Episode 160: Unfear with Mark Minukas

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hammer, your host. On today's episode, we have Mark Manoukas. Mark is the co-author of the book Unfear: Transform Your Business to Create Breakthrough Performance and Well-Being. He is the managing partner at Co-Creation Partners and has been helping organizations transform their business performance for over 15 years. His work has taken him literally around the world and has allowed him to explore all kinds of different industries. He helps people know how to show up, communicate, problem solve, and even help them to understand how large the gap is between strategy and execution. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Mark Manoukas.

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Mark, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, Bradley. It's great to be here.

Excited to have you. So we always start with background and origin story. So why don't you give an opportunity for you and your co-creator, co-author of your book, just kind of tell y'all your story of how you guys got to where you are today.

Yeah, well, the simple— so if I— when I reflect on my background, I'm not the typical person who you know, does this kind of culture work in organizations. So I can kind of give you a quick background on myself and how Gaurav, my business partner and co-author, crossed paths and, you know, how we got to working together. But, you know, my, my story kind of goes back to some blue-collar roots in Connecticut. I grew up in a small town, blue-collar town in Connecticut, not one of those, you know, high-end towns right outside of New York City. It was very much an industrial town outside of Hartford, Connecticut. And yeah, you know, my dad was an engineer, my mom was a nurse. I learned from an early age, you know, as a man in the world, you know, you don't show emotions. Anger is okay, but, you know, all the other emotions aren't, you know, you just keep your head down as a man and just get it done. Don't complain. And I studied engineering like my dad in college. From college, I went into the Navy as a diver and a civil engineer. And one of the big messages that I picked up in the Navy was don't show weakness. In order to be trusted, you have to be tough and you can't show weakness. And from the Navy, I shifted gears completely into management consulting, but I went into McKinsey Company, which is, you know, big firm. And, you know, their whole thing is they can take any complex problem in the world and break it up into small little bits and analyze them in a very rational sort of way and put it all back together again in this, you know, beautiful solution and answer that, you know, creates impact for clients. And so it's kind of weird that I now do this, you know, sort of what some people might consider touchy-feely work in organizations around culture and, and all that. But I learned over time, you know, and I had a couple of key moments in my career that, yeah, in order to be trusted, you actually have to be vulnerable. In order to create any real change in the outside world, you first have to be willing to look at yourself. And when I reflect on my life, you know, what allowed me to be successful in some ways, but also became very limiting, was I was a hypercompetitive person. You know, I felt like I had to win at everything, and I can go back to my childhood, but also most of my professional career. And that was just a repeating story. And at some point I kind of woke up and realized, wow, that's just a very limiting way to look at the world. And, you know, that was a point at which I met Gaurav. We crossed paths. He had started Co-Creation Partners, which is the company I'm with now. I was still at McKinsey Company where he came from, and he was running this mindset workshop. And it really, you know, some of the light bulbs started to click for me and I started to see how much, you know, my mindsets were conditioning how I showed up as a leader, and also just the kind of change I was able to bring to the world. And so over time, I've gotten much deeper into the culture side of transformation, and now bring together operational excellence with culture transformation. And that's the basis of the book that we wrote as well.

I feel like while the companies that we were with were different, I think your story is my story too. Completely agree. I mean, with hypercompetitive growing up, was almost unchecked in my hypercompetitiveness, took that into, into my career and into my businesses. Um, same thing, not going to be vulnerable with people, not going to open up. And it's interesting now that I have this podcast and I share more of the vulnerabilities of struggles and weaknesses now doing this than I ever did would was willing to do one-on-one with somebody. So it's kind of ironic to me. So I can absolutely genuinely relate to exactly what you, what you share there. Uh, I think Craig Groeschel says it really well in his podcast. He says people would always follow a leader who was real rather than one who was always right. And I tried to think that if I was always right or I presented myself a certain way, that people would trust or respect me just because of maybe the way I coming across, as opposed to actually just being very real and saying, you know what, I don't have all the answers and I need some help. So I think it's gonna be a great conversation. Yeah.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I wish I had that perspective, you know, younger or earlier in my career, but it's something I've—

yeah, well, so do I—

I've come to discover.

