High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 73: Building Culture, Trust and Leadership with Kevin King

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

In this interview, Kevin King, Owner of Premier Teambuilding Solutions, Lecturer, and Leadership Development Consultant, discusses culture, trust and leadership. He shares with us three levels of trust and what they could mean for you: competence, interpersonal and character. Kevin also describes what great leaders do and how they are students of their leadership – they are constantly learning about themselves and growing as a leader. He describes that the best leaders control the controllables and how controlling what you can control is an intentional practice. He also discusses how to create culture and how physics informs how to build culture.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to an interview with Kevin King. Kevin King is the owner of Premier Team Building Solutions. He's also a leadership development consultant and senior

lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Now in this interview, we talk a lot about his different experiences helping teams and organizations build culture, leadership, and trust. He's had over 20 years of experience in athletic administration and public relations and higher education, and including 11 years in public relations with the Detroit Lions, the Minnesota Vikings, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Chicago White Sox. So I think you're going to enjoy this interview with Kevin. There's a few things that really stood out to me about the interview. One of the things I'd encourage you to listen for is what he describes as three levels of trust. And he talks about what they could mean for you. He also talks about what great leaders do and that they're always constantly learning and growing as a leader. And he provides you some tips

on how to grow your leadership. And then towards the end, we talk about building culture and specifically how he uses physics to inform how to build culture, which is a pretty fascinating discussion. And the last thing I'd encourage you to listen for is we talk a little bit about control the controllables and how that's an intentional process. And I like the way that he described it, mostly because a lot of my clients and the teams and organizations I work with get stuck in focusing on things they can't control. So I think you're gonna enjoy this discussion. If you enjoyed it, there's two things that I would encourage you to do. Head over to iTunes and you can leave us a rating

as well as a comment there on iTunes if you just search for high performance mindset. And that would be so incredible. You know, I would so appreciate you doing that. That just allows us to reach more and more people each week with a podcast. And then Kevin and I are always on Twitter and we'd encourage you to reach out to us. Tell us what stood out to you about this interview. Kevin is on Twitter at KevinK29, and I am at Mentally underscore Strong. So we look forward to hearing from you, and without further ado, let's bring on Kevin. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset, Kevin. I am so jacked up that you're here today for

this interview. I know. Me too. It's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming. So, Kevin, for those people who don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do? Sure. Well, I'm two things here. I'm a professor. I'm at UWL, University of Wisconsin Lacrosse in the sport management program. And I also just launched my own business on the site called Premier Team Building Solutions where I work with companies and sport teams on how to build culture, leadership, how to get everyone on the same page and really have shared beliefs or behaviors

that everyone agrees upon and moves in the same direction. Excellent. Kevin, I'm looking forward to learning more from you today about leadership and culture. So just tell us how you got into this area. Let's just start there. My entire background for the past 20 years has been involved in some form of athletics. When I graduated from college, I had a communications degree from Eastern Michigan University. I started off working in the NFL, doing internships with the Minnesota Vikings, Chicago White Sox, and Detroit Lions. And so from a very early stage, I was always around teams. And then after I finished interning, I went on to work for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and for American Red Cross and World Wrestling Entertainment and the XFL.

If you remember the XFL back in the early 2000s. And so I've always been around coaches and players and teams and witnessing teamwork and being a part of a team, whether it was in the PR department or working with another department. So I just really enjoyed being in that type of an environment. And then when I got into higher education teaching, I was able to have a position at Central Michigan University as the director of their athletics director leadership development program. And in college athletics, leadership is a big deal, and we're always trying to teach our young student-athletes how to be better leaders and really preparing them for their

transition from high school into college and then having them flourish while they're here and then ultimately transitioning out of it. And so being able to work in that capacity really gave me a different perspective. And from there, just kind of at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, a year ago I started working with our football staff and just really working with our captains and teaching them what it means for them to lead. And I think a lot of times when you talk to leaders or captains, they really couldn't define what leadership is, and maybe they've

gotten to a leadership position because of their skill set, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they have the skills to actually lead. They just are really good at their discipline or their jobs. One of the ways that we have got to know each other is through my work in football, your work in football. So just tell us generally about your experience working with the football team there last year. And I like what you said about, you know, what does it mean for you to lead. Tell us how you worked with them and how you helped them develop as leaders.

