57: Be Ready for the Changing Expectations of Leaders w/ Sean Flaherty

Sean Flaherty, Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX Corp, shares his experiences in the Navy and how they shaped his views on leadership and creativity. He discusses the importance of connection before content and creating an environment where people care about each other and the mission. Flaherty emphasizes that leadership is about inspiring people to be their best selves and driving creativity to maximize results. He also highlights the need to set goals appropriately and prioritize spheres of caring and influence. The conversation explores the changing expectations of leaders in business and the importance of human connection in leadership. It discusses the shift from focusing solely on results to prioritizing relationships and the impact of cultural differences on leadership styles. The conversation also highlights the need for leaders to model the behaviors they want to see in their teams and the importance of creating systems to foster communication and constructive feedback. The role of younger generations in driving change and the potential consequences of apathy in organizations are also discussed. The conversation concludes with a reflection on the joy of teaching and the hope for the future of leadership.

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No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

00:00:14:07 - 00:00:43:21
Unknown
Welcome. No limits leaders. I am Sean Patton, your host, and I am excited to have another Sean on today. Sean flattery. He is. I met Sean at heroic, public speaking course, but he is the executive vice president of innovation and a managing partner at ITC's Corp. He's also a professional speaker. Before we were before we got on line here, Sean, you're talking about he just traveled to New Zealand and Australia, and he's on main stages and working with CEOs around the world and really focuses on innovation, culture and empathy.

00:00:44:02 - 00:01:05:18
Unknown
He's also a part time university professor, so it's a man of many talents. And I'm excited to have you on and have this conversation today. Sean, welcome. Thanks, Sean. Sean squared today. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Yeah. You can't go wrong, man. Both spelled the right way. So, you know, well, you know, when we met, initially, one of the first things that I guess connected us was we're both veterans.

00:01:05:20 - 00:01:20:15
Unknown
you were a little before me. You're a Navy man. Won't hold that against you on this podcast, but, you're an aviation electrician, you know? What was that early experience like? Did you go in, like, right out of, like, high school as young man? Like, what was that like for you? so there's a whole story there.

00:01:20:15 - 00:01:41:06
Unknown
It's one of the, one of the things I do on stage, to kick off, to get audiences excited. Right. So if you remember the late 80s, obviously the Navy was the best choice. We'll leave that to conjecture. but if you remember the late 80s, there was a movie, that came out titled Top Gun. I had heard of that.

00:01:41:08 - 00:02:04:01
Unknown
Yeah, they recently did a remake of it was kind of incredible. and, you know, coming out of high school, I grew up in a very loving, amazing family, but we didn't have a lot of money, and I knew college was the way to go. If you want to actually live a good, hearty life. And I was always interested in academics and academia, like, deeply interested, but I couldn't afford it.

00:02:04:01 - 00:02:30:16
Unknown
So the military was a good option for someone in my position, right? So I looked at the Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force, and I chose the Navy. I'd like to say, because the recruiter told me I would see the world, which I did, and that was awesome. But but the real reason I joined the Navy is that, I thought I was going to move to San Diego and, you know, played with F-14 Tomcats by motorcycle and play beach volleyball.

00:02:30:18 - 00:02:47:08
Unknown
Yeah, of course I. Yeah. And so that was my that's the reason I joined the Navy, mostly to get the GI Bill and to get some experience. And, you know, I was a like a lot of kids at 18 years old was a bit of a fart in a whirlwind. So it gave me a little direction, gave me some discipline.

00:02:47:08 - 00:03:03:10
Unknown
It was good for me, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about leadership in the Navy, and I learned a lot about, you know, growing up and how hard the world can be. And, I learned a lot about a lot of things I didn't want to do for a living and for my life. And it opened my eyes.

00:03:03:10 - 00:03:23:18
Unknown
And I, you know, I really look back fondly on that experience. It was incredible. And I bring a lot of the learning. I've brought a lot of learning forward, into my life and now on the stage. So, yeah, well, you know, you know, similar situation. You know, for me, I, I went to West Point, I went to the Army.

00:03:23:18 - 00:03:41:04
Unknown
But part of the reason I went to that was because I was like, by far and away West Point, the best school I can get into because they're not looking strictly at my academics. Right. They're looking for future officers and leaders. So all those other things I did mattered. And I also came from a, you know, Midwestern family.

00:03:41:06 - 00:04:00:15
Unknown
You know, I, I think I think the first time I got on a plane was to go visit West Point. You know, I yeah. So, you know, is it is no money for college either. So it's funny how, you know, out of necessity, sometimes breeds the best experiences that shape you. And, you know, you mentioned you learn so much.

00:04:00:15 - 00:04:24:19
Unknown
You know, you learned a lot about leadership in the military. As you know, that's my strong background as well. and what do you see? You know, now that you spent decades in senior business leadership, what have you seen about military leadership versus civilian leadership? What translates what doesn't? Yeah. Well, what translates? It turns out, you know, imagine my excitement.

