High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 390: 4 Ways to Lead with Influence with Jason Hunt, Speaker, Trainer and CEO of Eye Squared Leadership

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Jason Hunt teaches people how to bring out the very best in others.  He is the founder of Eye Squared Leadership and he has had the pleasure of working with companies large and small, including FedEx, The Taylor Corporation, Jack Links, and Pearson.    Jason's first major leadership responsibility was to run a branch of 100 church members in outer Siberia when he was 19.  Since then, he has been in various leadership positions, including principal of a junior high where he turned around the culture of a school in only 2 years.    Jason has a Masters degree in leadership from the University of Minnesota, is certified by the John Maxwell Leadership Institute, and is the author of The Other Side: 5 Rules for Leading with Influence.  and their four children In this episode, Jason and Cindra talk about: How leaders can gain influence with those they serve How to develop caring, connection, courage and collaboration in your leadership The CRAP acronym and why it is essential to leadership 3 Powerful questions to develop trust What it means to be a people-focused leader HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/390 HOW TO ENTER THE PODCAST GIVEAWAY TO WIN $500 CASH: www.drcindra.com/giveaway FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2599776723457390/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong VISIT JASON’S WEBSITE: https://www.i2eyesquared.com/ Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Welcome to episode 390 with Jason Hunt. This is your host, Dr. Cindra Kampoff, and I'm so grateful that you are here listening to this episode today about developing your leadership and ways to lead with influence. If you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place because every week we talk about everything you can consider about mindset. And today's episode, we're talking about leading with influence with Jason Hunt. Now, I know Jason personally, we both serve on the board of the Minnesota chapter of the National Speakers Association. I really enjoyed getting to know Jason over several years and was excited to have him on the podcast today because his content is rich and incredible for everybody who leads. And I'm thinking about how we not only lead ourselves,

but in some way we lead others. Maybe your job is actually a leadership role, but you also lead your family and you might lead other people around you. And so I think today's episode really applies to each one of us, no matter what our title might be. Jason Hunt teaches people how to bring out the best

in others. He is the founder of I Squared Leadership and has had the pleasure of working with companies large and small, including FedEx, Taylor Corporation, and Jack Links. Jason's first major leadership responsibility was to run a branch of 100 church members in outer Siberia when he was 19 years old.

And we also talk about his struggles and how he was able to turn around his school where he was a principal of a junior high school that he turned around the culture of a school in only two years. He's had various other leadership positions. Jason has a master's degree in leadership from the University of Minnesota and is certified by John Maxwell Leadership Institute. He is also the author of The Other Side, Five Rules for Leading with Influence. In this episode, Jason and I talk about how you can gain influence with those that you serve, how to develop the four C's, caring, connection, courage, and collaboration in your leadership, the CRAAP acronym, okay, and why it

is essential to your leadership. We also talk about three powerful questions you can use to develop trust and what it means and how you can become a people-focused leader. We'd love for you to share this episode if you enjoyed it. You could share it on social media, tag a friend or tag Jason and I, or take a screenshot and share it with someone who you are thinking about this week, who you know would love to improve their leadership and strengthen their leadership and who you're thinking about as you're listening to this episode today. Now you can find the full show notes and description over at cindracampoff.com slash 390 for episode 390. Without further ado, let's bring on Jason.

Jason, I'm so excited to have you on the High Performance Mindset podcast today. How are you doing? Absolutely fantastic and rolling just a little bit from Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. I know. Me too. I'm like, this is the only thing I'm doing today besides putting on my Christmas decorations and I'm really excited about that. Yep, yep, yep. I'm tempted to get a workout in just to make up a little bit for yesterday, you know?

Exactly. So to join, well, first of all, thanks so much for joining us and I thought to get us started, Jason, why don't you just describe a little bit about what you're passionate about and what you're doing right now? Yeah, absolutely. So, Sindra, my experience comes from the world of education. I spent 15 years as a social studies and ESL teacher. I worked as an administrator and finally a principal of a junior high here in Owatonna,

Minnesota. And I recognized that after, you know, in my second year of leading the school, I wasn't cut out for leadership. Like I was failing miserably, terribly bad. In fact, so much to the point where it was October during my second year, I found myself hiding in a portable classroom. It wasn't being used during the school day. I was freaking out. I had no idea what I was doing. Every single stat and everything, it was just going bad. I mean, the culture was toxic. Everything was terrible.

And I really had a struggle trying to figure out how can I specifically lead? What can I do to be able to rally people around, you know, some of the objectives that the district had and I had. And I recognize that one of the biggest challenges that I have based on my personality style is I'm a task-oriented person. And was leading the school, like it was a task, you know, here's, here's a new flow chart. Here's a new student handbook. Here's a new, you know, all these kinds of things that were more systematic than relational. And once I made that recognition, thanks to some great mentors like John C. Maxwell, things just started to turn around a little bit. So I worked there for

several more years. We turned the school around. It was a fantastic place. I got an opportunity to leave because they were combining a couple schools and doing some shakeup with the school, with the district. And I got this passion, like, you know, how many other people are out there like me that are just struggling because they're task oriented and they're not quite understanding the power of the relational aspect when it comes to leading other individuals. So that's why I started this company about four years ago. I focus exclusively on people-centered leadership. And my passion is to help people avoid their portable classroom. You know, everybody's going to go in there a little bit, but let's hope they don't go in there very long. And maybe I can share with some tools, strategies, some thoughts and ideas to be able to help them make it a little bit easier for themselves.

