EntreLeadership - The Secret to Being a Confident Leader with Dr. Karyn Gordon

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Dr. Karyn Gordon. Karyn is a bestselling author and a TEDx Talk speaker. She’s also a co-founder and the CEO of DK Leadership—a global leadership coaching company. Karyn talks through ways you can improve your relational and emotional intelligence so you can lead your team well. Then, she highlights the different confidence mindsets and how we can all work toward a healthy mindset. Later in the episode, George chats with Dr. John Delony, a Ramsey Personality and #1 national bestselling author. He unpacks three things that are killing your confidence and how to overcome them. You’ll learn: •      The real reason people are leaving their jobs •      The three most common types of leaders •      An illustration that reveals the kind of leader you are •      The three confidence killers that leaders overlook Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      DK Leadership’s website: https://bit.ly/3IWlXuU •      Dr. Karyn Gordon’s TEDx Talk: https://bit.ly/3ommrAZ •      The Three Chairs by Dr. Karyn Gordon: https://bit.ly/3Psk5ww •      The EQ Leadership Scorecard: https://bit.ly/3cxLqii •      Own Your Past, Change Your Future by Dr. John Delony: https://bit.ly/3DsDhoJ •      Learn more about Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/30CezmJ •      Listen to The Dr. John Delony Show: https://apple.co/3DxVdxt •      Learn more about EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/33aF7Nd Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, why confidence is the secret to great leaders at work and home. Then, three things you don't even realize are killing your confidence and how to overcome them. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcasts from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. I'm excited to introduce my guest today, Dr. Karen Gordon. She's a best-selling author, TED Talk Speaker, and CEO and co-founder of DK Leadership. Now, here at Entree Leadership, we say business is easy until people get involved. And in the book, we talk about how a huge indicator of success is your relational intelligence,

which is your ability to get along with others to achieve shared goals. So we wanted to have Dr. Karen on to talk through ways we can improve our relational and emotional intelligence so that we can lead our teams to success. She's going to walk us through an illustration that highlights the different confidence mindsets and how we can all work towards a healthy confidence. So let's jump in. Here's our conversation.

Well, Dr. Karen, it's so good to have you. Came highly recommended from one of my favorite people and past Entree leadership guests, Carrie Newhoff. So we said we have to get Dr. Karen on the podcast. Well, Carrie is one of my favorite people. So that is, I greatly appreciate the compliment. He's a huge mentor, colleague and somebody certainly had that I look up to as well. And a fellow Canadian at that.

Yes. Yeah, you're going to hear my Canadian accent. There's certain kind of words that I say, I kind of forget because most of the work I do is in the States, but there's certain words that my American friends and clients would kind of like, ah, there it is. There's a Canadian. It kind of slips out, yeah. That's awesome. Well, as of late, you recently did a TED talk that has been a smash success and our team got to watch that incredible stuff. What was that experience like? Oh, it was a lot of work. For anybody who's ever done a TED Talk, you know exactly with what I'm talking about. I had no idea of how intense it was going to be. I mean, I've been a professional speaker for over 20 years, but I've never written a script ever for any of my keynotes.

And, you know, with a TED Talk, you get assigned coaches, you get assigned mentors. There's weekly rehearsals. You have to write out a full script. I was like, wow, this is like intense. So anybody was a great experience. I love it. And for me, the biggest gift was just, you know, I'm really a teacher at heart. I'm an educator.

I'd love to teach and inspire. And for me to do a TED Talk was just such an honor because it allows me to teach to the global classroom, right? So it was a real honor, real true honor to be invited into that community. Yeah, that is a bucket list item for sure. And I assume there was a lot of pageantry behind it, just getting to that moment. And you did great. It's got, you know, hundreds of thousands of views.

So I want to encourage our listeners to check that out after we're done here. And we're going to just scratch the surface of some of this incredible content that you mentioned there. And really, we're focusing on. why confidence is such a secret to great leaders, both at work and at home. And so you talk a lot about this. And I heard you quote the Gallup research stat that said 50% of employees leave their job to get away from their manager. So it sounds to me like there is a leadership crisis out there. We've always had bad management and leaders out there. Right, right. But what do you make of all this? Well, I think it's, you know, science is always an interesting thing. And I, what I love to do is I love to

take science and good research and simplify it so it's really easy for people to understand. And then we know with what to do with it to make a practical, right? So, so, you know, for anybody, for any of us that work outside of the home, we all know that, that boss, that manager, that all of a sudden we're like, we just want to get rid of. Like, we no longer want to come into the office. And so I think it's, you know, it's something we've always known, but I think now people are making different decisions about their career. You know, before it was around money and it was around status. And certainly within the next generation, they're looking more for meeting. They're looking for purpose. people want balance. So we're seeing a real shift happen in terms of how people are making decisions. And so now what's happening is people aren't going to, they're not going to tolerate. They're like, you know what? I, you know, 70% of engagement scores is now predicted by the quality of the manager. And so for all businesses and leadership, we have to properly equip leaders and managers, otherwise they're going to have a major engagement and retention problem.

