The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 134: Patrick Lencioni – Naked Consulting: Why It Works

Episode Date: June 19, 2016

Episode 134: Patrick Lencioni – Naked Consulting: Why It Works I read Pat's Leadership Fable, "The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team" many years ago and became a huge fan of his work.  "Getting Naked" is another seminal piece on shedding fear.  You'll notice on this episode that Pat also has a great wit and sense of humor.  I was learning and laughing throughout the conversation. Pat Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and the author of 10 books which have sold nearly 5 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. The Wall Street Journal called him "one of the most in demand speakers in America." He has addressed millions of people at conferences and events around the world over the past 15 years. Pat has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Harvard Business Review, Inc., Fortune, Fast Company, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. As CEO, Pat spends his time writing books and articles related to leadership and organizational health, speaking to audiences interested in those topics and consulting to CEOs and their teams. Episode 134: Patrick Lencioni – Naked Consulting: Why It Works Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio. The Learning Leader Show "Getting naked… Being completely transparent has been the key to our success." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Humility is the core virtue of sustained excellence A drive for excellence is imperative to be successful – Southwest Airlines Why don't most leaders do this? They think it's beneath them How do you not get fooled in the hiring process? Pat answers… "Scare people with sincerity" Why the phrase "it's just business" is horrible Why his business is called The Table Group It's important to enjoy each step of growth.  If you don't enjoy owning one restaurant, you won't enjoy owning 20 of them Getting naked – Being 100% transparent Don't sell… Help.  Start to do stuff for a potential client immediately.  Help them from the very beginning before they've paid you anything.  They will eventually beg to give you money. Naked Consulting = Don't be afraid to lose the business Don't be afraid to be embarrassed – Ask questions Don't be afraid to feel inferior to your client.  Help them.  Clean the office, carry supplies, do the little things The Ideal Team Player is: Humble Hungry Smart Keynote speech process? Make people an insider.  Make it so they are in on it.  Don't present, just talk as you normally would.  Be honest. A great learning leader is humble enough to know that she is learning constantly "The best piece of technology is a table." Continue Learning Read:  The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team- A Leadership Fable Go To: The Table Group Follow Pat on Twitter: @patricklencioni Follow me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 130: Ryan Holiday – What Is Your Greatest Enemy? Your Ego Episode 127: Adam Grant – How Originals Impact The World Episode 126: Jayson Gaignard – Mastermind Talks – An event with a lower acceptance rate than Harvard Episode 114: Cal Newport – Deep Work Is Your Super Power Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Pat Lencioni is leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio From TableGroup.com   Pat Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and the author of 10 books which have sold nearly 5 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. The Wall Street Journal called him "one of the most in demand speakers in America." He has addressed millions of people at conferences and events around the world over the past 15 years. Pat has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Harvard Business Review, Inc., Fortune, Fast Company, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. As CEO, Pat spends his time writing books and articles related to leadership and organizational health, speaking to audiences interested in those topics and consulting to CEOs and their teams. Prior to founding The Table Group, Pat worked at Bain & Company, Oracle Corporation and Sybase.

If you don't love every step of the way, you're not going to do well, I don't think. And so you got to love, you can't start a restaurant and say, I'm really doing this because I want a chain of restaurants, because then you're not going to love that first one very well. So I say, make sure you love what you do. And if the success comes beyond you, that's fine. But if it's just what you're meant to do at the first stage, then make sure you love that too. So it was scary. And I will tell you, one of our first clients that launched us, reneged on a contract. And so right out of the gate, somebody called us and said, we're not going to honor this contract.

And we were like, oh, man, there were some tears. And we were like, are we going to sue this company? Nope, we're not going to do that. We're going to move on and find other clients and work really hard. And we're glad we did. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success.

You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, it's Ryan Update in regards to the Facebook group we've set up. I'm so happy to see the response that we've gotten from so many great fellow learning leaders. The conversation and the dialogue has been fantastic, so I'd love to invite all of you to further the conversation and join us. simply go to learning leader.com slash group learning leader.com slash group and we will add you to the community and you can join like-minded individuals to discuss leadership topics. Argue a little bit. Maybe we can disagree.

I think that's how we all learn. But it's been fantastic so far. I've loved really engaging with you guys, the great listeners of the Learning Leader show. So go to learning leader.com slash group. We'll add you and I look forward to talking with you soon. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

I really appreciate it. And I am so thrilled for tonight's featured leader. This one was so good with Pat Lynchoni. He is the founder of the table group and the author of 11 books, which have sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide. The Wall Street Journal called him one of the most in-demand speakers in America. He's addressed millions of people at conferences and events around the world over the past 15 years. Pat is a remarkable servant leader who has great humility. I just loved this conversation.

A few of the things we got into. The story behind why Pat initially left his corporate job to start his own business. I love specifically hearing about the early days and Pat shares those stories. And then the three essential virtues of the ideal team player, followed up by his specific process for giving world-class keynote speeches. The way he details his thoughts and preparation for giving speeches and how he opens them, I think it'll surprise a lot of people, and I think you'll really like it. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Pat Lanchone. Pat, I am thrilled to have you here on the Learning Leone.

Peter's show. So first, thank you for being here. Quick question around virtues of people who have sustained excellence. You have done a fantastic job of studying these types of individuals, those types of teams, and you certainly are one as well who has sustained excellence for a number of years. I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the common virtues or themes those people and or teams all seem to share? You know, I think that humility is at the core because they don't think more highly of themselves than they deserve to, but they also don't think less of themselves in terms of their God-given talent.

So humility is key, and then a drive for achievement, but again, more to make a difference not to please themselves. I think those are two of the chief virtues that I see, both in terms of the individuals and the organizations, never taking themselves too seriously. I think a Southwest Airlines is a company we work with, very humble, very humble, but also very determined to do good for their customers and in the market in a service way. So I think it's not having a strong sense of yourself in terms of servants, you want to serve others, but being really driven to do well. I think those are probably the two key attributes of sustained excellence for me. Interesting, you brought up Southwest Airlines. So I, you know,

when anyone who's gotten their MBA or is currently getting it, you know, when I was going through that process, Southwest Airlines is one of the, always a case study, 100% of the time, usually multiple times, depending on how many courses you have, getting your MBA. And I, so I've studied them quite a bit. It's been a few years since I got my MBA, and I'm, I'm curious so from your perspective, why, it seems to be that their characteristics and their virtues themes are not, it's not rocket science. It's known, yet so many fail to do it. What separates them from the rest that allows them to do what they do? Yeah, in my book, The Advantage, I lead with the story about Southwest Airlines. I don't call out Southwest, because I don't do that in my books in terms of

specific companies. But I was sitting at a Southwest Airlines employee meeting, leadership meeting, with like 700 of their VPs and executives and leaders all the way down into management. And I was sitting next to the CEO, and I was watching presentation after presentation about the amazing things they do for their customers, for their employees. Because Southwest really is a better company than you've heard the stories. I mean, some companies, you hear these great stories because they're good at PR, and then you meet the company, and you get to know them behind the scenes, and you see that there's really kind of a shadow culture, not Southwest Airlines. They are better in person than they are in what you've read. And so I leaned over to the CEO, Gary Kelly, because I was invited there to speak,

