36,660 –> 00:57:40,020
approaches that Henry Ford really liked lead,

927
00:57:40,260 –> 00:57:43,260
now they can lead to prosperity. Don’t get me wrong, we had 20 years of

928
00:57:43,260 –> 00:57:46,660
prosperity in this country, but it only lasts about 20 years

929
00:57:46,900 –> 00:57:50,740
because quite frankly,

930
00:57:50,740 –> 00:57:54,260
and we talked about this both in, we talked about this in Candide and I’ve

931
00:57:54,260 –> 00:57:57,820
talked about this on shorts episodes. We talked about this with Francis Bacon and the

932
00:57:57,820 –> 00:58:01,430
great installation. I do fundamentally

933
00:58:01,430 –> 00:58:05,230
believe that the American people and all

934
00:58:05,230 –> 00:58:08,230
their flavors and eccentricities and differences,

935
00:58:09,670 –> 00:58:11,430
we have taken philosophically

936
00:58:13,750 –> 00:58:16,790
the final step on the mountain of the Enlightenment

937
00:58:18,070 –> 00:58:21,790
as a nation state. We’re just the last argument on that because we took

938
00:58:21,790 –> 00:58:25,470
all of the ideas of Enlightenment rationality and human reason and

939
00:58:25,470 –> 00:58:29,250
skepticism, and we turned that into freedom of speech and freedom of

940
00:58:29,250 –> 00:58:32,370
assembly and freedom to do this and freedom to do that. And then we pushed

941
00:58:32,370 –> 00:58:36,130
it as far as we possibly could, and we’ve been ruthlessly pushing

942
00:58:36,130 –> 00:58:39,370
it as far as we possibly can for the last 250 years.

943
00:58:39,770 –> 00:58:43,370
This is where we get into kind of some of the thoughts, this ties into

944
00:58:43,370 –> 00:58:46,210
kind of some of the thoughts that I had and you pushed back on me

945
00:58:46,210 –> 00:58:49,810
a little bit about those, about robots in our robotic future. You

946
00:58:49,810 –> 00:58:53,610
know, last year, you know, I, I, and I

947
00:58:53,610 –> 00:58:57,450
still hold that we do have in America because of where we

948
00:58:57,450 –> 00:59:00,530
are and the kind of people we are philosophically,

949
00:59:01,090 –> 00:59:04,930
forget spiritually and psychologically, just philosophically, the kind of

950
00:59:05,250 –> 00:59:08,610
expectations we have about how we should be in the world,

951
00:59:09,330 –> 00:59:12,810
whether we agree with those expectations or not, they come from somewhere and they came

952
00:59:12,810 –> 00:59:16,450
from the Enlightenment push to push to its logical end.

953
00:59:16,690 –> 00:59:20,220
And leaders aren’t, aren’t able to escape that, particularly American leaders.

954
00:59:20,220 –> 00:59:24,060
Now, if you’re listening to me internationally, we do have a lot of international

955
00:59:24,060 –> 00:59:27,860
listeners. If you’re listening to me from India or from China or

956
00:59:27,860 –> 00:59:31,180
from Australia or from Brazil or from Spain.

957
00:59:31,740 –> 00:59:34,740
And I just named a bunch of places where we do actually have active listeners.

958
00:59:34,740 –> 00:59:38,500
Germany. You’re going to have to look at your origin, your country of origin,

959
00:59:38,500 –> 00:59:41,820
and sort of where, where things come from and how that

960
00:59:41,820 –> 00:59:45,580
influences the, the unquestioned assumptions that

961
00:59:45,580 –> 00:59:48,540
you have as a leader that you just approach literature with

962
00:59:49,970 –> 00:59:53,690
those kinds of things, those kinds of assumptions are going

963
00:59:53,690 –> 00:59:57,370
to massively influence the kind of

964
00:59:57,370 –> 01:00:00,250
vision you create and then the kind of strategy you create and the kind of

965
01:00:00,250 –> 01:00:04,050
tactics you create and ultimately the kinds of organizations and teams you

966
01:00:04,050 –> 01:00:07,810
create. Wanted to go back to this idea you had about the Bible,

967
01:00:07,810 –> 01:00:09,490
which is interesting to me,

968
01:00:12,690 –> 01:00:15,650
and I’m going to work backwards. I’m going to add some other books that should

969
01:00:15,650 –> 01:00:18,930
go on that list. So a History of the Peloponnesian War,

970
01:00:20,040 –> 01:00:23,560
Herodotus’s. You don’t have to read all of it, but I mean,

971
01:00:23,720 –> 01:00:27,360
Herodotus did make the point in that book that war is the father of us

972
01:00:27,360 –> 01:00:29,640
all. I think it’s probably useful to know that

973
01:00:31,880 –> 01:00:35,080
then we have Seneca. I know you’re a big fan of the Stoics,

974
01:00:35,240 –> 01:00:39,000
Seneca’s letters. You may not agree with Stoicism, you may think that

975
01:00:39,000 –> 01:00:42,840
it’s nonsense, but it’s a good idea to be able

976
01:00:42,840 –> 01:00:46,590
to sort of have that idea. A good idea to have that idea in

977
01:00:46,590 –> 01:00:50,390
your head. I’m currently going back through the

978
01:00:50,390 –> 01:00:54,230
Iliad and the Odyssey, looking for different things in the Iliad and

979
01:00:54,230 –> 01:00:57,790
the Odyssey now than I was maybe three years ago when I. When I went

980
01:00:57,790 –> 01:01:01,470
through it. I’m looking for different things now. But I do think that

981
01:01:01,470 –> 01:01:05,110
we. One of the things that as leaders, we have maybe failed to do

982
01:01:06,870 –> 01:01:10,630
at a. At a cultural level is we fail to rebuild myths

983
01:01:10,630 –> 01:01:14,350
or restore myths. Matter of fact, we’re spending a lot of time in

984
01:01:14,350 –> 01:01:17,830
the last 25 years or so arguing about which myths we can have and which

985
01:01:17,830 –> 01:01:20,950
myths we can’t. And we don’t spend a whole lot of time

986
01:01:21,270 –> 01:01:24,390
leading on which myths we will have.

987
01:01:25,990 –> 01:01:29,830
Which I think is. Is very, very crucial. And I think it’s part of

988
01:01:29,830 –> 01:01:33,470
the whole identity. The identity collapse and the

989
01:01:33,470 –> 01:01:37,070
collapse around meaning that we’ve had in our culture. And

990
01:01:37,070 –> 01:01:40,870
then to tie back into the Bible. The Bible is such a versatile book. It

991
01:01:40,870 –> 01:01:43,550
can be read as literature, it could be read as

992
01:01:44,510 –> 01:01:48,190
philosophy, it could be read as psychology, it could be read as myth,

993
01:01:48,350 –> 01:01:51,950
it can be read as ancient folklore, it could be read as a tall tale,

994
01:01:54,110 –> 01:01:57,710
it can be read as a sow

995
01:01:58,990 –> 01:02:02,670
for skepticism. Or.

996
01:02:02,670 –> 01:02:06,340
A weapon against faith. It is such a. Weirdly, not

997
01:02:06,340 –> 01:02:09,580
weirdly. This is such a uniquely. That’s the term looking for

998
01:02:09,740 –> 01:02:13,460
uniquely versatile book. I would just push back a little

999
01:02:13,460 –> 01:02:16,620
bit. I wouldn’t assume anything about someone’s behavior because they’ve got that book on the

1000
01:02:16,620 –> 01:02:20,420
shelf. I would want to know if they’ve actually read it. It should be the

1001
01:02:20,420 –> 01:02:23,580
first question. That’d be the first question.

