Michael: Hi there and welcome to HaBO Village Podcast. I'm Michael Redmond.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redmond.
Michael: And we are here today to talk to you about leadership development. Now, remember, the HaBO Village Podcast is about building passionate provision leaders and passionate provision companies.
Kathryn: Absolutely.
Michael: And when we talk about that, what we really mean for anybody who's new is the idea that you would have more profit and more joy in your company and your position. We realize that running a company, starting, being an entrepreneur takes a lot of energy. It's a lot of risk. It actually takes a toll on our lives many times, but there's a way to do it so that you can build a thriving company, be wise about it and save your soul.
Kathryn: And once you've built a thriving company, continue to maintain that in terms of how you function, how you operate, all those kinds of things. So talking definitely to folks who maybe are early starting, but also to folks, you've been doing this a long time and you're at a level of leadership where you're like, "Okay, I know I need to grow. I know I need to keep growing." And what does that look like?
Michael: Yeah, and when I say save your soul, I mean, I'm not talking in the phili- or the theological or biblical sense or anything like that. I'm talking about-
Kathryn: It's more your sanity.
Michael: It's more your sanity. The fact that it sucks the life out of your soul sometimes being an entrepreneur and being a business leader. We actually talk sometimes about the fact that success can actually suck it out of you faster than actually not being successful in your business. So we talk about those things on this podcast. Today we're going to talk about that leadership development issue. We had a great opportunity last week to be in La Jolla, California.
Kathryn: Oh, it's beautiful. I'm going to move there. I found ...
Michael: Right on the beach in San Diego County.
Kathryn: ... five houses that I would be ready to move into tomorrow.
Michael: Yeah. I just think that the one on the corner would be fine.
Kathryn: That corner house.
Michael: We had a great time, but the reason we were down there is actually so that we could go to a conference workshop by Terry Walling, Leader Breakthru, who runs and owns Leader Breakthru with his wife. We talk about Terry periodically on-
Kathryn: He was on our podcast. We did two stories ...
Michael: That's right.
Kathryn: ... with him.
Michael: We interviewed Terry.
Kathryn: So you can back up and listen to Terry. But yeah.
Michael: Terry's a phenomenal guy. He's been at leadership development, in leadership development for 35 years. He's written several books. He is a speaker that's sought out around the world and we happen to be fortunate enough to have him as a friend of ours. That was just a real blessing that that happened 12, 15 years ago. So nine years ago, I went to Terry's first coaching certification workshop, and in nine years he has continued to refine and build his model and the way he communicates. He does a phenomenal job, and if anybody's ever interested in something like that, you can find out more information at leaderbreakthru.com.
Kathryn: Breakthru is with a U.
Michael: T-H-R-U.
Kathryn: Yep, Leader Breakthru.
Michael: The reason we're jumping in this today and talking about this subject is because Kathryn went through the certification, this actual official certification.
Kathryn: I am going to be a certified coach. I've got a few things to do before then, but there you go.
Michael: But Kathryn and I have been coaching for a really long time.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: Development coaching, leadership coaching, business coaching, and it's a unique model in the midst of it. It's not just this generic. The bummer with coaching is it's just a generic title that's overused a lot in our society.
Kathryn: Well, and every coaching organization out there that's going to train you to coach is going to have a pathway for you to just do better conversations, ask better questions, be more guided in the way ...
Michael: And that's really [crosstalk 00:03:35].
Kathryn: ... you walk through it, right?
Michael: Yeah. How do you help people have breakthroughs?
Kathryn: Yeah. How do you actually look at a leader, assess and help them more self-discover in the coaching model than telling them what to do, but help them really go, "Yeah, this is where I am and this is what I think I need to do," simply because you've asked really, really good questions.
Michael: We've talked about coaching a lot. Instead of using the word coaching, we've talked about being thinking partners. There's a lot of similarities between those two, but what do we want to talk about today in the brief time we're together is the idea of this concept of leadership development. We all know that term. That's a really popular term and I think it's a fuzzy term because it means different things to different people. Ask 10 leaders in a room to define it and if you could keep them from listening to each other's definitions, you'd probably get 10 totally different definitions.
Kathryn: That's be really funny today. Put them all in a cone of silence and have them answer and then lay out the answers.
Michael: Right? And we want to talk about leadership development in the sense that we believe leadership development happens as people develop as adults. It's an interwoven thing within adult development. Leaders go through different seasons and phases that are actually have been documented, have been seen over and over again. There's also a couple of key elements to this. I think we're going to talk about that today, because if we talk about the train tracks today, Kathryn, then I think that will be really helpful and start us out on this series that we can launch into talking about coaching and mentoring more later. So what are the two parts? Let's talk about this. What are the two parts of being a leader and leadership development?