So do I. I wanted— I wrote this down as a place for us to kind of start, and, um, this idea, um, it's actually the subtitle of your book, and I think it ends up becoming this part where we don't even necessarily know that it's a dilemma, but this idea that we want to have breakthrough performance in our businesses, in our companies, but we also understand that we want to have this idea of employee well-being. And sometimes those do not necessarily fit. It is either we are really going to grow and develop and even scale the company, and if it burns people out, it burns people out. But you guys say that there's actually a kind of a, maybe a third option there. To be able to achieve both. Can you speak to that?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and there's, you know, in different organ— you know, some organizations are on the other side. They say, look, you know, performance isn't as important as taking care of our people. And then they think they need to sacrifice performance. But yeah, the essence of the work that we do is we help people see that that's really a false choice. You can pursue business performance and employee well-being, but it kind of requires you to get down to the level of individual mindsets and even deeper than that in some ways, which is people's individual and collective relationship to their fears. And it's not about overcoming fear or not experiencing fear. It's really just about inner engaging with your fears and stresses and with much more curiosity. And that becomes a pathway to kind of resolve that seeming paradox. Between performance and well-being.

When you say fear in the workplace, can you speak to that a little bit? Because I think even for myself, that was not a word that I would necessarily have realized that maybe people that have worked for me would have been experiencing, maybe intimidation, possibly, but not necessarily fear. How was fear— how does it show up in the workplace? Place?

Yeah, it's true. I mean, it tends to show up in certain patterns of behavior. So most people wouldn't immediately say, oh yeah, I'm fearful, therefore I'm acting in a certain way. They just sort of act in a certain way, and it feels in some way— and while maybe very uncomfortable or stressful, it's also their go-to pattern in times of stress. So it's kind of, you know, it's in their comfort zone, so to speak. Um, but these, you know, we can get kind of get into some of the particulars, but, you know, the two general flavors are you either act aggressively in the face of your fears, you know, and get hypercompetitive, or you become perfectionistic, or you find fault with other people, or you become sort of passive where you seek approval, or you just avoid situations and conflict. And, you know, both of those, you know, are probably based in good intentions, but they can become dysfunctional. And they're fundamentally based on fear. It's in fear. What is fear? It's really just some perception of a threat. In, in the world. And so part of the work we do is just to help people become a little bit more aware of how they are perceiving threats, that they may be orienting themselves in this sort of survival, um, way or survival stance to the world, and how it's leading to certain patterns of behavior that may not actually be serving them and their organizations.

Do you think leaders— and for our listening audience, business owners tend to be more skewed over to the aggressive side?

I think entrepreneurs in general do tend to be a little bit more on that side because it's, you know, the general story. So we talk about, you know, there's a difference between physical fear and emotional fear. So physical fear is true, there's a threat to your physical body. Emotional fear is your— there's a threat to your ego essentially. And What is the ego? The ego is really just a story you're telling about yourself. And so there's a story that's built up in terms of, you know, what, how we perceive a particular threat. And so people with more of an aggressive pattern, you know, tend, their general story, there's something threatening, but if I can stand out and be special, if I can stand out and yeah, just prove to the world how special I am, I'll be okay. It's like the, just the general, very general form of that story. And I think that's kind of entrepreneurs are saying, hey, like if I can just stand out and just be special to the world, I'm going to be all right. I'll be successful if I win, you know, if my business is successful, then I'm okay as a human being. And so that's just the, I think, a general, yeah, perhaps story that people in that, uh, in that world tell themselves.

I don't know if this is necessarily right to attempt to go down this therapy route or so, but I mean, do you think a lot of it happens in childhood whenever you experience certain different traumas or even experiences in your childhood about how you were raised, or your mother, your father, your grandparents, who, whatever, and how that ultimately kind of manifests itself later in your life?

Yeah, I think, you know, the word therapy sort of has a stigma. It's like, hey, you're broken, you need to seek medical care. And there are, you know, situations and contexts where, you know, somebody, you know, certainly may need that level of care. But if we just look at psychology, you know, just basic psychology and how the brain works, you know, negative experiences stick to us, you know, they stick in our memories like Velcro, so to speak. And really positive experiences don't stick to us. You know, we'll experience a real great high in the moment, but it sort of slides away. And so, yeah, if you, you know, if you think of, you know, most patterns that we have, you know, develop in life, there's some element of, you know, we've had some painful or hurtful experiences in the past and seeking to not have to experience that pain or that hurt again. And so we develop certain patterns and absolutely, that's that we'll go back to childhood experiences, whether they're particularly traumatic or not, right? They're just, they do tend to stick with you and throughout life as well. So I don't think it's, you know, I'm sure therapy does go, I've never been to a therapist, but I am very deep into the psychological research about how we tend to form patterns and habits in life and what you can do to change those.