1002
01:02:24,380 –> 01:02:27,300
That’s a big thing. I would want to test them on that because the level

1003
01:02:27,300 –> 01:02:30,990
of illiteracy we have, and I’m not the first person to say this, the level

1004
01:02:30,990 –> 01:02:34,670
of illiteracy that. That even quote, unquote, Bible believing

1005
01:02:34,750 –> 01:02:38,190
Christians have just around what actually is in the Bible itself

1006
01:02:38,590 –> 01:02:42,430
is absolutely shocking. So the first question would

1007
01:02:42,430 –> 01:02:46,230
be, have you actually read that thing? And then after that, we can sort of

1008
01:02:46,230 –> 01:02:49,870
go off to the races, you know, Great point. Just great

1009
01:02:49,870 –> 01:02:53,630
point. Just like I would presume that if I’m walking into somebody

1010
01:02:53,630 –> 01:02:57,320
who. Walking into the office of somebody who says

1011
01:02:57,320 –> 01:03:01,080
they are A Muslim, I can’t presume that

1012
01:03:01,080 –> 01:03:04,840
they’ve actually read and understood the Quran. I can’t presume that

1013
01:03:05,240 –> 01:03:08,720
I have to ask them, have they read it, do they understand it? And then

1014
01:03:08,720 –> 01:03:12,280
we can sort of have a conversation after that. Now, there may be some. Because

1015
01:03:12,280 –> 01:03:15,880
Islam’s different. There may be some ticks that indicate that they’ve read it,

1016
01:03:16,120 –> 01:03:19,720
but it’s the same thing if I’m walking into somebody’s office who is

1017
01:03:19,720 –> 01:03:23,510
proclaiming their Jewish identity and has the Torah on their shelf. Have

1018
01:03:23,510 –> 01:03:27,350
you actually read that? So I have a question for you around this, around this

1019
01:03:27,350 –> 01:03:30,510
topic, right? Do you think, oh,

1020
01:03:31,470 –> 01:03:34,750
this is an interesting question. Yeah. Do you think that,

1021
01:03:36,430 –> 01:03:39,550
you know, compare the Bible to the Torah to, you know,

1022
01:03:40,590 –> 01:03:44,310
all these other religions and everything? Do you think it’s the percentage of

1023
01:03:44,310 –> 01:03:47,790
people who say that they are

1024
01:03:48,350 –> 01:03:51,960
followers of these thinkings? Right. You know,

1025
01:03:51,960 –> 01:03:55,760
and, and I’m putting everybody on one side in the

1026
01:03:55,760 –> 01:03:58,840
Bible on the other. Right. And in that thing,

1027
01:04:01,880 –> 01:04:04,680
I would, I would wager, I’d be willing to bet,

1028
01:04:06,200 –> 01:04:09,920
right, Jewish people, Muslims, right. Some of these

1029
01:04:09,920 –> 01:04:12,920
other situations, the, the ratio of people

1030
01:04:13,640 –> 01:04:16,890
who have not read the text is less.

1031
01:04:18,890 –> 01:04:22,490
You would think so. But what

1032
01:04:22,490 –> 01:04:26,330
you find or what I would. What I would say is this. It devolves

1033
01:04:26,330 –> 01:04:29,930
out differently. So you can be Jewish

1034
01:04:30,730 –> 01:04:34,410
and interestingly. Oh, yeah, because there is a big cultural.

1035
01:04:35,050 –> 01:04:38,810
Yes. Yeah. Never touch the Torah or the Talmud ever

1036
01:04:39,210 –> 01:04:42,290
and not even know about the Mish, the Mishnah. Like you can, you could have

1037
01:04:42,290 –> 01:04:46,050
heard about it on maybe, you know, if you attended a Sabbath

1038
01:04:46,050 –> 01:04:49,450
meal or something like that. But you can go your whole life as a Jewish

1039
01:04:49,450 –> 01:04:52,490
person and not touch that and still claim

1040
01:04:52,890 –> 01:04:56,610
Judaism. Now, Islam’s a little different, but where

1041
01:04:56,610 –> 01:04:59,850
you get, where you get that disjunction

1042
01:05:00,170 –> 01:05:04,010
is where you are culturally Islamic, but the culture is

1043
01:05:04,490 –> 01:05:08,250
the book. And so you’re getting the book in the culture anyway.

1044
01:05:08,570 –> 01:05:10,570
Even if you’ve never actually touched the. Book.

1045
01:05:13,190 –> 01:05:16,950
How it shows up in Christianity, and this is the parallel is.

1046
01:05:18,470 –> 01:05:21,910
And you all can send me emails about this. This is fine.

1047
01:05:22,390 –> 01:05:26,150
People who read devotionals that are snippets of the book

1048
01:05:26,150 –> 01:05:29,910
out of context with commentary from other folks around it that

1049
01:05:29,910 –> 01:05:33,590
may or may not be accurate without having

1050
01:05:33,590 –> 01:05:36,390
to and presuming that that is the thing,

1051
01:05:38,040 –> 01:05:41,480
and then moving on with the rest of their day. So Christianity has it.

1052
01:05:42,200 –> 01:05:44,920
Islam, that’s. That’s fair.

1053
01:05:45,800 –> 01:05:49,640
Judaism has it. I mean, I think this, this happens with everybody,

1054
01:05:49,640 –> 01:05:52,759
right? Like, like, like I run into people and they’re like, oh, yeah, like, I

1055
01:05:52,759 –> 01:05:56,440
love Stoicism. Joe Rogan is, is awesome. What,

1056
01:05:56,680 –> 01:06:00,400
you know. What’S

1057
01:06:00,400 –> 01:06:03,520
that meme? Tell me you know stoicism without telling me you don’t know stoicism without

1058
01:06:03,520 –> 01:06:07,170
telling me you don’t know stoicism. Yes, exactly. You know, and,

1059
01:06:07,570 –> 01:06:11,210
you know, the, the cultural aspect is, is a really great balancing point,

1060
01:06:11,210 –> 01:06:15,010
right? Because, you know, they’re, you know, it is, it is

1061
01:06:15,010 –> 01:06:18,410
incredibly likely that it’s the only thing you have around you. So then you just

1062
01:06:18,410 –> 01:06:22,210
kind of fall into the fold and you’ve never actually gone on, on your

1063
01:06:22,210 –> 01:06:25,810
own, you know, kind of like mental pilgrimage, if you will. Right. Of

1064
01:06:25,810 –> 01:06:29,490
like, you know, do I really believe these things? Right? Do I,

1065
01:06:29,490 –> 01:06:32,930
do I hold myself to these standards, or is it as

1066
01:06:32,930 –> 01:06:36,730
convenient? And I think we as

1067
01:06:36,730 –> 01:06:40,450
Westerners presume that. We presume our

1068
01:06:40,450 –> 01:06:43,610
sins and our virtues

1069
01:06:44,490 –> 01:06:48,090
are only unique to us. That’s the thing.

1070
01:06:49,370 –> 01:06:52,970
And our sins and our virtues are not unique to

1071
01:06:52,970 –> 01:06:56,250
us. They are the same as with

1072
01:06:56,250 –> 01:06:59,660
everybody else. The thing is, they show up

1073
01:06:59,660 –> 01:07:03,300
differently in other places with other

1074
01:07:03,300 –> 01:07:06,100
peoples. And so you have to go there and you have to live among those

1075
01:07:06,100 –> 01:07:09,860
people. One of the things that, and I’ll use a book, an example from a

1076
01:07:09,860 –> 01:07:13,700
book that we, that we read. So we read War, right? And

1077
01:07:14,100 –> 01:07:17,620
I watched the documentary that went along with that, Restrepo,

1078
01:07:17,620 –> 01:07:21,140
right? And the most

1079
01:07:21,140 –> 01:07:24,980
striking thing, one of them, several striking things in Restrepo was

1080
01:07:26,250 –> 01:07:29,850
when you saw the commander of the 5th

1081
01:07:29,850 –> 01:07:33,690
Battalion going and talking to the,

1082
01:07:35,130 –> 01:07:37,850
the local leaders

1083
01:07:39,370 –> 01:07:43,090
who we all thought were devout Muslims, but

1084
01:07:43,090 –> 01:07:46,850
in reality, remember when they killed the cow in Ali,

1085
01:07:46,850 –> 01:07:50,690
they only cared about getting paid for the cow. And that is

1086
01:07:50,690 –> 01:07:54,170
a disjunction, because if they had been truly followers of

1087
01:07:55,350 –> 01:07:58,990
Allah and followers of the Quran in the way that we would

1088
01:07:58,990 –> 01:08:02,470
interpret that from reading their book, the

1089
01:08:02,470 –> 01:08:06,150
cow should have not even been an issue. Should

1090
01:08:06,150 –> 01:08:09,510
have been, okay, this is whatever. And we’re, because we’re going to go talk to

1091
01:08:09,510 –> 01:08:13,350
people about Allah. Same thing. For

1092
01:08:13,350 –> 01:08:17,030
on the other side, they look at us and they go, well,

1093
01:08:17,030 –> 01:08:20,560
if you read the Bible, you would act this way, but you

1094
01:08:20,560 –> 01:08:24,120
don’t. Yeah. And so we have all. So, again,

1095
01:08:24,120 –> 01:08:27,760
it’s, it’s, it’s examining these unexamined assumptions.