Kathryn: So I'm going to say, first of all, we just want to acknowledge and say out loud that good leaders are always growing.
Michael: Yes.
Kathryn: So if you are going to lead well, you constantly have to be paying attention to who you are and where you're going. So this train track model is the concept that there are two parts of leadership development.
Michael: Like the rails of a train.
Kathryn: Like the rails of a train track, right, that run in parallel and both have to be paid attention to. So one of those is the doing part, which is your tasks, your obligations, the outside, the things the world is seeing. And then the other is your being, which is the inside part. So what is it? How are you developing as a human and what does that mean for your leadership? So one of the things that can be challenging is have you ever been in a situation where you found yourself doing stuff that felt inconsistent or counter in some way to who you are, right?
Michael: Yeah. Oh, I have.
Kathryn: You've gotten into a role where you're like ...
Michael: Oh boy.
Kathryn: ... "This thing that I'm doing is not who I am." And there ends up being this incredible conflict within you with regard to how you're functioning on the outside because it no longer matches the inside. And that can happen for a bunch of reasons. It can happen because you've got a lot of pressure from the outside to conform to a certain way of doing things. It could be from your board of directors. It could be from your family. It could be from your friends. There's an expectation of how your life should look and you have landed in a place where you are should-ing all the time. If you're there or you've been there, you know that incredible feeling of I am so worn out because what I'm doing isn't actually feeding my soul. So those two train tracks can get out of alignment, which typically is going to move you into some sort of a transition where you're like, "I can't do this anymore."
Michael: Well, there's several different pieces here. So the being in doing is the two significant parts that we have to pay attention to as we're developing as leaders. We have to get better at our skills. We have to get better at the tasks of leading and we have to get better at ... When we talk about being, we're going to talk about relationships, we're going to talk about your relationship to yourself, your own personal disciplines, your own personal control, your own personal trust. In the speed of trust conversation we talk about where it starts with self-trust. If you say you're going to do something, do you do it? How much trust and confidence do you have that you're going to go through things? Now, what's interesting is a lot of entrepreneurs, they have incredibly large egos.
Kathryn: By the way, if you just need a humor break in your day that is surrounding the topic of ego, go look up the Me Monster on YouTube. It's a comedy skit. You will want to share it with your friends.
Michael: Okay. That was a total side note.
Kathryn: Total sidetrack.
Michael: We're talking about egos. Now, what's interesting is the strong ego we have, there's a lot of confidence that is portrayed out. But what we know from years of working with leaders and the research is when you get the doors closed, private conversations late at night, what you find is you find that that person who seems so secure is really has a lot of confidence, but they are also dealing with things that are insecurities inside because shocker, they're human. They're not superhuman. They're not this weird third sex. They are actually real people with real challenges. And yes, they have courage and they are able to go out and do things that a lot of other people take risks that people don't believe, and they believe in themselves and their ideas, but there is a challenge. So you're growing internally with your own emotional intelligence, your own maturity. You're also growing in your ability to relate to other people in that external. So you have these two things is being in doing.
Kathryn: Well, and it's a funny thing because just to help you remember this, so much of leadership development in our world, things are going, going to look up, really does focus on the external. It focuses on the doing, right? But the reality is we are human beings, not human doings. So the reality is if we're not really paying attention and we're not becoming more and more self-aware, and we're just living into the doing, you're going to get sideways and your soul is going to get wrecked.
Michael: So you get stuck.
Kathryn: You get stuck.
Michael: And you can get stuck both personally and organizationally. This is one of the reasons why this is so critical to building a passion and provision company. There's an old adage that I learned a long time ago from some older wiser mentors, and I've seen it over and over again in my own life or in our life and our business and in others is that you can grow a company beyond your leader's ability. We've all seen it, or many of us have seen it. A company grows and it hits this sprint where it just explodes and everything's great. They're in the right place and it grows beyond the leader's ability to lead. There's something about it that it's like that company just got bigger than the leader. It might be their character.
Michael: It might be their ability to understand how to manage. It might be they don't understand how to control the systems yet because it grew faster than they could grow. And what often happens in a company like that, if it's controlled by investors and everything else, they get rid of the leader. If it's controlled by the leader and it's privately-owned, usually the company shrinks back down to what the leader can handle. It can oftentimes just stop there and never go any farther and then it turns into this season of lore in the company. Remember when we did this? It happens. There are other influences, but a lot of times that can happen. The third option is that even if it shrinks back down, the leader grows and the company can continue to grow and the leader's ability. When we talk about that, that's part of what we're saying in leadership development.
