The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 298: Michael Useem - How To Become A Learning Machine

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #298 with Michael Useem - How To Become A Learning Machine Full shownotes can be seen at www.LearningLeader.com Commonalities of sustaining excellence: Thinking strategically Communicating persuasively Decisive decision making The power of using real life examples to demonstrate leadership Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain He was a learning machine "We know not the future, and cannot plan for it much.  But we can determine and know what manner of men we will be whenever and wherever the hour strikes." He was a self directed lifelong learner - "I have always been interested in military matters, and what I do not know in that line, I know how to learn. I study I tell you every military work I can find." He had a mentor/coach - Adelbert Ames was his tent mate and he learned all he could from him He had a disciplined focus on learning from him.  "I asked him every night to tell me what he knew so I could learn" He routinely got outside of his comfort zone - "I will watch myself and do an after action review to analyze." Get tangible experience The purpose behind taking students and family members to Gettysburg every semester - To "stand where Chamberlain stood." And to "get you in their moment on that ground." Recreate the moment as if you're there. Gene Kranz and Apollo 13 "Expecting high performance is a prerequisite to its achievement among those who work with you.  Your high standards and optimistic anticipations will not guarantee a favorable outcome, but their absence will assuredly create the opposite." Being a decisive decision maker and preparing for those challenging moments with an attitude that "failure is not an option." "I knew my teams even more than they knew themselves." Had a great mentor in Chris Craft to help him Teams that are well developed go through experiences together can outperform individuals under stress The motivation behind risk takers: "A calculating adventurer, deriving a thrill from taking a risk and watching it pay off."  This is how visions are created. How to become savvy about calculated risk Risk tolerance is a learned skill Persuasive communication is an art form It's a learned skill You can't hide, you must be persuasive as a leader There needs to be a solid narrative (story), a purpose behind it Every person must know how important their specific contribution is -- "Why are we doing this and what is my role?"

Expecting high performance is a prerequisite to its achievement among those who work with you. Your high standards and optimistic anticipations will not guarantee a favorable outcome, but their absence will assuredly create the opposite. This episode is once again brought to you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader.

That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44-2-2-2-2-2-2-2. in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners, the 4-4-222.

Now on tonight's feature leaders with the great Michael Euseem, a professor of management and director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Also, best-selling author of seven books, including The Leadership Moment, which we focus on heavily during this conversation. A few of the other topics we got into. The story of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Most of you have not heard of him.

And the key to his success in the Civil War and how this applies to you. Then a deeper look at Gene Cran's flight director of Apollo 13 and his culture for demanding excellence and not allowing failure when lives are at stake. then the three key pieces of advice for new managers, which also happen to be valuable for all leaders. So good and informative with Mike Youseem. All right, Mike, you seem so excited to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Ryan, thank you. Great to be here. All right. To get us going, man. There is so much to get to, but I am fascinated by your work and how you've done a fantastic job of uncovering excellent leadership and then sharing it with others. And so we'll get to your

background in a second. But first, I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? You know, Ryan, for me, it comes down to maybe three or four enduring qualities or capacities. Everybody seems to have them that moves the world in some way. And just to get us going, I think we all need some common. of thinking strategically, communicating persuasively, and acting decisively. Stop the whole story, but it is at the core of anybody's impactful leadership. Can you say that again? Sure, it's communicating persuasively, thinking strategically in the first instance,

that communicating that strategy persuasively, and to make everything happen, you've got to be a decisive decision maker, so deciding decisively. Okay, I like that. That's simplistic, but there's so much there. And part of your writing process, in fact, I'll share. So one of my most trusted mentors in my life named Brian Miller sent me an email, and he said, Ryan, you've got to read this book called The Leadership Moment. And this just happened recently, even though the book's been out for quite some time.

And he's one of those mentors where I listen when he speaks. And so I immediately bought the book. And then I emailed you the next day. And here we are talking now. And I found that the cool thing about the leadership moment is the fact that it's a story-based book and then you get practical as well. Basically, you share a story of somebody who led usually through some tough moments and then how you could implement that into your life. And so I'd love for you to, if you could now maybe share an example of somebody who thinks strategically, communicates persuasively and also does a great job of making decisions. they're decisive.

