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The HaBO Village Podcast

The Two Types of Leaders You Need to Know [Podcast]

Episode 14: Michael and Kathryn describe the two types of leaders essential to the health of every business: Visionaries and Administrators. They Identify and describe these leadership pairs and contrast the two. Does your business have the right leadership? Listen to find out!

Pirate man with telescope

In This Episode You Will Learn:

  • The difference between VISIONARY and ADMINISTRATIVE leaders (also called an integrator)
  • Why successful companies have both
  • How a visionary sees the big picture/long term and how an integrator sees the day to day/makes it happen.
  • Why personality tests are both good and bad
  • Discover what you are and find the yin to your yang

References:

Rocket Fuel

E-Myth Mastery

Myers Briggs Foundation 

 

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Michael:           Welcome to HaBO Village. I'm Michael Redman.


Kathryn:
         And I'm Kathryn Redman.


Michael:
         And we're glad you're joining us back again today. Today, we are going to talk about visionary versus administrative leaders, or another way of saying administrative is-


Kathryn:
         Integrative.


Michael:
         Integrative leaders, or the integrators. So, the visionary versus the integrator. We get this language from a book called Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters. Was introduced to me at a conference in early January of 2017, and it was basically the concept, or idea around it, is there are two different types of leaders, and really successful companies have both.


Michael:
         One is the person who is the visionary, who sees the big picture, who sees long outside of where are we going, what could be, and wants to take their organization to get there. A lot of founders of organizations are the visionary. But, really successful companies also have either started with, some of them started with, but a lot of them added to, now the idea of the integrator. Some people call it the administrator, but the person who can see the day-to-day, help make sure things happen, and we've got some great illustrations and stories today to tell you that help tease you out, and talk about it, and talk about the examples of it.


Michael:
         But, Kathryn, your initial thoughts on visionary and administrative, or integrator, today.


Kathryn:
         So, we're going to spend some time talking about, well, we'll tell you some stories, because if you have to categorize, and there are gradients, I would say that Michael's the visionary leader in our company, and I am more of the administrative leader. But at the same time, we cross over. It isn't as simple as it sounds. So-


Michael:
         In some situations, it's more black and white, and more clear than in other situations.


Kathryn:
         Right. Right. There are a lot of not black and whites-


Michael:
         Yeah.


Kathryn:
         But we're going to talk about a few of those, so-


Michael:
         So, that's the big idea today. And remembering, as you're listening to this podcast, as we will say every week, or hopefully try and remember every week, is this about helping leaders build Passion and Provision companies.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         And organizations.


Kathryn:
         And understanding what kind of a leader you are, as well as if you are not the head of the organization, what kind of leader is leading your organization is very helpful.


Michael:
         Yeah. Absolutely. And how you integrate with that. And it helps with, if you're not the head leader, it absolutely helps with how you communicate, how you translate, your place in the situation, and how you can hopefully accomplish things more effectively, and also evaluating whether you're in the right organization or not. And maybe one of the things too, as we're talking to senior leaders, this is important for the health and success of your company. If you don't have these two categories, if you don't have the vision and direction and that external focus, while at the same time having somebody else in your organization responsible for making sure that things happen, that the details and the needs of today are taken care of, and they're not overlooked or ignored or missed completely, for the sake of just going, "Hey, we're going out here. It's going to take care of itself. We just need to keep moving forward, and all the details will just kind of happen."


Michael:
         And the integrator, or the administrator type people, they're like, "No, they don't just happen. Actually, they get missed. And actually, it doesn't just miraculously appear, and we need to think about that." So, really, as you're doing this, the hope is that if you're experiencing the situation where you're running into places in your organization that are challenging, one of those places may be that you probably are, if you're looking at every company, one or the other. You're either a visionary, or you're an integrator. Odds are, if you're the founder of the company, you're a visionary. Statistically speaking, that happens way more.


Michael:
         The folks who wrote Rocket Fuel, I believe, that was one of their points, and we've just seen it experientially. People who jump in and have that are usually very visionary. The ones that aren't, are what Michael Gerber has called people who have had an entrepreneurial seizure, and that means you potentially are more of a task-driven person. You understand the details, and you understand ... if you're a watch maker and you're working for somebody else, and you're making watches, and you realize, "I can do this. I could run my own business, and I could make more money, and I'd do that."


