185- Courage to Leap & Lead with Brock Brown, part 2

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar.

Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

So, so bringing this back around because people are going to see me going off on a tangent. No, I'm not. I am saying now that Then how do we know that an organization— so suppose we're going to interview a company, you know, there's a job opportunity. How do we know that that company is values-based?

Can I tell you a story?

That's what we're here for. Okay, inside scoops.

So I got— I was called by an old client who was now with a new company. To see if I'd come up and talk with them about sort of strategic planning and leadership development. And they had, they were a private company, decent size. I think they're about 300 or 400 employees and in the construction business. And he said, you know, our owner is the CEO and he really, you know, touts us as being a values-based company. So I had to fly out, I had to fly, get in a plane and fly to go to their organization. I said, you pay my travel costs, I won't charge you a salary. We never charge a client until we've signed a contract, but we do a lot of work in advance of signing the contract. And so I went up, I got there intentionally quite early and I went to the reception. The first thing I said to reception is, hi, I'm Brock. Here to meet with the executive team. She goes, oh yeah, we're expecting you. And, and behind her on the wall, what was the— was the values. And I said, ah, look at those things. Those are pretty cool, those values. I said, who wrote those? She goes, I don't know. I said, oh. I said, are those values, like, are they prioritized, or where'd they come from? She goes, I don't know. I said, do you know, have you ever been trained on what they mean or how to use them? She goes, no. Okay, that's interesting. So I went upstairs to the boardroom and I noticed their values poster. It was framed on the wall. So I went and grabbed it and I took it. This is a big 3-foot poster. I took it off the wall and went and put it in the storage closet off the boardroom. So they all come into the boardroom and we introduce ourselves and the CEO is interesting. I said to my friend, I said, I'll come up if you give me an hour and a half. And he goes, okay. So the CEO walks into the meeting 15 minutes late. We thought, you know, normally I start a meeting on time, but if the CEO is not here, it's probably a big deal, you know, so I'm gonna wait for him. So I waited. He comes in 15 minutes late. The first words out of his mouth were, I only got, you know, 20, 30 minutes. I got something to do here. We gotta get going. It's okay. So I started doing my thing. I got a little PowerPoint presentation and And I made some statement and he says, well, you know, we're a values-based company and we're quite proud of that. And I said, can I test you on that? And I knew that that would do and it worked, which was, you bet, man, test away, you know. Okay. I said, can everybody pull out a pen and a paper? And they all pulled out a pen and a paper.

I hate to say that there was no cheat sheet on the wall.

And so I said, here's what I want you to do. And as soon as I said that, one of the VPs at the table said, he's gonna ask us to write down the freaking values. And I said, what I'd like you to do is write down your core values. I said, you don't even have to write down the behaviors that go along with them, but I'd like you to write down your core values. And if you put them in priority order, I'd like you to write them down in priority order. And one guy threw his pencil down. He said, well, I can't do that. And everybody else looked to the blank spot on the wall. And I said, I don't want you referring to any documents, guys. If you're a values-based organization, you know by memory what your values are. And so eventually everybody at the table but the CEO put down their pen. And the CEO was pressing his pen so hard. He got one word down. He got one value down. And he does not— it's almost like if I press hard enough, the words will come out of the pen. And it wasn't working. And you could tell he was embarrassed. He was frustrated. And I said, look, I'm not here to embarrass anybody. That's not what I intended to do. I said, if you are a values-based organization, and I know what those are like, it's my living. Those leaders know their values by memory because they're using them every day. They're holding people accountable to them every day. They're making decisions by those values every day. They reference them every day. They know them by memory. And I said, if you don't know your values by memory and you're claiming to be a values-based organization and you've got them on the posters on the wall, I will guarantee you that your employees think your values are nothing but pious words of intent and that you guys are phonies. And I said, The second guarantee is I can guarantee you because of that, your employees don't trust you. And head of the sales team, the VP of sales, he points his finger at me and he goes, I don't know if I'm allowed to use this word. He goes, Brock, you are full of shit and I disagree with you. And I said, well, that's not the first time somebody said that to me, but go test it. If your employees are honest enough with you to tell you the truth, go test it. And that meeting ended. And it's interesting, the CEO canceled the meeting he had so he could stay in the meeting. But we finished off the presentation and I left. That was a Friday. I flew back home and the next Friday in the morning, I got a call from the VP of Sales.