You know, you mentioned something earlier that I, I actually have used this verbiage quite a bit, is that you said soft skills. I was a hard skills person, and I still tend to lean that way for sure. It is a conscious choice to develop my ongoing soft skills because I would much rather talk strategy, scoreboards, numbers, tactics, measuring, or all that stuff. Uh, I'm more comfortable that way. You worked for McKinsey for a long time, which is renowned in what it's doing as, uh, uh, as strategist and many other things, obviously. For someone who's listening to this that can maybe relate to that and sees that maybe their culture is not really where they want it to be, I know my own story and you've shared a little bit of yours, but where do people begin the process of beginning to develop more of those soft skills to develop their culture in their business?

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It's a great question. Yeah, because the hard skills are quite important. We can't, can't lose sight of those.

No.

Yeah. Oftentimes, you know, we also You know, most of our educational system is built up into developing those hard skills, and most people get promoted. And even, you know, and if you're a small business owner and starting a small business, you know, the early phases of your success are built up in, you know, how well you've mastered some of those hard skills and strategy. Um, yeah, the big challenge of learning as well is we start off as being unconsciously unskilled. So we basically, we don't know what we don't know. So how do you come to know what you don't know if you don't know that you don't know it? It becomes a real challenge. But I think part of it is just, you know, getting really curious about how you may not be as effective as you would like to be is really what it— where it needs to start is just real curiosity. I mean, without— you don't have to give up your, your hard skills, but, you know, where, you know, in those— that softer skill area, might you be missing something that's not allowing you to be effective. And I see that actually a lot with small business owners and entrepreneurs is they just get laser focused on, you know, the technical stuff that they need to do or the big, you know, the problems that they need to solve. But then they're kind of— they're not seeing the whole wake of like human carnage that's, you know, left in their wake because they're just so laser focused on this, this other thing. And they would actually be much more effective if they really saw, you know, how to hold those technical skills and hard skills, but also, you know, become more effective with other people and learn how to, you know, inspire and influence people rather than just dictate, for instance. But it's different for everyone.

Yeah, I think, um, this is making me think of emotional intelligence, um, because there's times when I'm talking to someone— again, this was my own story myself, so I want to be transparent to say that I went through this where I thought, man, I'm doing all the right things. I'm checking all the right boxes. I do not know. That is my process for doing this. It's my problem. I'm doing all these things. I do not understand. There is more. We are not maximizing the opportunity. There's more in me. There's more in this business than what we're getting out of it. And I can't figure out what it is now. What that ended up manifesting itself to— and this is actually a good segue into my next question— is, um, constant change, constant change. And it was a searching for the right answers. Um, and so before we get into talking about change management, how do you navigate through all of that within culture, because that's one of the things I want to talk to you about, is this realization, to your point, of There's got to be more to this than— there's more in me as a leader than what I'm getting out of this, out of this opportunity. Does that make sense? Like, that was the place I got to where it was like, it was almost a place of frustration. We're like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Yeah, yeah. And you may not have— know the answer, but I think you can tune into that frustration and say, hey, there's a signal here that, that's, you know, it's a sign that I may not be as effective as I need to be, or the system I'm leading is not as effective as it could be. So what, what are we missing I think that's, that's step one.

