The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 352: Patrick Lencioni - The Five Key Actions Of Excellent Leaders

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #352: Patrick Lencioni - The Five Key Actions Of Excellent Leaders Notes: Leaders who sustain excellence = Humility - They don't feel they are more important than others, but they realize that their words and actions carry more weight. "Leadership is a privilege... It's about serving others. A lot of leaders lead because they think it looks cool." "Leadership has to be about what you can give, not what you can get." Exploring the two leadership motives: Reward-centered leadership: the belief that being a leader is the reward for hard work, and therefore, that the experience of being a leader should be pleasant and enjoyable, avoiding anything mundane, unpleasant or uncomfortable. Responsibility-centered leadership: the belief that being a leader is a responsibility, and therefore that the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of personal gratification). One of the questions to ask yourself: "How do you see your job in terms of verbs?" — what do you do to really help the business? The leader must be a constant, incessant reminder of the company's purpose, strategy, values, & priorities.  You're not only the CEO, you're the CRO." Chief Reminding Officer The actions of great leaders: Running great meetings Managing the executive team Managing the executives as individuals Having difficult conversations with people Constantly communicating and repeating key messages to employees "The CEO should have the most painful job in the company." For the mid-level manager -- "Am I waking up with the right rationale to do this job?" Love is a verb: Time Affection Discipline "Leadership is not a noun, it's a verb." Running great meetings: "Meetings are the central activity of leadership.  Bad leaders have other people run their meetings." Good meetings have debate and conflict.  People are able to be passionate without consequence.  The leader prioritizes what will be talked about. CEO's are responsible to build teams.  Your job is to build teams based on trust When receiving a message from a cynical leader who says "You don't understand."  Our response? "No, we're not going to be that way.  The ones who do the hard work change the world." Micro-managing vs. Accountability: "There is an abdication of management.  You should know what your team is doing." Parenting: "The great news about being a parent is it's humbling." The leader must be the chief reminding officer: "Constant, incessant, reminder of the company's purpose, strategy, values, and priorities. You must over-communicate." Marriage advice: "Be completely humble, vulnerable, especially in front of the kids.  Engage in healthy conflict.  When people can't argue, that's a problem."

What it is is actually rethinking my motivation. And I think anybody can do that. Now, if you look at that and go, no, I don't really want to adopt that motivation. I think it's really about me. Then what I'd hope is that you'd have the courage to admit that to the people that work for you. So they could know what they were in for. But most people don't want to be motivated by reward.

They really are in their heart of hearts want to be motivated by responsibility. But sometimes they just don't realize the difference. HR people say it again and again, getting employees to use any learning tools a battle. But then they mention LinkedIn Learning. They say LinkedIn Learning is different because their employees actually use it. Learning and Development Pros at 78 of the Fortune 100 companies choose LinkedIn Learning. It uses LinkedIn Insights to publish 60 new courses a week and makes personalized recommendations to every employee.

Visit LinkedInlearning.com slash leader and sign up for a demo today. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates. What I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about.

Also give you more details about. my book, Welcome to Management. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2. Now, on tonight's featured leader, my friend Pat Lynchione, author of 11 books, sold over 6 million copies, including the five disfunctions of a team, and his latest work is titled The Motive, Why So Many Leaders Abdicate their Most Important Responsibilities. A few of the topics we discussed, why you should look at your role in terms of verbs, as in leadership is what you do. It's not what you are. Then the mindset, excellent leaders have towards meetings. We go deep here and it's super important and practical. Then the behaviors avoided by bad leaders. There are specific ones that Pat shares from

his real life experiences that are very helpful to you. Also, one quick note, I do apologize. We had some microphone issues with this one. With that said, the content is so good. I don't think you'll realize it about halfway through. And I'm so excited to release this one with Pat Lanchone. I always look forward to these ones. I guess I could call you a friend now. My buddy, Pat Linchone, is back for a third time.

We only record an even numbered years for some reason. I think we're going to change that. But Pat, welcome back to the Learning Leader Show for the third time, man. It's great to be here, Ryan. And yeah, let's do this sooner. but we are friends. We're definitely friends. And I appreciate all the pre-recording chat on what it's like to publish a book. And I was most curious about. And I'd actually like you to talk about that for a second.

You've written now 11 books. Is that right? Yeah, I think it depends how you count them. I have one field guide. Yeah. So 11 or 12 books, you've sold more than 6 million copies, probably more than that based on what I've seen online. That's what I read. But can you take me back? And maybe this is something. selfish to what was going through your mind as you were publishing your first book? You know, we didn't think that we didn't have very little expectations. Now, your stuff is based on so much work that you've already done. Yours is going to shoot out of the gate.

And people should go, all the people listening to your podcast should go buy it just to support you and because it's going to be full of great stuff. I already know. But when we did ours, nobody knew who we were. and it was a fable. So it was business fiction, which was not really a thing. So we were just hoping that somebody would bind the book for us and produce it so we could hand it to clients.

So it was an accident and the sales of it didn't start right away. It picked up over time. And so we were just very blessed that our publisher said, why don't you write another one? And then the third one was the five dysfunctions of a team that really took off. Yeah, that's the one I feel like that puts you on the market and still does. And now, it's funny, I was actually just watching my pastor, lead catalyzer of Southbrook Church, Charlie McMahan this past weekend. And it was, it was really ironic how things work.

And he was describing some of the change going on at the new year with the church. And he taught, he said the name Pat Lanchone, I think six or seven, six or seven times. No, and not only that, but mentioned a lot of this is the process we went through as we're making this change when he talked about the advantage and being ideal team players. And it's funny, I pulled up my phone and showed my wife Miranda was sitting next to me. And I said, look what's happening on Tuesday afternoon. And it says, you know, recording with Pat Lynch. So it's so weird how the world works, man.

But it's pretty cool that. And Charlie, that's his name, he did not, we didn't talk about the fact that we were going to record again. It just so happens that he was talking about you and that they've used the work that you've published to dramatically change this. giant movement and it's pretty cool to see an action man well praise god for that who'd have thought who'd have thought pretty neat man it's pretty cool to see the impact you have on the mentor that you are to people when you don't even fully realize it you know you have such broad reach and i know the

book sold millions but still it's it's cool to hear those real life stories i think of making a lasting impact on thousands of people's of lives in this one community is pretty neat i never get tired of hearing it and it just makes me want to continue to do good things. Yeah. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah, yeah. So I know I've asked you this question before, but we evolve and grow and learn and you've written more books since the last time and we're going to talk about one of them in specifics.