00:04:24:19 - 00:04:47:08
Unknown
So I was 19 years old, just graduated from high school. I get I joined the Navy and I got, I got stationed at Miramar and imagine how excited I was to move to San Diego and be associated. And I got a I got an F-14 Tomcat squadron as well via from 54. I was stationed in. And, I tell a little story about two different I served in two different squadrons.

00:04:47:08 - 00:05:07:06
Unknown
So I'll tell a little bit about the different leadership styles, and then you'll see why I think it translates, you know, not just in the military but across any domain of human leadership, any domain, even parenting, you know, at that level, the most granular level. And, my first squadron, the commanding officer, he was like an incredible leader.

00:05:07:06 - 00:05:32:07
Unknown
He I remember I was stationed, there. It couldn't have been for a week. After I got to Miramar, he comes down to the hangar bay to give us a speech because we got our deployment orders to go to the West Pacific to West Pacific cruise. Right. And he gets up on the pulpit and a commanding officer gives us a really powerful, profound speech, about how we have this opportunity together as young men to do something for our country.

00:05:32:09 - 00:05:50:21
Unknown
And we signed up, to be here. It's a volunteer service, and we have an opportunity at our foot. We're going to we're going to go on this cruise, and we have the opportunity to be one of the best squadrons in the Navy if we choose to. And, you know, he created the space for us to step in to talk about some of the different awards you can get and and you ever seen the movie Rudy?

00:05:50:21 - 00:06:10:22
Unknown
Sean? Oh, yeah. I was like, that was me. I was like, sign me up. Put me in, coach. I'll take whatever role I'm in. This is great. And, you know, he he really got us inspired. And he was the kind of commanding officer that would come down. You know, I served, in the line shack. And if you know anything about the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, there's a lot of jobs.

00:06:10:22 - 00:06:30:01
Unknown
People running around in different color uniforms. You know, we had, you know, or affectionately called the t shirts, because they were, you know, it was a dirty job. And we, we had to carry chains to tie the planes down like it was the low man's job in the organizational dominance hierarchy. And it was like, there's no lower job.

00:06:30:03 - 00:06:47:11
Unknown
literally two flights, stairs all day long, up and down carrying these chains. My quads look like Arnold Schwarzenegger squads. like, we are in some great shape, and we'd run across the deck and tie these planes down and run back down, get the next set of chains for the next plane, and, you know, reverse that order when the planes are taken off.

00:06:47:13 - 00:07:10:12
Unknown
But that was the job. It was a hard job. It was an intense job. It was a very physical job. It was, didn't literally didn't require, in theory, a whole ton of creativity, you know, and, he'd come down the line, check periodically to talk to us like the commanding officer would come down the line, check on a regular basis, and just connect.

00:07:10:16 - 00:07:30:16
Unknown
And this is one thing I learned from him that I carry into the civilian world. For sure. when you're going to have an interpersonal interaction or a group meeting or any sort of like in-person interaction connection before content, connection before content, he would come down. And before we got he got into the business of running a line shack.

00:07:30:16 - 00:07:48:04
Unknown
He'd he'd make sure to connect with us on a 1 to 1 level look, how are things going? You get mail drop from your family. How are things going back home, you know, how are how are you feeling? Are everybody in good shape? You know. And then after that, he would smoothly transition into, okay, we got this checklist of things that need to get accomplished by the shop.

00:07:48:04 - 00:08:08:21
Unknown
How are we doing on this? What's standing in your way? What are your roadblocks? What can I do to help make sure that you're not being impeded at being your best, the best possible line check the Navy's ever seen. You know, so that that concept of connection before content to carry into every aspect of my life and every aspect of interpersonal, relationships make sense.

00:08:08:21 - 00:08:29:23
Unknown
Now fast forward. I got redeployed after we got back, so I was in the Persian Gulf too. So we were sailing along, in the Indian Ocean. And the middle of the night, I was working the night shift. I remember this like it was yesterday. And the ship turns. I could hear the creaking in the metal. You know, the ship turns in the middle and we're all looking at each other, going, oh my God, something's up.

00:08:29:23 - 00:08:55:15
Unknown
The captain comes over the loudspeaker and announces that Kuwait has just been invaded by Iraq, and we're going to be the first carrier group, you know, in the Persian Gulf. And 50 years had to go through the Straits of Hormuz. It was a it was a trying time. you know, and it was scary, you know, being that young, ripe age and all of a sudden now you you're sailing in the Indian Ocean on your way to the Maldives, basically, Diego Garcia, now we're going to war.

00:08:55:16 - 00:09:14:23
Unknown
It's like, boom, life changes. Wake you up. and this is the way the world works, too, right? Can't predict. You can't always predict what's going to happen next. So I, that was my first squadron, now my second square. So when I got back to Miramar, after that experience up in the Persian Gulf on the Indy, I got redeployed to v2.

00:09:14:23 - 00:09:33:22
Unknown
V2. Now is Top Gun. The F1 and F2 are the top gun. I mean v F1 is officially top gun. It's just a squadron. You know the folks they fight against that's, that's V2 and their sister squadrons and they're stationed on the USS Ranger. And I was like oh my gosh this is I'm having a great experience I can't wait.

