Transcription
Okay, Henry, I'd love for you to tell our audience how a large naked man changed your life forever.
Um, you really want that story?
I really want the story. It's a great story. It's got some...
It's a great story in a lot of ways because it can tell you like, and what you need to learn in life is, you know, fear can limit your life. Yeah.
I mean, it can change the direct trajectory of your life. So, I'll make it short. I'm in the seventh grade. I'm doing a book report. I get flustered. I get lost my notes. And then I got nervous. I got nervous about being nervous. And I couldn't talk.
And I kind of had a meltdown in front of the class. And the teacher stands up and says, "Sit down. You know, you will never be successful in life if you can't do public speaking."
And she said, "Didn't you say maybe you want to go to law school one day? You'll never be a lawyer." And she literally said that. Said, "Sit down and call the next student up." And I was traumatized. And literally, and I, and I'm not kidding about this, from the seventh grade through high school, through college, through graduate school, I wouldn't, if I ever got asked to speak, I, I just wouldn't do it. I don't do that. And so I'm floating along and I go into practice. I'm in my 20s and I'd get asked to speak all the time, you know, organizations, churches. I go, "No, I don't do that." So I go to the gym one, I'm working out. Actually used to go to the gym, believe it or not. Yeah. And this big naked guy walks up to me on the way to the showers. And he was large. I mean, this big naked guy.
Yeah.
He played for the Rams, actually.
Wow.
And so he walks up to me and he says, "Are you a Christian?" And now, when's the last time a big naked guy walked up to you and asked you? I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, God just told me to tell you something." And I'm like, well, I'm also a psychologist and I can make those voices go away. We know how to do that. And I said, "No, I'm serious. I'm a pastor that I'm not crazy, but God just told me to tell you something." He and I said, "What church?" And he told me and I said, "That's real church." Okay, I listen. So, we go next door. We got dressed first. We went next door.
That's great.
And he said this. He said, "God told me when you were a kid, something bad happened to you."
Wow.
"When you were speaking, and since then you've been afraid to do it, and you haven't done it." And I'm like...
"And then he said, "And God said he wants you to begin speaking for him,
and he's going to open some doors, and you're to walk through them."
Wow. How did that in the moment? It had to be almost slightly confusing just because of the circumstances, but then at the same time, uh, had to be pretty revealing that he was able to say it the way he said it.
There was no way that that's, you know, I mean, I...
That doesn't happen, right? And that specificity.
Yeah.
And it was shocking, but it was like shocking really because of the God moment.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a real miracle.
Yeah. But then instantly I was so afraid because I had to now. I mean, I knew if I didn't go do this, I'm going to get swallowed by a whale.
Right. Right. Exactly.
That's the way it works.
Yeah.
And so the next week I got two calls to speak and I had to go do it.
And it was horrifying. It was terrifying, but I knew I had to do it.
And it took about a year and a half before I overcame it.
Before we continue with the interview, let me introduce you to today's guest, Dr. Henry Cloud. Dr. Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership expert, and best-selling author known for his work on personal growth, boundaries, and high performance leadership. He's written more than 40 books, including the classic Boundaries, which has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. All right, let's get right back to our conversation. I want to go back into the story of the teacher. People like that sometimes don't realize the weight of their words. Who knows what was going on in her world that day, but she steps all over the spirit of a seventh grade kid.
Yeah.
I bring her up because does it play into the healing all those years later? And I'm thinking of our audience right now who's had somebody do that to them maybe recently.
Yeah. Does grace and forgiveness of that teacher in your life, does that play into you being able to get over the wording?
Crap. I need to do that. I need to forgive. No, I'm kidding.
But I mean, I wonder how much allowing that to lift is in forgiving her. I've never asked you that.
Well, it, you know, forgiveness is a big part of most healing because most of our healing or or or you know, most of our pain is inflicted at the hands of people.
Right? And so as long as we're still holding on, you know, unforgiveness isn't holding on.
And as long as we're holding on to something, that person is still in your head.
Right?
And Ken, it, it is unfathomable what now the research shows about what unresolved relationships in our head do to us. I just, I was doing some research the other day and I read the study, reread it. I'd seen it before. They took high-erforming math students, these are like 800 on math SAT kids, and put them in a in a timed test, working math problems on a scale. They had divided them up by those that had critical fathers in the questionnaires was your versus supportive, encouraging fathers. They're working math problems against the clock. On the screen embedded in the math problem, they subliminally flashed the father's name.
Wow.
So subliminal, you can't see it.
Sure.
You, you see it. It gets in your head, but you don't know you've seen it.
Had their brains hooked up. The critical fathers every time the father's name flashed, which they weren't aware of, but it went in your brain.
The performance centers in the brain dropped and the anxiety went up and the per and and the scores got worse. The encouraging fathers, their names came up, spiked.
Wow.
So, what you're saying about in relationships and people that are embedded in our heads, we need to resolve that and get those voices out of there and get new voices in. And that's the good news. Neuroplasticity.
Yeah.
We internalize new encouraging voices.
How in the early days of you starting to speak,
do you go back to that locker room moment with that guy? I mean, he had to replace that teacher. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Well, he started it for sure. And that was sort of like, you know, if you're reaching a goal or you're doing anything, anything in life is going to be long-term and hard. You've got to have an anchor why you did this. You got to remember your why.
Yeah.
And I didn't want to be doing this, but I knew I don't want a whale to swallow me, right?
So, that was an anchor. But what had to happen was, and in fact,
um, a good friend of mine who's a speech therapist, I went to her the next day and I said, "I got to do this. Will you pray for me?" And she said, "Yeah, and I'll help you."
I gave the talk to her, practiced it with her, and she went and sat in the front row.
And that kind, that's what a good coach does for a kid. That's what a good support group does. That's what a mentor does. We, we've got to internalize new...
We're empowered by relationship. All these decades later and you've spoken in front of so many large crowds like, you know, millions of people at this point. Does that voice ever pop up from time to time?