1096
01:08:27,920 –> 01:08:30,720
And we can, again, we can use literature to do this in a safe kind

1097
01:08:30,720 –> 01:08:34,360
of way, point this out and go, well, I’m never going to go to the

1098
01:08:34,360 –> 01:08:38,160
Korengal Valley. The likelihood that I’m going to run into

1099
01:08:40,320 –> 01:08:44,040
a, a follower if I’m living in a certain part of

1100
01:08:44,040 –> 01:08:47,790
America, the likelihood that I’m going to Run into a person who is

1101
01:08:47,790 –> 01:08:51,470
a devout follower of Islam is

1102
01:08:51,470 –> 01:08:55,190
XYZ percentage. But I can still get these disjunctions from

1103
01:08:55,190 –> 01:08:58,430
literature. I can still see and explore these and

1104
01:08:58,430 –> 01:09:02,190
recognize them. And that’s the value of. That’s the value of those books

1105
01:09:02,190 –> 01:09:05,430
on the shelf. And that’s what it. That’s what it does. Like, again, I think

1106
01:09:05,430 –> 01:09:08,430
it’s actually easier. Yeah, right. Because

1107
01:09:09,070 –> 01:09:11,670
one of the things that I try to do is like, whenever I’m working with

1108
01:09:11,670 –> 01:09:15,220
someone who’s like, new to sales or has got some weird ideas about him,

1109
01:09:15,540 –> 01:09:19,340
the first thing I do is like, I. In my head, I call

1110
01:09:19,340 –> 01:09:22,300
it, like the mother tongue. Like, what is that mother tongue? What is that thing

1111
01:09:22,300 –> 01:09:25,620
you have done that you took deep

1112
01:09:26,020 –> 01:09:29,579
and you couldn’t hide? You had to realize luck played a much smaller

1113
01:09:29,579 –> 01:09:32,780
portion than. Than everyone else talks about and everything else. Like, that’s right, because like,

1114
01:09:32,780 –> 01:09:35,340
in martial arts, one of the things we always talked about is, like, your first

1115
01:09:35,340 –> 01:09:38,260
art is kind of like.

1116
01:09:39,380 –> 01:09:42,890
Like, as my friend Matt would say, you know, like, I’ll study shingi, I’ll do

1117
01:09:42,890 –> 01:09:46,130
tai chi, but, like, I. Wing chun is how I do work,

1118
01:09:46,690 –> 01:09:49,850
right? And so there’s always this kind of thing. It’s going to go back through

1119
01:09:49,850 –> 01:09:53,330
these filters and these lenses and everything, you know, and,

1120
01:09:53,810 –> 01:09:57,570
you know, so, like, I’m always looking for, like, okay, where is that thing where

1121
01:09:57,570 –> 01:10:01,370
you had to go do hard stuff and you couldn’t hide in?

1122
01:10:01,370 –> 01:10:05,050
The feedback loop was so clean and clear that it wasn’t. Everybody was against

1123
01:10:05,050 –> 01:10:08,210
you. There was no victim mentality. There was nothing other than

1124
01:10:09,190 –> 01:10:12,590
like, they’re, they’re. I saw this on a cooking show once, and I just think

1125
01:10:12,590 –> 01:10:16,150
about it all the time. Don’t get. Don’t get bitter, get

1126
01:10:16,150 –> 01:10:19,830
better. There you go. Right? Because, like, everybody has

1127
01:10:19,830 –> 01:10:23,550
that, right? And I. And I truly believe that, like, that if

1128
01:10:23,550 –> 01:10:26,710
you can kind of put yourself into that mode, right? Kind of going back to

1129
01:10:26,710 –> 01:10:29,270
the Musashi thing when, you know, the way broadly, you see it in all things,

1130
01:10:29,430 –> 01:10:33,270
right? Like, if I can find the kung fu version of whatever hard

1131
01:10:33,270 –> 01:10:36,400
thing I’m going through, I’m gonna. I’m gonna be able to find my way through

1132
01:10:36,400 –> 01:10:40,160
it. Right? And so I think. I think literature makes it easier to see

1133
01:10:40,160 –> 01:10:43,560
it as opposed to, like, having, you know, it’s too on the nose

1134
01:10:43,560 –> 01:10:47,400
sometimes. Right? You know? Right, yeah, yeah. No, I agree

1135
01:10:47,400 –> 01:10:51,080
with that. And you know, you mentioned martial arts, so I. I came out

1136
01:10:51,080 –> 01:10:54,760
of striking disciplines, right? And we’ve talked about this before. I came out of striking

1137
01:10:54,760 –> 01:10:58,440
Disciplines, Right. And so, you know, got my black second degree, actually black belt

1138
01:10:58,440 –> 01:11:02,080
in, you know, taekwondo back before it got into the Olympics and did all the

1139
01:11:02,080 –> 01:11:05,260
nonsense with became watered down sport thing with ridiculousness

1140
01:11:06,540 –> 01:11:09,900
and, you know, learned all this great stuff.

1141
01:11:10,620 –> 01:11:14,220
And to a certain degree, if I’m doing

1142
01:11:14,220 –> 01:11:17,900
mma, there are some of those things that I can still do

1143
01:11:18,060 –> 01:11:21,740
inside of that space. But for me, that was 20

1144
01:11:21,900 –> 01:11:25,660
freaking years ago. That’s number one. So my body doesn’t do those

1145
01:11:25,660 –> 01:11:29,340
things anymore. But even more importantly in going into grappling

1146
01:11:29,340 –> 01:11:32,970
and going into jiu jitsu. And this was the

1147
01:11:32,970 –> 01:11:36,770
biggest bump for me, the biggest hill for me, which is why it took me

1148
01:11:36,770 –> 01:11:40,130
20 years to do something that I probably should have done 20 years ago.

1149
01:11:42,290 –> 01:11:45,650
I had to get over my identity, such as it were,

1150
01:11:46,930 –> 01:11:50,530
of being a striker. Right. And

1151
01:11:51,570 –> 01:11:55,210
look, the modern word is identity. And the word I

1152
01:11:55,210 –> 01:11:58,250
use in this book, and it’s in a lot of business books, is also ego.

1153
01:11:58,250 –> 01:12:01,810
And I’ve used that word in training and in coaching and all of that. But

1154
01:12:01,810 –> 01:12:05,290
I’m really distilling down and actually talked about this in a different context.

1155
01:12:06,490 –> 01:12:09,770
Gosh, last week, talking with somebody,

1156
01:12:10,570 –> 01:12:14,370
I’m really distilling down the idea, or still distilling down

1157
01:12:14,370 –> 01:12:18,170
ego, the idea of ego into something that I think is a

1158
01:12:18,170 –> 01:12:21,530
lot more concentrated and a lot more powerful and a lot more accurate.

1159
01:12:22,570 –> 01:12:26,250
It’s just pride. And I always think of

1160
01:12:26,250 –> 01:12:30,050
that scene in Pulp Fiction when Ving Rhames is hitting,

1161
01:12:30,210 –> 01:12:33,010
hitting. What is it, Bruce Willis in the head?