Michael:
         So, you have an entrepreneurial seizure, and then you go out, and you start a company. And then all of a sudden, you realize, "Oh, it's not just ... I don't get to just sit and make watches and build more money. I have to actually now be responsible for a company. I have to be responsible for marketing. I have to be responsible for getting..." And all of a sudden, you go, "At my old job, I could work 40 hours a week making watches, and now I can only have like 15 hours a week to do it, and the rest of the time, I have to do all these other things."


Michael:
         And that's why we talk about the entrepreneurial seizure, because a true entrepreneur, I think it's really important. Visionary and integrator, the word entrepreneur's not in there, and I think it's, I don't want to presume on the guys that wrote Rocket Fuel why it's not there, but I think it's really important. Kathryn and I were thinking about this, talking about it, is an entrepreneur, one of the key definitions of an entrepreneur is somebody who's willing to take the financial risk to create a company, a financial endeavor. Could be a non-profit. It could be a for-profit, but they're willing to take the financial risk, and they have a vision, and they're going after it, which is why a lot of them are visionaries.


Michael:
         But, when you have an entrepreneurial seizure, you're not really an entrepreneur. And I'm not saying you didn't start a company. I'm not taking that from you. I'm not saying you didn't take any of the risks. But, a lot of times, that's not your nature, and what you did is if you're going to stay in business, you have to learn all these different aspects of running a business that you may not have understood. And a lot of times, entrepreneurs have learned to do that, and they'll risk in multiple places, but they're willing to take that risk, and now you're out there, and safety's gone. And an entrepreneur can be a conservative entrepreneur or a really ... they can range on a wide range of risk.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         Right?


Kathryn:
         And I would push back just a little-


Michael:
         Okay. Go ahead.


Kathryn:
         Because I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are visionary who really also don't understand the fundamentals of business. And so, they go out, and they-


Michael:
         Point taken. Point taken.


Kathryn:
         Just to clarify-


Michael:
         Yeah. You're right.


Kathryn:
         So, you start a company, and you're all excited, but again, you're like, "Why can't we just get from here to that mountain over there in two steps, because that's what happened in my head?" Which-


Michael:
         Which is part of the point of visionary versus integrator.


Kathryn:
         Just to push back on you a little bit.


Michael:
         All right. She's got a point there. So, everybody who's in business isn't always an entrepreneur, but you could be an administrative entrepreneur or a visionary entrepreneur, right?


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         And what we want to dive into more is there's not one way of talking about who you are. All these things are like ... these two terms are like personality tests. All personality tests, and we work with, as we do leadership development and that kind of stuff and working with cultures, we use a couple of different versions, three or four different versions of personality tests. And personality tests, there's some, like Myers Briggs, where you come out with four letters. There's some like Disc, which is another really popular one, you come out with four letters. Then, there's augmented tests that you can layer on top of that to give more value, and they call you this, and they call you that.


Michael:
         But, then there's the Winnie the Pooh test, where, "Are you Tigger, or are you Pooh Bear, or are you Eeyore?"


Kathryn:
         Or Rabbit.


Michael:
         Or there's another one that's becoming very, very popular in corporate America that has to do with colors. I don't fully understand it yet, but I know some folks that are running some decent-sized companies that are integrating it, and the whole goal of all of these is there to help us put a term that we can all agree on to different aspects of personalities to think about the way we think, the way we process information, the way we take in information, and how we deal with risk.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. And the danger is, that with all these personality tests, if you oversimplify them, you lose the reality that there are, what do you call it, ranges essentially, right? So, in the Myers Briggs, which is the one I know the best, there's introverted versus extroverted. Well, I can be a ... each of the sides of those, if you're taking the deeper test, goes from 0-30.


Michael:
         Yes.


Kathryn:
         So, I can be a 30 extrovert or a 30 introvert, but I could also be a 5 extrovert, and that's going to look very different, or a 5 introvert, and that's going to look completely different, or I could be just in the middle. So, there's these gradations that happen. The color test, if it was red, blue, yellow, and orange, I don't know if it is, but-


Michael:
         I don't know.