Mhm.
That's so good to hear. That's what I want people to hear. And, and, and what would you say is the reason for that? I mean, we've already covered some forgiveness. We talk about new voices. Anything else that you know people need to know? Is it a function of time of you just getting up and delivering the goods?
Well, it happens over time, but time, you know, there's an old saying, "Time heals all things." No, it doesn't. Try that. Tell that to an infected tooth.
Yeah, that's right.
What heals things is when you get the right ingredients working on the infection.
And so, you know, all of that time you, you mentioned one thing, getting up and doing it again. Yes. The biggest antidote to fear is stepping into the fear and doing what you're afraid of. Because what happens is your brain slowly learns, "Oh, I don't need to be afraid of this." And it goes back to sleep.
But there's a lot of components in that. And the components are that you, you must start little bitty incremental steps to step into your fear. And sometimes there's some internal work. It could come from trauma. It can come from voices in your head. It can come from the way you talk to yourself. You got to address those reasons, but you must face fear.
Fear is my daughter had a bad experience, um, in an airplane and she went to the bathroom. She was like six years old and then turbulence started. She got locked in and she started being afraid of going to the bathroom. We go to dinner at a restaurant and she'd have to have her sister or mother go with her.
And I'm a psychologist. So I, and Joe start, she wouldn't go sleepovers. She'd call us at 9:00, "Come get me." Yeah.
I said, "I am not going to let fear ruin her life." And had to push her into stepping into those fears. She'd call us and I'd say, "I know it's hard. Good night. Have fun. Hang up."
And Tori's like, "We got to go get..." No, we're not.
We're not going to let fear. And so what I'd say to people hanging out, you know, listening to us today is you have got to see fear as the life limiter and not let it win.
Yes.
It takes a strategy. It takes help, but we know how to do this.
Yeah, that's really good.
It is very encouraging.
It is. And I want to talk about doubt for just a moment because it's kind of a, you know, it's a cousin. They kind of hang out. For people who are thinking about or they've got an opportunity in front of them or they're longing for another opportunity and they realize it's going to stretch them. There's a point where it's probably a little bit change. I want you to inform this. Uh, but it's also challenge and it's great and all of a sudden that doubt creeps in. It's now popularized as uh impostor syndrome.
But it's a moment where you start to go, "I want this. I want this." And now you see it and you start to go, "Oh, can I do it?" And I think that's kind of natural. So how do we step into that? Much like fear? Is it the same thing?
Well, it's similar, but, but it's a little different because what you're actually doing there is you're developing competencies you don't have.
Okay.
Right. So, a lot of people, I've had thousands of people say, "I just need more self-confidence. How do, how do I get more self-confidence?" And I said, "Confident for what?" And there's something they want to do like you're saying. I go, "Have you done it?" And they go, "No, I need to get confident so I can do it." I go, "Go talk to somebody else because that ain't the way the world works."
Right?
Some, you know, anybody here, you walk across this room, you don't think about it because you've done it before. That's right.
And people want confidence before they do something. We do something, and we take little steps and you fall down, right?
And you've got to get into the mindset of, "Of course, I don't know how to do it. I haven't done it." And normalize that. That's okay. It's called learning.
But if you don't have the space in your head to learn and fail and fall down and learn from that and throw an interception, go back to the huddle and call another play. You think you got to do it perfect before you've done it.
Yeah.
You said something great, stretch.
Yeah.
If you don't know about this, it's called flow research. And, and there's an axis here of challenge and there's an axis here of ability.
And so the flow goes like that on the graph. So what, when we're in the flow, it's where the challenge is meeting our ability. Okay. To get to the next corner, what do you have to do? You have to up the challenge a little past your ability.
That's right.
And that's where you fill that gap of anxiety.
Normalize the anxiety and take little steps because if you try to do this, the anxiety, anxiety has a curve. Yeah.
It'll increase performance because it activates the system. Olympic swim swimmers when they're on the stand, they have the same physiological arousal as a panic disorder.
Wow.
But they don't interpret it as something bad.
Huh?
And so what you've got to do is normalize, "I'm stepping into something I've never done before." Great. That means your system is awake. But if you try to bite off too much, it'll overwhelm it. Right?
On the other side, back to your stretch goal. If you're never doing something past your ability, you're asleep. You're dead. You're not growing.
We need stretch goals. But we need stretch goals that don't tear muscle. Every day, do something in your business or your marriage or whatever that gets you out over your skis a little bit. I want to talk about the tension between, okay, I want to grow, I want to get better, you know, I want to stretch and, and contentment. And I find that to be, I'm not sure I've figured it out, you know, and I want to go to school here, you know, what's the, what is that healthy tension there or, or maybe that's not the right...
No, it's a great point.
Yeah. Like I want to grow,
but I also need to be content with what I have.
Yeah, it's a, it is a, and, and one of the things you got, you got to think about here is where's it coming from? Because a lot of the wish for more, more income, more revenues, better life, whatever it is, those are good desires. We're, we're fueled by desire, hunger. We want more. We want to get better. If a tree is not growing and producing more, it's not alive. That's good. If it's from desire, something that's truly you that you desire. Sometimes we want more, but it's coming out of different motivation. If it's coming out of envy because you're comparing yourself to others and, and I'm not good enough cuz I got to be like that, it'll never fulfill you and it'll create all sorts of other anxiety.
Mhm.
If it's coming out of to prove yourself either to yourself or somebody else, then you're on a pass/fail thing like, you know, the, the Carol Dweck, you know, research talks about that.
The growth mindset wants more because it's a real desire. There's a proverb, it says, "A longing fulfilled, a desire accomplished becomes a tree of life." Real.
Now, contentment, when you accomplish something that's real,
what all the happiness research shows is that gets savored like a good meal.
And you, you, that's why we have, you know, they pop the champagne at the end of the tournament or the game, and it, you've got to be able to savor it.
But then you want to go win the next one, but it doesn't spoil the one you have.