Wait a second. When you left the meeting, what did you think? Did you think, well, I'd blown that client or what?

Well, I didn't know. I mean, not everybody in the room was going, you're awesome, you know. And eventually we didn't go to work for them. And it was because the VP of sales told me. And I think like 2 or 3 years later, actually, they were bought out. Their sales had sort of tanked. And it actually was in a time when industry was actually kind of climbing up. But anyways, they didn't do very well.

So when the VP of sales called you, what did he say?

He or she said, you know, he says, Brock, I told you I thought you were full of shit. He says, I came back home. He says, I got 3 employees reporting directly to me. 2 of them followed me from a previous company and one's been working for me for the last 2 years. So he said, I asked all 3 of them, If they trust me. And they all said, yeah, we like you. And he said, I told them, I didn't ask you if you like me. I asked you if you trusted me. And he said, I gave him a scale of 1 to 10. And he said, I got a couple of 3s and a really weak 6. And, and I said, so what did that tell you? He goes, well, I asked them. I said, well, why don't you trust me? What would it take from— what would I need to do? To earn your trust. And they said, you're flying all over the place. You never keep us informed. You're making decisions here and you're making decisions there. We have no freaking clue what the plan is. We have no clue where we're going as an organization. And in terms of those values on the wall, nobody's following those. They're just words. And he said, I got my eyes open. My team doesn't trust me. And I said, well, thanks for calling. And then he said, by the way, did anybody call you about doing work for us? I said, no. He says, yeah, you're not gonna do any work for us.

That is a fabulous story.

I said, thanks for letting me know. That's awesome. I didn't do any work for them. But, you know, that's what happens. Employees see through it. And everybody claims to be values-based, but It really comes down. And when you see values-based leaders, they're quite stunning.

Did you ever use that tactic again, by the way?

Oh yeah. Yeah, write them down. Just write them down.

I think that's a great tactic. And I think the moral of the story is the company's sales declined. Yeah. So, Brock, Tell us, when you— I mean, that shows tremendous amount of courage and integrity as a vendor. Do you ever, when you, when you walk into a client for the very first time, do you ever get nervous?

Um, No, um, no, I don't think I get nervous. I, I do a lot of preparation. I do a lot of homework. Um, like I said, before we ever get to the position of signing a contract with a client, we have met extensively with them. We have put hours and hours into understanding them to see if we could work with them and they could work with us.

What kind of homework do you do before you've met the client?

I like to see if I can talk to groups of employees. I do some search on industry in terms of their industry reputation. I want to find out what their bid reputation is. Do they do fair bidding process? Have they ever been involved in trying to bribe a client? And generally industry will know those sorts of things.

How do you find that out?

It's not hard to find. You phone their competitors. You know, in fact, one of my clients One of their competitors always was bribing clients overseas, and the Canadian government discovered what they were doing on international contracts and charged them under the Competition Act. So you try to see what they're doing, how are they doing their bid process. There's a lot of things to be told about a company when you look at their bidding process and how they go about managing their client base. If you can talk to some of their clients, You do that as well. But well, the employee interviews that really sort of shine through.

But Brock, you call up a competitor and you say, hi, this is XYZ company. We want to know if your competitors have— I mean, who are you talking to?