Sure. You know, first, whenever you do something with a team, you always have to be on the same page with the head coach in terms of the head coach has to be open to diverse ways of thinking. And a lot of times, people or coaches do not necessarily put a ton of value into leadership development. They may defer to campus programming that may teach kids how to do that. But last year, we decided to design a 10-week program to really teach the captains what is leadership to them and what are they motivated by for playing the sport. So one of our first questions we would ask is, what motivates you to play football? And based off your motivations for why you do what you do, has a direct link to the outcomes. It relates to your why, what's your motivation for it. If you're doing it because it's an

extracurricular activity versus you're doing it because you want to compete and win championships, it's two different motivations for it. And so really what we wanted to do was tap into their individual personalities. We wanted to have a diverse group of captains who had different personalities, different leadership styles that would relate to, you know, a program that has more than 100 people involved in it. And so each week we just peeled back the layers of leadership individually for them, and then we started to instill our core values. And last year those core values were leadership, development, psychology, and communication. And so based off of those four core values,

we wanted to have programming centered around those four core values. Then once the captains understood what our core values were in terms of how we wanted to lead the program. You know, Kevin, when I'm speaking to coaches and athletes, I talk about how you're building culture whether you realize it or not. So what would you say in terms of for those people who are listening that our leaders are in a leadership role, coaches, owners, managers. What would you tell us about the importance of intentionally building culture? Why is that essential for us to do? Well, when you have an intentional culture, things get done a lot more efficient. Your communication is a lot more clear.

You have the same goals. Your communication is a lot more clear. You have the same goals. Your accountability is strong. It's very systematic in terms of people are able to flourish in that environment versus when you have a culture by default, it's kind of the opposite of that where your communication isn't clear. I mean, trust is usually weak. When you have a good culture, trust is really strong. But when you don't, I mean, it's weak. If you have trust issues between staff and leadership or players and coaches, those types of things, you always hear people talk about in sports about locker room, you know, it's bad for the locker room and those types of things. So if you're not really disciplined and if you're not really having a culture based on intent, then you have to accept what you get, basically.

And that's the default part of it. So what would you tell us in terms of, like, what's the most effective culture to create? I'd say the best culture that I've noticed between working in sports and even working, you know, at the hospital would be relationships. And really, trust isn't really given to you by your title. It's really given to you by the relationships that you've developed with individuals and people that, and repeated behavior over time where people have a positive experience with you that allows them to trust you. And it goes both ways as well. So I would say trust is a big part of creating that environment that you want.

And how would you tell us in terms of how to create the trust and what kind of relationship should we build? Well, you know, it should be, we always talk about, you know, there's three levels of trust. That's what we talk about over here. Competence, you know, people want to trust that you know what you're doing. Interpersonal relationships, meaning that people want to feel that you care about them beyond what they're hired to do. And then character, you know, just the type of person that you are. You do what you say. You exhibit all those behaviors that make people feel comfortable around you. So if I was to break it down into those three components, and then it's over time.

I mean, it's not like a one-shot deal and then people automatically trust you. I mean, trust is such a huge thing in life. I mean, with relationships outside of work, with friendships, I mean, we're always making deposits and we're always trying to create experiences that deepen trust on both sides.

