The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 359: Pat Lencioni - Three Actions For Leaders In Challenging Times

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #359: Pat Lencioni This was recorded with hundreds of fans/friends on Zoom on April 2, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notes: Three actions for leaders in a perilous time: be exceedingly human. By that, I mean that you should demonstrate your concern for the very real fears and anxieties that your people are experiencing, not only professionally and economically, but socially and personally. Even though you don't have definitive answers to all of their questions, don't let that keep you from listening to them and empathizing with their fears. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, you should not be hesitant to share your own concerns with your people. They want to know that they can relate to you and that they are not alone in their concerns. be persistent. This is not a time to hold back. Send people updates and regular communication, even if there is not a lot of new information and the message is largely personal. No one will look back at this time and say, "my manager was so annoying with all the encouraging emails checking in on me." When people are isolated, over-communication is more important than ever. be creative. Try new things. Call semi-regular video-conference meetings that allow employees to not only talk about work, but to share their experiences dealing with this situation. Have them share movies and games and other tools that they are finding to be helpful with their families and invite them to tell stories about what is going on in their worlds. Crises provide an opportunity for people to come to know one another and establish bonds that will endure long after the crisis is over. This is not a time to be efficient. It's a time to be present with people.  Once they get that new sense of trust, then you can move on. Every company/family needs to be intentional about their thematic goal/rallying cry. Cohesiveness and innovation are the themes for The Table Group What we do during this time is going to be what people remember.  This is the window of opportunity. People would rather be criticized than ignored. The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. Pat is looking for that sense of "peace" that no matter what happens, we will be okay. (He tells a story about an NYC priest the night before he died "I"m not afraid.") When you help others, your fears go down. Idle time and worry is what makes fear rise. Advice for parenting teenagers right now -- "It's a time for grace, not discipline." How to establish a safe environment? Empower people to take risks.  When they stumble, it's okay. Failure = learning moment 2 biggest red flags of a bad teammate - what are the symptoms/ hardest things to overcome? Insecurity and selfishness Good teammates? "They take ownership of their mistakes and work to correct them." Must take ownership of it to improve. The Ideal Team Player -- Humble, Hungry, Smart. Download for free: "The three questions to ask your family" on Pat's website The Table Group Does Love have a place in leadership?  You need to love your players even if you don't like them. You have to do what is in their best interest. Pat's next book? "The Heroic Manager" The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team: Absence of trust - unwilling to be vulnerable within the group Fear of conflict - seeking artificial harmony over constructive passionate debate Lack of commitment - feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization Avoidance of accountability - ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards Inattention to results - focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success

We spend all of our lives watching reading books. I remember reading books when I was a kid about Paul Revere and stuff like that and watching movies and superheroes, kids watch now. And it's always like, I would be a hero. I hope I would be a hero someday. This is the window of opportunity to be a hero. This is the time, if you're a leader for the right reasons, you want to serve others. You want to be sacrificial and be that person who puts others ahead of themselves and does heroic things.

This is the time to do it. Welcome to the Learning Leaders 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. Received 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 4422. Now on tonight's featured leader, the great Pat Linsioni, joined me and hundreds of our friends live on Zoom for this special edition of the Learning Leader show where we got to have a dynamic conversation while hundreds watched, listened, took diligent notes, and then the second half of the talk asked some fantastic questions directly to Pat. A few of the topics we discussed, three actions for leaders to take in challenging times, then how to establish an environment of safety that allows vulnerability and trust to flourish. And then advice to new managers in a time of crisis. This one was so good and so enjoyable to have you, the loyal listeners, there with us live. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Pat Lanchone. For those who somehow don't know who Pat is,

bestselling author of 11 books, sold over 6 million copies, including the five disfunctions of a team, the advantage, the motive, which is the most recent book, as well as many others, president of the table group,

great co-workers he has here on the call with him. Amy Hyatt is one of them who I've mentioned multiple times on podcasts, who is absolutely fantastic. And prior to working, the table group, Pat worked at Bain and Company and Oracle now lives out in California. Pat, welcome. Thanks for being here today, man. It's great to join you and all these wonderful people. I want to get a start because you recently wrote something about thoughts for leaders in a perilous time.

And I think that's a good choice of words. And there are really three keys to get a start. I thought this could be a good jumping off point for us as we weighed into how to manage what we're doing. right now. And so there are really three keys that you've written about. And I think we should take them in order because it makes sense given what the people joining us and the people listening are dealing with. And first of those is to be exceedingly human. Can you expand and explain more about what it means to be exceedingly human in a time like this? Yeah, you know, I wrote that. I was up in the middle of the night, one of the first few nights of this. We're at our, we're at the end of our third week of lockdown in California. We were kind of early. And I remember thinking, you know,

if I were talking to a leader, frankly, in a family or in an organization or anything, I think that this is not a time to be like have it all together and to be professional. Just lean into this whole situation. Be open about your concerns about people need to know that you're like them. And that breeds trust. Because if we're too calm and collected and we're like, everything's going to be fine, let's just get on with business. This is a a time to be more open with people about what you're going through, about challenges you're having in your family or in your business or you personally, people actually like to hear that from their leader and they're going to be much more likely to trust them. Because if leaders are

too on and too pretending to be, have it all together, it actually is counterintuitively. It actually makes people feel worse. So it's, we need to be exceedingly human. We can't be vulnerability is a good thing. Now, that doesn't mean we get on here and we cry and we have to constantly. It just be a human being and let people know, yeah, you have concerns about your kids or you had a bad day or you did something that makes other people think, okay, I'm not the only one. How do you do that for your team at the table group? It's not only do you write about this and you help other businesses, but you're running a business at the same time with people now remotely. You're all over the place. You're having calls like this on Zoom and other places. How do you manage that

with your team. Yeah, well, I think the thing, in that first week especially, and it's continued, but it was just we spend a lot of time together. This is not a time to be efficient and to say, let's just have a 15-minute Zoom call and get some stuff done and let you go back to your family and to your work. I mean, people want to be together and we have regular calls where we spend extra time pouring into people around their family and what's going on in their world. and this is the time to do that.

And it's very tempting to think, well, everybody's got stuff going on in their house. We need connection. We just talked to the CEO of one of America's 10 largest companies the other day. He just spent three hours on a Zoom call with his entire executive team where all they talked about one by one is how they're doing in their families. Wow. And that is the right thing to do right now. Efficiency is not the key.