Yeah, you're going to see a lot of leaks in employee retention and engagement. And that you're just like you mentioned, you know, we have a buyers and sellers, market and real estate, and we're seeing that it's an employee's market today where they're getting to call the shots and go, I want flexibility. I want to do this on my terms. And so as leaders, you know, you don't have to bend over backwards, but we have to look in the mirror and go, what's going on in our world that we can control to become better leaders so that when employees do show up, they stay. You're absolutely right. And it's interesting because I've been doing this work for 25 years. My doctor's in marriage and family. I actually started working with families. I'm actually a registered therapist. I worked with teenagers, millennials for the first 10 years.

in Canada, I became quite well known because my work was sponsored. I started writing books and doing television. And it was 15 years ago, George, when millennials entered the workforce that a lot of the companies that were sponsored through my work, they started calling me saying, Karen, you know your doctor's in family systems. Could you take what you know from family systems and integrate into organizational systems? Because our managers are having problems. They don't understand this next generation.

People are showing up late. They're quitting. They want all this feedback. Our managers don't know what to do. And that's when I actually started shifting and expanding our work as a company to really look more at the organizational context. And it was when I started researching and looking at great leaders, great managers, what is it that makes great managers? What is it that makes great leaders? And as I looked and I dug into it, it became super clear.

The secret sauce was emotional intelligence. And managers and leaders that had that, they had really great retention. And the great thing about EQ, it's learnable. We can all learn it. This is not, it's not like IQ that's more genetic. EQ is actually a set of learned skills. There's five core skills. And one of the core skills is confidence.

And that's kind of how confidence kind of fits into this big puzzle around leadership. Well, when you think of the word confidence, a lot of people have a, you know, there's a stereotype that, well, leaders are just inherently confident. They make decisions quickly. They carry themselves well. But you have a different picture of what true confidence, healthy confidence in a leader looks like. Yes. So it's interesting. So people can appear confident, okay?

And you're absolutely right. So a lot of times people, and even on the TED Talk, when people were actually watching the TED Talk and they were actually commenting, they're like, wow, it actually makes me really start thinking about what confidence actually looks like because people can have this persona that they're confident. And what the cool thing is about my background,

because I started as a therapist, and I still practice very part-time. But, you know, the thing about a counseling office is that the masks come off, okay? And all of a sudden, people that can appear very confident and very put together in these high performers, in my office, they talk about their insecurity, their imposter syndrome, their massive anxiety, their depression, their marriage falling apart. And what appears as confidence is not necessarily

with what actually confidence is. And so I talk about in the TED Talk, I talk about in my book, the three chairs, that real confidence is a mindset. It's the attitude that we actually have of herself. It's a person that thinks, I know a lot, but I don't know everything. I have strengths, but I've got weaknesses. And I'm going to lean into those weaknesses. And the secret with the confident mindset is that there's humility with it. And because of the humility, they're more open for feedback. They're more open to hear from their customer, their spouses, their children. And this has to be an ongoing discipline, really, in terms of for all of us to really kind of focus on developing confidence for ourselves, our team, actually, our family as well.

Yeah, there's this middle ground, sweet spot, Goldilocks balance that we need as leaders. Yes. You talk about this in the book, The Three Chairs, and of course, your TED Talk based on that. So unpack the three chairs model for us and how every leader naturally sits in one of those chairs. Sure. So I'll give you a backstory and I talk about this on the TED Talk. So the story started in my second year of practice when I was working with teenagers and I started noticing that a lot of teenagers struggle with self-esteem. So I love research. I love data. So I started pouring through the research to find out what was actually, what had already been done about the research about confidence and had that affected decision making. And as I was kind of pouring through the research, I saw this