Yeah. And I think about this portable classroom that it can mean sort of like it's a metaphor, you know, maybe things that you're avoiding or places that you go to hide because you don't really want to deal with whatever's going on right now. And I'm also I appreciate your vulnerability just from the start, Jason, because I'm thinking there's a lot of people who are listening who maybe are more task oriented and not necessarily relationship kind of focused. So I appreciate that. So tell us a bit about what you're doing right now in your company and just give us a little like background of that before we kind of dive into some of the content? Yeah, thank you. So I squared leadership is the name of my company. And it's literally an I with a square symbol, which means influencing for impact. You know, I love the idea of influence. I love the idea of impact. I think that's what leadership is about is impacting other individuals. So what I do is it's a mixture of speaking and training. Right now, more training than speaking because there's not a whole lot of

stages open due to COVID. But I work with a lot of different groups, mostly in greater Minnesota. Manufacturing tends to be kind of a little niche that I found myself into. And I sit down and I customize training for organizations based upon whatever their needs might be for their leaders. And my goal, again, is to be able to help create more people-centric leadership, to strengthen those relationships and bonds. And what I've recognized with most of the organizations that I work with is a lot of people are great technicians like they're really good at something specific maybe they're working on a press or maybe they happen to be a good cabinet maker whatever and then they get promoted into leadership and they don't have those skills

to be able to build the relationships that are necessary to be successful later. So that's kind of my niche that I get into. And we create, you know, numerous trainings over the space of, you know, several weeks and months with organizations to be able to help train these leaders and get them the tools and the skills that they need to make sure that not only can they use their technical aspects, but they can be able to get people to come along with them. Life-changing. You know, I think you're not necessarily always taught these leadership skills and sometimes you're just kind of thrown into it. So to start us off, you mentioned kind of people-focused leadership. So Jason, why don't you define that for us as we kind of dive into

some of the more kind of focused on the details of this. Yeah. So I think leadership is just really simple. It's influence. It's nothing more, nothing less. And I know there's a hundred books written out there. I even wrote a book on leadership, right? Everybody's got a book on leadership. You know, so we all define it in one way or another, but, but when it really comes down to it, it's can you influence another person to think or act differently? That's it. Can you, can you influence another person to think or act differently? That's it. Can you influence another person to think or act differently? And I recall when I read through some information about leadership and I came to this understanding that leadership was about influence,

I was leading the junior high and had no influence. That was my issue. I had no influence. But there was a social studies teacher who had no additional responsibility or title beyond just that of a teacher. And he had great influence and whatever he said, people did. I'm like, there's a problem here. I've got the title. I'm getting paid to be the leader, but yet I'm not leading because I don't have the influence. And I observed later on as I went to church, I saw the same thing. There was a leader in our church that was our pastor, a good guy, great guy, high respect for the individual, love him to death, but not a ton of influence. He just wasn't really getting the church moving anywhere. But then I would go and see other congressional members. And some of them

was like, hey, we're going to do this on this Friday. Let's get together. Boom. We had the largest gathering we had ever in the particular church, you know, cause this one person that didn't have any title or position, but had influence was able to make it happen. Yeah. So that just told me, I'm like, okay, wait a minute. If I want to be a leader, if anybody wants to be a leader, of course, having a title does help, but that's not the only key. In fact, the real key is making sure that we understand influence, how we can be able to gain influence from people, that's really what leadership is. It's developing influence and using it to be able to create a positive impact in the lives of other individuals. So I'm thinking about, you know, just your experience in that junior high. And I'd love to hear more about like how you were able to

turn it around by better understanding leadership and maybe emulating some of these other leaders that you saw that were more sort of like person focused? Yeah, I would like to say that it was an easy, quick process and I read a book and got better. Yeah. But I'd be lying to you. Change is never easy. I tell you, Sindra, it was the hardest probably year and a half of my entire life. There were numerous days where I just didn't feel like going forward. There were numerous days where I really, I felt imposter syndrome.