It's being present with people. investing in them up front. And then what you find is when they develop that new sense of trust, they become so much more productive and so much more aligned and so much more engaged with one another. Do not think you can shortcut that process. So gosh, in the first week, we just spend so much time talking about what it's like to go through this. We've got kids in the next room now and dogs. And so this is a time to be exceedingly human. Yesterday, one of the people on my thing had a background on. And I think that's fine depending on what's going on. But I said, can you take your background off and there goes his 21-year-old son into the bathroom. And I was like,

Timmy, how's it going? Let people in and let them know who you are, what's going on in your world. And honestly, we will emerge from this time more cohesive than when we, than at the beginning. That's one of our goals. Yeah. I think, you know, now's a time when leaders, you write about the motive about abdicating some of the hard parts of leadership and why being a leader is and should be the hardest job in the company. And I think I said this before, General McChrystal, but I'm not saying it's easy to lead when times are good, but it's easier to be a leader when you're winning the game

or winning the war or winning the battle or when revenues are skyrocketing. It's hard, really hard to be a leader right now. And so how do you feel about that with a business that was probably off the charts? You just release a book. You probably had a lot of projects lined up. A lot of those have to do, though, with you being there in person and your team members being there in person. And now all of a sudden, that can happen.

So how do you manage that part of the hard parts of leadership with some changing things, probably economically, too, for your firm as well? Absolutely. You know, I was just on a Dave Ramsey's company. We did a thing with Entree leadership just an hour ago. And he asked me a question. And the answer occurred to me right before he asked it. And so this is something I've just been thinking about.

You know, we spend all of our lives watching reading books. I remember reading books when I was a kid about Paul Revere and stuff like that and watching movies and superheroes, kids watch now. And it's always like, I would be a hero. I hope I would be a hero someday. This is the window of opportunity to be a hero. This is the time, if you're a leader for the right reasons, you want to serve others. You want to be sacrificial and be that person who puts others ahead of themselves and does

heroic things. This is the time to do it. And that goes away when this goes, is over. And the funny thing is, people will remember how we behave during this time for years. Anything we did during normal times, the meetings we had and the decisions we made, that has a shelf life pretty small. What we do during this time, our kids are going to remember and our customers are going to remember and the people we work with and that we lead are going to remember.

this is the window of opportunity to really demonstrate that we are doing this for the right reason and for others. And so sometimes knowing that can have us take a different posture. I don't think this is a time to just survive and get through it. I wonder if we just all said, how can we actually try to thrive during this time and do something that will last? Then we get a sense of purpose. The first five days of this for me, we were just surviving. And then I remember thinking, we have to make this a time of difference making. And it changed everything for us.

Last time we talked, I brought up the fact of meetings and why the leader needs to be in charge, not pass that off to somebody else to run those meetings. And when you describe what your meetings are like and how you're in charge and how you run them. And if anybody on this call or anybody listening has bad meetings and they're a leader, it's their fault. Not the person who they should be running it or that should be their responsibility. And now these meetings take on a new twist.

We're not in the same room. We're virtual. So how have you taken the responsibility to run excellent meetings when we're not together anymore? You know, if you'd ask me that three weeks ago, I'd have said this was weird. We are also used to this now.

I mean, the people out there that are listening, how many Zoom calls have you had? This is the new, normal. At first we were like, are we going to have to do this for a few days? We're going to do this for the next eight weeks, probably. And so we should get great at it. And I was not a big proponent of virtual meetings just because I really like people to be together and I really like to be in the same room. Well, that is the reality we're in now. We have to do it this way. So we are trying to get really great at these virtual meetings. And to get great at that, we have to be very clear about

what kind of meeting we're having. And what I've found is that most people have either very tactical meetings where they get on a Zoom call and they try to get things done and get out quickly, which I don't think is a good idea. People need more time. Or they have a happy hour. So it goes either totally social or totally tactical. Oh, I love seeing somebody's child here. That's great. And so I think we should be hanging out together on Zoom around business, around our work. I think we should say, let's get on for an hour. And heck, we might even be working independently, but I'm going to see you there and I might speak up and say something. Or we might just brainstorm and just say, what do you think is going on and how can we better

serve our clients? We can't lose those moments of being together where we don't even know what we're going to get done. So if we try to be too efficient and we try to keep those calls like very focused, which feels like the right thing to do, but it's just not. We need to actually hang out together technologically. And so that's where innovation and cohesiveness and growth is going to come. So don't think that you're bothering people by having them on a Zoom call because probably they need that in order to think creatively and interpersonally. I don't hope that makes sense.

The thoughts on leaders in a perilous time, one of the other aspects of it was being persistent. And I sense that's what you mean by that because being persistent when it comes to the level of communication. I was, Shane Snow just published an article today about this where he did some research on communication and he found that people would rather be criticized than be ignored. Yeah. And the research backs that up where if someone's ignored, even if the response is going to be negative or criticism, they would rather that, their satisfaction goes up with that

versus feeling like they're alone or they're ignored. Right. The opposite of hate of love is not hate. It's indifference. And so this is what I, that's the second thing I said is just not being human, but be persistent. Bother people. If you're thinking, well, I don't want to call them at home because they're probably busy with it. No, no, call them and check in with them and talk to them. We don't want to leave people alone. That seems like we're being respectful, but it's not right now. It's actually more painful. So call people, find out how they're doing. Bring your son or daughter onto your call. This is so wonderful. We got a guy with a hat on that says Milwaukee on his shirt. I don't know if he knows. I see Eric with a son. Yeah. And that's so great. It's like let's be part of

one another's lives and don't hold back. This is a bad time to hold back. Six months from now, people won't look back and say, yeah, Eric really bugged me. He kept checking in on me and kept communicating with me. They're going to say, he left me alone and I didn't know what to think. So this is a time to be more persistent in our communication with one another. our leadership than even than normal. And there's something around having a thematic goal. And I, I have learned in building my business, Pat, about the importance of having a thematic goal. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's even more critical right now as you're trying to build something as you're dealing with challenging circumstances. Can you can you, can you, can you

talk a little bit about having a thematic goal in two places? And I, I, I thought of this because of seeing Eric and because of what you just said, one at work and having the rallying cry and how we're going to proceed amongst this, this challenging time at work. But then also, most or all of us are at home for the majority of the days. A lot of us with children trying to balance homeschooling and working our business and figuring out how to do that and it's new for a lot of us. So when it comes to having a thematic goal or a rallying cry, how do you do that? So, and this is critical because this is the most important thing. Are people looking for some amount of clarity, even temporary clarity?

And when this whole thing first started, everybody was like, I don't know what's happening. How long is it going to last? Well, now we know it's going to last for a little while. Okay. So our job as leaders is to give people enough clarity to make this productive. And the way to do that is to give them a rallying cry for the next, you know, eight weeks. At my company, what we did, I'll just share ours, we said, what are we going to do for the next eight weeks? I know. We're going to make this a period of cohesiveness and innovation.