Generally, if you have a contact, for me it would be having a contact in the sales team, knowing someone who can introduce me to the sales team or to the senior executive group. You know, one of the things that executives like to do is hang with other executives and meet down at the Petroleum Club or wherever they do and talk to one another. So you can get an executive to introduce you. And then if you get people who are willing to, you know, to be honest in all confidence, then you can find out information about them. And then, you know, you're just kind of— I think I have a pretty good ear for, you know, whether we call BS or whatever it is when you're trying to filter through the integrity and the humility of the CEO and then asking them questions like, you know, one question I asked the CEO is, let's say you discovered that you ran a whole CEO town hall presentation to a group of employees and you did it in the shop. And the shop wasn't locked out and you didn't have any safety gear on, which means you functionally violated most safety policies in your company. What would you do? And they kind of howl and howl and go, I guess I would never do that again. But what would you do about talking to your employees about what you did? And, you know, I'll never forget, I had one guy say to me, if you think for a second I would ever apologize to a group of employees, you are out of your freaking mind. And it's like, well, okay, fair enough. Do I think I can do work here? Somebody might be able to, but I don't know that it's me.

That's powerful. It's powerful. The notion of testing potential employees to see if they would be a good client takes a lot of courage.

It does. You know, Jeanne and I, when we started this company, we sat down and set out some sort of guidelines. And one of them was if I have to sell hard to earn money, I'm doing something wrong. And CB, and I'm not trying to blow my own horn here, for 29 years we have never done a cold call. 100% of our revenues come from referral. The other stipulation we put in place is that we didn't want our fingerprints on any project that was bound to fail. So we had to screen for that. What's the propensity for success? And if the C-suite is filled with arrogance and ego, lack of humility, machismo, as they say in Spanish or in the, you know, in the Hispanic world, There's a high probability of failure. And I know that there are some consultants who specialize in that environment. I don't. And I need to start with humility. I don't care if they know what to do. I need to start with somebody who goes, I don't know what to do.

Well, you have set a very high bar. In your work, and your success rate shows it. In your personal life, have you had to be courageous? Yeah, yeah.

My wife and I will be celebrating 39 years marriage this year.

That's encouraging itself.

Um, but at 8 years of marriage, um, and, uh, young kids at home, and, um, me probably being fed more by ego than anything And a couple things influenced me. One was my mentor Larry Mills showing me what integrity was and me realizing that, um, that's what I wanted to have and I didn't have it.

Why didn't you have it?

I consider myself, um, a man of integrity, and, um, and I'll tell you why here in a second. And then also fearing that, you know, my marriage was in trouble. Jeanne and I were completely disconnected. She was busy being a mom. I was busy trying to grow a career early on in the industry. And I came to my wife and sat down and talked to her and let her know that I'd been unfaithful to her. And I told her that because I wanted our marriage to succeed. And it was a very difficult time for us. We separated for 7 months and started going to counseling. Jeannie didn't know what she wanted to do, but at the time she said, I don't want to break our family up. I want our family to work, and I want to work at seeing if we can get better at this.

But can we go back a second?

Sure.

You told your wife you had been unfaithful. And you have been married now for—

8 years.

8 years. And now you're married to the same person—

39 years.

39 years. I'm not sure. I have so many questions to ask you. I'm not sure which one to ask first. One has to do with her courage. Mm-hmm. Another has to do with your courage. Another has to do with your values. Another has to do with what triggered it. Another has to do with what triggered your reality check. So I've asked all those questions. Can you answer some of them? Because I'm like, what? Where do I go with this? Yeah.

So, you know, having, you know, and I'll call Larry a mentor, having a mentor come into your life who exemplifies trustworthiness, is an exceptional leader, exemplifies integrity, and then you look in the mirror and go, I really value that, but I don't see it in me. It really causes you to sort of stop and go, but I want to be that, you know, what will it take to get there? Um, and then, you know, Jean and I started taking counseling. We, you know, we, we've actually done a lot of counseling, but we started taking counseling. And, um, you know, the counselor was just talking about truthfulness in the relationship, and I realized I wasn't being truthful, you know, with my wife.