Kathryn:
         If it were, I'm hoping that they would give gradations of those colors, because it's not that cut and dry.


Michael:
         Well, it's easy to oversimplify.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         And so, as we use this, we talk about visionary and an integrator. These are fuzzy terms. We've talked about those in the past. They are abstract terms that need to be defined, and these guys take a whole book and define these too so that they give language. And then, there's a variation, and you can easily get sucked into, "Oh, you're a visionary. Oh, you're an integrator."


Kathryn:
         Right.


Michael:
         And it can be a positive thing. It can be a negative thing. And the reality is, it doesn't ... one word does not make all people. There's these certain characteristics, and I just want to say that upfront, because that's how a lot of these terms get misused. But for today, a visionary, in general, a visionary to a little extent, or a lot of extent, is somebody who is looking at the future. They can see the distance. They imagine the places that you have not been. They can be very future tense. Wow, I could think of where we could go with this. We could go here, here, and here. And they're miles ahead of where you actually are.


Michael:
         They can actually be envisioning something a year in advance, two years, ten years, thirty years in advance, or maybe even, in some respects, we see in history undocumented, a couple generations advance. They envision something that was just so amazing, they started something in place, and where could we go from there? The idea of flight is one of those. So, here's a great analogy. As you start to understand how these pieces go together, and the fact that they could actually truly help you, understanding this can help you overcome some of your obstacles to becoming more Passion and Provision, is we want to use an analogy of a wide-angle lens and a telescope, or a telephoto lens on a camera.


Michael:
         Most people have used a camera. And when you put a camera up to your eye, and you have a really wide-angle lens, and you stand in a room, you can see the ceiling and the floor and the walls on both sides. That's a real wide-angle lens. We've all-


Kathryn:
         Sometimes even the floor.


Michael:
         And even the floor. And we've all seen that in films or TV, and quite a lot of people have seen it where you can see more. The difference between a wide-angle and a telephoto is, a wide angle gives you a wider angle view, and a telephoto gives you a narrower angle of view, but it allows you to see things that are farther away as if they're close up, right? Like a telescope or something like that, or a microscope.


Michael:
         Now, a telescope is a great version, because a telescope usually allows you to see a really long view, and we use telescopes for everything from looking a the stars and looking at planets to a type of a telescope that was used even for sailors, as they were sailing. You could see. You think of that cool swash buckling, I can't say that word-


Kathryn:
         And you recently made all the sailors and pirates-


Michael:
         Oh yeah. I know. Well yeah.


Kathryn:
         But hey, whatever.


Michael:
         But, you got this captain out there, and he pops out this telescoping [inaudible 00:12:23], and it all kind of extends.


Kathryn:
         Oh, it's copper. It's beautiful.


Michael:
         Oh, it's beautiful. It's awesome. And then you look in it, and then somehow the camera switches, and you can see what's so far off, and they can see things that you can't see with the naked eye. Is that an island over there? Is there something on the horizon? Can we get to safety? Can we get to a place where there's provisions? We don't want to sail past it and miss it, because we couldn't see it with our naked eye. The very purpose of that is to look into something and see something that you cannot see with the naked eye that is going to be helpful.


Michael:
         Okay. In a telescope wide angle, the visionary tends to see with the telescope.


Kathryn:
         And sometimes, they know they're seeing with a telescope.


Michael:
         Right.


Kathryn:
         And then other times-


Michael:
         Often, they do not.


Kathryn:
         They do not understand that they're actually looking through a telescope, and they can't understand why the people around them cannot see what they see.


Michael:
         So, this is a huge point Kathryn's making, because what happens with ... I'm a visionary, and what I have discovered over the years in realizing that you have to take that telescope off, away from your eye, and look around you, and make sure you're not tripping over something. And what happens is, visionaries are oftentimes born with this imaginary telescope on both eyes, right? Like, these super binoculars. And so, you can see in stereo, and it's real vivid, and what's a really long way away makes super ... is really clear.


Michael:
         And nobody tells you that you have this gift. Nobody around you understands this gift you have of being a visionary, and imagining things. And so, things get told to you. And if you're one of these visionaries, you've probably heard at least one of the following. Get your head out of the clouds. Would you become more practical? That's not real. Right? And those are the types of things that-


Kathryn:
         Stop dreaming.