Envy is a spoiler. Envy defines the good by that which I don't have. So if I hadn't gotten it yet, I'm, I'm no good or it's no good. And then when I get it, what's good? What I don't have. So what I have is not any good. So we never get to gratitude. Desire and gratitude. You put those together and you've conquered that dynamic tension you're talking about.
That's really good because it is normal for us to want to keep growing. And...
I hope so. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I think it is. I think it's wired into our humanness. We don't want it to grow like you said, to where I'm just looking at the scoreboard only.
The scoreboard.
Yeah. And, and the other thing is, here's what we know about the great performers. They love the process as much as the trophy.
That is true. That's right. And if you think about it, if it's coming from desire, like I'm grew up competitive confer, I would get as much pleasure out of being in a corner of a course with my shag bag, you know, at twilight hitting shots because you just love what you're doing and then you go put it to, you know, tournament test. But if it doesn't count unless you have won something, it, it's never going to fulfill.
Yeah. If you're serious about winning at work this year, let me ask you a question. Are your systems helping you grow or holding you back? That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. Because here's the deal. Missed calls don't just cost you business, they cost you momentum. That's like showing up to a job interview in your pajamas. You might be brilliant, but you just blew it. Effective leaders don't miss opportunities because of sloppy communication. And Quo gives you and your team one shared business number so every call and every text is handled professionally. It works right from your phone or computer so your team stays aligned as your company grows. So make this the year where no opportunity gets away. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/ken. That's quo.com/ken. Quote. No missed calls, no missed customers. The process to love the process. I don't think a lot of people think of work that way to go, "Okay, what inside my job function do I actually really love?"
Yeah.
I think we kind of get focused on other things. And I think of the master craftsman, right? They're the ones that are like, they love, they know, they're putting it together. In the, in the white collar business world, how can we dive in a little bit to find something that's fundamental to go, "I love this part of the work. This is the process piece." How do we do that?
Well, the first thing you got to also realize, you're not going to love all of it.
That's right.
Right. I, I remember, I don't remember who it was. It was an Olympic swimmer. I saw her interviewed and, and the training regimen and all that. The interviewer says, "Well, you just, you just must love to get up in the morning, hit that pool because you..." She talking about she loves swimming. And she said, "I hate it every morning."
And the interviewer goes, "Why?" She said, "Because I hate cold water."
Right?
But I do it because the process is not every moment of every task. The process is always being very, very engaged in where we're going. Mhm.
And that we're getting there because you're not going to love every minute of it. And we have to do crap that we don't want to do.
But if most of it is not happening in your signature strengths and passions, it's probably a miscast long term. That's really not sustainable. Unless...
You have a lot of people work three jobs they hate. Why? Because they want to send their kid to college. Then that process gets meaningful again. Because we're talking about the reason and the why. There's a clear why. It's, it's interesting. I was thinking while you were talking, you know, you and I've hung out with a lot of big-time coaches. I've been able to interview some of the biggest, most successful ones, and I've learned that they love practice.
Yes.
More than they love the games.
That's what I mean. They're out there hitting the shot.
Um, okay. I want to shift gears. Um, and I want to talk about winning with people at work. Obviously, most professionals are spending more time at work than they are at home.
Which, by the way, you know, as a psychologist, okay, a psychologist generally has an hour a week with most people they work with. Yeah. And you're supposed to produce all this growth, which you do and can, right? And all that.
You have an hour a week.
Somebody's at work 40 to 50 hours a week. And I want everybody to begin to see your work environment and relationships and challenges as the primary growth vehicle.
Yes.
In your life relationally as well as performance.
That's absolutely good. That is absolutely right. And that's why I want to talk about this. How do we win with difficult people? And we're going to give you some fun archetypes. So me and the team got together and we came up with some archetypes that are pretty well represented in the workplace. Okay. So cool.
One of the things you have about some difficult people you don't want to win with because you don't want to be playing with some of them.
That's exactly right. I, I sense that that might be the advice. So, first one is sensitive Steve. And, uh, Steve gets offended, upset very easily. You feel like you're walking on eggshells with sensitive Steve. How do we, how do we interact or do we not interact? What's that look like?
Well, the first thing I want to do is I would ask two things. One is, what is Steve sensitive to?
There are people that are hyper sensitive because they're really wounded souls.
Yes.
There are other people that are sensitive because they're really narcissistic.
And they take offense to you not worshiping them and admiring them and making it all about them and this, that, and the other. So when you know, we, we want to do well and do good to everyone, right? But you got to ask, is this person sensitive because they're wounded? We step into that with empathy. And I would ask Steve, say, "Steve, you know, sometimes, sometimes when I, it seems like if I give you feedback,
I don't know. It seems like it might be hurtful to you. Is it? Tell me. Tell me about that." And then with teams, I've done stuff on feedback and accountability, and I will ask everybody, "How do you want to hear it?"
And some of them say, "Well, just first thing, tell me, tell me I'm not getting fired, and then you tell me whatever you want."
Right?
But people, people will will talk about, um, you know, what's helpful to them. I mean, if we can get that conversation with Steve, what's helpful to you and what's not.
And it's not some sort of, you know, narcissistic, you know, "Don't say anything negative to me, I know it all" kind of thing.
But the other type, then if they're arrogant, control, the last thing you want to do, don't count your critics, weigh them.
Yeah.
And if somebody's taking offense at everything because you're not cowtowing to them, then that's a different kind of problem.
Yeah. Good. That's really good. Okay. What about party pooper Peggy? Just negative, cynical. If we pull from Saturday Night Live, it's the Debbie Downer. Just, you know, no matter what's going on, Peggy is the party pooper. And it can really bring the entire vibe of the team down or you and one-on-one interactions.
Well, a few things. Um, one of the best things you can do if this is, if it's important, then send send Peggy on a six-month project. Now, I'm really serious about this. This comes from Carter's change research. You know, people that are against, he calls them nos.