1162
01:12:35,410 –> 01:12:39,210
Any. I’m not gonna. If you know the movie Pulp Fiction, you’ll know which scene

1163
01:12:39,210 –> 01:12:42,610
I’m talking about, you know, because Bruce Willis is the boxer and

1164
01:12:42,770 –> 01:12:46,530
Bing Rhames is the mobster and they get into an altercation and he starts

1165
01:12:46,530 –> 01:12:49,410
hitting him in the head and he tells him, you know, blah. Blah, blah, blah,

1166
01:12:49,410 –> 01:12:52,050
blah. Or. No, it was. No, it’s not. It’s not there. It’s earlier in the

1167
01:12:52,050 –> 01:12:55,420
movie when he’s talking about the bet. That’s right. And about how he’s going to

1168
01:12:55,420 –> 01:12:58,380
be in the ring and he’s going to, you know, not want to go down.

1169
01:12:58,860 –> 01:13:02,380
And he’s going to be like, that’s. That’s pride. You know, uses another term. I’m

1170
01:13:02,380 –> 01:13:05,940
not going to use that term. But he uses this pride messing with you. And

1171
01:13:05,940 –> 01:13:09,740
I always think about this, and not always, but I’m starting to think about this

1172
01:13:09,740 –> 01:13:12,300
more and more. How much pride messes with us.

1173
01:13:13,420 –> 01:13:17,260
Yeah. And how much we have to say, forget that pride.

1174
01:13:17,580 –> 01:13:19,580
And that’s not the word he used in the movie, by the way, because it’s

1175
01:13:19,580 –> 01:13:23,400
a Tarantino film. So forget that pride. You’ve got to let

1176
01:13:23,400 –> 01:13:26,960
that go. And the thing is,

1177
01:13:28,080 –> 01:13:31,440
pride is. It’s insidious.

1178
01:13:32,400 –> 01:13:35,280
It crawls up into everywhere. And I don’t know a person,

1179
01:13:35,760 –> 01:13:39,440
religious or not, who likes pride. Not

1180
01:13:39,440 –> 01:13:43,240
one. I also don’t know any person, religious

1181
01:13:43,240 –> 01:13:46,700
or not. And we can take the religious connotations out of pride if we want

1182
01:13:46,700 –> 01:13:50,180
to. I don’t know any person, secular or

1183
01:13:50,180 –> 01:13:53,780
sacred, with either kind of those worldviews

1184
01:13:54,100 –> 01:13:57,860
who looks upon that as being a. A positive

1185
01:13:57,860 –> 01:14:01,620
thing overall down the road because of

1186
01:14:01,620 –> 01:14:04,500
how it stops your development.

1187
01:14:05,220 –> 01:14:08,500
It prevents you from going and doing the new thing. Right?

1188
01:14:08,820 –> 01:14:12,420
It blocks you from success. It also

1189
01:14:12,420 –> 01:14:16,260
blocks you from failure. But it becomes the shield,

1190
01:14:16,260 –> 01:14:19,940
right, that we wrap around ourselves and we call it ego

1191
01:14:20,020 –> 01:14:23,700
or we self sabotage. We do all these other kinds of things. I’m kind of

1192
01:14:23,700 –> 01:14:26,300
working on this theory and we’ll explore this throughout the remainder of the year. This

1193
01:14:26,300 –> 01:14:29,579
is one of my things that I’ve hooked on into a book, and now I’m

1194
01:14:29,579 –> 01:14:32,020
going to start seeing it everywhere because this is also one of the threads that

1195
01:14:32,020 –> 01:14:35,300
I’m going through books this year. So this will come up later on down the

1196
01:14:35,300 –> 01:14:39,100
year when we talk again in this season. But

1197
01:14:39,100 –> 01:14:42,550
I think that what the books do fundamentally,

1198
01:14:43,750 –> 01:14:47,590
if we read them to my point about the Bible, if we

1199
01:14:47,590 –> 01:14:50,950
actually read them, is they challenge us on our pride,

1200
01:14:51,670 –> 01:14:54,710
they challenge us on our ego, and they challenge us on our identity, too.

1201
01:14:55,670 –> 01:14:58,390
And I think that’s the hardest thing for people to.

1202
01:14:59,030 –> 01:15:02,150
Particularly leaders to come to, because

1203
01:15:03,110 –> 01:15:06,310
if I’m already. If I’ve already got the status

1204
01:15:07,250 –> 01:15:10,610
and I’ve got the office, what more. I mean,

1205
01:15:11,010 –> 01:15:13,090
what more could I possibly need? John.

1206
01:15:16,210 –> 01:15:19,650
I’ll let John sit with that. There’s a.

1207
01:15:20,610 –> 01:15:23,730
As you’re talking about this, one of my favorite shows is Brooklyn Nine. Nine, right?

1208
01:15:23,730 –> 01:15:27,330
Oh, we’ve never talked about. I love

1209
01:15:27,330 –> 01:15:30,730
Andre Brower on that show. I do, too. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

1210
01:15:30,730 –> 01:15:34,490
Phenomenal. Like, he’s like my spirit animal because I saw him. I

1211
01:15:34,490 –> 01:15:38,330
watched on Homicide, Life on the Street. That’s how I first sort

1212
01:15:38,330 –> 01:15:42,130
of interacted with him. Just again, like

1213
01:15:42,130 –> 01:15:45,370
the guy in the Wire, just a phenomenal character actor.

1214
01:15:46,490 –> 01:15:49,530
And I don’t want to step on your point about Brooklyn 99, because I have

1215
01:15:49,530 –> 01:15:51,250
an impression about that show, but I want to hear what you have to say

1216
01:15:51,250 –> 01:15:54,890
first. There’s this one character who’s

1217
01:15:54,970 –> 01:15:58,650
like the very hard detective, right. Is played by a

1218
01:15:58,650 –> 01:16:02,360
woman and, and she’s like, well, I don’t understand why. Why people are making this

1219
01:16:02,360 –> 01:16:06,000
stuff so hard. And it cuts to her reading Sophie’s Choice, right? And she

1220
01:16:06,000 –> 01:16:08,920
puts the book down and she’s like, easy. Pick the daughter, right? And then just

1221
01:16:08,920 –> 01:16:12,720
like, you know, so I think. I think there’s a lot of room to

1222
01:16:12,720 –> 01:16:16,480
go through. Oh, you

1223
01:16:16,480 –> 01:16:19,680
know, we do these personality assessments, right? Because this was like the beginning of the

1224
01:16:19,680 –> 01:16:23,000
change for me, right? Realized I wasn’t the only person with my own

1225
01:16:23,320 –> 01:16:26,520
issues and concerns and the. In questions. And also realizing that

1226
01:16:27,100 –> 01:16:30,900
because I’m not a completely unique individual with these things, I can go

1227
01:16:30,900 –> 01:16:33,260
find other people with similar situations and learn from them.

1228
01:16:34,940 –> 01:16:37,860
And people will be like, can you just send me the results? No, not just

1229
01:16:37,860 –> 01:16:40,940
going to send you the results. And they’re. And they’re like, why? And I’m like,

1230
01:16:40,940 –> 01:16:43,180
because you’re going to look at it and be like, yep, that’s exactly what I

1231
01:16:43,180 –> 01:16:46,980
thought. See? Yep. Right? And there’s no, there’s no. You

1232
01:16:46,980 –> 01:16:50,700
don’t write if you’re just going through it to confirm your own biases, to confirm

1233
01:16:50,700 –> 01:16:54,360
your own thinking, to confirm you’re like, yep, I’m perfect. Like, there’s.

1234
01:16:54,360 –> 01:16:58,160
There’s a whole lot of room to read and not learn anything, you

1235
01:16:58,160 –> 01:17:01,840
know? And so when one of the lines that I’ve changed

1236
01:17:02,000 –> 01:17:05,760
on a lot was this idea, right? If.