But I'm curious, Pat, off the top of your head, if you think about all the people in your life and you've got some amazing leaders, you've worked with the best of the best companies, if you think about those who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, What have you found that those leaders seem to have in common? Well, I think that there's this combination of humility, which is that they know they're not more important than other people. The deep down inside, they know that they're just a human being or as I would say a child of God and everybody else is too. But they realize that their words and actions are actually more impactful than the average bear. and so they hold those two ideas that are seemingly contradictory in mind at the same time.

So when you realize, hey, the things I do and say other people are noticing and acting on, but that doesn't make me more important. See, sometimes people, when they realize that their words and actions are important, they let it go to their heads and then they lose sight of things. Or if they're humble, they think, well, nobody cares what I think and what I say. And so they don't really use their leadership potential. So I think it's the combination of those two things, which are kind of, it's an ironic combination because most people don't think they go together.

So I would say those are the two things. That's a fascinating point. I actually wrote about this part. It's funny, this is about your stuff, but I have to bring it up and I want to get your take on it. When I was a new manager, this is part of what's in my book.

When I was a new manager, I told everybody, hey, feel free to disagree with me. Let me know if I'm wrong. Tell me in team meetings. There's no, like, it's a wide open free space. Let me know when,

because I want to know the truth. I want to just get it all. out there. And so I remember I went into one of the next meetings and I said something and I remember it doesn't matter what I said. I said, are we good? What do you guys think? You disagree or anything? And everyone's like, no, no, we're good. We're good. It sounds good. Great. Yeah. And I walk out and fortunately for me, one of my team leaders pulled me aside. He said, hey, man, we're not good. This is not good. So and so, a couple of people, they think this is a terrible idea. And I said, what are you talking about? They just nodded. They said, we're good to go. Everything's fine. What do you mean?

And he said, you don't understand, man. You got to put yourself in their position and understand their history of bosses. They've had bosses say that before. And then when they've spoken up, really bad things have happened to them. So you have not necessarily earned their trust yet. So your word actually carries far more weight than you think based on your title. And I just said, I thought in that regard, I was like, I told them, though, they could speak up. And he said, that's not how it works now, that you have that title and you have to understand that.

And it was a great learning moment for me early on in my career that while I certainly want to be humble and a servant leader, I do have to realize, though, there's a different weight behind your word based on your role as a leader. Yeah, and that's why people have to read your book, because when you think about becoming a manager, humility can work against you. Yeah. So this welcome to management idea that you have is people can go in and say, well, I'm humble, so I'm just going to go out there. and who cares what I they're not going to be afraid but if you don't understand that because you're their leader they might actually be reticent to tell you the truth you're going to run into walls I was going to say Alan Mullalley who was the who turned Ford motor company around probably the best leader of the last you know 60 years in America he he went into Ford and said I want

people to tell me the truth and it took him weeks and weeks of meetings before anybody would say they had a problem the company was hemorrhaging cash and they were bleeding and And nobody would admit they had a problem. And finally, when he got the first guy to stand up and say, there's problems in my area, he gave him a standing ovation. And he had to prove to people that he wasn't going to punish somebody for telling the truth, but he was going to reward them. And new managers have to realize they have to earn that trust before people because they think, well, I'm not an important person. Why wouldn't they tell me the truth? It's like, you've got the title.

And with that goes some challenges. Yeah. I'm going to, by the way, I'm going to go out today and buy five copies of your book and send them to some of our friends and clients. You're the greatest, greatest sales guy ever from my stuff, Pat. This is about you, but you're making it about me. I know that's in your nature. I really appreciative of that. So thank you.

But this transition to leader from Dewar is so critical. And so many times we take our best salespeople. Heck, I work with priests. We take a great priest and we make them a pastor. And it's a different skill set. And then we hurt their ability to be effective because we didn't prepare them. So this book is very needed right now. Thank you.

That was me. when you're the top at the top of the stack rankings and sales, which is what I was for a few years, they immediately go to the top of the stack rankings and they say, you, you, and you are going to interview for this job. And now, I'm grateful for that opportunity and I'm grateful that I actually got the job. However, unfortunately, I was not good at it for a while because I was ill prepared to understand what it's like to be a manager. and that's the area of focus for my first piece of published writing that I wanted to put out because it's a critical time and I hope people don't make the same mistakes that I did. Yeah. Think about how crazy that is that we think a person's naturally because they're a good performer going to be a good leader. It's like saying, well, the best quarterback in league is going to be the best coach. And usually it's the backup quarterbacks.

Yeah. Right. It is. And it's a different skill set. It's a different skill set. Well, if you think about like the backups, and I've been a backup at times, the backups really have to be. over-prepared, have to be ready at a moment's notice. They're not as

usually gifted or talented as somebody else. For a portion of time, I backed up Ben Rathlisberger and nothing against Ben's studying skills or preparation work. But he was just so much physically better than everybody else. He didn't, I mean, he could have

easily gotten by without watching a single second of film because he was that good. Whereas the backups to have a shot to be successful, you go watching like, every second of film that's out there and studying the playbook to say, I'm not talented enough to get by without doing this. And that's why I think that person typically has a better shot of becoming a better coach. Yeah. And I think in the NBA, you looked at the best coaches

are often guys that were point guard, maybe a backup point guard, like Steve Kerr, as opposed to Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan as a coach probably says, well, just go to the basket and dunk it. It's like, well, that's pretty easy for you. Yeah. So anyway. Yeah. By the way, speaking of the NBA, Eric Spolster, remember he emailed me and you, or Amy Hyatt, who's the greatest and is one of your colleagues. And Amy and I have built a great relationship over the past five years of working with you. Spolstra emailed about our episode together. Do you guys still keep in touch? What's going on there?

You know, we do a little bit. And I actually had a chance to help him. He used our stuff and then I did some work with him. And he is a fabulous coach. Another guy who went overseas and played in Europe, came back and was a film guy for the heat and worked his way up. And he is a fabulous coach. And his teams almost always outperform with less talent. You know, people remember when he coached LeBron.

Yeah. And they said, well, he's the coach of a team with LeBron James and Chris Bosch. But look what he's done since all those superstars have left. He's a fantastic coach and a great guy. That's awesome. Okay. You brought up Alan Malali from Boeing and then Ford. And the reason I want to bring him up is because thinking of your latest work, book titled The Motive, which thank you for an early copy.

I tore through it. It is also a little bit shorter. So for those who don't like huge books, you'll like this one. It's also a fable. Again, I have a ton of notes about it. But I want to start with the fact that you almost didn't write it. And Alan was the reason that you almost didn't write it as I read in the book. And I'd love for you to explain why he almost convinced you not to write this book.

