Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - John Donovan, AT&T Communications CEO
Episode Date: October 17, 2018This week’s conversation is with John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications.He’s responsible for the bulk of AT&T’s global telecommunications and video services businesses, includ...ing AT&T’s Business, Entertainment, and Technology & Operations groups.AT&T is a global leader in telecommunications with 100 million U.S. consumer connections and millions of businesses, from the smallest companies to nearly all of the Fortune 1000.John manages over 250,000 people. Think about that for a second.What’s the key to running an organization this large?For John, it starts with knowing his values and what he stands for.This creates a certain space that allows him to be grounded and present more often.In this conversation, John shares how he got so clear on who he is and what he’s striving for.It took some difficult, lonely work to sort it out and I hope you are currently embracing that same process._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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pro today. So the analogy between sports where you do so much work and business, they're identical
because it's still about relationships and performance and everybody being their best self.
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help others be their best self. And then all of a sudden you get around an organization who are
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work this morning or whether you're going over to the field, it's the goal, whether you're going to, you know, to work this morning or whether
you're going over to the field, you know, it's the same thing. All right, welcome back or welcome to
the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training,
a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create.
And my partner in that venture is head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Pete Carroll. And the whole
idea behind this podcast is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. And that's it.
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That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications.
John's responsible for the bulk of AT&T's global telecommunications and video services business,
including AT&T's business entertainment and technology and operations groups.
He's got a massive workforce that he is serving in his words.
And as you know, AT&T is a global leader in telecommunications with over 100 million US
customer connections and millions, I mean, millions of businesses from the smallest companies
to nearly all of the fortune 1000 companies. We're on the sidelines for the Seattle Seahawks game
and the stadium, CenturyLink Stadium, holds about 68,000 people. And so we looked up and I said,
how many stadiums like this do you fill for your workforce? And he did the math and he said, yeah,
yeah, it's somewhere around four. And it's just next time you're at a NFL stadium or you're at a large stadium where there's
like 60, 70, 80,000 people, just imagine what it's like to manage all of them, let alone
four times that.
It's an outrageous idea.
And what's the key to running an organization this large?
And for John, it starts with knowing his values and knowing what he stands for.
And that just jumps out of this conversation.
And it creates a certain space that allows him to be grounded and humble and more present more often. And in this conversation, John shares how he got just really clear on who he is. And
there's no hesitation. There is no half-stepping. There is just clarity, deep clarity on who he is and what he's striving and working toward.
Now, this doesn't just happen by chance.
And it took time for him, difficult, lonely work to sort it out.
And I hope that you're currently embracing that same process.
And so with that, let's jump right into this conversation with John.
John, how are you? i'm doing great thanks michael
i gotta just say that i've appreciated not not only the conversations and the time we spent but
the way that you work and you've got a curious way you've got incredible eye contact where you're
trying to be with a person in their journey as even I'm speaking right now. And it feels like when we have conversations that you're wanting to work right
below the surface of this part of the conversation and then it unfolds in some
way. And then you want to go a little bit deeper beyond that part of the
conversation.
Is that close to being right on how you organize your relationships with
people?
Some yes, some no. Yes. In the,
from the standpoint of I think that everybody
I'm speaking with needs my undivided attention. That may be a defect in me or it may be a habit.
Either way, it's just at this point how I do things. I don't think that I think any certain
way. I'm just in the moment. So above, below, surface, not, and those things,
they just, they come. It's all flow for me. So what, how do you organize or think about
relationships? Because when you're giving undivided attention, it's one of the greatest
gifts we can give to another person. And are there, is there an approach before your undivided
attention? Is there something that's happening before that? Or are you literally wanting it to
unfold and then you're feeling and seeing and hearing and feeling and hearing and seeing and
then adjusting accordingly? Well, I think like most things that, um that even if you don't see your own pattern, you're in a pattern.
So I think it's a legit question that everybody should have placed on them at some point saying, how are you managing your relationships?
I think the first thing is prioritization.
And that should where you spend your time should have the prioritization that creates a balanced relationship.
You're going to learn a little.
You're going to teach a little.
You enjoy spending time with people.
They enjoy spending time with you.
And so if you don't start with a simpatico up front, then it's kind of hard to create that on the fly.
That's kind of what happens at the vegetable aisle, at the grocery store, or late at night at a bar.
But the ones that are more structured are you start by saying, I really want to spend time with that person.
And you manage your schedule accordingly.
Now, there's going to be some new things you deal with every day.
So I try every day to have a little bit of meeting with familiar people and talking about familiar subjects to operate in that comfort zone.
And then I think it's really important that you sort of pause.
And for me, just that little moment of sending you a good intention to start every conversation.
And I try, and I'm not perfect, but I try each time I greet someone to have a small intention that's to their benefit.
And that locks me in.
And that's just this little habit that says start and end every conversation with a small offer to that person, a mental offer, an intention that's for their benefit, for the betterment of their life. And if you do that, it's sort of you have these
partitions in your conversations that make sure that the last one's gone,
the next one doesn't re-enter, and that you finish it appropriately.
How long have you been practicing that?
For as long as I can remember.
Where'd you learn that?
That's a good question. Probably it started when I was in college and my aunt,
who's now 107 and a half, bought me a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Andrew
Carnegie. And I learned the value of unlocking the empathetic part of what you're thinking and granting that person those small gifts of really
good thinking. It may be as simple as, I like your hair today. I love those shoes. It creates
an empathetic thought process. And so I've sort of started that habit while I was in college and most of it stuck with me or maybe built from
there. And then what is underneath the surface of you wanting to do that? Because of all the
ways that you could spend your focus, your energy, your attention, what I hear you saying is that I
want to connect and I want to do good. I want to do right by somebody by sending them some sort of just even momentarily
engagement about their benefit. Well, I think I try very hard in most situations to not let myself
have two tracks of thinking. I try not to be thinking about my reaction to your question before I finish hearing your question.
So I think many of those alternative thoughts that can come along, that track can either be counterproductive, distracting, all kinds of things it can be, none of them great. That track is also available for erasure and reprogramming.
And when you reprogram it to simple methods that allow you to connect better,
then you start to see that that's the most powerful thing you have is that subconscious track.
While you're in a conscious and interactive conversation, that subconscious track is the most powerful
thing, in my opinion, that you own.
When you're in tough situations, it's the control that says, no matter what you do to
me as a human being, I control my reaction to that.
And I always try to tell my kids, not only do you have control of that, it's the greatest
freedom you have.
It's also unlimited in its how long you have to respond, how you use it.
And so then when you start to gather control of that, I think it changes fundamentally how you interact, how you connect with people.
What does that mean, the control piece at the end?
The beginning part, are you from, I'm going to ask a question.
I'm 99% sure that you know the answer.
Viktor Frankl's work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In Search for Meaning.
And he's got a beautiful line about there's a stimulus and a response.
And the space between those two, the choices that we make and the response that we have is what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. That is what makes
us human, that we have that choice. So in that space between stimulus and response, what I hear
you doing is that when the stimulus, meaning the beginning of a question or a conversation,
that you're priming the beginning of that stimulus with love, with empathy, with kindness. And then that frees you to be locked in to whatever the nuances of
the texture of that, those unfolding moments are. And I'm not sure if you're calibrating,
meaning that you are feeling something as the language or the environment is unfolding from
the other person, if you're calibrating with yourself or you're fully just giving yourself into what's taking place across from you that's a very psychologist
scientific well it is description um but i'll play along yeah okay and i'm not qualified maybe
to answer that but i'll give you some thoughts on it.
