GA 486 | Creating a Well-Loved Workplace with Lou Carter

Every day you're being told to improve your operations, to meet your deadlines, to be the best possible leader and manager you can be. And you're getting pushed down from your VPs or your CEOs and being told what to do and you feel like you just have to do it or you'll be in trouble.

Today I'm excited to welcome Lou Carter to the show. Now this is a really interesting podcast today, folks. So Lou Carter isn't your typical lean practitioner, lean thinker, although many of the things that he's going to talk about are completely aligned with all the things that we're talking about. But Lou is actually the founder and CEO of Most Loved Workplace Best Practice Institute, Results Based Culture. And he's also the author of many books on leadership and management and so forth. But today, sort of the topic of the show is what Lou called the universal solvents to horrible work relationships. And so that was a really, really, really caught my eye when I read that. So the universal solvents to horrible work relationship. So what we really kind of get into is like, well, first of all, like what is a horrible work relationship? Like, what does that look like when we really came at it from maybe a leadership perspective? So like if you're in a bad work environment, what is that leader probably acting like? What's their behavior? What are their actions? And then we sort of flipped it around and then talked about some of the solvents or some of the things, some of the countermeasures, if you will, that we do to sort of overcome those, those bad behaviors. And boy, it was just a really interesting, it's one of those deals where I had some, some questions lined up and ready to go and then just things would just kept popping up in my mind and, and so we just freestyled most of this conversation. So I think you're going to really find some value in this one. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 4 86. Again gembapodcast.com look for episode 486 also gemba events.com and check out some of the live instructor training events that we've got coming up down the road. So we're really excited. Yesterday we did a kind of a dating myself here because we, we're like a month or so ahead of the podcast right now. But yesterday we actually did a, a virtual caught it in a classroom workshop at like 80 some people show up and it was fantastic. So we're having a lot of fun with these live instructor events.

So.

So go check that out over@gemba events.com. okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Lou, welcome to the show. How are you?

Hey, thanks, Ron. Doing great today. How are you doing?

I'm good, man. Where are you calling in from?

Calling in from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Oh, wow. Nice. Nice. Yeah, right? How's the mosquitoes? Is that okay?

Hit me, hitting me. All right. Every day. But you have that. That good stuff to keep them away from you.

Listen, I know we talk about mosquitoes on a Lean podcast, but I hope my wife doesn't listen to this, but she doesn't like me using these pesticides. But, man, I found this. This Bifrin or whatever stuff and this other stuff, and I put it in. I bought little backpack sprayers because we've got a lot of mosquitoes here in Texas, and bad. I sprayed this stuff all around my property. They're gone.

Yeah.

Apparently you got to do it every three or four weeks, but, hey, man, it's worth it.

So, yeah, the. The state has a. The county has an installation every season of a mosquito repellent, so it reduces the mosquito population. I put in an order to do the same with lizards. We have so many lizards, so much.

Water, you know, and it's just.

It's good. We're beginning this podcast with killing animals, right?

Yeah. Mosquitoes. I appreciate you coming on, man. This is going to be a fun interview. So, as you know, Lou, we like to get things started out of the gate with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you have?

Yeah, so I thought a little bit about this when. When you asked me before, it was. I was told this by. It was a CEO. She was. The CEO passed away. She was 106 years old, by the way. She passed away, which is incredible. Frances Hesselbein, good friend of mine, CEO of Girl Scouts of America, formerly. And I was with her at the New York Stock Exchange, and she was. I was giving her an award there and to all these important people, and she. She heard me speaking, and for some reason, she came over to me after I spoke, and she came over my ear, and she actually knelt down. She's about 96. Then to my ear, I was sitting down. She said, lou, be careful of your thoughts because they will become your words. Be careful of your words because they will become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for they will become your destiny. And I thought about that and I thought, well, geez, what did I say wrong? Number one. Number two, I thought, well, that's going to Change, really, the way I think about life and the way I think about what real power I have with words and how people really do look to me when I'm in front of these crowds. And, you know, I don't think much about, you know, you know, how important am I? I'm just another person guy, you know, am I important? Well, I am. When I'm up there, it's my responsibility. It's like when you. You're in a relationship, wife or whomever. I'm the only one. I admit. Leaders have a responsibility at every moment to watch their words. They're very important. And when I heard that statement of sort of words matter, I thought to myself, well, what does that mean, words matter? Well, it means everything that you say can and will does have an impact on people. Yeah. So choose them wisely, be responsible in them, and do the right thing when you use them. Man.