Well, you know, in fact, the room I'm sitting in right now doing this podcast right across for me, he came and visited us and spent two days with our company, which was a hoot. And during those two days, he said, there's something in your book, the advantage that I didn't like. He really loved the book and he underlined it. And it was crazy to have a guy like him affirm the book. But he goes, the one thing I didn't like that, Pat, is you said that leadership is a sacrifice.

He said, I don't think it's a sacrifice. I think it's a privilege. And I said, Alan's from Kansas. I said, Alan, you're not in Kansas anymore. Because he has this idea that everybody who's a leader realizes that it's a privilege and it's about serving others and that you should love doing it. And I said, the world has changed. And a lot of leaders lead because they think it's cool and because they see it as a reward,

not a responsibility. And we convinced him that that was true and that a new generation of leaders have come up that have different motives oftentimes. And that's what this book is about, is about if you have the wrong motivation for being a leader in the first place, none of the things we teach are going to make sense, which is why this book, the motive, is actually a prequel to all the other books I've written. If I had a stack of my books on a table and somebody said, which should I read first? I would say start with the motive because it's quite possible that you shouldn't be a leader

or that you need to adjust your motivation before beginning the process. So let's explore the two leadership motives. You've briefly touched on it. So reward-centered leadership versus responsibility-centered leadership. And this is where you and Allen had that conversation. Explain, if you could, the difference between reward-centered leadership versus responsibility-centered leadership. Well, so reward-centered leadership, I think, you know, I think we grow up with this one in

mind. People think, I want to be a leader. And I hate it in college graduations when people go, okay, now you're graduating, go out and be a leader, change the world. and I always want to stand up and say, don't do that because you're probably doing it for the wrong reason. And unless you understand why you want to change the world and it's for others, it's really dangerous to become a leader.

But heck, when I was a kid, when I was in high school, people said, you should be a leader. And so every time I could run for student government or I could be a captain of a team, I would go for that. The problem was when you're young, you think it's about you. And you think it's like, well, this is cool that I can be a leader, or I'm going to have authority and I'm going to get attention for this.

That's very normal, but it's very dangerous when somebody does that in the business world because what they end up doing is thinking, I'm going to do whatever I can for myself as a leader, as opposed to that's reward-centered leadership. What am I going to get out of it? Money, power, fame, whatever else. And let me tell you, I hate to say it, but more than half the leaders in the world probably go into it for reward reasons.

But responsibility of centered leadership is when somebody becomes a leader and says, oh my gosh, this is a huge burden, and I'm accepting that burden for others. Because when you go into it knowing it's a burden, then you're going to do the hard parts of the job. But if you go into it for the reward, you're going to abdicate the hard parts of the job. I like to, and in the book, I even use the example of sports. Let's talk about football. Imagine a reward-centered football player gets drafted into the NFL. And he says, finally I've arrived, I worked my whole life.

this being drafted is the reward for a lifetime of hard work. Their first thought is going to be, I'm going to buy myself a new house, I'm going to get a car. I mean, it's the Johnny Mansell syndrome. It's reward-centered. And so how much are they going to put into that job? As opposed to somebody else who gets drafted and says, oh, my gosh, this is a huge burden. They're paying me a lot of money. They put their trust in me.

I better start working out right now, learning that playbook, and doing whatever I have to do, because I do not want to let my teammates and this fan base and this organization down. Those two motivations, I mean, if you were drafting two players in the NFL, and one was motivated by what they were getting and the other was motivated by what they wanted to give, what in the world would be a bigger difference. And yet we measure how fast they are and how big their hand size is. If you don't understand the difference between those two things, you're going to get drastically different results. Well, the same is true of a leader. If a leader is doing it for what they can get

out of it, and let me tell you, the Silicon Valley is full of people that do this to be cool and rich and famous, it leaves a trail of dead bodies behind them. But if a person takes on a leadership role and says, I owe it to the people that hired me and to the people I'm going to lead to do whatever I have to for their benefit, man, that's a great leader. So that motive is so binary and so critical because I've worked with leaders who had the wrong motive, and I try to teach them how to be a better leader. And they're like, why would I want to do these things? They're not fun. It's not for me.

It doesn't help me. And so they abdicate some of the most important responsibilities. That was a long answer to a short question. You use one of the examples of Dirty Jobs. I'm a huge micro fan. And Dirty Jobs is something you write about. And I'll quote it. But it's the two main characters of the fable are Shea and Liam.

And Liam likes it because it shows people who seem to like their jobs, even though they're doing something that others wouldn't want to do. So I'm curious why, a great, great analogy made me really think about this. How did this come up through your research and preparation as you're writing that the CEO should have the most painful job in the company? Yeah, because it's like, it's like I'm a dad. I have to be willing to do the hardest things for my family.

For my wife. I have to be able to sacrifice. And by the way, the reason why men wear, traditionally wear black tuxedos is because black is the color of death and you're supposed to die for your family. That's why priests and ministers wear black. And if you're the leader of a company, you should say, I'm going to go to work and do whatever I, is the only, I'm the only person that can do that because I'm the chief sacrifice officer. That doesn't mean it's not, it's not fun. It doesn't mean that. And that's what I love about Mike Rose show.

My kids always loved watching that show with me, dirty jobs. I think because most of the episodes had something to do with poop. They were like, oh, look at that guy's in the sewer. But I loved it because these people who are doing really hard things, some of them were really, really happy. And other people I know have really cushy jobs and are unhappy. And I realize if you go into your job thinking it's supposed to be just fun and easy and rewarding, you're not going to embrace the tough stuff.

And when you're the leader of an organization, you have to be willing to take a bullet for your organization. And if you don't have that attitude, you're going to lament all the tough stuff. Do you, in your work now sharing the motives, the motivations behind why people want to be leaders, has it come up where, and I don't want to spoil the ending, but in the fable where somebody comes to the realization that, you know what, I actually should not. I should not. Absolutely. I should not. So how does this work in real life when you're working with somebody and they call you

because they want to become this excellent leader? And you realize through hard work and a bunch of questions you ask them and reflection that they come to the point in time and say, actually, Pat, I don't think so. Or you have to tell them, hey, Shea or whoever it may be. I don't think, I don't think this is for you. You know, you mentioned to Amy Hyatt, who works here, who's one of the founders of our company, wonderful woman. So she and I were consulting years ago.

She and I were the main consultants when we first started the firm. And we had this client who was running a company here in the Bay Area. And I remember we were in San Francisco at a Mexican restaurant talking to the CEO. And the guy was clearly miserable. And Amy turned to him at one point. He's our client. And this is our revenue. And she said, do you really want to be the CEO of this company?