1237
01:17:06,320 –> 01:17:10,120
If I’m not feeling a book, I can put it down, right?

1238
01:17:10,120 –> 01:17:13,080
And then. And sometimes it’s hard for me to do because, man, I love. I

1239
01:17:13,080 –> 01:17:16,840
love completing things. Like, I love chalking things off the to do

1240
01:17:16,840 –> 01:17:20,240
list, right? My wife is the same way and I’ve changed a lot, right? Because

1241
01:17:20,320 –> 01:17:23,780
one of the people who I, who I really respect, he talks about the. The

1242
01:17:23,780 –> 01:17:26,220
rule is a hundred page 100 pages minus your age,

1243
01:17:27,180 –> 01:17:30,980
okay? So at 45, right? So if I’m not into it BY

1244
01:17:30,980 –> 01:17:34,460
like page 55, okay, I have a little. I have a little. Okay, Is this,

1245
01:17:34,460 –> 01:17:38,059
is this really all that important, right? And then also, maybe I should come back

1246
01:17:38,059 –> 01:17:41,740
to this thing later, right? There’s a, there’s a stoic line

1247
01:17:41,740 –> 01:17:45,580
of, you know, when, when. Whenever a man, you know, steps foot on

1248
01:17:45,580 –> 01:17:48,380
the same river twice, it’s not the same river because he’s not the same man

1249
01:17:48,600 –> 01:17:52,120
kind of situation, right? Because we’re. We are all capable of change, you know?

1250
01:17:52,440 –> 01:17:55,080
And so I think about that all the time because I’ve got some books on

1251
01:17:55,080 –> 01:17:58,760
my shelf, right? And I’m a big nerdy reader. Everybody, like, I. I Read

1252
01:17:58,840 –> 01:18:02,200
a lot, right? And most of it is for development these days, right? I don’t

1253
01:18:02,200 –> 01:18:05,480
really read all that much for entertainment until, you know, Hyon calls me and, you

1254
01:18:05,480 –> 01:18:09,280
know, he wants to go read something weird. But a lot of

1255
01:18:09,280 –> 01:18:13,120
his business books, right? Philosophy books and marketing and sales stuff and leadership stuff

1256
01:18:13,120 –> 01:18:16,970
and everything. And Thinking

1257
01:18:16,970 –> 01:18:20,810
Fast and Slow by Kahneman, right? Everyone’s talking about that book. I picked

1258
01:18:20,810 –> 01:18:24,370
it up and was like, oh, this is tough. I wasn’t ready to read that

1259
01:18:24,370 –> 01:18:28,050
book. And so there is a. We have to

1260
01:18:28,050 –> 01:18:31,850
be at the right place at the right plane, right? To be able

1261
01:18:31,850 –> 01:18:35,450
to kind of get any knowledge out of it. Or we’re just like, yep, knew

1262
01:18:35,450 –> 01:18:38,730
Shakespeare was garbage, right? And toss it over the shoulder and put all the blame

1263
01:18:38,730 –> 01:18:42,540
on him, right? Whenever there’s thousands of. Of other people that have. That have seen

1264
01:18:42,540 –> 01:18:45,780
those plays, right? And we also need to remember, like, this is a thing that

1265
01:18:45,780 –> 01:18:48,180
I talk about with my wife all the time because she loves Shakespeare, and she’s

1266
01:18:48,180 –> 01:18:51,740
like, it’s not meant to be read. It’s meant to be watched. It’s meant to

1267
01:18:51,740 –> 01:18:55,580
be a play, right? So all of these. All these books and stuff like

1268
01:18:55,580 –> 01:18:59,380
this are really great, but, like, really what you should be doing is, like, you

1269
01:18:59,380 –> 01:19:02,540
know, watching, you know, three or four versions of Hamlet and how are they different?

1270
01:19:02,540 –> 01:19:05,660
And what are those interpretations of it? Don’t just try to, like, bludgeon yourself. And

1271
01:19:05,660 –> 01:19:09,430
just. And especially not for, like, status. Like, look how great I am. Like, look

1272
01:19:09,430 –> 01:19:13,230
at these books on our. On our shelves. Like, I love that our. Our

1273
01:19:13,230 –> 01:19:16,790
big library downstairs has got everything from Highline to

1274
01:19:16,870 –> 01:19:20,310
Stephen King to Atwood to

1275
01:19:20,870 –> 01:19:24,470
Scalzi to, like. But they’re things that we really read

1276
01:19:24,550 –> 01:19:28,230
and find value in. And, you know, they’re. They’re there for a reason. They’re not

1277
01:19:28,230 –> 01:19:31,270
there for the display, you know,

1278
01:19:32,010 –> 01:19:35,810
and so I think it’s very easy to go into it with. And this goes

1279
01:19:35,810 –> 01:19:39,170
back to intentions. Like, intention is my. Is my favorite word. It’s my daughter’s least

1280
01:19:39,170 –> 01:19:42,930
favorite word because she hears it from me way too often. But, like, what

1281
01:19:42,930 –> 01:19:45,890
is your intention when you’re going through this book? Is it to, like, be like,

1282
01:19:45,890 –> 01:19:49,730
ah, I knew they were idiots, right? Or is it to go through and potentially

1283
01:19:49,730 –> 01:19:53,410
learn something, right? And maybe find a gap within yourself, right? Remove one of your

1284
01:19:53,410 –> 01:19:57,250
blind spots, you know, so that way you can be a better. Whatever it

1285
01:19:57,250 –> 01:20:00,880
is you’re going after. Well, and as we. We’re gonna.

1286
01:20:00,880 –> 01:20:03,960
We’re gonna. We’re gonna turn the corner here a little bit. Because we’re, we’re gonna

1287
01:20:03,960 –> 01:20:07,400
have to wrap up here. I got a hard stop here at the top of

1288
01:20:07,400 –> 01:20:11,080
the hour and John has been, has been very gracious with me,

1289
01:20:11,080 –> 01:20:14,359
with me today. So we’re gonna skip over a section of the script and we’re

1290
01:20:14,359 –> 01:20:17,840
gonna go right to this idea of what do we do with all of this.

1291
01:20:17,840 –> 01:20:20,360
Right? And we’ve kind of talked a little bit about this today,

1292
01:20:22,760 –> 01:20:25,080
by the way. Brooklyn 9. 9. Just as a side note,

1293
01:20:27,090 –> 01:20:30,010
so I have watched, I’ve watched like the first like two or three seasons on

1294
01:20:30,010 –> 01:20:32,650
Netflix. I can’t remember where I, where I stopped at, where I put it out

1295
01:20:32,650 –> 01:20:35,050
and then went off to go do other stuff. I’ll go back and pick it

1296
01:20:35,050 –> 01:20:38,770
up. But Andre Brower is the perfect example of

1297
01:20:39,650 –> 01:20:43,090
the phrase that I always tell my kids, which is, if you open up the

1298
01:20:43,090 –> 01:20:45,970
door of a clown car, don’t be surprised when clowns fall out.

1299
01:20:49,330 –> 01:20:53,170
And he’s, he’s, he’s constantly opening the door of that clown

1300
01:20:53,170 –> 01:20:56,970
car and then looking around like, I can’t believe I’m surrounded by clowns. And

1301
01:20:57,130 –> 01:21:00,730
that’s, that’s the thing that like,

1302
01:21:01,050 –> 01:21:04,810
that like catches me all the time. That for me that’s the giggle worthy thing

1303
01:21:04,810 –> 01:21:08,570
in the, in the show because it is, it’s

1304
01:21:08,570 –> 01:21:12,370
all, it’s all clowns. And you’re just like, I don’t know what you expected, dude.

1305
01:21:12,370 –> 01:21:15,730
I mean you’re, you’re very Shakespearean in your approach. You’re like

1306
01:21:15,730 –> 01:21:19,410
Othello there. These people are like 499

1307
01:21:19,410 –> 01:21:20,490
pizza from Domino’s.