It's so interesting that you say that. It's freaky timing, actually. I was having a conversation this morning with a colleague, and I said, you know, we were just talking about some different stuff and different changes in the company and all that, and nothing bad, but just some different stuff. And. And I remember saying. I was sitting there talking and I was like. And I was looking for the word. I'm like, I can't find the word. And I know it matters, and I'm worried about the next word I'm going to say. But. And I said it, you know, she goes, I get it. I get. I know what you mean, you know, and it wasn't again, but it was. You're right, you know, just. If you're just loose with your tongue and just sort of reckless, goodness gracious, you can leave a lot of damage behind you.

Absolutely. That's right, Ron. And the way you described it just now in saying that you were looking for the right word. Right. When I heard you say that, what's important is that you were looking. That's the most important thing. You were looking. And the pause. There's so much power in a pause, because typically when we pause, we give up control. And that's exactly what we need to do more of with people. Give up that control. Because we're so in control. We're in front of people in a crowd, and we need to be listened to. But when we give up control for that pause, we're actually allowing others to talk and give them the opportunity to take part in your speech, your discussion. So you're not dictating necessarily the discussion or being seen that way. At least perceived that way. So the power of the pause, the power of finding the right words and thinking, well, what if I did take that pause at that moment? What if I did reflect on what I'm saying and does it have meaning to me in my own values? That's a powerful thing to do every day.

Speaking of a pause, you know, Simon Sinek. You've probably seen Simon Sinek and read his books or whatever, but I remember he came to one of these big lean conferences a few years ago called Ame, and he. He was the big keynote, you know, at the end, and. And he came walking onto the stage. I was kind of excited. I read, you know, everybody's seen the why video and, you know, read his books and stuff, and. And he walks onto the stage. It's so powerful.

It is.

I remember it like it was yesterday and this was several years ago. Walks onto the stage, oh, Simon Sinek. Everybody's clapping, you know, and all of a sudden, sort of, he gets to the center of the stage and the clapping starts to come down because, you know, he's going to start talking and all of a sud down at the ground, and he takes his palms together and he starts rubbing his hands just slowly. And he's looking at the ground. And I'm telling you, he paused for at least five seconds. It felt like 30 seconds. And I thought, oh, my gosh, he forgot how to start, or he's. He's frozen or whatever. And all of a sudden, I've never paid more attention to the person in my life than I did him at that moment. And then all of a sudden, he looks and he says, it was a dark day. I was like, oh, my gosh. Then he gets into this epic story. You know, it was the most powerful opening to aikido that I have ever seen. You know, and all he did was be quiet and just kind of look down and rub his hands together.

You know, what's interesting about that is at that very moment he stood on that stage and he's rubbing his hands. He's summoning that dark day. Yeah, he's summoning it and he's becoming it.

Yeah.

And it's like every time we go into a different environment, we have to pause and remember that we're about to take on a new role. And that role will change, transform every single individual, as long as we're mindful of it and can become that role. So we're actors, really, all of us on this stage of management and leadership and results that we achieve no matter what we're doing. We're acting every day and we're playing this role of purveyor of excellence every day. And that's not easy. It takes a toll on us. Yet we have to summon that darkness like Simon did every day. There's five seconds of truth. Yeah. For him. And thinking through that context.

Yeah.

Just taking that moment. Because it's Showtime, man. Yes, Showtime.

Years later, talking about that opening. You know, I don't even know if he remembers it, but anyhow. Well, gosh, we've been talking for eight minutes now and. And people don't even know who Lou is. So tell us about your background, Lou, and tell us about, you know, what you're up to these days and sort of work that you do and that sort of thing.