Yeah. So change is, whether it's technology changes that are happening in our, in our organizations, change is now happening at a rapid, more rapid pace. How do you create the right culture to allow the right changes to be able to take place? Because some people can get really comfortable in certain routines. And whenever something comes to disrupt that, it can create an issue in the culture.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, change is a constant, right? And I think there is a sense that change is accelerating. And I would think about it at 3 different levels. I mean, one is just how, you know, we as individuals relate to the uncertainty and the change that's there. Second is how we, you know, in relationship or in teams, build trust and have effective conversations when we're in situations where there's a lot of change and uncertainty. And then how do you build systems, you know, feedback loops and routines that allow us to, you know, see the change, you know, see changing conditions and adapt to them, you know, in an effective and a fast way. So on the individual level, just to give you a feel, there's a couple of key mindsets. You know, we talk about the shift, you know, from being a victim to being in mastery. So where a victim says, look, you know, things are happening to me, I have no choice, I have to react in a certain way. Someone in mastery says, look, I may not control the circumstances, I may not control what's changing in my environment, but I always have a choice in terms of how I respond. Very different orientation. To, you know, the change that is inevitable, and it leads to very different results. The other shift in mindset is, you know, from a knower to a learner. So knower says, look, I already know the answer, or there's nothing to learn here. A learner is someone who shows up with curiosity and says, look, there's something I have to learn here, and what is it? And again, that's a very different orientation, very different way to show up when conditions are changing. Than the other, other way. And so those are two fundamental mindsets that if you can get those in place for individuals or critical mass of individuals in an organization, especially the top leaders, we can deal with change in a very different way. At the team level, it's just about building trust. So what does it mean to have trust in relationships? And are we open about things? Are we, you know, do we have emotional intelligence together? Are we willing to share what's uncomfortable and speak to those things so we can deal with them, or do we hide them and sort of pretend they don't exist? And then at the organizational level, it's, it's all about, yeah, do we have the right measurements in place? You know, are we— do we have the right learning routines like retrospectives and agile practices or lean practices? You know, things that just create learning in our environment that allow us to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, or things very ossified and sort of bureaucratic you know, and don't allow for learning. And so there's all kinds of things we can talk about at that level. But, um, that's, you know, I just, I think about how you create a culture that adapts to change and uncertainty. You have to deal with it at all, all three of those levels.

Just by the nature of this podcast and the, and, and, and the topics of leadership and, and, and entrepreneurship and growing our businesses, um, The topic of culture comes up often. It really does. I should have asked this before. How do you, how do you define culture?

It's a beautiful question. Yeah, I think about this a lot. So one answer I like— there's multiple different answers. I'll actually, maybe I'll offer two, but, um, and they kind of leave the different insights. But one aspect of culture is what we repeatedly do. So what are the habits that we, we have in the organization. Because when we repeatedly do things individually and then collectively, that kind of becomes our culture. Another aspect of culture is what does it take to fit in within an organization, you know, what are the behaviors or ways of showing up that allow you to fit in and be accepted into the group. Hmm.

You know, there's such a— at the time of this recording, there's a Regardless of how you feel about certain things politically at all, because I don't really get into politics, there's a major culture shift that's happening at Twitter right now from a corporate perspective. Often that does not happen in our organizations. You don't see something like that where there is a clear line of, well, the thing was going this way. Now it is literally going this way and it happens. It becomes much more like trying to turn the Titanic is the only way I know how to put it. It's just this slow incremental change. Again, I'm just trying to contrast that to the Twitter, Elon Musk buying it and saying, okay, this thing's not going this way anymore. You know, we're taking a totally different path. What are the things when someone says, I want to, I want to institute a cultural change in my organization, because the performance is not where it needs to be. But also, I can tell there's just— not only forget performance, but there's also just the, the team well-being is not what it needs to be, and I need to go about instituting that change. You again don't— aren't going to say, hey Elon, come buy this thing, and so like we can change the culture. I mean, what are the things that someone needs to do to start actually architecting that change?

Yeah, yeah. And even on the Twitter, I would, you know, question whether or not Elon Musk is really taking care of the well-being of people in that, you know, that's—

that's a—

that's such a fair point. That's a— that's a great point, right? I mean, you definitely— definitely that there's— there's definitely a big debate about that, for sure. Absolutely, for sure. I agree with you.

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Yeah, I mean, there's, there's definitely a number, a couple of different entry points, uh, you know, just to keep it sort of, um, concrete and practical for your, your listeners. Um, I'll offer up a few thoughts. I mean, obviously there's, you know, if you really want to change your culture long term, you know, there's, there's a program you can put together and a lot of things you can do over a period of time. Um, but there's a few things that make a real big difference. One is how are you showing up as a leader? Are you truly role modeling what it is you're expecting of other people? And are you aware of your blind spots and how you may be unwittingly, even with the best of intentions, reinforcing a culture that you don't want to create? So it's, you know, I guess step 1 is just defining what is the culture you're trying to create. Step 2 is saying, how am I role modeling this culture? If culture is, you know, repeated patterns of action or habits, Am I embodying those patterns and habits, or am I doing something else? And third is, is telling the right story to the organization. You know, most culture is transmitted via stories. And so what's the, what's the organizational story? What's the lore, the myths in the organization that you're trying to create? You know, what's the story about the history and where we've been, where we are today, and where we want to go? And does that resonate with people? Is that inspiring? To people. I think it's a really important piece. It's beyond just communication. It's obviously communication is an important part of that, but it's really is the communication fitting into a story that makes sense, that is inspiring for people. And then the next element is, you know, how are you reinforcing for people the patterns and habits that you really want to see? Are we celebrating and rewarding, you know, the people who are acting in a certain way Or are we actually rewarding the other people and sending some mixed signals? So it's just getting really clean on how do we reward people and how do we celebrate the culture that we're really trying to create.