1308
01:21:24,730 –> 01:21:28,530
I don’t know what you expected. Well, I

1309
01:21:28,530 –> 01:21:31,170
mean, not to cut you off real quick, but like this happens in sales all

1310
01:21:31,170 –> 01:21:34,970
the time, right? Yeah, let’s, let’s have sky high goals, let’s

1311
01:21:34,970 –> 01:21:38,650
not pay them what they’re worth, right? Because salespeople don’t come into

1312
01:21:38,650 –> 01:21:41,570
their full value, right. They come in for a haircut, they have to earn the

1313
01:21:41,570 –> 01:21:45,370
rest through, through performance and merit in getting things across the line.

1314
01:21:45,810 –> 01:21:49,570
And some people take massive advantage of this, right. $40,000 base, but

1315
01:21:49,570 –> 01:21:53,210
you’re going to make 250 if you really go after it. And then, and then

1316
01:21:53,210 –> 01:21:56,610
you’re frustrated that they’re sending bad deals over the wall. Like

1317
01:21:56,770 –> 01:21:59,810
what you get, what you incentivize for is the old business lesson, right?

1318
01:22:00,450 –> 01:22:04,210
So you know, once again, like you did it to yourself sometimes

1319
01:22:04,210 –> 01:22:07,930
because you didn’t think all the way through the problem. Correct? Exactly. Well,

1320
01:22:07,930 –> 01:22:11,650
what you, what you subsidize, you, what you tax

1321
01:22:11,650 –> 01:22:15,490
you get less of and what you subsidize you get more of

1322
01:22:15,730 –> 01:22:18,610
to sort of tie back to economic thinking. So

1323
01:22:19,650 –> 01:22:22,450
sort of a, sort of a law of life. So, okay,

1324
01:22:23,970 –> 01:22:27,250
a model can’t work without a vision. Right? And a vision can’t work without a

1325
01:22:27,250 –> 01:22:29,770
model. I would, I would assert that, I think we’ve kind of maybe come to

1326
01:22:29,770 –> 01:22:31,490
that conclusion. And

1327
01:22:33,730 –> 01:22:37,130
I, I, I want to talk touch on this area because I think this is

1328
01:22:37,130 –> 01:22:40,330
the place where we get most confused over the last 25 years. And I also

1329
01:22:40,330 –> 01:22:43,740
think this is the place where we’re going to have to do some really yeoman’s

1330
01:22:43,740 –> 01:22:46,980
work to rebuild visions and models.

1331
01:22:47,460 –> 01:22:50,100
Because so far what we’ve talked about are very,

1332
01:22:51,540 –> 01:22:55,220
for lack of a better idea, they’re very 18th and 19th century ideas.

1333
01:22:55,380 –> 01:22:58,780
Right? I mean, yeah, we mentioned TV shows and we’ve thrown in cinema and we’ve

1334
01:22:58,780 –> 01:23:02,500
mentioned movies, but in reality we’re talking about. And that has been the

1335
01:23:02,500 –> 01:23:06,180
focus of this show and will continue to be the focus of this show. Going

1336
01:23:06,260 –> 01:23:09,180
backwards to a discipline that

1337
01:23:10,700 –> 01:23:14,540
many people have abandoned. We do live in a post

1338
01:23:14,620 –> 01:23:18,300
literate, highly visual culture driven

1339
01:23:18,300 –> 01:23:21,420
by algorithms and social media.

1340
01:23:22,140 –> 01:23:25,900
Now I’m going to bring this idea over from another conversation that we

1341
01:23:25,900 –> 01:23:29,660
were having, John and I were having before I press record. There are people

1342
01:23:29,660 –> 01:23:33,140
who are perpetually online and then there’s a whole bunch of other people who are

1343
01:23:33,140 –> 01:23:36,710
not. And I made a conscious decision starting last year

1344
01:23:37,190 –> 01:23:40,870
to begin to build a wall between myself and the,

1345
01:23:40,870 –> 01:23:44,550
and the, or between the online people and myself. I began

1346
01:23:44,550 –> 01:23:48,230
to consciously do that and intentionally do that and then

1347
01:23:48,230 –> 01:23:51,830
to go out and not necessarily explore, but to go out and meet the people

1348
01:23:51,830 –> 01:23:55,630
who are not perpetually online and talk with them and find

1349
01:23:55,630 –> 01:23:59,430
out what they’re actually seeing and then to start building projects with them and

1350
01:23:59,430 –> 01:24:03,140
doing things with them as I sometimes frame it in the real world.

1351
01:24:04,580 –> 01:24:07,580
And that’s been, that’s been an interesting, it’s been an interesting adventure because we talk

1352
01:24:07,580 –> 01:24:11,340
with people who are not perpetually online. They see a totally different reality

1353
01:24:11,340 –> 01:24:12,980
than the people who are perpetually online.

1354
01:24:15,380 –> 01:24:19,180
And you do begin to see the, the gaps, as we

1355
01:24:19,180 –> 01:24:22,100
mentioned before, between those two, those two

1356
01:24:23,060 –> 01:24:25,940
lack of a better term worldviews or visions. Right

1357
01:24:27,070 –> 01:24:29,870
now I’m not saying one’s good or one’s bad. I’m really saying that there’s gaps.

1358
01:24:30,110 –> 01:24:31,710
Okay, yeah.

1359
01:24:36,750 –> 01:24:40,350
We’ve talked about what literature maybe speaks best to creating

1360
01:24:40,350 –> 01:24:43,830
that vision. We’ve talked about the Peloponnesian wars and we talked about

1361
01:24:43,830 –> 01:24:47,670
Seneca. We’ve cut up The Bible a little bit, which is okay. That book can

1362
01:24:47,670 –> 01:24:51,390
handle it. Yeah, it’s fine.

1363
01:24:52,560 –> 01:24:56,320
I mean, any. Any solid book can handle it. Any solid book. If you

1364
01:24:56,320 –> 01:25:00,080
can’t stand up to a little bit of pushback, like. Yeah.

1365
01:25:00,400 –> 01:25:03,440
You know, you’re probably not writing anything in the first place.

1366
01:25:03,840 –> 01:25:07,440
Correct, Right, exactly. So when we look at

1367
01:25:07,440 –> 01:25:09,920
these models, how does technology.

1368
01:25:11,840 –> 01:25:15,680
How do we take this, this vision, Right. Whether it’s constrained or unconstrained.

1369
01:25:15,680 –> 01:25:19,520
Okay, we’re gonna have a model, right? We’re gonna get a

1370
01:25:19,520 –> 01:25:22,520
model from a model of leadership from. From. Let’s say

1371
01:25:25,480 –> 01:25:28,320
we’re going to get a model of leadership from the Iliad. And our model of

1372
01:25:28,320 –> 01:25:31,840
leadership is going to be based around a mythic story that we tell ourselves as

1373
01:25:31,840 –> 01:25:35,000
a team. Cool. That’s fine. I have no problem with any of that.

1374
01:25:36,360 –> 01:25:40,120
How does technology factor into this? How do we pull

1375
01:25:40,200 –> 01:25:43,960
technology in? Because what I often see is

1376
01:25:44,600 –> 01:25:48,070
the technologists and their story

1377
01:25:48,870 –> 01:25:52,310
becoming the dominant story and driving a whole bunch of other

1378
01:25:52,310 –> 01:25:56,070
reactions. Whereas I think if you have a vision

1379
01:25:56,070 –> 01:25:59,830
first from the leadership that is consistent and coherent,

1380
01:26:00,230 –> 01:26:03,750
which is two other things, but that you get there with clarity, hinder, and courage,

1381
01:26:03,750 –> 01:26:06,870
right? You cross that bridge, the three Cs, bridge to the model.