Do you like this? And he had tears in his eyes. And he was like, no, I don't. And she convinced him to revisit him. design. Wow. Because there's this idea that, well, you know, this is your career path. Everybody's supposed to be the CEO. And it's like, no, some people are meant to be a great salesperson. Some people meant to be a priest, not a pastor. Some people are meant to do marketing, but not to lead the firm. Because it's a calling and a sacrificial one. And if you're doing it for the wrong reason,

you're going to hate the job. Alan Malawi never, he loved being a leader because he was willing to sit there and have a nine-hour meeting wrestling with the most difficult topics because that's why he took the job. So yes, we've had leaders opt out. And we've said to people, hey, you know something, you'd be happier doing something you love

rather than taking this job for the wrong reasons. Because if you're taking it because people are proud of you for having that title, man, it's not a good tradeoff. The economics of that are bad. So let's take it maybe one step further, Pat. there are a lot of people listening who have a job somewhere between individual contributor and CEO.

So we'll call that mid-level management. I think that's a sweet spot for the avatar of this show. That's a person who emails me a ton, as people in those positions. And so I don't think the motive is just about the CEO, even though the fable is two CEOs talking in the book. How would you direct this message to that specific person, that says, hey, Pat, I have a team of 15. I got two open positions, so I'm trying to hire some people. We've got aggressive goals, a lot of pressure, but I do love it. I love leadership. I love the responsibility. I love my team. I got great people, but, you know,

it's not perfect. We're working at this. How do you take some of the motive of, of, the motivation, I guess, rather, from that book towards that specific person? Yeah, and that's really who the book is four because it's it's not binary or fixed what that person has to do is ask themselves maybe i need to reconsider and think not about whether i should have this job but about if i'm waking up every day with the right rationale for doing it because even the most we get trapped into the selfish reasons for doing a job and sometimes we just need to relook at that i remember i'll tell you a story about this so i'm a i'm a husband and a dad right and i and i had this guy named daniel harkevuey great guy as a life coach. And I was talking to one day and I was complaining about my wife, who's I love, I've been

married for 27 years. And he said, hey, Pat, did you ever stop to think that the purpose of being married, that marriage is not to make you happy, but to make you holy? And see, if I go into marriage thinking the job of being married is so that she makes me happier, well, then when a couple months go by where she's not making me happy, I'm actually sacrificing for her. I'm like, this isn't a very good deal. But so he helped me rethink why I was a husband. It wasn't about me. It was about her and my family and becoming a better person. So those people listening to this who are kind of like, man, this job is a burden.

What I would say to them is rather than thinking about it as this job is burdening you, think about it as you're burdened for it, for those people. So you can actually adjust your motivation to have the right one. And in the book, we won't give away the ending or the story, but actually there's a character the book who adjusts his motivation for being a leader. So the people listening to this, it's not about going in my A or B, it's about saying maybe it's time that I actually learned to embrace B because I've been operating under the assumption of A. Because what I didn't do is say, yeah, you're right, I want to be happier. I should find a new wife because she's not making me happy this month. What it is is actually rethinking my motivation. And I think anybody can do that. Now, if you look at that and go, no, I don't really

want to adopt that motivation, I think it's really about me. Then what I'd hope is that you'd have the courage to admit that to the people that work for you so they could know what they were in for. But most people don't want to be motivated by reward. They really are in their heart of hearts want to be motivated by responsibility. But sometimes I just don't realize the difference. One of the questions that Liam asked Shay in the book is, how do you see your job in terms of verbs. I liked that spin on it because sometimes I ask the sustaining excellence question and I read more about excellence a lot, Pat, and I know you're studying it as well.

And I forget exactly who said it, but they talked about the actual behaviors versus qualities or characteristics. So meaning basically excellence is what you do, not a quality, but it's your actions. And so when I see a question like, how do you see? job in terms of verbs? Like, what do you, what do you do to really help the business? This is one CEO talking to another, one leader talking to another leader. I think it's a fascinating question to ask somebody. And I'm curious how you kind of got the idea to think of it that way. Yeah, you know, I've always said love is a verb. You know, everybody, because you ask them, do you love your children?

No parent is going to say, no, no, I don't. They all say yes. And then I say, well, here's the three verbs of loving your children. Do you do this, this and this? And you, And by the way, they are, do you spend time with them? Do you show them affection? Do you discipline them? And most people will go, oh, I do two of the three. It's like, okay, but if you really love them, you got to do all three. And what we say, are you a leader?

Yes. And in this case, the CEO, you're like, okay, if you're the leader of that organization, then you have to do these certain things. And if you're not doing those, then you're not leading. Leadership is not a noun. I am the leader. That's why in the book they talk about they should call it not the chief executive officer, but the chief executing officer? Are you doing that job? And there's a list of responsibilities

that leaders who aren't motivated for the right reason don't like to do, and they abdicate them. And that's one of the things we say to leaders is, do you do these things? And they go, no, I don't like three of those things. Then you're not doing your job. You can't be the chief executing officer if you're not doing the verbs. And there's so many leaders out there who don't do them, but they just like being called that title. There are five that I wrote down that Liam, the CEO, who said, here are the five actions I avoided when I was a bad CEO, running great meetings.

And I'm going to hit on a few of these go deeper. So I'll list to five, then we'll hit on a few. Running great meetings. And actually, I'm going to start with that. So you can think about that. Running great meetings, managing my executive team, managing my executives as individuals, having difficult conversations with people, constantly communicating and repeating key messages to employees. I'm going to hit on that one too.

Let's get specific now, Pat, because everybody that's listening has meetings. Right. And in the book, one of the leaders hates meetings. But the interesting thing, aspect of this is that he was responsible. They're his meetings, and he hates his own meetings. So it's kind of amazing, but there are probably people listening to say, oh, even though I'm leading these meetings, I still hate them. Well, I won't answer, but what do you say to the person who's saying like, oh, yeah, like, or maybe they're proud that they don't have any meetings when that's wrong too, because you've got to meet, right?

That's part of how you get things done. So what is your advice to somebody when it comes to, especially a leader, whether they're a frontline manager or a CEO or anything in between when it comes to meetings? Well, notice what I said. I said running great meetings. That means it's great and you have to be actively doing it. Right. Everybody does have meetings, but what they think is, I'm going to keep them as short as possible. I'm going to have as few as possible.