00:09:33:22 - 00:09:55:10
Unknown
Now I'm going to go be in Top Gun like a dream come true. I was so excited as a kid, you know? And I get over there and literally we got orders immediately upon my transfer. We got orders to go back out to the Persian Gulf. Same deployment, same ship, basically same ships. I mean, the independence and the Ranger were literally sister ships.

00:09:55:10 - 00:10:13:18
Unknown
If you looked at them side by side, you couldn't tell the difference other than the numbers that are painted on the side of the, you know, the islands kV 61 and 62. So, same ship, same planes, F-14 Tomcats. I moved over, so we get our deployment to go back to the Persian Gulf. Commanding officer comes down to the hangar bay, as is tradition, to give us a speech.

00:10:13:18 - 00:10:45:07
Unknown
Except Sean, this time the speech was a little different. The speech was about the six P's or the six P's. Proper planning, precludes piss poor performance. This commanding officer was so proud of his six P's. He repeated the phrase twice. Proper planning precludes this poor performance. And then he gets off the stage and the XO executive officer number two in command, gets up on the stage and says, gentlemen, it's time to line up for your piss test.

00:10:45:12 - 00:11:06:12
Unknown
And that was my introduction to V2, sir. Wow. That was that was the an inspirational message you needed to go to war with that guy, right? Yeah. Inspired. I was like, I'm not sure if I'm signed up for this one, but, so this commanding officer, in the six months that we were at sea, never once came down to our line.

00:11:06:12 - 00:11:26:18
Unknown
Check. Never once. I don't think he ever made eye contact with me in six months. And, you know, my experience in that squadron was very different. You know, and, and I think about as I was coming to the end of it, you know, when I was in VF 154, I was literally considering, hey, maybe this isn't such a bad ride.

00:11:26:18 - 00:11:46:07
Unknown
I could sign up and do some more time. And you know, this is pretty cool. and they offered me at one point I was offered, ROTC scholarship so I could have gone and become an officer and done the thing and, you know, made the military a career. It was an option for me, and it was something I was seriously considering at one point.

00:11:46:09 - 00:12:04:23
Unknown
so let's talk about performance of these squadrons, because we have to kind of squash that for me. So, 154, that first Squadron, we had this thing called the alert five. Alert five means you got to be able to get the planes off the deck in five minutes or less. we never missed that mark. We never missed it.

00:12:04:23 - 00:12:26:12
Unknown
Matter of fact, I remember breaking records, you know? You know, cutting, cutting time down four minute mark less. We won an award in our line check for being, you know, one of the best line checks in the Navy. And, you know, the experience. For me, it was pretty incredible. It was incredible, you know, and, Breaking records and changing standard operating procedures for the Navy.

00:12:26:12 - 00:12:52:01
Unknown
That's from a line check from, like, the lowest folks in the organizational dominance hierarchy. That's pretty amazing. And VF two, you know what the conversations were about in between flight operations, you probably guess having served in the military yourself, these were these were what I would call conversations of apathy. Okay. So we talked about getting out of the Navy, getting off the shift, getting off this ship.

00:12:52:03 - 00:13:19:08
Unknown
Here's what I'm going to do when I get out of the Navy. Here's what I'm going to do when I get off this ship. I can't wait to get off the ship. It was complete apathy. You think we were changing any standard operating procedures or competing for, you know, any sort of award? No matter of fact, I remember standing on the flight deck multiple times at attention, getting berated by the executive officer for missing the five minute mark on the other five, on the other five metric.

00:13:19:10 - 00:13:58:04
Unknown
And, just a very different experience. So what that taught me, and, is really how it has influenced my leadership is that leadership is it's a function, man. It's a thing you do. It's a set of behaviors that you perform that cause a change in the world. They cause a change. They cause what I would call creativity to occur in the people that you're leading, you know, and if you think about this environment of the Navy and flight deck, when when you're standing at the back of the flight deck and you watch an F-14 Tomcat take off, it disappears below the horizon before you see it pop back up again.

00:13:58:06 - 00:14:15:19
Unknown
Now, and this is this is a ship that's humming along at full speed into the wind. The Tomcats got its hammer down with the flames coming out the back. You know, it's full afterburners, the ship, steam from the ship's engines, chucking the plane off the deck, and you see a dip below the horizon before it pops up. Back up.

00:14:15:19 - 00:14:35:14
Unknown
It's like a tightly engineered environment, you know, and you might think that that's not the place where you want a lot of creativity, but you'd be wrong. And, you know, these two leaders proved it. So that's probably the key learning I got from the Navy leadership is about inspiring people to be their best selves, to change the future, to make it better.

00:14:35:16 - 00:14:59:19
Unknown
And that requires creativity. Sorry, that was a long winded, John. No, that was perfect. That was so great. I mean, there's so many lessons in there. on, you know, I think one important ones is no matter where you are in the organization, you can influence others. And no matter where you are in the organization, no matter where you have great leadership or piss poor leadership, there's lessons to be learned, right?