Along with that, there's this idea of employee engagement. We've heard of it. I've heard it many times before. Again, I think coming to a definition of terms, when you, when you say, or you all say, employee engagement in an organization, really, what, what do you mean by that? And how do you create, in a sense, to be able to create the power of actually getting employee engagement in a healthy organization?

Yeah, I mean, I love that concept of engagement. For me, very practically, it's, it's, do you have employees who see what's needed and do it? That to me is engagement. If you have employees who see what's needed, and do it without having to be asked or cajoled or reprimanded or whatever it is, that's an engaged workforce because they care, they understand the direction, they care, they feel like they have the degrees of freedom to act. And they have, you know, a degree of safety to take some risks and act to make things happen. That to me is an engaged workforce. And you can, I mean, there's different survey tools and all that, that sort of measure that. But to me, that's the real, essence of what it means to be engaged.

You know, I was thinking about the, the survey that Gallup did that said at one time— it may have changed, um, especially post-COVID— but that people left organizations more because they did not know what was expected of them. And to me, that shows like a lack of engagement from them individually and what their role was of how they contributed to the, to the actual business at all. They had no idea. They were like, I don't know, I'm just, I'm just a cog in the wheel. And, and that's, that's the lack of an engaged workforce.

Yeah. And that cuts both ways too. I mean, I, I think, you know, without assigning blame, let's put blame aside, but I think there's, there's a role for, you know, the worker who's saying, look, I, I feel like a cog in the wheel, because that's, that's fundamentally a victim mindset. And saying, look, you know, I have no control. I'm powerless to act, which is an orientation to life. So how do you get that employee to say, well, great, you can do that, but there's consequences. And are you happy with the consequences of showing up that way? Or do you want to show up in a different way? Yeah, mastery, and feel like you have a choice. There's also a role for leaders to just be clear, to, you know, create the environment where people feel like they can step into mastery a little bit more easily. And so part of that gets back to, you know, are you telling a clear story? Is it clear what direction we're moving in? Are we celebrating the times when people do step out of that comfort zone and take action, even when it, you know, was a little bit risky?

Yeah.

So it's, you know, there's a role for leaders, but there's also a role— let's not let, you know, the employees off the hook as well, because how they show up is also reflective of how they feel about how well engaged they are.

There's a friend of mine, Dustin. He'll listen to this podcast. So, Dustin, I'm gonna give this shout out to you for this one. We were talking about one-to-ones and the value of having one-to-ones every single week with your direct reports. And, you know, I kind of used a 5-step process. And Dustin, this is totally on his— he integrated a question where he started asking— I don't know if he asked it at the very end, so I'm not sure, but he asked it during the one-to-ones. He'll say, Mark, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you personally? And they'll say, you know, I'm a— now they obviously are accustomed to it and they come in with it, but say I'm a 7. Well, what would it— what would need to happen to get you to a 10? And what he says that happens there, and I started integrating that into my one-to-ones as well. And what that does is it begins to kind of shift off of, okay, after action review, these were the 3 big things you said you were going to get done last week. Did you do that? Here's your numbers. All that's important. We're not saying any of that, you should not do that, but that really started to get into people sharing around what's happening in their personal life and opening up that space. And so I just wanted to share that question and see, get your thoughts on that as an example for getting to actually create engagement because you're approaching them as a human being, not just as, you know, what have you done for this business or this organization? Last week or this week.

I love that. Yeah. By the way, that's a, it's a nice example of a habit that if it's done, you know, regularly, consistency with the right mindset and intention as well, it really can impact the culture, becomes the culture. But there's a couple of aspects of that, you know, asking the question and, you know, what would it take to get from a 7 to a 10? I mean, one, there's a degree of openness that you're, you're creating. With that, that employee. I think the even better if in that, with that routine, is, is the leader also being open as well? Are they only asking, you know, the person they're working with to be open? So I think it gets back to role model. Are you role modeling the openness that you're expecting of other people to really truly make it safe for them to open up? The other ask, the part I really love, is what would it take? I mean, you're actually saying, look, you have the power to take some action to improve your situation, what are you willing to do? What are you willing to do? So it's reinforcing that, you know, that idea of mastery.