crazy pattern on three distinctive attitudes. And I thought, wow, it's so powerful, but it's sitting in dusty journal shelves in libraries, academic libraries. So I thought, how can I make this come alive? So I created this very simple model called the three chairs that I call the three chairs, which is what the TED talks about. So I'm going to show the visual, because I think like a lot of your your listeners are visual learners. Are you a visual learner? Absolutely. Okay. So I am as well. I'm off the chart visual. So for me, I needed to create a model that was visual because I wanted people actually see it. So I'm going to show it just so that everybody can

actually see it. there's essentially three different chairs or three different types of leaders or three different types of confidences. So I'm going to kind of quickly go through each one. And I want everybody to think to themselves, what chair sounds like you? Which confidence or mindset actually sounds like you the majority of the time. Okay. So the left chair is what I call the blind attitude. That's the person that they put themselves down. They're hard of themselves. They're critical. They can be sometimes just really, really tough on themselves. So they can appear confident. But in their own headspace, they are blind to their own strengths.

Okay, then you've got the one on the right. That's what I call the arrogant leader. They're cocky. They're arrogant. They are full of themselves. They don't care what they say and how it impacts actually other people. And the one then in the middle chair is what I call the confident attitude or the mindset. And that's the person that they feel really good about themselves.

They have confidence. They know their strengths. They know their weaknesses. They're working on their weaknesses. And they have that humble mindset. So these are the three different chairs. I've taught this as young as kindergarten students. all the way to Fortune 500 CEOs. It is so simple, and that's almost the magic of it.

And so when I teach it, the first thing I try to get people to do is, what chair do you see yourself sitting in the majority of the time? Because all of us are moving around. And then the second part of the question is think about how that mindset now impacts, how you feel and your decision making. So how does that mindset impact things like goal setting, dating, who you're going to choose as a partner, feedback, conflict, because it's so consistent the research, and that's what the book is filled with. I showed the research on, if somebody says, okay, Karen, I'm sitting in the left chair, I connect with that.

I can make very strong predictions on how they're going to make decisions based on research. It actually almost gives people goosebumps when they actually start reading it, because I can almost, it's not, I mean, the thing about psychology and all of this is it's not black and white, right? I can't say, if you're in the left chair, this is going to happen. But I can say, based on science, if you're in the left chair, this is more likely to happen.

And so that's the second part, that awakening, that awareness going, wow, which chair am I seeing in and how does it impact my life? It's wild to think about how many decisions we make as leaders subconsciously based on some of the unhealthy places we find ourselves in. So it's really important to look in that mirror and have the self-awareness to go, I see myself. I can see how my team might even perceive me this way. So I love this model. I want to make it real by going through a few different scenarios, kind of a lightning round. And you tell us how each of the chair might react or look like. So let's start with communication.

So if you're in the left chair, how would you communicate if you're in that blind seat? Okay. So if you're in the left chair, blind attitude, if there's conflict, you really notice it actually in conflict. The left chair, usually they either stay quiet. They are passive. They will avoid the problem or they're not going to go to. So let's say if I'm in this chair and George, let's say you do something that bothers me, I'm not going to go talk to you.

I'll either keep it to myself or I'm going to talk till Susan over here or Brittany. So what have I just done? I've just created a triangle. It's what we call triangulation. It's all classical backstabbing, you know, passive-aggressive. But that's very popular is that they don't have the confidence to go talk to the person directly. If I'm in the right chair, I will basically go to you and I'll tell you off. I'll attack you and I will blame you and I'm not interested to listen to your perspective.

If I'm in the middle chair, I'm more likely to be assertive. I'm more likely to lean into the situation. I'm more like to pick up the phone saying, George, you know what, I really want to have a chat about this. I keep it between one-on-one. Okay, I'm not involving anybody else. and I'm going to be focused on problem solving and listening to your perspective. So if you just take that one example,

just one example, for everybody listening, just think about how much time is wasted in organizations and in families because we do not know how to deal with conflict. And the root of the conflict issue is actually with where we sit. So we have to teach ourselves, our families, our teams, we need to learn how to sit in that middle chair

and learn actually how to deal with conflict. And so that mindset in the middle is, you know, part of it is that they're feedback hungry, Because they have that humility, they're open to feedback. The ones on the left and the right, they're very feedback, fragile. It's very hard to give them feedback because they personalize it. So, you know, everything becomes a big drama. And so it's amazing on how this skill not only solves problems, but actually saves a lot of time.