Michael:
         Stop dreaming, in the negative sense, right? No, that's a waste of time, because what you do, and this is what's said sometimes, you're not really doing anything. You're not really working.


Kathryn:
         You're not doing anything practical, or anything of value right now, because you're looking at something that's so far out, it doesn't actually impact today, so stop it.


Michael:
         And what happens is, is if nobody realizes that's a gift, then nobody realizes that there's a difference between the integrator and the visionary. And so, as a kid, you turn into a teenager, and then as a teenager, you turn into an adult, and you may be accomplishing things because you keep going after this, and you get farther, and people follow you. But without it, you're under this illusion that what you see and hear, what you imagine, is so obvious to people.


Michael:
         And when you turn around to describe it to them, you don't understand why they don't get it, and that can either be discouraging, or it can be really frustrating, because you're like, "What is wrong with these people around me?" Because what happens is a reverse discrimination happens. When people discriminated against you as a visionary, because they thought you were immature and everything else, which okay. There's about 10% of the population typically is more visionary, and 45% of the population is way more administrative. And then, you could add maybe more that are, 70%, that are practical really tangible people.


Kathryn:
         Now it's bad math because you're at like 120% now, but nevermind that.


Michael:
         Well, but no, I won't even justify that. She's wrong. Okay. So, but what happens it, you're in the minority, and people are discriminating against you, and you feel miserable, like you don't understand me. Visionaries often feel misunderstood, okay? It's one of the things that happens. I get it. One of the things that happens when you mature and grow is you realize what your giftings are, and you realize the value of other people's giftings.


Michael:
         Because if they didn't know about the visionary telescope, you didn't know about the integrator or administrative-


Kathryn:
         Wide angle lens.


Michael:
         Wide angle lens.


Kathryn:
         So, let me tell you a really quick story, and this is obviously not a marriage workshop. But, because we both run the company, we get to sometimes share these things. So, a friend of ours on Valentine's Day asked the question, "What do you love more about your spouse now than you did when you first got married?" So for us, that's like 24 years. And my response to that was, "I actually love and appreciate the fact that Michael is a dreamer far more than I did when we were first married," because when we were first married, it terrified me. I didn't know what to do with it, because he was describing these things that were like ... well, first of all, they all cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and we were like flat broke, and I was pretty sure he was going to go buy something on a credit card tomorrow, because he was describing it so vividly, and I didn't understand.


Kathryn:
         And I was completely freaked out. So, I would totally diss on his dreams, and he would feel misunderstood, and discriminated against. And I would be frustrated, because he was scaring the tar out of me on a not infrequent basis. So, we've actually had to learn this in just our marriage, and then bring that into the business, and that's been a super fun journey.


Michael:
         Well, and it's so true. So what happens is, there's that rev- when I was talking about reverse discrimination, as a visionary, you could accomplish a lot of stuff, and what's interesting is, right now, we're probably talking to leaders. If you're listening to the podcast, you're already somebody who's been successful at a lot of stuff. You've accomplished a lot of stuff in your life, and your career. You may be on a brand new journey of starting a new adventure, but you have done stuff, and you have been successful, and you have led people, and that's to be commended.


Michael:
         We're probably not talking to people who haven't done that, but what can happen here is you can get lost. You can realize that there is a communication gap between you and other people around you, and you've had the fortitude to push forward, but you didn't realize fully about this different dynamic. And the marriage thing for us, the way it worked out in our marriage, is understand what that looked like.


Michael:
         A friend of ours, a mentor friend, said once, "Michael, stop," or somebody said to me, "Stop. Get your head out of the clouds," and he happened to be nearby, and he jumped into the conversation, and he said, "No, no, no, no, no. Stop. Michael, never take your head out of the clouds. But while your head is in the clouds, put your feet on the ground."


Michael:
         There's an assumption by a lot of people that you have to have one or the other, and we kind of ... I coined the topic of conversation with a friend of ours who's more of an integrator recently, I said, "Just so you know, I'm not the extreme visionary like some people. I don't take as much risk as some people. I'm not willing to be as crazy as some people. I'm a little bit more conservative. I'm way less conservative and way more risky than a lot of people," but I used to be a dysfunctional visionary.