So Simon can go up on stage, right? And everybody knows who he is. So who the heck is Luke Carter, right? What is that all about? Isn't that funny, though? In all seriousness, Ron, like, we assign roles, right? And we assign who you are. The truth is we're all back to Anonymous, all of us. And I don't know if Covid did that, whatever that may be. I don't want to date the show or what it may be, but we are all back to Anonymous. We all should be back to Anonymous in some way. The key differentiator in talent is how well do you do in the moment? What are you doing? What role are you playing in the moment? Who are you playing that role for? And that's who you are at that moment, Right? That's who you are in that moment. So I can tell you, Lou, CEO Best Practices to creator of Most Loved Workplace, published by Newsweek, the UK Global and the America's Most Loved Workplaces. Thank you, lou. Writer of 12 books on leadership management, including In Great Company, developer of the Emotional Connectedness Research and the Love of Workplace Index. Okay, so what I want to know who Lou is and what he's doing for me right now. Right now. So Lou, right now is a guy on your show who's going to talk to people who really love Six Sigma and do it every day and manage, and we're going to somehow have a discussion about how to create a better organization and career and day life for them. So we're speaking to them. So lose a guy speaking to your audience today. Not just an author or like guy who likes to boat. A guy likes to, you know, I'm not, you know, family and take scared of mosquitoes in Florida. And he uses repellent. He doesn't like lizards. I don't mind him. It lose a guy who's going to talk to your audience today and we're going to talk about emotional connectedness. We're talking about how to improve your leadership, how to really get into this, this focus that you have that's so hard every day. You're being told to, to improve your operations, to meet your deadlines, to be the best possible leader and manager you can be. Right. And you're getting pushed down from your, your VPs or your CEOs and being told what to do and you feel like you just have to do it or you'll be in trouble. Or here's the other one I hear all the time because I work with CEOs, I work with mid sized companies and large companies and I hear the same thing over and over again. It's their fault. Take that and rip it up and throw it in the garbage because they're going to work. I see so many leaders say this to me, Ron, and it's happened to me all the time. This happens all the time. They say this to me. They say I have to do that. It wasn't my choice though. That's what the CEO told me to do. I'm supposed to do this. I'm supposed to be more lean. I'm supposed to implement this process. That's what I have to do. I don't believe in it though. And when it goes wrong or they don't do it right, they say they told me to do it that way. Who looks weak in that situation? The CEO who told them to do it or the manager and leader who said they had to do it?

One might even say both. Right.

I say the manager or leader.

Yeah, definitely them. Yeah.

And I'll tell you why. They're weak because they're not weak. They look weak because they're saying to people, someone told me to do something I didn't believe in and I did it anyway. So I'm forced to do it. So you should be forced to do it too. Instead of saying, I've spoken with my CEO, my vp, I've talked to them at length. I debated the pros and cons of the different situation. We had a very healthy dialogue and came to the conclusion that together this is the best possible thing for our company. Now which one is going to win? The one who said I had to do it or the one that said? I debated this at length and got to a conclusion, came to a conclusion. This is best for all of us. Let's go in together and make it happen.

Right.

So which war is one better? The one where I'm told to do and go in and to fight, or the one that I know I believe in because I've gone through an internal struggle or an internal understanding and with others and my bosses to fight that war?

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. So it was interesting on the little intake form that we have for the, for the podcast on the topic and the theme of, of the episode, you had mentioned the universal solvents to horrible work relationships. I remember when I first saw that, I was like, whoa, that's pretty powerful little statement there. Universal solvents to horrible work relationships. Building most loved workplaces. So what makes a horrible work relationship, in your opinion?

There's a lot of factors for horrible work relationships. The biggest one is blame. Blame is huge. It's one of the worst possible behaviors you could exhibit as a leader. Blaming others for actions, blaming yourself, blaming failure on others. It's the worst. It's a terrible. It's something that creates huge consternation in companies needing to be right all the time. A need to be right, to be correct. That's me. I said this. That's the only way. It's the only way that this is the way to do it. And it's hubristic, hubris, leadership. You believe you could do something no matter what, and you just go through with it. You win or you lose in that situation. All right? But if you co create with people, that's the solvent, co creating. What we had talked about before with working with a leader, rather than being told what to do and saying it's his or her fault, then boom, right? It's blame. So the universal solvent to these things about need to be right, the need to blame, not take responsibility, not be a leader, is co creating with people. Now, George Bush Sr. Always said the universal solvent to all conflict is humor. Even though he didn't have. He always said he could never deliver a punchline, right? But he had others who were funny. Right? And he laughed a lot. Right. And so as a leader, he also said, he said to others who. He would always joke around with people who were not the president that he disagreed with. And he said, I can name a couple people who had a really low approval rating. He said, he said to them, if you're so smart, why am I president? If you're so smart, why am I president? So for me, what I think about is other leaders complain, other managers complain about their leaders, and they say that they're the smarter, have the smarter way if they're so smart, why are they not the CEO? If they're so smart, why are they not the chair? So what I am proposing is the fact of a respect for what is happening inside of an environment and. And understanding their perspectives and why they're doing what they're doing. Co creation does that gets in the way. In that way, though, when there's people who have hubris, people who blame a lot, it's a lot harder to improve processes, a lot harder. So we have to come with a foundational solvent to that, which is we believe we can. We will learn to create something together rather than have just our own, and we'll go through whatever it takes to feel comfortable doing that, even if I have to share my passion or anger or frustration or even my love for something. Right. We accept our feelings for what they are at the moment.