Yeah.
And I just want to know how you work because it's extraordinary.
It was striking the first time we met.
And that's the part of this conversation.
And I'm excited that we're right into it right at the beginning of this.
So when I look at that, I mean, a lot of people talk about having a vibe, a good vibe, a bad vibe.
You know, we're on the same vibe.
I like your vibe.
The science of that really is about frequency.
And I think the most important thing is you find the other person's frequency.
My objective in most conversations is to lower the frequency by taking all the friction out. And so, you know, look, if you jump out of
the psychological view of this, it was really simple. In 2013, I said, all I want to do this
year is notice my ego. And it was what I said, that's a very weird objective. That was a
professional objective. I wanted to notice my ego. Now,
it turns out you can't notice your ego without being offended by it. You can't not be disgusted
by it. You have a propensity to fix it. But if you can't observe it and notice when you're driven by
it, when you didn't really need to say that, when you over-contributed, when you stepped on someone
else. So that was almost an entire year. And I was recapping every hour's meeting saying,
where and how did my ego get involved? And then in 2014, I decided to notice the ego in others.
And I just wanted to identify in others when that wasn't really Michael, that was
Michael's ego, the second track. That second track is now affecting your interaction with me,
and I'm going to forgive all actions that are born from that, or that I recognize were born from that.
And because of the sequence that I did it in with an entire year of observing my own,
I started to recognize its many disguises. It can be a ventriloquist,
it can be a mime, it can play all these different roles. And so then when you begin to notice it in
others, and then you immediately forgive it, because you can't forgive your own and not
forgive the other, it's fundamentally changing this background track. And then in 2015, the objective was to build an ego-free zone.
And that fundamentally changed everything. Because I'm not going to bring my own,
and I'm going to forgive yours. Then suddenly, when I immediately recognize yours and forgive it,
then you drop yours. And now all of a sudden,
we have an ego-free zone, and then it gets very real very quickly. And when you're there,
then the earlier statement about the sort of vibe, and you calibrate, that is the calibration.
The calibration is how much ego is going to be in here. Are we going to do this amped up? Are we doing our high frequency version, you bringing yours, I'm bringing mine?
Or can we somehow start to lower that? And that naturally lowers with people you're comfortable
with, family members, loved ones. But can you do that with a stranger? And like for me,
I know the answer is yes, because the Dalai Lama did it with me.
I had this crazy opportunity to meet him.
And I knew right at that point that that man can grab anybody's high frequency and pull it down to theirs and be at that immediate connection level.
Long answer, but.
You know, we could turn the mic off now.
Like, I just want to marinate in this for a while.
It's really rich.
So here's what I'm thinking right now.
I've got a couple different things I want to talk to you about.
One of them is the frequency idea.
And so, okay, so how about this?
Before I get to the frequency piece, that that 60 of all change that happens in a therapeutic
relationship between um a professional and a client is rapport six so call it vibe 60 is of
amazing change that takes people when they do the work we call it right doing the work the inner work
is just based on the relationship they have with the other person that wants to help them. So what you're talking about is actually making that connection real for people by knowing your
mask, you're calling it ego, knowing that shiny thing that you need to put on to look good,
to feel good, to present well, and then recognize it in others. And then when you recognize it in
other people, you're saying, I know that's not, and here's what I think the insight for me is, it's not your true self. So really your practice
is to look at the false to get to the truth. And so that truth, when you're trying to connect it
to the truth, you say it gets real quickly. And then when you're in that space, whether that be
in an intimate relationship or a professional relationship.
And I'm not sure that you, as I said it, there's a thing banging around the back of my head that
intimate relationships, I want to separate romantic and intimate. Like people that I work with,
there's an intimate connection of the work that we're doing, but it's not romantic. So I just
want to separate those two, those out.
Do you separate in that same way?
Do you feel that you're intimately connected with the people you work with
based on the attention that you give them and the freedom to be themselves?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think that, that the finer art of this is it's,
it's much easier one-on-one. And when you move from familiar relationships to
transactional, like, bam, you're right up on one person. Can you draw on that?
Its finest art is to be able to stand in front of a room and feel the room's vibe
and interact with the room. And I think that's at large scale organization, you know, some of the
great leaders might not go through this sort of description to get there, but they get there
naturally. And so I'll tell you, like one of the tricks I use is on the back of my notebook, I'd
be happy to show you, I keep a list of words, words of power that I want to use, words of force that I never want to use. But also from
that list, I'll highlight, like when I feel the room, what do they need? And then I will often
quick scan a list, which I've now gotten to like know my list to say, you know, they're scared.
And what they need to feel is comfort.
And I, I'm going to go to these five words. How do you, how do you do that? That's that
calibration question that I wanted to get to. I'm thinking that you're using yourself as an
instrument and that you are, go back to frequency, like you're a tuning fork and you're picking up
the frequency of yourself and others.
And are you trying to help them get connected to your frequency or just a new frequency?
By definition, you'll always be at a lower, at a, the, the higher frequency drifts to the lower frequency.
But high and high will match each other.
Yeah. High and high will match.
Yeah.
Yeah. A lot of people confuse amplitude with frequency that's right you want you want power you want high amplitude but the
lower low frequency low frequency and you're familiar with gamma beta alpha theta delta
frequencies right and so knowing that you have an appreciation for quantum mechanics and physics that there is a thought that the earth has a particular frequency
right and that also matches eloquently with an alpha brain state and the same type of that same
hertz alpha is a cruise control focus beta is that high frequency which is like a like a highly
focused highly engaged but a bit too much,
we run into an anxiousness. And I think that's what you're describing that, that frequency,
like a beta frequency, you need it for at some points in your life to switch on, if you will.
But if we don't have alpha, we run into trouble, right? We crash and burn by, I don't know,
12 o'clock, one o'clock, you know, like we're just spent too much energy sending text messages
rather than connecting with others. So is that what you're talking about? Like taking a beta
frequency and moving it into an alpha? Yeah. Or in some business situations, you know, you're,
you're running across a gamma and you're trying to pull, you know, the, the really
high frequency stuff down.
And that happens a lot in these group settings.
And so I'm not saying that there's this precise science.
You just feel your way through it.
But you can tell when people are energetic in the room.
You can tell when there's, you can read concern in their eyes.
These are just the same things that you do one-on-one,
but you're scanning the room and you're just doing some quick math in your head. And I don't mean like math one, two, three, four,
five. I mean, like generally people are much quieter than usual. They have a look to them
that's pretty serious today. They were here early. They're sitting more on the edge of their seats.
And so you just kind of build your messaging. Look, if you want to land a message,
you're never going to land it if you can't read a room. That's sort of, you know, everybody's
always known that about business, entertainment, anything. But to be able to fine tune which words
you use so that they can take with it some attributes like hope or just confidence, comfort, you know, those sorts of
things. And that's the calibration as you're describing. I've never thought of it in those
terms. So I think it's an interesting way to think about it. It's, you know, those connections
and then drawing to, you know, the lower the frequency, the better, but drawing it down to a level that
says, I'm quiet, I'm confident, I understand. I mean, that's generally how you want to end up
with your connections and why we're most comfortable with those that you would describe as the intimate
relationships, the familiar ones, because you don't spend much time into that ego. Let me,
let me credential myself with you. Let me tell you how great I am. Let's start there.
No highlight reels.
And then you're going to start to amp yourself up, you know, just to, to, to, you know,
feel like you're in the conversation.