You distract them,
or you expose them. You put them in the group where everybody starts to see and then their voice, their negative voice at the meeting after the meeting has less weight because everybody sees. It's not a problem with the boss's idea. This is cuz, you know, she's a downer.
Or sometimes, um, people that infect negativity, we got to have a hard conversation. Say, "You know what? Um, we're trying to build a really positive team here. I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but pretty much," and we go back and I name it for you today. Everything you said was pretty critical and kind of victimy and negative,
and I don't want that with our team. So, let's talk about it. Why do you feel that way? And sometimes, um, they got to go. One of the, one of the most important things teams can do is you start with your vision. Here's what we want to accomplish. But then you ask, "If we're going to be that team,
then what are our behavioral values? How do we need to behave? What are the anchors? We're going to, we're going to face reality, but we're going to have hope. We're going to be positive about it. We're going to have the hard conversations, not take it personally." And you have some norms. A group will enforce its norms, but you got to name the norms.
And so teamwork, then when people violate the norm, the group begins to take care of it.
How does a leader make sure those norms stick?
Well, like anything else sticks, you know, um, behavior that sticks has got to run on wiring. And that's why people go to workshops and then it's gone. 90% of it's gone within a week. The workshop's important. First thing I have to have is awareness. So that's why we name them, right? So if, if I'm going to get better at my golf game, you know, Tiger even has a coach and I'm going to talk about Tiger, I want you to, you know, take it back here and not here. That's the awareness.
But awareness has got to be followed by real-time focus. So now Tiger's got to go on the range and hit the shot and focus on, "Okay, he said take it back this way. I got to be doing this." And then the third thing is deliberate practice. So in real time, we got to be aware. "No, Tiger, you didn't take it back here. You took it back here." And deliberate practice is doing the thing correctly with relational support the whole time. Those four factors will literally grow new wiring. So back to the team, what a leader will have to do and this is why team building is so important that's actively working on things, not just trust falls or something like that. You, you name, you name what we're trying to build and say, you know, whatever it is, some behavior of healthy debate. And then somebody, what I do with teams is, "Okay, you're in charge of that value in today's meeting." And if somebody, he sees them not saying their opinion or whatever, that person's going to throw the flag, say, "Hold on, we said we were going to say everything. What, what are you holding back?" They call in real time and then they practice the new behavior. And at the end, somebody will be the auditor and say, "We're going to take five minutes. How did we do on our values today?" And then we'll talk about it.
Wow.
And that will literally build new neurological patterning.
And what I'm seeing, Henry, is that is making the leader job far easier when you put that type of system of culture in place. Like, this is what our shared behavior is here.
Shared.
Yeah. You know, your immune system, um, is one of the best metaphors of this. Our immune system, the leader, the head,
doesn't even know when I did this and now 10,000 bacteria entered my mouth. Saliva takes care of it immediately. And if it's too strong, gets past that, the stomach acid gets past that,
then HR gets called. The T cells put a marker, the marker cells go up, and then we contain it. Leaders should be developing the immune systems of their teams and companies. So when the problems happen, this gets taken care of at the cubicle level. They never make it to HR. Don't ever make it to the boss.
That's good. And then if it, if it's too strong for that, then certainly some things will rise to the top.
But a leader is responsible for building a culture that drives performance and excellence and care and thriving and immune functioning at all levels. And that's why we do skills building and competency building and the soft skills as well as the business skills. You know something that absolutely blows my mind? There are companies out there gathering your personal information and selling it online. Your name, your address, old addresses, phone numbers, even family connections. And that's why I use DeleteMe. I work in the public arena, so my name is everywhere online. But you don't have to host a national show to care about this. If you're building a career, leading a team, growing your income, your name matters. Don't let strangers profit off of your information. DeleteMe finds your personal data on data broker sites, gets it removed, and keeps monitoring those sites so it doesn't pop back up. DeleteMe lets you stay focused on what matters most. So, if you're serious about winning at work and protecting your future, protect your personal data. And right now, get 20% off an annual plan at joineddeleteme.com/frontrowseat. That's joineddeleteme.com/frontrowseat. Okay, we have two more, uh, uh, archetypes here. So, this one...
Oh, no.
Brown-noser Bradley. Just always trying to get ahead by kissing up, sucking up to the boss. Uh, that stays with us from like, feels like middle school, high school all the way up. It's hilarious some of the comments that you see in the corporate world about people like this.
So, what, what would be a good line that you'd see Brown-noser saying? Oh, well, the leader in a meeting says something and they, they immediately rush to act like it's the best thing they've ever heard. Uh, you know, or the over-complimenting, you know, the, the rush to, you know, in what would be a normal interaction, they dress it up so much and it's just a performative. Again, it's just straight up buttkissing, you know, trying to curry favor, you know, out of just empty praise or, you know, compliments or things like that. And by the way, there are a lot of leaders who love that.
Well, that's a problem.
Yeah. Well, I feel like there's always a, when you see somebody that's thriving and we had some fun with this. Like, this is the person who's actually getting ahead because of this. But that's because a leader enjoys it and that person is a manipulator. At least that's my take.
Yeah.
The buttkisser is a manipulator.
Now, if you really want to have fun...
Yeah.
Um, you could say to Joey in that moment, "Hey, Joey, seems pretty important to you that the boss knows you like his idea." And see what everybody says, right?
Some people aren't that bold.
Right?
But the, sometimes, you know, the things with, um...
What happens in that situation because I like that call out.
Well, here's a less brutal, okay?
Call out. Joey, I'm sorry. What, what were you, what was hoping your, what was the intent of what you just said? What, what were you hoping would happen by that comment? And now he's got to, the motive lives in him.
Yes. Interesting. Yeah. So that, yeah.
It's the same, you know, a lot of gaslighters or controllers or manipulators, one of the best things you can say instead of getting hooked into it is to say, "So what? I'm not sure what were you trying to accomplish with that sent, with that statement?"
Just look at them.