On both sides, it's not a one-way street, but a two-way street. So Kevin, I like your three, competence, interpersonal character. If we're listening and we're like, yeah, we needed to work to develop trust a little bit more, where would you tell us to start? Is there a place in those three you tell us to start, or what would you tell us to do? I would say of the three, again, it begins with relationships. I think people follow you based off of relationships that they have with you. People may feel that you're competent just by your, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt just by your title. They may think that you're competent, but again, if you don't, they don't have a connection to you, they don't have face time with you,

they don't feel that you care about them, that's when things start to, over time, again, over time, this is when things can go awry. And I've seen that a lot with players and with coaches when the player can trust that you're X's and O's. They know that you're competent. They trust that you're a good man and you don't do anything crazy outside of the field, but they don't feel like they're connecting with you personally. Maybe they don't feel like you say hi to them or you learn things about them outside of school or outside of sport. And it's not just in sport, too.

It's also in businesses as well. Again, I mentioned the hospital. It's the same thing where, you know, if your staff doesn't feel like they're, let's just say you are a high-ranking official and their touch points to you is very limited, they may trust your competency. But they may not know your competency, but they may not know your character and they may not know you personally as well. So depending on what their relationship is with you could affect how much they trust. Yeah, Kevin, you know, when I think about really successful coaches that I've seen and leaders, they do show this level of caring. You know,

for those of you who are listening who would like to improve in that part, where would you tell us to start and how do we show that we care more often? Well, I think there's some easy things we can do. It's just getting outside of our offices a lot of times or getting outside of our typical environment. A lot of times if you're a leader, maybe you're in meetings all day, you know, and you don't have a lot of face time with staff. And I would say it's part of being intentional.

It's where you have to create that time because, again, you're either creating the culture or the culture is creating itself. And so when we go back to what we mentioned earlier about discipline, then you have to say, okay, I have to consciously or I have to intentionally make a point that I want to visit more with my staff. And that could mean a lot of things. It could be, you know, I keep mentioning the hospital because I'm a consultant for Gundersen Health System. But it could be rounding in your department, or it could be cuddles, or in sports it could be going out to lunch or having team activities that don't involve X's and O's.

So there's a lot of things that we can do. We just have to be intentional. And it's different for everyone because everyone's personality is different and people show how they care differently. But I think if you're conscious of it and you're intentional about it, then you start to create that environment for your department. So Kevin, if I could kind of summarize what you're saying, you need to create your culture or the culture creates itself. I really like that. I think it's a really sticky point. And the best really work to create the culture. They start with relationships and showing people that they care about them. Right. Yes. When you allow a culture to create itself, again, you really don't have it. You

can't say anything because you didn't do anything to create it. You let it happen by default. And by default means good or bad. Whatever happens, happens, really, within your culture. But if you want it to be a certain way built on caring and developing people and coaching and mentorship programs that you might have within your department. All those things to me fall under interpersonal, showing that you are investing in this individual and you want to create an environment where that person feels comfortable and can put forth their best effort. What do other things that leaders do in terms of creating a culture?

They have clear goals. They have their core values, things that they believe in. They have behaviors that they exhibit themselves and that they expect or require in some cases from their staff. They are visionary, and they not only create, let's say they have their core values and they have their beliefs, but I think what good leaders do is then they equip their staff with all the skill sets they need to meet the standard is, and then they equip their staff or their team with all the essential skill sets they need in order to either meet or exceed that standard. And I think leaders who are the good ones are able to do that, clear communication, but give you what you need to meet or exceed it. Do you have an example that you can provide of just somebody who you think really crushes that? Yeah, you know, again, I'll go back to my client at the Gundersen Health System. You know, we have her core values is healthy dialogue, everyone's voice matters, accountability,

resilience, and trust. And so the acronym is um for for for that department for the finance and revenue cycle department and there's that and there's behaviors and outcomes for every core value um that she has but she just doesn't say these are my core values and this is how you're to behave but she you know has me you know working with her staff over seven months to have, to equip her staff with all the skill sets and the knowledge that they need to meet the standards of heart. And I think that's what, where some fall short is that they want it to be very quick, and they don't want it to be, they don't want it to be over time. Culture is built over time, default or intentional.