I'm like, why in the world did they choose me to be in this position? I am not cut out for this. I don't deserve to be here. I'm screwing it up big time. I don't know what I'm doing. And that was tough. And I've got four kids and a wife and she's a homemaker and, and I had to provide for them. So I've a lot of stress and worry in line. I mean, there were a lot of, I remember my daughter, my youngest daughter, Esther, cute blonde hair, blue-eyed girl. It gave me this,

this little red sticker with a smiley face on it. You know what I'm talking about? You just get a little smiley face. And she gave that to me one day and I put it on the steering wheel of my truck. And I found that anytime that I was like leaving the junior high and going over the district office or just travel, you travel as a principal every so often. I mean, I was just nervous. I was just a wreck and I'd rub that thing for comfort. And, and, and I would just, I'd rub it raw. I mean, it was just, I think I have it somewhere here. I mean, it is almost completely white because of how anxious I'd get and just the worry that I would have of trying to do that. Ultimately, I think what I had to do is recognize

that leadership really wasn't about me. I was too focused on how people saw me and my performance. And once I started to overcome that and start to say, you know what, I had to come to grips with, even if they fire me, let's just say they fire me. What can I leave saying I'm proud of? And really, what does anybody leave any organization saying they're proud of? It's the relationships and the impact you make on people. Absolutely. And so I had this moment where I was like, okay, that's what I got to focus on. Like, forget about myself. And I just got to start focusing on other people. What do they want? What are their needs? What do they care about? You know, what are the concerns that they have? Have I listened to any of that stuff? And I realized I hadn't, you know, and so it really came to this place where I had to listen a lot. I realized that I couldn't do it all. So I had to build a team around me and I gave them great amounts of authority and permission and I empowered

them to do certain things. So I can't say that I turned the junior high around on myself. That would be absolutely wrong. It was a team effort, but I think it started with the leader becoming humble, moving him, in my case, him or herself out of the way, and then focusing on the people that you're leading and building relationships with them and just empowering them. I heard PJ Fleck, the football coach at the University of Minnesota speak a month or so ago. I was like the opening keynote of this virtual conference and he was the closing keynote. It was really awesome. And I have to, I have to look and see what this acronym was, but he was talking about like one of their mottos is like, forget about me. I love you. You know, so just

this idea of like servant leadership. And that's what I heard while you were talking is like, okay, forget about myself, be humble. And how can I work to build these relationships? So can you kind of describe to us a little bit about, you know, how would you say that leaders can gain influence with those that they serve? Yeah. So it's important for us, obviously, to understand that leadership is about influence. But then they ask the same question you do. I get all the time, well, OK, Jason, I get it. I get it.

But how do we get influence? I don't have any influence. I only got a little bit of influence. Or I got great influence over my family, but nobody working there listens to me. You know what? What the heck? How can I put this together? And I have spent a great deal of time reflecting both on what I learned through my experience at the junior high through a lot of

my mentors. And when I say mentor, I'm talking about people like Zig Ziglar and John Maxwell and, and, and, and Tony Robbins and those kinds of folks, people I've probably never met, but I've read a lot of their stuff, right? They just have wisdom that they just pour out into books and you can get them for almost free, right? So I've just really focused on this subject of influence and tried to understand at the very core of it, what's going on?

How can we simplify this for John or Jane that are just entering into a supervisor level of leadership? How can I make it understandable for them? And, Sindhu, I realize there's four components into it. And I also recognize these four components relate to a body part, which just makes it more visual and easier for us to remember. Then I kind of captured it all together and I call it full body leadership. So full body leadership is this. it's, it's really simple. You've got a heart that cares.

You have to care about your people. If you don't care about the people, it doesn't matter. They'll follow you for a short period of time because you are the leader and you have the title. But after that short period of time, they will not follow you anymore. It has to have a heart that cares. Secondly, we've got to have, we've got to have a head that connects. You know, we often think as leaders,

you know, we're up on the stage and we're saying this and giving direction and casting vision and encouragement. And yes, all that's true. All that's true. But we got to pay attention to the fact that we've got eyes and ears too. Yeah.

And listening and watching body language and building a connection by trying to get a good understanding what they care about is powerful. So heart that cares, a head that connects, feet that show courage. It isn't easy to get on a deep level relationship with somebody and ask some of those pertinent questions. You know, I often talk about connecting and I say there's three levels of connecting. We have the superficial level. And if you recognize that the only thing that you talk about with a coworker is the weather

and sports, you're at a superficial level of relationship. It's, you know, we live in Minnesota. We get to talk about the weather all the time, but it's at a superficial depth. The second degree of connecting is a business degree. If you go out and grab a drink with the person, and the only thing you find yourself talking about is actually work and the people at work or the jobs at work, you've got a second degree, you know, a second level of connection with the person, which isn't bad. It's a good place to be. But the third is this deep personal relationship where you're asking questions like, you know, what do you dream about? What do you sing about?