Michael: How do we help leaders deal with all those things get lumped into them being bigger than the company or big enough for the company so that organizationally and personally, we go through these growth spurts and we also hit these places where we have to transition? What got us here won't get us there. There's got to be a shift in the way we operate, the way we interact. And it's part of this growth process. So let's talk about, because of that, leadership development, being in doing, let's talk about transitions real quick. What are transitions? We've mentioned them a little bit, but what are, and how many can we expect in our lives?
Kathryn: Yeah. So the research says, well, so first of all, let's talk about what is a transition. A transition is where you hit a point where essentially you have to shift what you're doing to take the next step. You're stuck. Things aren't working the way they were. It could be a skill-related issue. It could also be a being issue where you just know you're not aligned and what you're doing isn't working and you're miserable. So something is forcing this shift. Sometimes it's transitions are forced upon us. It can be things like by golly we've been moved, right? Or we need to shift locations. There can be a physical transition that kicks these things off. Transitions are going to happen in life, and the research says that most humans, most adults go through 10 to 12 transitions in the course of their ...
Michael: Adulthood.
Kathryn: ... adulthood, right? So these transitions are things that begin to, for whatever reason, things become identified that you're like, "I am not equipped for this. I need to make some adjustments." Or, "If I'm going to press into this, I have some serious choices to make to narrow my focus." So there's a number of different things. And those transitions look different and have different questions based on where you are even just age-wise. So someone going through a transition in their twenties and thirties is asking completely different questions than someone in their forties or fifties, as well as someone in their later years. The questions that you're asking in terms of what matters, where you're going, what you want to do, those things begin to change just based on your physical age.
Michael: Yeah. So when we talk about transitions, here's six different characteristics that we have. These are great questions. If you're experiencing one of these six or multiple of these six, you might be in transition. You might be in transition if you're experiencing restlessness, confusion, self-doubt, lack of motivation, paralysis or inactivity, or prolonged uncertainty. Now, the key to this, relentless, restlessness confusion, self-doubt, lack of motivation, paralysis or inactivity, or prolonged uncertainty. If you're a leader, you will experience those things and you do on a, who knows, semi-regular basis, that doesn't mean you're in transition, if you experienced them. If you're experiencing them over a prolonged period of time.
Kathryn: And that could be three months to three years. We're talking a prolonged period of time.
Michael: Well, and transitions can last three months to three years. So I think it's fair to say that if you're experiencing this over a few days or a week or two weeks, that's not a sign that you're in transition. You might be going into transition, but not yet. But if you're experiencing this for three, four, five, six weeks, a couple of months, if this is something that has become a pattern, there is a good chance you're moving into some kind of transition. And as Kathryn was just saying, transitions can last anywhere from three months to three years. So to manage and navigated a transition is really important and oftentimes you need help. You need outside, help. You need help outside your own head because we don't get to clarity alone. We've said that a lot on this podcast and that's just critical.
Kathryn: Yeah. And the power of having someone outside of yourself walk it with you is that oftentimes what can end up happening is that person can help you identify what's actually happening and give you words for it and give you a framework so that you're not stuck trying to figure out what it is and you can live into what it means and how to progress through it. So it's not if you're going to have a transition, you're going to have transitions. And the question in leadership development is how will you navigate those well.
Michael: Absolutely. So if you want to be a great leader, you need to understand how to best handle these transitions. If you want to build a passion and provision company, a company where you have more joy in what you're doing, there is more a sense of purpose and fulfillment, we've talked about the five characteristics of a good job before, and as a leader, as a senior leader, as a company owner or something like that, that applies to us too. How do we create that good job? There's a myth out there that says that if a company could have those kind of jobs, it's not meant for the leader. That's malarkey. And we have committed quite frankly, our entire life now moving forward to dispelling some of those myths and helping leaders actually overcome those things and growing our own companies and maintaining those core values.
Michael: Sometimes it's just like you're in fifth gear on the highway and you're cruising down the road and the engine doesn't have to work hard. You're just like, you've got things dialed in and you're on a straight road and it's great. But sometimes business takes us off those straight and narrow highways and we get into curvy roads with lots of traffic and all kinds of different obstacles.
Kathryn: Snowstorms.
Michael: And snowstorms. Sometimes you're in the mountains going up hills and you're in these curvy roads with all kinds of different things going on in the engine's got to work harder. You've got to work harder to make sure that you're getting to where you're going, that you're staying safe on the road. And sometimes just like driving in storms or anything else that can be a white knuckle event. And running a company could be a white knuckle event at times, but it's not meant to be that on a regular basis. If you have major levels of that where you're not getting paid, or there's just major, major challenges all the time, you may not have a passion provision company at the level that it is possible for you.