Kathryn:
         He did. I will attest.


Michael:
         And now, I am a way more functional visionary.


Kathryn:
         Yes.


Michael:
         And there's something right there. You can be a functional mature visionary, and a dysfunctional one. You can be a functional and mature integrator, and a dysfunctional one. And if you're an administrative type or an integrator type, where you see things that need to be done today, you pay more internal observations, I need you to know that just because you're practical and you get stuff done also, you can be dysfunctional or immature in understanding your gifts and everything else.


Michael:
         And you can see from our discussions on emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence really impacts this area a lot.


Kathryn:
         Absolutely.


Michael:
         And how we integrate, and how much we honor the gifts of others, and realize the place of our gifting, and use it, and then really mature and develop that gift, and develop the skills needed around that gift.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. So let me talk about kind of the wide angle lens view of what it looks like to be an integrator, which is more kind of where I land, and that is that while Michael can see way off into the distance, my tendency is to be able to see every nook and cranny between here and that goal. And in early days, and there's a gift in that, because if you are that person, then if you're bought into the visionary, then you can begin to map the path of how we get from here to there.


Kathryn:
         So, that's a really, really important skill. If you don't trust the visionary, then you can become really frustrated, because you feel like, "Do you not see the 55 hills between where we are and that mountain? Are you crazy? Like, there's not enough time in the world to get that far." So, my grow place as an integrator has been to learn to trust the vision and the dreams, and to realize that to press into those is going to require some risk. And so, I've had to take risks and kind of move forward with that, and really, my job is to help make sure that we map the ground between here and there.


Kathryn:
         And while we're dreaming, we're getting things done on a regular basis that move this in the direction of that goal. So, and this can be really big stuff, or even just really small stuff. One of the experiences that we've had with clients over the course of time is that we realized that we can come in, and we can vision with them, and Michael is just phenomenal at question asking and drawing things out, and helping them sort of dig deep into their values and their purpose and their beehag, and all this really important stuff.


Kathryn:
         But, what we've realized is that no matter how much talking we do, if I don't take all of that information and translate it to a on paper report tool as a consultant, they feel like we haven't done anything. It's just been talking. And that's a powerful picture of just-


Michael:
         A real important point.


Kathryn:
         Even just the difference between being able to dialogue about all those things, and then being able to sort of refine and put the practical tangible pieces in place to help somebody be able to use that conversation.


Michael:
         Yeah, that's huge. Because different people are going to perceive information differently, they're going to talk it and process through it, so you've got to learn this is one of those ways of how do you learn how somebody else translates information. So, let me tell you a story. We live three hours from Tahoe.


Kathryn:
         It's a beautiful thing.


Michael:
         It's a beautiful thing. We live in the Sacramento Valley, which is a huge agricultural area, and we're at about 150 feet above sea level in California, and farmland everywhere, but we live on the edge of what is basically the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Cascade Mountains, which is the mountain range that runs on the East side of California. It goes from Mexico to Canada. And those ranges to ... Tahoe is smack dab at the top, kind of near the top of California, and at the top of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and beautiful, large, granite mountain peaks.


Michael:
         And it is a beautiful place in the summer and winter, great for water sports. It's a huge lake. Great for winter sports, because of all the craggy mountains. There's so much snow and great ski resorts. And on the South side of Tahoe one summer, we were up there enjoying hiking around and basically most of the snow was gone, and there are multiple mountain lakes. Well, Tahoe is a massive lake that's like 75 miles around. We found a smaller lake that was probably three miles in circumference.


Kathryn:
         It was beautiful.


Michael:
         So, it's not a pond. It is ... you walk back, and you find this lake, and it's gorgeous, and it's not easy to quickly walk around, and we're at one end of it looking, and it's in this bowl, which if you've spent a lot of time in the mountains and you find a lake, it's usually in a bowl. But, in some place like the Rocky Mountains or in Sierra Nevadas, these granite rocks, these peaks, go up, and so you have this really steep rim that goes around the lake, so this small lake. And we're sitting there, and you got red pine trees, not redwood trees, but pine trees, and it's beautiful, and it's gorgeous.