What do you cry about? You know, you capture you captured the, the answer to those three questions. It's, it's incredible, but that's hard to do. People aren't willing. Can you imagine in our second conversation, I've had to sit down with you, Cinder, and said, Cinder, what do you, what do you cry about? Like, what can you do every night? What really bothers you? Yeah. It's not easy to ask that, but you give me answers and suddenly we build a bond. And so that's the courage aspect leadership takes courage you've got to be willing to do things a little bit differently the heart that a heart that cares head that connects feet that show courage and hands that collaborate ultimately the primary number one job of a leader is to be able to empower other individuals harvey firestone said that the number one job of a leader is to develop other leaders. That's what we're doing, right? And so we find ourselves in a position where we're working with other people,

and now it's our job and responsibility to help them become better versions of themselves, to empower them, to give them confidence, to delegate to them, to give them appropriate feedback that's good and relevant and honest and open and authentic. So it's about as simple as that. That's great. Care, connect, courage, and collaboration. I love this like full body leadership, right? So I'm thinking heart is caring, head is connects, feet is courage, hands are for collaborating.

So let's dive into each of these a little bit more in detail. And let's first talk about caring, Jason. Let's talk about what does that actually mean? How do you show you care? Maybe just give us a little more details on that. Yeah. It's hard somewhat to show that you care because I think a lot of people really do care, but their employees might not know that they really do care. Right. Because what we get tied up in the tasks at work. I mean, all of us have to-do lists and especially in leadership, you want to focus on your to-do list. And if you focus too much on that, you, even though you might care for your people, they might not see it. Sure. They might not recognize it. Yeah. Now, if you don't care for

your people, that's a bigger, bigger issue. We got to probably have a whole nother podcast on that. Talk about how you actually develop that care. it starts with seeing everybody as a 10 and you're you know changing your own frame and mindset about how how we how we view people but but if you do care okay then you've got to show up yeah you've got to give what i call a crap you've got to give crap and it's hard to give a crap you know if it was easy to give a crap everybody did crap but it's it's not easy and so almost to give a crap. And it's hard to give a crap. You know, if it was easy to give a crap, everybody would give a crap, but it's not easy. And so almost nobody gives a crap. And so I encouraged my leaders and said, all right, you've got to give a crap. And they're all like, well, what do you mean by crap? I said, all right, it's this. You have to celebrate, recognize, appreciate, and praise. C-R-A-P. Celebrate, recognize, appreciate, and praise. You've got

to give a crap. And so we kind of walk through that and help people understand, okay, what does it mean to celebrate? What does it mean to praise? What does it mean? And talk about those things. And then the next question is, well, how do I do it, Jason? Like, I just don't have any time. So fine, fine, fine, fine. Go to the AA meeting. And I'm not telling them they need, you know, alcoholic help. I'm just saying there's an appreciation appointment. Put in your calendar one hour every single week and do not change that for anything.

That is your crap time. That's awesome. I love the acronym. Isn't it fun? But it's sticky, right? I mean, I really appreciate it. It's sticky. Oh, you're taking this to a whole new level.

Oh, dear. I just meant like it's easy for us to remember it, right? And Jason, one question I had is you said something about like seeing your employees as a 10. Tell us what that means. Yeah. So we've all made judgments about people. It's good and it's bad. Back in the day, we had to make judgments about saber-toothed tigers to see if they'll kill us or not. And we had to react to that. Okay, I get it. But I recall when I was serving as a junior high principal, I had to hire a lot of new teachers. And there'd be a deck of teachers waiting out in the, in the lounge for us to bring them in for an interview. And I'd literally walk out there and get ready to interview the next one and scan over the next two or three and say, yep, yep, nope, nope. And yep. Like I'd make those decisions. We judge people in seven seconds or less.

Sure. And I'm not saying judgment is wrong, but holding onto that judgment is wrong. So if you judge a person as a two or a three on your team, you know what? You're probably right, but are they more? Are they more? Is there something more you're not seeing of them? So I encourage people to ease up is a phrase that we use, ease up on the judgment that you've made of the person. And I recall I was teaching a group of FedEx over in Michigan. And, and, you know, there's some guys that have been in the business for a long, long time. And one of the guys is like, Jason, you don't get it. You don't get it. John, my coworker, we've been working together for 25 years. Okay. He's a three. He's always been a three.

He's never going to be anything more than a three. He's just a three. And I turned to him and I said, okay, I get it. You know, we probably can't force you to change your mind to make you think that he's a 10, but can you ease up? Can you, next time you see him, could you think of him as a four? Can you look for things that would prove to you that he might be a four on your scale of 10? And he, in a begrudging kind of way, it was like, well, okay, you know, I'll, I'll do that. It was about a month and a half later. I got an email from him and he said, Jason, you'll never believe this. He's actually a five. Cause he was looking for the five that he was doing. So seeing everybody's attend is a goal that we have we want to be able to get to that place i understand i'm a list it's difficult for us to see hard work you know

hard people to get along with or workers that we might not have high um degrees of respect for as a 10 so just ease up you know just choose the next number and look for ways they are that way and what you'll recognize as soon you'll start seeing everybody as a 10 of the potential of what they can be because I honestly believe that everybody has unlimited potential. They can all be a 10 if they're in, right? And the more I judge myself, the more I judge others. So I've been really working on my own self-judgment because I know if I'm harder on myself, then I'm just harder on everyone else around me. And I like the idea of just like easing up, right? Like it's hard for you to get to a 10 right now, but I am also thinking about Brene Brown's work. And, you know, she says like everyone is doing the best that they possibly can. And I, I been working on that as well. Like just