and I said, Gary, and I whispered this to them during the conference, I said, why don't all your competitors do all this? And it was really a rhetorical question because I thought it was like, can you believe that? And he had this quiz look on his face. He was really thinking about it. And he leaned over and he said, you know, Pat, honestly, I think that they think it's beneath them. And that's the thing about Southwest. What they do, as you said, is not rocket science. But it's the kind of thing that more sophisticated companies think it's too simple, too hokey, too unsophisticated. And they're all looking for a silver bullet that's more measurable and more complicated and complex. And, you know, people from Ivy League schools just

can't believe the key to business is common sense, treating people well, working really hard and loving one another. They're like, it has to be more than that. Why do people feel the need to make it so complex? I think it's arrogance. I think it's like, well, I'm very smart, so if I'm not tapping into all of my intelligence. I mean, Southwest does not have smarter employees and smarter leaders than their competitors do. They really don't. They They don't hire from better schools. They don't look for people with higher SAT scores, if you will. They look for people that have certain values.

And those values are not correlated to raw intellect. They're correlated to common sense, having a servant's heart, having a sense of humor, and a warrior's spirit, as they say. And so they hire for those things, which more intelligent people think it can't be that. And it really, really is that. They're intolerant of people who don't have a sense of humor, who don't want to serve others, who don't overcome obstacles. And as a result of that, they create a culture that is something that they're competitors,

even though they can read books about it, just can't seem to do because they're looking for something more measurable, sophisticated, quantitative, and immediate. Speaking of the hiring process, Pat, and this is an area where I think everyone views as a place that is so vitally important yet so many, even pretty great leaders sometimes struggle with this. take me into because you work with some of the best in the world. You have worked. You currently are working. You've written incredible books. To somebody, and I've probably done, I don't know, more than 500 interviews to hire people. Typically is in the profession of selling, but also in other roles as well throughout my career. I'm curious from your perspective. So people, you know, Gary Ridge is a great CEO from WD40. He said people don't necessarily know what they're looking for. And that's why they struggle in the hiring process. Exactly. And so that, I agree. So now that's,

Southwest has defined these are the qualities and the in the virtues and the themes, the people that we want, they possess these characteristics. And we're looking for them specifically. But how do you take it from that point to then making sure you don't get fooled through the process? Because Southwest, their information and other great companies, their information is out there. People can know, okay, they want these three things. So I'm going to go into the interview to make sure I can somehow show these three things. But Southwest, I'm guessing. I'm guessing. does a good job of not getting fooled. How do you avoid getting fooled when trying to hire for the characteristics that you want? Well, it's a great question. And the funny thing is, they get fooled very little of the time, but everybody gets fooled some of the time if you're a company of size. Well, heck, I've come in my little company, we get fooled sometimes. And when I first met the executives at Southwest, they said, hey, Pat, we want you to help us with a problem. I said, what is it? Because our turnover, you know, we have people leave our company, and we don't know why. And I said, what's your turnover? They said, like, 4%. I said, well, that's ridiculous.

They go, yeah, but it just feels bad when anybody leaves. And they said, and the problem is people are leaving right after they start, the ones that leave. And I said, well, that's a good problem. See, those are the ones that are sneaking through the interview process. And then they get here and they realize it's real. And they don't want to stay because they don't want to work there. See, the best antidote to people maybe sneaking through the interview process, I mean, first of all, have an interview process that's so real that you're going to find people who don't fit. But more importantly, make an interview process and a cultural reality that's so real,

that people run screaming that don't fit. And that's the thing about Southwest Airlines. And I write about this in my latest book that when you interview somebody for a job and you have a list of cultural attributes, tell them at the end of the interview process, hey, we believe in these three things, however many they are. And if you like those things,

you're going to love working here and we're going to love you, it's going to be great. But if you don't like those things, you're going to hate working here. It's really going to be miserable. And we're not going to enjoy you very much. and six months from now, you're going to wish you hadn't come here. So in other words, we call it scare people with sincerity.

If you're dating somebody and in the dating process, people think it's like fooling somebody into going out with you. Well, that doesn't make any sense at all. Why would you want to be with somebody who doesn't fit you? So when you date with somebody, you should say, hey, this is what I'm like. If you like that, we're going to have a blast. But if you don't like that, this is going to be the most miserable few months of your life. And that kind of candor is what's important.

Now, the interview process is good. One of the things Southwest does, Ryan, which I think is hilarious, is like, so they hire people for a sense of humor, right? So how the heck do you can you tell if a person has a sense of humor during interviews? Well, one of my friends there was in charge of HR for a while in hiring. And so they're hiring pilots. They're doing interviews with pilots. So these are people, a lot of them from the Air Force wearing three-piece suits and wingtips and dress socks looking all formal and everything. And they're saying, we're going to see if these people have a sense of humor.

And what they look for is self-deprecating sense of humor, you know, really not too, thinking too much of themselves. They have fun at their own expense. So halfway through the interview process, they actually sent all these pilots down to the company's store to pick out a pair of khaki shorts, which is what their flight attendants wear on their hot flights, you know. And they said, and so they had to go down there and put on khaki shorts and interview the rest of the day in their suit, tie, khaki shorts, wingtips, and their dress socks. Well, a few of the pilots said, this is so ridiculous. I'm not going to do that. This is so demeaning to me.

I'm opting out of the interview process. Well, what a great way to weed people out, because if they can't do that, they're not going to like working there. And that doesn't mean they're bad people or bad pilots. It means they just don't fit. They should work someplace else. So they do uncharacteristic or untraditional things to see if people are comfortable in the culture. And they have to be willing to lose talented people with great technical skills who don't

fit the culture. And that's what a lot of companies don't do. They think, well, everybody who has the technical skills. If this guy graduated in the top of his class at the Air Force Academy, then we have to hire him. It's like, not if he doesn't have a good sense of humor or a servant's heart. So they take it seriously. They know what they're looking for, and they're brutally frank about whether a person's going to like it or not. So that's a long answer to a short question. I love it. And it always starts, though, with the leaders of the company and with the group. if you can't just put up these words on a board and say, this is what we live by. You have to literally live by it.

And the other thing, Pat, I was going to bring up later, but I'll bring it up now, whenever somebody tells you it's not personal, it's just business, like I hate that phrase. And I don't hate a lot of things, but I don't like that phrase because to me, I believe it's one and the same. Like, I'm not a different guy when I go to work or when I do this podcast or from when I'm talking to my wife or my kids. You know, it's not, there's not a difference, there's not a difference between business and personal. It's all personal all the time, no matter what. And so it's just like if you have to like fire somebody, like you can't tell them it's just business. Obviously, it's part of the business, but you're still, we're both people.