Yeah. Because ultimately it's going to force them, whether they admit it or not, to see what they're trying to do. They're jockeying.
Yeah. And, and that kind of person, um, the odds of them taking correction are low.
Right.
But sometimes this can help. This can work. What I would do is Bradley. Is that...
Yeah. Uh, this is Brown-noser Bradley.
Brown-nose Bradley. I would say, "Bradley, you know what? I want to talk to you as a team here.
We want to be close and, and pull for each other and be a good team. I think you want to feel close to everybody. Is that right?" And he'd go, "Sure." Well, I don't know if you know this or not, but it seems like when you're going to call it what it looks like, when you're always kissing up to the boss, I don't know if you know this or not, but it's alienating the team from you. I don't think you want that.
So, you might want to be aware of that because...
it's kind of bugging people.
Yeah.
And I don't think you want that. So, you align with what he's going to lie about, which is, "Yeah, I want to be close to the team." He doesn't care about the team. He wants to...
That's right.
But he doesn't want to be shamed either.
And sometimes it might call to a better part of him that kind of gets it. "Oh, I got to stop doing that."
Okay. All right. Last one. Backstabbing Barb.
Backstabbing Barb. Give me an example.
Barb is Barb is always trying to pull everybody else down. So plays a good game, right? Face to face with you, but is either gossiping or throwing you under the bus with the boss, just constantly trying to pull you down in order to lift herself up.
Well, this is a good example of a team enforces its norm. So this is on the leader.
Okay. Okay. If the leader has established a norm that, um, we don't deal with things outside the meeting that you're afraid to say to a person in the meeting or you don't deal with something about a person outside of that person that you won't say to them.
And here's how we're going to deal with that. You can make that rule, but somebody will violate it. But if the norm is that I've been taught, we don't do that. And Barb comes up to me and, and starts talking about, you know, Mary. I'm going, "So, Barb, remember, have you talked to Mary about that?" She goes, "No." I said, "Well, tell you what, you go talk to Mary about it. If y'all can't resolve it, call me and I'll be glad to sit down with you and see if the three of us can solve it."
And that will end it.
Mhm.
A gossip needs willing ears to hear. That's right.
And if nobody's willing to hear it,
and you call it out,
and you don't even have to confront your gossiping, just say, "No, have you talked to her about that? If you hadn't talked to her about it, go do it and then come back to me."
That will kill it.
Let's flip this now back to us. We had some fun and obviously there's always going to be difficult people to deal with at work. But let's, how do we make sure that we aren't, you know, one of those difficult people or just how do we make sure that we see ourselves the way that others are experiencing us?
You know, it's interesting. We talk about self-awareness is, you know, if you go back to the EQ stuff, awareness of self, awareness of others.
We don't understand or realize that we gain self-awareness through others' awareness of us.
You look at a kid, how does it happen? Mirror neurons, modeling, feedback. You know, have you ever seen, you remember when your kids are little and they fall down and they fall down and they look up and they're asking, "Am I hurt?" You go, "Hop up, you're..." and they're fine. But if mom or dad goes, "Oh, no." They go...
And they instantly, you know, that physiologically builds the structures of a pain threshold.
Wow.
It's amazing.
That is crazy. So that's what I, I wanted that, that nuance there because sometimes we don't know because we have, we have limited self-awareness even if we're very self-aware.
But to understand how we get self-awareness, you've got to know it's not a weakness to want to get other people's perspective. It's the way we build it. First of all. So how about this? My favorite question to a leader. I want you to take, get a couple of people above you, a couple of your peers, couple of people that report to you.
Okay? And over the next two weeks, set up coffee with that whole group and sit down and say, "You know what? I'm, I'm, I'm working on my leadership. Um, and I got a question to ask you. You got to promise me honest, okay? And I'm not going to get offended. I'm not going to debate it. I'm not, I just want to learn."
"What's it like to be on the other side of me?" Yep.
Like relationally and in my performance, what's that like for you? And just listen. Now, they might be crazy, but at least they, and some are, but at least you're learning. There's something you're doing that's that's giving a perception that's able to be interpreted that way. And we're also at the same time, we're learning about others because then you're learning how people actually see you. And you're going to see different types and your pattern recognition is going to grow. You're going to learn to feel like, you know, that guy's really honest and real. Now, I, I can sense that this guy's kind of critical. This is kind of a buttkisser over here. And there's so much other awareness that goes in the diad of that question and getting feedback. And so feedback gets a, it kind of gets a tough wrap in some circles, but...
We really need to see that's why do football teams watch game films.
You know, Tiger says, "There's feel and there's real."
Yeah.
"I felt like I was in that." But the video shows something else.
That's right.
Self-awareness comes in part from other people's eyes and we need that.
Yeah, that's really... Can I tell you one more?
Yeah. Look at the results. You know, when we're interacting with somebody, if people unplug and always walk away, ask yourself why. If people want to know more or want to get together with you more, ask yourself why. Because results don't lie. And what people that are stuck do is they always explain away the result.
Mhm.
Even, "Oh, it's the market or it's this or it's my boss or it's the company or it's the product." It's never them.
Yeah.
But if you let the results speak to you and inform you, they are your friend.
Yeah. How do we, other than just doing it there? There's a muscle to be built here on receiving feedback. You know, we talked about sports, you know, I think of college football, you know, and pro football. Um, I've been in training camps and I've sat in meetings where, you know, you have an entire position. So maybe it's the, the offensive line coach and you got all the linemen sitting in there and they're showing plays and I mean, it's brutal. It's not demeaning, but...
Reality is brutal.
It's brutal in that they're not, there's no varnish on this. They're just like, he's showing with a little pointer. Every one of these coaches got that little red, you know, laser pointer and he's going, "Look, you just missed this effing this and this and you blew it." You know, it's just raw. Again, they don't dehumanize these guys, but there's no filter. It's just, "This is where you screwed up. And here's what happened. We got sacked. It killed a drive. You could say that we potentially lost all momentum to win this game, guys. We can't miss blocks like this." But he's, he's talking about one guy and you are centered out.