Sure. And, Ryan, to take a kind of a sideways step and then come back to the illustration, I'm a university faculty member. I have a couple of courses on leadership. And I think out of frustration with the confines of the classroom in delivering this particular topic, leadership, it's all about how we think and it's all about what we do. I've turned to more personal accounts of people who were in a different. position to make a difference and then did make a difference. And in that vein, I found I focused on

nine people who were in very different circumstances. So to tell the full story, it went to nine very different people, watched what they did, learn from how they did it, and sought through an example, a compelling real-life example to appreciate what it does take. And to turn to one example for U.S. listeners, this is part of our heritage. I turned in one of the chapters of this book to one of our Civil War. Oh, my favorite. Here we go. Here we go. So Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is from the great state of Maine. In 1862, he signed up to serve in the Union Army, had no military background. He did not come out of West Point, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He went to see the governor of Maine and said, I'd like to volunteer. The governor said, great, we need volunteers. How about being a colonel? And Chamberlain, to his credit, said, I'm sorry. There was no ROTC at the time. I had not come close to going to West Point. So I think maybe I'll start as a lieutenant colonel until I can at least master the rudiments of how to serve in command. So with that said, Joshua Lawrence, Chamberlain, I think it was age 32 at the time, teaching at Bowden College. He was a, a professor of speech, rhetoric, religion, a couple other topics.

People could teach many topics back in those days. He enters into a union uniform. He's with the 20th regiment as mobilized. Each regiment has the number of the order of mobilization. So he was the 20th regiment of Maine, which means 19,000 soldiers had already volunteered. He was the 20th group of 1,000, went into service in 1862 and soon found him on some of the great and also terrible battlefields of the Civil War. So he was in Antietam in the fall of 1862.

He fought in the battle of Fredericksburg in December, ends up at Chancellsville. And then the focus of the chapter is his historic role in what happened at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That, of course, is the engagement of July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, a turning point, unequivocally, maybe the turning point of the Civil War. Robert E. Lee's army of 75,000, the Army of Northern Virginia, as it was called at the time, had come north, the only genuine invasion of the North during the entire four years of the Civil War to shake things up to pressure Abraham Lincoln to sit down and bargain to end the war, the terrible loss of life up through the first two years.

Robert E. Lee's army of 75,000 was soon confronted by a. Union Army, Lee, of course, for the Confederacy, a Union Army of about 95,000 in a place just by chance called Gettysburg. It's a little village of 2,200 people, kind of in central Pennsylvania. The two armies fought for three days. Many, many decisions went into the outcome. It was an unequivocal union victory, culminated in Pickus Charge, a disastrous attack by the army of Robert E. Lee. Going into that, though, going into that union victory was one

set of decisions and a leadership moment of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. So we focused there as he stood on what's called Little Roundtop, made a couple decisions that turned out to be historic. So, Ryan, there's the essence of the setup. Okay. A few things about Chamberlain. It's my first or second favorite story, and we'll probably talk about both of my favorite stories. Okay. One of the first parts about him that I think is, I've been writing and thinking a lot about this, is that Chamberlain was a learning machine. Charlie Munger has used that phrase and that I think Chamberlain was. He was a master of disciplined self-study. I think I read that he told Maine's governor, I have always been interested in military matters and what I do not know in that line,

I know how to learn, a voracious reader and was also surrounded by a great mentor. Can you talk a little bit more about how Chamberlain was successful because he was a learning machine because he was dedicated and disciplined when it came to improving himself and learning. Yes, and Ryan, you touch on for me a really a central point that defines why I wrote this book, which is that leadership, we sometimes say, is something that's an individual naturally comes by. They're a natural-born leader, is the phrase. but on thinking about that, I'm looking at some research and just talking with many people, I've personally concluded there are very few natural-born leaders, maybe none, really,

in that there's no DNA for leadership, there's no DNA for teamwork as such, at least directly. And thus, leadership, we don't have it at age 10, but during our youth and in our early years, we, if we are of a mind to learn about it, we can indeed master the art. And Chamberlain, I like the phrase, was a leadership learning machine. And he really took it on through three paths. So as you quoted there, he told the governor, look, I don't know it, but I think I can master it. It's a great issue, though, to dwell on because your listeners, myself, we all think, well, okay, How exactly do we go about becoming more effective in a leadership position, more given to

strategic thinking or decisive decision making? So here are the three paths amply confirmed by research. We can see it in ourselves and we can see it in others. I'm going to anchor each in something that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain did. And first of all, he said, as he told the governor, I don't know it, but I'm going to become a student of leadership. What does that mean tangibly? Well, we all do this, I think, without being self-conscious about it. Often we read history. We watch the history channel.