reminding myself, you know, this person is doing the best that I can. So in your terms, ease up on the judgment. Powerful stuff. And I like how you related to yourself. The very best leaders are great self leaders, but the most difficult people to lead is ourself. And so we do have to have that thought control. And I love, you know, I've read through your book a couple of times now, and I love a lot of thoughts that you put in there about controlling our thinking, our own personal thought process. And if we can master that or at least become better at that, gosh, you know, we can really help out a lot of people

because we get ourselves out of the way. Absolutely. And there's so many automatic negative thoughts that can appear. Before we kind of go into the second C-Connect, I want to ask you, Jason, I always ask everybody on the podcast, like to tell us about a time they failed and what failure is to you. And I was thinking a lot about what you just said about, you know, and how it connects with failing in leadership. So what do you think failure means in terms of leading? I, so I think that leadership has gone through a few different stages over the last three or four decades. If we go back to the nineties or so, leadership was, was almost exclusively focused on process, lean manufacturing, six Sigma, you know, those kinds of things, great strategies,

wonderful stuff that I think we probably could still use in a lot of environments today, but that's not leadership. That's management. All right. Got it. Then we move into the early 2000s, maybe the first decade, decade and a half or so. And leadership tended to be this list of critical skill sets, these characteristics that you must have. John Maxwell and his 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. That's all about characteristics. Okay. I'm not saying we don't need to focus on that, but who in their right mind actually can capture those 21 characteristics that you can't. Right. And HR directors created these entire, you know, huge systems of evaluating the one. And these are the 17 criteria we need. No, you know, it's, it's not going to work because we can't we can't be that person. Nobody exists that can really fill all that out.

You think about Richard Branson and how he leads and you compare that to somebody like Elon Musk and how he leads or you compare that to, you know, any of the big leaders that Bill Gates, Bill Gates and Richard Branson together. OK, very different people, very different leadership styles, but both very, very effective. All right. And so what am I saying? The most important style of leadership, the latest trend in leadership right now, the best way for people to follow you is authentic leadership. It's just being real to who you are grabbing onto your strengths and admitting your weaknesses that's where the failure piece comes into i think it's critical for leaders to be open and honest

about their failures why because then we relate to them if we just imagine the leader never fails like everything they touch just turns to gold. I can't relate to that because I fell every day. So they're here and I'm here and there's no way I can't connect with them. In fact, we're leading into connecting right now. Yeah, I know. Exactly. We can't connect with them because we feel like they're unreachable.

Yeah. So when a leader has the courage, right? When we're willing to be like bernie brown talks about and just be vulnerable and say hey guys i completely screwed up here's what i was planning on doing this is where my intent was at but it did not work and abcd happened i'm sorry we messed it up i messed it up what can we do to start working through this? I think people grab onto that. I think they see that. OK, this person's real. Like I can follow that person, this person over here. Not too sure if they're real. And honestly, when we don't need to make our mistakes, everybody else knows it but us. OK, well, and even if you think about how you started the interview today, Jason, you're telling us about a time that you struggled with your leadership. And I agree that this vulnerability piece actually connects with the caring,

which we were just talking about, like the more I'm vulnerable with others, and the more I let them in, maybe they're going to see that I care. And it also connects with the second C of connection, right? Is like, that's how you connect with others. When I hear more about the ways that you struggled, I feel connected to you immediately, right? Because then I can relate to you. So tell us about the second area of connection and what that means to you. Sure. Connecting is probably one of the most powerful pieces of leadership. And I think about it this way. If you think you're leading and nobody's following you,

you're just taking a walk. You're not connecting. All right. And this is, this is probably, I mean, I understand that the, the most important right job number one of a leader is to be able to get to that collaboration stage. But as far as importance for my personal level, I put it on connecting. That's, I think that's the most important piece because personally that's where I struggled the most. Sure. So as I was going through this junior high experience, I recognized that I needed to get feedback. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know how I was screwing it all up. I needed some information from the people that I was leading. Again, it takes courage, not easy to do.

So I ended up talking to a handful of people that I felt close with and I was comfortable with. But there was one person that I knew I needed to talk to. She was a union president. And again, I'm the administrator. So we already are flashing heads, right? But she speaks her mind. And she had a lot of influence at school. I couldn't stand her.

In fact, I don't really hate people ever, but if ever I came close to hating somebody, she might've been the one. She might've been the one. Okay. Well, she's not listening. Hopefully. I think she's enjoying retired life in the cabin way up North. So I think we're probably pretty good. Anyways. And even if she is listening, I have deep respect for her because of exactly what she did here. Yeah. We sat down and I said, Hey, I need to know what's going on. And I know you speak the truth. So give it to me. Yeah. And she's laid out in very specific form. Exactly what I was doing is wrong, which all related back to the fact that I wasn't being relational. I wasn't connecting people. And she said this, and it will never leave my mind. She goes, Jason, it's like you're being a locomotive.