00:14:59:19 - 00:15:34:13
Unknown
Like you can get better from any situation if you take that sort of growth mindset perspective of like, I'm either learning what to do or I'm learning what not to do. But either way, I'm getting better from, you know, from this experience. And I, I also love your emphasis on creativity. And I actually would call that and I wanted to talk about this because one of the things that, this has read different articles and, and content, great content you put out on your LinkedIn, newsletter and online in your talks is you talk about how the purpose of leadership is to expand the spheres of caring and the spheres of influence of the people

00:15:34:13 - 00:16:01:04
Unknown
you surround yourself with, so that creativity is maximized. And I love your emphasis on leadership driving creativity. When I work with a lot of my clients and businesses, I hear them. You know, a lot of business leaders talk about metrics and outcomes and results and productivity, but not that many on how do we maximize creativity. So, yeah, I'd love for you to even expand on that of like, why is maximizing creativity so important as a business leader?

00:16:01:06 - 00:16:20:18
Unknown
Yeah, well, things like profitability, performance, value delivery, all the things we do in our business, those are outcomes. Those are like after you've done all the things that cause them to occur and you know, they're the results and you need them and you measure them and you know how good you're doing. I mean, human beings are are they thrive when they can see the scoreboard like that's the truth.

00:16:20:20 - 00:16:46:06
Unknown
So you need them. But that's not what actually causes the creativity to occur that allows you to maximize them. you know, it's the behaviors that you do as a leader that causes that creates that environment where people that people can step into to be their best possible selves. And I think that requires a deep understanding of the science of intrinsic motivation, which that's the that's the work I'm doing.

00:16:46:08 - 00:17:12:00
Unknown
and yes, these the spheres of caring equally as important as the spheres of influence. Like, we know we gotta get better at the thing we're doing. That's what causes us to be influential, to be good at the thing. But that creating that, again, this comes back to, you know, connection before content is the most tactical baseline strategy you could ever deploy to make sure you're creating more caring in the ecosystem so that the creativity thrives.

00:17:12:02 - 00:17:35:09
Unknown
You know, if you stop and think for a moment about any organization on the planet, Sean, any organism, including your own, right, what would the world look like for you? How would it feel for you if your customers authentically and actually cared more about you and your business today? You're the people in your business than they did yesterday?

00:17:35:11 - 00:17:57:04
Unknown
Like that's a good thing, right? Like, but we know the way we are. We often think inside out, right? So we think, oh, we got to organize ourselves so we deliver the best service for our customers. We need to care about our customers. But really, you will thrive if you get your customers to care about you. Right. Yeah.

00:17:57:06 - 00:18:15:02
Unknown
And that's the pattern that I see in the world, I think, and I think the Navy kind of taught me that in a, in an obscure sort of way, like when you have that environment where the people care about each other, you know, we care about the mission, the thing that we're there to do. We care, you know, and it's and it's reciprocate it.

00:18:15:02 - 00:18:47:06
Unknown
And we can see that it's reciprocated. We've created something quite valuable. And that's where creativity comes from, quite frankly, the most powerful form of creativity. Right. So you're saying when speak creativity is you're talking about when you have, a organization with high esprit de corps, with great communication, with inspiring leaders, when you set that type of culture and conditions, then innovation in and creative, creative solutions to problems sort of naturally spur from the the creation of that culture.

00:18:47:06 - 00:19:19:04
Unknown
So what you're saying, yeah, they come from people who actually care about what you're there to do and they're, you know, intrinsically motivated by that. And when you set your goals appropriately, you know, I like to say you have a you have a dominance hierarchy of goals, whether you realize it or not. And if the thing that you're hammering on, if the hammer you're using is profit, which we know from our previous conversation, is the result, it's like it's the it's the end result and we need it because it allows us to thrive and make investments in the future and all the other things profit does for us.

00:19:19:06 - 00:19:38:17
Unknown
But if that's a if that's at the top of our dominance hierarchy of metrics, what are we telling our people and how does that feel like? When do you think the last time your people showed up for work with a spring in their step, thinking to themselves, man, I can't wait to go make a profit for the company.

00:19:38:19 - 00:19:58:03
Unknown
If people don't operate that way, they never have and they never will. Like we know, they all know though. They know how important profit is. They know you need the profitability, they know it, but they're not thinking like that. And we're not intrinsically motivated for that. Like unless we're the ones taking that profit home ourselves. So our job as leaders is to create the environment where they know what the goals are.

00:19:58:05 - 00:20:19:23
Unknown
They know what a success looks like. They want to step into that. They have unique skills and tools themselves that can that can help drive that. And they're working on filling those gaps as well by learning and growing like that's that's what we need to build that those are the environments that cause creativity to occur. Like really powerful creativity.

00:20:20:01 - 00:20:41:00
Unknown
Yeah, I know I love that. And, you know, you, I've had so my, the Warren officer who I got to work with some but then he got called away on to do, you know, secret squirrel stuff for three letter organizations. for a while, but he's awesome. And when he got out, he Rex retired, retired.