Michael:
         And at the other end of the lake, the bowl goes up, and there's these peaks, and then beyond that, you can see other mountain peaks. What starts to happen, and you have probably seen this before, is that that idea of how far that peak is beyond that range, and then the next peak you see, you can kind of tell that it's behind the second peak, but how far is it between the two peaks that you see? And distance becomes kind of flat. But, when you're sitting there just enjoying this lake, you can see the whole thing and you can move your eyes around a little bit, but you have a wide angle view with your eyes, such peripheral vision, and you're taking in all this beauty.


Michael:
         That's like having the wide angle lens. I can see all of it, and the depth that goes way back on those mountain ranges stacking on top of each other. It's hard to tell. Well, what happens with a telescope is when I take my telephoto lens in my camera and I focus at the lake, and I have this really big telephoto lens, I can't take a picture of the lake and the rim and the bowl it's in. I can't take a picture of the peaks that are beyond the peaks, and I have this incredible thing. All of a sudden, things start to separate a little bit, and I can zoom in, and I can see detail on a mountain peak that I couldn't see with my eyes, that nobody else can see.


Michael:
         And if I say, "I want to start walking there, and I want to get there," and I'm standing at the edge of the lake, and all I have is this telescope, my initial assumption is, "There it is. It's vivid. I can tell. I want to go there," and you can start walking. And if you don't look down-


Kathryn:
         You're very wet.


Michael:
         You're very wet, or you trip over a big rock in front of you, and you land smack on your face. That analogy is what happens a lot of times when you don't realize that what you have is a telescope. That's why a lot of entrepreneurs, they live in these visionary- especially the visionary type. The visionaries live in this place where they can see that so far away with such detail and imagine it that they become the absent-minded professor and they totally miss everything in front of them, and that sabotages them regularly for success.


Kathryn:
         And it really frustrates the people who were trying to follow them.


Michael:
         Yeah. Absolutely. And then, so, what you end up doing is learning, over time, to look and see where you might go with that telephoto lens and that telescope, and then you take it down, and you go, "Okay. Which way do I go? Left or right?" And I've got to avoid that. And then every once in a while, you come back up and you put that to your eye. That's the physical thing that is applying to this metaphor, and you need the administrator to see all the stuff going around you, the integrator, all around you, and to help with plans and everything else, because you also need the visionary to keep their eye on that, to make sure that you don't leave the target, the North Star if you will, on the horizon when you're sailing towards it.


Michael:
         If everybody stops looking at the North Star when you're sailing, and you're sailing by stars, you will get off course. And when you look up and realize you haven't been doing that, you don't realize how long you've been off course. And then, you get lost. And what you end up doing is you can end up never achieving the potential of going to this faraway place that has so much more contribution and benefit and value.


Kathryn:
         Very true.


Michael:
         And so, that idea of being in Tahoe, or being in the mountains, and seeing that place off, it requires both gifts, and it requires you to understand, have both of those types of leaders.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. And because we work with a lot of companies of multiple sizes, we've seen some really good leadership teams that have both of these in play, and it's really fun. We have one engineering company that we've worked with, and they have a guy ... he's the rain-maker. Like, he-


Michael:
         One of two principals.


Kathryn:
         He's one of two principals. He's the rain-maker. He can go out there. He can jimmy up all kinds of business, and he can just do amazing things. And without him, the company would not have grown to be what it is.


Michael:
         I should say that there's multiple partners in this, because some of them might be listening, but they're the two senior, oldest-


Kathryn:
         Original. Yeah.


Michael:
         Partners in this, and that's true. I was talking about that this morning at my breakfast meeting, using him as an example, because there's a joke that he doesn't do anything.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. And yet, there's a recognition in that that if he wasn't doing what he's doing, they wouldn't be where they are, so it's an interesting combination, because his counterpart, the other principal, is very ... it's not that he isn't visionary, because he is. He has a great vision for where he wants to see the culture and the serving the clients, and all of that. But, he's way more sort of-


Michael:
         Internal.


Kathryn:
         Tactical, hands-on. He's an integrator, and he has done a stellar job of helping that company move forward in the ways that it needs to. So, it's been really fun to work with them and watch them and-


Michael:
         Yeah. It's been neat.


