Leadership That Lasts: Paul Thornton on Building Bold, Ethical Leaders in Every Industry

Thinking. Hello everyone! Okay, this is a live and it's with Paul Thornton and I'm very excited. Look at this friendly face right here. So we've got today handsome, brave, and bold because you have to be, right? Well, yeah, I mean, you don't know me from Adam. I think we met on maybe matchmaker.fm. So who's this crazy lady, lady asking me sending out our calendar and saying, come on my show, and not asking me who I am. That is me. I'm the crazy lady. So I'm really excited. I want to make sure that I've got your— yep, your name is perfect. Paul, introduce yourself to our lovely audience of one, one person out there.

Well, first of all, Adrienne, thank you for having me on your podcast. Uh, one thought, one thing I found interesting was your point about no prep needed. So you want people to come on and be totally real and honest and straightforward and all that. So I think that's great. I have spent my career focusing on leadership. I have written books on it, articles. I've taught classes, seminars. I've been in various leadership roles. I think it's a fascinating subject. It's something I'm passionate about. And it's exciting to talk about it, I think. So that's kind of where, what I've done. I'm still writing and reading and learning. And I've been a student and teacher my whole life of the concept of what it means to be an effective leader.

Oh, I love that. Okay, let's start with the first question. And by the way, what I love about doing this is that if I ask you a question and you say it's a great question, I get really excited about that because I didn't use like ChatGPT to get me the question. Or I started this 2020 because I wanted to show off my friends, and so it was called like— it was like Candid Conversation, showing off my friends, and then it just evolved. And but I, I learned so much, so Bye. Before my first question, where are you located, Adrian?

That is a great question. I am located in, uh, Scituate, Massachusetts. It's about 18 miles south of Boston.

Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm a Connecticut girl. I may be in Daytona Beach now, born and raised in Connecticut. And I will share with you one of the things I love about that area is I— so I was, um, I love Chatter. It's a social audio app, and Cindy Stumpo is on Chatter and she's running rooms. And I don't think that people— do you know who Cindy Stumpo is? Stumpo Developers?

I don't know.

Oh my gosh, she is an amazing— she's really what, like the number one female builder out of Boston in the United States? She is. I think it's tough as nails, but I love when she comes on and talks business. So I think it's so important. But leadership. So let's go to the first question. Oh, I manage my local grocery store. Am I a leader or a manager?

Well, I think you're both. I think managers focus on current methods and procedures and policies to get things done. And that's certainly needed, right? Leaders want to change something. They want to change the structure. Or the process, or the vision, or something. So I think most people, like running a grocery store, you know, you're both manager and leader. There's a lot of things you're wanting to make sure they run correctly and the process works and what have you. But you're thinking also about how are things changing in the world. You know, my customers, my delivery. What's happening that I can better serve my customers? So I think you better be thinking about what changes are needed and coming along and how can I stay ahead of the curve and be effective in what I'm doing.

Okay, so we're role-playing everyone in case you're thinking, how does Adrian start working at a grocery store? Okay, so keeping up the grocery store, which by the way we need and those are essential workers. Well, I was asked to lead a team, but I don't have any leadership, but I'm not really worried about it because I'll use ChatGPT and it'll write my whole script up and I can become a leader really in the 10 or 15 minutes it takes me to get everything on ChatGPT and into my Word doc and I'll just read it.

Well, that's an interesting way to go about it, but let me back up. I think Leaders need to be very clear on what they believe and value. You know, your core beliefs and values are your foundation. You won't get that from ChatGPT. You need to get it from thinking and trying things and reflecting and learning and solidifying what is it I fundamentally I believe in value, and I take that with me when I lead my team, right? So that's a very important starting point for every leader. Every leader, every good leader I know is clear on their core beliefs and values, and they have that solid foundation that propels them to be influential and make a difference in what they do.

Okay, we have another question here, and I am, uh, I am not an actress, but I'm going to play one right now. Okay, so carrying on the grocery store, because I just graduated from high school and this is a family-owned mom-and-pop grocery store, and I am like the manager of this grocery store. They need a leader. Why can't I lead? Do I— someone said something like, you shouldn't be a leader, you're just graduated from high school, you need more years of experience under my hat. And I'm like, I don't wear a hat, I don't need experience, I just need to share the things that I'm learning from other leaders. Is that true?