So it's personal too. And you have to understand that. I think the best leaders I've ever been around, they never use that phrase, ever. And I think a lot of people get caught up using that phrase. And they think like it's just an easy cop out. And I just don't like it. I don't think it's a good, healthy phrase for people to use. No, well, that phrase, that idea or sentiment is at the heart of why many people hate their work.

And it's kind of why I went into business in the first place. At the earliest stage, I went as a little kid, and my dad would come home from work and complain about management and his company, even though he was very good at what he did. And I remember thinking, if people can't go to work and be completely human, be themselves, they're going to not be happy there. And I've had jobs like that where I had to go and pretend to be something I wasn't. And it stunk. Yeah. And if you create an environment where people can come to work and be fully human, fully themselves, warts and all, boy, they're going to come, they're going to be bounced off the walls with joy because they fit. But the thing is that not everybody belongs in every organization. And that's why if you don't have, if you don't look for cultural fit, then you can't possibly create the kind of environment where people can be themselves because there's some people in the world who should not work with me and with the other people work with me because they just, their true, their deepest sense isn't fit with me. That doesn't mean they're not wonderful people. but not everybody should work everywhere.

And too many companies hire generically and then make people act like robots and nobody loves that. Nobody loves that. Pat, when somebody walks up to you or you're at a dinner party and they say, and they don't know you, and they say, hey, Pat, what do you do?

How do you respond? Porn star. Seriously? No. I mean, have you used that before just to get a response? Maybe with my friends, just joking around. No, you know, it depends on this

the format because I do a lot of different things and it depends on what kind of what their background is and why they're asking. But sometimes I'll just say consultant. I'm a management consultant and sometimes depending on the, again, on the context, I'll tell them I write or I write books or I can, you know, do coaching to executives and teams. So it kind of depends on what it is, but what I really do is I run a small consulting firm and I do writing and speaking in addition to that. But my favorite part of my job is working with my colleagues and running this little company of ours. That's my favorite part of it. Why? What parts of that make it your favorite?

You know, because when we started, you know, it's an interesting thing, Ryan. When we started, we just wanted to work at a place we love to work. And we started the company, had no idea that I'd ever write a book or that I'd ever get one soul or that I'd ever get paid for speaking. And so we just started this little company and said, if we can just pay our mortgage and we didn't even have mortgages then. But if we could pay our mortgage someday and enjoy working together, that would be enough. And from the very beginning, we said, we want to come to work and be glad when we see cars in the parking lot and go, oh, yay, they're here. We just always wanted to enjoy what we were doing. And so the reason why we started the firm and the reason why I love coming to work today is the same.

I love the people I work with. We are like family. We fight like family in a good way. We love each other. We care about each other and we enjoy each other's company. And as a result, I think we do good work. So really, I started this company to work with people I cared about and do something that we thought would make it. difference and it's it's it's we've been blessed way beyond anything we ever could have imagined or

deserved so how many people are you work with here in our office we have 10 and we've been very intentional we could have grown it really big and we decided instead of doing that we want to keep it small and then we uh we help other people in the world consult using our material we say hey if you want to start your own little business you can go do this too why don't you go out and find clients and we'll help you find some clients and and we encourage people to to do that for themselves, but we've always decided we wanted to stay small to protect the culture and this amazing interpersonal dynamic that we have here. Why is it called the table group? The table group, because when we started, I certainly wasn't going to name it after me.

I have a long name, and I thought that would be a little bit limiting anyway. And then we also decided that what we were going to do was going to be very simple and straightforward. And, you know, we believe the best piece of technology every business owns is still a table. And that when people sit down around a table. They, you know, that's how you get things done. You sit down and you hammer things out. A table is a very sturdy, reliable, simple piece of equipment. And so, we wanted it to be something simple like that. Nice. What role does Amy play at your company? Amy's the, she's one of the co-founders. Okay. And general manager, and she's kind of my surrogate, if you will. I mean, Amy, if you look at our personality styles, we're both idealists,

which that might not mean anything to people listening, but we're both similar in our core, but she's a thoughtful, introverted, structured person, and I'm a less thoughtful, more extroverted, unstructured person. So when you put the two of us together, she understands what I'm trying to say and knows how to put it into action. So she's the general manager, she's the glue. She's the person that finds the gaps in our company

and fills them all and knows how to do everybody's job. The reason I bring that up, Pat, is because Amy has been, the word that comes to mind is just delightful to work with. and getting you know, you and me set up to have this conversation speaking with her, emailing with her. And I think it tells me a lot about the leader based upon the type of individuals they surround themselves with and they have working together with them. And, you know, you probably wouldn't be surprised, but some people would be surprised that

there are certain, even, you know, somewhat people who people would view as being successful that don't have quality people working around them, what's kind of surprised me. But it's evident. That's why I usually will almost never bring up the name of somebody who kind of is, you know, working alongside the feature guest. And tonight I am because I think she's fantastic. She has uncommon judgment around people, you know. And the truth is I trust her in particular and others here at my company with my life. I mean, she makes decisions about where I'm going to spend my time and where I'm going to go and whether something's worth doing.

and I totally completely trust her. And she is an extraordinary person. And I will say, I don't, I think that bragging is a very, is not a very attractive thing. But the one thing I do like to brag about is the people I work with because they are really extraordinary. And I mean that. And the other thing is they are much better than I am at many of the things we need to do here.

They know what I'm good at and I know what they're good at. And we love that about each other. And so if I, I remember when I started my firm, my dad, God rest his soul, said, Pat, don't take any employees with you when you start. Get your business started before and then make sure you can afford them. And I said, well, Dad, I'm never going to do anything well if I don't have these people around me because I stink at half of stuff we need to do and they're good at it. Speaking of that, Pat, I'm glad you brought that up. Let's go back to the very beginning.

When was the table group created? 1997. 1997, okay. And the founders all worked at a company called Sybase, a database company in the Bay Area. and I was getting recruited to go work for some big name CEOs. I only mentioned that because it was kind of tempting, but I was like, I don't want to do this. I want to work with the same people I've been working with for the last five years.

And so we all decided we should start our own consulting firm because we had this methodology we believed in, and that's how we did it. What was it like at the very beginning? Because a lot of people listening have emailed me thoughts about basically doing what you've done. They've had what some would say a regular job. A lot of them actually make pretty good money. but they also have responsibilities people to take care of, but they want to do more.

They want to do something bigger. They want to leave their mark on the world. They want to make an impact on people, and they have ideas and thoughts. But there's a huge fear, and a lot of people, a lot of successful people are risk-averse to doing what you did.

What was it like at the very beginning? Take me back to 1997. We're going to start this company called the Table Group. We're going to be a consultant. Because a lot of people say if they're unemployed, they're like, oh, I'm a consultant, you know? We all heard that before. and they're kind of struggling.

