Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Peter Bregman: The Leadership Gap | E140

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

How can we be a better leader for ourselves and those around us? In this episode we are talking with Peter Bregman. Peter is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm which advises CEOs and their leadership teams. He speaks, writes, and consults about how to lead and how to live. He’s also an acclaimed author, podcast host, and speaker. Peter is recognized as the #1 executive coach in the world by Leading Global Coaches, is ranked as a Top 30 thought leader by Thinkers 50 Radar and selected as one of the Top 8 thought leaders in leadership. He is ranked by Global Guru’s as one of the top 30 best Coaches in the world and one of the top 30 best leadership speakers/trainers in the world. He is the award-winning, best-selling author and contributor of 18 books, including his newest book You CAN Change Other People: The Four Steps to Help Your Colleagues, Employees—Even Family—Up Their Game. He also hosts a top 10 leadership podcast called Bregman Leadership Podcast. In today’s episode, we discuss Peter’s personal journey and how he reclaimed his purpose after he lost his company in the dot com crash. We’ll also talk about Peter’s books 18 Minutes and You CAN Change Other People and how to incorporate the books’ key takeaways about time management and leadership. We’ll also discuss how to pivot from good and bad feedback, and how to build your emotional courage. If you’ve been wanting to amplify the leader within yourself, keep listening! Sponsored by -  Eight Sleep - Go to eightsleep.com/yap to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Kraken - Visit kraken.com/yap now to learn more or search for "Kraken" in the app store Social Media:  Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Timestamps: 00:38: Peter’s Origins and How He Got Started   12:40: What Peter Did After the Dot Com Crash 16:13: Peter’s Book 18 Minutes  21:39: Productive vs. Unproductive Distractions 24:23: Peter’s Advice for Organizational Focus 33:23: Peter’s Personal Definition of Leadership 34:02: The Leadership Gap 41:53: How To Implement Emotional Courage 46:29: The Other Three Pillars of Leadership 48:58: Peter’s New Book You Can Change Other People 56:43: Separating Good and Bad Feedback 1:07:49:Peter’s Secret to Profiting in Life Mentioned In The Episode: Peter's Masterclass - https://bregmanpartners.com/masterclass/ Leadership Gap Assessment - https://bregmanpartners.com/where-is-your-leadership-gap-assessment/ Peter's Website - https://bregmanpartners.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Source. Taxes and other fee still apply. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast. A place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday

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had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with Peter Bregman. Peter is a CEO of Bregman Partners Incorporated and a claimed author, podcast host and a speaker who is all about teaching others how to lead and how to live. Peter is recognized as the number one executive coach in the world by leading global coaches

and his rank as a top 30-thought-leader by thinker's 50-radar. He's the author of 18 books including his newest book You Can Change Other People, the four steps to help your colleagues, employees, even family up their game, and he hosts a top 10 leadership podcast called Breggman Leadership Podcast. In today's episode, we discuss Peter's personal journey and how he reclaimed his purpose after losing his company to the .com crash. We'll also talk about Peter's books 18 minutes and you can change other people and how to level up your time management and leadership skills. We'll finish up our conversation by learning how to pivot from both good and bad feedback and how to build your

emotional courage. If you've been wanting to amplify the leader within yourself, this is an episode you should listen to. Hi Peter, so happy to have you here on Young & Profiting Podcast. So nice to be with you. Thanks for having me. Me too. I'm super excited for this conversation. I think that my audience is going to love these topics about leadership, time management, getting people to change. You are the author of 18 books. And you are also a very famous executive coach and consultant, one of the best in the world. And I know that everybody has a come up story.

Everybody has a journey. And it's not like this all happened overnight. So I'd love for you to walk us through your career journey. I know that you started your company in 1998 in one bedroom apartment, fifth floor walk up. And it wasn't very easy, you know? So walk us up until that point and then let's talk about you launching your company.

Sure. And just to be clear, I've actually written five books, but I've contributed to 16 others. So it's kind of like written or contributed to. So let's see how far back to go. The guess you just reminded me of my apartment, my fifth floor walk up apartment. And I spent basically all of the money that I had at that point on a laptop, which cost $5,000 for a 10-inch screen black and white laptop. It was a hitachi, I remember still. I don't know why I remember these details. I started my career leading expeditions, mountaineering and kayaking and teaching leadership on expeditions, mountaineering and kayaking and teaching leadership on expeditions.

I sort of when I was in college, I fell in love with the outdoors and with moving with groups of people from point of to point B. I didn't know how to do it. I grew up like, you know, a Jewish kid from New York City. So like I had never camped before in my life. And I really fell in love with working with people in really, I mean, everything you need to know about leadership and team stuff, you can learn on a camping trip because you're, you know, you have to get along with everybody else. You have to get from point A to point B. You have to survive and maybe even thrive and have

a lot of fun. And so I did that for a while and I really, really loved it. And then though realized that if my intentions were to have a family and I've kids and that I probably couldn't just like live in the woods and do that in the way that I had wanted to or expected to do it. So I remember a very, very intentional decision which was I don't want to suddenly have to make a bunch of money and then go do work I don't particularly love or want to do in order to make money. So right now I'm still whatever 22 23 I'm going to move two degrees over like I'm gonna do what I'm doing but I'm gonna do

it in a way that could begin to start to make money for me so that I could keep doing the stuff that I loved with an eye towards how do I do this and make money and even if I don't make money at the beginning, that's okay because as long as I kind of keep moving in that direction, eventually I'll end up loving what I do and making money at the same time and that's sort of how it turned out. So I remember that very intentional decision and then I started a company teaching leadership to organizations using the outdoors as the metaphor. So you know, doing team building stuff and things like that.

And then I really loved that. I made probably about $20,000 a year as I was doing that. Like it wasn't like Mike Big Moneymaker. But I learned a ton and I did one project that I worked on was with a company called the Hey Group, which was a terrific consulting firm. And we together did something like amazing. It had to do with, well, there's specifics to it.

It's not so important, but it was, what's important is it was working with an organization that was in the midst of a lot of conflict. And we did something that blew us all out of the water in terms of what we accomplished. And they asked me to join them and start a practice with several other consultants on transformational change in organizations. So I did that. I felt like I was enjoying the work that I was doing in my own company, but I had

hit the ceiling of what I knew and how to grow, which was, by the way, a very low ceiling. And so I joined this consulting firm, and I learned a ton with them. I worked with tremendous, leaky, capable, smart, generous people. I did an executive MBA while I was there, so I got my MBA. And that was really my big education in business. I mean, I learned a ton about how it worked. In fact, I remember my boss at the time, Andy Geller, who ran the Hey Group in New York. And this will tell you a lot,

actually both about our relationship. But I had written a letter, business letter. And he called me into his office. And he sat me down across from him, across this big desk, right, this big sort of daunting desk. And he said, there are Peter. I read this letter, there's a whole bunch of issues here. And he started talking about the letter.

And everything from like you used to comma after dear John you used to comma instead of a colon. That's not how you do it. So I was sitting in this chair that happened to have wheels on the bottom. And so without getting up I just pushed myself. I used my feet to push myself backwards and around to get to his side of the desk because I couldn't see what he was talking about. And he said, hold on, stop. You're not getting it. I am upset. I'm pulling my authority on you.