Well, you, you know, you, you need to have an understanding of the core drivers in a business or whatever it is you're trying to lead. So having some understanding of the customer, the products, how money is made, profit margins, the financial tools you use to analyze the business. So there's a lot of content that you need to understand to evaluate situations and make effective decisions. Some of that you gain through experience. Some of you can gain through the textbook and taking classes and things like that. But you want to make sure a person is ready. They have both the background, the insights, the experience to lead something like a grocery store or something, a company, or whatever it happens to be, a hockey team, doesn't matter. Yeah, so I think that's really important.

OK, so then the goal of this fun little role-playing— at least I had the fun part of it— but the fun part of the role-playing is that It really is important for managers, for business owners to understand what their leaders will look like and make sure that they're either training them or bringing in a Paul Thornton to train. So what does that look like, Paul? So you're called by the grocery store. I'm calling you. I'm a manager. I don't know, but they want me to lead. He said I have no budget. I mean, I have a good budget. I can hire anyone. Would I be calling you and saying, can you help me? And what would that look like?

Well, you could be. There's a lot of ways to develop your leadership skills and knowledge. I mean, there's all sorts of YouTube videos. There's also great articles and books and what have you. I think if you put your mind to it, you can learn a lot about leading, you know, through those avenues. You can learn a lot too by observing and watching some effective leaders. You know, what do they do? How do they operate? How do they come across? How do they inspire people? You know, what do they do? And I think leadership is, you know, it's a lifelong journey. My 11-year-old grandson recently, I thought, had a very effective leadership moment. There was a kid in his class that was bullying another kid. And he, my Grandson's very confident. So, he went up to the bully and said, "Hey, you know, what you're doing isn't very nice. Joe's a nice kid and, you know, why are you doing that? And that's not right." And he said to him, "You need to apologize to Joe for what you said. And you sure you shouldn't do that, you know, because Joe's a good guy and, you know, you're a good guy and blah, blah, blah." So, I was amazed at his courage and his willingness to step up and confront this bully, a lot of classmates would have, well, they did. They just let it slide and said nothing and turned their head and, you know, do nothing. And a lot of times in life, the leader is the one that steps up and says or does something. The non-leader is the one that says, "Ah, you know, no big deal and I'm not getting involved," or, you know, they walk away. So pretty amazing.

I love that story because he wasn't the innocent bystander.

Right.

He made sure, and that's usually the third party to bullying and the bully or the victim. So love it, love it. Congratulate him for me. I think that's great. Sometimes I get that, you know, it's funny, I've done a lot of like leadership programs. All right, so like I've done like Leadership Osceola, Leadership Orlando, Leadership Hollywood, Leadership Port Orange, Leadership Daytona Beach. I love, love, love leadership programs. But what I've noticed sometimes is that I don't necessarily always have to be the one in charge. Yeah, that is not— could I? Yes, but I don't have to feel like, oh my God, I've got to gather the people together. Or even on the social app called Chatter, I don't always have to be the one leading. So it's interesting to me. So I'd like your perspective on that because sometimes people are— they just come right in and they're like, OK, here's the role, we're going to take it together. And I remember one of the leadership programs with Dr. Pepper. And it was a program that they had for Leadership Hollywood, but it was some role-playing involved. But they, they said, okay, I want everyone to, you know, pick a leader. And then whoever they were pointing to, to pick a leader, it went on to— they'd like— they were the one. So if I pointed to Susie and said, I think Susie should be the leader, I would be the one that was picked. And I love that. And it just kind of got you thinking out of your own mind. But what What suggestions do you have as a leader? Do you always have to be taking charge? Because can you explain that being a leader doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take control?

Yeah, I think you're right. There's different ways that leaders can add value. One type of leader is simply the thought leader, right? The person that comes up with an idea or insight. That's going to help the group focus or see things in a new way. So sometimes you're in a meeting, you're not leading the meeting, but you have some really interesting and innovative ideas that you can put on the table and, you know, that they may take hold and the group might say, yeah, that's a great idea. We need to do that, blah, blah, blah. There's other times when you can be a leader just by setting the example. My grandkids play sports and I talk to them a lot about setting a good example in practice and in games of working hard, being prepared, being diligent throughout the whole game, that type of thing. There's also the servant leader. The servant leader is looking around the group and saying, who could, who needs help today? Who isn't quite engaged or participating or adding value. Maybe asking that person a question. What do you think, Susie, about XYZ? Or how do you think we should approach that? Getting them involved. So, there's a lot of different ways you can go about influencing the group and engaging them and focusing them or you know, maybe clarifying, but getting them to come up with some common goals and some common approaches that would make sense for them to move forward. So, yeah, it's not the person who's in charge, quotes, isn't always the one leading every minute of the meeting or session or seminar or workshop, whatever it might be.