It just doesn't work because you have someone come in and say a couple words that sound trendy without having people do the work over time where it becomes almost like muscle memory, where it just becomes a habit. And it's the same thing with default is that default doesn't happen overnight it's just been these repeated behaviors over time that has created this environment and it's very difficult to get out of it if you're not if you don't you know if you don't have something that changes that momentum yeah excellent kevin i like what we're talking about in terms of culture and

what good leaders do. Tell us a little bit about the work that you do in leadership in general. Can you tell us just specifically, you've given us an example of the hospital, but when you think about how you help people be stronger leaders, can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, one thing, you know, as a leadership development coach, you want to be in tune with what they need and what they believe in. You know, when I work with Gunderson, it's not my beliefs. It's our chief financial officer's beliefs, and it's me coaching them to move in the same direction over time with a lot of different skill sets, communication skill sets, standards, accountability metrics, outcomes. Everything's in writing.

Everything is clear. Everything is intentional and has purpose to it. So if you think, you know, we always talk about, you know, our intentional is what we do, purpose is why we do it, and our skill is how we're going to do it. And so for every question that someone might have in terms of our intentional behaviors, you already know the rationale for why we do what we do. So Kevin, we've been talking about your work in football and in the hospital, and you've had such an incredible amount of experience as a player development coach and staff consultant with the UWL football team, which you've talked about,

11 years in public relations at professional sports like the Detroit Lions, the Vikings, the Buccaneers. And now you have your own company, a premier team building solution. So tell us, you know, how did premier team building solutions even come to be? Yeah, you know, I've been very fortunate in the sense that I've already, you know, I had clients before I actually had a company. So when I started to work with UWL football a year ago, I had started to think about it, but I didn't know what it would look like or I didn't know a name and all those types of things. And so I was trying to create a partnership with UWL football and Gunderson Health System because I wanted to be able to combine like how does health care leadership and sport leadership, how they interconnect with one another. And I was able to present

my sport business leadership model to the leaders over at Gundersen Health System, their CEO and his executive staff, and show them how that model could work in health care. And really, over time, you know, the chief financial officer and I had some discussions about doing that with the revenue cycle and finance department, and then what it would look like in terms of training and how long it would take for me to instill sort of a leadership model for the revenue cycle and finance. And that's how really Premier Team Building Solutions was launched because then I had a long-term commitment from a, Gunderson Health System is the largest employer in the La Crosse, Wisconsin area. And so, and I had a, like I said, a long-term commitment with them. And so that's sort of how Premier Team Building Solutions was launched.

I think what's unique about it is that when you think of, you know, well, how does sport leadership relate to healthcare leadership? And how does sport leadership relate to finance within a hospital of leadership? And the answer to that is that great leaders think outside the box. They think differently. They don't think status quo. They don't think that they can't learn from different industries or they can't learn from different disciplines. And I think that's been the really good relationship between myself and Gundersen Health System is that we've been able to take our unique skill sets and then combine them together to make for a really good leadership model for them.

So, Kevin, can you tell us a little bit about your sport leadership model and tell us how that relates to any area? You know, like you're explaining football, the hospital, but my guess is that it really applies to any kind of leader. So tell us about that. Yeah, for sure. You know, again, when you think about any leadership position, whether you're working at a grocery store or you're working at a hospital or you're working for a large corporation what you really want to have

is is just patterns of beliefs and you want people that believe in what you believe in and people that enhance what you do so you know whether you work at the grocery store you work at a bicycle shop, is that when you want a team around you that not tries to change your core values but enhances your core values through their individual personalities. And I think once you understand that, then you start to create the momentum. And we use physics for our leadership here at Premier Team Building Solutions is that it's just the physics of it is that, you know, if you have more people moving in one direction and you create momentum, I think good things are going to happen. It's going to be

hard to stop that force. And it works the other way, too. I mean, if you have momentum going the other way, it's going to be very difficult to stop something that's not going the way that you want it to go. So just using different, like I said, we use physics. We want to have clear communication. Then we want people who add value and who can enhance what we already have in place. So, Kevin, tell us a little bit about how you use physics. It's super interesting. So we use the formula force equals mass times acceleration, so FMA.