I'm sitting across from this desk and I want you to, and I said, hold on Andy, do you want me to learn something or just feel shame about the letter? Because this will work if you want me to just feel shame about the letter But if you want me to learn something then we should both look at the letter and you should show me what you're doing so that I could learn it and And kudos to him where he was like Okay, actually I want you to learn something so come over to my side of the desk and we'll work on But I really I learned a lot and then I spent a year at Accenture and but I really learned a lot. And then I spent a year at Accenture. And when I was at Accenture, I came up with an idea for, and I've started about three companies. And every time I've started a

company, it's because of some frustration that I've had with the way things are being done. And I think I have an eye towards a better way to do it. And so it happened when I actually worked with outward bound and with gnauls. And I kind of wanted to do the corporate programs in a different way. And they didn't really want to change what they were doing. And then I started off and started my own company there. And then this time I was at Accenture

and I felt like, you know, the way we're consulting were indispensable to our clients because we're doing the work for them. But that means that we're not teaching them how to do it. That means that they're dependent on us, not independently capable. And it's all these things that I don't believe in. Like, I believe that if I'm going to help someone do something, I want them to learn how to do it.

I want them. I don't think I need to force them to need me. I feel like, you know, if I've got a good relationship with them and I'm helpful to them, then I'll be useful to them in increasingly complex, interesting problems, and I will continue to be valued. But I want to teach them how to do what I'm doing. I don't want to just do it myself for them. And so I started, I created a whole business model for it around coaching. And this was at the very early days of coaching. This was in 97. And it was about coaching really, kind of helping people to develop their own independent capability and ownership.

And I presented it to them with a little bit of not hubris, but a sense of ownership over it myself and a sense of the value of it. I basically said, look, I've got this business idea. I'm very happy to do it here. If we do it here, it solves a bunch of problems that you're having. It doesn't have to be the whole company, but it solves a bunch of problems you're having. It allows us to valve very senior level relationships with the clients and this one it looks like.

But in order to do it, and I'm happy to lead it, but in order to do it, I want to lead it because I have a real sense that I've written all these business plans and everything for it. And you have to make me a partner. And I want a percentage of what I'm creating. But I'm happy to create it here. And this is what it'll look like. And this is how much money it'll make. And they said, and I think I was, how old was I? This was in 97 and I was born in 67, so it was 30 years old. And they said, thank you very much, but we really prefer you to be a manager

and you're not ready to be a partner. And we don't promote people like that, just because they have ideas. And so I said, okay. And then a couple of weeks later, I gave notice because I just said, all right, I'll just start this myself. And then about a week and a half or two weeks before I said, all right, I'll just start this myself. And then about a week and a half or two weeks before I left, they said to me, okay, hold on,

actually you're apparently serious that you're gonna leave. And so we are open to having this conversation of what this could look like. And at that point, I was already gone in my head. I was already, I had taken the risk that I needed to take. So I said, I really, really appreciate that. And it's a nice boat of confidence, but I'm going to just start this on my own. Tell me about that decision.

Do you regret not going with Accenture? Do you think that it would have grew faster or bigger had you gone with Accenture? Are you just really happy you went out on your own? Yeah, I mean, you're asking great questions and there are two mutual exclusive questions. So I'll answer them each separately, which is, I don't regret it for a second. I so deeply value the freedom I have to do things

the way I want to do them. My entire career has been deeply unststrategic. I haven't had like this view of, here's what I'm going to create, Frederick Beakner, who is this theologian, wrote this beautiful quote, which said that your vocation, and I even think of it as calling, but like your vocation, is the place at which your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need. And I am constantly looking to perfect that intersection. And so I've been running my company for close to 25 years, and I've changed it four or five times because first of all, I change as a person and the market changes.

And also, I keep learning more about myself and I keep wanting to refine that intersection of my greatest joy in the world's greatest need. I can't do that at a place like Accenture, which is great at what they do. And I learned a ton being there. But I don't, I don't have to do anything. So I don't regret it for a second. Would I have grown faster? Might I have made a lot more money? Might I've made a larger impact? Probably, I don't know for sure. Like, I often think, you know, I might have because of those resources and the support and that stuff,

but also I would not have had, I might not have been as effective in that environment because it's a much more corporate, you know, defined, boundary, environment. And, you know, I'll tell you like I made my numbers, like I had this crazy spreadsheet. And when I first started the company, the numbers reflected the spreadsheet almost to a tee, like a million and a half, about half a million in the first year, a million and a half in the second year, five million and third year. I mean, it was like stupid projections and I made them every year.

But in totally different ways than I had planned to, like not at all the ways that I had planned to because I'm opportunistic and I'm, you know, I don't know that I could have been opportunistic in that way. I don't like my plan wasn't working, so I did something else that was sort of in line. It's just not directly what I wrote in the business plan.

So I don't regret it for a second. I think the biggest lesson for me in this and I had a very similar path where I started as an entrepreneur. You did have that outdoors leadership job that you were talking about, but then you quickly went to entrepreneurship, then you went into corporate and learned some institutional knowledge and you came out and you started your own thing. And that's so powerful. People feel embarrassed about that. They think they're an entrepreneur and then you have to be an entrepreneur forever or you fail. But sometimes getting that institutional knowledge and learning how a huge company works

and what the processes are and what organizational structure and culture is can be really powerful, wouldn't you agree? Oh my God, 100%. I could not do what I do without having that experience. I mean, I was deeply embedded in some very, very big complex organizations. And there's no question. And with people who were embedded in them,

with people for whom, like that was a job, with big massive companies and corporations. So like, could I coach the president of Citibank if I hadn't had that experience? It would be hard. I mean, I'm not saying you can't do it, but it would be hard. You know, can I coach the CEO of CBS? Can I, like, these corporate environments was absolutely essential to what I do now, even though I'm in a t-shirt and I get to do what I want now.

But I learned so much by being in that setting. Yeah, I can totally relate to that. So let's talk about the .com crash because your business was doing great. And then you kind of just lost everything like a lot of other business owners did. And then you did some soul searching. You almost went to rabbi school.

You almost went to med school. You took acting classes and started an investment fund. These are all very different things. So talk to us about why you did that and what you learned from that experience. Yeah, I did a lot. I mean, the interesting thing about that time period, which was, you know, we crashed along with everyone else.

But I am not a huge risk taker. And so I built the company in a way where we remained profitable every year. We weren't nearly as big as we were beforehand, but we never, I didn't have a lot of capital expenses. I never believe and ask the question you asked before, which is had you invested more money and infrastructure of the company,

would you be bigger now? Probably, like probably, but I would have been super stressed. Like, those years would have been super stressful for me. But instead, I was like, okay, I'm going to shrink the company because I can. And now I'm not going to lose money, but I also have a lot more time on my hands and what am I going to do and how am I going to do it. You know, it was a great, there's a way in which it was a great time. And the reason is because I've always thought

about being a rabbi, I really like acting, like all of these things are really interesting to me. And so I pursued them in a certain way. And what ended up happening is I realized, I do all of those things in my work. I am to this day, I'm a rabbi in my coaching. I'm not using Jewish text to, you know, bring to bear. I'm not, but, you know, I lead ritual. I can, I'm pastoral. I use those skills in the work that I do. I also use acting skills in the work that I do. Like, you know, when I'm doing speeches

and when I'm, you know, like, and so I realize like there are things I like about all of these things, and I can actually incorporate, you know, this is again that intersection, Frederick Beakner of my greatest joy in the world's greatest need. I can incorporate these things that attract me, and I can incorporate them into the work that I'm currently doing and I

will be better for it and my work will be better for it. But I don't have to like run off and join in Ashram, you know, in India for six years or, you know, go to a rabbinical school for, you know, four years and then, you know, and probably by the way, I wouldn't be successful in any of those things and I would end up frustrated. Like, if I went to a medical school and then I ended up in a congregation, and suddenly, I'm running a kind of a leading congregation, and there's things I would love about it, but I would feel all the constriction I felt at Accenture. I'd be in a box. I'd have to satisfy people in a certain way.