I love that. It's not the person with the loudest voice. Yeah, I think that's great. Okay, so to go back to this, to go, well, to talk about servant leadership for a second, because it's really important to me because I didn't know the term servant leader. So I am 62. Did you hear that?

I didn't hear that.

62. Nobody else listen. Close your ears. Okay. Now I'm kidding you. I feel like I'm 22, so it doesn't really matter. But like, so my point is, is back when my 30s, I I honestly thought what was wrong with me. And growing up in a family business, I think my family was like, what is wrong with Adrienne? I was always like, wait a second, is she in the right role? How can we make her role better? I don't want to just give her a title and not give her the role. Can I work with her to make sure that she's like the best in that role? Because one day she may want to leave and I want her to be perfect for when she leaves for another company. I'm like, and they were like, what? Like, because that turned out— how would my parents know? They were born in the '30s and started their business 1955. They didn't understand age. Nobody understood me. And it really was only about 10 years ago I heard the term. And when I heard it, I thought, oh my gosh, that really is me. And so for all of you that, like, can we give some tips for those that are servant leaders and don't understand it? Actually, it's interesting too, because I'll hear this a lot. I'm a servant leader because I volunteer my time in church, or I'm part of a nonprofit, and that servant word term gets confused with the leader. And so a lot of people, I'm not even sure really understand it. I think the best way I thought of it was you can either be people over profits or profits over people. And I tend to be that wanting to make sure that person is in the best situation because then they will be able to be profitable than putting them in a situation where they're not like, so yeah, I'm the one that would say, is everyone happy in their job? Because if you don't like it, then let's see what we can do. But I'd like a little bit more drilling because I feel like there's one person out there that really has that question. And why?

That's a good, good topic. Good question. But before I answer that, I want to tell you that 62 is the new 42. And, and you have more energy and enthusiasm and passion than most people I know. So that keeps you very, very, very young and energized and focused. But back to servant leader. As the term implies, it's two words, leading and serving. I think sometimes people forget the leading part of it. A servant leader is also a leader. They typically have a vision or destination, a long-term goal or They have an idea of a better way to proceed. You know, so that's kind of, they put that out there. But then the serving part is, how can I help you achieve the vision? You know, what can I do for you? Do you need resources? Do you need, I don't know, a clear roadmap? You know, what can I do to help you achieve the vision? So both are important. Sometimes, I find leaders forget the serving or helping part of the equation. You know, they're good at throwing out the challenge or the vision. We want to increase sales by 30%. We're going to do it in the first quarter. And it's like, okay, but how are we going to do that? You know, they don't do any explaining or serving like, here's a plan. Let's talk about this. Or what do you think? Or together come up with a plan. You know, so that's, that's where they fall down a bit.

I love this. I smiled because, oh, your Boston comes out, sports and important.

Park the car in the Harvard Yard.

Yeah, see, we don't, we don't have an accent in Connecticut. Yeah, between you and New York. But my husband actually comes from the, like, Southbridge area. And so the Sturbridge, and it's so funny because half his family talks like Worcester and the other half Is boss sound like weird? Anyways, okay, so, so in a company, first of all, what, what's, what tools I like, what skills you need to have to start to begin to possess leadership skills? What would make— so I want to make sure I'm getting my question correctly. So I'm young, I graduated from college, and I'm excited to go off in the world, and one of my goals will be to become a leader in a company. How would I go about doing that? What would those steps look like for me?