We love biography. We read about people who succeeded as an individual and making a difference and some who failed. We talk with people. We listen to your program, Ryan, and it's all part of that self-developmental enterprise. And here's the phrase to capture it, of becoming and serving as a self-directed, lifelong student of leadership. To that end, Chamberlain, he bought books at the time. Amazon not around to provide them, but the equivalent on Napoleonic military strategy. So, having not had an interest in military affairs, he became a self-directed student.

Secondly, here's the second avenue. I think about this. In fact, all three of these avenues go into our leadership development programs that I'm part of. Number two, he said to himself, I bet I need a mentor or a coach. These days, we might call it a leadership coach or an executive coach. That term not around the time. But he sought out a person named Adelbert Ames, Adelbert Ames. Ames had come out of the point, U.S. military.

Academy of West Point in the class of 1861. So he's a young guy, 10 years Chamberlain Jr., but he had four years of discipline, focus on military strategy and command. Chamberlain and Ames shared a tent, and Chamberlain said, Ames, you are my mentor, you're a younger guy, but you've been at the point, I haven't. Every night, I'd like you to download. Tell me what you learn. So here's a coach, a mentor, if you will. And then number three, and research consistently says this is by far the most important. We ask our many, many students and mid-career managers who we encounter in our various programs to be very mindful of this.

The third and most effective avenue for your own leadership mastery is to get out of your comfort zone, try something new you haven't done before. maybe in a small business, maybe changing your function from marketing to accounting. That can be a stretch, but that's how we learn by stretching. So Chamberlain told his commanding officers, people above him, in fact, like Ames, Ames was the head of the regiment that Chamberlain served in, give me experience. And then he took the experience. He doesn't engage at Antietam, but he does engage at Frederick Experts in Chancesville.

And I'm going to, in a sense, just watch myself. And what that means is at the end of a one-day engagement, for example, at Antietam, a one-day battle, this came in September 1862. By the way, to side note, 12 hours, the most deadly 12 hours in the Civil War era for losses. It was not the most deadly battle overall, Gettysburg was. But Antietam was the most intense loss in any 12-hour period. More than 20,000 Confederate and Union soldiers did not get off the battlefield after 12 hours. Chamberlain was there.

He didn't engage in combat, but there, and then later in combat, afterwards, he would do what we would call now an after-action review. It's a great method for leadership development. Here's what I did. Here's what I could have done differently and maybe better. Here's what I should have not have done. And then all wrapped up in the fourth question, the fourth issue. in light of that learning, the next time in Chamberlain's case, we go into battle, what are a couple ideas that come out of from that extremely tangible experience?

So quick recap, Ryan, number one, becoming a self-directed, lifelong student of leadership. Number two, seeking out coaches, mentors. It's easier to do that than I think people often appreciate. A lot of people really want to help you. They know they owe it to give back if they've learned. And then number three, consistently putting your hand up and saying, I'll take the offer to do something different or if it's not offered, seeking it out. So one diverse experience after another with after action review after each. And one of the other aspects of him that I found fascinating is his willingness to prepare and make sure he is prepared for a big moment.

in this life. And I quote, we know not the future and cannot plan for it much, but we can determine and know what manner of men we will be whenever and wherever the hour strikes. And I love that quote because it means today somebody might say, you never have to get ready if you stay ready. And I've heard people say that. I played sports and football and they'd say, you know, if we're constantly ready to go or I stay ready, that means I'm always preparing. I'm always repairing. I don't know when the big moment will happen, but I'm going to be ready for it when it does. I think whether it's a leader or just a high performer in general, thinking of that Chamberlain quote of, we don't necessarily know what it's going to happen, but when it does, I will make sure that I am ready and prepared.

You know, that's why we focus in this book on Chamberlain, because what we talked about so far is the setup, so to speak, the platform to be ready. And of course, who knows what lies down anybody's road. Chamberlain was hearing rumors that his army was on the way into Pennsylvania in hot pursuit of Robert Lee's army, the army of what's called Northern Virginia. But he had no idea where they were going to meet in Harrisburg, which was Lee's target, or maybe even Philadelphia, a secondary target. They did encounter each other outside of Gettysburg, about 40 miles south of Harrisburg. But Chamberlain, with the kind of developmental experience and commitment, that we've talked about was evidently ready for this particular moment when history really

is defined. And let me just offer a quick statement about that, and then we'll get into a couple of particulars. As the two armies encountered each other in Gettysburg, July 1, 2, and 3, historians to this day are debating how the battle was fought, and in particular, could the outcome have been different? and could have been a Confederate to victory. And along that line, the outcome was determined by hundreds of fairly senior and actually frontline decisions by those who fought there on both sides. Chamberlain, to his credit, pick it up right on some of your platform there, didn't know