I couldn't just pursue things that I wanted to pursue. And so it was great to explore parts of myself that I really want to integrate into the work that I do and then say, okay, well, how can I do that? I mean, my books are preaching in some way, but with some practical approach to saying, oh, by the way, and here's how to put this to use in your own life, which is, I think, the best way to preach. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah, I think that's awesome, you know, doing what you love, finding out the greatest need in the world, that intersects with your joy.

I think that is brilliant. Let's go into the meat and potatoes of your work. I want to talk about leadership. I want to talk about time management, getting people to change your new book coming out this week. So let's talk about time management. You have a very popular book called 18 Minutes. And you uncover this 18-minute approach

to help us better prioritize our lives. So give us the highlight reel of that book. What is the 18-minute approach? Okay, so the highlight reel is the biggest myth in time management is you can get it all done. If only you have the right system or use the right labels or organize yourself. If only you were just a little better than you are now, you can get it all done. And that is a complete and total misconception.

Like you cannot get it all done. You are a limited resource. And first of all, you're a limited resource. And this is the motivational part of this interview because you're going to die, right? Like eventually, like, we're all going to die. And at that point, we will stop being productive, right? And for most of us, we're going to become less productive way before that, hopefully. And, you know, there's only a limit amount of stuff we could do. So, you know, it's like one of my clients in his work ended up getting a, in fact, I was just on the phone with a separate client that I was just thinking of who just basically got a role that's four times as big as the role he had beforehand.

So the question is, okay, so does that, that means four times as many emails, that means four times as many meetings, that means, so are you going to work four times as many emails, that means four times as many meetings, that means, so are you gonna work four times as hard? You were already CEO of a company. Are you gonna like, you know, no, of course not. So we have to make different kinds of choices. We have to decide what we're gonna do, and most importantly, what we're not gonna do.

We have to be really deliberate. And this is what's great about being a limited resource. It forces us to be strategic and intentional about what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. So to admit to ourselves, I will not get it all done. Now I have to choose. How do I choose what to do? And we choose it based on what is most important for me to achieve over the next year. And how does that translate to this week?

And how does that translate to this day? One of the things that I teach in this book, your to-do list is an intake document. It is not an action document, right? Because your to-do list is too long and you're not going to get everything done. But your calendar, your calendar is time limited. You've got whatever many hours you're going to choose to work in a day. It's time limited. And so now you can make choices about, well, I've got three hours. You know, and when you look at all the meetings you have, and et cetera, you might say, well, I've got 45 minutes in my day. So I've got to ask myself two questions.

One, is there anything else in my day that is not so important to me that I should cancel in order to do other things that are on my to-do list? And if the answer's no, then you have to look at that to-do list and you have to say, what's the most important 45 minutes I have on here? And so the book is about how to make those kinds of decisions and how to be strategic and intentional about how we're spending our time and effectively our lives. For my understanding in the book, you talk about five things per year that you should do, and you say you shouldn't do more than those five things. So why is that? Why only pick five,

and then how do you pick those five things? So part of that, like my career is opportunistic and not at all strategic. Like, you know, like I tried it with eight. It didn't work. I tried it with two. I felt like I could do more. So I ended up with five. And what I do is I talk about a six box to do list.

So I take a piece of paper and I make like any elongated tic-tac-toe board, align down the middle and then align about two thirds of the way up and align about one third of the way up. So now I've created six boxes, right? And the bottom right box, I put everything else. I just put the title, everything else. And in the top five boxes, I put everything else. I just put the title, everything else. And in the top five boxes, I put,

what are the five most important things I wanna focus on this year? You know, like one might be my new book that's coming out, right? One might be my current client work. One might be bringing in new clients. Like that's already three things of my five things. I'm not gonna just do one of those.

I'm gonna do excellent work with my current clients. I'm not going to just do one of those. I'm going to do excellent work with my current clients. I'm going to do excellent work like trying to find new clients and developing relationships and et cetera. I want to do I'm like, and then what I suggest is that you put every to do that you have to put you put in one of those boxes. And if it doesn't fit in one of those boxes, like I'm just take my top three right now, which is do excellent work with my clients, bring in new clients and develop new relationships and work on the book. If there's a to-do that doesn't fit into one of those, like by running sneakers or write a fiction book, if it doesn't fit in one of those things,

I put it in the category of everything else. Because I've decided, that's less important. When I first started keeping it to-do lists like this, 90% of what I had fit into the box of everything else, right? Because I've decided that's less important. When I first started keeping it to do lists like this, 90% of what I had fit into the box of everything else. Because I'm like spending my time feeling incredibly productive but getting nothing important done, which we do all the time. I mean, 90% of your email should be in that bottom right box,

right? 90% of the things that you respond to or react to should be in that bottom right box 90% of like the annoying conversations that go on in your head about how should I have responded to that or I can't believe they did that Could you believe it? Let me call my friend and go can you believe they did that? I mean how am I that goes in that bottom right box That is not a good use of your time and so once you start doing, now you're making choices that says, well, I'm going to spend a much larger majority of my time on the things that bring value to me and the world. I love that.

So let's dig deeper on focus. Let's talk about distractions. So you talk about unproductive versus productive distractions. Could you talk to us about that and how we can swap one for the other? Yeah, so an unproductive distraction. First of all, there's a ton of research. I'm not going to call it to mind exactly. I'm not going to remember, but like we get interrupted, you know, five or six times an hour,

and it takes us 20 or 30 minutes to get back to the work we were doing beforehand. And I'll tell you anecdotally, the more important your work and the harder it is, the more often you'll get distracted and the longer it will take you to get back to it. Because we're looking for those distractions, because it's hard work. If I'm working on a hard piece of writing or a challenging email or a strategic thought,

and like, I don't know, my dog calls, I'm gonna answer, because it's gonna help me, you know't know, my dog calls. I'm going to answer because it's going to like help me, you know, not do the hard work. It's going to help me get away from it. So we distract ourselves. Now, there are times when it's really useful to clear your head, to separate yourself from what you're doing so that you can be 100% focused on the thing you're doing when you're actually doing it. So I find that, like, especially during COVID, I've lived out in, you know, we have a house upstate in New York and I've spent a lot of time upstate New York. I love going out and taking walks outside.

But I also do this thing, which I call a productive distraction, which is I interrupt myself at least once an hour. And I will stop once an hour and I will ask myself, am I doing what I most need to be doing right now? And I'm being who I most want to be right now. And I find that stopping myself and asking those questions, I could be working on something like I said, like I could be working on something really hard and really productive. And then somebody sends me an email, it pops up, I look at it, it sends me to a video of a YouTube kitten. And like, 45 minutes later, my phone rings,

you know, my alarm rings, and I'm saying, am I doing what I most need to be doing right now? And I find, what am I doing? Like, I'm still looking at videos of kittens or I'm on Mac rumors figuring out when the new laptop's going to come out or any number of things I do that I find more fun than hard work that I have to do. And that just brings me back to focus and goes to camp definitely not doing what I need to be doing right now. And that's fine, but I'm going to shut this down. I'm going to go back to the work that

I need to do. That's really good advice. I loved that little tip. Let's talk about organizational focus, because we've been talking about individual focus and from my understanding, there's some nuances when it comes to organizational focus. I own a business. I have 63 employees and it's very hard to align on priorities and get everybody on the same page. You do this for a living. So what's your best advice for that? Well, you know, your first of all congratulations because 63 employees, that's a lot.

I'm glad I don't have 63 employees. But I admire you for it because I don't think I'm very good at that. Even though I coach CEOs and but I still don't think I'm very good at it. I'm good at coaching and I'm good at teaching it but it's different. So here's the thing, like the most important thing you already described it is how do you get people aligned, right? That is the most important thing. And I talk about this in my book, Leading with Emotional Courage.