How was it at the very beginning and how did you grow it? Well, you know, it was interesting. Before we started the company, we'd get together in somebody's living room. We all had apartments. None of us had mortgages or kids at the time. And we'd get together in one of our apartment

and we'd talk about this plan and we had to start this company. And every meeting we had at a different person's apartment, a new person would come to terms with the fact that we were serious. In other words, we'd be like, yeah, this is fun, we're planning a business. And then it would dawn on people,

oh my gosh, we're really going to do this. And people would get a pit in their stomach. Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? going to do. And we all just kept encouraging one another. And in spite of the fact that my dad and other parents of ours were like, oh, don't leave your jobs. We decided, let's do it. It was scary, but it was really exciting. But our expectations were really low. What I mean by that is, if all we got to do was work together and make ends meet, we would have been happy. See, and people often say, how can I do what you do? And I say, well, what do you mean? And they're like,

well, I want to have a big consulting firm that people know about in books and speak. And we're like, well, I don't know, because we would have been happy if we just got to do the first thing. And every time we learned to love and enjoy whatever we were doing at the time, and then it led to something else, but we weren't like skipping over two steps to get there. And I think sometimes people start a business thinking, well, gee, I'm starting this business, not because I really want to do the business, because I want three steps later. And if you don't love every step of the way, you're not going to do well, I don't think. And so you got to love, you can't start a restaurant and say, I'm really doing this because I want a chain of restaurants,

because then you're not going to love that first one very well. So I say, make sure you love what you do, and if the success comes beyond you, that's fine. But if it's just what you're meant to do at the first stage, then make sure you love that too. So it was scary, and I will tell you, one of our first clients that launched us, reneged on a contract.

And so right out of the gate, somebody called us, and said, we're not going to honor this contract. And we were like, oh, man, there were some tears. And we were like, are we going to sue this company? Nope, we're not going to do that. We're going to move on and find other clients and work really hard. And we're glad we did. So it was scary.

We were sitting in a room with one phone line. This was back in the day when the internet wasn't quite so pervasive. And we had one phone line, one really slow internet connection, and a big loft with ants all over the place, spraying ants because somehow they were sneaking in there. It used to be a jelly bean factory where we were working. So that's what it was like. It was very humble and we loved it. But also, in addition to that, I'm trying to also get practical for people who have

responsibilities. Please. You've got to make money. And so, and you had, how many people started it together with you? Five. Five people. So, I mean, that means whatever money comes in, you're splitting in some way, some way, shape, or form five ways.

You have to live, right? We have to pay bills, things like that have to happen. And I know, it sounds like your bills weren't quite what they were, you know, what they are now with a family and kids. But from a practicality standpoint for someone who's listening to this and wants to do this, I mean, how did you make money? Well, it was interesting. So when I was getting those job offers before we started the company, one of the companies that people have heard of and the CEO heard of, they offered me a job and I turned them down.

But I said, you know, I'm going to start my own firm. Why don't you guys hire me to do the same kind of work and hire a firm? And they said, okay, we'll do that. So we had a client. And then we had a couple of other clients that I had done some pro bono work for before, but it was modest, but it was interesting. So we started, my wife, who has more faith in me than I do, I think she gave us, so we were living in an apartment in San Francisco, and she took the money we had saved for a house and said, just use this to start the company, you know, I mean, it wasn't

very much money. It was a down payment. And I was like, you sure? She goes, oh yeah, you'll be, you'll do fine, you'll do fine. And so, so she gave us a little bit of seed money just to rent the office and buy some tables and chairs and stuff. And then we had a few of these clients. But the very first pay period, what I did, I remember this, we had, we had enough money to pay people's salary, but I said, let's skip the first pay check just to prove that we're willing to do this. So let's never take this for granted. And let's be, our financial philosophy is conservative, be conservative with your money and a little bit paranoid about what might happen in the market. And so we decided to skip our first pay period, pay ourselves just enough, not too much. And so we didn't set our

expectations too high. But we did scramble for clients. And we have this methodology that we call naked consulting that we do. I have a book called Getting Naked. And I think that was the key to our success early on. And that is you're completely transparent with your clients. You tell them the hard truth. You love on them. You give away the business when you have to. And you just do things uncommon, culturally uncharacteristic things that are in their best interest and not your own, and they reward you for it. And I will tell you the naked approach to customer service and to consulting that we do was we got rewarded for that right away.

That's probably the single most important thing that we do in our business is we have this approach that we call naked service. What does that sound like? At the beginnings of a relationship with a new client, I'm thinking of the table group and your, your naked approach. Can you, can we hear it? Can you, can you kind of role play a little bit of, if I am, you know, I'm Ryan Hawk and I'm your new client and you're, you're Pat and you're coming to help out me or my company. What does that sound like? Well, the first thing we do is we don't

sell, we always consult. So we go and let's say you're not a client yet. Well, in our mind, you are our client. You just don't pay us yet. Okay. So we go in and we just help you. So we don't go in with a presentation and a business card and a, and a promise about what we do. We just go in and we ask you questions and say, what's going on? And we start to do stuff for you. We just say in that meeting, we go to, do you have a whiteboard and we, we ask what's going on and we just start giving away what we do and showing them little pieces of it? And that they could actually go, that's really good. Okay, I don't think we need anymore. We're done. We just say, let's start serving them instead of selling to them. So rather than promise something,

we show them stuff and help them. And we'll come back and keep doing it for free. Now, no client, no person that's even remotely reasonable is ever going to take advantage that. Like, well, if you're not going to charge us, we'll just keep having you come back. But they're shocked that you'll do it. Yeah. And then they're like, you guys are great. Yeah. Okay, let's get a, you tell us what to pay you and we're going to do this because they see what we're doing.

They see that we're more interested in them than we are in our own business. And we've had many clients say, we don't think we're paying you enough. And we're like, no, no, no, we think you're paying us enough. And they're like, I don't know, you're doing a lot of everything. extra work. Well, we were actually concerned that we were doing, you know, they're actually more concerned about us being treated fairly and because we're concerned about treating them fairly, that it becomes this symbiotic relationship where they're like our family. And it sounds crazy. So that's how we start it. Then when we work with them, if there's three principles to

naked consultant. One is don't ever be afraid to lose the business. Okay. If you have to tell them something that's difficult for them to hear, but it's what they need to hear and you think they might fire you because it's too hard to hear, tell them anyway because it's what they need. And so many times people have said, you guys really care about us and you tell us the hard truth and we want you around. And I've done it in ways I was sure I was going to get fired. Like called a CEO out in front of his team like, you know how you can't do this. And afterward they're like, you're the only person who's ever told us that we need you to stay. The second principle of naked consulting is don't be afraid to be embarrassed. And that is ask questions that might not be smart questions.

Not that you know aren't smart, but like you have a hunch about something, but you think this could be stupid. Go, hey, you know, I have a question. What does this mean? Or why are you doing this? You remember when you were in school and the teacher said something, you didn't understand it? And you're like, I should ask about that. Oh, but that might look stupid. And then somebody else asks a question. And the teacher says, that's a great question. And everybody else says, yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Yeah. And you're like, why didn't I ask? Well, I was afraid to be embarrassed. Well, with our clients, we're never afraid to be embarrassed. That's our job. Yeah. Our job is to ask the questions that other people sitting there don't want to ask because they have a, their job is on the line.