00:20:41:00 - 00:21:06:06
Unknown
Green beret. Warren. Officer. Almost all the time on teams. Fluent Arabic speaker, you know, did stuff that's not on any records. All that kind of stuff. he got his MBA, and then he went and took over in hospital administration and eventually quickly became a CEO of a hospital. And he became, like this turnaround specialist for these hospitals that were losing money and eventually got him to they're they're making five, $10 million a year.

00:21:06:06 - 00:21:30:14
Unknown
Right. And I was just talking with him and I was like, dude, what was that's awesome. You know, like, you don't you don't know anything about health care, right? Like, what do you, you know, like, how are you? How are you doing this, with such little experience? And he talked about how the great commanders that he had had this, walk around leadership style where they would, you know, come to the room and they would sit in with the guys and they crack a beer at the end of the day and like, hey, what's going on?

00:21:30:14 - 00:21:48:13
Unknown
And, and, and all those just to reinforce that connection before content and the, and the power of those senior leaders coming down and having those authentic conversations, he's like, that's all I did. He was the first time a CEO had walked in inside of the nurses station and was just like, what's up? You know, like what's going on?

00:21:48:15 - 00:22:10:23
Unknown
And it's as simple as that. On that, that made, you know, seven and eight figure swings and the result and the profitability of those organizations. And to just to emphasize the, the power of of what you're, you're talking about, and, you know, I also really resonate with the connection before content. I'm going to I'm gonna I want to use that.

00:22:10:23 - 00:22:29:10
Unknown
That's awesome. I, I it's such a great line. You know, I, I want to give a talk, here in Tennessee, when I first open my business, I got asked to speak at, a small business organization, and I used a line that at the time wasn't well-received, but it's along the same lines, and it's kind of from my, my military experience.

00:22:29:10 - 00:22:57:13
Unknown
And I said, you know, what I found out is that, working with southern businessmen is a lot like Arab warlords. And they're like, what? Like, wait, behold. I said, you know, I got two different I got some looks down here in small town Tennessee, because, as you know, and I know you've worked in the international roles as well, and, you know, in a lot of other cultures, especially Asian cultures, Middle Eastern cultures, man, we our number one rule was you don't talk about the mission or you don't ask for anything.

00:22:57:13 - 00:23:16:06
Unknown
In the first meeting. You sit down. You ask about the family, you have dinner, you establish the relationship first. But, you know, I think that too many leaders in our heads, we are focused on that result and outcomes and not realizing that those are going to be, as you said, the result of that human connection that that we create.

00:23:16:08 - 00:23:36:04
Unknown
Yeah. And there's no. There's no way you can't you can operate without having them as metrics and talking about them and knowing, you know, how this pulling this lever has a result, that you need it. I would never suggest that you don't. And I think, you know, there's a lot of speakers out there that are just people, people, people know you got to run a business at the end of the day.

00:23:36:04 - 00:24:00:04
Unknown
Hard things take hard things. You got to make hard decisions and run a business. But your people understand, that they that you need profitability in order to operate. I want to pull on one, thread. You said this sort of management by walking around thing. I actually got that I didn't it didn't click for me until I read David Packard's book, the HPA, incredible book on leadership.

00:24:00:04 - 00:24:15:10
Unknown
I highly recommend it to the audience. You can pop the link in that, in the text. But David Packard wrote this book, and the key thing I took from it in the what later well, lit up for me is his management by walking around was like his core message, like, you got to be present for the business.

00:24:15:10 - 00:24:35:11
Unknown
It's about presence. It's about being present for the humans that are actually operating the business. And I think, that's when I saw this thing lit up for me about leader one, leader two in the Navy. You know, he came down, he sat down with us. He that connection before content even at that level. and I don't care how big your organization is, I think Ed Bastian does a good job, at least on social media.

00:24:35:13 - 00:24:50:06
Unknown
with this, a Delta, you see him popping up? He's the CEO of Delta Airlines. You see him popping up, and, you know, he goes and runs a ticket counter, he works the flight line. He's, you know, he'll take a coach seat and, you know, talk to people and see what's going on, see what the experience is like.

00:24:50:08 - 00:25:12:20
Unknown
I think that's really important. and it gets people to tell the story about what you're all about to what you mean and what you expect from your leaders, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it reminds me of or like, this brings up the fact that when we talk about leadership, how much of this is sort of like timeless principles, right?

00:25:12:20 - 00:25:36:15
Unknown
Just like human timeless principles. I'm curious now that you've been, you know, really in senior business leadership roles and working with your business leaders for I don't want to add you, but, you know, three decades, Shawn, it's been over three decades. what, what are some changes? What are the biggest changes? Maybe you seen in, the expectations of leaders in business over that time?

00:25:36:17 - 00:26:03:13
Unknown
Well, I don't think it's, I don't think they have anywhere near as much, power and control as they used to. Right. So I think the expectation shift is actually occurring at the labor level, like the, the, the younger generations are not going to which I love, they're not going to tolerate, poor leadership. They'll just go somewhere else and they, and they'll boycott your products if you're not careful.