So the first thing that I do with people often is and I would do with you is to say, what is the most important thing for you to achieve over the next 12 months? For you as an organization to think and be really, really clear. Like you could have strategic plans and you could have tactical approaches and you can have all this thing. But what is the most important thing that you can describe in a sentence? What is the most important thing to achieve over the next 12 months?

And along with that, what are the most important couple of behaviors that I want us to demonstrate as an organization, as a group of people working together? Like, what do I want? How do I want us to show up in order to achieve this most important thing? So that's step one. Step two is to then say, for everybody, like everybody organizationally, should be saying, what is my key contribution to making this most important thing happen? Everybody will have a key contribution. So you're very clear about what's the most important thing. I call that your big arrow.

What is your big arrow? And big arrow outcome and big arrow behaviors. And then the second is, what is my key contribution to making that happen? And then what I often suggest is you give the most critical key contributors, you give them resources, you figure out based on, you know, like when people choose coaching,

they'll often say, oh, this person has a listening problem, let's give them a coach. That's not how I coach. Like I find that, I mean, it's fine, but I think it's much more effective to identify who your key people are that are gonna drive your key initiatives forward and give them the coaching,

whether you think they need it or not, because if you can amplify their performance by even 5%, and coaching works really well, so it will amplify their performance more. But if you can amplify their performance 5%, you're going to do a lot to driving your organization forward, because the goal is for individuals to improve in a way that moves the organization forward. Not just, you know, it's not life coaching. It's, you know, executive coaching

to coach people to be more successful at driving something home. Of course, it works on individual issues also, but there's a context to it and that context is really important. And then I would also collect data about what's getting in their way. Who are my most important key contributors

and what's getting in their way? But are my most important key contributors and what's getting in their way? But that alignment piece is really really critical. Okay, so one big arrow, cross department, and you've got to identify who your main contributors are, and everybody in the organization no matter how high up or low up on the totem pole has to know how they're contributing. Now, what if you have more than one priority? What if you have three, four, five priorities, or do you only really want to communicate just one? Yeah, so I had someone say, look, Peter, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you.

This is really, really important. And we find like really keeping people focused on priorities is really important. And that's why we have 23 priorities. And I said, I said, that's great, but you have defined the definition of priority. You know, like, so what I would say is the big arrow is not the only thing you need to do. But be clear about what the most important thing is you need to do. And I would not say there are, you know, five most important things for you to do. So, there might be five very important things for you to do.

But here's what happens. What happens is people start to move in all sorts of directions. So let's say you've got 63 people. And everybody, and you say, okay, I've got 63 people and I've got five top areas of focus which we've talked about, five priorities. I'm not going to choose between them to say what's most important, five things. So they say, okay, that's great. So there's five things that are most important.

So now let's say just to keep the math simple, there are 12 people who focus on each one of those priorities, right? But now you have the 12 people that are focusing on that priority, the other three people could do whatever they want to do. I'm kind of trying to do the math on my head here. But, you know, so that means that there's 51 people who are not working on one of those priorities. But they kind of maybe have to, right?

Because that priority is overlapping, because the priorities are, you know, you don't have five different companies. You have, you know, five different priorities that the company is working on. And so now you have the potential of a lot of people making their own individual choices about what's important, what's not important, working across purposes to each other, because you might say that's your number one priority. And I'm like, thanks, I know, and you need my help.

But that's not my number one priority. My number one priority is this other thing. So I'm not going to give you the time of day right now because my bonus is based on this other thing. I'm going to focus on that. And even even with very, very big companies, that coherence becomes even more important. And so I'm not saying give up on four of your five things. I'm not saying give up on four of your five things. I'm not saying that. But identify what is most clear that everybody needs to make sure happens. And let that be on

everyone's plate. And other things can be on other people's plates also. And you can say these things are also important. I'm not giving up. And we're going to measure them and have milestones and compensate around them or however you want to approach it. But make sure you have this one focus that everybody knows. This is what's most important for us. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire

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Again, go to Shopify.com-profiting, all lowercase, to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com-profiting, Shopify.com-profiting, all lowercase. This is Possibility powered by Shopify. I think that's really great advice because then you have everybody focused on one common goal to your point. Everyone's prioritizing in the same way and more aligned and there's no like inner conflict with what people should be working on. So how descriptive should we get with that big arrow goal? Is that something that you suggest that we kind of break down into pillars or is it just should it be more vague like how descriptive do we get? Okay, so I'll say two things about it. One is that it's not a

monetary goal, right? So you don't want your big hour to say, okay, we're going to hit 5 million in revenue or a billion in revenue. That tends not to create coherence because everyone's going to try to figure out how to get there. One company we're working with, and this is how I learned it because I made this mistake. We said, okay, it's a financial services company, and the goal was two billion in new assets coming into the company.

Great. So now you had some people going after big banks to try to get it. You had other people going into mom and pop investment shop, and everybody was like all over trying to make this two billion number. And there was no coherence to their approach, which means that you couldn't leverage research and you couldn't leverage conversations and all this stuff. And so we came back together and we go, okay, this didn't work. You know, just saying a two billion in assets under management, new assets

under management isn new assets under management isn't enough. What we need to know is, what is your strategy for getting there? What is your approach? How are you going to approach it? So then they refined it and they said, okay, we're going to get two billion in assets, but we feel like we've tapped out the big investment houses. So we're going to do that by approaching investment houses of such and such a size and being

a support to them and et cetera. So great. Now we have the strategy. Now we know then they started getting traction. So it's like a mission statement for the year. We're going to do this by doing that. Yeah, it's a strategy. Like here's our strategic approach to getting to the number

could be a target, right? The two billion could be a target of the big arrow. But the big arrow is, what are we prioritizing this year in order to get to that target? Okay, I'm super interested in this. Sorry for so many questions on this same topic. But, with this big arrow goal, I'll just use my company, for example, we're a marketing company and a podcast production agency. So ongoingly, I obviously want to grow the business. I want to increase client satisfaction. I want to retain my employees. But to me, those are like ongoing priorities and wouldn't be my big goal.

We're launching a podcast network. So should I make something like that our big goal, the fact that it's new, it's innovative, it's something new that we want to launch. And then everything else is, like I said, it needs to happen, but I don't want everyone to just focus on the things that need to happen anyway. 100% you're thinking about it in the right way. Okay, cool. All right, let's move on to leadership. So what is your personal definition of leadership? You know, technically it's just to have followers, but that's not really my definition of leadership. So what is your personal definition of leadership? You know, technically it's just to have followers, but that's not really my definition of leadership.

You know, it's an interesting question and everybody, everybody sort of looks at it in different ways. You know, for me, it's inspiring, focused, and collective action on what's most important. Like to me, that's what leadership is. When I think, and by the way, that's a sibling to my definition of coaching, which is a reliable process that helps clients get massive traction on their most important work. So I consider a great leader to be someone

who's able to get massive traction on their most important work, but you're doing it through an inspired people, in a sense. Okay. Let's talk about the leadership gap. You say that leaders never fail because they don't know something. Leaders fail because they don't close the gap between what they do and what they know. What is this leadership gap?

Can you tell us more about it? Yeah, and this is true for leaders and it is also true for people. Like, we all know more than we do. Like, if we did everything we knew, we would all be the perfect weight. We would all be, you know, like, we would all, like, we would all be the perfect spouses or partners. Like, we all know, I know what I need to do in my relationships. But in the moment, I might get triggered and I might, I know how to be an amazing parent, right? But when, you know, my son asks me for the fifth time, why he can't do something that

I've already told him five times that he can't do, and I've explained it to him the first four, I lose my cool a little bit. I'm not proud of that, but there's a gap between what I know and what I do. And I'm constantly trying to close that gap, but the challenge of that gap, and this is what, I mentioned this book beforehand, but leading with emotional courage, is emotional courage. So think about, and let's just do a thought experiment now.