June 1st comes, let's say, and God willing, June 1st, we're getting out there again and getting back to normal. We want to look back and say, well, we grew together as an organization more than we would have otherwise, and we came up with new ideas that we would have never thought of in serving our clients and getting messages out. And so that became our thematic goal. That's our rallying cry. Of course, you don't stop there. You say, okay, what are the four or five levers you would have to pull to make that happen? And we at the table group came up with five things. We said, we're going to change the way we communicate and interact with one another, meetings, hangout sessions, social.

We're going to get more messages out to our followers because they want more now. They need more. We're going to tap into some of the resources we've had, our assets that we've never used before. We're going to launch two new programs that people will use, that we were going to launch six months from now, but let's just do it quick and dirty right now. and we are going to, what was the other one? Oh, we're going to do more outreach to people in need. And so those are the five things.

Suddenly we went from feeling like we were victimized by the situation to feeling like, no, we're actually on offense. We're going to make those five things work. And it totally changed the posture and the morale of our people. And every organization, every family needs that. Like what is going to be true about us at the end of this period, whether it's two months or three months. And that, that, again, we want to play offense, not defense.

I see a good comment from Kelly. She said with so many video and conference calls, I'm finding that I'm absolutely exhausted virtual fatigue from having so many of these now. So like it's almost gone to the other end. How do you manage that? Because people are tired of screen time. Because there are happy hours. I know they're happy hours with friends.

There are work meetings. there is everything between. So how do you balance that? You know, it's funny because I think what we need to do is think about it differently. I'm just thinking about this out loud. I lived in Spain when I was in college, and they had siestas. And those are less than they used to be. You know why, how they were able to do siestas?

Because everybody worked like up above their store. You know what it's like you worked right by where you, so you just closed the shop and you went upstairs, you took a nap or you had lunch. And then you'd go open it again in the evening. When people started commuting and going into offices and driving to work, they couldn't do that. Well, I think we should change the rhythm of our work now. I don't think, I think you should shut it down from noon to two sometimes. Say your colleagues, hey, I'm out and everybody give each other grace to do that.

I'm shutting it down from noon to two because I'm going to go play basketball with my kids. I'll be back on later. Does anybody ever ever kind of feel guilty right now? It's like 9 o'clock at night and you're like, I think I should go log in. I'm kind of feeling Jones to do a little bit of work. Oh, I shouldn't do that. No, I think we should rethink the way we work and actually not get fatigued. I don't think we need eight hours in a row of sitting in front of a computer and then seven

hours in a row of watching TV with our kids or playing code names or whatever else, which is wonderful, but I like to break it up. And yesterday, I went and took three hours off in the middle of the day and it changed my outlook completely. I've found for me, Pat, I'd be curious for you, the power of walking. Walking with the sunrise for me has been a new aspect of my morning routine. Now I have to work out in my home semi-gim that we've tried to put together since gyms are closed. And then finishing that by walking as the sunrises and then another one usually with family at some other point later in the day.

Wait, does that mean you're working out before the sunrise? guys? Yeah. When you work out, Pat, you're in good shape. Well, I have college students at home, so my house doesn't shut down until about 2.30 in the morning. So we have very little quiet time. Do you stay and hang out with like, can you hang with your kids and do with the things that college kids do? No, but you know what's funny? I'll tell you this. So I have twin boys that are 21. So they're home from college. I've never been so glad that they had call of duty because they actually talk to their friends that way. This is one, this is the craziest blessing of this time is that boys have ways to connect with their friends. So when he's in the next bedroom over, yelling, ah, you know, because he's there shooting somebody.

I have a really hard time going to tell him to keep it down because that's all the, that's all the goodness he has right now. So my house is noisy about 20 hours a day. Okay. That's a long way of saying, no, I do not, I do not exercise before. All right. I try to, that's been part of my morning kind of behavior. and it make it it I think there's a something. Getting some normal normalcy is really important.

Right. Or even learning something new. And that's something I wanted to bring it with you. For me, I think my, my morning behavior will change forever in a good way. And so I'm curious, now that we've had some time in this new normal, what are some, some things that you've implemented because you are basically forced to that you think will remain, whether it's for you or for others that you're working with, you are helping, that you'd say, wow, you know, this has actually been a positive. We were forced to do it and we're better

off for it and we'll continue to do it long term. Well, and I hope I will. Because, you know, I hope, I'm actually concerned that when this lifts, that there's going to be this kind of social, emotional depression because people are going to go back to the old way and they're going to realize maybe it wasn't all that great. You know, because we were kind of just disqualified. You know, because we were kind of just distracted. I mean, I actually, I'm going to tell you the truth. I had this moment today of feeling like, oh my gosh, they came up with a cure. Wouldn't that be great? And everything went back to the old way. And I would be like, oh, no, I want to hold on to some of the things that are going on right now with like literally eating together and talking during dinner. You know,

I mean, we tried to do that before. But when you have kids of 21, 17 and 13 playing lacrosse and going to this and doing this, it got really hard. And this is fantastic that we're going back. to that. You know, we played poker last night as a family. And I mean, we would have never done that before, which bums me out. So I hope that we're going to become more intentional about spending family time together. Yeah. I'm curious for you, if you can be vulnerable for a minute with us, when you're alone and you're thinking about what's happening, because you're a lot of your business, I would imagine it's either you being on stage or you being with leaders physically, whether it's in their office, working with CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world. And so you can't

go on stage right now. And I identify with this a lot because I miss it so much, the feeling of the energy and the eyes and the head nods, and then coming up after the talk and talking to you on the side of the stage and the feedback, like I miss it. I didn't realize I'd miss it this much. And it's hard. When you're kind of by yourself in your head and you don't have to be the, the public facing Pat Linschoni, what have you had to say to yourself? I guess I'm curious to see like,

how scared have you been, or what type of fears have popped up into your head, given that we have so much unknown right now? I actually, just to be quite perfectly honest, I'm a Christian, the Catholic kind. And I've just kind of come to the conclusion that I just want to do the right thing for eternal purposes. And if anything, that's what's happened during this time.

All the things I used to worry about, I think, you know, all of this is going to end someday. And it's made me have to really rethink my priorities. And so I'm trying to fill that time up with prayer. And I'm bummed at myself for still being so busy. By the way, I read this amazing story of a 49-year-old priest in New York City. 49 years old, he was a lawyer. He grew up in a really wealthy family in Mexico City. He became a priest who was engaged to be married, decided he broke it off to be a priest.

He's 49 years old. Two weeks ago, he was doing an online mass and talking about, we don't need to be afraid. That night he got sick, went to the hospital, and he was texting the night before he died. This was the first priest to die and all this. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. Things are fine. Man, I would trade that for anything.

Really? So I will just say my perspective is that's what I'm looking for. I want to have that sense of peace, whatever the circumstances that we're going to be okay. What do you say to the leader who does not have that sense of peace right now that is scared that though, let's say they lead a team of 15 or 1,500, and in there are private moments, they're thinking, oh, my goodness, I may have to lay people off.