Yeah. So we make suggestions and ask questions, and sometimes they're stupid. And when they're stupid, we go, oh, man, that was stupid. And they laugh with us. But one out of five, they're like, wow, that's a great question. Yeah. And that, boy, you keep, you ask one out of five questions that makes them really think about. They're like, man, we need these people.

The last one is, don't be afraid to feel inferior to your client. Do anything they need you to do, even if it's below you or it looks below you. I mean, we used to go to clients. And even when we'd establish some level of credibility in the market and people knew who we were, we'd still like doing simple things for our clients, like helping them with figuring out a conference menu or running microphones around the room or whatever it is. I mean, we don't care. We'd type up notes. We do anything.

We like that. And they really appreciate that. They're like, you guys don't think you're important, do you? And we're not important. You're important. You're our clients. We'll do anything for you. I'll tell you what, Ryan, our client, it's hard to break up with a client even if we want to.

Yeah, I got to believe that you become a part of their business. Yeah, and it's always because we're not trying to serve ourselves, but serve them. And if one takes advantage of us because of that, then we celebrate that. We're like, hey, look, they took advantage. We're not going to keep doing it. But we're like, that's okay. That's proof that we were doing the right thing. But I'll tell you, it doesn't happen very often.

Most people are just looking for a vendor or a partner who cares about them enough to do the hard stuff to help them. And again, I think that was the key early on. When we first started our business, every time we'd go into a client, it seemed like it was Amy and I, you mentioned Amy, we would go into a client. And darn it if we wouldn't walk away with a deal, because we'd tell them hard things. We'd tell them what we weren't going to do wrong. Like we weren't going to make them hold hands and sing and get naked and hug because they were sick of that kind of stuff. And we told them that we're going to help you do things that are practical. And if you don't like it, you don't have to worry about it.

You don't have to pay us. You know, we'll just figure it out. and they're like, okay, we want to work with you. So it helps you get business. More importantly, it helps you do good business and keep business because you're so other-focused. So my favorite book of mine is Getting Naked. It's really for service providers of any kind,

but I think it's my favorite book. One of my mentors gave that to me. Oh, really? Yeah, he did years ago. It's interesting. So I mentioned you before we started recording. When I was going years ago, when I was going in the interview process for a leadership role.

Right. The five dysfunctions of a team was given to me and told, and I was told I had one day to read and be prepared to discuss during the interview the next day. And then another mentor gave me getting naked. So, Pat, your work has been, and that kind of, I don't know, dovetails off of what I was thinking about as you were describing when you said it's hard to break up with a client. I have to believe you are having to probably now turn away more business than you can actually accept. I'm guessing because of from a referral perspective. So a company that you're already working with and you've helped them for years are saying, Pat, you've got to go work for my buddy who runs this company over here.

He needs your help. He's one of my good friends. I want you to help him. I mean, I got to believe that happens a lot too. Tons, which is why we started finding people in the world who had a passion for doing this kind of stuff and had the raw material for it, more importantly. And we're looking for a career change. And we'd say, oh my gosh, you could do this because we had.

hated turning people away. We started this business to help companies become healthier. It was our passion. And suddenly more we're asking us to help them than we could possibly ever serve. And what a high class problem, but man, really a bummer. And so we started finding people who were like, you know, I don't want to travel all the time anymore. I just want to work for, do some consulting. And we'd say, well, why don't you do what we do? And we'll send you some of our extra stuff. and we'll show you how to do it and give you our material and you can go and build a business. And so we have a bunch of those people around the country, around the world actually, who are now, you know, helping us with our extra business and finding that business on their own.

And that's been a really, really gratifying part of what we do. So you just kind of license it to people? Yep. I mean, anybody, as it turns out in the world, can go out and get our stuff and go help people and use it. We give it away. You know, we have a workbook that shows how to, all the exercises that we do. so it's all out there. But there's certain people that it's nice to know that they're really,

really good at it and they know our stuff and that we've got to meet them and spend some time with them, that when somebody calls us, we could say, hey, we know this guy or this gal. And you're a good fit for you because we know what their background is and we know what their skill set is. How do you, what's that process like? Because, I mean, I would assume that you're very careful about that. Yeah. You know, if we're going to recommend somebody, we want to make sure we, and so we have to be really careful. We vet them in terms of like, because if we're going to recommend them, we need to know what they look like and how they perform.

And so we have them go and watch one of us do it. Yeah. And we interview them really well just to see what their kind of qualifications are. And more importantly, if they have the right behavioral stuff and if they can do naked consulting. I got you. Really interesting. I'm guessing that those people that you hire both as part of the table group on your team

as well as the consultants who go out there. and share and spread your message. I have to believe that a few of the virtues that they have are humility, our hunger, and that they are smart slash, I don't know, intelligent. And the reason I bring up those three words is because you've written the most recent book. First of all, for the few people, it's worth like 30 plus minutes in and we didn't, I guess, say this. You've written, what, 10 plus books?

They've sold millions and millions of copies all over the word. World Street Journal has called you one of the most in demand speakers in America. And so just to get that out of way, the newest book, The Ideal Team Player, in which you identify the three virtues that combine to produce people that are basically who you want to work with. And so you're the expert. I'll let you take it from here. But describe me why you wrote the ideal team player and talk a little bit about being humble,

being hungry, and being smart. Well, my bestselling book is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And I wrote that in 2002, I think. And that's just done so well. We had no idea that it would travel so far in so many languages and so many different kinds of organizations. And what that does is, so you have a team, how do you turn them into a real team? I mean, you have a group of people and you're like, we want to be a team.

We're serious about this teamwork thing. What does that look like? So we took them through the five, you know, behaviors that you have to embrace. And the five disfunctions, the five temptations or disfunctions that teams fall into that tend to screw them up. So we wrote that book and then the question became, what kind of people are good at doing this? Now, anybody can do it, except for people with pretty severe limitations. I mean, almost anybody can be a good team player with the right amount of coaching and work and all those things. And that's a lot of the work we do with our clients.

But there are certain people that have some what we call virtues, some personal virtues, that make them a really easy fit for being a team player. So if you were going to hire somebody and you knew they had these three virtues, you're like, oh my gosh, they're going to slide onto this team and they're going to be great. And that's whether you're an NBA team or a corporation or a church or a school. There are these three virtues that makes somebody a very, very natural team player. And those are humility. In other words, more interested in others and themselves. Second is hunger, which is just will not stop working until they have very high standards and are not afraid to work hard. You'll never have to ask them to do more. You'll have to bring them in

because they just have this desire to do well and to work hard. And third is smart, which is not intelligence in an intellectual sense, but it's really more common sense around people and knowing how to deal with people and understand people's emotions and when you're sitting in a room not to say stupid things and to understand what's going on around you. So these things humble, hungry, and smart, which on their face sound pretty simple.