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FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So what you're describing, I've never heard before.
Sure you have. You just haven't heard it in those words before.
What? No. Okay. To your point, you got gotta read a room, but that sounds so mechanical.
What you're describing sounds richer and deeper. And that's why I'm really interested for you is that are you using yourself as the tuning fork? Because if that's the case, then you better be on.
Yeah. I'm not saying that aggressively. Like you've got to, your tuning forecast to be at
the right frequency or right pitch. Yeah. And if, is it, is that a
correct way of thinking about it? Yeah. Okay. Then how do you tune your fork?
Most leaders have a set of activities that they go through kind of their go-to routines.
I think they also have reinforcement that what they're doing is successful. And so they lock their fork in.
And so you may be a tuning fork, but you're tuned to the same frequency.
What I'm describing is harder because it requires that you show up with your lowest possible frequency and it requires that you scrutinize yourself after the fact in
ways that are not rated. So when you get into the subtlety of this interaction, you say okay,
well I did a big town hall event and I had a couple thousand people on and I got this really
high rating and I was very clever. Those are meaningless. If you got
a question and you had an opportunity to deliver a message that really needed delivered and you
fumbled it, it doesn't matter, football analogy, if you rushed for 120 yards and scored two
touchdowns, if you fumbled the ball at a critical time in the overall game, that was not a good performance.
And when you hold yourself to that level and you start to get into that granularity of how did I do,
and you take responsibility for landing these really important messages,
then I think leadership gets to be this amazing thing that you're able to do extraordinary things, and then you have these missed opportunities.
And so there's a gravity to that.
So that's a long way to get to a simple answer is you better have some routines that you go through yourself that give you an A game. Secondly, if you're going to calibrate, then you need to evaluate yourself
at a level that's not going to show up in verbatims and check boxes and 9.2s.
They're going to be missed opportunities to have landed the right message.
Are you looking for, to make it simple, are you looking for the misses and the mistakes,
or are you looking for the moments when
you're on point and then to try to figure out and back into how do I do that more often?
And maybe it's a both. Maybe you're doing both. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I think
that there's big themes in a large organization like I manage. You're always going to have some
big themes that you want to get done that may
take a year. There's some multi-year ones. But what I'm saying is that in addition to those things,
you need to break your life down into the events, this meeting. The sports analogy is they always
say, well, just one play at a time, one game at a time. Let's just worry about tomorrow.
The same thing is true in life and in business and relationships and all that stuff, which says,
you know, you want these big themes, that's all well and good, but you also have to break it down into what's the next hour going to be like. And if you don't have good frameworks, you can't operate
at high speed with what I'm talking about. Cause it's like, it would be like golf where you have seven swing thoughts that that doesn't help you have to go out and naturally
just swing the club and that takes practice so I'm talking about is not a brilliant technique
it's something you practice can you walk between meetings and say did my ego do too much in that meeting? Was I thoughtful in how I did things? You know,
and so you start to build those habits. And then a year later, you don't even have to think about
any of this stuff. So, you know, what do you do to formally read a room? Like in the beginning,
that for me was a practice. You know, I said, okay, let me go read the room. It's time to go
read the room. Now that's not a second thought. I have a
small prayer I say in my head before I speak each time to remind me that I'm not speaking for me,
that I am just a vehicle to get things done that day, which then allows you to operate
in the flow of things because you're in the practice. So the analogy between sports,
where you do so much work, and business, they're identical because it's still about relationships and performance and everybody being their best self.
So if you're your best self, then you can help others be their best self.
And then all of a sudden you get around an organization who are operating as their best selves.
Then there's the magic.
It's I'm happy.
I love it here. And we're winning. We're
doing extraordinary things. And you, you know, that's, that's the goal, whether you're going to,
you know, to work this morning or whether you're going over to the field, you know,
it's the same thing. I feel like we're speaking the same language. I love it. I love everything
you just said and how you captured it. And you're looking at me like, come on.
No, I'm just flattery will get you nowhere.
It's so true. And it's so hard. It's so hard to do. I mean, it really does take practice. And are you practicing? I know spirituality is a big part of your, one of your pillars of your framework.
Yeah.
And how do you practice, because you talked about saying a prayer, how do you practice your spiritual part of yourself?
How do you practice developing that?
Well, I'll give you three quick frameworks that I use.
The first one is I use a framework of just making sure you define
where you are in your life. And if you think of big arcs, I think of there's four arcs in life.
There's the physical arc. And most people know kind of when they're peaking in that,
say, well, you know, I'm not as fast as I used to be, or, you know, I can't eat the way I used to.
My metabolism is slowing down.
And then there's the second arc, which is your intellectual arc.
And these things, they always coexist.
But then all of a sudden, you're growing and you're learning and you're gaining experiences and you're getting better.
And there's that arc.
But then one day that arc ends and you say, OK, well, I don't, I can't remember what I just
read or what's that gal's name again. Shoot. And then there's the third arc, which is the toughest
one, which is the arc of influence and your influence grows. And then there's the fourth
arc is the arc of going home, which most people don't realize because they want to cling to this
influence one the rest of their lives. And so I think that that's important because I think the context of
any advice I would give is related to where you are in those arcs. And so I'm trying to think
about life and give my arc of influence up, which means I'm gaining far more satisfaction of seeing
someone else succeed with a small seed that I may have given them two years ago
than I do something that is extraordinary myself. So I'm beginning and I just, it's not
cognitive, but it's just keep saying that if your life is a clock, don't be trying to do noon activities when it's dark in the evening.
And so where are you in that?
And I think that's an important context for your readiness because it will make sure that you're not way off track and doing the wrong things.
The second thing that I try to do is have a plan that's
written down that has major elements of. And so I have a rest of life plan. I wrote my first plan
in my 20s. And that exhausted because it was it ended when I was 55. So a few years ago,
I had to rewrite my rest of life plan. And I think it's one of the things that should be
one of the best documents you ever produce. And so you shouldn't just sit and say, here's a checklist. It should take you
months to put it together. It should be one of your greatest works. As I always say, you know,
I read it. Every time I read it, I cry and I laugh for the stuff that's in there that I have to
accomplish. You know, it's a very wide ranging document that really helps me. It helps
me. And I do read it. I calibrate it. I've shared it with a few friends just to make sure that I'll
be held accountable to it. I want someone close to me to hold me accountable for it. And the third
and the last thing, which is probably the nature of your question is you're just your routine.
The most central part of my routine is I wake up very early, 4,
4.15, and the first three hours of the day belong to me. Nothing owns me in those hours. There's no
boss. There's no electronics. There's nothing. I have meditation. I have exercise. I have reading.
I have, you know, church. I do, those three hours are where I center and balance myself. And if you're doing them from 4 to 7 a.m., there normally aren't a lot of interruptions.
And most people would say, I don't have that amount of time.
I got to take care of the kids.
I got to get, you know, folks off to school.
I have to do.
That's true.
But you don't start with three hours.
You start with 10 minutes.
You start with 15 minutes.
And I can tell you, you will get the time back. If you meditate, you'll need less sleep. If you spend a half an hour clearing your brain,
you will do email at twice the speed. There are so many things that are time efficiencies. And
it sounds so incredible, but I have so much conviction that it's worthwhile, I would tell you unilaterally, on the other side of every minute that you spend gathering your thoughts, collecting heart, not you and your brain, you and your heart,
those moments will be repaid to you greater than one-to-one.