And so I'll teach to you how we apply it in sports and in health care. So if you have, you know, you have a fixed number, you know, force is the amount of force that it takes to create, to move in a certain direction. And then the M is the mass, which is a fixed number. So it could be 43, it could be 100, it could be 5, whatever that fixed number is. And then you have acceleration. That's how fast something's moving in a direction. So let's say you have, let's just say, you know, if someone's in my office right now and one person is pushing me in one direction, with a little bit of resistance, depending on the force that that person uses,

it's going to be difficult for that person to move me in a direction but if that person has 10 people behind him or or her or 20 people or 30 people behind him or her and they're all forcing me in one direction even with resistance i'm they'll be able to push me through the wall just because of the amount of force that they would have. And so it's the same thing in leadership or it's the same thing in sports or health care. If you have whatever the fixed number is, if everyone's moving in that same direction, it creates momentum. It creates a force that's very difficult to stop now the flip part of that is is that if you have resistance and

typically in any environment you're going to initially have some resistance let's say three people are resisting what we're doing So if we have a fixed number of 43, but only 40 people are moving in the same direction, that means we have to work three times as harder to get to max force because our max number is 43, but we only have 40 who's moving in the same direction, three who's resisting. We can overcompensate for those three, but we just have to work three times as hard in order to create that max force. And, again, if you have, let's say, 43 and then you have only 33 who is on the same page and you have 10 people who are resisting, it's just harder to do. You know what I mean?

And so in a sports team or in any type of organization, the more people you have moving in the same direction, you're creating max force for yourself. And when you have people who resist it, you have to work to overcompensate for them, and that can make the job more difficult. So the key is to get everyone... and so you can't deny physics. Like, if everyone believes in the same thing and moves in the same direction, it creates a force, and that's, you can't deny that, you know. And so typically when people create cultures, they think, well, you know what, or they bring in a leadership development person. Oh, well, that's so innocent of revert back to the way it was after that person leaves.

And the answer to that is that's correct. If you have enough people who are resistant to whatever that change is, it will revert back because the force isn't strong enough to change it. But again, if you have physics on your side, then there's no stopping it. Physics on your side, then there's no stopping you. Physics on your side is the key. And my guess is, you know, when you think about making sure everybody's on the same page and moving in the same direction, tell us what you mean by direction. Do you mean like their goals or do you mean like the foundation of their values? Tell us what you mean by direction.

Yeah, so for direction, it's the standard. It really is the standard of operation within any organization or any company or any team. It's whatever your beliefs are and whatever your values are becomes your standard. And then there's behaviors that you need to exhibit in order to move in that direction. And so that can be different for everyone. You know, in sports teams it could be win more games than we did last year. It could be let's compete for a conference championship. It could be let's compete for state championship. It just depends on the leader and what that means to them and for those of people

who are listening kevin who are like oh cool this sounds great you know how do i use it what would you what would you tell those who are listening in terms of like what's one or two strategies or tips that you would provide us you know just so we can work to enhance our leadership? One, I think you have to be a conscious leader. You have to want to get better at leadership, almost become a student of leadership. Again, I think most people or some people that's in leadership positions have gotten there because of a skill set. And you train to be a sports psychologist,

or you train to be the best leadership coach, or you train to be the best professor, or you train to be the best athlete. We train to do all these things, but who trains leaders? Who trains you to be, even in other industries, you have certifications or recertifications. You're always having to get better at something or go back to school for something or take classes for something. But in leadership, not many people do.