I mean, any one of those, be like, yeah, humility, yeah, all hunger, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, good interpersonal skills, smarts. But when you put them together, the combination of all three is a really powerful thing. And a person who is really hungry but not humble. You know, we call that the steamroller. You know, those are the people that are going to roll right over other people. I mean, even a person who's really humble but not hungry or smart, we call them a pawn. In an organization, they tend not to influence others in a good way.

They just kind of do whatever they're told. And we're looking for people that are going to contribute to a team. They know how good they are, but it's not about themselves. So when you find a person who has all three of those, you've got yourself the ideal team player. And unless you're hiring somebody to do brain surgery or fly an airplane who has to have certain technical skills, if a person's humble, hungry, and smart, they can learn most anything. And so there are certain jobs that have really high technical skill requirements, but most jobs hire for fit and train for skill.

Southwest certainly does that. Other great companies we've worked with do that. It's really more about cultural attributes and it is about intellectual skills or technical skills. So we're in an interview, and I'm interviewing to work for you, Pat, and you want to determine if I am humble, hungry, and smart that I have all three, not just two, but all three.

What are you asking me or what is the process for you to identify if I am humble, hungry, and smart? I should pull out the book here. It's around here someplace. Because I have a bunch of things listed in the back. When you write a book, people remind you about it, and you're like, oh, I forgot I wrote that. But before I even look at the book, I'll just answer this in terms of how I do it. I mean, in the back of this book, we've got the most thorough description and models for how people can do interviewing,

and both in terms of the questions to ask and then how to ask them and how to go about this. So it's a very thorough explanation. But I'll just answer it for myself, because I was using these values long before I wrote this book. That's kind of how we stumbled upon this book, because people said, you know, those are the three values of teamwork. And we're like, oh, you're right, they are. So when I look for humility, first of all, I want somebody who can make, who can be light about themselves. I don't want somebody who takes themselves too seriously. And you look for that in interview skills, but I look for people that can forgive others. That's a big one for me. In other words, do they move on after? Are they humble enough to go, hey, everybody makes mistakes. You made me mad, and that's okay. So I ask people in interviews, tell me about that in your life. And I once interviewed a guy, who everybody wanted me to hire, but I had this sinking feeling about his humility. And I remember asking him,

I call it the Law and Order School of interviewing. You know that show Law and Order. Basically, where they asked somebody a question three times and they say, did you kill her? No, did you kill her? Okay, I killed her. It seems like they always say the answer. They tell the truth.

And so in interviews, I tend to do that, not in a rapid fire succession like that. But I remember asking this guy like, hey, do you, how do you deal with conflict? how do you deal with it after it's over? Well, that's a pretty easy question in interview. People are going to go, oh, yeah, I'm good. I don't have a problem with conflict.

I'm like, okay, you know, he wasn't going to say that anyway right now. Later in the interview, I said, hey, if you get in an argument with your friends, your buddies, do you come back from that pretty quickly? Does that linger? No, no, I'm, you know, my buddies, I'm fine with him. But I didn't really believe it, Ryan. And at the end of the interview, I said, hey, what would your wife say if I asked her if you hold grudges? And he goes, oh, yeah, I'm a terrible grudge holder. And that's, to me, a sign of not having humility, not recognizing, hey, everybody makes mistakes.

You've got to move on. And I'm Italian and Irish, so I'm going to say something that's going to ruffle their feathers from time to time. And if they can't move on after that, that's not a good sign. So that's the way I do it. But the key, what we say is don't ask people questions once. Don't ask them in a traditional sense. Get them out of the office. Here's the humility questions that we look for.

We have an assessment in the back that says, do people genuinely compliment or praise teammates without hesitation? do they easily admit when they make a mistake? So you ask people, tell me about the biggest mistake you made and see if they own it and see if they can celebrate that. Are they willing to take on lower level work for the good of the team? It's like, tell me about stuff you do that would probably be beneath you, you'd think, but you don't care because you do it anyway. Do they share credit for team accomplishments? Ask them what they're most proud of and see if they talk about other people. Do they acknowledge their weaknesses? You know, that old question? I love that question still. Tell me about your greatest weakness. And I always tell people, and don't tell me

that you're so conscientious that you intimidate others. I want to know your real weakness because I need to know who you are. And Amy, in my office, who I hired first in an old company, I remember the weakness she told me in her interview. And I remember that well. And that was 23 years ago. And I'm like, yeah, I can work with that. That's great.

You know it. Do they offer or receive apologies graciously? That's that last one I just mentioned. So those are the kind of things we look for in interviews. But if you sit behind a desk and ask the question once, the people know how to interview that way. You got to be a little bit more. Here's some of the other questions.

Tell me about the most important accomplishments in your career. Embarrassing moment in your career. How do you handle failure? Give me an example. Tell us about someone who's better that you in an area that really matters to you. So these are the kind of questions we get at to try to see if somebody's humble. But there's no checklist. You've got to get it in your gut.

And if in your gut you're like, ah, I still don't get it. Keep probing. Are there certain weaknesses that somebody would say that their complete red flag that you're like, it's not happening if they admit a weakness. Or are you just happy that they're self-aware enough and humble enough to admit any type of weakness? Almost the latter of what you said is almost it. Now, if they said something that was a real indication like, yeah, I'm really uncomfortable about other people's success. Yeah, that'd be bad. You know, I'd compliment them for their raw and honesty, but that would be a deal breaker for me. Or if they said, yeah, the other teams I'm on,

I really rub people the wrong way because I'm kind of all about myself. Now, on the other hand, I would say, well, you're aware of that. What are you doing to overcome it? And if they said, I'm aware of that, and this is what I'm doing, and I'm never going to be that way again. But most weaknesses, if a person's not an axe murder or addicted to porn or something like that, there's porn coming up twice in this conversation. There's three times you said it, yeah.

Porn. There's number four, too. Which is a terrible thing, by the way. I shouldn't make light of it. It's a horrible disease. But the thing is most people, whatever their weakness is, if it doesn't show me, if they say I sleep in all the time and never come to work late, well, that's a hunger thing. And, you know, I have no idea when I'm making somebody mad and I make people mad frequently. That's a smart thing.

But if it's not a real violation of humble hungry, smart, I'm fine with it. What are some of the smart questions? It's hard to, sometimes it's a gut feeling. You can just tell when conversing with somebody. Like, have you ever said, use the phrase like, she just gets it. And you could just tell or we clicked. And it's because they, to me, I've, when I think of smart and I'll obviously let the expert share in a second, but when I think of smarter intelligent when I'm interviewing people,

especially for a job, it's the questions that they ask me. Are they thoughtful questions? Not just the basic like vacation days or whatever, the lame questions, but mean, have they listened to what I've said and then thought about. it distilled that down and asked really thoughtful questions. That to me is a great indication of somebody who's who's intelligent. Yes. And if they're genuinely interested in you and your business, that's an indication of humility too. It's not like, let's just talk about me. Right. Right. But the questions we ask us, and by the way, Amy, who you mentioned earlier,

is probably the smartest person I know. You know, I don't know, she didn't get the highest SAT scores and the highest grades in college, so she did fine. But she just gets people. She just knows And that's why she's the surrogate for me. She could talk to anybody and they like her more than me. So that's awesome. How would you describe your personality? Do you know who you are? That's a smart thing.