I'm personally scared. Normally, I can share this vision and I can kind of predict the future because I've lived, I have some life repetitions. I have some experience. So I have some idea. Like Marcus Buckingham says they can see around corners, right? They can see the future. And that's why we follow people who give us more certainty because we hate uncertainty. Right.

So for the person who, and I love that, you know, you share honestly how you feel, but there are a lot of people who I think are not at that place yet. What advice would you give to that leader? Like, what if the CEO of Fortune 50 company call you? This probably has happened to a pat. I can't really say this, but I'm scared. I'm fearful. I'm not sure what to do. What's like the general advice you give to that person?

Yeah. First, I tell them this is why you're a leader. So lean into this, if you will. Secondly, what I would say, and it's the third of my points I talk about being being human and being persistent. The last one is be creative. Think about things that you wouldn't have thought about before. Like here's one of the things that we're doing. By the way, it's when you think about others, your fear goes down.

Your worries go down. And I think that's how we're wired. And so one of the things we're doing right now is we're encouraging anyone and all of your listeners to offer your employees to take a temporary pay cut. And just to put that money toward avoiding laying off people in your organization. I mean, this seems like the most obvious thing, right? But so many people are in the grip right now and they're not even, and people, we've said that to people and their CEOs are like, I'm going to do that because the morale of the people in your organization is going to go through the roof because they want to share in this sacrifice.

And when they know that like, okay, we're shut down right now, I could live on 80% of my salary or 90% of my salary. I want to give that 10% back to help one of my brothers or sisters who is going to get laid off. That's a win-win. And it takes the leader to say, I want to offer this opportunity to everybody. And as soon as the leader does that, I'm going to tell you a story. My son had a project about helping homeless people. He put together these little kits.

And in the kit, there was antibacterial, you know, Purell and then some stuff to eat and a toothbrush and toothpaste and stuff like that. I just, the guys came to cut our lawn because they're still doing it, which is great for them. And I just walked out and handed them a bag of Purell little bottles. And I thought, this is for you and your family. And let me tell you, your fear goes down when you're helping others. And when you're a leader, you're in a position where you're supposed to be helping others. Do that more. And I think that idle time and feeling helpless is what makes fear go up.

So find a way to be creative to help other people. all the time, get their kids on the, you know, we're going to probably have some family presentations where we talk about all this. It's funny, I just got a note from Doug Meyer. He said he has college age kids and you have college age kids. Yeah. I'm sure others have that. What advice are you giving to your college age kids?

Well, what I'm trying not to do is be, this is not a time for imposing new discipline. Yeah. It's crazy because it feels like it is, but they need more grace right now than ever. and they need more choices. And so like, my college kids are beside themselves. Their senior year of college just ended one day. And it breaks my heart. They're no longer athletes.

They're college athletes. They're no longer live with them. They're at home with their family. Hey, look at that. One of Eric's sons is back. Let's see if I, is that a son? I can't tell my, it's far small. Anyway, so what I try to do with them is I try to appeal to their, their greater

sense and say, what do you think is the right thing to do here? What can you do to make yourself better and how can we help you? And they opt into the right thing. But man, my wife is like, we're going to have a new rule around here. At midnight, nobody's, and it's like, this is the wrong time to do that. This is the wrong time to do that. I go by my son. I have a 17 year old son. He's in bed at 10 o'clock. And I look in his room. He looks up and I'm like, keep sleeping in, buddy. That's awesome. I think it was Joel Peterson CEO of JetBlue. I had him on months ago. And he's got an incredible marriage, a lot of kids, grandchildren. And I said, Joel, could you give me some advice on being a good dad and a good husband?

And he said, let me tackle the dad one first. And he said, you have those daughters. And there are times where they're going to drive you crazy and you're going to probably raise your voice and lose your composure. Let me just tell you, after I've had some time now between those moments and now, he said, try to try your best to be a cheerleader, not the, you. the overbearing coach. And even though your tendency is, you as like,

try your best, I promise you that is the method to go. And I thought, huh. And I actually think of that advice often now, Pat, when I'm being the overbearing coach and the person who is potentially

losing my cool because of whatever. And instead saying, try being that person instead. It'll be better long term. Yeah, I learned that the hard way a few times. We all do. How so?

Oh, I mean, just because, the hardest thing about life being a parent is watching your kids suffer. Yeah. And so you're parenting them and you're like, gee, if they could just learn this right now, they wouldn't have to suffer. So I'm going to force them to learn this so they don't suffer.

And your intentions are really good. And then, but that's just sometimes you just got to help them make good decisions. And when they don't let them, let them learn. Yeah. Easier said than done. For sure, for sure.

I want to open up to a few questions. I had some sent in by those. I'm going to start with Brooke cups. So Brooke, I'm going to unmute you and then you can fire away. Pat, you cool with that? Oh, I love that. Questions are my favorite. All right, Brooke.

All right, Pat. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Love your stuff. Thank you. Here's my question. So I got a two-parter. So I'd sneak as much stuff in as I could.

That's going to cost twice as much. All right. By the way, hold on. Brooke, hold up. I meant to give him a proper introduction. So Brooke is a high school basketball coach. And he teaches a leadership course at Centerville High School and is a mentor of mine and also coached Brony James and his son Gabe's AAU basketball team. So he sat side by side with LeBron James coaching basketball.

Brooke would never tell you. So I have to give you the proper intro. But he teaches, I know I've spoken in his class a few times and your stuff, five dysfunctions and others are all over his classroom. So Pat, I always think it's cool to see when your work that you've published in a book, however long ago is impacting high school kids and obviously beyond like right right away and brook's an example of that so brook go go ahead man all right yeah thank you right yeah we've we've actually used the five dysfunctiones with our basketball team for about 10 years now so that's great it's been awesome so if you're you're the leader of a team what what two specific actions do you think are the

best for establishing that safe environment for trust and vulnerability to kind of flourish. That's the first part of my question. Yeah. It's all about it's about getting people to to take risks and realizing that it's not only, it's not only okay, it's actually necessary. So, so I mean, you know, we just get people to talk about, we do this exercise called the personal histories. And you could do these things virtually right now.

And that's just people just go around and talk about, hey, here's who I am. Here's where I grew up. And this was the hardest thing about my childhood. It is crazy how many people just don't have that conversation at work. And when they do, they're like, and this isn't touchy-feely. I hate touchy-feely stuff. This is just people saying, yeah, my dad died when I was young. Or we struggled financially or whatever else.

In 15 minutes, you have this simple conversation and people are looking at each other like, oh man, I have a totally different understanding and appreciation for you. And then we use a tool like either the Myers-Briggs or people, there's so many great tools out there, disc and everything else, just so people can actually better understand. St. Francis once said, you know, in the prayer of St. Francis, seek to understand more than to be understood.