Not many people are disciplined enough to say, we need to coach our leaders consistently. It's just not enough to say that. You're in a leadership position, so lead. When we, when I work with our captains on our football team, you know, one of the questions we asked them was that, you know, why did you become a leader? Like, how did you become a captain? And they would say, well, you know, because, you know, I work hard or, you know, I came in early, I left late, and those are all good traits to have. But sometimes it may mean, hey, I go out there and I select a coin toss or something.

It's not really like when I talk to them, they really didn't understand. Yeah, I'm doing things that others don't do, but I can't really articulate why I'm a leader. You know what I mean? And so I think when you become a conscious leader, when you know why you're doing what you're doing, and you know that as a leader it's not about title, but it's about relationships, and it's about building trust, and it's about creating an environment where people can flourish, then I think you start to get better. Then you're on the right track after that.

So, Kevin, let's talk a little bit about yourself and your story. Can you tell us kind of why you do what you do? You've talked about your why or just the idea of knowing your why and your purpose. So tell us why you do what you do because we believe here at iPerformance Mindset that your why can be a really powerful motivator. Why do you do what you do, Kevin? I enjoy whether I'm teaching students, you know, whether it's sport management program students or teaching hospital administrators or teaching coaches or student athletes. I enjoy seeing people accomplish what they want to accomplish. And I enjoy helping getting people on the right track to moving and going in a direction that

they see fit. And a lot of times their intentions are good, but they just don't know how and and for me it's very rewarding to to show them how and give them a roadmap and then be encouraging for them and be a support system for them and watch them do put in the effort and put in the work individually and collectively to get better and it's not about me or what i've done it's just me taking a step back and saying, wow, look what all they did to work. You know, they put in the time. They put in the effort. They were comfortable being uncomfortable. They put themselves in positions to get better.

And now they're on the right direction and on their way. And I think for me as a teacher, I really really take pride in that and I love to see people accomplish goals that they set forth themselves. You know, Kevin, we think here at the High Performance Mindset that having a growth mindset is one of the ways to enable success and reach, you know, kind of your own standard of excellence. Tell us about a time that you failed and tell us what you learned from it so we can learn something from your failures. Oh, gosh.

You know, I have to go back to when I was 17 or 18 years old. And I think, you know, at the time it was devastating, but looking back it really set the foundation for me. I had a Division I football scholarship that I had accepted to play football at a university, and the only thing I had to do was pass my ACT. And I took that thing I don't know how many times, and I was one point short of the standard requirement, and I didn't end up getting the scholarship because of it. And, you know, for a long time it haunted me because I was like, you know, I lost out on an opportunity because I wasn't prepared, or at least that's how I felt at the time.

And I didn't ever want to lose out on an opportunity because I wasn't prepared. Now, just because I'm prepared doesn't guarantee that I'm going to get every opportunity that comes my way in life. But it taught me that I can better live with the results if I know that I'm prepared and I put forth my best effort. and if I don't succeed, I'll learn from it, but I'll keep trying. And if I do succeed, it's because I know I put in the work. And I would say that sort of has stuck with me over time and really has made my motivation and my work ethic and discipline a lot stronger. And you think about your success. I mean, college professor, owner of Premier Team Building Solutions, you know, in so many different pro sports. It's cool how, it can work against you. And I think the really good ones, discipline, leaders, and just individuals in general, really know how to take negatives and turn them into, fuel them into positives to do better.

Others will take negatives and it may just take them totally in a different direction as well. But I think if you can figure out a way to make those failures into successes, you'll be better for it. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think so many times our knee-jerk reaction is just to take it personally or take our failure and take it to heart. You know, because we failed, we are a failure. But what you're saying is that the best do is they're always looking for the opportunity and the difficulty. Yeah. You know, we can't guarantee, life doesn't guarantee us anything.

But, again, I feel like I'm better off, I can live with the results of the outcome, knowing that I put forth and did my part and put forth the effort and energy and time into something. Kevin, can you tell us about an aha moment that you had? You know, just a light bulb that went off in terms of, you know, a learning moment for you, maybe about culture or leadership? Well, I tell you, you know, one of the aha moments for me was I never aspired to teach. When I was in college, I wanted to be a spokesperson in the NFL. I wanted to be a spokesperson for a team. And I never thought I would ever teach college for sure.