Thank you. And I'll tell you why, because the three frameworks that you just laid out are touching each part of becoming. So the first sounds like it's a
framework of wisdom. There's four phases and you've heard of the joke, you know, there's,
well, it's not really a joke. Psychologists are not funny people. I'll just say that,
you know, at the outset that there's three types of people. They're funnier than economists.
Yeah. Especially at your line of work. That's good. Um, yeah, there's three types of people. They're funnier than economists.
Especially if you're lying to work, that's good. Um, yeah, there's the, there's the old fool.
There's the bitter old fool and there's the path of the wise man. So the, the old fool is chasing things just, you know, can they get some and they get drunk by it or whatever, you know, it's good,
but they become an old fool because they still chase things.
The bitter old fool is they chased all the things, but it didn't work out.
And it's just angry.
You know, everyone else has the right stuff and not them.
And then the path of wisdom is really the deeper path.
And it's less travel.
There's a thin herd of wisdom for those traveling that path because it's hard.
It's really hard to do it in modern times when most people, back to your ego thought, are sharing highlight reels for the padding of ego.
And it's tough to be different in those ways.
We all want to be part of something.
The need to belong is really strong.
And that pulls us in compromising ways when we don't know what true
north is for ourself, and we're not sure what our real path is. And so that gets to your second
framework, which is what is your manifesto? What is your life purpose? Write it down. Get really
clear with it. And I'm begging to ask the question, you know,
not begging. I'm wanting to ask the question, what, how did you do it? Did you just get quiet
and let it flow? Or did you have a structure around that? Did you, did you want to make sure
that you, I don't know, hit at least three, four, five different types or types, but three, four,
five different parts of yourself or the human experience? Like how did you structure that document?
Well, I started inside myself.
And that's where you go into the spiritual, the health, and all those sorts of things. And because I just don't believe if you're not right with yourself, then anything you do that you project gets to be dishonest.
And so I think the most important thing in the entire journey, at least for me, is go back to your roots.
Think about how you grew up.
Forgive all the bad stuff. Embrace the good stuff. And,
you know, don't become the brilliant college graduate until you've reconciled the farm boy
or the urban kid, you know. And so you have to go back to that because anything you are
has to build from there. And then, and so I think that the most important work you're going to do is inside.
And I think writing those things down and what kind of person you want to be is the hardest stuff.
Because the difference between, in my young career, everybody would say, you're really smart.
So I took it all the way to the extreme and said, if someone wrote on my tombstone,
this man is smart, how would I feel? And boy, that was not my aspirational goal. And you say,
well, if I have smart to work with, then where do you get? Well, wise is certainly a better
version of that because that feels like a word that is smart shaped by experiences who
gives back said that's a much better word now how does one move from smart to
to wise how do I start to give back then all of a sudden I just say okay well
that's the journey then sit down and get serious about it and start to allocate
more your time to spend time with other people.
So that's it.
I think I'm getting a glimpse of how you structured that document is you connect to yourself, whatever's happening.
And the first place you naturally went to is I've got to know who I am, where I came from.
And there's some shiny stuff that's wonderful.
And there's some stuff that's, you know, deep and rich. And then there's some other stuff that i i wish didn't happen but it's i need to integrate it i need to
be that to you i think use the word forgive but i need to integrate the early days experiences
that i had so that i could move into later phases of life yeah right okay well let me tell you the
exercise i do normally when i am coaching people, I'd say,
take, take 10 people, you know, a couple in the family, a couple of professionals,
have each one send 10 words, not paragraphs, not a long thing, 10 words that describe you.
You now have a hundred words. Now the exercise is consolidate the list and get the list of the
10 things you are. And then. And that's the first step.
Then you come back.
And for most people, everything they want to be, character-wise, they already are.
Because if you want to be it, you're already thinking about it.
I love that.
A guiding thought, not to interrupt, but a guiding thought that I think has been incredibly powerful for myself and people I'm fortunate to spend time with is this thought.
And it was a gift given to
me. I'll pass it on and see, I think you're going to nod your head is that everything you need is
already inside. Right. And so then our, our job is to figure out what, what do we need? And then
what are those capabilities inside of me too? And in most cases, I find that it's more of a
subtraction than an addition exercise because, because where you were when you were the real teen uh maybe at 12 pre-teen that that thing is like that's clay that's the raw
stuff so so you start you take the hundred words and you say okay here's the list of 10 things i
am but how do you how do you go from 100 to 10 that is just you saying everybody's saying that I'm the same thing. I'm smart. Okay. This
one says intelligent. This one says brilliant, whatever you say, come back and say, okay, well,
this is the list of the 10 things I am. Now, first of all, if you already are them,
stop dwelling on them. If you, if you're worried about whether you're a good parent
and everybody says good parent, you're already a good parent. Check, you got it. So you're not going to suddenly become a bad parent. So all I'm saying is at that point,
we're going to turn the chapter because there's consistency across the 10. There's a reflection
that your professional colleagues think you differently than your kids do and your mom,
but there are character similarities. So you look at that. And then the next part of the
exercise is if that's the 10, then what does that list say I might be that's not flattering?
If no one says I'm generous, I might be selfish. Let's just take a look at the other side of the
coin that might be a little darker. So what's not there? What's not there? By inference,
as well as what's not explicitly there. Because the other side of a strength might be a little darker. So what's not there? What's not there? By inference as well as what's not explicitly there.
Because the other side of a strength
might be a little bit of a weakness.
And then the next step is write your 10 you want them to be.
And let's just think about how do you become those things.
And then let's get on to the next chapter.
And so for me, when we talk
about this rest of life plan and the first and the hardest part of this, it's, I don't think it's the
most important, but I think it's the, it's the most, maybe it's the most urgent. It's the most
central. It's the cornerstone. You don't get that right. The whole plan doesn't work. But then as
soon as you're done with that,
then all of a sudden you realize that's not what it's about because you're not on this earth to make the best Michael. You're on this world to impact it, this world to impact. And so now all
of a sudden you go on to the next part of the plan, which says, what am I like as the family guy?
How am I as a brother, a sister, a sibling, a spouse, a child? Am I a good child? Because you never give
that title up. And then you start to, but if you get the first part that you want to accomplish,
then you start to build a foundation and then you get into that. And then you can get into the
more mundane goals about actions and things you're going to do, like what are you going to leave as a legacy.
But then you start to – I'll give you one sentence that I remember, and it's affected how I parent.
It says, you are not the star of your children's play.
You're only an actor.
And if they're the star, how should you play to them?
Fundamentally changed how I raise my adult kids because I bite my lip now and I wait until they ask.
And it really centers around them being the star.
It doesn't matter what I want for them or what I want of them.
It only matters that it's their play and they're
the star. And just this whole idea of moving to just a support role. They're not 13. I'm not
trying to impose values on them anymore. That's just a good example where if you don't do the
work internally, then you can never make that transition to come back and say, I am now the parent, the support person.
And that fundamentally changed a lot of the relationship that I have with my kids.
How old were you when you or how old were they when you had that insight?
Well, it was only a few years ago I rewrote my plan.
It was funny because, you know, I would say publicly at speaking events to work,
I would always say, it's really important you do a plan. And when I was 52, I was telling people,
my plan expires at 55, so I'm gonna have to rewrite it. And I'm going to take my time doing
it. And so you start to think about it in that timeframe, which is, you know, six years ago.
So it wasn't a heck of a long time ago. But a lot of that stuff,
where I got a little more structured in my relationships, was when I started to get my
rest of life plan. And so you start to realize that this script is a lot more about what's left behind.