Think about a difficult conversation, how long that you're not having. Think about a difficult, you're not gonna have to say it out loud, but think about a difficult conversation that you know you should have, but you're not having. And listeners do the same thing. Don't just put this all on Hala. Think of a difficult conversation that you're not having.

Now, think for a moment about why you're not having it. I bet you know everything you need to know to have it. I bet your, I know you're perfectly, I know from this conversation you're perfectly skilled enough to know to have it. I bet your I know your perfect I know from this conversation you're perfectly skilled enough to have a difficult conversation right and I bet you've had time and opportunity. So those are the things we usually try to solve for when we're trying to get something time we do time management. I mean the whole first part of this conversation is about time management right time management. We talk about you know how do I build my skills in organizations? We do this all the time. We do training programs and communication plan. But in the end, the reason you're not having

that conversation yet is because there's something you don't want to feel. So, you know, if you have that conversation, you might have to feel uncomfortable. You might have to feel that you're hurting someone. You might have to feel the risk of losing the, you know, disconnection or losing the relationship. You might have to feel that weird, passive aggressive thing that happens when, you know, you give someone feedback and they say, thank you, but then they don't talk to you for four weeks. Like, I don't know what it is, but there's something you may have to feel if you follow through on that action.

And if you are willing to feel everything, if you're willing to feel the hurt and the anger and the frustration and the past of aggressiveness and the defensiveness, if you're willing to feel everything, then you can do anything. Right. And so the reason we don't move forward, what closes the gap between what I know and what I do is what I'm willing to feel. do is what I'm willing to feel. If I'm willing to feel hunger or deprivation, or then I could eat whatever. But when I see the ice cream and I see everybody else eating the ice cream, I can't manage that feeling. So I eat the ice cream.

We can follow through on anything if we're willing to tolerate feelings. And so one of my big goals in life and what I've worked on for an over a decade is how do I increase my capacity to feel? Because if I'm, and by the way, that makes for a much richer life, like there's all sorts of dysfunctional things we do in order not to feel things, right? There's all sorts of dysfunctional things we do in order not to feel things, right? There's all sorts of dysfunctional things. We cut people out of our lives and, you know, we get into addictions, and we, like, all sorts of things we do in order to not feel things. So, I, this feels like a

very important element to me. So, is that emotional courage? Is that the emotional courage that you talk about so often? Yes, that's emotional courage. Emotional courage is the willingness, the courage, to experience emotions and not react to shut them down. So how do you tell us personally how you started to embrace your emotions and some of the things that you've done differently to have more emotional courage? So first of all, I discovered this. I learned about it as a very close friend of mine who I collaborate with.

We lead a leadership program together, Jessica Gelsen. She was telling me, you gotta go meet this woman and Brad me. She's really amazing. She does really amazing work. You gotta go to workshop. So, I kept putting it off because it's like five days at S.L.N., which is out in California,

and I had never been to Estiline, and I live in New York. But it somehow coincided once, and I went. And by the way, Estiline's an amazing place. I love Estiline. One of the most beautiful places I've been. And so I'm in this workshop with like 20 other people. And people are making these choices.

And I've done a lot of work, a lot of personal work, I've done a lot of communications work, I teach communication, I understand this work really, really well. This sounds like hubris, but it is rare that I am ever in a room and stuff's going on and I don't get it. Like in this realm. I mean, that happens a lot of times, a lot of times, a lot of times, but in this realm. And people are engaging with each other

and getting into conflict with each other and bursting out crying and yelling and like doing all this stuff. And I don't know what's going on. I don't understand the choices that they're making. Like they're making these choices about how to relate to each other that I did not understand. And it was working magic.

I mean, people were emerging with like major transformations in their lives. And I emerged from that five days going, I don't know what happened here, but I need to learn more about it. Like this is out of my depth. This is something I've not experienced before. I don't understand. And it's very, very powerful. So I need to learn more about it. So I ended up doing a couple more workshops,

and then she had a school which she no longer has, but I did a four year program with her to become like a practitioner in this work. So I really, like in that process, I just, it kept every time I did work, every time I met with the group or her process, it was like peeling layers of the onion like more and more and more stuff. And I now run a leadership intensive that I only run once a year and we limit it to 20

people. It's not big. But we do this kind of work. And there are people who come every single time because you get better at it and then you realize there's more to get better at. It's hard. It's hard to feel everything in this world. We live in a painful world.

We also live in a joyful world. It's a whole lot of hard for people to feel the joy. We live in a fearful world. I mean, my mother was in the Holocaust, right? And so like I grew up with like an experience of everything might be taken away any moment, never be secure, never be comfortable, right? And so you don't want to feel that. So what do you do? You like build stuff. I like make a lot of money and I build a lot of relationships and I do what I can so that I can create some illusion of control and security.

And then, you realize it's an illusion. And so you gotta feel that. And so every time there's more and more and more and more to feel, but it's what makes life in my experience incredibly rich, incredibly rich. The more we're willing to feel, the more of life we're able to experience. So how can bring this down to the ground level here?

Like how can somebody listen and implement emotional courage? Like what should they be doing? Very simple. The way you build emotional courage is by exercising your emotional courage. It's a muscle. You can't build muscles without lifting weights, right? You can't read about muscles. So that's why in my book leading with the emotional courage,

a lot of it, at the end of every chapter, it's like practices, like what can you do? So one of the things that went very, very, so because reading a book is, I write a so because you know reading a book is I write a lot of books Reading a book is great, but that doesn't close the gap between knowledge and action, right? It just increases the knowledge in some cases it increases the gap because now you know more But if you're not doing anything you've just increased the gap So you have to you have to lift weights if you want to grow muscles

And so the way you build your motion emotional courage is you do a little thing every day that feels like a risk to you. Do something that feels like a risk. I could tell Hala by what you've built that you are comfortable or maybe not comfortable, but willing to take risks. You are willing to take risks. And every time you take a risk, you willing to take risks. You are willing to take risks. And every time you take a risk, you're expanding your comfort with what you're willing to feel. Because every time you take a risk, there's a possibility of failure. Every time you take a risk, there's a possibility of shame and embarrassment. Every time you take a risk,

there's a possibility of confronting your own limitation. Every time you take a risk, there's a possibility of success, which, you know, people might also be afraid of, because success brings attention, not everybody wants attention. So like, so the weight and the risks can be small. It could be that you're at dinner and you're with someone who likes to overfeed you and every time that they offer you something or you're at a guest's house, you're a guest in someone's house, and they offer you something you don't want to say no. And this is actually could feel like a very big risk to just displease another.

Are you willing to disappoint another person in order to be true to yourself? That's a really important question. For all of us, there are ways in which we will lose connection to ourselves in order to stay connected to someone else. So, can you take a risk to not give yourself up to please another? And it could be a very small way. It could be a way of saying, you know what, thank you, but I'm full. It could be a way of someone having you know what, thank you, but I'm full. It could be a way of someone having a conversation with you and saying, I'm sorry, but this is not a conversation

I can have right now. It could be doing the opposite and saying, look, there's a conversation that we should really have. I mean, it could be putting on a shirt you wouldn't normally wear. Like, you know, it's like any little move that expands your capacity to act that reflects a risk for you that might bring in a feeling.