00:26:03:13 - 00:26:25:05
Unknown
You know, like, that's a you can complain about the internet and, social media if they have had some significantly negative impacts on our society. But there there have been some really good things that have come out of it too. Like, more transparency leads to it just breeds more honesty and more trust and creates a forcing function for people to behave better.

00:26:25:07 - 00:26:29:19
Unknown
And I think that that's been a really good thing.

00:26:29:21 - 00:26:54:18
Unknown
I agree, I see the same thing. You know, that's I'm glad you're saying this. You're unknowingly reinforcing my, my, my principle and talks about how the expectation of the younger generations, is that, you know, it used to be that you could just manage someone the position, the metrics, as long as you did that, you know, if you did some leadership in the human development, that's our thing that I was like extra, right?

00:26:54:18 - 00:27:22:20
Unknown
I was like, oh, yeah, that's a nice thing to have. And you know, the expectation, I think now what I see is the when someone takes even a role inside your organization takes a job. It's not just an understanding of I put in 40 hours the transactional. You give me a paycheck. And that's what this is, right? That's that's just not it goes they're expecting their expectation is I'm going to be developed profession.

00:27:23:01 - 00:27:45:05
Unknown
And personally in this role that's part of the expectation of these leaders. And I think that there's a as that changes happened, there's some generational, you know, conflict and misunderstanding going on there. What have you seen around maybe generationally is that expectation has changed from the workforce, but you still have maybe senior leaders who grew up in a different environment.

00:27:45:09 - 00:28:08:06
Unknown
How are they coping with that? some well and some not. So I think there's there there's a lot of leaders out there that are kind of a little bit on the struggle bus, like not knowing how to deal with this. And the last thing they can do, unfortunately, is like stick their head in the sand, like because everybody sees it like it's a very public thing now.

00:28:08:08 - 00:28:34:01
Unknown
So if you want to lead, well, you almost have to, you know, LinkedIn's probably the it's the place for business leaders today. And, you know, if you try to imagine running a digital company or a company that's living in this digital world, digital world, without being somewhat involved, without having, you know, a presence there, you know, it's it's, even, like I said, a bastion, a bastion of Delta.

00:28:34:01 - 00:28:52:19
Unknown
You see, you see these leaders popping up and you talking about the things they're doing in the way they're thinking. And, it's it's a it's I believe it's almost become a requirement. I agree, and I agree with you. It's not a trend this movement from management to, you know, finding the right balance. I like to think of both things as good though, too.

00:28:52:19 - 00:29:20:02
Unknown
Right. So, you can't operate without management. You can't operate without predictability, you can't operate. And I, I see management as the art of predictability, whereas leadership, it's like the art of possibility and creativity. And, you know, I think from a ratio perspective, with information, you know, not being fixated in some way, like you didn't have perfect access to all the information in the world.

00:29:20:04 - 00:29:41:20
Unknown
you could operate largely in a management sort of framework where we're just driving for predictability, we're just driving for profitability, and we can keep all the nasty behaviors kind of under the hood. And people don't see it. That's just not possible today. Like people talk about it. If you behave poorly as a leader, you know, your whole freaking company's telling everybody else around you about it and it's not good for you.

00:29:42:01 - 00:30:12:21
Unknown
You can't grow that way. So this sort of, this sort of balance has, has there's a tipping point and it's we're well beyond it. That's what I believe. Yeah. So someone is maybe a rising middle manager inside their company. And so they're, they're, they're stuck in the there are no man's land between the two trenches. Right. They've got maybe some senior leaders that, see that sort of writing the wall want to sort of change it but aren't sure what to do.

00:30:12:23 - 00:30:43:11
Unknown
Maybe the the historic culture isn't there and they've got the younger, junior managers and labor force building that is demanding it. What what can they do in that? You know, director, VP, senior manager role to to try to influence the culture inside their company to make it better. well, I believe and I, I teach a little bit about this in some of my more advanced sort of talks that I've been doing lately.

00:30:43:13 - 00:31:03:04
Unknown
that the number one thing you can do as a leader is model the behaviors you want to see rippled through the organization. Right? That's the number one thing. And there's science to support this. This is not, this is not soft. You know, not there's nothing soft about it. And the science I've been sharing is around the cognitive biases that involve influence.

00:31:03:06 - 00:31:25:11
Unknown
And some of them are like the authority bias. Stanley Milgram's experiments, like way back in the in the early days of, behavioral economics in the prisoner's, you know, where they put people in lab coats and have them shock people. And, yeah, you know, if you're in, if you're in a lab coat or you're in a position of authority of any sort, people watch you and people will do what you do.

00:31:25:13 - 00:31:48:03
Unknown
Like that's well established. the recency bias, the, herding bias, the you know, these these biases are very real and they're well-established in the social sciences. Now, there's been experiments to prove that they exist. They they exist in all of us, you know, not to the same degree for everybody. You know, it's not. But it's statistically significant that these biases are out there.

00:31:48:04 - 00:32:12:12
Unknown
So as a leader, if you know these biases are out there, then you need to understand that they're not bugs, they are features. They are the way we are wired. Your people are wired for this. They want to be led. People show up for work because they want to be led. Otherwise everybody will go start their own business and try to, you know, change the world in their own unique way.