And their corporate penance, yeah, they're painful, they're boring, but we'll get out of them and we'll be done. Now, if you're having bad meetings, you're not being a great leader. Meetings are the central activity of leadership because a meeting is getting people sitting around a table and solving problems. And when we say we hate meetings, we really are saying we hate our job. The problem isn't meetings. The problem is the kind of meetings we're having. And I did write a book about this called Death by Meeting, and it's in the advantage. But the problem here is that there are leaders in the world who just abdicate this.

Or they say to somebody else, you run my meetings, or let's just mail it in and get through this. So if you're one of those people that says, yes, I hate meetings, meetings are terrible. Just realize you're not alone. And I'm not criticizing you. I'm saying it's time for you to rethink this. There are ways to have great meetings. And nobody, if you're the leader, nobody can make that happen but you. and it's time for you to take responsibility for that.

If you're the director of a film and you think, yeah, this film is boring and I don't really like doing this, but it's what I do. It's like, no, that means you're not doing your job. What are meetings? What are meetings like at the table group? That's the name of your company for those listening who don't know. You're the founder and president of the table group. What are they like?

Oh, I love that you ask that question because we really try to live our own stuff here. And we fail sometimes, but our meetings are really. there's a lot of debate and a lot of conflict. Good, healthy conflict, but it's real. And we love to have people visit, like friends of the firm. And we have them sit in our meetings. And afterward, they're like, oh, man, that was crazy. And we're like, actually, yeah, because we really get into it.

But, you know, when people come to visit that aren't here, usually, they think, are you guys mad at each other? I had a guy with me here who came to visit. He goes, so are you going to have to clean that mess up afterward? I'm like, no, no, no, no. everybody knows that's what we do. Because if something's worth talking about, it's worth challenging each other about. And so we really have passionate, unguarded, and pretty intense meetings because the issues we're talking about are important. But the other thing we do is we prioritize what we're

going to talk about dumb stuff. We don't go and peanut butter our timeout between a bunch of different topics that aren't important. We try to only talk about the big stuff. And so the big stuff is usually the stuff we're passionate about. And so meetings aren't boring because if you're talking about the big stuff and you're really going after it, people love being in your meetings because they're not boring. Now, to do this, we have a structure, a light structure where we identify what our rallying cry is at a company. We always have a rallying cry. What's the big thing? And then here's the four or five things we have to do to make that happen. And this is the other things we're keeping our eye on. And then we put colors around every one of them at every meeting. And we say, is this red?

it yellow is it green. If it's red, it means it's on fire. We got to talk about it. If it's yellow, well, it's okay. Green is fine. We talk about the red stuff. Red stuff makes for really interesting meetings. But when you go around a meeting and spend five minutes on everything, the green stuff, the yellow stuff, people are bored out of their minds. So we don't talk about unimportant things. We don't hold back. And my job as a leader is to make sure everybody is engaging. And if somebody's not saying anything and they have a different opinion, I have to throw them out. It feels like there's a lot of psychological safety at the table group, especially with those meetings, because I found some of the most effective highest performing

teams I've been on, whether it was in sports or in business, had a very healthy sense of disagreement of conversations where you could tell there were a wide variety of viewpoints, different perspectives and we weren't always going to agree. Like that bad meeting I explained earlier, right? That's a bad meeting because we're just like, yep, we're good. Even though people disagreed with parts, right? And I think as I evolved and got better at it and started really studying it, so what is the key or what have been the keys to building a culture of psychological safety

where people do not have fear to speak up and disagree with the great Pat Linchony who sold billion books, right, that a person who may think, who am I? Who am I to disagree with Pat? But you've set up a culture to do that. How have you done that? Well, that's one of the other five of those five things. That's one of the other things that CEOs have to be responsible for, and that's building a team. And a lot of CEOs will say, I don't really want to do that. I'll outsource it or I'll delegate it to HR or I'll go to the meeting or we'll go golfing or scuba diving or drinking. And it's like, no, your job is to build extraordinary amounts of trust among your team members, which is that psychological safety.

So nobody is afraid to admit when they're wrong or to challenge somebody so that you will have those great meetings. And when a CEO abdicates that or delegates that and doesn't take responsibility, the most important first thing a leader has to do is build trust among their team members. And so that's one of the five things. And there's a lot of CEOs that go, yeah, I think that's touchy-feely, I don't want to do it. they are damning their organization to bad meetings. People are going to hold back.

There's not going to be healthy conflict. And that leaves the organization in a horrible position. So this is one of the five things that leaders who do it for the wrong reason don't do. Because they don't want to go into a meeting or to go into a team building session and have difficult conversations. They don't want to go and dig deep to build trust. It can be painful. It can take a little bit of time up front. And they're like, let's just skip over that.

and acquire a company or change our strategy or do something intellectual. But the CEO has to build trust on that team. You can't have great meetings without that trust. And you've written about the fact that team building cannot, and I think running meetings, even sending the notes after the meetings, which is a big thing that people really responded to was when they saw they were my notes that were thoughtfully taken and added my thoughts on afterwards that were sent after the meeting with action and this is kind of what's going on. But the leaders should not delegate team building to their head of HR.

That that is something that has to be a part of it as well as that. So what are what are some of the things you've seen out in the market that leaders and I don't want to just use CEOs. So let's just say leaders have outsourced to HR or to someone else because they say, Pat, come on, man. You know, I don't have time for this. I got a bunch of others. I got to worry about the board.

I got to worry about, you know, the earnings or whatever it may be. They say, I don't have time for that. How do you respond when that happens? And that happens all the time. And it's like, how do you feel? It is mind-numbing to me. But it's a society we live in. The people say, yeah, I don't have time for that.

I got strategic decisions to make. But do you realize if you don't have the trust of your team and people aren't vulnerable and open, the decisions you make in those meetings are not going to be real? People are going to hold back their opinions, and then they're going to second guess them afterward, and they're not going to support those decisions. And once you sit down with a leader and explain that to them, almost all of them go, you're right, I have to do this. But they convince themselves that they don't have time to build a team, but they do have time to clean up mess after mess after mess because they've made bad decisions. So we just help them understand the cost of not doing that. And the problem is, so I'm an outside consultant, right?

But when I go into consult to a team to help them become better, I am not there to do that for them. I'm there to teach the leader and to facilitate the process that they can do it for themselves. When you outsource that, let's say you call your head of HR and go, let's do a team building thing. And then they bring in a consultant and they use the Myers-Briggs or something. Well, if the leader isn't actively engaged in that and using that every meeting they go to, and if they're not sitting around going, okay, the introverts in the room, you're not speaking. I want to hear what you have to say. or hey, you're a bunch of thinkers, not feelers.