Kathryn: If your team's miserable, if you're miserable, whether it's a cash issue or whether it's just an environment issue, there's 100 different reasons why that can happen. But the point is it's not meant to be that way longterm. The windy road comes to an end. The storm passes. So our heart and desire-
Michael: At least it's supposed to.
Kathryn: It's supposed to. Our heart and desire is to help you navigate those transitions, but remember that it's not a permanent situation, that there's actually hope and that you can create a passion and provision company over the years that provides passion and provision jobs and has people who are excited to work with you and excited to work for you and bring their best selves every day so that you actually get to live into your dreams. So those are the things that we care about. So over the next several podcasts, we're just going to be diving in a little bit more into this concept of leadership development, being and doing, stages of leadership based on age, that kind of stuff. And then the kinds of questions that you might be asking as you navigate the various transitions.
Michael: Yeah. Hopefully we're doing a good job articulating this whole idea of leadership development in a really short period of time, but this is powerful stuff. We have considered it incredibly valuable to us over the last 17 years. And actually I'd say probably over the last 30 years. I'm 51 and I can go back to being 19 and think about the first significant conversation I had as an adult with a mentor about leadership development. The first book I was ever given on leadership development that I remember as an adult getting was 19. Bob Spread gave it to us. At that point it was this little blue book.
Michael: I wish I could remember the name of it. It's somewhere in our library. It was just like this textbook on, on leadership development and what did it mean to be a leader. And I'd grown up in a house where my father was a leader, ran a business, was in several nonprofit organizations. Pretty much wherever he was leading people. Whether they liked it or not they're following.
Kathryn: They didn't always like it.
Michael: There was a lot of things that were good about it that he created and I learned a lot watching. I learned a lot of bad habits, but I learned a lot of positive habits watching my dad. And that was powerful. And growing up, I can remember our Scout Master, my Scout Master Bob Deleray, because he wasn't your Scout Master.
Kathryn: Not ours. I was not a Boy Scout as it turned out.
Michael: Pouring in also. So that whole idea of if you look back as a leader in your life and you start looking at your timeline of the different events that have happened, good and bad, there have been all these different events that have been building and shaping you for leadership. And I bet there's probably with a lot of folks that are in leadership in businesses there's a lot of moments in their childhood, in their teen years and going forward that they have had the opportunity to have the benefit of that.
Michael: But it is those people that come alongside you that can really help you grow. The concept that we use, the way we define the fuzzy terms of mentoring and coaching are key tools in how we actually navigate transition. It's not everything about navigating a transition, but they're key tools and people who are good coaches and good mentors can help you navigate those transitions so that you don't have to continue to repeat them. You learn the lessons and you can move on as opposed to getting stuck there developmentally as an individual or your organization. In the next episode we're going to talk about coaching and mentoring and defining those terms and what they mean.
Kathryn: Good.
Michael: I'm excited about that.
Kathryn: I think the book might've been Ordering Your Private World.
Michael: Ordering Your Private World. The blue book?
Kathryn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael: Really?
Kathryn: But that's a side note and you guys don't care out there, but there you go.
Michael: This is the fun part. Kathryn and I have known each other so long. We've been together a very long time and had many similar mentors. So next episode, coaching and mentoring, we're real excited about it and I think it's going to, the definitions we're going to bring in the way we're going to talk about it is going to put an arrow in your quiver that's going to help you be more successful because the goal here always is how do we help you put the things into your toolbox that allow you to become a better leader and experience more passion and provision in your personal life and in your company so that you experience the joy, but you can give it away, because as leaders, that's our responsibility is to care for others and to create something for other people that brings more life to them and brings that passion and provision life to the people in your company.
Kathryn: Indeed.
Michael: That's it for today at HaBO Podcast. If you liked this at all, we would love it if you would go out to iTunes and you would give us a refer ... A referral, you would give us a recommendation and a rating.
Kathryn: You know what? If you want to refer us, that's okay.
Michael: If you're loving, it can give us those five stars and write something there. We'd love to have that. And then just hit subscribe and listen to this and also tell other people. Share it on your social media. Share it in your email. Tell other people about it because we're trying to create this movement of what does it look like to have more passion provision companies in our society with more passion provision jobs. People deserve it. We deserve it as entrepreneurs. That's it for today. I'm Michael Redmond.
Kathryn: And I am Kathryn Redmond.
Michael: You have a great week and we'll talk to you later. Bye bye.
Kathryn: Bye bye.