Well, connected to that, let's talk about stress. That's a big one for leaders out there. Yeah. What do the chairs look like in stress? Yeah. So, again, a great question. So what's interesting is the left and the right chair, they don't tend to be great at setting boundaries because they want to win the approval of other people. So they tend to be yes,

yes, yes, yes. They take on more things. They have a harder time setting boundaries because they want to win that approval. The person in the middle chair, they have a stronger sense around what their boundaries are, what they need, how to refuel. So because of that, they have a stronger ability to say, I'm going to say yes to these priorities. I'm going to say no to these things that are not my priorities. And if people are upset about it, that's unfortunate. But I need to take care of myself as a leader in order that I can give more to my team. And so they don't feel guilty for taking time off. They do not feel guilty for saying no. It's a very different mindset. And so as a result, they can perform at a very high level with lowered stress. And for anybody just listening to thinking,

okay, this is really interesting. I want to learn more about where I'm at in the chair. I've got to, I forgot to mention this. I've got a wonderful free scorecard, a leadership scorecard. It's on our website, dKleadership.org, and you can download it for yourself for your team. And it helps, it's a one-page or just helps leaders do a quick assessment of which chair are they sitting in. And maybe what are the different skills they actually have to work on to help themselves sit in the middle chair. Super practical. We'll make sure to link that in the show notes. Thank you for that. Yeah, perfect. So I've heard you say something to the effect of how you respond and react is a reflection of your confidence.

So talk to us about the relationship between your attitude, your feelings, and then your behavior that comes out of that. Yeah, this part is just so exciting. You know, when we think about the mental health crisis that we're in, right? And we're, you know, anxiety and stress and all this like the heaviness. And when I started practicing 25 years ago, I realized there, again, there's so much research, but it had to be practical. If things are impractical, people don't know what to do with it.

And if they don't know what to do with, they're not going to make any changes. So so much of really with what I do, whether it's podcast or books or speaking, it's teaching, it's education. It's simplifying psychology and science in a way that people actually can really get it. So for everybody who is visual learn, I want you to visualize for me a head, a heart, and a hand. Okay, so this is how everything's kind of interconnected. So we have our head or a thought.

So the thoughts that we tell ourselves, that's our mindset. Our mindset will drive how we feel and how we feel drives our behavior. So, George, let me kind of give you an example. Let's say I'm 35 years old. I'm doing fairly well in my career. but one of my thoughts is I need to be perfect. I need to be perfect. Okay, so if that's one of my thoughts,

how do you think that's then going to impact how I feel? What's your guess? I know I'm putting you on the spot. You're like, oh, dear, I didn't know I was going to be quizzed. You'll never feel like you're enough at that point. You'll always fail. Right, right. So I have to be perfect.

So I will feel probably insecure. I will probably feel anxious. So anxiety for everybody listening is correlated with perfection. So it'll probably feel insecure, anxious, nervous, scared. And if I have those feelings, how then do you think that's going to impact my behavior? What do you think is the ripple effect? Well, you'll probably behave a little bit irrationally to try to at least have the perception that you're succeeding and that you're perfect. Yes, exactly. And so what we often find with that ripple effect is I will probably

do one of two things. I will either become this overachiever trying to kind of be perfect, or I'll probably stop trying. And I won't even do anything because I know that it's unrealistic. And so that's how our thoughts drive our feelings, which drive our performance. So performance is so connected to our mindset. And so that's why all leaders, when we talked about leadership at working at home, and this is completely applicable to all parts of our life, we have to really be focused and mindful of what are the thoughts that we tell ourselves.

Are they empowering? Are they truthful? Or are they toxic? And are they disempowering? Because if we are feeding ourselves poison, we're going to feel very, very, terrible about ourselves, and that's going to really negatively impact our decision-making. So as we, you know, strive to work towards that middle chair, of course, we can't be in that chair 100% of the time. But what's at stake if we ignore this, if we aren't working towards that?