You're moving full steam ahead, but you've not connected into your boxcars. Oh, wow. And you can go from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Chicago as a locomotive. But if you're not bringing your boxcars, right A locomotive with other boss cars is, is useless. Now that hurt tremendously. Yeah. But boy, was it the truth? It was just the truth. And so when I talk about connecting, it's a powerful, powerful, powerful piece because we have to connect to bring people forward. It's the only way it can happen. We can't get to collaboration unless we're connecting with people. And do we do that yeah that's what i was gonna ask you it's really simple really simple listen and ask questions that's all it is the common cold of poor leadership is bad listening it's it really is we get strung up with so many things that are going on somebody comes comes into my, into our office and we just ignore, we just ignore. I recall, here's another story for, I love stories. It's just fun to be able to

tell. So while I was serving as junior high principal, there was one particular teacher that just had a complaint about everything. You probably have worked with people like that before. I'm sure many of those that are listening right now, you know, the coworker, right? You know, the person that no matter what it is, it could be a beautiful day outside. They'll find something wrong with the day. Okay. This is the one that complained about teachers and students and curriculum and temperature of the classroom.

And once told me in 1978, her tomatoes didn't ripen in her garden and was complaining about that. I'm like, are you kidding me? This is a guy. And so she'd come into my office frequently with a complaint and I'd be be typing away on an email because that's what important people do, right? And I'd be typing away and I'd turn to her and I would continue to type as I was listening to her. Oh, sure. Well, obviously that wasn't good listening.

Sure. So I go through my portable classroom experience. I'm getting some feedback. I recognize I've got to be a better listener. One day she comes in and I turn all my stuff. I turned my screen. I've moved my keyboard. I squared my shoulders with her. And I just said, how can I help you today? And she went off on a complaint. And I said, okay, well, I'll see what I can do about that. And I wrote it down and I didn't even do anything yet, but you know what happened? And later I found this out. She went back upstairs. This is before school.

She went back upstairs. She gathered together her teacher buddies. And she goes, guys, you know what? Mr. Hunt really cares. You'd have no idea. Like I just sat down with him and he truly listened to what I just said in three minutes time. I started to change the entire culture of that school because I listened. Yeah. Awesome. And so there's, I mean, we could go deep into listening and some of the different strategies and skills to be able to do

it. I think we all probably know what it means. If I could share anything, I would just say, Stephen Covey's got these great five levels of listening. The fourth is active listening, which most of us have in our mind of what good listening is. The fifth is empathetic listening, where you're listening so well that you're feeling the same feelings the other person's feeling. That's what we should strive to. When you get there as a leader that you can honestly and emotionally feel the same kinds of things that they're going through, you're a good listener. We do it occasionally, right? Somebody announces to us that they have cancer. Guess what? We become amazing listeners. They cry, we cry,

we are empathetically listening. So we've got the capacity, we just don't apply it very often. Yeah. And maybe it's to protect ourselves. I think about when I feel what someone else is feeling and they're struggling, it's like, oh, I don't want to feel that way. So I'd rather, I'd rather just kind of, you know, like maybe not connect as much. It's a lot easier, right? It's a lot easier. So I know you talked about, or you, you talk about these three key questions to develop trust. Were those the three questions you were sharing with us earlier? Which is what do you dream about? What do you cry about? And then what was the third one? Dream, sing and cry. So what do you dream about? What do you cry about? And then what was the third one? Dream, sing, and cry. So what do you dream about that is, you know, looking far forward in the future? What are your passions, your desires? Where do you want to be in life? What kinds of big dreams do you have? What do you sing about what's going on right now that's just really good?

You know, everybody's got something good and they're proud of going on in their lives at any given moment. Ask them. Take a minute and ask. They just listen, right? Connecting is asking questions and listening. So ask them and find out what's going on. And then the final thing is, what do you cry about? You know, what's bothering you? What's upsetting you? What's really causing you problems?

I've used this on one-on-ones before. I've encouraged other people to use it on ones. Really simple. It's a three-question agenda. But it gets right to the heart of where people are at. It helps it be more focused on what their, you know, what their agenda is instead of what our agenda might be. I've used it in honestly, in networking events, I've used it in a first, first time conversations with people. You know, there might be a little bit of groundwork about weather and sports first, but then have the courage to dive in. And you know what? People

will remember you. If you're the guy that showed up to a networking event and said, Hey, what do you cry about? They'll remember that to, you know, just, just talking about the weather for 15 minutes with each other. Right. Those questions really do go deep. When I think about what do you would ask me, what do I dream about? You know, it's also like focused on me, like you're suspending your own needs and you're telling the person something really important to you. I could see those questions as very powerful. Let's talk about the, we talked about care and connect. Let's talk about courage.