Something you mentioned just a minute ago, you said something to the effect of blame about blame and how. How bad leaders will blame others and. But then you even mentioned they blame themselves, and I thought, boy, isn't that interesting that you blame yourself? So I wanted to maybe just explore that a little bit. Thinking about blaming yourself, like, I felt like I might be guilty of that myself. For me, if I blame myself for. If one of my teenage kids goes awry, I feel like this shame, like, what did I do wrong, how I failed them as a father, you know, or. Or perhaps there's even this thing of, like, trying to take personal accountability for my actions. So maybe there's this, I don't know, this connection between sort of accountability and blame. What does that. What. What do you think about that as it relates to yourself?

It's a lot of unpacking. A lot of unpacking. What I've always noticed is that we blame ourselves first. When we have something that goes wrong, that's the first blame that occurs. The outward appearance is easier to blame others. After that, it's harder to say to yourself, I did it. Right? Mm. I did it. So let's look at the situation of employees doing something wrong. It's my fault they did something wrong. I know there's kids at play here, so it's a wholly, totally different emotion. So I moved away from it just to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just because it's highly emotional. Maybe it is the same, though. So let's look at it for a second. You have to ask yourself, number one, is it true? So somebody who blames themselves a lot sounds like you have, which is fine. It's normal. It's human. I've done the same. So I go to my. I say to myself, is it true? Is it really true? Did I cause my child to do xyz? Did I cause them to. Did I show them too much of my own behaviors and what I do? Thus they're doing these behaviors as a result. And there's a lot of. You can't control a lot after that. It's already done. The damage is done. You think it's done. So the solvent to that is to ask everyone you're around to be better than you. Your job is to be better than me. Don't be who I am. Now, you've heard other things where people say, do, do as I say, not as I do.

Yeah.

Not too different than that, really. Other than saying what I tell you to do here is be better than I am. You are a better version. I want you to be a better version of me. And I'm going to give you the tools, resources, vision, values to do that. Don't expect me to be that person because I have faults just like everybody else. And don't just look to me as your role model or mentor. I'll do my level best to be there. But I'm human and I'm human not. But I will do my best and I'm human. Be careful of our words because words are just flying now. Right. So I'm going to be careful of my words and I will be my level at my level best. And I'm going to fall. I'm going to slip. Don't use my words all the time because they're not the best. Use your own. Be at your best. Develop yourself. At the end of the day, everybody's responsible for their own actions and decisions. Yeah, we, we are not responsible for other people's actions and decisions. And we have to remember that is that just as much as we're not responsible for the way we feel after their actions and decisions, now responsibility comes into play. When we say we're not responsible for the acts of decisions, that's interesting because we actually are inside of an organization system seen to be responsible for their actions and decisions.

Yeah.

So this is a polarity. We are responsible for action decisions by virtue of our hierarchy. So what do you do in situations like that?

Well, yeah, in fact, had a very similar conversation recently. I've been asking some team members to, you know, try these some new things, some new activities that they weren't normally doing as part of their job description. And it was really fragmenting them and making it difficult for them to do their Their core job, you know, like their main job, if you will. And so what I realized was they weren't doing especially great on these tangential things that I was asking them to do and vice versa. It was starting to impact their, their main job. And so I realized that was my fault, you know, I had to take ownership of that. So I apologize to them. We hired a new person who took over the new tangential type activities so they could focus on that and then the core team member could do it. So. But yeah, it was 100% my whatever. I don't want to say fault or whatever. I didn't do it maliciously. I wasn't trying to hurt the company or hurt that person. But you know, it was a strategic decision that I made and after reflection on it, I realized that, gosh, it's not the best. And so we adjusted, right? And now things are great, everybody's happy and we're doing, doing great. But it took me, you know, some, some humility to go to those folks and say, hey, I literally said sorry, you know, I shouldn't have done that. And that was a mistake. And, and, but here, here's how we're going to fix it. Everybody was super appreciative of it. And yeah, so, I mean, you're right. I mean, as a leader of a company, you gotta take, I mean, I remember Mr. Toyota from the Toyota family who, who, who stood up. I remember after Toyota had all their quality issues, you know, a year or so ago or a few years ago, they don't have very many quality issues, but they had one and he stood up and I'll never forget, you just said I'm sorry. Those were the first words that he said, I'm sorry. And then he paused and then he went on about how this was never going to happen again. And you know, it's true, it's never going to happen again. I'm very confident in that. But you know, taking, having that, taking that accountability and that ownership, to me that's authentic.