1382
01:26:08,070 –> 01:26:11,910
Now, the technology serves the model rather than

1383
01:26:11,910 –> 01:26:15,720
driving the model, and it serves the vision rather than driving the

1384
01:26:15,720 –> 01:26:19,320
vision. Am I looking at this incorrectly, or is there a better

1385
01:26:19,320 –> 01:26:23,120
way to sort of frame this for leaders? Well, I

1386
01:26:23,120 –> 01:26:26,760
think that’s a. That’s an interesting topic,

1387
01:26:26,760 –> 01:26:30,480
right? The. The thing that I really appreciate

1388
01:26:30,480 –> 01:26:33,840
about the Internet is there’s no real need. There’s

1389
01:26:34,480 –> 01:26:38,160
there in, you know, coming up as a kid in the 80s, right. I’m

1390
01:26:38,160 –> 01:26:42,010
45. You know, I was kind of nerdy, right. You know, and I wasn’t

1391
01:26:42,010 –> 01:26:45,490
so nerdy that I. I couldn’t, you know, you know, have

1392
01:26:45,490 –> 01:26:49,170
conversations with other people. But, like, I wasn’t really a big football guy,

1393
01:26:49,170 –> 01:26:52,890
right. Nerd. You know, and so, right, there, there’s. But then, you know,

1394
01:26:52,890 –> 01:26:56,250
the Internet is really great at, like, you can find your people, right? You can

1395
01:26:56,250 –> 01:26:59,410
find your tribe, right. You can find your community. And

1396
01:27:00,450 –> 01:27:04,170
I think if you just go, like, looking for the people who are

1397
01:27:04,170 –> 01:27:07,860
like me, right? The people who, who already agree with everything that you

1398
01:27:07,860 –> 01:27:11,580
agree with. You. You build yourself this, like, echo chamber, right?

1399
01:27:12,140 –> 01:27:15,820
And algorithms are really good at giving you more

1400
01:27:16,140 –> 01:27:19,820
of what you’ve already kind of voted for, if that makes

1401
01:27:19,820 –> 01:27:23,540
sense. Right? And so I think that the. I think. I think

1402
01:27:23,540 –> 01:27:27,100
that the, the danger is, well,

1403
01:27:27,660 –> 01:27:31,460
you know, these five people, I see them all over LinkedIn, right? And so

1404
01:27:31,460 –> 01:27:34,770
they were like, man, that’s five people. Like, holy

1405
01:27:34,770 –> 01:27:38,490
smokes. You know, and so I think, I think it’s, I think it’s as

1406
01:27:38,490 –> 01:27:41,890
helpful as it is hurtful, right? Because then people don’t do their own

1407
01:27:42,850 –> 01:27:46,530
fact finding. You know, we were talking about this, this conversation on

1408
01:27:46,530 –> 01:27:50,370
Friday before Snowpocalypse, and I was kind of like, man,

1409
01:27:50,930 –> 01:27:53,890
like, I’ve got a lot of gray area on this, right? Because I’ve kind of

1410
01:27:53,890 –> 01:27:57,570
moved and I’ve shifted and I think that most people are just running around on,

1411
01:27:57,570 –> 01:28:01,370
on autopilot. I don’t really think that most people have done enough reading and reflection

1412
01:28:01,370 –> 01:28:05,130
to really kind of understand their own how and their why. And

1413
01:28:05,130 –> 01:28:06,850
so then it’s like, you know,

1414
01:28:09,010 –> 01:28:12,850
you know, people are just looking for people who believe something

1415
01:28:12,850 –> 01:28:16,450
similar, right? And that’s where, you know, the, the, the whole

1416
01:28:16,450 –> 01:28:20,250
guru thing comes into play, right? And you know, the influencer gurus are just

1417
01:28:20,250 –> 01:28:24,050
like, well, you know, and, and the algorithms feed into this, right?

1418
01:28:24,050 –> 01:28:26,840
You’re going to get one polarizing opinion, you’re going to get the other one. If

1419
01:28:26,840 –> 01:28:29,800
you like the other one. Okay, great, right. It’s just going to bottle feed you

1420
01:28:29,800 –> 01:28:33,280
more of that. And so our capacity, I think, for being able to kind of

1421
01:28:33,280 –> 01:28:37,120
think through the problem. Why do I feel these things? What are the trade offs

1422
01:28:37,120 –> 01:28:40,480
of thinking this way, of believing this way? Like,

1423
01:28:40,720 –> 01:28:43,520
does this actually get all the way through the gauntlet,

1424
01:28:44,400 –> 01:28:48,080
Right? You know, going back to the, the,

1425
01:28:48,560 –> 01:28:52,240
you know, the, the Christian, you know, the Christianity conversation, right?

1426
01:28:52,780 –> 01:28:56,580
I know a bunch of people who are very, you know, they talk

1427
01:28:56,580 –> 01:29:00,340
about being, being very Christian and everything. And they’re so competitive that they

1428
01:29:00,340 –> 01:29:04,140
would chop their, like, mother’s legs out to like, get ahead of them and stuff

1429
01:29:04,140 –> 01:29:07,900
like this. And it’s like, it’s like, I’m not saying

1430
01:29:07,900 –> 01:29:11,660
that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but like, when you’re putting yourself out

1431
01:29:11,660 –> 01:29:15,300
there, that you’re this kind of person, but your, your, your actions do not align

1432
01:29:15,300 –> 01:29:18,780
with that stuff. At a certain point, you’ve not ran the gauntlet completely,

1433
01:29:19,510 –> 01:29:23,070
right? You know, and there’s a version of this, like in

1434
01:29:23,070 –> 01:29:26,110
stoicism, right? Because like in, you know, I talk with a lot of people who,

1435
01:29:26,110 –> 01:29:29,790
you know, stoicism is very popular in business circles. It’s very popular in like,

1436
01:29:29,790 –> 01:29:33,310
sales and entrepreneurship circles and stuff like this. And then I’ll start asking about, like,

1437
01:29:33,310 –> 01:29:35,990
okay, what are your thoughts on like, you know,

1438
01:29:37,670 –> 01:29:40,070
temperance? Oh,

1439
01:29:41,350 –> 01:29:45,150
not, not super worried about that, you know, and Ryan Holiday talks about this

1440
01:29:45,150 –> 01:29:48,870
all the time, right? That like certain, you know, there’s four main virtues,

1441
01:29:48,870 –> 01:29:52,490
right? And there, there’ popular ones. And then the other

1442
01:29:52,490 –> 01:29:55,970
pop. The, the other two are just skipped over by most people,

1443
01:29:56,850 –> 01:30:00,570
right? And, and there’s a version of that in Christianity. There’s a version of

1444
01:30:00,570 –> 01:30:04,130
that in Islam. There’s a version of that, I’m sure in, in every like,

1445
01:30:04,210 –> 01:30:07,570
philosophy, you know, that the people can go through. And it’s like

1446
01:30:08,450 –> 01:30:12,090
if you don’t go deep enough, you’re probably cherry

1447
01:30:12,090 –> 01:30:12,610
picking.

1448
01:30:15,810 –> 01:30:19,520
Well, and if you can’t, if you can’t see the world through your enemy’s

1449
01:30:19,520 –> 01:30:22,760
eyes, whatever that may mean, you

1450
01:30:23,080 –> 01:30:26,200
probably are not seeing the world fully.

1451
01:30:26,760 –> 01:30:30,480
Oh, like I saw this on

1452
01:30:30,480 –> 01:30:34,160
LinkedIn today and this woman was talking about that she had to go block

1453
01:30:34,160 –> 01:30:37,760
someone because he was being very, very antagonistic and

1454
01:30:37,760 –> 01:30:41,600
just very aggressive and everything. And so he followed her over to another

1455
01:30:41,600 –> 01:30:45,210
social media platform. Oh my. And he was like, you

1456
01:30:45,210 –> 01:30:48,650
blocked me? Like. And then he goes, what, you don’t like

1457
01:30:48,650 –> 01:30:52,250
logic? And it’s like the idea that

1458
01:30:52,250 –> 01:30:55,970
like your version of whatever you were pushing and touting is the

1459
01:30:55,970 –> 01:30:59,330
only logical conversation. Everyone else must therefore be an

1460
01:30:59,330 –> 01:31:03,050
idiot and not lined up with logic because they don’t agree with you

1461
01:31:03,290 –> 01:31:06,970
is the whole problem that everyone has with like crossfitters and vegans.