Yeah. I guess what I keep thinking is having the courage to not just want to please everyone and please yourself instead. So aligning with your decisions and not worrying about how others feel, worrying about how you feel doing the right thing, no matter what anyone is feeling. You or somebody else? Yeah, you know, in that book, leading with the most of the cards, I break it up into four parts, which I consider to be the four elements of leadership. And when I say leadership, I don't just mean big CEOs of big companies. Like leadership is also, you know,

like how you lead yourself in the world. Are you confident in yourself connected to others committed to purpose and emotional courage, emotionally courageous? And the real challenge is, can I stay connected to you and stay connected to myself at the same time. Can I stay true to myself and not care what's going on for you or I want to raise a higher bar, which is I might disappoint you But that doesn't mean I'll disconnect from you So can I stay connected to you and connected to myself at the same time. And that's really what we're going for. That has tremendous, and then can I stay connected to you

to myself and to this larger thing I'm committed to in the world? Can I do those three things? That requires a lot of skill and a lot of emotional courage. So I'm so happy you brought this up because I was literally about to bring it up. You have a master class and you talk about the four elements of leadership. So I want to do a quick fire segment. I know we

just, we covered emotional courage very deeply, so we don't need to go over that one, but I'll rattle off the other three and then just take a minute and give us your best advice for each one. So number one, your first element of powerful leadership is confidence in self. So what is that? How can we be more self-confident? So confident in yourself is not arrogance. It's not, I think I'm better than everybody else. Confidence in self is a groundedness. It's not, I know everything.

It's, I cannot know things. Right? When someone knows everything, they're not confident, they're insecure. When you're confident, you could be wrong. You cannot know things. You can have a ton of things coming at you from different directions and not lose yourself. Like to stay centered and grounded in the midst of a lot of noise. That's confidence in yourself. Awesome. Number two, connecting to others. So what's your best advice in terms of relationships and what does this

pillar mean? So being connected to others is being able to see and hear other people and to give them an experience of being seen and heard and to be willing to be seen and heard yourself. That's how we create true connection. Okay. Number three, commitment to purpose. So commitment to purpose is much less about big, broad vision, about, you know, I'm, I'm inspiring. And it's actually about where you spend your time.

Commitment to purpose is like, this comes back to the beginning of our conversation. What I'm going to spend my time on and what I'm not going to spend my time on, what I'm going to do and what I'm not going to do. And the people who are really effective at commitment to purpose are very focused on what they're going to do. And there's, by the way, I'll just say that on our website, there is an assessment that's free that has 48 questions. It takes, you know, five or 10 minutes to fill out, but it tells you, and it's related to the chapters of the book, but it tells you where your strengths and weaknesses are in confidence and self-connection to others' commitment to purpose and emotional cards. So it gives you, I mean, we originally thought of it as where to jump into the book, but

it's also just a generally kind of interesting thing to say, where do I jump in, you know? And that's the leadership gap assessment. Yes, that's really good. Is that what you're referring to? Okay, cool. I have the link here. I'll put it in my show notes. So we'll have that for our audience. Okay, let's talk about your new book that's coming out this Wednesday.

You can change other people the four steps to help your colleagues, employees, even family up their game. Why did you write this book and what is your definition of change in this context? Great question. So I wrote the book actually because my co-author, Howie, came up to me after one of my coach trainings that I do, and I had said in that coach training, this is going to be my last coach training. And he came up to me and he goes, it can't be your last coach training.

And I said, yeah, but it kind of is. And he's a close friend of mine and he came through as many of them as he could. And he said, and basically that conversation ended up in a, there's really important stuff here. Let's write a book about it. And let's make this book incredibly user manual-like, meaning it's not a conceptual book. It's filled with dialects.

There's a great parenting book that I love called, How to Speak So Your Kids Will Listen and Listen So Your Kids Will Speak. And it was a great idea. It was a great book and it was executed really well. There were like cartoons in it and dialogues and it told me exactly what to say and how to say it. And I was like, okay, so if we write this, I want it to be that straightforward and easy. And it is not a book about manipulation. It's not a book that says, how can I say the magic words to change

you, Hala, so you don't even realize it, but you start doing, like I'm hypnotizing you. It's not bad. It's that, you know, everybody says you can't change other people. You can only change yourself totally not true. Totally not true. You will not be an effective leader if you can't change other people. Your job as a leader, your job as a manager is to align people. You're changing them. You want to change their focus. You want, and you're not going to do it in a way that they don't want to change. So the conversation has to be open with them. Like you're going to support them in changing and you're going to help them. But you know, the first step in how you know, changing other people is to be an ally versus a critic. A lot of times we approach it as a critic. You're not doing this. I want you to do that. Feedback has been incredibly damaging in our cultures because it's like, as long as I give you

feet, especially with, you know, books that kind of support this like, you know, ruthlessly telling you the truth, because it brings people to shame, but it doesn't actually help what we want. I don't need people to know the truth. I just need them to get better. Right, I want them to up their game and telling them the truth may be a part of that. But it's not just about dropping a truth bomb. It's about having the skills to help people improve their performance. It's about having the skills to help people take risks,

take, have the emotional cards, take risks, to do things differently than they're doing in order to get better results than they were having beforehand. And that's what the book is about. The book is very specifically about how do I become an ally instead of a critic to the people closest to me that I want to help change, who want to change themselves and maybe stuck in struggling. Yeah, let's talk about some of those strategies because when people get told negative feedback, first instinct is to get super defensive or even resist it.

You're just like, I don't want to listen to you. You don't know anything about me. You're not with me 100% of the time. How dare you tell me any of those things about myself. And even when you're, you know, your own self, you can have those feelings. Even if you know that that's something you're doing is wrong, you'll, you'll be resistant to that change. So how do we switch that dynamic?

Okay. So first, can I tell you why we respond that way? Because it's a very short thing of why. So the most, we talked about emotional cards, the most painful feeling that we can have as human beings emotionally is shame, right? Shame is like, there's something about me that's wrong. Like there's something about me that's not right. Like not just I do something that bothers other people. That's sort of might be embarrassing. But shame is the place where it's like it.

And we will do anything not to feel shame, right? Because it's so painful. So what you just mentioned, you nailed it, Hala. You mentioned the top two things we do to avoid shame, which is denial and defensiveness. Like the easiest way not to have shame is to completely be blind to this thing you're talking about that I feel shame about. You think I talk too much? No, I don't see it.

I don't see it at all. That's ridiculous. No one else has told me that or everyone who has told me that doesn't know me well enough, or whatever. Right? So if I deny this, what you're saying, and that's how things become blind spots, things become blind spots because they're too painful to look at, right? So people aren't being difficult when they're being going into defensiveness or not. They literally don't see it. When I have someone who tells me, I know what my blind spots are.

My answer is, no, you don't. Like, that's the definition of a blind spot. You don't know what your blind spots are. Like, you might know things that were blind spots, but so that's why we go to shame. And now, let me flip to the other side of, what does it take to make a change? It takes four things.

Ownership, independent capability, emotional courage, and future proofing resilience to change in multiple situations in the past. So when we just give someone feedback and we tell them what to do differently or tell them what the problem is, they don't have any ownership, they're not going to build any independent capability. They will need a tremendous amount of emotional courage to survive that kind of shame. And they are not resilient in any way to change in the future because we've just corrected their action in this particular situation in a way that drives them to deny it in the first place anyway. So that's what doesn't work. So when we talk about in this book, the four steps, they are four steps to build ownership, independent capability, emotional cards,

and future proofing. And the first one is to go from critic to ally. So that's the first step. And the way you do that is, and we have a three part formula, which is empathize, express confidence, and offer to help, right? Ask permission, right? Because it's your choice. So if I see something, and I'll say, how long? You know, I've noticed this thing. I know, because I've seen you be incredibly capable in this past, I know absolutely that

you can handle this situation, would you be interested in thinking about it together? Now you might say, no, I'm not interested in thinking about it together, in which case, I say, okay, and I have to be okay with that. But when I say, okay, you now have a much greater chance and likelihood of coming back to me for help because you know I will respect to that boundary. And that then it will be your ownership. And also chances are you might say, yeah, I would love to help thinking it through. I'll think it through with you.