Yeah.
Centered just right there in front of everybody. And, and I bring that up because at some point, every one of those guys feels humiliated when that happens. But over time, they come to go, "I'm about ready to walk in a film room."
Yeah.
"And I'm going to become a better player because of the pain I'm about to experience."
Yeah.
That's as simple as I can say it. How do we as professionals get to that level? Cuz we don't have game film. But there is a way to probably get to that point where we build up that and now we crave it. Or did I screw up this week? Cuz I want to get better so I get another contract. I want to keep starting.
You do. You got to crave it. But to crave it, I mean, when you were, when you were a little kid, you wanted ice cream, not broccoli. Right? Right. Fed enough broccoli. Oh, that's pretty good. Takes till you're 30. But, right.
It, you know, but, but we can learn to crave things that, that we didn't like. But it starts with, we've, we've really got to begin with normalizing it to people. Somebody I spoke this morning, somebody walked up to me and said, talked about a few failures and they messed up and this, that, and the other. And I asked them, "What, how do you see failure? How do you see making a mistake?" If you don't normalize imperfection, you're going to move away from it because our brains are built to to move away from something that's wrong. And if I think it's wrong that I'm making mistake, even though the mistake is wrong, but I think something's wrong with me or the world because I made a mistake, that's going to be harder to internalize. We're going to fight it, resist it, or, or something. So this is why, back to the team culture. That culture, and you said they, they feel it after a while. The culture is here. We don't care about your ego. We care about winning.
Yes.
And so when winning and doing better is what matters, then we start to crave it. "How do I get better? How do I get better?" Another part of this is some of you who are listening, some of you, we don't all come to that room equally.
Yeah. Some of you came from, you, you had a, back to the math student, you had a crit, you had a critical father's voice in your head and every time that somebody reminds you on the screen of that, you're not just hearing that locker room, you're hearing, "You're a loser. You'll never be anything." You're hearing all that stuff. And so you got, this is where, you know, go talk to a good shrink and work through that stuff and get it out of your head. When that coach is giving me that feedback, I want to be hearing one thing. I want to be hearing the coach. Yes.
Not my history.
That's right.
So, so you got to look at the soil that it falls on.
And, and then the other thing is that it's really, really important
to see that, like you said, as a gift.
Yeah.
One of my favorite verses is David said, "Let a righteous man strike me. I'll treat it as a gift."
When you start to see is, I think it was Ken Blanchard that said, "Feedback's the breakfast of champions."
Yeah. And the highest degree of performance and flow, back to chicks at Beihaya.
Yeah.
The people that get in the most flow are in the sports that have immediate feedback. He mentions rock climbing. You have immediate feedback.
Yes.
Because you can feel yourself falling. And the ability to not resist
the input of reality is the ability to begin to meet the demand of reality.
So we, you got to leave the ego out of it. And if your ego is wounded, you got to get it fixed.
Yeah, that's good.
Plus that whole culture.
Yeah.
Everybody in the room is kind of like...
Right. Yeah. It's part of it. And, and that's the point for the leader. If, if leaders could create, uh, this expectation for radical transparency.
Yeah.
Cuz that's what an NFL team is.
Yeah. It's Jackwell Charlie Cander.
That's right. In fact, you'll see coaches that don't do well at that professional level. When you hear about it after the fact.
It's where the players didn't trust them, where they're kind of a little bit too guarded. They don't. That's right. And so those guys, they're designed by playing college football at a high level. That's where that really starts to get serious. They're now designed for that feedback. And if you don't give it to them straight, they'll turn on you. That's where you lose a locker room.
And there's a parallel here. I don't want to go too far down the football rabbit hole, but there is a parallel to what makes sustained long-term success, you know, on the NFL level where these guys are millionaires. You're not going to treat them like Nick Saban treated, you know, college football players. They want that radical transparency because they're used to it.
I had a supervisor in my training. Um, the guy was, I mean, he's almost sadistic. And in clinical supervision, you're in a small group of four other trainees and a supervisor, and you have to present your cases and say what you did and say what they said and all this kind of stuff. And this guy was sadistic, but he was a genius, and he knew more than all the other professors, and I just wanted what he had, right? And I remember I was waiting outside his office one day to go into groups because I signed up for them. You can choose your supervisor. And a friend of mine walked by and go, "You're getting supervision from him? What are you crazy?" I said, "You know what? I want to steal everything he knows. I'm leaving my feelings out in the hall. I just want to hear what he has to say."
Wow. And that's really, really that's a great mindset going into it. Yeah. If you're if you're looking to get stroked, you know, go talk to AI and they'll tell AI will tell you how great you are. Hey, here's a truth I've learned the hard way. Cheap stuff usually costs you more. You buy the bargain mattress and three years later, you're replacing it. That's one of the reasons I love Avocado Green mattress. They're assembled in the USA with certified organic materials. No chemical junk, no glues or adhesives, no petroleum-based foam, just natural latex, wool, and cotton. And they're built to last, holding their shape and supporting your body better, so you're not throwing it out in a few years. You're choosing something made responsibly. A longer-lasting mattress made with materials you can trust for a healthier home environment and less waste means it's better for the planet. And if you're a parent, they even offer kids and crib mattresses made with the same safe materials. Go to avocado green mattress.com/ken to find your next mattress today and get an extra $50 off adult mattresses with the code front row seat. That's avocadogreenmattress.com/ken code front row seat.
I want to talk about home life for a bit. World Health Organization data came out: 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress. 54% of those workers report that that work stress affects their home life. Yeah. I feel like that number is low. The question to you is, how do we keep the work stress out of the house? Is that even possible? And if it is, how do we do it?