But what, what circumstances Other than you were both busy and going your separate ways, what circumstance led you to infidelity?

Yeah, great question.

Um, because to me that's a long way than going separate ways.

Yeah, it— so probably the answer to that is way more time than we have, you know.

No, there's not. We can do part 2 and part 3.

The short answer would be being tremendously ego-driven. So I grew up in the city of Vancouver. I played football and I ran track. When I graduated high school, I was offered a full scholarship for football at University of British Columbia and a full scholarship for track at Simon Fraser University.

Wow.

I was good at what I did. That same year, the BC Lions, the professional football team in town, invited me to their camp. Um, and I, I realized that I couldn't go to school and be a student and do athletics, so I just kind of walked away from all of that. However, um, throughout the year, if you were in Vancouver and you opened up a paper, it had my picture in it, uh, with a story on me.

Wow.

I think that fed an ego, um, that was bigger than, than I could handle. And when I left the sporting world And nothing filled that void. And, uh, I would say my massive ego, uh, allowed that to happen. I, I allowed it to happen, but it came out of my ego.

I can understand that. Okay, now I understand. All right.

And Well, I, I think, you know, that, that's— to me, that's the answer to the question. Um, you know, what, what led you to even think that was just this desire to feed that ego, and, and, uh, that was something that fed that ego.

And, and then how— the and is, how did you, how did you tell your wife?

Uh, it started with, I got something to tell you and I'm sorry. And I sat down at the kitchen table with her and told her. Um, of course she was shocked, uh, hurt, uh, all sorts of emotions all at once. Um, I won't describe those. That's her story to tell. Um, and, and I said You know, I will take your lead in terms of what you want to happen. Um, I do not want this marriage to fail. Um, but if that's something that you would prefer happen, I'll support you in every way I can. And I mean, at one point I went to her and I said, um, as she was struggling with what to do, um, You know, weeks down the road, I said, hey, I'll sign over the house, I'll sign over the retirement plan, I'll sign over everything to you. I said, my job, if you want to end this marriage, um, is to support you in any way I can and, and support the kids in any way I can. That's what I'll do. I know I've hurt you. So—

Well, but didn't that sound to her like you were saying You know, I know you meant it to sound like you cared and you didn't want it to end, but didn't it sound like to her it was like, yeah, well, whatever you want?

No, and, uh, I hope not. I guess you'd have to ask her. Um, I never asked her that question directly. Um, we, we agreed to separate And, um, she wanted me to come home on weekends, which I did, so I could keep a relationship with the kids and so that her and I could talk.

How old were the children then?

Oh, my oldest would have been maybe 5 or 6.

Did they understand what was going on?

No, no. They knew Dad was not at home during the week. That's what they knew. That comment from me to her came out of sort of long conversations that we'd had about what the future Would look like, what she wanted it to look like, what she didn't want it to look like. You know what might going forward look like? What what might breaking up look like? So it didn't. It wasn't just some flippant conversation I made. You know, and I I was. She knew that I wanted the marriage to work and would do whatever I could to make the marriage work from my side. But I also. She also knew that I, I, I, if I said that, if she said that we're done, that I would follow through with that support. I didn't want her— I wanted her to know, because that's always a worry, I think, when people are in that position, what's financially going to happen. And I wanted to know that as best I could, that would never be an issue for her.

Hard question. Since you had done this, how did she know how to trust you again?

Yeah, well, she sort of laid out some ground rules for me that were important.

I'm sure she did.

And, uh, and, you know, I mean, lots of things we did and lots of ground rules she put in place in terms of my accountability, communication, Those sorts of things. But it— we both estimate it took 5 years for her to trust me again. And really interesting, when it all started, a friend of mine who had gone through almost a similar thing, except it was his wife who had been unfaithful with him. He said, Brock, if you're going to stay in the marriage, know that it'll take 5 years. Before she trusts you again. And almost to the day, 5 years.

Wow. And I'm taking notes. How do you know when somebody trusts you again?