Not like what you left behind.
It's not like exhaust and you're the car.
It's you're gone and everybody's forgotten you as life really should be.
And what have you built into fabrics and structures
that survive?
Again, there's the connection between one and two on that path of
wisdom. And then do you care about legacy? No. Yeah, I didn't think so.
Because, you know, actually, I shouldn't say that. That's not completely honest. I care that
my legacy is minimalized. I want it to be the smallest footprint. The analogy I'll use is
I want to be the hand that's removed from a bucket of water and there's ripples for a short period of
time and then no one knew it was ever there. Why that image? Because you're in the game.
So you don't want to make it seem like it's any different than that. I think
it's intellectually dishonest to feel like you're not in the game. So when you're in the game,
and now you're out of the game, what did you leave? You didn't leave an imprint.
You didn't leave an odor. You didn't need, You see, it's, it's more like a DNA, uh, modification,
um, than it is a building with a name on it or a program that was started. Like I, I'm just not
good enough to aspire that I'm going to have some sort of scripted legacy. I just think those are
sometimes, it's a great aspiration. I just don't think that that's something that is going to make
me a better person trying to build a legacy. I think it's better that I help slightly nuance how people live and behave around me and, and have that carry on.
I, yeah, I don't hear in any of your thinking patterns or value propositions that you care
much about physical stuff. I'm not, I'm sure you have nice things, but that's why I couldn't
imagine what your, your relationship to legacy really was. I mean, it have nice things, but that's why I couldn't imagine what your relationship to
legacy really was. I mean, it doesn't sound like you're, like, again, you're not looking for a
building. Have you written anything that is public? No. Is there a reason for that? I'm saving up for
it. You only get one first book? Yeah. Did I share with you my rest of life plan? Yeah. So you've seen the
document. So that's, if I were going to write a book, I've rewritten three books, but none of them
are related to any of this subject, which probably for you sounds like maybe it would be tempting to
do so. It would really be taking the rest of life plan and the buildup to it and the tear down from it and self-publishing
something to just share with my family that says, here's kind of what I learned.
And I traveled a lot in my life and the original thought was the reason I started to think
about this stuff more and realized that one day I might write it down was because of all the time that I didn't spend at
home that I was thinking if I was going to write a book that was a substitute for many, many, many,
many evenings at the dinner table that didn't happen or my child on my lap in a rocking chair,
what would that book be? And that's sort of another way to think about this. It should be the advice
that you not only have for yourself based on where you are, but it should be well-written
enough that it would be able to be something you'd give to your kids and say, this is the best I got
on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And then you probably owe that to your kids one way or the other.
And some deliver it just by their actions.
It can be imitated.
I hope I did that well.
Some do it by time and lesson learned.
I still remember my dad's corny jokes and nursery rhymes.
Or some people probably ought to write it down.
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How do you reconcile the demand you have of running one of the world's largest businesses,
the travel schedule you have, and the deep desire to be connected to your loved ones?
And I ask because this is a struggle I have.
Yeah, no, it's a struggle that many have. In life, there's no such thing as balance. There's only guilt. The destructive
thing about imbalance is the transaction that surrounds it with, I'm minus one because you
were gone for this, and now you're plus one because you're exhausted.
And so how do we netting out these positives and minus? I always tell people, you want balance,
pick people to be around you that are magnificent because anytime I'm going to be out of balance,
I talk to my wife in advance and she says, go for it. And not having that guilt is balance
because you're never going to have complete control over things without making
enormous compromises. Like for me, the counter of a balance and people say, oh, well, you know,
I've just made a whole bunch of choices to leave all those things out so I can be home and have
quality time with my kids. You know, you may be given gifts that you're supposed to go change
the world. And now you've cheated God's gifts to you by not trying to find a balance point.
So in some respects, you take the easy way out. And I got to tell you, these are real conversations.
Like my oldest, a few years back, I said to her, honey, I'm sorry for all the times
that I haven't been home. And she said, you know, a lot of people who had quality time with their parents are not – don't have the same relationship I do with you.
She said, I always knew that you were doing the right things.
I knew you were doing them the right way.
And I think it's pretty cool that I can – when people ask me what my dad does, I can tell them to Google search you.
But for her, it was the example that mattered. And so I just think that these are tough, Michael.
These are tough calls because the only person that should really get cheated in all this is you.
I think it's really easy to say – to center the world around yourself and say I don't have balance.
I'm trading this against that. You're the one that
should be cheated. You should be giving all you have with the gifts you have to go as far as you
can to build the most impact that you can for everybody around you. And then you've got to go
behind that with all the energy you have left and fix all the things that broke on the floor.
The things where there's a spill on aisle six that I missed this with the kids.
Then there's the this I didn't get done at work.
And that's never going to be something that's super comfortable with a framework that says
this is always going to be pain-free.
So the way you make it pain-free is you just make a choice and then you learn to not only
live by your choices, but be willing to accept your mistakes. That's balance. And the balance is between the tension, between the person you're
wanting to become and the efforts that align for that. Is that the balance? Well, I think the
balance is in your own mind, because I think that your kids, if you're traveling and you're gone and all that,
your kids know how to characterize you with the time they have. They draw from you the greatest
things that you have. If you don't build your gifts as far as you can, then you spending time
with them, it's a lesser you they're spending the extra time with. And that doesn't mean that when you go on being your best self that you're not going to feel pain about what you're not doing with your kids and that night that you're on the road when you should be home.
But it's tough because I think you go in the other direction and you'd say maybe there was one more book in you that was the magic one that was going to change people's lives a little more than the prior work you've done.
All those kinds of things.
You have to be your greatest self to be your most impactful in your own family circle.
And so I think that trying to be less than you can be to make the biggest impact is cheating the gifts that you've been given.
Somebody asked me probably about 10 years ago,
deep depth in relationship with few or impact across many.
And my first answer was, I don't know.
I really had to ponder that.
And then if I'm honest, it feels like I want to do impact across many.
But then there's this other part that says, no, no, no, no, that's a disservice.
You shouldn't be doing that to your family.
What is wrong?
Are you some kind of animal?
You shouldn't do that.
And then there's another counter argument, which is like, wait, hold on a minute.
Why can't we have it all?
So I didn't like the question.
At the level of depth versus breadth, there are certain impact zones where it is breadth.
Because if you're going to, if you're getting a message out there, breadth is what it's about.
But when you're talking about Michael, like massively impacting a life,
then it's going to, you can only get there through depth. So you're taking your breath
and you're now with this relationship over time, you're trying to take 500,000 people to a better
place. And the nobility of that work is so important, you're going to have to trade it against that depth in the smaller circle.
That is the tradeoff.
And it's even the tradeoff between the depth with a circle and your familial, just your spouse and kids.
Those are the tradeoffs.
That's the pain.
That's the pain. That's the imbalance. And, and
I'm saying to you, both sides of that is tricky balance, because if you just come in and have a
huge impact on a few people, and you could have been the person that changed 500,000 people,
then you cheated your gifts.
That's the way it feels. And the cost feels at some points, uh, there's two
sides to the cost. One part is cheating family. And then the other side is, uh, that, that I argue
with is like, well, hold on now back to your point. There's like, if I'm living a life of purpose and
I'm aligned with that purpose via accessing gifts or, and building on gifts, that is actually the best
thing I can do to demonstrate to the loved ones about following purpose and passion.
There's times where example is more important than time.
So how, when it gets hard, so I have a young son, when it gets hard and you miss more time
than you'd like, how did you work through that with your family?