And I know that means, you know, doing the hard things, but tell us a bit more about how do we have courage when we lead? Yeah, I think that courage is embedded into each of these other threes very closely, because you can't do any of them without encourage. If you're a manufacturing, let's just say that you are the plant manager. All right. You've been in the manufacturing organization for 25 or 30 years or something like that. And I'm not trying to stereotypical, you know, I'm not trying to be stereotypical here at all, but I work with manufacturing a lot and a guy like that probably is not a

feeling oriented kind of guy. Okay. They've just been in this environment and manufacturing tends to be a little bit rougher, you know, compared to maybe some other industries and whatnot. And for them to come out and say, hey guys, I care about you. You know, I really care about your success. I care about your families. I care about you personally. That takes courage.

That's not easy to do. I know that a lot of times when we talk about courage, people are like, well, you got to make the hard decisions. True. Okay. That takes courage too. Well, you got to give the tough feedback. Yeah, true. That takes courage too. Well, you got to give the tough feedback. Yeah, true. That takes courage too. But it takes courage

to shut up and just allow somebody to talk, right? It takes courage to not express your opinion before you gather the opinions of others. It takes courage to be able to give a crap and actually make that happen, right? It takes courage. And we'll get into this in just a minute. It takes courage to let go of those tasks that you just love and trust them to somebody else to empower and allow that collaboration to happen. It takes courage to do that. So when I talk about courage, that's what I'm talking about. And I don't go too deep into this because courage is solved by one, one thing, one thing. And that's all you need. Mel Robbins wrote a book called the five second rule, right? That's all you need. That's all you

need. Right. And, and you, I'm going to let you guys buy the book or go out and get the, get the audio version. Cause she's fantastic. She's just fun, fun, fun to listen to. Um, she's her life, my, her life was messed up and then she turned it all around. Now she makes millions of dollars off a stupid, dumb little concept. Um, but. It is this. Count down from five seconds and then say blast off, right? Five, four, three, two, one, physically get up and do something. If you know you, people aren't feeling very much care and you should show some appreciation, that thought hits your mind. You just count five, four, three, two, one. Doesn't matter what you're getting. Stop, get up from your seat and go say thanks to somebody. Just do it. That's the solution. It's as easy as that, but we don't do it because it takes courage. And it's so much easier

to be comfortable. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I got to finish the report. And guess what? That's going to slip your mind and you didn't, you didn't take the action. It didn't happen. So Jason, tell us a bit about collaborate. And, uh, collaborate. And I know you described that as like the leader's number one job is to collaborate and empower others. So tell us a bit about that. Yeah. The key phrase that I use in this quadrant, in this area of full body leadership is collaborative empowerment. I just love the phrase because it's not like delegations got this thought that, well, I'm going to pass this on, right? You just happen to be my monkey I'm choosing today.

So this is yours and just go do it. Right. You know, you need to delegate, delegate or die. I get it. But, but a true leader is going to, going to really intentionally think about who are my people? What are their strengths? Okay.

And what tasks can I help them work on to strengthen their strengths? That's what collaborative empowerment is. It's not, I'm just giving you something. It's I'm being intentional in your development because I can see the bigger picture. Leaders usually get into position because they can see a bigger picture, bigger picture, whether it be the process of whatever organization you're working with. You just understand the process better. Maybe it's a people thing. You just see people in a different way. You see a bigger picture when it comes to people. I don't know what it is, but leaders see more than they see before. They see a bigger picture. And so our job now is to be able to help that person fit into that bigger picture by identifying strengths, tailoring and customizing

whatever the task might be to the person's strengths, and then gradually helping them reach up and grow from that area. That's really what it's about. So do you think that's the best way to help people grow? Or are there other ways that you would suggest to help with this collaborative empowerment? I think that is the number one way to go. I honestly don't think there's a better way to do it. You can obviously get them a book and have them read a book. That's good. You can send them to conference. That's good too. But when you sit one-on-one and you, you kind of help them along the way, you know, they, they have to do it. They have to see it. They have to be given that responsibility. Think about how

we raise kids. You know, we don't raise kids by just telling them everything that we did. We sit down, we show them, you know, my, I haven't mowed the lawn in our house for probably six years, seven years. Cause I, cause I showed my son, like I said, okay, this is the deal. And I step by step walk through every little, I like, like I would show him how to, how to go around the dumb little water turnoff valve. That's the middle of our yard that, you know, how to go around the dumb little water turnoff valve that's in middle of our yard that you know if you go over the top of you're gonna hit it with your blade right i had to show him how to go around that i had to show him what straight lines were because the first time he did it he did this way you know bad bad bad but you got to let them make their

mistakes and he couldn't make that mistake and i couldn't teach him about the mistake unless i empowered him first and now i don't even worry about it. It's him and his younger son. That's all they do. The one line that I don't even remind them nothing. I've empowered them. Awesome. Collaboration that happens in the beginning, they become empowered. Now I have more time as a dad to spend with my daughters. I have more time to be able to get some work done. So the one they're done with their work and I'm done with my work, we can go do something fun together. And that's what leaders can do.