That's a tough question, no, I think. I think that's tough. Yeah. We use the Myers-Briggs and other tools in our practice. But we just want to know if they have a sense of themselves. What do you do that others in your personal life might find annoying? There's a question. Because everybody's got something.

Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. What kind of people in the way you the most? and how do you deal with them? Interesting. These are all smart questions. Smart.

Gotcha. Would your former colleagues describe you as an empathic person? Empathy is a good part of smart. Can you give me an example of how you've demonstrated empathy to a teammate? So those, but you're right. So those, I just gave you four questions. It's the conversation that we're really interested in. And here's the other thing.

What we encourage people to do in interviews is don't do a single interview and then pass it on to the next person and have them start over. debrief after the interview. And so the first two people to interview somebody say, what did you learn? And both of them go, oh, this guy's the smartest person ever. I mean, he just so gets. But we're not sure about the hunger. Okay, let the third person drill down a little bit more on hunger.

If you do generic interviews, you get 10 people that do the interview and after the end of it, you go, what do you got? And everybody says the same thing. You've just wasted that time. So we're saying do group interviews, both get three people in a room to interview somebody at the same time and debrief after each interview and discuss that person as a person. team because you're all looking to make sure they're humble, hungry, and smart. So don't fail to

benefit from one another's perspective. And we just hired a person recently. And we'd interviewed her a number of times and we all had conversations about her. And then we finally let's just get her in a room together. And so she's a pretty introverted person, but she had six people interviewing her. She was a little uncomfortable, but she handled it well. More importantly, at the end of it, when we debriefed, somebody would say, well, I think what she said there was a violation of humility. And the other five people said, no, no, no, that's not what she meant. In fact, she was being really humble. And the other person said, oh, I totally read that wrong. Well, had we based our assessment of her on one person's misreading of an situation, we could have missed a really good person. Interesting. So groups do a better job than individuals at all this stuff.

What would Amy say your biggest weakness is? Or what would you say maybe? Maybe it's the same. Well, oh yeah, she would know. My biggest weakness. When I look at humble, hungry, and smart, I am a unique. Equally qualified to be bad at all of them. I mean, I'm kind of an equal opportunity employer here in the sense that I, there are moments when I am not in my career when I've been not humble, not hungry, and not smart. I think I'm kind of well-rounded and well-rounded in my weaknesses. And I don't say that to avoid it because I think that at different times in my career, and we've worked together for a long time, there's been parts. I would say if I had a weakness, it might be hunger in the sense. Like, when I write a book, like, I don't do a good job finishing it. I kind of wait to the last. minute because the idea of this like I kind of need to be motivated and I will tell you that I come to work like two minutes before I'm supposed to sometimes or sometimes 12 minutes after like today and so I would say I don't have an innate desire for for hard work I have to be passionate about something to do it whereas other people in my office will work hard every day day in and day out even if they're not so moved so I would say that would probably be my least now tell my friends if I'm asked my friends

if I'm hungry, they think I'm crazy hungry, but it's just a different way for me. And I think that... In your own expectation level is probably higher than anybody else for you. I think that's a common theme amongst really successful is a tough word for me because everyone defines it differently, but really successful people seem to have higher expectations for themselves than anybody else in their life. And so that makes a lot of sense to me. Which can be good, but it can also be bad.

But I would say this. There's other people in my office that are hungrier than I am. So I would say relative to the people that I work with, probably hunger would be my own. But it also means you're doing a good job of surrounding yourselves with people that level you up, that are great. Oh, they are wonderful. That's great. Well, I think about, let's flip the script and say somebody who is a great candidate has a couple or many options of places to decide where they want to work. What can that person learn through the interview process, through, you know, research online, whatever it may be, to say, do I want to work at that company?

I've got options. I'm good. I'm really good. I'm a high performer, so to speak, as is used in corporate the world. I'm a hypo. What would you tell them to look for through that process to make sure they make the right decision? That's a great question. And just like dating, people should be going into an interview looking for fit. I remember right when I got out of college, you know, you're kind of, I just want a job. I need a job. So I interviewed at a company that I should have run screaming from. And I spent two and a half years. And I learned a lot about dysfunctional companies and it helped me in my career. but I knew going in the interview process was this. They were going to try to piss me off

and see if I could deal with arrogant, rude people because the culture was one of arrogance and rudeness. And you know what this company is. It's a big company. Is it Bain? No, it wasn't. Bain was different. Bain had some challenges, too.

It was Oracle. Oracle, okay. I figured it was Bain or Oracle. I wasn't sure. Yeah. And maybe Oracle is not like that anymore, but let me tell you, in the early days, it was like, you know, dog eat dog world.

compete with each other. It was not a collegial, collaborative environment. I don't think it was a good company at all. And I left after two and a half years, and that was the longest decade of my life. But in their interviews, I will have to give them credit. They were very honest. They put you in an interview environment, and they tried to piss you off, and they were arrogant, and they tried to get you to brag about yourself. Well, darn it, the guys that were trying to hire me knew that. And so they prepped me to get through this part of the interview process where they were looking for that, and I thought they were doing me a favor. And in fact, what they were doing is talking me into working at a company that didn't fit my personality. And it was horrible. I mean, you would not

believe the political crap that went on there and how awful it was. So I should have seen that and gone, oh, wow, this is not the right fit for me. But at the time, I thought, well, I need a job. I want to do this and there's opportunity here. And, you know, early in your career, you can learn things and it benefits you, but man, when you get a little older, it's like, don't work at a place where you know you're going to be miserable. So I would say when you interview, ask them questions and ask yourself, do I think this is an environment that values people who aren't braggie and people who are more team-oriented? Or is this a place where I have to be an individual constantly promoting myself? Is this a place that's going to really recognize that I work hard? Or are they going to take advantage of that?

Because I've worked at other organizations to do that. And is this a place that's going to value my interpersonal skills, or do they not care if I treat people well as long as I win? Now, some people are actually built for those kind of where, you know, know what your values are. Interview those people to see if you should fit there and don't work someplace if you don't fit. Fantastic advice. And those are the types of questions, Pat, that I feel like I get the most via email sometimes. Not necessarily just younger people, but people, maybe they're in transition or there are in other aspects of their career and they're thinking about it. And I like to direct it towards flipping it too

because everyone always like, hey, how can I get this job? When really there are a lot of high performers who have options. They do. And so for them, it's not how can I get this job. It's how do I decide which one to take? And certainly don't make it just about money.