what was going to happen on July 2nd, but with this very self-conscious effort to get himself ready for whatever might lie ahead. Every spring, I believe, when you're teaching, and I don't know if you still do this, so let me know, but I read about this, that you actually take students and their families to Gettysburg to actually walk the grounds. Do you still do this? We do this, and can I recommend this to you, Ryan, and maybe you've done it. I haven't. I want to learn about this. Awesome. Well, here's the, it kind of,

the underlying agenda. Believe it or not, I actually get out to the Gettysburg battlefield from 10 to 12 times per year with students, with mid-career managers, sometimes with those with their families, to stand where Chamberlain stood, to be in the shoes where Robert Lee stood during Pickus Charge, and in that way, very important here, to get you into their moment. we can read about Chamberlain. This is more than 155 or so years ago. That's invaluable, but even more powerfully, let's stand where they stood when he said, fix bayonets. And thus, Gettysburg and Teatum, we take, believe it or not, students to Antarctica, that they're kind of relive, what Shackleton did down there. We go off to the Himalayas.

We've often done that to stand in the shoes of Sir Edmund Hillary and, Tenzing Norgay is they kind of summit in Mount Everest. We don't summit, but we do stand where they walked. And in that sense, we try to recreate the moment as if you were there. The only point, the entire point, is for people to almost re-experience what they went through to make it as indelible as possible. That experience probably helps them remember it and it sticks with them. I would imagine that would be powerful. I'd love to do that. Okay. So there are so many stories get to, and that's, I love the Chamberlain one. We didn't plan that, but I'm glad you chose that.

But I will choose the second one if you're cool with it because this one reminds me a little bit of some of the great leaders that I've been fortunate enough to be led by in my upbringing from my parents, certainly some of the coaches I played for in high school and beyond. And I'm a huge fan of when I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to the moon. And so you could probably guess what I'm thinking of right now. but Eugene, Gene Kranz made famous to a lot of people from the movie Apollo 13. And you wrote about this. And I think there's a few things about Gene that I really like. One of the quotes that I'll start with,

and then I'll let you kind of take it from there because I know you can go deeper. But it's this idea as a leader of expecting high performance. And as he puts it, expecting high performance is a prerequisite to its achievement among those who work with you. Your high standards and optimistic anticipations will not guarantee a favorable outcome, but their absence will assuredly create the opposite. I love that quote. Yep. Yep. Well, let's recreate this era. Neil Armstrong, featured in a current film, First Man, of course, Apollo 11 is putting out the first foot for him and the first foot for mankind, as he had the phrase at the time, is followed by Apollo 12 and then the very ill-fated Apollo 13 a year later. We all know a lot about Apollo 13 from the film.

It's a great film. Ron Howard is the producer-director there. And we looked, we kind of took that as an exemplar of exactly what you reference here at the outset of, being ready to ensure extremely high performance when it's most vital that it's delivered. And a short story on Eugene Kranz is as the Apollo spacecraft, three astronauts on board, is speeding away from the earth towards the moon in a very famous moment. The astronaut in command, I bet everybody listening to this can reproduce before I even say it. But I'll say it, sent down the statement.

Houston, we have a problem. So Houston, we have a problem. The problem turned out to be an extreme problem. Two oxygen tanks are on board. Oxygen, the obvious source of what you breathe. But equally importantly, because they did not have enough power from other sources on board to power a computer, to keep the heat on. they had what they call a fuel cell, which combines oxygen and a separate tank contained hydrogen. And that was the source of power for everything.

So when it turns out one oxygen tank, it blows out. And within a few seconds down in Houston, building 4E, now they're called the Johnson Space Center, one of the sub-mission specialists says to Eugene Cranes, age 33, at the time, or maybe 36, I'm going to block on which it is. But in any case, a fairly young mission controller, the person responsible for overseeing oxygen says, Flight, Flight Commander, Flight, speaking to Eugene Kranz there in this control center,

look, we've got a problem with oxygen. We think it's not a malfunction of our meters. And in my estimate, we're going to be out of oxygen in about three hours given the current rate of loss. Well, these guys got several days. They've got to get to the moon, slingshot-wise, then be brought back from the moon, and thus is kind of a death sentence

if some other source of oxygen cannot be found fast. And thus, Eugene Cran's, a person of action, a decisive decision-maker, says after consulting with people in Houston and on board, of course, remembering that the command module is now attached to the lunar module, that that spinly looking device that there had been planning to take down to the moon surface. These little legs that stick out.