I want to hear from a feeler and how are people going to respond? If you're not using it, if you're not making it one of your tools, it's not going to stick. I had somebody just recently sent me an email saying, I've done the Myers-Briggs with teams throughout my career and it's never worked. When we went in and used it with them, she goes, you guys actually made it part of the infrastructure of how we get things done. This is the first time it's ever changed my team. But if the leader isn't taking that as their responsibility, it's not going to stick. And this whole concept, I don't have time for it. It's like saying I don't have time to go on dates with my wife because we've got to get the kids to practice.

Well, that's a great recipe for a bad marriage. And ultimately, your kids are going to suffer because of that. I remember early in my career, Pat, I was really starting to read a lot and to study and then share widely kind of what I was learning. about becoming a better leader. And I got really excited. And every once in a while, I'd beat a more experienced leader who would say, hey, man, you're pretty young.

You don't have experience. You haven't really figured things out yet. Just wait a little bit. I know you're the soft skills guy and you're all into this and you're all excited. But eventually, you'll see over time that will go away because you'll understand what the real world is actually like.

And it was, you know, so they were treating me like a little kid and it would make me emotional and mad. And I would just say, is that really what I'm going to become? I started with doubting myself. Am I really going to become like that guy? Wow. I really hope not. And that's part of why I started this podcast pack because I don't want to become that guy. And get more than one experience leader who have very big titles and huge salaries have told me that.

And that really bothers me. And I'm guarantee you there are people listening right now that are being told that exactly. message because they're excited, they're sharing what they're learning, they listen to podcasts and read books, and an older person is telling them that they don't understand the world yet. What do you say to that person who's listening right now? Yeah, that's just the sadness of cynicism. And you and I are alike. That frustrates me greatly.

And the way I look at that, it's like, yes, let me tell you, if you want to be like, if you want to swim downstream or float downstream with the culture, then you will be an airline like Pickup United, Continental, whatever they are. are these days American, because people go, well, you'll work in the airline industry long enough and you'll realize how things work and that's the real world. Or you'll be like Southwest that says, no, we're not going to be that way. And let me tell you, it's the ones that decide to challenge the status quo and not be cynical and be optimistic and do the hard things that change the world. And let me just say, the people that work at Southwest Airlines love working there. The people who lead Southwest Airlines

take their jobs very seriously. Passengers feel it. Everybody feels it. So you can either choose to do it the way of the majority, which is cynical, or you can choose to follow the leaders who are doing it the right way. And that's what our mission is about at the table group. It's all about changing the world of work, both from an organizational standpoint, so it's not dysfunctional, but also from an employment standpoint, so it's not miserable. We want the world, we want that the standard job to be about being functional and fulfilled in work not to be miserable and dysfunctional. And for now, that's the minority position, but the best companies in the world get this. And someday that should be the standard.

Can you share your thoughts on micromanagement and accountability? Yeah. Yeah, micromanagement is one of those words that people use that don't want to manage. I don't want to micromanage my people. And by the way, yes, at one extreme, there is micromanagement. But I believe today, especially among leaders, the bigger problem is what I call abdication of management or macro management. And that is they don't bother to get to know what their people are actually doing and to coach them around that. And what happens is a person who doesn't want to be managed or held accountable often says, don't micromanage me.

Like a 16-year-old kid. She says, mom and dad, stay out of my room. And a lot of CEOs who don't want to manage their people say, well, I'm not a micromanager and I trust my people. Well, that's not an excuse for not knowing what your people are doing and for seeing problems that are coming up and helping them avoid them. That's not micromanagement. That's just responsible management. And so I think a bigger problem in the world, most companies do not have too much micromanagement today. They have too little real management.

And that's especially true among people the higher up they go in the food chain. So real management requires that we know what people are doing. We can trust them, but we have to be with them enough to know what's going wrong so we can help them avoid or correct that quickly. Why do you think that is? I've actually said that before. I mean, I made this mistake. I remember when I got promoted, it was a pretty big job from leading individual contributors to now leading leaders. and I said, okay, I'm leading leaders now.

I don't want to be a micromanager. I want to help them, but I also don't want to be that overbearing boss. And it was this delicate balance that I always felt like I was wrong. I wasn't fully ever figuring it out. And so I do feel for that person who is saying that. But why do you think we deal with this now? Well, again, I think if you're, if you're, it gets back to the most, If you're a CEO says, I want to take this job because I want to enjoy it and I want it to be rewarding.

Very few CEOs really like managing people as individuals. They get to that point in their life and they're like, hey, I've done this my whole career. I want to hire people that can manage themselves. They're adults. I can leave them alone and I can do the stuff I want to do. It kind of reminds me of parenting. Okay. And that is this.

So my, as a parent, I'm the same way as you are as a manager. I'm always debating like, am I writing them too hard or am I not writing them hard enough? that's actually the right bit of tension. You're always wondering about that. But then you meet a parent who goes, you know, I did this because I should be a parent, but I really don't want to spend that much time. I don't really know what my kids are doing.

And that is never the right answer. And I, interesting enough, an executive worked with me before I had kids. He was a pretty well-known executive in high tech. And I didn't know him that well, but I worked in the same company. And I had a meeting with him and he said to me, it was one-on-one meeting. He goes, hey, Pat, before we get started, I just want to ask you, do you have,

have kids and I said no I don't he goes well I have a 16 year old son and I don't even know him so when you have kids spend time with them don't be like me okay let's let's talk about these slides you're working on and I it just stunned me and if you're a manager and you don't know what your people are really working on and you justify that by saying well I trust them or you have to really look at that and say it's probably because I'm being kind of lazy and I don't find it fun to manage them that's never the right thing I want you angsty like oh am I overmanage them or am I under managing them. If you're angsting about that as a parent or a manager, you're probably doing the right things. But if you know you're nowhere close to micromanaging

your kids or your employees, you're probably not doing the right thing. How do you relate this to parenting? How do you relate what you've learned? You're a dad of four boys, happily married. How do you relate all of your, you've grown as a leader over the years? You've, you've improved, you've gotten better. You're a better writer, a better speaker, better everything that you've done. How does that relate to your life at home? Well, first of all, I know that my life at home is more important. And I also know that I've learned more about how to manage. Heck, I've learned more about how to be a better parent at work and I've learned more about

how to be a better manager at home. And employees are not children. But as my kids have gotten, I have a 13, a 17 and 221 year olds. Well, the 17 and the 21 year olds, I'm mostly coaching these days. You know, I'm not around them every moment. I'm mostly providing guidance and coaching. So there's a lot to that that I find to be similar. The great news about being a parent is it's humbling.