If we're not working towards this, what will happen is, well, we can go through all the different categories. We're going to waste a lot of time and energy, a time and energy on conflict and drama, because if that's what's going to happen on the two, those sort of waste of time, problems are actually not solved. Your relationships will really suffer massively because in relationship, and this is actually really interesting, the left and the right chair are usually attracted to each other in friendships, in part for spouses and partners, and even business partners. It's very interesting in terms of how we'll have major issues around marriage and relationships. In terms of our goal setting, our goal setting will probably be either like really too high or too low, more likely to struggle with mental health

issues. And so much around what we do as an organization is helping people, and all ages, George, and this is the really important thing. Like, people think you have to be, you know, a manager, supervise. No, you start teaching this to children. You know, I started teaching this to teenagers and then actually realize I could actually teach it to children. I mean, I now teach as young as five years old. So you can actually start teaching this so young and just starting the mindset around. And, you know, one of the things you can do, even as a leader and all parents listening, is once you can watch the TED talk and you can kind of see the different chairs, start having conversations about it, start leading into conflict saying, okay, in that conflict, where are we sitting?

You know, we're we sitting in the middle chair for that conflict? We're we actually sitting in the right or the left? And all of a sudden, this model becomes this visual, this framework that all of a sudden can start leaning into it so that we can actually be starting to make healthier decisions. Yeah, it's incredible to think across the board, especially with the mental health crisis. I mean, even children finding that healthy confidence at a young age, what kind of leaders will they turn into. I mean, that could change an entire society. So I love the work you're doing. It's so powerful. And for the self-aware leader who's going, all right, Dr. Karen, I know I lean towards

that right or left seat. I want to work towards that seat. How would you give us one step they can take and coach them to take a step towards that? It's a great question. I was speaking at a women in leadership conference yesterday, and that was actually one of the questions. It was women of three hundred amazing women leaders. And a lot of them during the Q&A, they were putting their hand up going, you know what? People think I sit here, but I'm not. I'm sitting here. here. Like it was very interesting. And then some people actually acknowledge here, but there's a lot of people that said, I, at work, I sit in the middle. But when I go home, I sit on that left chair. And that's the fascinating thing. We can kind of move to different chairs, depending on different environments.

So there's a few different ways. But one of the first things I encourage people to do to really help herself, first of all, is the awareness, start becoming aware of like, okay, when I'm at home, I'm sitting in the middle. So what am I doing? So you start becoming aware. Or if we're maybe with their in-laws, and all of a and we're like, we go to kind of the left chair or with certain friends, we go to the left chair. So just having the awareness, George is kind of like step number one. The second step I really encourage people to think about

is start being mindful on examples of great people, great leaders, great friends, spouses, colleagues that are sitting in the middle chair. Because if we can start making a list of people that are already sitting in the middle chair, the second that we have real people, real stories, and we can actually surround ourselves and spend time with these people,

will learn so much because it really is like a language. Like leadership, and really with what I'm teaching, and this is leadership, emotional intelligence. Like that really was, like, confidence is part of it, but it really is a model for leadership emotional intelligence because it's like a language. So George of I said to you, okay, the research has said that to lead a successful life, however people define that, you have to learn French. You're like, okay, so you could like read some books on French, you could kind of like,

hang it with a couple people, or you could just go to France and immerse yourself. And that's going to be the fastest way for you to really. learn it. And that's kind of like this topic. If you can surround yourself with other people who are sitting in the middle chair, you'll learn all kinds of things, how they set goals, how they deal with bad feedback, how they set boundaries, how they say no, how they prioritize their time. And just by surrounding ourselves with other people will learn so much. And then the third tip that I'd really encourage people to think of is think of times in your life where you have sat in the middle chair. And what have you done? What was the mindset? What did you tell yourself? What kind of

it kind of gave you the courage in terms of responding. And that sometimes is a really great framework actually as well. I mean, the book gives like lots of other ways for people to build it. But that's, those are kind of a few little nuggets just to help people get started. And like I said, the scorecard is really helpful on our website because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, because it really, also areas that actually you have to work on as well. Yeah, it sounds like it comes down to paying attention, surrounding yourself with great leaders, being really observant, and being willing to work on those things when you do see them. So we covered a little bit of ground here, a lot of it, but there's still so much more. So we're going to make sure to link all of your resources, the book, the TED Talk, the scorecard in the show notes for our listeners. But Dr. Karen, you were doing some incredible, incredible work. We're so grateful to have you on the podcast today.

Thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much, George. Thank you, Dr. Karen, for an incredible conversation. If you want to get a copy of her book, The Three Chairs, How Great Leaders Drive Communication, Performance, and Engagement, just use the link in the show notes. So Dr. Karen helped us define healthy confidence as a leader. But what about the things that are killing your confidence? What are the top things you may not even realize are holding you back?