1462
01:31:15,300 –> 01:31:15,940
Exactly.

1463
01:31:19,540 –> 01:31:23,300
Oh my gosh. I think

1464
01:31:23,300 –> 01:31:27,060
that’s a good place for us to begin to, for us to begin to

1465
01:31:27,060 –> 01:31:30,860
wrap up one of the things that we have

1466
01:31:30,860 –> 01:31:33,900
to do and one of the things we’re going to be doing actually as a

1467
01:31:33,900 –> 01:31:37,380
show, as listeners, as our guests, and even myself as a host

1468
01:31:37,620 –> 01:31:40,880
over the course of this year, is we really going to be focusing on

1469
01:31:42,640 –> 01:31:46,360
doing and talking about what are the

1470
01:31:46,360 –> 01:31:49,800
various intersections of literature and leadership? What can we

1471
01:31:49,800 –> 01:31:53,640
pull from literature? What can we pull from leadership in more

1472
01:31:53,640 –> 01:31:57,360
of these intentional kinds of conversations, these

1473
01:31:57,360 –> 01:32:01,120
intentional kinds of what I call mashup conversations.

1474
01:32:01,920 –> 01:32:05,640
A mashup is mixing everything together and pushing on it and

1475
01:32:05,640 –> 01:32:09,380
poking it and pressing it and stress testing in and

1476
01:32:09,380 –> 01:32:12,660
seeing what works and what doesn’t. We do

1477
01:32:12,660 –> 01:32:16,100
mashups because A, I don’t know everything, I can’t

1478
01:32:16,100 –> 01:32:19,460
possibly know everything, B, there’s more than one

1479
01:32:19,460 –> 01:32:23,180
perspective in the world, and C, just because I could see the world

1480
01:32:23,180 –> 01:32:26,620
through my enemy’s eyes doesn’t mean I have to agree with what I’m seeing. It

1481
01:32:26,620 –> 01:32:30,100
just means I have to see the perspective from where that person

1482
01:32:30,260 –> 01:32:33,980
is standing. Now, I want to be very clear. None of my co

1483
01:32:33,980 –> 01:32:37,750
hosts are my enemies. They’re all my friends. We’re all in this

1484
01:32:37,750 –> 01:32:41,350
boat together. We’re all rowing in the same direction. And by the way,

1485
01:32:41,350 –> 01:32:45,150
we’ve invited new folks into the boat who want to join us. It’s interesting

1486
01:32:45,150 –> 01:32:48,750
that John mentioned that his, his wife is into Shakespeare. We actually got a

1487
01:32:48,750 –> 01:32:52,590
referral from one of our guests to a. To a person who has

1488
01:32:52,590 –> 01:32:56,430
done their thesis work in Shakespeare, had a conversation with her. We’re going to

1489
01:32:56,430 –> 01:33:00,190
be bringing her on. She’s going to be talking with us about Macabeth because we’re

1490
01:33:00,190 –> 01:33:03,210
doing Macbeth this year finally, and

1491
01:33:03,450 –> 01:33:07,210
Troilus and Cressida. So we have to figure out which one of those two we’re

1492
01:33:07,210 –> 01:33:09,770
going to. We’re going to land her on, and it’s going to be great.

1493
01:33:12,810 –> 01:33:16,450
The, the. The whole point of this show, the whole point of

1494
01:33:16,450 –> 01:33:20,290
this is to drive the intersection of literature and

1495
01:33:20,290 –> 01:33:23,930
leadership. It’s to drive that intersection into a sharp point and to

1496
01:33:23,930 –> 01:33:25,850
be the tip of the spear on this.

1497
01:33:27,860 –> 01:33:31,220
This is a valuable and I think, worthwhile

1498
01:33:31,540 –> 01:33:35,380
quest. It is a quest myth. It’s a story.

1499
01:33:35,460 –> 01:33:38,700
Of course, I’m telling myself, just like the Iliad, just like the

1500
01:33:38,700 –> 01:33:42,100
Odyssey. And yes, I do have a vision for it.

1501
01:33:42,180 –> 01:33:45,540
And now I’ve got a model, and now I’ve got a quest.

1502
01:33:46,100 –> 01:33:49,460
And so I would never, and none of my guests would, but especially

1503
01:33:49,540 –> 01:33:53,260
myself, I would never ask you to do something as a listener that I wouldn’t

1504
01:33:53,260 –> 01:33:56,970
do myself. I eat my own dog food, or at least I try

1505
01:33:56,970 –> 01:34:00,370
as much as I possibly can to eat my own dog food. And that is

1506
01:34:00,370 –> 01:34:04,010
a statement that I’m making with as much humility as I can possibly muster, because

1507
01:34:04,010 –> 01:34:07,490
it’s true. We do have to worry about

1508
01:34:07,490 –> 01:34:10,090
engagement. We do have to worry about connections.

1509
01:34:11,130 –> 01:34:13,890
The fact of the matter is we do have to worry about which way the

1510
01:34:13,890 –> 01:34:17,370
pendulum is swinging. Is our vision constrained or unconstrained,

1511
01:34:17,690 –> 01:34:21,200
not just as leaders in our families, in our communities,

1512
01:34:21,360 –> 01:34:25,120
in our civic organizations, but also as

1513
01:34:25,120 –> 01:34:28,920
leaders on our teams and in our businesses, small,

1514
01:34:28,920 –> 01:34:32,560
medium or large, in the places where people look to us

1515
01:34:32,640 –> 01:34:35,440
and they are looking to see us as leaders.

1516
01:34:36,319 –> 01:34:40,120
I will. I’ve said this before, perhaps not a short episode,

1517
01:34:40,120 –> 01:34:41,440
but I want to say it again here.

1518
01:34:44,000 –> 01:34:47,120
These days, most people know who the President of the United States is.

1519
01:34:48,330 –> 01:34:52,010
Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent because we’ve nationalized a lot of this.

1520
01:34:53,370 –> 01:34:57,130
But there are still a good chunk of people and leaders.

1521
01:34:57,130 –> 01:35:00,730
It would be worthwhile for you to pay attention to this. Whose

1522
01:35:00,730 –> 01:35:04,530
example of leadership is not the President of the United States. It’s

1523
01:35:04,530 –> 01:35:08,250
not even the mayor of the town that your organization, your

1524
01:35:08,250 –> 01:35:11,970
business or your family happens to be in. There’s a whole bunch

1525
01:35:11,970 –> 01:35:15,620
of people that are surrounding you and their example of

1526
01:35:15,620 –> 01:35:18,780
leadership. The only example of leadership they are seeing

1527
01:35:19,820 –> 01:35:23,020
is you. What is your

1528
01:35:23,500 –> 01:35:26,940
vision, what is your model

1529
01:35:27,900 –> 01:35:31,740
and what are you going to do if it’s broken

1530
01:35:31,740 –> 01:35:35,500
to restore that model or even to make that model

1531
01:35:35,500 –> 01:35:38,140
better. Literature can give you the why

1532
01:35:39,430 –> 01:35:43,230
but you’re going to have to come up with the what and we’re going

1533
01:35:43,230 –> 01:35:45,990
to explore all of that this year on the show.

1534
01:35:47,190 –> 01:35:51,030
So with that I’d like to close our episode, our first mashup

1535
01:35:51,030 –> 01:35:54,750
episode of the year today of the season. I guess I should say not year

1536
01:35:54,750 –> 01:35:57,190
but season. I guess I should say that my producer would probably like it if

1537
01:35:57,190 –> 01:36:00,670
I said that with John

1538
01:36:00,670 –> 01:36:04,470
Hill AKA Small Mountain and I would like to

1539
01:36:04,470 –> 01:36:07,200
thank him for coming on the show today. And with that well

1540
01:36:08,160 –> 01:36:08,880
we’re out.