And I don't know, maybe you blew it and you got to go and you've had to,
not had to, but you went back and made it right in some ways.
Or maybe you were just the wise man throughout the whole time.
You know, it's, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
I think that's where certain relationships are really important. I think
it's really important that you keep friendships from young in your life. I think it's really
important you have a relationship with a significant other. These questions, they never
go away. Friday night, my wife and I late in the evening the evening we're getting ready to retire for bed and um and I said to her I I think at times um I'm not a good enough father for Julia
and uh and she's really good because she doesn't placate me
in this particular case just Friday night she said no you're doing a great job. She looks up to you.
And every time there's something that's really important, you're there for her.
And she knows that.
And I'm taking care of the day-to-day transactions.
She understands how this thing works.
She's adapted just fine to it.
But she'll call me out if it's out of control.
Do you really need to do that?
Are you doing this because you want to do it? Are you doing it for work? Are you doing it because
it's work-related and it's fun? Because this just seems like one too many. So that sort of feedback,
it's important to have someone give it to you. I believe every manager, leader should have a
kitchen cabinet as you get senior because people tell you what you want to hear. And this balance
point, you're not going to find easily. So you got to get feedback from your family. You got to get
feedback at work and you can find a happy medium as long as you're listening. How many people in your life tell you no? You're wrong.
I think it's correlated to how many times you can say, I'm sorry, or I don't know.
And so I think if you are the type of person who comes across as strong-willed, confident,
certain of themselves, people are less likely to say that.
It's more a function of how many do I want to say no to me.
Look, my position lends itself to people giving me the bright side and saying yes to everything.
And so if you're asking the question that has a yes or no answer, you're probably asking the wrong question.
The way that you get your no is by asking a question that has people thinking differently in answering it.
So they can't avoid, so they, they won't say yes or no,
but they'll be able to tell you how they feel. And it's equivalent to a no.
So when you ask the question the right way,
people will share with you things that would change your thinking,
which is the equivalent of a no.
Can you give me an example of that?
Or do you want me to take a shot at it? No, no, no, sure. If I say to you what's on your mind,
you're going to start a process. If I say to you what's worrying you, you're not going to say no.
What do you think about this event that happened last week? Or if I say, you know, I'm kind of floating around in my head how I should react to this. Tell me your perspective.
How do you react? I ask people all the time, what advice do you have for me? It shocks people
sometimes. I'll go to, you know, a group of people that are four levels below me in the organization and say, you know, give me some
advice. And then they sit there wondering if you're serious and then you don't answer for a very long
period of time. And that's very uncomfortable. Next thing you know, they're raising their hands
and they're giving you advice. So the questions change. If you give them the opportunity to say,
hey, here's what I'm thinking. Does that sound right? I'm going to hear yes,
a lot. So I just try to avoid situations where it's that easy to say yes.
Okay. So what is it that you're searching for most in your life? Like, what are you
either driven by or searching for? What are you most hungry for is actually what I want to know.
Strength. Keep going. You know, I don't, I feel
like I have enough on my plate and I feel like there, I don't, I don't want, so I don't find,
if, if it's, if it matters to me, I yearn. I don't have the want. So there's not a lot of
missing pieces. So for me, a lot of what I'm trying to do and accomplish takes energy that's about as much or more than I can give.
I'm naturally an introvert.
I'm naturally a thinker.
And so I'm in a position that requires me to be extroverted and talking a lot.
And that's exhausting for me. And so it's not that I,
so I put my uniform on every day and I go do what I have to go do, but I don't sit around and say,
this is a natural for me. The thinking part that we're describing is natural. I love it. I love development stuff, helping people, all that, but I'm built for
one-on-one conversations. I'm not built for microphones and auditoriums and I have to do
a lot of that. So what is the most challenging part? And I asked, I ask as many people I can
who are extraordinary at what they do. Like what is the most challenging part of your profession?
So for you, it sounds like the public piece. That's a personal, but that's not the profession itself. Our organization is such massive scale and it's so diverse. So the hardest part mentally is changing subjects so drastically from politics and public policy and a bill that's on the docket in California to the pricing of television to what Hulu and Netflix are doing to what's happening at retail stores. So the diversity of that,
switching subjects really fast and being on your A-game is probably the most difficult thing.
The hardest to get used to is the amplitude that the organization has. It's such a massive organization. Every word counts. And so the gravity of that scale
is something that needs to be consistently thought of. You look at the two of those,
those represent the most challenging parts of, quote unquote, the business.
And then what do you do knowing that your natural preference is to think and feel and have an introverted way of processing information?
How do you balance those two?
That every word matters.
Maybe that actually plays into the introverted side because when introverts speak, we should listen because they've thought about it.
They've contemplated.
And so maybe that's it actually plays perfectly into your strength.
I'm not sure whether it's a strength or not. The way that I think about it is like any sporting event. I have to put my uniform on and I have to go to work and I have to,
you know, and there's preparation that's required.
But I don't have the stress that many people have. I get the question all the time,
why are you so easygoing? How are you so Zen in the midst of all this stuff?
And it's these things we just talked about. I have a framework to operate things. And so if you have a good philosophical, I'll call it broadly, but really
importantly, values and morals and principles, business principles, and how you want to manage,
if that stuff has been thoughtful and it becomes behaviorally consistent, then you can live in the
moment and just make the decisions as they come. And you can make them in very high volume and you
can go really fast and you can get through email quickly because you don't,
you're not spending time thinking about how do I want to project in this? How do I want to,
you know, so you just can, you flow. And when you flow, it becomes very natural. So I don't have
that stress. It's mostly just the stress of the energy to you know go and get in front of a larger auditorium
and speak you know that kind of stuff the the what you're describing is a concept of mind speed
is that you know our mind works in frames pictures if you will is an easy way to think about it and
sometimes when we have all of that clunky extraneous internal dialogue and worry and thinking, it's a little bit like a strobe lights on.
And so when a strobe lights on, you only get half of the frames, a third of the frames, you know, one eighth of the frames, whatever it is, seven eighths of the frame.
But you're not in real time because that strobe light is almost playing games with the syncopation of time and to quiet the internal
noise to get to the signal is a life effort.
It takes an incredible amount of practice to get to signal and it sounds like
your three frameworks and the last of the frameworks being the way that you
practice and train and cultivate the inner abilities to be on time, that those three and together are really the
framework that allows you to become who you are. Yeah. You know, one of the profound things for me
is I read once in a book, an estimate that someone had pseudoscience, if you will.
This is pseudo. I know where you're going. Yeah. Yeah. About how much of your thought process was
either negative or wasted. That's right. And so I started to pay a little bit of
attention and I realized that whatever the number is, it's high and it's always too much.
And so clearing that stuff up, getting that out of the frame of your life is the most, I think it's the epiphany for me is gain control of that subconscious stream of thinking and that internal dialogue.
Erase it and reprogram it.
And then you can have whatever life you want.
Happy, rich, successful, however you want to define success it's all out there
that reprogramming requires first awareness like that that is possible and then awareness of what
ledger you know the the positive or negative or productive destructive types of thinking happen
and i won't share the name of the brand but it was probably about 12 or 15 years ago now
that a brand asked me to come in and say, just blue sky, Mike.
Talk to our people and just blue sky what you think is coming next.
And I took the opportunity to talk about observation of thought.
So right now, all we have is artifact.
I can see the artifact of your thinking.
So there's thoughts, thought patterns, and habits of thought.