Well, it is possible. Um, the first thing you got to ask is, what kind of stress are we talking about? You know, um, there's nothing wrong with stress. Stress drives us to performance. Stress is a demand on the system that your system gets activated to go do something about. First thing you got to do is you got to look at your stress. And sometimes it's quantitative. You're just literally doing too much. And you got to put the 80/20 prioritization to it that, yeah, this might be good, but here's what's important. I'm going to focus on that. Sometimes it's a system problem of, you know, you got to talk to the team, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But look at where it's coming from. But most of the kind of stress we're talking about is happening in the soil that stress falls in. What's going on in your head? And if you're, for example, the biggest one is trying to take responsibility for things you can't control. That's one of the biggest causes of stress. You've got to really focus on, here's what I can control, and you go after that as hard as you can. The outcomes are going to be what they are. You can't control those, and you can't control other people's opinions and all of that. So, are you doing that? The second thing is, how are you hearing? Are you there always and you're vigilantly, "Am I doing a good job? Is everybody happy with me?" All that kind of people-pleasing stuff that will, that stress that lives in here that you're going to take home. And the third thing is, who who are you connected to at work? The biggest destressor that we have in humanity is relationships. And so if you don't have a buddy, a comrade, a team, and the stressful things you're working on together, and you could take it to them, then solve that, then you got to build a firewall. And then you got to go to something good, right?
But my dad, um, fell out. He was building a company in his early 40s and gained a bunch of weight. He went to a movie and fell out. They thought he was dead. Said his heart was gone. He had six months to live. He was in the hospital for a month. Went to another hospital. They kept him there. They say there's nothing wrong with your heart. It's stress. And he changed his life. And you know what he did? Every day at, he closed his his operation at 5:30. Every day at 5:30, he said, "I'd sit in my desk. I'd look at everything on my desk. I'd say, 'God, these are your problems till tomorrow morning when I come back here, and you take care of them. I'm going home.'" And he would literally build the wall.
The second thing is, when he got home, he would sit in his chair for a half hour, and everybody knew, "Dad's home." That's his half hour. Sit in his chair. He'd read his Bible and pray, and he'd de-stress. Wow. And then he got a hobby, started playing golf. Yeah. That's why I play. And then twice a day, now this is a small town. His company was down the street from his best friend. Twice a day, 10:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the afternoon, he'd meet his best friend for coffee, and then they'd go back to work. And so there are some routines and practices that actually create structure against all that stuff. It's like a snow globe. You got to get it still and let the stuff calm down. But you got to have some structures in your life to let your system know that it's over. That's why God made days and nights.
And then what are you going home to? Here's a big deal, Ken. I hear this from leaders. "Oh, I do great at work. I perform well. Everybody's happy with me. I go home. I feel like I'm losing." Yeah. I said, "Dude, you're the same guy. Why don't you do at home what you do at work?" And they go, "There's no work like this at home." I said, "No, but there's leadership. What do you do at work? You sit down with your team and you talk about a vision." Say, "Kids, Mom, what do we, what do we want the Christmas holidays to look like? Let's get a vision for the holidays this year. And what's everybody's role going to be? And what do you..." And you start to you start to lead in the same way that you do at work. You get your team together. You get a vision. Everybody's got a role. You're coaching them. You'll do just as well at home.
That's really rich. I love that. Um, I want you to talk about a philosophy, a methodology I think that you introduced to Ramsey Solutions years ago. It's now a part of our normal lexicon. We've got desired future boards all over this building, and it came from your influence over Dave and some insight, and I know probably from a lot of the consulting you've done, and now you've got a new book. So, I want you to finally wrote the book. You finally wrote the book after it's been like, you know, popularized. Uh, for our audience, tell us about the book, but in telling us about the book, explain why you worded it the way you worded it, and that it is an actual process. Tell us about desired future.
So, the book's called "Your Desired Future." I think it goes up this week. You can get it. It should be when this is airing, it should be ready for you. Should be at least pre-order by a couple of days. Yeah. "Your Desired Future." Um, so I fell in love with leadership as a, you know, young clinician. I worked in a leadership consulting firm and started studying leadership really early on. I fell in love with the content world and all this about how humans perform. But the thing about the leadership world is, gosh, there's so many topics, you know, there's change and strategy and execution and all this kind of stuff. And we, it's a science. You got to learn it if you lead something or you're building a business. But often times I'd go into a company and you got the executive team sitting there, and I say, "Okay, you guys are leading this company. I want you to answer a question for me. Write it down on your... I'm going to give you one minute to think about this. What is leadership?" And Ken, I'd have six people. I get six answers, and they're all right. And I'm going, "But if y'all are leading this thing, and you're all doing different things to lead it, what, what are we doing?" And I started to feel like, you know what, leaders would be really served well if they had a little GPS, a little map that says, "If I'm leading something, I'm trying, what is leadership? Trying to get anything from here to there. What do I need to make sure is happening?" And I did a factor analysis of all the leadership literature, and they fell in five buckets. And that became the model. And it was interesting when neuroscience started to really explain a bunch of this stuff, it dawned on me, dad gum it, the most, the highest performing organization in the universe is the human body. Think about this. No, nothing close to it. Hey, I was trying to get there, right? Nothing close to it. How does the human body get from here to there? And I asked that question, and I went into look at the neuroscience and neuroanatomy and physiology. How does it, if we're sitting here and we decide, gosh, you know, it'd be better if we were standing over there. Your prefrontal cortex comes up with something, a desired future that doesn't exist. We call that a vision. Mhm. As soon as your brain sees that vision, it calls networks into action to start to figure out how to get there. So, what happens? Your brain's got the vision. You know where you want to go. Okay, brain, let's go. Your brain ain't going anywhere by itself. What does it do? It does number two, it engages the talent it's going to need to get it there. I'm going to need a couple legs on my team. I need a couple eyes. Need an inner ear to balance me. It sends out recruiters and emails, activates. You got to get the talent around you that's going to help you get there. All right. Well, let's go. Well, wait. How are we going to get there? Number three, I'll call an Uber. Well, that really doesn't fit. I'll ride a bike. No, I think my strategy. Number three, you got to know how you're going to win. I'm going to walk. As soon as you decide to walk, your brain has organized a plan of who does what when. What are the activities that are going to make the strategy come to fruition? And it is instantly, it's your brain is amazing. Oh yeah. It's instantly already devised. Number four, a measurement and accountability system that's going to hold you to the plan. You start to walk and you get distracted. You went over here. What does it do? Number five, it quickly corrects what it found in the accountability. So, if you're trying to move anything from here to there, clear on your vision, who are you going to need to help you? Do you need a coach? Do you need a mentor? Do you need a team? Do you need to, what talent? Do you know how you're going to win? Because we start to try to accomplish goals, and we try everything. You got to have a strategy. And that strategy's got to have a plan of the activities. And then you better be measuring not just the goal, measuring are you doing the things every day that move the needle, right? And if you're not, ask why and fix it.