It's got its own oxygen supply. So in an urgent move, Eugene Cran says to the three astronauts on board, okay, you guys, get out of that command module, get into the lunar module, close the hatch, at least you'll have enough oxygen to get out to the moon, got a day or two to go on that, come around the moon, and then with the gravitational slingshot effect, that's going to send you back to Earth.

So it's like kind of borrowing against time. We at least get a few more days. Problem solved temporarily. A couple of days later, as the command module attached to the lunar module is now speeding back towards the Earth, everybody knows, my guess is all our listeners know too

that you can't come back into the Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 miles an hour without heating up quite a bit without having a heat shield at the front and without being kind of aerodynamic, allowing the air to quickly move around you. And thus, Cranes knows, everybody knows that Houston, now the Johnson Center,

that he Cranz somehow has to get the astronauts out of the lunar module back into the command module with enough power on board the command module they've saved some power by having them in the lunar module to shift the astronauts

enduringly back to the command module they're going to detach from the lunar module then they're going to come crashing into the Earth's atmosphere and they need enough power to run the computer the retro rockets, all of that in a very famous moment

it's in the film, it's in the history books, Eugene Cranz has created a high-performing SWAT team. It gets back to the main point here. And the high-performing team is specialist. Eugene Cranz at the last minute got a couple people out of the team who he didn't think were that great, brought a couple new people in. This was a team he had to get extremely high performance from. He couldn't get initially from it what he wanted in as much as the team that had been in a little of a kind of a cloister room off of the command center in Houston, Wendellus,

they've been working for a couple days. And in one of the great moments reproduced in the film, it's in the history books, the SWAT team now reporting to Kranz, as the three astronauts up above, are heading towards the Earth's atmosphere pretty fast. The SWAT team says we don't have it. There's just not enough power on board

to allow these guys to continue breathing, to heat the capsule, to run the retro system to slow the command module down. And Eugene Cran says, thank you. I appreciate your commentary there. But he then said, you've just told me that we're going to fail. And I want to tell you, I didn't give you that option. Failure is not an option. Failure is not an option.

That's the famous line. So the SWAT team, extremely good, pre-developed. Eugene Kran spent a lot of time developing his teams. It seems kind of corny. Do we really need teams? Well, it turns out we do, who are high performance. And so this team went back to work now under orders to find a solution. And, of course, it did.

It took a lot of kind of creative engineering, a couple of Rube Goldberg kind of workarounds, kind of extreme improvisations. and how to solve it. But the problem is solved. The three astronauts are back successfully. Turns out I sat on a five-hour flight with one of them a couple years ago, live and well. Really?

Yep. Mr. Lovell. And so much of that success on the top of the failure comes down to Eugene Cranes, who had created several teams that under extreme circumstances, circumstances, very time bound, people's lives hanging on outcome. They got the job done. So I threw the question back at Eugene Kranz at one point. I tried to talk with people who were in the book if they are still alive. He was very much alive, of course. And I said, well, how exactly, Mr. Kranz, did you know that non-failure was feasible, was an option?

And he said, this has always stayed with me for two reasons. I knew we could do it. Number one, I knew my teams the way they didn't even know themselves. I'd put them together. I had trained them. I had created a stressful environment for them to act in so they could be ready under extreme stress to make tough decisions. So I knew that. Nobody else knew that because I was responsible for creating those teams, including

this special team, the one particular spot team. And then he said, number two, unbelievable stress. But a predecessor of him of Eugene Kranz, guy named Christopher Kraft, Chris Kraft, had been a flight director at Houston. Many Americans will know that name as well. And he had been, this goes back to leadership development, he had been my mentor. He mentored me in one way in particular that made an enormous difference. I was a young assistant flight director in an earlier mission, and Christopher Kraft, flight director, stood up there at Houston in the flight control center and said to me, the assistant flight director, Gene, Eugene, known as Jane, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I'm I'm going to leave the room.

Eugene Cranes, I kind of blinked, excuse me, and Chris Craft says, yep, you're in charge. So call this a battlefield promotion, but Eugene Cranes, a road to the occasion, successfully brought that earlier mission to a conclusion, and thus when they hit Apollo 13, leadership is acquired. That great earlier mentoring had made an enormous difference. It's an amazing story. And part of that team building, which you talked about with Gene that I found fascinating as I was digging in and loving the process to get ready for this talk was in a book, a team that would not fail, how they chose the people with this team and how they built the team. And he used a term called collective optimism, which is optimism is a collective construction, a view of the world based on a complex blend of what it is and what ought to be. And they studied these people under duress. They studied how they communicated, how they shared, how they handled stress.