But we can't understand people if we don't know what's true about them. And boy, if I'm talking to you right now, coach, and I know that you're an ENTJ, that helps me understand you and know how to be more vulnerable with you than if I don't understand what makes you tick. So it's just doing simple exercises. You can build trust on a team in two hours that you can really do some things that change the whole dynamic of a team in just a couple hours. So that's, I think, I hope that answers a question. Yeah, it does. And so just keep continuing to do those throughout just over and over and over. Absolutely. And, you know,

new team members come on board, redo it. You know, we, it's just, it's just like marriage. You just kind of keep doing those things and keep getting people to be vulnerable. And in times like this, we go around and say, we say, tell me one thing that you're worried about and one thing good that's happened recently in your family, whatever else. And the more people do that, you know, I coached a lot of kids on teams and I just wanted them to be completely human. I had 25 lacrosse players, middle schoolers in my office.

a month and a half ago. And I asked them to do humble, hungry, and smart, which is my, the, and it was amazing to hear these 13-year-olds going, yeah, I'm not very humble. I want to score goals. I don't, I don't thank the kid who passed me the ball. I shouldn't do that. That's kind of bad. And it was like crazy to hear these kids talk about like that.

So anyway. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. The other side of kind of the other way is two biggest red flags for a poor teammate, somebody that you may be, you my, like from my position, we try to work with kids or trying to help them, obviously, but what are the two, like the two toughest things to overcome to get them to, whether it's to be vulnerable, to buy into what you're asking them to do? What have you found to be the

hardest things to overcome? Man, if they're, if they're, you know, selfish and insecure is so hard. I mean, now the good news is you're working with kids. So they're a little closer to their wounds when they're young and maybe you can a coach can do a lot to heal a kid because they're young but when I work with people in the corporate world and most of their life they've been living out of their wounds which are that selfishness and insecurity that was caused by something lacking in their life that's a really tough one to overcome um gosh what else I I don't know if that I could put anything up as close to that I would say that's it if they can't say you know what I love to see on the basketball court. And I have a son who's a really, he's a good athlete and he's just

had a great attitude. And I was watching his lacrosse game before all this happened. And I saw that he made a mistake on defense. He looked one way and then looked the other and the guy got behind him. And he went to the goalie and he goes, my bad. And then he went to the other guys on the team, but that was on me. And then he ran off the field and he said, hey, coach, that was my fault. And I was just like, he ended up scoring the winning goal in overtime. That what he did before, though, was way cooler. Because when a kid can say my bad it was my fault versus blaming other people for their mistakes. Man, that's that that's kind of vulnerability is and if a kid just doesn't like that, man,

I would take a much less talented but vulnerable kid over somebody, somebody who could never admit they're wrong. Great. Thank you. Let's go to Joe. Joe Nykirk, you ready to roll? Yep. All right. Thank you.

Thanks, Ryan, for setting us up. And Pat, thanks for your time and wisdom. here and today and in all your books. Thank you for saying that. I've been a fan for a while. I was given about five year books about five years ago and started reading them and I haven't stopped since. So I credit you with turning me into a reader.

So thank you. Oh, that's great. My question is, what are the first three things that you do when you walk into a company that asks you to help them? Okay. So I'm thinking about this in real time. First thing, I got to know the leader is sincerely interested in doing this. Because I've had some leaders go, hey, you've written a book and hey,

can you help us? This isn't really my thing, but if you could help fix us, it's like, no, the leader, they have to be sincerely interested in it. And I've been fooled before. I've had leaders saying, I really want to do this. And then you get down the road and they're just like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I don't really want to be vulnerable. So it's the first thing, is the leader truly interested in doing this and they're willing to be vulnerable? So I got to get that relationship right. The second thing I do is I just want to get the team together and get them to be vulnerable, getting some of the questions that coach asked me before, and that is, you've just got to get them to start showing vulnerability and building trust. Because without that,

you can't make good decisions. You can't solve problems because if people aren't being honest and they don't admit when they're wrong or they don't ask for help or they don't acknowledge when somebody else has a better idea, all bets are off. So I go vulnerability. And then you know what? The next thing, I mean, I don't necessarily do this sequentially. But if I were sitting on a plane next to a leader, I would say, first of all, are you willing to be vulnerable and to really sink yourself into this? Yes. Okay, then I would say, so the first thing you're going to do is get to know your team and get them to be vulnerable. The next thing is, find out what your rallying cry, what your thematic goal is.

What is the single thing? Because that's super practical. I remember I once worked with a bank in the Silicon Valley and they were super cynical. And they were like, ah, this is all touchy feeling. And then when we got to this, and I said, you need a rallying cry. I want to know what all of you guys agree is your number one priority from this. that moment on they were like, okay, now this just got real. We want to go back and do all the other stuff because if it's all leading to this,

that's what matters. So I would say, is the leader committed? Will the team be vulnerable? Can they identify what their big thematic goal rallying cry is? Those would be the three. Thank you. Sure. Love it.

We're going to go. I just ran off Eric's third child. Let's go to my man, Chris G. You ready to rock, man? Yeah, I am. There you go. Yeah, Pat, there's a, well, I read Getting Naked a few years ago. Remember reading an airplane?

And people were running, running, what are you reading? And an aspect of that book that I really love is how you talk about, and you talk about this on your podcast, when you go into meetings of talking about what's the most relevant. But there's a dichotomy that I have between talking about what is most important in the moment. and also preparing for things. So how do you balance that, the preparation, creating an agenda with what's most relevant in the moment in meetings?

I think I'm going to need a little bit more clarity. So like you're working with a client. Am I right? Well, I'm working, so with my team. So normally I'm going to go into team meeting and say, here's all the things we're talking about. Yeah. And part of your advice is don't do that.

But I want to be prepared because I feel in my past I've just not prepared and been lazy. so I want to be prepared. Yeah, I think that, I think that, so we're talking about setting an agenda coming into a meeting, am I right? Yes. Okay. I think the key is you're not expected to know what's going on and what you should be talking about in a meeting until you get in there and actually get people's perspectives on what's actually happening. And remember, Alan Mulally ran his company this way when he turned around the Ford Motor Company.

So if it can work on a company that size, I think it can work on any organization. And that is when you sit down with your team in a meeting, the first thing you should do is you should go through, these are our priorities. You know, this is our rallying, crying, all the things we're saying, let's actually quickly go through and assign a color to them. Green, yellow, or red. I like to give people lime or orange in between, too. And it's not until you've done that and you've taken that 10 minutes to kind of go through and find out what's going on, that you really have a prayer of knowing what you should. talk about during a meeting. So I think it's okay for you to be vulnerable enough as a leader to go into a meeting and go, I don't know what we should talk about today. Let's find out how we're doing.