We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I talked with Dr. John Deloney. He's a Ramsey personality and number one bestselling author of Own Your Past, Change Your Future. He's going to unpack a few things that are killing your confidence and how to overcome them. Here's our conversation. The good doctor's in the house. How are you, John? I'm good. Has anyone ever said that to you?

Not one time. That's the first time that sentence has ever been uttered. Call it a win. It's a win. So we're talking about confidence today. Where would you rate your confidence level? Strong or quite strong. Actually, I kind of run kind of medium. I feel confident about some things.

Some things I am incredibly inept. But this interview you feel real good about. Yeah, I like hanging out with you, man. Okay, that means a lot. Well, let's get into it, John. A lot of leaders out there. We all think we're confident, right? On some level, if you're a leader, you're leading people,

there's an inherent level of confidence you need to have that seat. Oh, man, I've been around. There's insecurity. Most leaders I've been around struggle with confidence. But they would say in a group of people, oh, yeah, I feel confident. Yes, yeah. But beneath the surface, beneath a thin veneer, there's a lot going on. Yeah, a bunch.

So let's talk about some of these confidence cases. and how we can overcome them. Okay. What's the number one thing you go, this is leaders struggle with this and they're not talking about it? I think leaders struggle with competency. They don't know what they're doing.

You are really good at building houses and suddenly they move you, they quote unquote, promote you. They give you more money in a fancier title, and now you're in the air conditioning, and now you're over all the people that build houses. And it's a different skill set. Or you've been a great plumber

and you get recognized for that, and now they put you as a team leader over 14 other plumbers. That's a different job. And so most of the time when you get moved to a leadership role, we don't have the skill set to be humble. We don't have the skill set to say, hey, I need to learn something new. And so we just do the skills that we already have,

harder and faster, right? So I'm just going to squeeze this wrench even tighter on these people, or I'll just do it myself, or I'll holler and yell because that worked in the job site, but that doesn't work in the HR room, right? And so the number one confidence skill I see is people just don't have the skill set. I'm thinking of myself one time I was over all of the housing at a university, all the residence halls, the maintenance, the building, they're getting students in, getting them out, all the stuff. And I had to turn in a performer for a new residence hall.

Like how are we going to build this thing? How much are you going to cost? What's the debt service going to be? How can we cash for this thing? And I didn't know anything about Excel. I didn't know anything about like... Pivot tables? I didn't even heard that.

I thought a pivot table is a dance move, right? And so I turned this performer in to the president, who was a former CFO, on a word document. And I italicized some words in it. To make it fancy? Yes. And I'll never forget. He just held the paper up, and he looked at it like, I'd handed him a plate with a dog turd on. He just looked at it and was like, what is this?

And so from that moment, I was like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. and I actually hired a senior accounting major to sneak into my office and teach me how to do Excel. There was a set of skills I didn't know. And then when I learned Excel, I felt like the whole world opened up to me, right? But it was a skill set that I didn't have, and I was running multimillion-dollar budgets,

and so I needed to learn that skill. And once I got this skill, I was instantly more confident than what I was doing. So learning those hard skills is a way to overcome that lack of competency. And it's soft skills, right? That will give you the confidence.

Yeah. And all of that starts with humility. What do I not know to do this job? up well. There's some self-awareness there. Big time. Awesome. And we teach a lot of that here at Entre leadership to help people with that, which is awesome. So next up, we have another form of something we do to overcome our lack of confidence, which is getting more and more data and information. We are obsessed with more info. I heard it recently said, and I loved it, that data has become our new antidote to anxiety. I just need to have one more cup of coffee. I'm going to watch one more

TED Talk. I'm going to read one more leadership book and one more after that and then one more after that and one more after that. And we're trying to cram more charts and more graphs into our heads as a as a like a security blanket laying over the fact that we don't know what we're doing or that business is bananas or that the work environment or the economy's in the trash or whatever's going on, we just think more data is going to help us. And more data is good to an extent, but after that it just drowns you, right? It's just noise. And then being able to determine the signal to noise ratio becomes almost impossible, right? this is important for me like you and I've talked about this like I've got just a slogan that gets me through my life and that is I've got a guy and Dave came in the other day Ramzan was talking to us about how bond markets are not tied in any mechanistic way to the Fed rates but the Fed rates affect the bond market rates and he was walking us through the mechanics of that number one I was like man that guy's real smart he's not just on the radio he's like real smart but number two I will never be

Google anything about bond rates. I'll never watch a YouTube video on bond rates. I'll never watch a TED talk. Because I got a guy. If I have a bond rate question, I'll ask Dave. And I'll just move on with my life. If I have a hair product question, I've got a guy. Can't call me.