Kathryn:
         Super fun.


Michael:
         Seeing their gifts. There's another organization that we work with that, and with lots of companies, we've seen this where we see lots of companies that don't have two people, that don't have a visionary and an integrator, and they really suffer, and it's not that they're not trying. It's not that they're being super dysfunctional. It's just that they're handicapped.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         They're missing ... where you need two, they only have one. But, we actually do sometimes see companies where there are both in there, and one of them is dysfunctional, and it really makes things, quite frankly, it makes it even harder at times.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. It's really hard, so we work with companies where there's a visionary leader, and they just, again, little bit of [inaudible 00:30:36], and just absolutely see that peak in the distance. And because of the telescope and not realizing kind of that they have that on their eye, they think it's three steps away. And then the person that's responsible for implementing that, looks and sees 150 different things that would have to happen to make those three steps work, and there can be quite a tension, and quite a frustration, because in one of the cases, the visionary is absolutely the boss and he's in charge, and the person who's the integrator, there's not a value in play for that person.


Michael:
         Yeah.


Kathryn:
         And so, the leader gets frustrated with the integrator because he can't produce quickly what it is that that guy sees. And so, it's very ... that's a very frustrating thing to watch.


Michael:
         So, here's what is also helpful for the integrator is, because if the visionary is oftentimes the founder, the visionary, and they don't have the maturity yet to handle what they do in the visionary ... when you're looking with a telescope and you're trying to put together the whole concept of the picture, it's very difficult. You have to move around a lot. It's like taking that paper towel tube when you were a child, putting it to your eye, and closing the other eye, and then trying to describe a brand new room you're in. Your head has to move all over the place so many times and you have to remember all these little pictures and put them together, as opposed to just taking it off and looking, and seeing it all.


Michael:
         It can become very frustrating to the administrator, and in this one organization, it is, because what happens is, the visionary looks at one place and describes it, and then they flip their head and look at another thing, and they describe that, and then they flip their head, and they don't always know they're flipping their head. And all of a sudden it's like "Well, okay, tell me what you want me to do. Tell me how you want us to run this company. Are we going after this goal? Are we going after this goal? Are we going after this goal?"


Michael:
         Because you're trusting them to say, "Okay, what's happening?" And as a visionary leader, it's really important to realize that a small change in your vision sounds like, or your perspective, sounds like a wholesale vision change for the company.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. And I can absolutely attest to that. So, Michael can see much further and is really good at looking at the different things that it would take to get us there. And sometimes, I just am flabbergasted. Like, why would we need that tool? Like seriously, we can't afford that tool, Michael. We don't need that tool. That's just going to drive me crazy. But that tool is a really important part of the overall journey.


Kathryn:
         And so, it's just really ... yeah. It's super important that we learn, as visionaries and integrators, to trust each other, and to value the gifts that the other person brings to the table even if they frustrate you a bit, because you have to find the path through, and the integrator has to trust the visionary, but the visionary also has to hear the concerns as well as the ways that the integrator sees those things coming to fruition. So, it's really important.


Michael:
         Yeah. If you are right now listening to this, and you're in a place that you're stuck or frustrated, I want to encourage you that this is solvable. There are, if nothing else, get this book Rocket Fuel. It's a great book. Also, another great book to read is Michael Gerber's book E-Myth and Mastering E-Myth. That's another great book. It's the idea of-


Kathryn:
         E-myth Mastery.


Michael:
         E-myth Mastery. You'll start learning and understanding systems, and you'll understand the difference between looking far off and looking close up, and what people say as having a high horizon and a low horizon, and being able to look up and down or in the weeds on the horizon.


Kathryn:
         Of course, for the trees, or-


Michael:
         All those kinds of analogies. But basically, I want to encourage you that there's hope. There's hope. There's two things. One, if you have an integrator and a visionary, where this gives you more language and a place to start learning, to understand how to communicate more, and understand and evaluate your own gifts and skills. Not only if you're a visionary, but what kind of visionary are you, and where are your skills in that visionary? If you're an integrator, what kind of integrator, and where are your skills? Where is your risk tolerance also? And how well do you communicate about it?