And then that informs the agenda. So trying to come up with an agenda before the meeting starts is just not a good idea. I think that's what leads us to be sitting in a meeting and wondering, why are we talking about this? And it's like, well, because somebody asked me to put it on the agenda last night before we knew what was going on. Right. So that makes sense? Yeah, the preparation is you have to have priorities. So if you don't have priority, oh yeah, if you don't have a clear set of priorities, then you're just winging it. Right. Like it gets back to my thing. You know what my staff does when we have our meetings during this, during this time? We start by going, remember, our job here is to become more cohesive and innovative. Okay, first thing, communication mechanisms. How are we doing on that? Green, yellow,

or red. Next one, outgoing messages. How are we doing on that? Green yellow or red. So we have that structure. We go through all of that. The whole purpose of that is to know what we should talk about during our meeting. It's actually not that overstructured. By the way, I want to make a point here that I forgot. I wrote a note. So I wrote a book years ago called The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, which is essentially just how to apply the simplest business concepts to your home. Because one day I went home and I said to my wife, you know, if my clients ran their company is the way we run our family, they'd go out of business. And she was like, well, what does that mean? I said, well, the thing is, why do we wing it at home? But then I have meetings and I have agendas and all

these things at work. And so I wrote this book and we went to our publisher last week and they've agreed to let us give it away for free online to downloadable. And it is a fantastic tool right now to sit down with your spouse. And if you have older kids even and go through it, it's very simple. It's not, you don't have to have like a three-day offsite or a flip chart. And, and, ask yourself some questions and bring to your family that same level of clarity that we have. So I think you just go to our website and it's free again and download that. It makes for a good conversation with a spouse and a family. Amazing.

I think to Chris, I've sensed this and Pat, I would imagine this is how it is for you. Part of your preparation is the fact that you have so many. reps. You've got so many repetitions in meetings with leaders. And I think one of the skills you developed, again, it's funny I'm bringing up Shane Snow again, but one of the things that him and I talked about was this idea of pattern recognition. And you develop pattern recognition through lots of repetitions. So when you're in the meeting, you can be an active listener, offer feedback, and you can just pull from what you've got kind of downloaded in your mind from all of these great experiences. I have to believe, Pat, that's, that's one of your superpowers is that you can pull from so many incredible

experiences with other leaders who have sustained excellence. Yes, but you need just enough structure to operate, to use that intuition. It's just, if you have no structure at all, intuition can be kind of dangerous because it's all over the map. I know, I've done that myself. My staff has to kind of contain me. So if you have just enough structure, this is generally what we're trying to accomplish. Here's the four or five key levers we're trying to accomplish it with now let's be intuitive within those the context of that yeah i think and i think basketball is my superpower i'm pretty sure really are you a good basketball player well no i used to be but but now i'm old and i and i i played in the days when your shorts were hiked up way up and your socks were

hiked up so no i'm not all right let's go to uh keegan keegan you ready to roll i'm ready thanks Ryan yeah pat thanks for all your work um love the amazing parish, love the better pastor, fantastic stuff. Yeah, really, really helpful for us. So, thanks for doing that stuff. My question is around new managers, new leaders. So first-time leaders managing through, you know, turbulent times like this, what advice would you have for taking over a team in this climate? Yeah, I think most new managers think their job is to be strong. And strong is not what, you know, we tend to think that, you know, that old commercial, you know, that old don't let them see a sweat, you know, like it's a, it's a deodorant commercial. I can't remember

which one. Well, the truth is, if you're a leader, your people know when you're sweating, and they know when you're not perfect, and they know when you have issues. So I would teach new leaders to be the one to say, you know, check this out. You know, I'm not, I'm not perfect and be human. And vulnerability actually instills trust in people more than unwarranted confidence. And that's one of those counterintuitive things that most new leaders don't have. They think I'm supposed to be strong. I'm supposed to tell people what they're right answers, I need to know all the answers. And if you can demonstrate vulnerability, now that doesn't mean incompetence. I don't, I'm not saying that, but it's like nobody expects

a leader to have all the answers. They expect the leader to be in the pursuit of those answers and to tap into the people that lead them. So I think one of the hardest things about putting a person in charge right now is they think that their job, especially in a crisis, they think their job is to have the answers and to create certainty. And that just doesn't exist. Ask lots of questions encourage people a lot and break ties when you can't make a decision. Yeah. That's a tough transition. Tough transition, Keegan.

I've spent years messing it up and then writing a book about it and still battle. I know Pat's been a huge supporter. I'm very appreciative of that. But that's really good advice. Let's go to Gary. My guy, Gary B. Are you ready to roll a man? Yes, sir.

Thank you, Ryan, for the opportunity. Appreciate it. And by the way, he didn't know I was going to do this, but I literally just finished Ryan's book. You guys need to read Ryan's book if you haven't read it. Pass it out to your managers, your directors, fantastic book for sure. Pat, thank you for the opportunity. Like others, your books, we use your books in New Directors Conference. I'm the CEO of an addiction recovery organization, 4,000 employees.

Fantastic. Around the nation. What's it called? Yeah, I'm sorry? What's it called? Oh, adult and teen challenge. Oh. Adult and teen challenge, yes.

Wait, is that the same teen challenge that's been around forever? Yes, sir. Sixty two years. Yeah. Teen challenge used to, they used to do the haunted house in our town when I was a kid. Oh, wow. The teen challenge, that's awesome. Yeah, good to know.

So, you know, obviously these are unprecedented times. There's no doubt. Truly. I mean, in our century, none of us. Yeah, absolutely. And during these times, motivation, you know, leaders and employees and team members, their true motivation comes out, whether that motivation is stable income, whether that motivation is a title, because now titles

may change because of all the changes happening organically, structurally, et cetera. How would you approach leaders in your organization helping them see what their true motivations are, helping them see what that looks like? So did you ask this so I could promote my newest book? No, but I haven't. Oh, there it is. That's so funny. Because that's kind of what I get at in that book, which I always say I've written 11 books.

And if somebody had a stack of them and they said, which should I read first? I would say read that one because it's not about how to be a better leader, but it's about why you would want to be a leader in the first place. And during a time like this, it's actually more important than ever that our leaders are motivated by the right thing. And there's two primary motivations. To break it down on the simplest, one is the wrong one, which is reward-centered, which means I want to be a leader because it makes me look good or it gives me influence, power, money, popularity, control, fun, whatever else it is. That's not a good reason to be a leader.

The right reason, the other motivation is responsibility-centered, which is I'm actually assuming a burden for the sake of others. And I'll go back to the coach. Imagine coach, a player gets drafted in the NBA. One of them is reward-centered. Finally, I got drafted. I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to be famous. This is going to be awesome.