There's no cost to thinking it through. And then we begin to think together. And my job is not to give you advice. It's not to tell you what to do or tell your stories about how I did it before. Right. That would be taking the ownership back. My job is then to go to step two, which is what is the outcome you want. But that's that first piece that allows you to sidestep the denial and defense of this. Yeah, because permission is so important, I've gotten feedback before when I didn't ask for it

from people who weren't my manager or my direct or anywhere on the chain above me. And it can come off honestly rude and you don't process that feedback well because you just feel like, well, who are you to tell me anything? And why do you even think that you should tell me anything? How do we make sure that we give people permission

before we give them feedback? And then how can we also separate bad feedback from good feedback? Because if I had listened to everything my cousins told me or my ex-boyfriend told me, I would not be where I am today if I listened to that feedback. Right, exactly. I think, look, I collect feedback as part of my coaching. I collect feedback. But I actually think feedback does more damage than good because and I was talking with a client

who said, we're thinking about rolling out this whole feedback thing and sending people this book on feedback, et cetera. And I said, and this is the second question in the first step process, what is the outcome you want? Like what's the outcome you want? And he said, well, the outcome I want is I want, huh, let me think about that, because his initial thought was, well, feedback is going

to like make everybody better. Right? But it's like, no, actually, feedback is not going to make everybody better. It's probably going to make them get along less well. It probably will be unskillfully executed. It's going to make them feel shame and dislike each other more and probably more resistant. So what's the outcome you want? Well, the outcome I want is for people to perform better and to work better together. Okay, well, if that's the outcome you want, then feedback is going to do the opposite of that outcome. So what's going to give you that outcome, which is you have to help people get skilled in supporting each other's performance. Like the goal is how do you help people get better at helping each other?

That's sort of why I wrote the book. I mean, that's what the book is about. How do you help people help each other get better? And it is not by just willy-nilly telling them what you think, right? And so one of the things is, if you give people the same language, then they're gonna have the same conversation. So if you give people the same language, then they're going to have the same conversation.

So if you know how to ask permission, then people will, you know, if you sort of say in your company, let's say you just say, okay, here's how we're doing this. I read Peter Bergman's book. There's a three part formula. We're going to focus and develop on supporting each other's success and performance, not just telling them the truth or giving them feedback. So how do you do that? The first thing is you need permission.

If you see something that you wanna help, then you, and by the way, if you don't have confidence that they can change, don't go to them in the first place you're wasting your time, right? But if you have confidence in them, then you can share what you're seeing and express that confidence. And then ask them if they want to think it through with you.

And if they say no, you got to respect that. So, this is the permission of the formula. The permission formula is empathize, express confidence, and ask permission. And be willing to accept a no. Even by the way, if you're doing that with one of your employees. So, let's talk about like a family member. We want to give a family member or a best friend advice, because it's way easier when you're a manager.

Yeah, way easier. And by the way, when you're a parent, you think you have the right, but you don't. Like, that's false, that's an illusion. You don't have control over your kids. I mean, I'm telling you that from my experience as a parent. You don't have control. So you still need permission.

So when you're in a family, and by the way, I'll tell you something interesting, which is we sent out a survey to our list. I have a list of whatever, 60,000 people. And we said, you know, this is a idea of interest to you. You know, would you want to read about it? And also, who in your life comes to mind when you want to change?

And we, you know, there's a lot of executives on that list. There's a lot of leaders on that list. Most of them, the number one person, I mean, this is a business book. And it's also written for personal, you know, like you could use it and so on. But I'm like a business guy. And almost everybody was like a family member. That's like, so it's on people's minds a lot. So the way to do it, and I'll just give you an example. My daughter, I saw my daughter who in the, I saw her in the morning. This is my older daughter who's in college and I saw her in the morning. And she was eating for breakfast a chocolate chip cookie.

And she looked up at me and she had this like, a little bit of shame, you know, real look. And she's like, yeah, I couldn't sleep last night. I was doing work. So I stayed up till four in the morning and I baked all these chocolate chip cookies and they're really good. And I was like, oh, are there any left?

And she's like, well, this is the last one, right? Yeah, like it's not a good scene. And I was like, oh, are there any left? And she's like, well, this is the last one. Right? Yeah, like it's not a good scene. And I was like, huh. Okay. You seem not so happy about that. That's empathize, right? That's empathy. But it's also, by the way, I'm not coming to her saying, you have a problem.

Or I have a problem with you eating those cookies. I'm saying, do you have a problem with that? Because if problem with you eating those cookies, I'm saying, do you have a problem with that? Because if you're perfectly happy eating all these cookies, then I'm going to back off, right? Because you're not going to want to change, right? And it's not on me to make you change in that way. So my first is, like, you seem not so happy about that. She's like, it's not my better moment. Like, I'm not so happy about it. And then I say, well, I've seen you moment. Like, I'm not so happy about it. And then I say, well, I've seen you not do that. Like I've seen you not stay up all night and bake a bunch of cookies and eat them all. And by the way, your cookies are great. So if I were up at 4 in the morning with your

fresh baked cookies, I would eat them all too. So like, I get it. No shame in that, right? But I know that you're able to act differently. And would it be helpful if we thought about it together? Right? So that's the formula, right? Like, you don't seem so happy about this. I know that you can make a different choice if you want to and handle it differently. And I know it's not easy, right?

I know it's not just, oh, you should have just not eaten it. Right? That's a dumb thing to say. She should have not eaten it. You know, stating the obvious is a typical critic move. Like, oh, wow, you really shouldn't put your finger in that socket if you don't want to get electrocuted. Thanks, you know. So to say like, I know, and I know it's hard. It's not, it's not just a decision. It's hard. And do you want to think about it? So that's the formula. In that moment, she said, no, I don't

want to think about it right now. And I said, okay, no problem. And that moment, she said, no, I don't want to think about it right now. And I said, okay, no problem. And I said, if you ever do, I am not unfamiliar with this challenge myself, and I'm really happy to think it through with you. And that was the end of that conversation. That was the end of that conversation. And later on, a few days later, after she did the same thing, then she comes to me and says, she sort of said, stop when I tell you to stop, okay?

And I'm like, okay, but can we talk about it? But if I don't wanna talk about it anymore, I'm gonna say stop. I'm like, you are always in control of this conversation. Like you will be in control of this conversation. Like I am here in support of what you want and you, it's not my agenda. I think this is a great formula for us to give feedback without it being taken in the wrong way

because it could just easily just escalate a problem rather than fix the problem. So let's talk about the hidden opportunity and everything and why that's important and why we need to think about the outcome of what we want people to achieve when it comes to them changing. Yeah, so people get stuck in their problems. You know, their problem is I eat too many shall I get to cookies. So the way you stop that problem is stop eating

so many shall I get to cookies, right? But really, if you say what's the outcome you want, I wanna feel active and healthy. I wanna be an athlete. I want to be an athlete. Like, I want to be an athlete. Well, being an athlete is super more exciting and engaging and enthusiastic than not eating chocolate chip cookies, right? Like, not eating chocolate chip cookies, by the way, is very narrow.

So maybe I'll say, well, not eating unhealthy food. But that still is like, weighty and unfun. But being an athlete is like an outcome she could get behind. And she is an athlete. So it's like, okay, I want to be an athlete. Well, what do you want to do with that? I want to be able to like, figure skate and jump. And so it's like, great, well, to do that, you need a very favorable strength to weight ratio, right? Because if you're strong compared to your weight, you can get a higher. You could jump higher. So, and so now, like, great, well to do that, you need a very favorable strength to weight ratio, right? Because if you're strong compared to your weight, you can get a higher, you can jump higher. So, and so now like we've got an outcome that's sort of more interesting, then the hidden opportunity is in every problem, there's like where is let's like go back to the problem

because it's still a problem. Eating chocolate chip cookies a meal the night is still a problem, right? So just because we found another outcome doesn't necessarily solve that problem. So now let's go back to the problem, but solve it in a way that sees there's actually an opportunity in this that gets me to my outcome. So what's the opportunity? Well, the opportunity is the problem as I mean in jack and chip cookies at 4 o'clock in the morning. The reason I'm doing that is because my discipline and willpower is exhausted at 4 o'clock in the morning. And in fact, I'm exhausted at 4 o'clock in the morning.