Well, as I said earlier, one thing you can do is observe other leaders. Study what they do, how they do it, what's effective, what's not effective. But you want to certainly develop your skills as well. And we all know communications is a critical skill. So, working on how do you communicate your key ideas, your big points, your big ideas? How do you convey them? How do you come across? Do you come across as someone who's confident with your convictions? As I said earlier, you know, what do you fundamentally believe in value? And is it clear in your head? So, working on that, I think, is really important. Being able to influence people and inspire people, that's huge. So how do you do that? Well, you can appeal to their logical side, you know, present logical arguments and rationale why we should do something. The facts add up to it or the numbers add up to it. We should do this. The emotional side, how do I connect with the person emotionally? Stories and experiences I've had and things like that. How can I relate that to engage them and get them excited about the possibilities that, you know, I see or we see together? I think that's really important. Skills like delegating, you know, that's always important. The more you move up an organization, the more you have to be an effective delegator. Coaching is important, giving people feedback, pointing out what they could do to be more effective. I think one thing young people can do is volunteer to be a coach on your local, you know, football team or baseball team or whatever. That gives you some real-life practice at coaching and, you know, leading. I mean, you got a team of kids you're leading, you're leading drills and practice sessions, but it gives you a lot of direct experience of what it's like to influence a, you know, 13-year-old boy or girl to understand the drill, conduct it effectively, give them feedback, point out what they could do to be more effective. You know, all those types of things are helpful tools for the leader down the road. So, I don't know, those are some ideas anyway.

Beautiful, beautiful. It's funny that I used to have, uh, not like big arguments, but I would, I would argue the fact that delegation is so important to my parents and the employees that didn't, did not delegate because they, you know, no, I'm the only one that could do it. It's me, it's me. And I'm like, Mom and Dad, that's not a good thing. That's not what a leader would do. That's actually the opposite, right? You don't want to have that person— what if something happens? What if they got hit by the proverbial bus? Like, that's not— and it was hard for them to understand that. But I also want to talk about there's the knowledge that you can learn, what you could say and do, but what about the things that you're like, not verbally, but the cues? And so my question to you, Paul, and you can take some time to think about this. Do you push your chair in or do you leave it out at meetings, at dinners, anytime you stand up? Are you walking away from your chair or do you push it in? Hmm.

I don't know. I think I typically sit down in my chair and I pull it in a little bit.

I don't know. When you get up from your chair, are you putting it back where it was?

When I get up from my chair, I move it back.

See? See? Okay. So I wrote an article about that because it's interesting to me. Well, I am a corporate etiquette educator, so my company is Professional Global Etiquette. But I see that so much, and it drives me crazy. And I think I've always been like, you get up from your chair. I mean, didn't we learn that in kindergarten? When you get up from your chair, put your chair back in. But then when I compare it to the leadership skills and how important it is, and when people see you doing that, they're more apt to doing it. It's like some of those quiet cues for leaders. I know when I run a room or a workshop or Zoom, I like people to raise their hand because I'm a hand raiser. I don't want to talk at the same time and interrupt someone. That just feels funny to me. I'm not comfortable. So I like being a hand raiser. What are you? Are you a hand raiser or just kind of flow with the conversation?

I am a hand raiser. I used to be a college teacher and I would require the students to raise their hand before they made a comment. It gives a little more structure to the class. And, you know, I, Yeah, I required that.

And even board meetings, I like to have like a cue. Okay, Mike, I've got you next. John, you're going to be after Mike. And Sally, you'll be third. So go ahead, Mike. And then you. Yeah. So it's so interesting. Structure.

Yep. I agree.

Can we have a little fun? Can we talk about other cues? Because sometimes it's not all about the verbal. So give me one. Give me one that you think is like a nonverbal, but that kind of shows you're the leader.

Well, I think one thing is where the leader sits in the room. You know, in some situations I've been in, the leader always sits in the same seat. It's like the power seat at the end of the long table. They're in the power seat and everyone else around the table. Now, I had another manager and he would move around. He would sit on the side sometimes and sit down the end or on the corner, you know. And I thought that was kind of interesting. When I was teaching class, after the first 1 or 2 classes, most students sat in the same seat for the whole semester. I had one student one semester that every class he moved around and sat in a different seat. And he was very motivated to get to know everybody in the class and I thought that was really interesting. One of the things leaders do, or if we look at it this way, there's two focuses of a leader, the task and the relationships. This particular student was very much into the relationship side of the equation and wanted to get to know everyone in the class and he did. He was very popular and he connected well with people and that was definitely his strength. So that's kind of one thing that's interesting is where people sit. And another thing is when do people speak? When does the leader speak up in the meeting? Do they wait until everyone's had a chance to give their view? Or are they typically the first one to say, "I think we should do X, Y, Z." You know, that's kind of an interesting approach. A lot of the talk these days is the leader should wait and hear from everyone else and then be the last one to speak, so to speak. So that's another one. What about you? Any others that you've observed?