I'm going to find a house and a car and do commercials. This is going to be great. That's reward-centered. It's about me. The other one says, oh, my gosh, this team drafted me. I've got to work harder. I've got to learn the offensive system. I've got to contribute because the last thing I want to do is not carry my weight

and make them regret having given me this responsibility. Okay. what I've found is that there's a lot of leaders because society does this that say, I want to be a CEO or a leader because it's really about, it's a reward for a lifetime of hard work. And then when they calculate the personal economics of it, it's just not very good. Because the economics of being a leader, the personal economics are terrible. You've got to give way more than you get back. And if you're not prepared for that, you're going to start cherry picking your responsibilities based on what you feel like doing on a given day or at any given time.

and as a result of that, you will abdicate your responsibility as a leader, which is disaster, especially right now. So if you didn't sign up for the hard stuff, if you didn't sign up to be sacrificial and other-centered, you are in real trouble. In fact, I believe that that term servant leadership, I really don't want people to use that anymore, because calling someone a servant leader is actually implying that there's another kind. It's like that's the only kind there is. And if you don't sign up for servant leadership, then please don't be a leader because

it's not going to meet your needs and you're going to end up using that position for yourself. And that is really dangerous. It leaves employees in very bad situations, politics, dysfunction. It's just ugly. Yeah. Does that answer the question? Absolutely. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you for letting me plug. my book. Katie says servant leader is, servant leader is redundant. It's a good way to say it. Pat, real quick, I'm going to get to Ryan Hartley next, but there's a few questions about where to get that book. Some have already went to your website and cannot find it. The free book, the three questions ask your family. Do you know where you're going to do? Do you have email addresses for all these folks? I do not. Not for everybody. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm going to commit to do. I'm going to make sure that on our front page of our website,

at the end of today, tomorrow, there's going to be, I know that's someplace on our website, it's on there, but I'm going to move that to the front of tablegroup.com, and so it'll be, we'll make that easy to do. Okay, cool.

And if you haven't, I'll make sure it's a part of my Monday stuff. If you haven't already texted the word learners to 4-4-2-2-2, that's how you get access to everything that I do and all this will be a part of that. You can do that as well, but Pat, that and that's how you get a hold of me for those who don't haven't done yet at text learners the four four two two two all right let's go to ryan hartley and uh ryan take it away man yeah thank

you thank you for thank you for the time in the space and thank you for both actually being mentors of mine even though you probably don't realize it and well the accent is just too cool sorry i have to interrupt where where are you coming where are you joining us from so i'm going from wiltshire in the united kingdom so not far from stonehenge which is uh ironic but um i just We just rewatched the movie Spinal Tap the other day. The most hilarious reference to Stonehenge in history. So anyway, sorry. It's okay.

So I've recently left the UK police force after 12 years, and I left on Valentine's Day this year to go self-employed. And my question really kind of links to Valentine's Day, and I just would love to know your opinion on whether love has a place in leadership. I was a little worried about the whole Valentine's Day thing for a second. you know, it does. It's absolutely, I use the L word a lot. And, and like I say to people, you have to love your employees, even if you don't always like them. You know, and loving them, though, is not what people think. It's not always affirming them. It's not always doing the easy

thing. It's doing things that are in their best interest. And it kind of gets back to what Ryan was saying before, like, people don't want to be left alone during this time. But you know how many, You know one of the things that leaders who have the wrong motive don't do, they don't have difficult conversations with people. Because they're like, why should I do that? That's unpleasant to me. You know why you need to do it? Because you are depriving that person of an opportunity to improve and become the best version of themselves. And if you don't give them that advice, they're going to suffer in bigger ways later on. Now, if you say that to a person whose motive is to please themselves, they're going to go, I don't really don't care. So love is paramount in all of this. You know, in all of it. Now, some places have a harder time understanding that than others, but that's oftentimes because they think love means being nice and hugging and doing touchy-feely things. That's silly.

Love means putting another person's best interest above your own and trying to figure out how they can receive that in the most effective way. So, yes, go love. I'm a pro-love person. Love it. Let's go one more. my buddy Larry Siler Larry do you want to fire away man uh yeah well I was just I think providing some context to the question that got asked by the group which I think it was the three big questions that come from the frantic family thanks a lot for the time today everyone

oh my pleasure I think the three big questions correct me if this is wrong but it's what makes your family unique? What is your top priority or rallying cry right now? And then how do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? Perfect. Very good. And so we take people through that. It's like, what makes your family unique? And it's like your company has a has values. What are your families? And your company has a strategy. What are your families? And there's real ways to come up with that. And then the what's your top priority? We talked about that. It's like, okay, so what do you want to be different about your family in eight weeks? given what's going on right now.

Just be clear about that. And then make sure that you and your spouse review that and talk about it on a regular basis. But the book goes through that. But thank you very much. I appreciate you reminding people that there's three simple questions. How important I guess is a follow up to that if I can dig into that a little bit because we actually, my wife and I both read that book several years ago. And we instituted like the Sunday family dinner chats and things like that.

which are all really important. And a lot of that book is about, in a less formal way, I think that's a really good job of capturing, hey, there's subtleties to how you can institute this with your family. It's not going to be quite as rigid as it might be, you know, maybe in a business setting.

But the importance of routine and rituals was really important there. And right now when all of those things are completely thrown out of whack, I'm just curious how maybe you're doing it with your family And now you've got, you know, sons coming back from college and all of those things. Like, should we be working really hard to try to create these new routines and rituals, even though they might be temporary? Or should we let it just kind of, you know, figure it out as we go, I guess is the question. I think it's a little close to figure out as you go which of those routines make sense and people can opt into.

And a lot of this has to do with your personality style, too. I mean, I'm an ENFP, if you know what that means. It means I don't like structure very much. I should like it more. My wife is an INFP, which means she likes it a little less than I do. So doing anything on a repetitive structured basis is really challenging for us. And so I feel like the cobbler's, you know, the cobbler whose children don't have shoes that I'm not using this as well as most of the people have read the book. But what we have done really well, I think, is said, what are our values and how are we living our lives so that we don't have a strategic angst all the time, you know? and so we kind of know there's three values that we have in our family and that's that we got to stick to those and talk about those.

And we have, you know, three kind of strategic anchors that make us who we are. Some people, you're going to be an ISFJ and you're going to say, we're going to get together, we're going to talk about this and that might work for you. Alan Mullalley used to have a meeting with his family every Sunday where they went through everything, but he's very structured. So I think whatever works for you, the key is, is it clear? and are you, is it keeping you basically moving in the same direction? I think that, I think that with kids coming home from college, man, it's tough to impose new structure on them right now because they've had everything taken away from them. Way more than we did.