I was thinking about this. My 17-year-old is taller than me, and most things I say, he loves me. He does. He's a great kid. But most things I say, he kind of tends to doubt a little bit, right, as they come out of my mouth. And I realized, oh, my gosh, I have to earn this kid's right to parent him. And the same is true at work. So I think there's a great deal of similarity.

and I think being a parent is really a helpful way to learn how to be a better leader. And not everybody has that privilege, but I really think you're at a disadvantage if you've never had to work through those things with a child. Do your kids, do they marvel at what you've accomplished, or do they think he's just dad and he's a nerd and he's whatever? It's somewhere between the two. You know, I did a, I'm doing a podcast now, so they think that's pretty cool. Yeah. And my 13-year-old said, Dad, we just finished our last sports podcast. For the last six months, we did a sports podcast around organizational culture.

And we just finished it because we didn't have enough time. And the ladies in our office were saying, you guys are having too much fun. You need to focus a little bit more. So me and Cody, who is my co-host, we were doing that. Well, my 13-year-old said, I want to listen to one of your sports podcasts. And he loved it. He liked that I ripped on myself, too, and I got things wrong. But my 21-year-olds who are seniors in college right now, they're just starting to realize,

wow dad they're taking business classes and communication classes and they're starting to realize wow the stuff you work on that you've worked on since we've been kids is actually pretty relevant and pretty interesting and that's a fun thing to see them realize that but for most of their youth they were like yeah whatever they don't read many of my books I love it sometimes I go ahead my high school student got got advanced reading credit for reading one of my books so he thought that was pretty cool finally got a teacher to acknowledge that it was real I I I I don't know why we, maybe that's just me, but I feel like as parents, like, there are these moments where it, I do want to be cool. I want to be, you know, I'm pretty strict at times.

So those moments and one of my daughters came up to me and said, hey, we just had an author day at school where an author came in and explained her book and what it was about and her writing process. Could you be that person for next years? And I was like, wow, this is a great moment. Like I was really excited. I was like, you would want me to do that? I thought you'd be too embarrassed to have me come in. So I'm always curious when I find this, you know, you've got this, this in your arena, this pretty big level of fame of what your kids think of that, you know. Oh, yeah, that's a great thing. They're not impressed by that at all. And I have to admit, I have said things to them like, like, they'll be like my 19 year olds, I would try to give them

advice and they'd be like, yeah, dad, what do you know? And I'm like, you know, people do pay me for advice sometimes. They're like, yeah, we've always wondered why, because it's not really that good. I love it. They're coming. They're coming. They're coming. One more question about the book and then I want to talk about your podcast. There's a part that I wrote down about instead of being the CEO, you need to be the CRO. And the CRO is the chief reminding officer. The leader must be a constant, incessant reminder of the company's purpose, strategy, values, and priorities. For that person who thinks like, you know, I've already said that enough.

I'm good. We're good there. Why do you need to be the chief reminding officer, not just for the CEO, but for leaders in general? Right. You know, the thing about this is, I put incessant for a reason. The best leaders repeat themselves, even after people are like, we got it, we got it, we got it. Alan Mulali talked about that, that he was constantly reminding people. Gary Kelly at Southwest Airlines is constantly reinforcing those key messages.

Too many CEOs, especially if they're in it for their own rewards, like to change their subject matter all the time. Like, what's the flavor of the month? What's something that's interesting to me? And essentially, they're entertaining themselves and they're trying to be cool. And I like to say to CEOs, the same thing I say to parents, I didn't realize I'd be talking about parenthood so much here, but if you're, you have to communicate things so much that your people can do a good impression of you when you're not around. That's a great point.

People at Southwest should say, boy, Gary's going to talk. I wonder if he's going to talk about customer service again or when he's going to talk about being a servant leader. And it's like when people know that, that's when they get it in their gut. Most leaders don't like to over communicate because they feel like, man, I'm insulting my audience or this is too much. Research actually shows that if people don't hear something seven times, they don't actually believe it anymore. Because every CEO gets up and says, yeah, we believe in customer service or quality or employees are our greatest asset. It just sounds like, you know, wot, want, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

it's not until they've heard it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again in different ways in different settings that they go I think these people are serious so being the chief reminding officer which is not always cool is one of the ways to make sure you actually get your people on board and you create a culture and nobody ever leaves a company because they get over communicated to nobody ever says I'm out of this company it might be a great place to work but they keep telling me the same things too often nobody ever left a marriage because her spouse told love them too much. Yeah.

I was pulling up iTunes recently looking at where our shows are in the management column, listed both in the top 10. And I thought it was a big, it was a fun moment for me to see the Learning Leaders show sitting right near your podcast. Pat, can you talk to me about why you've made the shift into podcasting and what you've learned from it and why you like doing it. You know, yeah, and I resisted it for a while because I'm old, and my kids are saying old.

But it's such a blast because one we find, I started listening to podcast myself and I was like, this is really good. I mean, I don't know if I turned on the radio very much lately because you can target the information you're trying to learn. And it was just such a good way. Cody and I, the guy that my co-host, he and I love, we're very passionate about what we do here. We have guests sometimes and we talk about certain things that people are interested in.

And we've been overwhelmed by how much they use it and how much they listen to it sometimes more than once. And so it's just a fabulous vehicle for getting out a message in an informal way that helps people apply them. So once I realized I could sit in my conference room and communicate to people and they actually used it, I was sold. So our podcast is called At the Table with Patrick Lynchoney. And we enjoy it. It's not that formal. We don't just lecture people. but we also don't sit around just talk about what we're having for breakfast.

We actually try to get into stuff that could help people. So it's just been a blast and it's had a much bigger impact than we thought we could have. And when you don't have to get on a plane to reach people, it's a really nice thing too. Your wife Laura recently joined. The topic was vulnerability. What was that like for you? It was fantastic, but she is very, she's a little shy. She's an introvert.

And so when I listened to it afterward, it was a blast, but she was like, yeah, I didn't want to say too much. And I was like, oh, I feel like I didn't let you say enough. And she's like, no, I was kind of holding back because she's an introvert. But it was a blast having it. If she gets the stuff we do, she was a consultant way before we started the firm. And so she loves the stuff we work on. She's been a full-time mom and a Bible study leader for the last 10 years and longer. And so she's a little rusty, but she had, she was getting it. And she's, she's right there with us. So she was a little lacking confidence in that, but we thought she did great.