I think as a leader that leaders, you should always have a pad of paper and a pen and be actively listening and writing notes. And if you have a pad of paper, pen, everyone else around you will have a pad of paper, pen. So if you're running a meeting, make sure that you have even at the very worst, it's a hotel memo pad with a pen. At least have something at everyone's plates, because a lot of times people aren't thinking. And my dad always taught me as a leader, do it now. Don't just talk about something, do it. Do it quickly. He would give me directions. I would say, okay, I'm going back to my office to do it. And I just could picture my dad. I'm melancholy. I kind of miss my parents. And my dad would say, where are you going? And I'm like, back to my office. And my dad would say, There's a, there's a desk and a phone right here. Like, I don't understand, Adrian. Sit down and make the call, and then we could talk about it afterwards. I mean, he taught me right after college. I really got some of the best training. My dad was definitely a leader, didn't graduate from college, but understood and had a lot of empathy. And my mom was really HR, and so she taught me too. But those, those things combined were really important. Also, as a leader, I think I agree with you, listening, like just Listening. How many people, how many of you have seen leaders where you're around the table and they're distracted? Or you go into their office and they're unable to step away from the computer and look directly at you and have a conversation. And especially those that are like, I have an open door policy, come in any time. And then when you walk in, you're like, that's a weird open door policy. Does that mean I can come in, but I'm not going to be heard, right? And so I think a leader hears people and listens.

I agree. And I think along that line, Adrienne, just making eye contact with the person you're speaking with or listening to is really important. And, you know, we've all had leaders that they're looking at their cell phone, they're looking at the computer screen, they're, you know, looking out the window. And No one— you feel like a second-class citizen when you're in that environment, you know. So that's another thing to keep in mind.

Your turn. I love games. But corporate etiquette really does come into play too with leaders and making sure— I think leaders also, you know, set the tone. So I love talking about like dining etiquette with leaders. And how they take care of that. But any other thoughts of leaders and cues that they do?

Well, I think you always want to come across as being inclusive. You want to welcome people and make them feel like you're glad they're there at the meeting or the conference or whatever it might be. I think that's really important. Being prepared yourself, knowing people's names. You know, if it's a big conference and, and, you know, you got a big organization that you lead, knowing people's names and what have you is critically important. I don't know, those are kind of the ones that come to mind.

What about this one? So I, growing up, I always heard the term and I saw teachers have teachers' pets, they call them, right? Which is a really weird terminology. But I also have seen in business leaders having their own favorite person, and you can feel it, you can see it, you can almost like taste it. You know when someone is like, "Oh, Sally, oh, Sally's always doing everything so perfectly great. The rest of you—" And so leaders should be very conscious of not making someone— don't, you know, lifting someone up is a great thing. Who doesn't want to lift someone up? But don't lift people up at the sake of lifting others down. Right.

Yeah, we, I used to tell my students, you know, one of the things you don't want to do as a leader, have an in-group and an out-group. You know, the in-group is the 2 or 3 people you go to all the time for their input, their advice, their thoughts. And then everybody else is like, you might go to them, but oftentimes you don't. So You want to have some equality and, like I say, engage everyone, treat everyone the same. I think it's really important in meetings that you don't have 1 or 2 people dominate the meeting on your staff. You get everybody involved. Call on people if you have to. You want to, you know, appreciate the ones that are contributing a lot. Say, "Thank you. I really appreciate your comments, but I want to hear from Joe or Sue. You know, Sue, what do you think we should do here? You know, engage them and get everybody or give everybody an opportunity to participate and be part of the goal setting or planning or problem solving, whatever you're doing.

I love that. I love that. You know, the key is too, is that if you know that Sally is really, really quiet, what I would do is just before the meeting, I would just say to Sally, do you mind if I call on you? And will that be okay? Because I would, we know, we know that you have so much to put, but I know myself how hard it is sometimes, because that's why I really recommend that as parents and as leaders, that we also try to make sure, like for your 11-year-old, that they grow up and they learn how to like serve on a committee and what that looks like. And that, and that's okay. And then to encourage, you know, chairs of boards It's okay to bring someone on that needs to be mentored. Bring them on. Or if you are, if you're in a board and you're a volunteer and you're like, oh, this person's new, offer to be their mentor. Let them feel comfortable. I like literally would, when I first started with committees, I would just pick someone. Usually they were bankers, so I'm not sure why I would do bankers. Maybe I thought they would throw me some samples somewhere along the way, but I would just ask, can I be your mentor? And then I would just, guys, I'm jokey. I would like settle my chair right up to theirs just to bother them and goof around for a little bit. And then I would go back because I do care about people's space, but even that, caring about people's space. So I love this because we could go on and read a lot about leadership. So tell me what you do. Do you have articles, blogs? Like, what, what does Paul Thornton do to, to people, your suggestions and ideas? But then also, how does someone work with you?