Leadership in the. I'm sorry must live on its own. I'm sorry. And the accountability part that you're describing how it will be better in the future is self coaching. So what's happening in the moment as a leader is you're recognizing the failure, which is a leadership behavior. And then the second is you're giving yourself feed forward that others, meaning they're giving advice that others would have given you already and you're superseding that process.

Yeah, yeah, wonderful. You, you had mentioned earlier, I wanted to come back to this and you're sort of in your intro talked about these, the top most love workplaces. So I'm wondering if we could. You sort of talked a little bit about what you shouldn't do. If you want to have a horrible workplace, you should blame. You should. You know that. But if you want to have a an incredible loved workplace, is it just simply the opposite you don't blame or is it more to it?

There are specific things you do need to do. Now what I want to say is number one, there are universal solvents. It requires you bring them together though. It's an alchemy of sorts of. There's five different areas. The first is throughout the company having systemic collaboration. That means you create together and you do have processes in place that enable you to go out and create with your constituents. So you can be like Mr. Toyota and one day say sorry and know what to say, how you can fix it. You can only do that through collaboration and collecting understanding of your environment and actually giving them an ability to collaborate together. Now, Mr. Toyota also has a big vision, right? That's his positive vision of his future. What he knows needs to happen so that everybody in the enterprise, every single employee knows that when they come into work in the morning, they're taking part in that vision. That's number two. Number three is that my values as an individual aligns with the stated and espoused values of the company. If you spout continuous improvement, you also want to continually improve and get better over time. I'm sorry and I'll do this better later. It's alignment of values. Respect is when you show and you get back respect as a currency. Now, what does that mean? Respect is a lot of different things, a lot of different people. When it is a cultural norm, it's far easier to know if you're getting it or giving it. So respect equals trust. Trust equals respect. You do what you say you're going to do is part of respect and part of trust. You have to build up that currency. People value respect even more than monetary currency. We showed it in our research. People asked if they would prefer salary over respect when it comes to providing more voluntary discretionary effort, they chose respect. Believe it or not, Jackie Robinson said, you don't have to respect me or you don't have to be my friend. You do need to respect me. Though arguably one of the best baseball players of all time and was disrespected throwing tomatoes at no one cared about him but and Jackie said, I don't Want to be your friend. Just respect me. Give me respect for my talent. Give me respect. Different people define different ways. Some put comp and Ben salary in front of that and say, that's why you're not respecting me. Well, that's not true. Comes out to be other things. He didn't talk to me about it. Talk to me about it. Collaborate with me. Understand me. Respect my talent. Last achievement. Last achievement. Giving people the resources and development they need to be successful. You can give people a task, but if they don't know the development or know the process or what to do and how to do it to develop and grow, well, it's harder to achieve it. So those are the five things. Systemic collaboration, positive vision of the future, aligning values, respect. And then what we call knock it out or killer outcomes or achievement. You need all five of those. They're the, they're, they're, they're the solvents, if you will, or the amalgam of metals that create this greater, stronger metal and Toyota car that form emotional connectedness. Those are really it. And that forms love. It forms love. But the experiment I did with people, I put them in a room and I had 12 people. I split them up into two groups of six. And my goal was to see who would help each other more. And so my goal is I want to find out what causes people to feel emotionally connected to each other, so much so that they will help them out in their careers. That was my number one goal. So I put one group in a room and said, find out a way that you should endorse each other on LinkedIn and help each other out with your careers. Just one group in another one room. I put another group in another room and I said, okay, let's talk about what it will take for you to develop each other's careers and endorse each other on LinkedIn. And it turned out those five areas came out of it. And the group that I didn't have any treatment for got angry. They were upset that they were being taped. They thought the light in the room was too hot. They told us to reduce the air conditioning. They freaked out and they left. The other group all endorsed each other on LinkedIn. They all got together for beers after and they all stay in contact to this day. Why they worked it out, why they collaborated. They looked at their values. They discussed what respect was. They saw what they were going to do as a result of helping each other. It was clear the other group didn't know what to do. When left alone, people will do absolutely nothing. Given a context and given a structure and process, they will help each other. So I am in the face of what people normally say, which is believe in human nature, create human nature, give processes for human nature, and human nature will thus unearth into something greater than what it was before.