That's a good point about you actually sharing, like, well, you know what, today I'm kind of a 5. I don't— I, I didn't sleep good last night, or, you know, had to sit— yeah, I think that's, I think that's great to, to be willing to share with other people, with, with, with those that you're having the one-to-ones, where you are as well, not just them always sharing it. You know, with you. So it is, it is obviously the name of the podcast is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. I'm curious, like, what does effective leadership really look like in today's business world? Hmm, that's a broad question.

I know that's a super loaded question.

You could take that a long way. That's almost like, how do you define culture? Well, how do you define leadership? You know, I've heard say, well, leadership is influence. Maybe, maybe so, but it feels a lot more than that.

Yeah, I mean, I guess to put it into language that, you know, we kind of have in Unfear, I think there is this Unfear core to really effective leadership, you know, and that gets down to some individual mindsets, you know, am I showing up as a victim or am I showing up in mastery? And am I role modeling that mastery? Am I showing up as a knower and as an expert, you know, I have all the answers and I just need to give you my answers, or am I showing up as a learner with true curiosity? And so it's, yeah, it's being in mastery, it's being a humble leader, I think is really important. And then the behaviors can take many different forms depending on the nature of your organization. I think there's 4 different kind of flavors or types of behaviors that we talk about. In our book, you know, one is all about achievement or pursuing excellence. You know, you're really ambitious, setting big goals and targets and inspiring people. You know, that's one sort of, you know, set of actions or habits you can embrace. Another is about continuous learning. Are we creating, you know, a lot of spaces for us to step back and learn, reflect, and adjust, problem solve, and do all that becomes another important piece. One is, are we really good about developing ourselves and other people? You know, am I stepping up? Am I leading as a coach or am I leading as someone who's just setting direction? And so the— I think it was Dustin, you know, who has that, you know, that's all about, you know, am I showing up as a coach? You know, I'm having these weekly one-on-ones. That's a great, you know, pattern to reinforce. And then the other is, am I developing trust and cooperation across the group and building team? And so there's a variety of habits and routines that can kind of fit into that, in that bucket. But I, you know, there's this, you know, core mindsets, but they can manifest in different ways depending on the nature of your organization and where you feel like you need to put your time and energy.

Yeah. If you have someone, because I just had this, it's not, it's not an employee. It's not, not somebody that works for me. But I did have some, a situation the other day, and I won't give too many details because I don't want to— I got to protect the innocent here. But it was somebody that really, in a, in a, um, I don't want to say a critical moment, but it was in a touching moment, okay? It was in a touching moment, showed a complete lack of emotional intelligence. I mean, they, they just brought something up, presented it to the group in a moment where you think, did you just stole the thunder of that moment? I cannot, but I cannot believe that of all times to say what you said, you chose that time? There was multiple chances to share that, and it's obvious to everybody else. But to this person, it was like, this is a perfect time. I got everybody's attention.

You think what?

Here's the reason I'm asking this question. If you see someone who is— again, they're trying to do the right things, okay? But they do lack some emotional intelligence. How do you approach that in a way that's not completely, um, demeaning? Because, you know, what's going on inside of me at the moment is like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, I cannot believe you said that. That's what I want to say. Um, we'll keep it PG. Um, but I didn't, I didn't do that. But how do you, how do you approach someone, say, that, that, that you're a leader of that really does like you want to help them improve their emotional intelligence in certain situations?