So I would love that. Yeah, thanks for asking, Adrienne. One thing I do a lot of is I write. I write articles and books. I've written 25 books, believe it or not. So my books are short and to the point. Most of them are 50 to 80 pages in length. I try to hit on one big idea in the book. They're all available on Amazon. They're also very inexpensive. They cost anywhere from $2.99 to $4.99 type thing. So, I do that. I also speak at conferences a few times a year. I'm semi-retired. I don't like the word retirement, but I want to stay engaged and want to keep contributing. And I do training programs on occasion. I went to Dubai last year to do a training program over there for a company that had read one of my books and liked it and wanted me to you know, teach the staff on some principles on organizational alignment. So I do seminars and workshops on occasion. I don't do a lot of them, but, you know, I do them if a company wants to bring me in and do one. I'm on LinkedIn. That's where I'm probably most active. I typically try to write an article, or not an article, but a post once or twice a week on some aspect of leadership. So you can get my thoughts there if you're interested. But I hope you'll consider two books that I highly recommend. I wrote one on leadership styles, which I think is really effective. And I wrote one on the leadership process. That I think is good as well. And the third one I wrote was on organizational alignment, which is a topic that doesn't get a lot of time and attention, but it's a very important topic, I think. So those are three things that, you know, might be worth checking out.

So I'm wowed because I already went on. So you can see under the thing, books by Paul— wait, why is it Hillbilly? No, gosh, okay, I gotta delete that comment. My gosh, I'll do it when I'm off because that was kind of weird to me. It was the wrong book. Amazon, when I went on there— wait, hold on. I have it right here. Paul's book. So these leadership styles, leadership case studies for teachers and seminar leaders.

Awesome. Yeah. Leadership Process is the other one. The Leadership Process is the one I wrote.

That's— I want to do this. I want to go in and get your name as the author and then get your Author page. Here we go, here we go, here we go. Okay, hold on everyone because let me put this in the StreamYard. I wasn't— not focused, but I just want to make sure because it's going to take, uh, maybe about 3 weeks to process to, um, for this to go into a podcast. There we go, that is it, that's the one. All right, great. I, and I, I love that, like, so when you're, when you're writing, is it something that, like, is there something that you that's like, oh, I'm going to write about this, or is it more that you kind of have all your topics set up and you're kind of doing topics? Because I am curious about that.

Well, I, I try to— when I— what I try to do is come up with a relevant topic that I think will help managers and leaders be more effective. And I try to come up with some, some way of simplifying things to make it practical and usable. And my books, like I say, they're, they're pretty simple and clear, but I think they're very useful and helpful to people, you know, I think that's important. So I don't know, I like right now this morning, I was writing something on delegating, which is something that, you know, there's been a lot of things written on it. There's been a lot of books and articles and what have you. But I try to come up with what would be a useful angle or way to, you know, state it that people could get the message in a one-page, you know, 500-word article type thing. When I taught, I used to teach principles of management And when I started teaching, I had to use a certain textbook. And the textbook was like 500 pages long. I was like, you don't need 500 pages to teach someone how to be a manager. So I ended up writing my own book, which was like 120 pages, and it had 20 chapters in it. And again, my idea is boiling it down, simplifying it, making it clear. So, so a student could read, you know, 10 pages and get an idea of what you need to do to be an effective, you know, delegator or run an effective meeting or, you know, whatever it might happen to be. So that's kind of what I, I try to do. I love that.

I love that. I also think when I think of leaders, I think that they don't interrupt. And I know, I know how difficult it is, you know, if someone's going on, but then set the rules beforehand, right? Like, say, we're gonna ask you for a minute or two. So because otherwise some people will take over. But if you are looking to be noticed by the leader, state your case, and then stop talking. Because I think as myself as a leader, and as I have a committee around me, I will know, you start to know, like, okay, this person cannot deliver and communicate effectively, because they're saying the same thing over and over and over. And one more time over again, right? So I think that's really That's really important. And it's funny, I just wrote— I don't even know how to pronounce his name, but I thought it was so interesting— the NFL draft fumble, um, fumble, Shador Sanders. Am I saying his first name?