00:32:12:12 - 00:32:32:20
Unknown
But people show up because they want, to some extent, to be led by a good leader, and they want to watch you and they're watching everything you do. They may not hear everything you say, but they watch everything you do. Right. And these cognitive bias, cognitive biases, if you understand them, you have to also understand that they compound the compound.

00:32:32:22 - 00:32:55:03
Unknown
So when you behave in a certain way, it has a tremendous effect from the people that that are watching you behave. Tremendous cascading effect. So number one thing you can do as a leader, if I leave one piece of advice, it's model the behaviors you want to see. You know, we know the things like values are important right.

00:32:55:05 - 00:33:17:05
Unknown
So you establish these values for your company. Let's use the word integrity. Get a value of integrity painted on the wall. You talk about how integrity is so important. But if you're not actually modeling the behaviors that represent what you mean by integrity, if you're not using the language, if you don't have some sort of mantra to explain, to allow people to kind of make decisions in the wild around what that word means.

00:33:17:07 - 00:33:37:10
Unknown
If you're not onboarding with a training on it, interviewing for it, looking at performance management systems, talking about your your values in a certain way, and again, going all the way to the top. If you're not modeling the behaviors you want to see that indicate what that means, then stories are being told that don't match up to that value and you're done.

00:33:37:11 - 00:33:58:03
Unknown
So number one thing, model the behaviors you want to see. Know what they are. Be really crisp and articulate about the behaviors you want to be seen espoused in the wild. When you're not in the room and model them all of it so that the I mean leadership by example, right? It's all about timeless principles. They're, timeless, but not always.

00:33:58:07 - 00:34:37:19
Unknown
Yeah. Now we have science to shows why. And, you know, that's been that's kind of my secret sauce. So take some of that complicated science, make it simple to understand so that they can see why it's so important, to do these things. Well, I think it takes someone like, like you and age stuff that I, you know, try to do as well, which is someone who has that real world kind of experience to be able to filter that complicated science and see what, like what what matters, when you take that, you know, the science or philosophy, whatever you're looking at and and distill it down to like, what matters in this circumstance,

00:34:37:19 - 00:35:03:13
Unknown
be able to be able to, almost translate that into this is how that impacts your one on one today. Right? Like, you know, I think that's an important skill that, you know, we bring and and in that mindset, the, you know, communication and feedback is so important. And, you know, you also recently wrote an article about, turning constructive feedback into a powerful tool.

00:35:03:15 - 00:35:33:13
Unknown
and along with that constructive feedback, you also talk a lot about which I love. I love this too, because some of these, you know, I talk about, see, like how leaders think in systems is how I say, you said you talk about leaders focus on creating systems. And what I see a lot with different organizations I work with is they lack systems to foster their communication, to get the constructive feedback in the first place.

00:35:33:15 - 00:35:51:23
Unknown
Do you see that same problem in organizations all over the place? Yeah, and it's not I mean, it's complicated, right? So, you know, the the framework around constructive feedback that I have, it's a visual framework. You know, I like to I like to ask the question right out of the gate with leaders like what does your team do?

00:35:51:23 - 00:36:15:18
Unknown
How do they respond when they get constructive feedback? What does it look like? How do they behave? what are you here so and what I typically get back as well. They're in denial. They're angry. Right. They're bargaining. They're talking about how the customer doesn't know what they're talking about. And, you know, or they're they reach a state of sadness at some point where they're like, oh my God, we suck at our jobs.

00:36:15:20 - 00:36:33:13
Unknown
Maybe we should be doing something else for a living. And, you know, it's a it's the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross grief cycle that's what it is. It's the same cycle. And you can overlay that, say, once you see the science behind grief and how grief works. Oh, those things are deeply related. There's a pattern there. I'm all about systems and patterns, etc. and I need them.

00:36:33:19 - 00:36:51:02
Unknown
I can't I can't, lead without them. I can't teach without them. You know, you need to be able to see contrast in order to make progress. And what I teach leaders is, like, you see that pattern, and we know that when you're up or when you've got real good constructive feedback from someone, from a customer, it sucks.

00:36:51:02 - 00:37:17:14
Unknown
It feels bad. They're going to go through the cycle if they don't go through the cycle. And we know that being in that cycle is economic waste. Like as leaders like logically, you look at, you're like, that's you're just wasting your time and energy being down there, right? So let's get out of there. But if you don't see that cycle, if you don't go see them going through any of that cycle, you have a worse problem on your hands.

00:37:17:16 - 00:37:38:09
Unknown
Think about it. They're they're working 2000 hours a year, 40 hours a week in this work. And someone came in and said, the baby's ugly. Like, think about it, this is their baby, right? And if they don't care, you have a leader too. You have maybe two. From my earlier story, you have apathy. You have apathy in your environment.

00:37:38:09 - 00:37:56:18
Unknown
And that to me, if you once you reach a state of apathy in your in your team and your employees and the people that you serve, you're you're done created creatively, like there's no creative outlet, there's no place, there's no better future. You're going to get only what you got. You're not going to get any more than that.