And in fact, the thing that Chakachip cookies do is wake me up when I'm exhausted. So actually, the opportunity here is to solve for the problem that's leading me to eat Chakachip cookies in the first place, which is I'm exhausted. And the problem I'm now solving for the opportunity in this problem is I need more rest, which by the way will help me become a better athlete in more ways than one. I'm tiring myself. I'm going to bed too late. I'm working too hard. I am

I'm tiring myself, I'm going to bed too late, I'm working too hard, I am exhausting myself. And so now, now we're like, okay, so how do we, now we're in a really great feedback conversation, right? I mean, sorry, a non-feedback conversation, but a supportive coaching conversation, which says, hey, dad, how can I incorporate more rest in my life? So I'm not up at 4 o'clock in the morning eating, but really, so that I become this kind of athlete that I want to be. Right? How can I be this athlete that I want to be by getting more rest? So now, I'm not just giving her feedback that says,

stop eating chocolate chip cookies. Now we're in this conversation about improving her performance by getting rest so that she could be an athlete. Do you see how that's two totally different conversations? And one is much more likely to succeed. And that's like when I say you can change other people in that book, that's the magic of that book in a sense, which is, I don't want to teach you to be more honest with people. I'm not saying honesty is bad, but I want to teach you help them achieve and get to the

things that they want to achieve. Because for you as a leader of 63 people, for me as a coach, for in our family members, that's what we want, that's the outcome we want, is we want people to improve their performance. Yeah, I think this book is great. I think it's very needed. So it's coming out, this podcast episode is gonna come out in a month or so, so your book will have already been out. So where can people go find your book?

So, you know, first of all, to find out anything, you can always go to regmanpartners.com, all my books are on there, B-R-E-G-M-A-N, partners.com. And then the book will be hopefully wherever books are sold, but certainly, you know, it's on Amazon and, you know, all the online booksellers and it's out there. Cool. So that's again, it's called You Can Change Other People by Peter Breggman.

And the last question I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life? That's like the doorknob question and therapy, right? You know, like, oh, we're about to leave. It's a great session. By the way, I have this like overwhelming life issue that I'm going to share with you. So that's the doorknob question. I share a very quick story, which is that my father died in April of 2020. And I drove out to, I was middle of COVID and he was in Florida and I was in New York and so I drove with my brother 20 something hours basically nonstop. And he died about an hour before we got there. And I got there and I kind of wanted to see him. And I asked him to keep him in the apartment until we got there before they took him out. And I, it's so ingrained in my head, they took the sheet up from over his head.

And I saw my father who I've known obviously my whole life and was a sweet, sweet man. And I saw his body which was lifeless and clearly and obviously lifeless. and clearly and obviously lifeless. And everybody says this, but it is so, it really, really hit me. Like, you cannot take anything with you. Like, when we die, we die. Like, that's it. So then the question is, what makes a difference?

And then I, about a week ago, I was playing monopoly with my kids, and it struck me, and I've only played monopoly a few times in my adult life. But it struck me, wow, life really is like monopoly. Like you're playing this game and you're making a ton of money and it's fake, but you get buy hotels and things like that,

and you get totally competitive, and you could win, you get totally competitive and you could win. You could definitely win. We could totally focus that on life. But in the end, you close the board and you put the money back into the little plastic container and you shut it. And then the question is, what was important about that game, what was the most important thing about that monopoly game? And yes, the competition and the fun and all of that, but it's like, did I enjoy my time with the people I was playing with?

Like, did we have fun? Were we engaged? Did I put myself in it, but in a way that like enhanced our relationship, instead of storming away, saying, you cheated and blah, blah, you know? was it fun? Was I connected with those people? That is the only thing that matters. After a game of monopoly, it doesn't matter who won, right? It's meaningless who won. And I, to me, I think profiting in life is playing your life like you would play a

really successful game of monopoly, which is like throw yourself in it, have fun. Be competitive if you want to, engage with X-Hunter, but make sure that when you walk away from that board, you can look back and go, that was great. That was really fun. I love the people I just played with, and I'm super happy I just spent that last couple hours.

That is such a powerful story. I relate to it so much. I actually lost my dad very close to when you lost yours, May 2020 during COVID and same thing we got to the hospital right after he died and we missed it. And we weren't allowed to go to the hospital, which was like so tough. And then they only let us go afterwards. And to your point, it's like you see them lifeless, these people that were once full of life and you realize life is limitless. To your point, we talked about it earlier. There's a time limit. We need to know our priorities. We need to know what we're doing. But I never thought about it in the way that you just

mentioned that we need to also have fun being engaged, be connected. It's not just about winning this monopoly game. It's about enjoying the journey. So really powerful. I love that. Peter, this was an amazing conversation. Thank you for, you know, running over a bit. I'm glad that we got to, you know, continue talking. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? and my conversation with Peter Breitman. We covered so much in this episode, my head is still reeling. I totally related to Peter's come-up story about choosing to be thrown into the world of entrepreneurship and flying high, fast. The highs and the lows that comes with having high stakes in yourself is all a part of the success story that nobody sees. The pivots, the failures,

the mistakes, that's all a part of the journey of becoming a leader and leveling up. Peter shared such great concrete advice for how to hone our leadership skills professionally and personally. He told us about the difference between productive and unproductive distractions and how the harder and more meaningful our work is, the more our brain tries to search for distractions rather than focus. His advice for upping your concentration on your work is to re-evaluate your goals, shift your focus on what's most important, and to shut down the unproductive distractions right away.

We talked about the leadership gap and the four pillars of leadership that it takes to fill that gap. The first pillar being confidence in self. Confidence in self doesn't mean being arrogant or condescending to those you lead, but rather that you're comfortable with the fact that you don't know everything and that you always have the opportunity

to learn from those around you. The second pillar is connecting to others, being willing to see and hear the people around you and offering that same respect and connection to them as well. The third pillar is commitment to purpose, remembering why you started and being clear on what you're going to spend your time committing to. And the last pillar is emotional courage.

Emotional courage is something that doesn't come easy to many, but the more you exercise your emotional courage by actively listening to others, having hard conversations and the willingness to feel uncomfortable emotions when you're in those situations, the easier leading will become. Put those uncomfortable feelings aside, lead with emotional courage, and inspire those around you. If you enjoyed this episode and you wanna hear more

about leveling up your leadership skills, go check out episode number 42, become a better leader with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. Here's a clip from that episode. You can't have to prove yourself. Every time you get promoted though, you gotta learn to stop doing that. And the worst thing you see you can do

is try to prove how smart they are and win all the time. At that level, you wanna make everybody else do sooner. Don't make it all about you. So it's a very difficult transition. One of my customers said for the great individual achiever, it's all about me. For the great leader, it's all about them. You see, it's hard to make this transition for me to an achiever, which is mostly about me, to be in a leader, which is mostly about me, to be a leader, just search for a name. It's Halataha. Big thanks to the Yaptime Zoys. This is your host, Halataha, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier,

more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating

happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer?

Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Ruben. You're getting a diploma. You can't eat a diploma,

but you can eat wings and charlis. Get 23% off any order of 30 or 50 piece wings when you use promo code 23grat at charlis.com. That's promo code 23grad at charlis.com. Charlis has wings. Charlie's as Wee's