And then they said if they didn't measure up, when times got tough, they were quickly weeded out. And by the end of the training, Eugene Cran said the team has come together. We've developed the ability to compensate for each other when the chips get down. And we have an attitude so positive that given a few seconds, we can solve any problem. He knew his team and they built a team. And so that he had prepared for the worst. He prepared for this moment to happen. And so that when it did, that they could bring their astronauts home safely.

You know, it points to a finding from research. I don't come to this one directly, but from lots of academic research on teams, teams that are well developed, not too big, not too small, diverse in membership. And they've been through experiences together so they've been through experiences together so they appreciate each other, can outperform individuals, especially under high stress. So individuals under extremely high stress, we all have a panic point or a turning point where the stress overwhelms us. We can't get to sleep at night. We may want to resign. But an extremely well-formed, well-developed, well-defined team, common culture, common bonding,

believe it or not, it actually gets better under stress. It doesn't get worse. It gets better. And Eugene Kranz, I don't know if you ever saw that research, but he was already on top of that point on the premise that some of his teams were going to face a tough moment. He faced a couple there in Houston during Apollo 13 like none other before. And so his teams had been built. And Ryan, it speaks maybe to just a final kind of takeaway point, if you will. When we think about leadership, we tend to think of it as an individual sport. and I like your allusion to being a football player. You learn to be an individual contributor as part of a team.

You learn to be a team leader. That said, there's another agenda, another developmental terrain, and that is developing leadership teams. Teams aren't natural. People don't naturally bond, but through our own intervention, not divine intervention, in our own intervention, we can become amazingly strong in our exercise of team leadership. So it's an individual and it's a team sport at the same time. You know, Mike, there's a, I think an exercise that you've written about that you do with your class is that you ask each student, and your students are often really high-level leaders in companies,

I know, because you teach executive level MBA classes at Wharton and in charge of a really leadership development. But you give them an assessment and then look at what they write about when you say, what are the most excellent leaders? What do they possess? And there's one that I pulled out that I want to talk about a little bit more. And that's risk. People who are willing to do things that may appear or feel risky. And you had one response to this question where they said, and they didn't name somebody in history. They didn't name a famous person, but they named a boss that they worked for.

And they said the reason this boss is great because they're a calculated. adventurer, deriving a thrill from taking a risk and watching it pay off. He dreams and creates visions that enable others to do their best. He motivates team members by emphasizing that the team is doing something that has never been done before. He has strong confidence in himself and in those he trusts. He develops trust. He believes in his team. He's willing to take a little risk. He shares some of the, this has never been done before type communication with the team, and this then creates high levels of performance. When you think about risk and how this specific manager was able to do that, what has the research or what has your experience found that others could potentially take away from this? Well, Ryan, just to pick up that, pick up on that really interesting point at the outset.

The world is becoming research evidence supports, as I think our intuition does, a more uncertain world. Riskier, partly as a product of climate change, partly because natural disasters historically have been on the upswing. Companies facing bigger risks because of the uncertainties in the marketplace. Look at some of the self-inflicted risks that companies have undergone Volkswagen over the emission issue. Wells Fargo over some of its practices. All that being said, leadership now, maybe compared to 10 or 15 years ago, requires, in addition, everything we've talked about, a greater appreciation for risk and its recognition, its management to try to reduce it, and then resilience if we get into it. And thus, so many enterprises now the term would be have become familiar with ERM, enterprise risk management, as a kind of almost a new discipline or business continuity planning. And it's a way of saying one of the kind of ascendant qualities of anybody's leadership is becoming savvy about risk taking.

If we don't take risks, we're not going to make money. if we take uncalculated risks, we're going to have a problem because we can run the company into the ground as a couple banks and a couple industrials have indeed found as they took uncalculated or misplaced risks or not adequately vetted risk before they were taken. All that being said, risk tolerance, risk readiness, resilience, if you need it, those are all learned skills as well. And in my observation, looking at companies in the U.S., I'm actually outside of the U.S. as well, the last five years has been kind of a sea change almost in that managers, including hopefully some people listening to this program, have become more self-conscious about the risks that are faced and more deliberative. I use that term deliberately, more deliberative in how they think about risk. Deliberative meaning this. We've got to be very self-conclusive. conscious about risks that we think shouldn't happen, but they may happen. We've got to be more careful about thinking longer term, even if it's been a couple years now with no disaster. That doesn't mean we're not going to get hit with the flood, maybe three years out. So risk taking and preparing your team, your top team, yourself, and then the enterprise for what

lies ahead has become a new premium. And by the way, got onto this as a research talk, a little while ago, it is amazing how many companies now are becoming self-conscious developers of risk readiness and resilience if the unthinkable happens. Another topic that I wanted to bring up, Mike, is why it's so vital for leaders to be effective communicators. And polling some from Howard Gardner's study, which I know you've written about, looking at some of the commanding world figures from history. And he discovered that that tales were the mobilizing medium for all these leaders.