We do. Yeah. So, Corey, you asked a great question. Corey said, are there women on the call? All the questions have been from guys. I would say, I would love to have a woman asked a question, but none have asked one of me. So I'm going by the questions that I'm asked. Well, I think that's because I put in a no questions from women.

request. It's your fault. No. Corey, go ahead. Go ahead. Hi. So, am I on mute? No, you're good. Go ahead. We can hear. All right. Hi, Patrick. I've watched you multiple times at Global Leadership Summit and I love your books. I've got a ton of them up there on my shelf.

But this question has to do with, you know, timing of change. What I do is I lead inclusion and diversity initiatives. And right now, is a time that I'm really trying to get a lot of my leaders to focus on a need for connection and belonging and just really cultivating, managing their teams in a way that's inclusive. But I'm concerned that they're being bombarded with so much information, whether it's from the organization trying to get them to focus on billing hours, that I'm questioning what the right time is and the right way to roll out anything new to sort of help redirect everyone

to make sure we're doing the right things for our people. So that's my question. Yeah, that's not an easy one. There's a lot in there. But what I would say is this is a time to slow down to go fast. And if we're trying to be too efficient and get people all foe, you know, inclusion, when people get to know one another as human beings,

they become more inclusive, right? And there has never been a time when that was more important. And so what I would say is if you can help the people you're serving the leaders to know that by people interacting with each other in ways that they haven't in the past. And I don't just mean the technology. I mean what they do with the technology. They're going to emerge from this. You can't measure their productivity in the course of the next few days. I want to see what it's like in a month.

Are they bought in? Are they working hard? Are they passionate about what they're doing? Are they helping each other? Are they giving each other feedback? and to do that, you have to invest up front in a lot more time getting to know one another in a new way. So those are, I know sound just like a lot of words, but connect what you're doing with the outcomes and anticipate the objections of the leaders who say, we don't have time for this.

It's like, oh, no, no, no, no. If we don't spend time with this, we are never going to come close to accomplishing what we could accomplish. Okay. My organization is more productive than we have ever, ever, ever been in the last two weeks. But it's not because this technology is wonderful. It's because as a result of this, we have forced ourselves to focus and to really work together and to make sacrifices for one another. And it's going crazy.

Hey, Pat, can I ask us self-as question real quick to close us off? How do you, how do you disson? what the topic of your next book will be? Well, usually I don't know, and many times I thought I was finished. In fact, after my third one, I thought I was done. So things just come up, but I'll share with you how I came up with this last one. I remember thinking of one day I was in my office with talking to my staff, and I rattled off the names of the three people that my dad worked for in his career.

My dad's passed on, God rest his soul. And I remember thinking, I know all their names. I remember what they look like. I remember how they treated my dad, and I remember how my dad responded to them. And it just occurred to me that most managers don't realize how many other people they influence and how that influence affects the way they treat others. And so my next book is going to be called the heroic manager. And it's going to be about how to manage someone with a full understanding of the difference you make in their life

and the lives of others that you will never meet. And so it's really getting back down to that people management thing. And it gets to the love, it gets to the influence. And so anyway, that's how that came out. So you're breaking news here. Yeah, yeah, but please don't share that with anybody. This is just us, a very intimate audience. Is it a fable?

It is. Is it done? Oh, no, no. I barely even started it. Okay. How long does it take you to write something like the motive? You know, most books, soup to nuts take me about nine months, but I don't write full time even close.

If you condensed it down, I probably finish up. I probably take about six weeks to write a book, but I couldn't write in six weeks because I'm too just, you know, I'm into, you write every day. Is that, is that a part of your practice? You do not, you're not, so you're not one of those writers write type of people. No, I'm, I'm, I'm an ENFP. I have to write when I'm inspired. And so what we do is we, they, my, my staff locks me in a hotel that's about two hours from my home. I mean, really, two miles from my home and two miles from my office. And I go in there and I'll write for two days and people will come visit me. And the kids used to come spend the night sometimes.

And so I make progress in like these big pushes. But my editor who I think is on here, I actually saw her name. This last book, I think I wrote about a third of it in three days. We had to edit it. But I had one two-day period, you guys, where I wrote, I've never been so productive. And it just came out. And I sent it to them and they were like, where did this come from? I say, I don't know.

So it's kind of like the musicians who sometimes can bang out an album and like a day. And then other things take forever. Right. Yeah, that's kind of how I am. I'm pretty inconsistent that way. It's got to be, I got to be motivated. Maybe inside baseball,

but what's like your book deal process? I'm not even sure your publisher is, but like, how do you set that up? My publisher is Wiley. Okay. Which is, they published like Tom,

I mean, what's his name? John Gordon. Clemens. And John Gordon. Yeah. Yeah. And they published people back in the 1800s, you know, they've been, they're an old publisher in New York.

And they've been my publisher forever. They purchased another company. But the key is I have an agent and in New York also. And so we just sit down and talk about it and try to be very, we like having a publisher. They leave me alone a lot. I mean, they're good people and they do a good job of getting the books out. But I have an editor that works for me in-house who is my CFO. She's just awesome. Her name's Tracy Noble. And so they let us do. all of the writing in-house and heck we title the book and cover it and do all that stuff so they really give us freedom and that's we love that so nice well thank you so much for being here pat and answering my questions as well as our guest i think it's fun when we can make it interactive uh i see

the smiles and i just hope it was useful in some way to people absolutely yeah i absolutely i see the cool background from Tatiana's screen looking cool and everybody having fun here and i love it like it brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to everyone's day pat so i just want to say thank you so much for being here i'm i'm already excited for our next conversation you've always been so giving to me so yeah let's hope that i get we get to do this and and and it's and we're back to work and everything but we're better for having what we've gone next time we'll do it in person i'll come out i'll come out west and uh once we get back to normal so all right uh thank you everybody for being here and thank you pat This is so great.

Wow, I love those conversations had with hundreds of our friends live on Zoom. If you'd like to be a part of the next one, I've got a few more lined up with some big time guests just like Pat. Don't hesitate to email me, Ryan at learning leader.com, and I'll make sure you have the details for the next live one. But those are really enjoyable to see the smiling faces of all of you watching and listening, having a good time asking fantastic questions of Pat. and I know he enjoyed it as well. A few of the parts that really stuck out to me that now is the time as a leader to be exceedingly human,

persistent, and creative. Very useful advice. And then create a thematic goal for your team at work and your family at home. I thought Pat shared some fantastic advice on how we can do that. Once again, I want to thank you so much.

for continuing to spread the word one person at a time. Because you do that, it gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which is to have incredible one-on-one, long-form conversations with leaders like the great Pat Lanchione. Thank you so much for continuing to give me that opportunity. I will talk with you soon. Can't wait.