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think that there was a lot of etiquette lessons in what he was doing. So I like to myself include like the, the etiquette lessons along with leadership style because I, I just— there's so much. I love this conversation. I just love I think it's great. I think that the goal for, for us though, is to produce a new generation of leaders. And Seth Green, who I admire a lot from Market Domination LLC, says— I love this one— but he says, be where your feet are. And his wife had it on— she has Winey Palooza podcast, I produce for them, I like literally love it. But one of the things is that be where you are. So for our next generation, you You know, be very careful, listen, you know, don't interrupt. Interrupting is a bad habit. Yeah. So teaching, I just feel like that part of it to make sure that these kids understand how important it is to learn how to have dialogue back and forth. Yep.

We, we have my wife and I have 5 grandsons and their ages are from 10 to 17. And our house in situ, it's on the water and we have a boat and what have you. So they come down here for a week or longer. In the summertime. And each summer we try to work on one interpersonal skill that will help them in their life and career and being a leader. So one summer we worked on making eye contact. And then the next summer we worked on asking effective questions. And each night at dinner, we would say to them, you know, what questions do you have for us? We wanted them to be curious and, you know, probe and ask questions. And the week didn't start out so great. They really didn't have much on Monday, but by the time Friday came, they were asking like 3, 4, 5 questions, and they were very curious. And, you know, so they really got into it, you know. So we've been thinking about what are we going to focus on this summer? You know, I like the idea of being present and being in the moment and being attentive to the group or the person you're with. I think that's an important leadership trait as well. So we're working on them. Thank you, Seth, for that.

Oh, you know, another thing, just two more. A leader puts their ego— they check their ego at the door, correct?

Well, I don't know. I think a leader has an ego because I think they're clear on what they believe. And value, and they know what they think is important. So I don't think there's anything wrong with having an ego. I think having an ego is good as long as you don't become arrogant and condescending and think, you know, you have all the answers and all that. That's bad, you know. But having a strong point of view, something you believe in, and a core conviction you have, I think is good. I think we need it. We need leaders who are willing to state what they believe and stand up for it and make their case, but also be open and humble and listen to what the other person's got to say. So that's the way I look at it.

I love confident leaders. I don't necessarily like when they're sharing, oh, last weekend I was on the boat and the blah, blah, blah. First class. And, you know, like, that— like, when I think of ego, I think of that. And then we should go out with the most important to me, because again, my parents taught me this. Yeah. People out there, Paul's going to tell you, stop saying how busy you are. Yeah. You are not helping yourself. Do leaders say, start, I'm so swamped, everyone, I am so busy?

Like, is that what a leader would say? No, no. Uh, leaders should be in control and calm and clear. And if you're hectic and busy and going in 19 different directions, you're not conveying the presence you need to make an impact.

You know, I think it's like the trickle-down effect. If the leader is telling you that they're so busy all the time, then why are your employees are going to tell you how busy they are too? If the leader is coming in at 10 and leaving at 2, even though the work hours are 9 to 5, you don't know what's happening during that time. Like that, that to me is a problem. I've had leaders that do exactly that. And I'm like, where are you? But then they will come in when their leaders come in. All of a sudden, they're like working the full day. Like, wait a second. So I think that a lot of leadership lessons are what we've learned in kindergarten. Yeah, right. I really do. All the things that we learned at kindergarten. Paul, I really enjoyed talking to you today. I love this because I had no idea who you are. Everyone's like, aren't you scared? I'm like, I've had over 250 interviews, maybe 300. I've never had anyone— I say no religion and no politics. Otherwise, I'm having the best guests. And you are one. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Yeah, I have too. I have too.

Yeah. Oh, and so, okay, so I'm gonna— now I've become your stalker. So I'm going to go in, I'm going to follow you on everything, sharing everything. I, I think you're amazing, and if I can recommend you, I'm going to recommend you. You are, you are brilliant. You have a nice calm way about you too. So, well, thank you. No, you're amazing. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for watching. I really enjoyed this conversation. I will talk to you later. So This will stay up. I'll produce a podcast. I'll tag you, but you'll see. Why is Adrian Barker just following me like a little puppy? All right, have a great rest of the day.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Adrian. You're the best.

Oh, you are. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thanks so much. It was fun. This is great, Paul. I absolutely loved every