And thoughts lead to thought patterns and thought patterns lead to habit. Once they're a habit of thought,
they move to the subconscious, non-conscious, to your point. And right now, all we get to see is
the artifact of thought. We know thoughts exist, but all I get to see is your words, your body
language, and then even some objective measures of heart rate variability, let's say. And we know that if somebody has destructive tension building type thoughts,
they have, you know, like the artifact is there.
You see body language, you'll see some health artifact from HRV or whatever,
but we cannot yet see thought.
But when you're quiet within yourself, you can see it.
I can't see your thoughts, but you can see it.
And I can see my thoughts.
So what if we would redefine what high performance is and we'd say high performance, the key indicator for high performance is how much time and how timely are you?
Do you spend in that positive, productive, flowing, free-flowing type of thinking patterns?
That is completely programmable, but it's hard.
So how many years have you been practicing the internal awareness of your inner experience and then the skill to guide?
Let's see.
So the event for me was in 2009.
Oh, you had an event.
Yeah, I just woke up in the middle of the night.
So it wasn't like you had a heart attack?
No.
You weren't on a gurney?
Nope.
It wasn't something that like...
Nope, just woke up in the middle of the night.
And I just remember I told myself, there's a much better way.
And tomorrow I'm going to start the process of figuring it out.
So let's say that you are zero to 100.
Okay.
Like 100 is you at your potential. And I think, I think if I'm going to take a liberty here that you've
organized your internal world and your external world to be in that strike zone of a hundred or
92 plus or whatever on a regular basis, I don't know what the numbers are for you,
but where does that concept sound familiar? Yeah. I use a metaphor for it. Okay. What is it?
So my metaphor is it's a dartboard.
And like a small child throwing darts at the dartboard, they're all over the place.
And the outer ring of the dartboard is more of an intellectual exercise. You're going to inform yourself and you're going to kind of learn the do's and don'ts,
the rights and wrongs, kind of the 10 commandments, if you will.
Okay. And the bullseye, whatever you define it to be, any way that you would describe success,
there's these inner circles, you know, the slices with the numbers on them. So you've kind of gone
through the outside and you've got your system and your method. Most people live there.
And they live there because you can buy a book that's seven steps to this and the four versions of that and the three things that'll make you successful and all that. And then it doesn't
get synthesized. And I would argue that that's good for awareness, but that's not real work.
So now you get it to the inner dial. And for me, I think of those as
virtues. And I take a virtue each month and I practice that virtue. And so that's the behavioral
stuff. And that's where you move from ideas to integration. And that's where it becomes habitual,
not conceptual. That's where it moves from intellectual to visceral. That's where it
becomes not what you say, but what you do. And so that's a practice that I'm in right now. So this
very month, it's confidence. And you look and you say, humility without confidence is false humility.
So how do you build the right amount of confidence? And so each day,
I spend a little bit of time thinking about the right amount of confidence. Because in my position,
humility has to have confidence because otherwise people won't follow you.
So what is the right formula for confidence? How much? How little? So when you take a whole month and you do work on that and then you start to build virtues,
I spend all my time now, and I'm not saying that I've particularly progressed,
is I just found everything on those outer rings of the dartboard are not getting me closer to the bullseye.
And now I'm in this and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is a lifetime of work because I won't get to deal with humility until next February again. And like, I've got
so much work to do and confidence is working against humility. You know, this is tough stuff.
And if you're going to try to grow a garden of virtue, you got to get all this stuff right.
And so that's how I think about it. And that is you look at that, what am
I like 1% done if that and and so is it the rings or the slices of the the scoring the slices of the
score that so there's like 15 different Yeah, slices, right? I'm using 12. You're using 12,
one for each month, one for each month, and you're picking a virtue. Right. And then what is at the center? What do they all converge on? Whatever you want your goal
to be. So your definition of success is? Yeah. What is yours? So what I want is I want to be
operating selflessly for others. And so to do that, you've got to build. To do that, I have to have a great career.
I have to make a lot of money, you know, not because for those things, because that's part
of what it is. And that's why I'm saying the hard part is you want to just carve this beautiful,
perfect, straight path out. It doesn't work that way because you can't get to whatever that inner
ring is and not have challenges of not being home as much as you'd like
or the reverse that you can't put the extra time in at work because of where you are right now
that's what's hard and so however you define that thing and i i actually want to remove myself from
the formula i think my greatest self and other people should define their own,
I think my greatest self is when I lose self and I operate for a higher purpose. You mentioned
earlier that we all want to be part of something. Not only do I know that, I kind of, I'm absolutely certain that I'm more equipped to be satisfied by watching others blossom.
But it's not like a loser soft thing.
I also realized that if our company is not succeeding, no one cares what a loser thinks.
No one cares what the losing company is doing.
So you've got to win before people start to ask, how are you successful? That's where it gets contagious. So now you look at these things and you get alignment between business results and all those kinds of things, you have to make them
an integrated part of what you do. But look, it's not about what I define the center to be.
Everybody's got their own, you know, whatever that is. It's not true north. True north leads
to something. What is that destination? Put that destination in the middle of the dartboard,
start your process, you know, get the knowledge on the outside of it with the methods and the techniques and the things you're helping people do.
But when you get to the inner ring where that's not doing it for you anymore because you're not integrating it into your life, your behavior is not really changing.
I'm reading it.
I'm resonating with it.
But nothing's different.
It's time to now make the leap that says,
I'm not going to waste any time on learning. I'm now all about integrating. Let me go figure out
what I'm going to integrate. And if it's not good enough to integrate, then don't bother spending
your time reading it. If you can't integrate it, don't bother reading it. It's just flying by.
Yeah. For me, that's back to that signal to noise ratio. And the integration is actually what we would talk, how we would describe the gold dust of mindfulness. We integrate awareness, thoughts, words, actions, like integration is what flow looks like when you integrate technique and body and mind and the decision-making real
time decision-making in an unfolding, unpredictable, unknown environment, that that integration is
actually the, the, the hallmarks of mastery. Now, how often can we do it? You know, depends on how
internally robust and strong and sturdy and flexible and nimble we are.
We'll start with once, start with a moment, start with a meeting,
start with whatever it is. And then you build from there.
Okay. I got to say, thank you. Thank you for your insights.
Thank you for your time.
I've got a couple more questions that I just, I'd be,
I'd kick myself if I didn't ask you about what,
what is the dark side of being one of the most influential people
in modern day business? What is the cost and the dark side for you?
There are traps all around what we're talking about. So the traps are things like believing too much in what you say and not getting enough feedback
and people saying yes to you and building a different form of an ego that you don't recognize,
a much trickier version of it, where it's all good as long as you're always getting your way.
That's the dark side because that's, that's darkness wrapped
in light. That's the hardest darkness to find that which is wrapped in light.
Oh God. So it's, my heart's thumping right now thinking about like, am I playing that game?
Like it's, you know, cause I'm, I'm trying real hard, you know, I'm trying the best I possibly
can to be the best version to help others become their very best.
And then there are those ego, uncharacteristically ugly sides of me that I have to work with.
And so is that what I'm doing?
Am I just playing the part?
I want to say no.
Well, anybody who says that they – just take, for instance, humility as a virtue. Anybody who says that they're,
they've accomplished it by definition has failed at it. Yeah. So, so
okay. Brilliant. And then, um, and then the other pieces are, I've just got some,
maybe some quick hit answers,
and you can take as long or as concise as you'd like here. How do you finish this thought? It all
comes down to? Peace.