00:37:56:18 - 00:38:17:23
Unknown
They're going to show up to get the paycheck and go home and that's it. So when you see it, I try to teach leaders that the first thing you should do is recognize it and try to celebrate it, like, oh my gosh, these are people that care about their work. They care about it. Now we want to shorten the cycle, get them up into learning mode as quickly as possible, but they care about their work.

00:38:17:23 - 00:38:41:02
Unknown
So like take a minute, pause, recognize that they care, be appreciative of that, and then get about the business the shortening the curve. Makes sense. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Yeah. Setting setting that up. You know it's funny. You bring it up and you know people are gonna see this. But I literally have on my arm it says apathy ends all tattooed on my arm.

00:38:41:04 - 00:39:09:00
Unknown
Sort of a mantra of mine. but and I actually have like, represents versions of different civilizations that have, like, grown. And then the citizenry has gone apathetic, use mercenaries to fight their wars, slaves to do the trades, and, life gets all too comfortable. And I think that's that's another place where your apathy, I think, can come from that theater and culture where people don't care, like they don't feel like the organization cares about them, so they don't care about it.

00:39:09:02 - 00:39:27:16
Unknown
And I think can also happen when maybe you have an organization that's that function or is doing really well, right. Like we're hitting all the numbers. So it's really easy to, you know, when the market turns and you start hitting numbers to get apathetic on the things that made you successful in the first place and almost have a fall from grace.

00:39:27:17 - 00:39:45:23
Unknown
And, you know, we see that with, family or really all companies but family organizations as well. Right? Like a lot of family businesses, you know, that that that they get apathetic that second and third generation that got handed a profitable business. It didn't understand what it looked like the first five years. Let's it let's apathy go to their heads.

00:39:45:23 - 00:40:16:01
Unknown
So I agree I think you think apathy is as I say in my talk, apathy is a sneaky enemy that must be faced down at every turn, as well. So I think that's huge, you know? Yeah. And you talk about all these models and contextual models and constructs and teaching these business leaders, and, you know, you also, I know you did some teaching, but you also are an actual, you know, a university professor teaching business at University of Rochester and also at, visiting professor at Harvard.

00:40:16:03 - 00:40:44:14
Unknown
What do you enjoy most about teaching at those at the university level? Right. The kids are freaking amazing, like, I it's, nothing I enjoy more than, like, it's a it's the nation's next generation of leaders, man. You know, not in the military, but in the civilian world. And they are unbelievable. They show up with such, intensity and passion and, you know, all these kids paying a lot of money to be there.

00:40:44:20 - 00:41:01:22
Unknown
And it's an honor. I consider it a great honor to be able to be in that position where I have some influence over how they go out in the world and lead. I freaking love it. I absolutely love the environment. And it's the kids. It's the people, it's the kids. It's the yeah, they are. I shouldn't call them kids.

00:41:01:22 - 00:41:20:23
Unknown
Most of my students are actually adults. So yeah, they are amazing human beings. So and they teach me as much as I teach them. I feel like I have them do project work, and I see them out there toiling with some of these frameworks and some of the social sciences in the in the real world. I have them analyze like real businesses that are out there.

00:41:20:23 - 00:41:47:23
Unknown
And to me, some of the things they bring back our profound and thoughtful and I'm it's like never it fills my soul. I just leave it at that there. Infinite creativity. Yeah, I yeah, I, I love that there's there is definitely power in youth where that usage is 18 or you know, 30. it's still, you know, so, so that's, you know, bright eyed and bushy tail before they get out there.

00:41:47:23 - 00:42:05:05
Unknown
So, you know, I mean, if you don't if you can remember after bad, it's not a big deal. But what are maybe one of those lessons that you learned. This one brought one of your students out back to you that that impacted you. Yeah, that's a great question. So and you know, they also they give me great hope great hope for the future.

00:42:05:07 - 00:42:27:12
Unknown
to be specific. You know, they event, they analyze, they analyze businesses and they try to look at like hey what's caused this decline? And like look at the human motivation perspective, you know, and they'll take like a peloton is a great example. Right. So one of the teams did a really cool analysis of peloton like Covid boom, shrink like, hey, what are they doing now?

00:42:27:12 - 00:42:52:04
Unknown
And and they come up with some really incredible ideas for things that they could do, to, to infuse, you know, culture in these very rapidly changing environments to make it better. So it's just amazing to see, like I said, tremendous hope for the future of our great country. That and that is that is awesome. Well, this is been, amazing conversation.

00:42:52:04 - 00:43:12:10
Unknown
Sean, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your service, and your passion for making the workplace and leaders a better place and more productive place for our country and for the people involved. So just thanks for all the great work you do, man. It is. It's a pleasure to meet you and have this conversation. Thanks, Sean. It's been it's been a blast.

00:43:12:12 - 00:43:27:20
Unknown
I always appreciate you man and brother together. All right. Yeah I know I'm excited I'm excited for for more to come on this podcast, other podcasts or a stage or a business near you. Love it. All right. I will see you later, brother. You too.