Yes, beautiful question. We didn't get too much into the, you know, skills of, you know, how you have conversations in the workplace and build trust. But one really important skill that's kind of built up in a situation like that, or would be useful in a situation like that, is separating observation from interpretation. So if you're really showing up with curiosity, you know, if you're really showing up as a learner How do you give someone feedback? Well, first you have to own your own interpretation of, you know, what they said and what you thought they were saying, you know, what your interpretation of that was. And then really engage the other person in a dialogue about, well, you know, was that accurate? So if I was, you know, having maybe a feedback session with that person, I'd say, hey, in that meeting, I just want to share with you, you know, what was going on. You said X, Y, and Z. The way I interpreted that was you were really being dismissive of what, where the rest of the team was coming from. And you just, you weren't really tuned into what everyone else was saying. It almost seemed to me like you just, you weren't, you didn't care what the rest of the group was saying. But I don't know if that's accurate, you know, like you tell me, you know, that was just my sense of it. But you know, what, what was your sense of that interaction? And so just by giving feedback, by separating observation, interpretation, you can own your initial, like, you know, WTF reaction, but also create real space for the other person to be like, no, that's not at all where I was coming from. I was just really nervous, and I just, I really did care, but it just came out funny, or whatever it is, right? I, you know, I've been doing this for a number of years now, and it's just absolutely amazing to me how often I get it wrong, how often my interpretation of where somebody was coming from or what they, what they meant was completely off base. So I've learned now to like really truly have curiosity, but it's sometimes it's hard because we just, we think in our mind, we create a story like that and we're like, this person is whatever, right? We tend to label and create that story. And so it's just, you know, having more curiosity about how we label and tell stories about each other and just to create, you know, connected to the, you know, maybe craziness in the world and Twitter and politics. This is just a pattern that happens repeatedly in any strained relationship where we tend— we think we know where the other person or the other side is coming from, and we don't really engage with curiosity. So how do you— how do you engage with curiosity? That's the invitation.

No, that's really good. That's good. That was worth the price of admission right there. I will— I will absolutely remember that one for a long time. Observation versus interpretation. Because you can say, listen, this is what I observed, this is what you said. Like, there's no Uh, that, that's just what it was, but then this is how I actually interpreted that. That was— that, that's good.

Yeah. And the key there is to own how you interpret it without making it about, you know, who the other person is.

Sure, sure. That makes sense. I did interpret it this way. I was— I, I, you know, you were— that this is how I interpret it, but I'm inviting you to be able to share with me that how I— how that could be wrong. And you're right, oftentimes whenever you At times I may— I did not have that language. I will certainly use that language now that oftentimes my— I would have used assumption. This is the assumption I came to or the conclusion I came to based on that. But oftentimes you're right, that's actually wrong. That's not exactly— and not at all what they intended by that. So I think that's good.

Yeah.

So I got to— I'm curious, what, what was the best thing and the worst thing about working at McKinsey?

How much time do we have? No, it was a wonderful learning experience, actually. You know, so the best thing, um, just the, the real— yeah, just how many organizations in such a short period of time. You can work with so many different organizations on so many different topics and really, you know, learn so many different things. It was just a great learning ground, you know, to shift from the military into the business world and just have such a compressed, intense learning experience. I think that was the most fun. The— what wasn't so great for me is, yeah, what's the best way to put it is I felt very alone and isolated at times. And I think that's part of, you know, I reflect on, you know, what was going on for me. I'm this hypercompetitive person. And so I became so identified with, you know, what what my review was and whether or not people, you know, were rating me positively. And as soon as I hit a bump in the road, I, um, I took it so personally. And, you know, it's like my identity, my core identity was at stake. And so the way I dealt with that is I just, I kind of isolated myself. I didn't ask for help. I didn't cultivate mentors. And so I, at some point along the way, I felt very isolated. At times and didn't feel as supported and, you know, and uplifted as I would have liked to have been in an intense environment like that. But a lot of that was how I showed up too, and I own that.

Oftentimes the hardest thing that we can do is ask for help, right?

Yeah, for me especially. Yeah, at that point in my life, that was, that was a really difficult thing for me to do.

Yeah.

Mark, it's been great. Um, if people want to connect with you, they want to find out more about the book, once you tell them about the book and where they can find a copy of the book, and then if they want to reach out to you and your team, how can they do that?

Yeah, absolutely. You can learn more about my company at cocreationpartners.com. You can learn more about the book. The title of the book is Unfear. You can find that on Amazon or Barnes Noble or other booksellers. Also, Unfear book co-creationpartners.com is, is the place you can go. And if you want, you could always send me an email, uh, mark@co-creationpartners.com with no dashes.

Awesome, Mark. It's been a great conversation. Glad to have you on.

Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

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All right, I do it every week. I try to give a couple observations, takeaways for myself that hopefully serve all of you. If you're on Twitter, which, hey, if you're on Twitter, follow me on Twitter. I really like, uh, Twitter. I think it's my favorite, uh, platform. I know I mentioned about Elon, but I really do like Twitter. Um, @BradleyHamner if you're on there. So connect with me and let me know that you follow the podcast. So 3 quick things. The reason I bring up Twitter is that it says too long, didn't read often on some of the tweets. And so anyway, one thing is whenever you mention observation and interpretation, here's what I observed and then here's my interpretation, I will truly remember that. Number 2, the mindset. He actually said this multiple times, mindset of a knower to a mindset of a learner. And he actually talked about genuine curiosity several times. He actually said curiosity. Multiple times throughout that podcast. Uh, and then number 3, when he said— and I asked how would he define culture— and he said, what we repeatedly do. And I kind of gave the idea, and I was contrasting it with Musk buying Twitter, but really I think that is actually so true. You have heard that around, what we repeatedly do is the actions. But I do think Actually, I've never heard it in the context of culture, but that is so true. I can look back at times and was like, well, these are the reactions that I was doing, or these are the actions that this person was doing, or the actions that all of these people were doing over a long period of time. And how do you actually show up? And of course, just as an example of utilizing that in that question in your one-to-ones, as, as I shared with my, my friend Dustin had shared, with me, and I'm sharing with all of you, to be able to put in your one-to-ones. There's a habit that's forming about wanting to get to understand and know your team on a deeper level. So hopefully that served you. I think, um, oftentimes for me, especially for a long time at the beginning, I would dismiss soft skill things. I'm like, ah, you know, that soft skill stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just want to get down to all the harder skill things. But it really is the soft skills and the culture that actually develop. You've heard me say that on other episodes before. So make sure you go to Co-Creation Partners and connect with Mark. His partner Guav wasn't able to join us today. He was under the weather. But definitely check out their book. Go to unfearbook.com. Unfearbook.com. Thanks as always to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Rock Solid Assistance, Club Capital, and DirectClicks. Our newest podcast partner, Autopilot Recruiting, they are doing an unbelievable amount of work to help small business insurance agents to be able to grow their agencies with a players. You know the importance of recruiting A players, and you also know the value of having quality people on your team. And you've probably heard, whether it's a guest that I've had on here before, from other people, the importance of doing it on a regular basis. But you've not been able to put that type of consistency into practice in your own organization. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. You found the right A-players on your team. You also know that you need to develop them and get them up to speed as quick as possible. If you were part of the Coach P Consulting family, then you would know that they were going to get trained by some of the best in the business, getting it done at the highest level, and that is with Coach Pete, go to coachpeteconsulting.com. Let Coach Pete know that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast and we'll give you your entire first month off. coachpeteconsulting.com. Share this idea with some of you before, maybe on the podcast, I know with some of you individually, but having a secret weapon like an executive assistant has been the biggest game changer for me personally. Um, I did not realize having someone who's really— I kind of look at them as growth They're helping me to grow personally, helping me to stay in kind of my lane, and then also helping to grow the business. And when you're wanting to find a great executive assistant, obviously Autopilot Recruiting, what they do to be able to help you find your, your mark, your sales team, your service team, um, etc., on your staff is critical. Also being able to have an executive assistant, we're rock solid that kind of comes in and they're specifically going to help you to find a great EA. Go to rocksolidassistance.com, speak to somebody, have a discovery call with, with Tracy or somebody on her team, and they can help you to kind of understand exactly where an executive assistant would fit and how they're going to be able to help you to stay in your sweet spot. So maybe you can actually spend more time with your team. You can spend more time. Interviewing some of the people that the Autopilot— your recruiter with Autopilot Recruiting has put in front of you and obviously meeting with the clients, etc. So go to rocksolidassistance.com. We're getting down to the end of 2021. And many of you are already starting to do so fall planning and prepare for what's going to come in 20— I just said 2021. Can you believe that? 2022. I can't believe I said 2021. We're getting to the end of 2022. You're starting to do fall planning for 2023. And, uh, you know that having more of a presence online, getting your team quality leads to whether it's finish out this year, especially getting off to a really great start, having some momentum going into next year is important. So go to directclicksinc.com. They can work with you on your SEO and your paper Click Campaigns, directclicksinc.com. Finally, big thanks to my partner Club Capital. Go to club.capital if you want to get on top of your numbers. Club Capital is way more than just a CPA firm. And if you have not done a demo to see, I just spoke on with Coach P's group just last week actually, and shared with some of the things around not only my own experience around financials but also many others about how it's been able to help transform their business, be able to make proper, better decisions because you're understanding the numbers behind the decisions that you make. Go to club.capital.

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All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world, yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.