Is that because you find value in the Prince of Peace?
It's because I think as human beings, if you think about what's here on earth,
the thing that gets in your way is really
taking you away from the,
the natural peace that you were born to, to live in.
And so when I talk about a subtraction exercise as a human
being, I think what's at that core is peace. Peace with yourself, peace with others, you know,
just that feeling of belonging, comfort, stability, no fear. Think of it as just absence of fear.
How often do you experience peace?
Daily. When was the often do you experience peace? Daily.
When was the last time you had it?
During this interview.
At what points?
All points when we started.
Yeah.
And then how did you cultivate that readiness to experience peace in a conversation that
for some people, it's not an easy
conversation because we're talking about things that are hard to articulate. So how did you,
and I know what you're going to say, like, it's the framework, it's the 30 years of this work.
You see how this works? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Is it, I mean, but that is it. That is it. That's
the framework. It's, it's, you know's offer intention. Do you get on the same wavelength?
How hard do you have to work?
How hard do you have to work when it's just, it's like.
No, to get me on the, to calibrate with me.
No, no.
It's a joke.
Your eagerness was evident.
This is your thing.
Like your thing is this space.
So you living in this space is
a very comfortable place for you. Awesome. Okay. If I had to do it over again,
how do you finish that thought? I would have started earlier. I, you know, you, you never
want to change things because you are where you are, but in the wishful thinking world that doesn't exist,
I would have started earlier.
I often get asked the question, could you have succeeded if you were the way you are now 20 years ago?
And I think that's one of the best questions I've ever been asked.
And after some consideration, my thought is I would rather be the way I am now, no matter where that led me, than never having discovered it.
So it is now my definition of success. is something that I would never give back for stature or money
or any gift that I could be given here on earth.
Many people go back to 2009, your experience in 2009,
have moments like that and then want to take the next step.
And it can be something small, like I want to play the guitar,
or it could be something large or impactful, like I want to change the quality of my life. Yeah. So I have a
thought that pain is the reason we change. Yeah. Uncomfortableness is how we grow. And so in many
cases, my job is to help people feel pain, not take it away. It's the last thing I want to do if pain is the impetus for growth or change.
So how, did you have pain? No. Okay. So you're going to put a chink in my thought process,
which I love. Sure. So what happened in 2009? Well, when I think about it, I think that there
are three ways to get there. Okay. Suffering, which is my word for pain, prolonged pain is suffering. And that's
probably the most effective way to get there. I'm 100% with you. The second is purpose,
where you just take on something that's bigger than you and it's grander than you.
And it matters to you.
And it matters to you. because I think the most powerful force
we can generate is yearning. I think that when you really, really want to make it happen.
And the third is unconditional love. And I think that all three of those things can yield that
result. And I think very early on in this journey of mine, in the beginning, I was sort of meandering on the outside of that dartboard.
I was learning, learning, learning, learning, but I couldn't integrate, couldn't synthesize, couldn't find the magic.
It's when I realized that the easiest path there we were all given at birth is which is the ability to unconditionally love. And when you begin to do
that, then people can love you back. And then you start to build this thing and say, that's the path,
this suffering thing. Why would anybody waste their time doing that if they can do it with
unconditional love? Because that's a gift we've all been given. Purpose is sort of like, you've
got to be at the right place at the right time with the right ask of you
to step up to something that's purposeful and big enough that's going to carry you for decades
and be a life purpose, if you will, a life meaning. So I would say that I chose one of the
three most common paths.
I'm not saying I didn't feel some suffering.
My wife might disagree with me and say that I was in some pain.
I just think she contrasts my happiness now with my happiness then and looks back and says, wow, you were so much more miserable then.
That was true of every part of my life.
So you're saying there's a chance to my theory still holding up.
No, no, no. You, you have it. You have it. I just, you know,
with people who reach out.
Yeah. But I love that.
I love the thought about that there's things are not black and white and as
easy as it seems like.
So the triteness or the reductionist model that pain is why we change that
you've had some texture, which is purpose and also unconditional love.
And one of three or all three of those conditions potentially creates great change.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then pressure comes from?
Self.
What does that mean?
We talked about it earlier.
How you react is the source of this.
It's not the action itself.
What are you most afraid of?
I can't honestly say that I spend any time dwelling on fear.
I think that fear doesn't motivate me.
Formulaically, it's so minor in what drives me or governs my thinking. If I were to say which
things would be unfulfilled work I would do. It would be not having enough success soon enough
to keep confidence and momentum in what I'm trying to accomplish culturally.
Culture is a funny thing. It's a million things, but it's fueled as confidence and momentum.
You are responsible or manage or lead, I don't know exactly the right word to
capture how many people report. Serve. What do you hope for them? And then part two of that is,
what do you hope that they would learn from you? So it's two parts to the question.
Well, the first question of what I want for them, what I want for every person is what they're seeking.
I think to have a formula which somehow equates my own journey to their journey is selfish and myopic.
So I just want for them what they want.
And I go back to this phrase peace because so much when you really sit down and talk to people, what they want is they want absence of stress.
They want to bring their kids up the right way.
They want to take care of their parents.
And so they want the fear removed and they want the peace increased.
But I don't want to define it for anybody.
So what I want for everybody in our organization is whatever it is that they're seeking.
I want them to find that and where work and their time with AT&T is where that intersects it.
I want us to be a net contributor, not a net detractor.
And so it won't be the whole formula for anybody because work never is, but you hope that you're a net contributor, not a net detractor. And so it won't be the whole formula for anybody because work never is, but you hope that you're a net contributor. And so what I want them to think
about when they look at me and what I want them to look at is say, you know, that's someone who has
my and our best interest in heart. That's someone who's playing the game to the best of his ability
and doing it the right way. And to the extent that can help them say, I can be slightly better today,
that would be great. But that's probably aspirationally more than I'm able to accomplish.
You know, we all have a role to play. And all I want to do is just play my role the right way.
And how I get characterized by others is not as important as me fulfilling the most
with what I have.
John, thank you for your time.
It's great to spend time with you, Michael, always.
Last question, I promise.
How do you articulate or think about mastery?
How do you define it even if you're able to do so?
Well, I think it's more or less summarizing all the things we talked about.
It's always relative to where you are.
Don't take anyone else's graph as your graph.
It's a piece of art and it's yours and it has to start with you. And you can't master things around you,
can't master relationships, you can't master your job, you can't master anything until you master
self. If you're going to master self, the most important theme that I've left you with
tonight is that it gets at this programming your subconscious to a way that makes you your best
self that's as positive and productive as it can be because all the tools are right there.
It's just a question of putting the energy in to getting that right.
As you slowly remove your hand from the bucket and drop the mic.
Okay, time to drop the mic, Mike.
Yeah, that's perfect.
Just like what a treat really to spend time with you and see how your mind works
and see how you've organized your internal and, um,
found harmony with your external world. And so, uh, what a real treat.
And if you were to like, just to give a last little parting thought to somebody,
um, how long does it take?
How long does it take to experience the insights and the knowing and the
integration, um, or the beginnings of that integration?
An instant. I mean, literally, intention is born in an instant.
And so it's a lifetime's work that starts in an instant and yields benefit minute for minute, as I said earlier.
So there's just no downside.
Sounds like the Dalai Lama.
Huh.
A quote by him was that, um, how does a light man happen?
And the, the, the, the thought was, um, it can, it can happen in the next moment
or for several lifetimes. So keep practicing. Yeah. All right. Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks,
Michael.
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