Never thought that I would be a leadership coach. All these things that I'm experiencing 20 years later, they weren't in my plans 20 years ago. And I think the aha moment for me was that as you move through your life and move through your career, if you're open to different opportunities, if you're open to getting outside of your comfort zone, and for me it was to get in front of college students and teach them something that I had been doing for 10 years at the time, that there's a lot of things that life can show you that you can't or that I couldn't physically see, or I couldn't even dream up myself. Like, it wasn't in my mental capacity to dream it because I couldn't see it. And really, when you're open to things and you're okay putting yourself in uncomfortable situations,

life can show you more than what you can conceptualize in your own head. And so I think that was an aha moment for me. So let's go to the top ten traits of high performers, Kevin. And so I know you have that in front of you. Which of these do you think that strong leaders exhibit the most? Like which trait of those top ten traits of high performers do you think most leads to being a strong leader? I think the strong leaders fall into number seven, they're comfortable being uncomfortable. And I'll tell you why I like this. I like this for myself, too.

It's easier said than done, by the way. And I think that's why really good leaders are able to do it because it's not easy. Sometimes you have to intentionally put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Sometimes situations don't put you in uncomfortable situations. You put yourself in uncomfortable situations. You put yourself in uncomfortable situations to grow. So you become intentional in your purpose for doing something. A lot of people aren't good at that, or a lot of people don't want to initiate that uncomfortableness because they don't know how they're going to react to it, or they don't know how they're going to

respond to it. So I would say number seven, they are comfortable being uncomfortable. And then which one of those traits do you see the people that you work with struggle the most? Controlling the controllables. Because in leadership positions, people tend to want to control a lot of things or at least feel that they have to control a lot of things or at least feel that they have to control a lot of things and you know control the controllables is it's a cliche term but requires a lot of practice and discipline in order to execute it if you can become really good at controlling the controllables then i think you're you're well on your way to being a high performer. It's just not

easy doing that, and it takes a lot of practice to every situation. You almost have to take a step back and say, okay, what part of this situation can I control, and then control that part of it and let the other part go. That's discipline behavior. When you do the opposite, it's default, and you're just being impulsive a lot of times to events that may happen to you. That's true. I like what you're saying in terms of just taking a step back, asking yourself, like, what can I control? And usually it's just like your attitude and your effort and

your preparation and then dominating that but again that takes practice it takes it takes discipline and it takes a lot of self-awareness and it takes not being impulsive because typically we respond quickly to things that are happening throughout the day. And sometimes to take a moment or take a pause or take a step back and just say, okay, what can I control in this particular situation? It's not easy to do. But again, if you can be disciplined about it, I think then you have, you know, the best choices will be available to you of how to handle that situation. So Kevin, let's go to the speed round. Tell us the first thing that comes to mind. So if you could recommend a book or a resource for the audience, what would it be

and why did you choose that? You know, the most recent book I read was Above the Line by Urban Meyer. You know, I read that book and, you know, I like it because as a leadership coach, especially when you're talking about culture and teams and these types of environments, you're trying to create sustainability over time. And when you don't have a system in place, I think typically you start to default back to bad behaviors and bad ways of doing things. And so I like how that book was able to really show or teach readers how to sustain culture. Above the Line by Urban Meyer. And what's the best advice you've ever received? You know, you ever heard the quote, I think it's Mark Twain, he said, you know, if you find your passion, you know, you'll never work a day in your life. If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And I can say that, honestly, with the exception of maybe one or two jobs in my career, I've never had a job I didn't like.