Right. Well, here's what I love about this because we've experienced it here. So, it's part of our operating. Y'all just... Yeah, we love it. But what I love about the framework is you just laid out all five of those. I want the audience to catch that. This is a loop. It repeats. This is how you grow a great organization, right? Because now it's like, okay, boom. It's going to change my vision. My vision might change as a result of the adaptation. That's right. So my vision changes. That's right. And so I... And you might need to change talent. That's exactly right. Well, you're going to have to, right? We've seen lots of stories of how companies, they'll start, and they'll get to a certain point on the backs of some really key people. Yeah. But those people can't take them where they need to go. That's right. So this really is a, it's a cycle that if leaders get this, it keeps you in the right mindset, right on how to lead an organization. I think what's so powerful is its simplicity, but it's repeatability. It's repeatability because it's like the laws of physics, right? I promise you, anything that ever got from here to there might look different, different styles. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were very different. They both did all of these five. Yes. Now, here's the problem. None of us are good at all five. So what we'll do is we'll start down a track and build a company or department in our own image. We might be good at vision. What if you're conflict-avoidant? Accountability is not going to be there. But your business needs it. So maybe you don't do it, but you make sure there are accountability systems happening. And so what we've got to do is monitor the five and ask, "Are all five of these present?" And if I don't naturally lean towards them, that's fine, but they got to be happening somewhere.
And it's universal. I just... Yeah. It just is how plants stay in the air. It's great. And it's not just a leadership construct. This is personal. If I want to lose weight, I want my marriage to heal, I want to be a better parent. It, you can apply "Your Desired Future" to any area of your life where there's a gap. It's how you get the kids to school on time. That's right. You got a vision. You got to engage the talent. If they don't know what they're gonna do, right? And if you're not measuring it and having it, it's not going to happen.
I want to go to the first part of that, which is the vision piece. Uh, you've coached so many leaders, consulted so many organizations, and it, it seems like not all leaders really figure out how to choose a vision or maybe articulate a vision. So derivative off of this, what advice would you give to leaders who may feel like that's me? I'm not sure that I've given my team or my company a good clear vision.
And and that's part of what I try to do in the book. You got this stuff, but then there's you. So there's personal application of the growth steps that we need to make. And and this is where the psychology of humans comes into it. You know, some people, they're not going to be able to come up with a vision until they begin to realize you got limiting beliefs in your head. Yes. That don't just say, "Well, you could never do that." They actually keep the vision from emerging. Right. Here's a fascinating fact. Where did Google come from? I do not know. And if you guessed, you'd say, "What we, well, you know, technology people, they were doing this that." No, Larry Page was a graduate student. He's in Michigan and then Stanford. Larry Page went to a leadership development camp. They taught him a mantra that he said over and over and over, and they kept repeating over and over and over. And he actually used it later in building it. And here was the mantra: "Have a healthy disregard for the impossible." All right. That became his internal world. Wasn't even thinking about there wasn't a Google. Woke up one morning, and he had a thought, "What if we downloaded every URL on the entire internet?" Now, most of us at that time would have gone, "I don't have enough RAM for that. That's impossible. How would you find all these?" No. "Have a healthy disregard for the impossible." Just because you got the noise, who knows? Parenting limiting voices, teachers, culture, your last company, your last boss, your checkbook. There's all these things sometimes will keep your vision from even emerging. And that's how we came up with a search engine. It was the headwork. And most of leadership development is, you know, we focus on skills, and they're very important, but your psyche may be what keeps you from coming up with the vision to limited fear, haven't been exposed enough to have a vision big enough. I work with an organization called First Star in Los Angeles that takes kids from the foster system. 90-something percent never graduate high school, and none of them go to college in the foster system. Basically, they pick them up in the ninth grade. They take them to UCLA for a weekend a month and a week in the summer, and they get to see what a college looks like. Their world wasn't even big enough to know that was a possibility. And then they teach them skills and all this. 99% of them, you go to their website, complete high school, and 90-something percent go to secondary education because they got a vision. But to do that, they had to get out of their little world. And leaders, that's why I love for leaders to go to leadership conferences, go visit in other industries. You find that these things that are suppressing how big your vision could be are mostly in your head, and you don't even know it.
Yeah. Well, folks, what'd you learn today? These conversations are designed for me to learn, and hopefully, you're learning alongside of me. And one takeaway today, there's a lot here, but I love the story Henry shared about his dad. And I wrote down structures. And I'm going to be challenged over the next few days and weeks to make sure that I look at what structures are in play. Maybe some that have developed organically, and then how can I be intentional? Because I'm in a high-stress environment, high-stress role. I've got three kids. All the same stressors that you all have. But I really took something away from Henry's dad, and I'm going to challenge you to do the same. What structures do you need to put in place day in and day out? What does your weekend look like as you recreate yourself? Really own those structures, and I think you'll see stress dive, and I think you'll see overall enjoyment. Really good stuff. I'm going to do that, and I challenge you to do it as well. Henry, my friend, thank you. Always good to be with you. I'm better for this, and I know our audience is as well. We all are from talking about stuff, right? Have fun.