Yeah, great question. You know, we, um, when we, uh, realized we were going to stay together, she laid out— or we laid out, I guess— boundaries that were important for us. And boundaries that were important for our relationship. So, um, you know, those boundaries stayed in place and still are in place, you know, today. Um, but something in terms of— it was— it's hard to tell. Um, I, I asked her, you know, she was pretty honest about saying, yeah, no, I don't I don't fully trust you yet. I don't fully trust you yet. And it's like, well, what would it take? Just keep doing what you're doing.

Mhm.

I got that. Um, and then there came a point in time, uh, you know, I'll never forget, uh, the first time, uh, after we had separated and got back together, the first time she wrote that she loved me. You know, that was probably 12 or 18 months. You know, so there's that type of indicator.

That she loved you? Yeah.

She wrote it on a Christmas card. I think it was on a Christmas card. So just little things like that. And then, you know, changes in our conversation. Our conversations became softer. Our Our sort of emotional outbursts from both of us became less frequent. Working through our challenges, because you still have challenges, whether it be communication or what's going to happen with the kids or what's going on in school, with a higher degree of care and attention and listening, you know, to one another and then respect for what one another thinks and says. I don't know that it was— there was no single indicator, but just a sense that, and I think a verbal sort of confirmation that trust is sort of regained in the relationship.

You mentioned emotional outbursts. How do I put this? CB style. What gave you the right to have emotional outbursts during this period of re-engagement, recovery, reuniting, re, you know, re-loving?

Yeah. You know, it, that, that took a lot, but Part of it was me. Part of it was us learning to communicate and communicate what we were feeling. And you know, I think that ego for me was a massive mask. I learned to put my mask on, you know, and this helped me to take my mask off, and that gave me permission to if I was. hurt, to show that emotion. If I was angry, to show that emotion. If I was frustrated, to show that emotion. Yeah.

But Brock, women feel— I feel that way. Most men wear a mask to protect their emotions. And I think that both men and women are at fault for this because we women think The men have to be strong and you know muscle man and solve every problem. And so men are sort of raised that way without disclosing you know how they're really feeling inside. What can both sides do to take that away, that stigma away, to be able to communicate? Like, I feel like, I feel like you're not paying enough attention to me, or I feel like you're paying too much attention to sports. So what, how does that, how do you communicate so that there is not a breakdown? How did you learn that?

Well, lots of counseling.

Yeah.

Um, and even just, you know, as I, as I started to explore that example that my mentor Larry had given me, you know, what does integrity look like? What should it look like? And within the context of that, what does honest communication look like? And it's not as if you wake up one morning and go, I think I'm going to be Honestly communicating my feelings today. It's a process of trial and error, two steps forward, one step back. Let down the guard, pull up the guard until because sometimes when you let down that guard, people take advantage of it, even in our marriage. You know, so. It's letting that guard down, seeing it be honored on both our parts, and learning to get used to the risk of doing that. And knowing that sometimes when you do, people will still take advantage of it. Sometimes when you do, your spouse will still take advantage of it. Doesn't mean the world's over. It means you're going to stop, reset, and go at it again. But you've got to keep a picture. And I think, you know, it's one thing she always told me is she always kept the picture of the end in mind. Picture of what our family looked like in her mind at the end and how it was behaving. That was what she held on to. And eventually it's what I held on to. And so it's always— we're going to be pursuing that picture. It's not a straight line. It might be this way one day, over here, come back, over here, come back. Now we're pursuing that picture.

I think that's incredibly important. I remember when I think I asked you if you were going to join ACEC, and you said to me, I have to talk to my wife about it. Is that part of— I mean, I thought, What? And I wondered, and then I thought about what you had said during the meeting, and I thought about your marriage because we had that inner circle. Is something like that fully communicating?

Well, I think to the extent that decisions affect one another, Yes, because you got to appreciate Jeannie is, is my wife, but she's also my business partner. We've run this company for 29 years.