You're a guy who people go to for advice in a lot of different areas of life, and you've noticed that family has spilled into this conversation more than a few times. It's always top of my mind, and so it's impossible for it not to come up. As someone who's married and raising kids, I'm personally curious, and I'm sure others are as well. If I said, hey, Pat, what are some of the keys to a great, long-lasting, sustained, marriage, what would you say? Many of the same things, you know, we wrote the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a team, and everybody said,

you've got to write the five dysfunctions of the family, because so many of the things apply, and it's like, I have to be completely vulnerable and humble in my relationship to my wife and my kids, but first to my wife. And that means I have to admit when I'm wrong, I have to acknowledge when I need help, I have to apologize when I do the wrong thing. And these were not things that previous generations did a lot

in front of their kids and sometimes even in marriage. And that's just part of society. We have to be vulnerable. And then we have to engage in healthy conflict. My wife and I are, we've seen that our relationship has grown when we've learned to work through disagreement. And sometimes it's very passionate. And sometimes it even looks bad on the outside.

But our kids now, they can see us arguing and we'll stop in the middle of it. We'll say, hey, kids, you know we love each other, right? You're fine. We know. Keep going. but you know we both like my wife grew up in a family that she never saw her parents argue and we used to think that was a sign of a good marriage but when people can't argue that's actually a problem that doesn't mean that the quality of your marriage is directly proportionate to

the number of fights you have but any two people that have a strong relationship are going to disagree and sometimes passionately but if you trust each other and you're vulnerable you can do that. So that trust and conflict are critical in a marriage. And it's the same thing that happens in an executive team. The difference is a marriage is more important. The problem is we tend to see our families as, well, they're never going to leave. An employee might leave, an executive might leave, so I better do all this. We think, as a family, we have unconditional love, so we don't have to have trust and conflict. But then we take our marriage for granted and it can unravel. So I say, hey, make sure your family is more important to your than your organization and make sure you're

spending as much time on that as you are at work. Love it, Pat. You know, I treasure our conversations. I'm so grateful. The latest book is titled The Motive. Highly, highly, highly recommend it. I reread it this morning, again, in preparation to get ready. And I just love it.

It's written it as a fable. And then there's some good takeaways at the end after the fable is over that I think are very helpful. I'm not going to spoil the ending. because it's kind of like a twisty turns in this. There's some twisting turns in that I was like, oh, that's not what I was expecting. When he called up, we'll be up in 10 minutes. Yeah, I was like, what is he talking about?

But anyway, I encourage you to read it. It's very good. Pat, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? You know, our website is a good place. We've just reorganized to make it easier for users to find whatever they need. We have a lot of free stuff on there. And so it's tablegroup.com. So, triple-w, of course, tablegroup.com.

And there's all kinds of assessments and tools and downloadable things. Because we want people to join this movement, which is we would eliminate job misery. We want to eliminate dysfunctional corporate life because it has a drastic impact on society, not only in our ability to make our companies good places to work, but that we can go home at night and feel good about our jobs. So it's a movement we're very serious about at the table group. And if you go to the website, you can see how to join our newsletter if you want to get articles. and stuff, a lot of free stuff there. Tons of it. It's been very helpful for me

in the building of our business. Thanks again, man. I know we'll be continuing to talk. Give my best to Amy because she's all been just fantastic to work with for the last five years when coordinating these with your team and certainly a great communicator.

That's not a surprise considering that you guys work together. So I really appreciate it. I look forward to our next one, man. It's a blast. You're good at this. And best of luck to you in the book. I'm going to go out and order some right now and I encourage your listeners to do it too. Thank you so much, man. All right.

God bless. Bye-bye. I feel so fortunate to get to have long-form conversations with Pat Lanchone. He's as kind and humble and smart as it gets and so knowledgeable is so much more wiser each time that we speak. I really enjoyed this one of few key takeaways. leaders cannot delegate the hard task like team building and running meetings to others. You must take ownership of those important behaviors. And then reward-centered leadership versus responsibility-centered leadership.

There's a big difference. And re-listen to that part specifically if you got into leadership for the wrong reasons. I find that that really forced some introspection and refraxion. reflection and has been helpful for me. And then love and leadership are verbs. They are actions and behaviors. And you should think of them in that regard. Very helpful.

Thank you once again for continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love. I would greatly appreciate it if you spread the message to a friend or two. Perhaps one that has never listened to the Learning Leaders Show. This one with Patrick Lanchone is a great play. to start and because you keep doing that, it gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. All right. Man, thank you. I like that. It's fun. It's just so, yeah, you know, obviously I don't have to tell you how good you are at this, but it's just so, so much fun for me.

It absolutely flies by and I loved it. I loved it. I think we hit on a a lot of the notes that I wanted to talk about as well as the family stuff is super important to me. Yeah, but you have a liberal arts podcast, and that's key. And people are looking for that. You know, people want life and work go together. Oh, yeah. And there's a reason why people are interested in that because you can't separate those.

And so I love this is, you're a man after our heart. So this is, we have a lot of crossover. Anything we can ever do for you, let us know. Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. And you already have. and Amy has, and I'll continue to keep you guys informed, and I appreciate all the help, and especially the kind words about my book, too.

Sure. I'm off to buy them right now. All right. Thanks, Pat. Okay. I'm going to jump in here, too, and say there might be a time if you're open to it. We'd love to pick your brain around, like, building a podcast audience and stuff. That's just something that we're fairly new to you and trying to do our best with, but really

would love some, like, directions for some veterans who've been doing it for a while. I would love to. I'd be happy to any time. That would be a very fun conversation, especially with you guys. It's the least I could do. But yeah. We would super appreciate that. Hey, who should the Brown Tires their coach? It seems like they're on to the Stefanski guy from Minnesota. I don't know them that well. Is that? The offensive coordinator. Yeah, I don't know, though. I don't know. I saw McCarthy got picked by the Cowboys and the Patriots, Special teams, and receivers coach got hired by the Giants. The college guy went to Carol. Carolina. Did you see Matt Rule?

Which college guy? Matt Ruhle from Baylor. Oh, the Baylor guy did. Wow. So the Browns are the last team. Yes. Yeah, which it sounds like they want to have a guy in place within by the weekend is what I just read before we got started to record. So yeah, I guess we'll see. I don't know if McDaniels maybe is he not going to get a job. It's interesting that a different Patriots assistant. If McDaniels, if he's going to get that job, I have no idea. Yeah. I didn't realize that the Patriots special teams guy. In receivers.

Hired as a giant. Yeah. Apparently coached, especially in receivers. Yeah, I've never heard of him, but yeah, I guess he's supposed to be great. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. That'll be interesting to see.

Yeah. All right. Ryan, thank you so much, buddy. Okay. All right. See you guys. Bye.