And I don't feel like what I'm doing is work and I feel fortunate because you know you know that feeling when you're when you're in the right space you know exactly what that quote means when you're not in that space you you're trying to get there because you won't work you know this isn't work to me I mean I come in and every single day and really love what I do. That's how I feel too, Kevin. Sometimes I'm like, just pinch me. Like, is this really my job? Saturday, I was on the sidelines of a football game and I was like, this is the best job in the world. You know, you're right when you know when you got it because it just doesn't feel like work and it just fuels your whole body. Yeah. and I want others to have that experience as well.

I think, too, you know, leaders aren't selfish either. I mean, they don't hold on to things that work. They want to share it. They want others to, they want to empower people. They want to put people in positions where they can experience their dreams and they can experience their goals. And I think really good leaders are not selfish leaders. They don't just try to say, well, you know what, I had to work my tail off to get here. So, you know, you have to do the same thing. I think they identify that, you know what,

I was helped along the way. I recognize that there were some people that opened doors for me to get to where I'm at today, and I want to do the same thing. And I think that's what I try to do in my practice. Is there a phrase or a quote besides the one that you mentioned that you live by? You know, it's not, I'll tell you, it's one of my, the guy who hired me at the Minnesota Vikings when I was an intern, Jeff Robinson, he told me this one thing that has stuck with me for 20 years. He says that we're going to help you, but when you get to a position to help somebody else, you have to give back. And that's part of this deal. And I've never forgotten that, and throughout the course of my career, I've always helped others

or reached back and gave someone a break or an opportunity or mentored them because I saw the benefit that it had or the impact it had in my life, and I want that person to experience that as well. So, Kevin, as we wrap up the interview, what's some final advice you'd give to those high performers who are listening? And by high performance, I mean those people who are working to reach their greater potential and are being conscious leaders and conscious of their thoughts and being disciplined with their thoughts. You know, I would say that it's just an ongoing process. Like, it never ends because your values and beliefs shouldn't have an end date. You know, just like your culture, like, you don't, you know, you don't reach your culture and say, ah, you know what, this is it. You know what I mean? You're

always adapting and adjusting and learning more and improving. And I think as long as you just stay in that space where this is how I am for as long as I'm working, this is how it's going to be, and you don't worry about the end point. And you don't worry about, like, I'm there yet. Because quite honestly, we're never there. And when we we think we're there life has a way of showing us that we're not so Kevin how would you recommend that we reach out to you sure so you can I'm on twitter at at kevin k29 k-v-i-n-k-2-, where you can email me at KevinLKing29 at gmail.com. All right. Excellent. And what would be awesome is if we could start a conversation on Twitter. Tell us. Myself, my handle is at Mentally underscore Strong. Kevin's, again, is KevinK29.

Tell us what stood out to you about this interview, what you got from Kevin, and what you're going to utilize in your life and in your leadership and Kevin I want to summarize to you what stood out to me because I'm so grateful for your time I'm grateful that you spent the last almost hour talking to us about leadership

and culture and what I really found meaningful is the three levels of leadership that you talked about competence interpersonal interpersonal, and character. And that creating your culture is intentional, right? You're always creating your culture or the culture is creating itself and you get to decide if you're going to be intentional with that culture. You also talked about how great leaders think outside the box. They're comfortable being uncomfortable and they think outside the status quo.

And then one of the sticky points that you provided to us is that the best are conscious leaders and they're a student of their leadership. They just don't let things happen by chance, but they're intentional with thinking about how they lead and then being intentional with their actions. And I loved our conversation about control the controllables.

I completely agree with what you said in that, you know, it requires discipline. And you're well on your way to be a high performer if you can work to control the controllables. And your advice of just like taking a step back and thinking about what you can control in the situation. But it's a trait that's developed over time. It's not something that, you know, you can be a master at right away. But you have to consciously work to control the controllables, which takes self-awareness and likely isn't our default reaction.

So, Kevin, I just want to thank you so much for your time and your energy and your insight and helping us be high performers today. No, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure talking to you about this stuff and I look forward to our future conversations. Awesome, Kevin. Make an outstanding day. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.