You know, all these leaders are running around saying, well, there's no time, I'm so busy. Your problem is you're not empowering. Right. You know, people want more responsibility. They want to do more. You're not giving it to them. You're being too selfish

and focused on getting exactly right. Move beyond that. Start focusing on the other people, collaboratively empower with them and help them grow and your life becomes easier. So Jason, I'm thinking about if you could do it all over again, right? And if you had an opportunity to lead an element or let's say a junior high school, that's where you were at before. What would you do differently if you were starting that job, you know, another time? Sure. Great question. I've thought about it often. And the first thing I want to say is I wouldn't want to do it over in a different way because I learned so much. It's in the hardest

times of our life that we learn the most. You know, we hold those right next to our heart. The good times we put in our pocket and we carry them around a little bit. We remember them, but the hardest times in our life, they make a difference. They change us. They change us. However, if I were giving advice to a new principal, that's a better question. I, you know, it really would be this. You have to connect with them before you can lead them. And so I would say, start right off in the beginning. Don't worry about, because you're going to want to get into the tasks. Any leader is going to want to get into the tasks. Well, I've got to understand the strategic direction. Well, I've got to understand this process. Well, I've got to understand what meetings are going to be

on my calendar. Well, I've got to understand what's the chain of command for this particular, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, tell you what, if you do the people stuff first, the other stuff will come so much easier and you'll have a team to be to go with you on that route. Yeah. Love it, Jason. What great content that you shared with us today. I'm thinking a lot about how it relates to my own life and my leadership. And I know everyone else is thinking about their leadership as well. So I'm going to work to summarize today the best that I can. And then I'd love to... What? So that's a good listening skill.

That's a good... Okay, there we go. Summarize. I loved just the four C's we talked about, caring, connect, courage, and collaborate. And I like this kind of idea of like this full body leadership, where heart is caring, head is connecting, feet is courage, and then hands are collaborating. I thought the stuff, the content you shared with us about caring was awesome. I love the crap principle. And then just like seeing everyone is a 10, I appreciated our conversation about that and being less judgmental of yourself so you can kind of ease up on other people. When you talked about connection as the most important, I thought that was powerful and that even relates to the advice you just would give to a new principal and the three powerful questions, I thought those are

really things that people could take away and use immediately. So Jason, thank you so much for joining us today. How can people reach out to you and connect with you? Tell us where you are on social or the web. Sure. All my social is at the at sign, right? I, the letter I, two, and then squared, spell it squared, S-Q-A-R-E-D. So I2 squared. You can also type in I2I squared and that will get you to my website. I'm all linked in all your social media, kind of all over the place there, but that's the best hashtag to be able to find, or just do a simple search, Jason Hunt, leadership development, it'll pull up. Absolutely. And tell us about your book, The Other Side. Yeah. yeah. So a couple of

years ago, in fact, I think I'm just passing our two-year anniversary right now. I mostly wrote the book because I needed to understand my content better. Yeah, for sure. But it turned out pretty dang good. Like I'm pretty proud of the book. And it is five ways to be able to lead with influence. So I hadn't quite developed the full body leadership model at that point when I wrote the book, but all the concepts we've been talking about, especially the core components and the importance of each of these different pieces are in the book. And so the kind of, it's a guide book for us to be able to kind of walk through how we can be able to grow and develop an influence and, and, and it gives you very specific and strategic tools and, and, and ideas on how you can be able to do this

with other individuals. I share my whole story throughout the entire book. I give you online resources to go to to do some of your own assessments and to be able to use these tools in a very practical kind of way. But you can find it on Amazon. Again, just search Jason Hunt and The Other Side

is what the name of it is, The Other Side. So Jason Hunt and The Other Side and that will take you right to my book and you can get it shipped to your house in a matter of a is, The Other Side. So Jason Hunt and The Other Side, and that will take you right to my book. And you can get it shipped to your house in a matter of a couple of days. Exactly. Well, Jason, thank you so much for joining us. Do you have any final advice

or thoughts for people as we close up? You know, Sindhu, I want to first off express my appreciation to you. Good crap, right? For taking some time. I mean, it's Black Friday. Who works on Black Friday? But this has been thoroughly enjoyable. And I really enjoy following you and the work that you

do. You really are a person of influence. It's making a big impact. I see that both personally and professionally. I see that happening. So that's really great. And that really would be my final words for everybody. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your position or your title might be, we all have influence and we can all make that influence grow. It's possible. And on your deathbed, we all start thinking about what kind of impact we made. We can make positive impacts, but we've got to be intentional. We have to believe that we have influence and it can make a difference in people.

We have to have the courage to be able to do the things to make the difference in their lives. And if we do so, gosh, there's so much joy that comes out of life. So it really is about influencing for impact. That's the core of where my ultimate belief is, and it's possible for every one of us. So no matter who you are, whoever's listening or watching, sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. So, so grateful for you. Thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome. We'll see you. Did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindhra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra.

That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.