Mhm.

Um, so that was not just a personal decision, it was also a business decision. And, uh, and because it's a business decision, it impacts her. One that I was willing to discuss without her input and how it might impact her. How it might impact our time together, our business, um, but those sorts of things.

Audience, forgive me, I've got allergies, so I'm sniffling. This is such an amazing conversation, and here's what I respect in you. Many men, or even women, would not talk about this openly, and yet what you've shared with us is so impactful And so helpful to many, many couples who are struggling. I know in my race, the concept of going to marriage counseling—that's a no-no. You just don't do that. And it's sad because the relationship between men and women, when it's filled with love. Is wasted when you don't have somebody that you can trust and talk to, because we can't know everything. We just can't. And you know, you men are from Mars and we women are from Venus. So we need somebody who's from Earth. Um, how did this— were you coaching at the time that this happened?

No, I was working in industry.

Okay. How did this prepare you or affect you in being a better, stronger coach, which you are amazing?

Um, well, I don't— I think the lessons learned Don't just apply to me being a coach. But a couple of things. One is a degree of resiliency, you know, 2 steps forward, one step back, 3 steps forward, 4 steps back. I think it helped me with a degree of resiliency.

I like that a lot. Yeah.

It also You know, when you, when you step forward, um, and whether you want to describe it as, as courage or not, but, um, and you put everything on the line and you put everything in the hands of another, um, and it's like, um, I'm gonna be honest and, uh, that could have some real negative consequences for me. I'm hoping it has positive consequences for me.

Mm-hmm.

When you've gone through that and you have put everything on the line and come out the other side and you're still alive, you may be dusted up and beat up, and it helps you to take that into other areas of your life. For me, I think it was a part of me going, At the end of the day, we need to be truthful. And, um, you know, Jeannie, Jeannie taught me what I call my greatest life lesson. And when we were separated, um, I was coming home on the weekend, and this one particular weekend I'd come home and it was Sunday, so I was getting ready to, to drive back to Calgary, which is where I was living while we were separated. And, uh, we were having a, a a discussion, um, late at night, and I was sitting on the floor, and, and, uh, Jeannie said to me, she says, um, you know what you do? She said, she says, um, you manipulate the truth to get a desired response out of me. And I said, what, what the hell are you talking about? And she says, if you think I'm going to have a negative reaction to something you say, you just change the truth a little bit. To try and manipulate my reaction, and I remember thinking to myself, oh shit! I do that all the time. And and then she said this to me: Your job is to tell me the truth and treat me with dignity and respect. My response is none of your business.

So take your I'm writing this down because this is gold. That's why I looked up to see what point in the recording you said this. This is gold.

So, you know, life lesson is, um, and I, I talked to my clients about this all— in fact, I passed this on to a client most recently I was coaching, and he said one of the greatest lessons he's ever learned because he struggles with it. He tries to manipulate people's behavior by changing the truth, especially in performance feedback. So the whole idea of, I'm going to treat you with dignity and respect, I'm going to tell you the truth, uh, whether it be me coaching a client, a client doing a performance review, having a difficult conversation with an employee, um, but I'm going to leave your response up to you. And if that response is You know, offensive, and you know, screw you. Then you'll live with the consequence of that. If your response is, thank you for telling me the truth, I've got some things to learn, then you'll live with the consequence of that. But either way, that consequence is out of my hands. My job is to tell you the truth and treat you with dignity and respect. How you respond is up to you.

Wow. Processing, processing away. Brock, I— we have to end, but I don't want to end because this is just an amazing conversation. And it's not often that I'm speechless, as you know. So, but you have set forth so many pearls of wisdom. Both in your work as an executive coach and your being a man and your being an exemplary part of society. So thank you.

Thank you, CB.

I'm so honored to know you.

And I am.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't even know how to end this other than I'll see you next week. And thank you so much, Brock. I can't even tell you how much I appreciated this conversation.

Thank you, CB.