George Campbell. I'm going to ask George, right? If I got a guitar question, I ask my friend Will, I don't spend hours and hours and hours trying to get to the right fit. I just have a person in my life. Some of my closest friends are banker or an HVAC. guy or somebody who runs a ranch. I ask them questions about ranching and banking and H-FAC, and it just limits the drama in my life. And the questions and all of this goes back to

got to have people and you got to have people that you get good wisdom from and you got to accept that wisdom and move on with your life. Yeah, because in that isolation, there's a lot of negative self-talk and we have no one else to kind of show us reality. Yeah, there's a great Carl Jung quote, a famous psychologist, and I'm going to butcher a little bit, but if you don't know who you are, there's plenty of other people who will tell you. And so you've got to have a group of people that you trust that speak into your life,

and you have to begin to build your, like, this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm not good at, and then I'm just going to head off into the world, man. I'm not going to keep going for more information and keep watching the news and scrolling and scrolling and scroll. That's a recipe for madness. And that's one of the benefits of our advisory groups

that are part of Entray Leadership Elite, where you're around like-minded business owners with our coaches helping you navigate this wild, wild west of business. And you go, oh, I'm not alone. I'm not crazy. Oh, he's done this. They're doing it, right? And so someone says, hey, I have a business deal.

I went and sat in on one of the advisory groups. It was a riot, number one. In the chat, I was watched, they were all talking, and it was great conversation, but in the chat, they were talking trash about each other. And I was like, these guys are actually friends, too, right? So they're building relationships, which is critical. But if one person's about to have to fire somebody, it's not like, well, I'm not going to Google how to fire somebody.

And I'm going to watch 17 TED talks on how to fire somebody because you're going to get 17 different things from 17 different experts. You got five or six men or women who are like, no, I fired somebody yesterday. It was hard. And this is what I had to do. Or I did it like this and it was a disaster. Don't do this. And so you have a group of people who are living it and doing it.

And that brings me to what I would say is the last big issue with confidence and leaders is a leadership is isolating. You just end up by yourself. And if you've been around me, I don't know the entree, who's been around me, I just harp on this over and over. But when your body recognizes it's lonely, man, it causes chaos. It just rings every bell you've got. And if you feel like I have to, like I'm thinking back to old tribes, I've got to go get

the food, I have to prepare the food. I've got to watch out for the children. I've got to do security. You can't. You can't do everything. And so you ends up feeling unconfident across your entire platform because you don't have other people in your life. You've got to get other people.

So if there was something you said, a leader's listening to go, John, I know I suffer from one or more of these things and it's killing my confidence. What would be a step to take to get in the right direction? There is none, zero, no long-term behavior change done in isolation. So I would tell people, start number one with a group, get some people in your life. Whether that's a formal group, like an advisory group, whether that's a couple of friends in your neighborhood. I do think proximity is really important to having people that you just do life with on the regular. and then you begin to humbly talk through, what skills do I not have? Like, dude, now I'm running like an organization. I've never done this. Or my favorite is, I just had a kid, and now I'm a dad.

I don't know what that is. My dad didn't show up. I don't have this skill set so we can freak out or just abandon or just watch Netflix, or I can dig in and learn those skills, how to be a dad, how to be a mom. What are those things I need to do?

So getting with a group, learning those skills, and then over time, being very careful about the information we allow into our heads because those stories that other people tell us over time become the stories

we tell ourselves. Powerful stuff. Well, John, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Always love having you on. Thanks, man. I feel a little more confident, standing a little taller already.

Do you? No, I'm 5'6. I'm not going anymore. Appreciate you. Wow, two doctors on one show. That is a lot of PhDs in one episode. If you guys want to hear more from Dr. John, be sure to check out the Dr. John Deloney's show wherever you listen to podcasts

or on YouTube. And if you want to see Dr. John Deloney live talking about how your mental health affects your business, join us in Nashville for Entre Leadership Master's series this fall, September 25th through the 29th. He's going to be taking the stage alongside some other great speakers as we teach the Ramsey Playbook for business. If you want to learn more or register, go to Entreeleadership.com slash EMS or use the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, do us a quick favor. Follow or subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. And if you're feeling extra kind, please share this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media.

All of that helps us impact more people and more leaders like you. And be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership wherever you hang out on social media. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.