I mean, that's happened too. I think people have made that mistake. And usually they're like, oh, my goodness. It can be crushing. I have a really good friend who is an engineer. He's brilliant. He really is brilliant. And he's an engineer, and he always took jobs based on the products the company had and whether or not they were going to go public, he thought.

And I'd say, John, just find a company that were people you want to work with. Because let me tell you, you've got to be with them every day. You're going to do well and you're going to enjoy yourself and do better work and good things will happen. And he, after three miserable job experience, he goes, oh, I finally took your advice and it makes sense. I like working here. This is, it's everything. And I think that's the thing going back to when we started the company in 1997, we said, let's just first of all make sure we like going. to work. And then good things will probably happen. We'll probably do better with our clients and do better

with our business. And it definitely is true. I love it, man. This is so good, Pat. It felt like it's flown by. I really appreciate it. I have one more question. Oh, wow. It has flown by. It has. Yeah. Thank you. When you hear the phrase learning leader and when you maybe initially heard that from Amy, what was the first thought that came to mind? Wow, that's a great question. The learning leader. Well, I have to say there's two thoughts that come to mind. My first thought was, I wonder if this is cheesy because there's a whole bunch of people out in the world that talk about, you know what I mean, like they use those words and they don't really know what they mean. Right. But then I thought, and talking to you, I'll tell you what I'm thinking now,

is that this is about people that are humble enough to realize, I don't know all the answers, and I can learn all the time. And a learning leader is one that's not only going to learn from a podcast or a book, but they're going to learn from the people they manage and they're going to realize they're managing people that are smarter than them in certain things. And they're going to go, man, one of my favorite questions or the favorite things a leader can say to a person on their team is, you're really good at that and I'm not. Can you teach me how to be like you? When a leader can admire the people that work for them, that's a great sign of true leadership and humility. And when you talk about the learning leader, it's somebody that knows they don't have all the answers. And I love that.

But I'm not going to lie. When I first heard it, I thought of so many like cheesy HR things, you know, the learning leader. Let's hug. You know, it's funny, I ask that question to a lot of people, Pat, and you're the first one who's said that. And I appreciate you being honest and saying that because I actually had that fear when thinking of any type of a name. But I love the art and science of leadership. And I'm a pretty naturally curious guy. And I thought learning leaders sounded a little bit better than curious leader. So I don't know.

It was hard to name it. But it also can be, like you said, like when you initially hear, you're like, who is this guy? you know well you know the thing that too is about a name i mean everybody it's so interesting to analyze that but the truth is the content is what makes it right and you are going to make the term learning leader great and so now i'm on here i'm like oh learning leader it's a great name to do that but if i came on here and you were like so tell me about you know i mean if it was just silly so the name only is good in retrospect of the content and the content is good and this has been a crazy fast time with you i could just sit and talk to you for the rest of the afternoon let's just keep going let's just keep on

Thank you. I appreciate it, man. I think at some point I would love to do it again. It's not like you're, you continuously put out more and more content that is, I just want to thank you, seriously, for not only for helping me, but impacting millions of people all over the world. I just love it. I really do. And to see somebody who's a true servant leader, who is very humble. I've seen you up on stage too. and you have the art that you bring to that is not only that, but the content as well as your mannerisms and way you approach it is very enjoyable. And it's, and a term I like to use is it's very educational as well as entertaining. And that's really hard to do.

Sometimes you can get one or the other, but it's really hard to get both. And you do a great job of that, not only in your writing, but certainly up on stage in front of sometimes thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So thank you, Pat, for the work that you continuously do. It's inspiring and empowering for people like me to see it and to want to do the same thing.

Well, that's kind of you to say, and I will just tell you that I'm the same. I wish I could say I were intentionally good at that. I'm just the same when I'm standing here in my office talking or I'm at home or I'm on a stage. And I'm glad for that because I just get to be myself. And I've been very blessed to do this in my career. Sorry, that just created another question. I didn't need to do this. That question, I asked Simon Sinek how he was so good on stage.

And without telling you his answer, because it's actually kind of in line with what you just said. Why, if someone had to say, Pat, what specifically could you say, could you point you to say, this is why I am great on stage? Just so throw humility out for this one question, Pat. But this is why I'm so great on the stage and how maybe it could actually turn into practical advice for somebody else. I think it's the naked thing is when I go on stage, what I'm, I'm going to do is I'm going to let them know how I'm feeling at the moment. Every presentation I give, I make them an insider.

I go and I tell them about what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling, who I am. So the rest of the talk doesn't feel like I'm actually trying to impress them or trying to present to them. I'm just letting them in. I let them in. And so they're just insiders. Now we're just having a conversation. And if I were, and I've tried to do presentations early in my career before I understood it, like, oh, I have to be on. Well, darn it, if I, the best thing that can happen to me in one of my talks is the microphone can go out or I can trip or I can drop something and I can go with that.

Because then they go, oh, this guy's human. We're not evaluating him. We're actually rooting for him. And now we're part on the same team and we're just trying to learn. So what I, it's kind of naked speaking, if you will. It's like just be myself. How do you do that at the very beginning? I usually, I try to get them involved.

I ask them a question. I tell them something about myself. Like in my talks, what I tell them is most of my. talks, I begin this way. I say, listen, I'm Catholic and I'm going to start with a confession. The first confession is that I'm not very good at giving a standard talk because I lose my track because I'm an ENFP in the Myers-Briggs. And the prayer of the ENFP is, oh, dear Lord, help me to focus. Oh, look, a bird, you know, and I said, and I'm going to forget my talk. And I do. And so I don't use notes and I forget where I was. And if somebody gets up in the

front road to go to the bathroom in the middle of the talk, I'll go, where are you going? And so suddenly it's not a presentation that they're assessing. It's like they're just with me. And then I tell them that, you know, this stuff is very simple. And you know what I do then? And then I say, please interrupt me. I give the first three people to ask a question a book for interrupting me. Because, boy, as soon as a hand goes up and they stop me and they ask me a question,

now we're having a conversation, now not getting me through a lecture. And it's everything for me. And I feel like I'm better when people are asking me questions and I'm on my feet. than when I'm trying to get hit notes. I've never used a teleprompter. I've never really looked at notes hardly, except if I've given a talk for the first time. And I just find it.

Go up there, be naked, work without a net, and if you fall, it's pretty funny. And you don't have a coach? Oh, no, no, no, no. Okay, it's interesting to hear the difference is. I love that. I think all it shows is that a lack of an ego, which is a huge reason for all of your success.

But this is, I could talk to you about speaking for another hour, but I appreciate it, Pat. This is fantastic. I love it. The only thing I would ask is I want to do it again at some point here in the future, and this has been a lot of fun. Please, because I have a bunch of questions for you too. We didn't have a lot of time.

Perfect. Next time. Sounds good, man. Thanks so much, Pat. God bless. All right. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time.

Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly, by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.