They gave persuasive accounts about where they were coming from and where they were headed about what was to be feared, struggled against, and dreamed about. And so the mobilizing power of their rhetoric became less from telling numbers and much more from compelling narratives. And I think this is a part that when I think about the greatest leaders that I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by, whether they're coaches in sports or in business, they did a fantastic job of sharing compelling stories, sharing the vision, the why, the how, using emotion to inspire both me as well as my teammates. and what are your thoughts on, one, developing to become a great communicator, like some of the how-to, but then why this is so important? Well, let's go back to the phrase that we reference very early on. You've got to become a persuasive communicator. Easier said than done.

Yeah. Shouting, offering facts and figures, those are foundations. Not shouting, but facts and figures are a foundation. But to be persuasive, I think I'll just ask us all to think about a speech we might have heard or a presentation that's really stayed with us. We tend to forget most of what's out there, but some things really kind of catch our imagination. We'll never forget. And Howard Gardner, a psychologist who's written a lot about this and many others have made the following argument. I'm totally drawn to it myself.

persuasive communication. It's an art form. It's a learned ability. For some people, myself included, it's uphill. I'm temperamentally a little bit on the shy side. But as we develop our leadership being, even if you're an introvert, in a leadership setting, you can't hide. You've got to be out there. You've got to be articulating where the heck we want to go. And in a way that is persuasive. That's the key point, persuasive. To communicate, that's the output. It's how it's received. It is a persuasive or not that is the real measure of whether you're communicated. And for that, you really caught the flavor and kind of the essence, which is it needs to come into form of a narrative. It needs to have purpose behind it. Sometimes we tell our origin story. How do we get

going as an enterprise. We began with three people, now we're 300. So much work went into that. That really is, in effect, an effort to communicate now who we are with the power of the story of origination. We are drawn to that. We understand who we are better now from where we have come from. So without getting into all the elements, and there are a number, I think the origination story, a narrative of where we're coming from and now where we're going, a sense of drama, if we can find it, not false drama, real drama. And then how important everybody's individual effort is going to be in taking from our origination where the heck we're going now. So let's go back to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He's up on Little Round Top. He now has to

communicate such that all of the 400 minus a good number of injured soldiers, some dead, they're all going to be able to do their best when it really counted, which is charging down this hill against an armed group coming up without any ammunition in the barrels of their muskets. And for that, Chamberlain often, not so much at the moment, but coming into it, had often said what can seem kind of corny, what the purpose. of why we're fighting this war. It's for country. It's for union. It's for our children. Now, and here and now I want you to pick up your rifle. Let's go. I order you to do that.

But to maybe wrap it up and then get back to you, Ryan, this act of being a persuasive communicator about purpose and strategy cannot be overstated. It is a mastered form. But I think from Chamberlain, actually from Eugene Cranz and many others. We kind of learned hopefully how to do it better ourselves in as much as we weren't given it as a God-given quality, but we can unequivocally become better at it. And part of that process, it was so cool to read this quote from Arlene Blum, who's a scientist, a PhD, a mountaineer, a climber,

and it reminded me of my talk with my friend JJ Reddick, who is down in the, he lives near you. I believe in the Philadelphia area. And JJ said, you've never arrived. You're always becoming. And Arlene Blum says, you never conquer a mountain. You stand on the summit a few brief minutes. And then the wind blows your footsteps away.

And it just so much like when it comes to leadership, Mike, we are lifelong dedicated learners. and that's what I've taken away from, you've written a ton of books, you're teaching this on a daily basis, you're learning and teaching at the same time. And I think that's really, if I distill it down, that's what it's all about for all of us as we're trying to progress, we're trying to get better,

is that we'll never fully arrive. Even if we get there, our footsteps will be blown away in a seconds, and then it's time to keep going and we'll never arrive. And I think that's what it's all about when it comes to become, an effective leader who sustains excellence. To me, it sums up our discussion. Is it not true that leadership really comes down to each of us, deciding, in my case, in some small way,