Wow, that's pretty powerful. Like I, when I saw that when I was kind of reading a little bit about you, about this experiment on the power of love and I was super interested to explore that with you because like I'm, I'm. I love looking at words like love. You know, like even in like in the Bible there's different types of. They'll use the word like eros is for like, you know, like romantic love. And then filio, which is, you know, fraternal or like brotherly love. Right. Philadelphia.

Right.

And then agape is this self sacrificial love. So it's like what God would show for you, like is agape. Right. So I'm curious, like, like maybe is it more like sort of like filio and agape mixed together? Obviously it's not Eros, hopefully.

Right.

What do you think about that? Is it sort of like this brotherly love, you know, that we're seeking or is it self sacrificial love? Or what do you think in a workplace?

So our beginning, the beginning of our research looked at companion love and then looked at effective commitment. So we took two organizational learning philosophies and figured out, well, which of it is going to connect into giving voluntary more voluntary discretionary effort, meaning perform more, stay longer. Those are our two things we wanted to measure. Perform more for the company and stay longer. Those are the two things we majorly wanted to know. There's other organizational outcomes we wanted too, but those are the two we're mainly concerned with. So definitely eros was off out the window immediately. So we didn't look at. That's called the companion is friendship love. The other one is companion commensurate love. It's the eros, it's the sexual or the relationship driven love. It wasn't. We knocked that, that's out the window. So especially when it comes to the workplace, totally different meaning. So there was an experiment by Arthur Ahrens that I examined at the time about Eros love that I used to, to form this experiment for work relationship love. And his was to ask a series of questions for each other. So he brought people in a room and they went in twos and he had them answer a series of about 52, 61 questions for each other and look each other in your eyes for a long while. Now, I did it so that it doesn't become creepy, but this is to look each other in your eyes and answer these questions and just stare there and be with each other. That experiment showed that you do have more eros love. You develop, as you said, eros love and fraternal love than if you did not have that experiment. So I said, well, what's it going to take in the workplace? Because it's different. It's very different. So in the workplace we found out that they are leadership behaviors and competencies more so than it was just this just friendship. Friendship was not part of it. So seeing these behaviors of being more collaborative, being more respectful, aligning with the values of the company and my values, knowing that I have a part in what I'm doing and being given the tools and resources necessary to achieve what I set out to achieve, that's the emotional connectedness that when you perform activities like that, one on one and in threes, same way Arthur Ahrens did it, same way. It just with different questions, different statements, you will create and achieve emotional connectedness. You just can't do the ero stuff because that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get you into trouble.

Right, right, right, right.

Wow.

Super interesting. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's really fun having you on because obviously it's a slightly different take than our normal sort of lean sort of podcast that have. But I think all the things that you' so complementary to what we're really trying to do as we're invoking change, trying to change the world, to make it a better place and change our workplaces and, and so forth. But in the end, what we are doing as lean thinkers, it's a human based system, you know, people. It's a people based system. People are cooperating with one another and trying to get things done. And in the end we do need to connect on, you know, and, and sometimes pretty deep, you know, many times vulnerable environments where to say I don't know or I need help, you know, it's very vulnerable to do that and it's not easy sometimes, but I think it's critical to be able to practice that and do that from time to time.

Absolutely. You have to. Being vulnerable and being authentic is a necessity for leadership and, and following through is essential. Too trusting. They all are the five areas. You have to practice them every day and realize your worth.

Yeah. Nice. Lou, if people want to connect with.

You.

I know you've written some books and you've Got a pretty awesome website that I was scouring earlier today. What's the best way for folks to reach out with you?

You go to Simon Sinek dot com.

Yeah. Okay, so the K E K. Right?

Everyone needs to know how to get in touch with me. Yeah. LewisCarter.com mostloveworkplace.com is is really where you go. Is most loveworkplace.com you look at me a best practice institute too. But Lewis Carter and Most Love Workplace will get you there right away.

Okay. Yeah. And we'll link everything up up here on the show notes. So all you got to do folks is just kind of scroll down on your app there and we'll have all, all the links there to, to connect with. Lou, are you on LinkedIn as well?

I. I assume I am on LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm one of the, the sea of people who are swimming. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Awesome. All right, well, hey, I really appreciate you coming on. This was a lot of fun. Lou, keep up the great work and maybe we'll have, we'll have you on again down the road road. And we'll keep talking.

Thanks for having me, Ron. I appreciate it.

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