Michael:
         And then, understanding the other side, so that you can actually much better communicate. When I first heard this, I went, "That's awesome. That's a lot like Kathryn and I." It's one of the reasons we've been successful, is because the way we described it was, I have a vision for where we need to go, what kind of company it is, and I have ideas about where we're going to take the company, and what we can do, and what the possible future could look like.


Kathryn:
         and I have an incredible passion, not that Michael doesn't, but I have an incredible passion for getting stuff done.


Michael:
         Yeah.


Kathryn:
         And making our clients happy every day.


Michael:
         Yeah. She's-


Kathryn:
         And doing it quickly. Like, I am all about making things happen.


Michael:
         And so, when you combine those two, what we got was a lot of success in the midst of 15 years in business, and small staff, and we love it, and our reputation is growing continually. But, we're still learning-


Kathryn:
         Yeah. It's not without-


Michael:
         Better.


Kathryn:
         Its bumps and bruises.


Michael:
         I made mistakes this last 6 months with our staff and with Kathryn, because we're at a place where ... if you're going on a hike, or you're backpacking, or anything like that, you can be going over places where you can see a trail a long way in front of you, and it's gently going up and down and side to side, and then you get to places where it goes through the trees and you can't see it anymore, and it goes over really tall ridges, and you can only see short distances in front of you.


Michael:
         Those types of things are challenging for everyone, and I just didn't communicate as well. I didn't realize the terrain had changed as fast as it did, and it was real important that the communication between Kathryn and I, and our senior leadership at work, was open. And because we communicate well, and we actively practice this kind of stuff, we were able to catch this before this turned into a disaster for us. It wouldn't have been the same case 10 years ago. We would have gotten way more into the weeds on this one.


Michael:
         So, we're real excited about this. If the other side of this you're missing one, you're either a visionary or an integrator, and you don't have the other, I want to encourage you to start figuring out what that looks like. It may mean bringing on a partner. It may mean hiring somebody, and that happens a lot of times. And oftentimes what happens is, the visionary doesn't have an integrator, and you need an integrator. You absolutely have to, if your vision is every going to become reality, and you guys aren't going to end up on the Donner Pass in the worst snow storm ever, and then you have to ... you die. You die.


Kathryn:
         And let's leave it at that, and not even say what happened.


Michael:
         Because in the Donner Summit and everything, people passing, this is up by Tahoe, but it's one of our stories of our geography. This huge group of pioneers, they didn't survive. They didn't make it, because there were certain things they didn't know about, and they didn't prepare for, and you end up like that. You don't make it to your vision, and your vision, the vision you have, if it is a Passion and Provision type of vision, and it has a context of you fulfilling your contribution, and contributing to the community around you, and it's a healthy one, it needs to happen. It's important. It's important to the community that your vision survives, and so you need the help and the people around you for that to happen.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. And if you're a visionary, go easy on your integrator, because sometimes it takes a while to develop the trust that that person needs to know you're not insane.


Michael:
         And if you're an integrator, go easy on your visionary, because you can look at them and say, "Okay. It's nice that you're doing all that, but could you come back now and actually do some real work?" And sometimes, the visionary is actually working and doing stuff. It just looks different.


Kathryn:
         Yes.


Michael:
         And we are cheering you on from the studios here at HaBO Village, and we want to-


Kathryn:
         We believe in you.


Michael:
         We believe in you, and we want to thank you for joining us today. Please hit Subscribe in iTunes. It's real important to us that we can be ranked. iTunes only ranks if you hit Subscribe. And also, we want you to go to our show Notes page on our podcast blog, and be able to leave comments.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         That's at halfabubbleout.com/HaBOvillage, and you'll find the podcast there, and we would love for you to leave comments about this podcast, anything else.


Kathryn:
         Yeah. Ask questions, anything that we can elaborate on, anything that wasn't clear that confused you, we'd love to hear about that, so we can continue being helpful hopefully.


Michael:
         We want to be helpful, because it's not help unless-


Kathryn:
         It's perceived as so.


Michael:
         So, this is Michael Redman.


Kathryn:
         And this is Kathryn Redman.


Michael:
         And we're signing off for HaBO Village. Have a great day.