to make a difference in the world. Sometimes people have a bigger platform, whatever it is, deciding you're going to make a difference and not drinking from it, that probably is maybe the underlying, almost a definitional statement about what leadership is. one last question mike there's a lot of people listening who are potentially new to a management role in a big company or they want to they're interviewing or they want to have a job like that or they're progressing along and they still need this advice what tactical advice would you give to someone who is a new manager they've previously were an individual contributor and now they've made that initial jump

let's say they were sitting in your office during office hours and Mike I need some help I think I'm in it over my head a little bit which most of us are who've been promoted what are a few things that I could do literally implement right now that will help me be a better manager and leader you know it's a great question to end on because it really is the agenda in our conversation as you and I have explored how do people lead what does it take why do they do that and all Ultimately, I think both of us are in the committed to helping people who are coming into management to make the right kind of difference in the world we're in. And thus, going back to an earlier dialogue we had, it seems to me it comes down to three lines of advice or maybe four. So here's the fourth one first. Can you become a leader? The answer is yes. so we can all do it, even though some people have a head start. It's not something that you either have or don't have.

It's not genetically given to you as an endowment. It is acquired. So for a young manager who's looking to take greater responsibility at a company, a foundation, a hospital, a community group, whatever may be, an athletic team for that matter, let's go back on one of the delineations, if I can use that word of the three methods for strengthening leadership. First of all, becoming a lifelong, self-directed student of leadership.

Podcasts, reading history, if you hate to read history, at least watching the history channel, all of that. Lots of books out there. Shell, Sandberg, I often recommend her. Lean in. Jim Collins has got this great book. Many people have read, good to great. So read, watch, witness. Life is an amazing classroom.

Number two, don't be shy. Reach out to people, grab a couple coaches or mentors. Mentors, it's a fairly informal kind of learning moment, but you go to somebody who's been around for a while. And it is amazing how often people you would never think would say, yes, will say, yeah, let's sit down for an hour. Let me tell you what I know now that I didn't know at your age. So coaching and mentoring. But third, and unequivocally, the most important, don't be shy about taking the next step. Different function, different geography, maybe even a different company or enterprise.

But life, I think, is a series of incremental. Let's get out of our box, do something differently, and then self-consciously learn from it through an after-action review. So, Ryan, there it is. Wow, Mike. All right. I really appreciate that. And thank you for going deep into the history books and explaining how I think these types of conversations for me are transformative in the fact that we learn. I think it's very important for us to learn from the great leaders of the past.

There's so many answers out there for us if we're willing to look and willing to have conversations like this one and listen to this and say, oh, I could just like Chamberlain learn from the people before him, Napoleon and others. we can do the same. And so I really appreciate you investing your time and giving to this, Mike, especially given all the other things you have going on. And I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. All right, Ryan, listen, thank you. It was great to have a dialogue with you.

Appreciate the questions, and may we all lead. And I will say, and I'm going to email you about perhaps tagging along when you go to Gettysburg at one of these times. I think that would be a really, great trip for me to take it. It would be worth it. Awesome. You're invited. We'll get it set up. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks so much, Mike. All right. So long. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Wow. Mike is quite the historian. I think there is so much to learn from taking a deep dive and learning more about the stories of those leaders who have come before us, how they've prepared for big moments like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain or how Jean Cran's built his team. I am fascinated by that and Mike certainly has provided so much wisdom and knowledge when it comes to doing his own research and telling the stories in a compelling way. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, I'd love it if you would tell a friend, perhaps one, who has never listened to a podcast or never listened to the Learning Leader Show. The best form of marketing is word of mouth and it spreads one person, one referral, one recommendation at a time.

So I'd be greatly appreciative of you to do that. I am so thankful that you continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country.

They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. Hey, Mike, you still there? Yes, I blanked out for a second, but I'm here. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your...

It's so neat, too, that the first one you went to was Chamberlain. That was my favorite story of the book. And I love Gene Granch, too. But I'm grateful for that. And thank you for going so deep and sharing. Ryan, thank you, Annette. Your guidance, your questions, your issues along the way were just terrific. So I really appreciate that.

And just maybe as a quick follow-up, I've got your email address. I take various groups out, and when we get one that's open, I'll send you a message. I'd love to go. I really would. That would be awesome. Really would. Where are you based physically?

I'm in Ohio. I'm in Dayton, Ohio. Well, we'd have you probably fly out the night before. Local hotel will load you up into our bus, and off we go. So I'll let you know. All right. Thanks so much, Mike. And I'll let you know when this is coming out.

I'll send you a note, okay? Fantastic. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Great. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.