187- Courage to Leap & Lead with Brock Brown and Marc Rossiter, 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.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just going to start by saying this is Courage to Leap and Lead. We have 2 extraordinary guests, and this is part 2. Mark, can you tell us the top 3 most courageous points in time that you've had that represents courage as the CEO of Interflex?

Yeah, uh, first of all, that That question makes me very uncomfortable. You know, I, I, uh, you know, so—

You want to rephrase it or—

No, no, I, I think it's good. I think that we can all— we, we should all recognize when we're acting with courage. You know, it's just a big word. You know, it's just a really big word.

So, so let me, let me, uh, expand on that. I totally agree, and that's the reason why I wrote my book Courage to Leap and Lead, is that we have this image of the word courage as being mammoth, something that we normally would not even think that we could do, like running into a building to save a burning building to save a child, or jumping into a lake to save an animal when you can't swim. So my book talks about microcourage. It's everyday actions that lead to something great.

Mm-hmm.

It could be Something as what other people see as simple, asking somebody who's visually impaired if you could support them in walking across the street. Well, that's microcourage because that person could say no and your ego is damaged. They could say yes and you could both be hit by a car. I mean, we don't recognize the small acts that we do every day. that make us part of society and human beings. So with that, let me rephrase the question.

Yeah.

As the CEO, what moments stand out for you as you think about your acts of courage?

I'll go micro to maybe bigger picture if you can. And I'll give you one example. And I think I would say it's an act of microcourage for any leader to walk around their operations and ask a frontline employee how they're doing and actually care about the answer and be ready to hear if the answer isn't great.

Yes.

99% of the time it's, yeah, great. Would you kind of, boss, just keep going? Like, I don't know you that well, just keep on going. But 1 out of 10, 1 out of 20, somebody's gonna go, not great. And it could be a personal thing. It could be a professional thing. And I would say the follow-on to that would be, well, tell me more. What's going on? And be actually willing to listen and to accept that because the world's a messy place. And I think that everybody's got things going on in their own life. They got their own challenges. To ask somebody how they're doing and be prepared to hear a negative answer and take that on. I think is courage because it's extra. It's somebody's putting something else in your backpack that's gonna make it a little bit heavier, you know, and you have to be willing to open that backpack and let people put stuff into it. I was, I was on the shop floor and I was talking to one of our leaders and I hadn't seen him for about 2 years. And I said hi to him and his, he talked, everything's going good, his family, all that kind of stuff. But he'd become significantly more muscular since the last time I saw him. And he's probably in his mid-thirties, and his face was significantly redder than I remember. And he said, everything's great. And I'm like, hey, you look different. You see, I've been working out. I said, okay. I said, are you taking drugs? I said, are you taking anything to achieve this that could have a negative impact in your life? And I said this, this, this gentleman was in the United States in Texas, and People in Texas don't love their bosses getting in their personal business. And he didn't know what to say. And I said, listen, the only reason I'm asking is I met your wife and your 2 kids at a company picnic 2 years ago. And I care about your health because if you're not healthy, you can't work and you can't support them. And I said, are you, are you really okay? He said, I'm not taking anything, Mark, that is a problem for my health. I just I'm really interested in working out. I said, okay. I said, but just remember, it's good, it's good to look good, it's good to take care of your health, but your real goal in life here is to have a job so you can support your family. He goes, I agree. I said, don't let other things get in the middle of that. He said, okay. So I think any HR professional in the world would tell you, you can't ask that question.

That's right.

There's no way. That's an outrageous thing to ask. And my answer to the HR people is Listen, I'll run the risk of being sued if it means that I've got a deeper connection with people I care about. And so, I guess that's sort of courageous to run that risk.

Very courageous.

I don't think people should use the threat of a potential risk down the road to not care about people, you know, and I say that's sort of an act of courage as we go through things. I'll jump maybe to a bigger one, CB. And about a year and a half ago, Enerflex decided to do an unsolicited takeover of our biggest competitor. And the numbers look good, the finances, you know, there's always risk in generating the financial returns for an acquisition, but they were about as good as they're gonna get to jump into that void. And when I had to sit back in my office and look out the window, I'm like, is this the right thing to do? Because Enerflex at the time had 2,000 employees. We came out of COVID pretty well. We had a good team. The easiest thing to do would have been nothing. By far the easiest thing for the CEO to do is nothing. And the financial rewards for a CEO of doing a merger aren't that much different than doing nothing, but the risks are much more significant. And so we had the courage to say, yes, let's do it. And I would say that I had the courage to put my own reputation as a CEO on the line to do that. The part that I didn't really understand was how I was making that decision for everybody else at the same time.

Yes.

You know, I was willing to take that leap. You know, I felt like, let's do it. You know, I think the risk reward is worth it. But if it's the right thing to do, let's do it. I probably didn't even put that much time thinking about what the risk was to me personally. But I made that decision for 5,000 people. And when I talk to CEOs now that ask me about it, I'm like, do not underestimate the impact this will have on all your people. And there's layoffs, there's always those things. I've got sympathy for all those things. That's a natural part of capitalism. You know, businesses combine, people get laid off, they find that that's part of it. You have to come to terms with that. But just asking a controller that works for you, you know, doing an acquisition at a public company, it turns your finance department upside down for 2 years and you've just made the decision for that team that an 80-hour work week is gonna be what they gotta do for 2 years plus. And I think if there's any CEOs listening to this podcast, just know that that's what you're doing when you make that decision. And it is, it is a courageous thing to jump into that void to try to do, to dare to do big things in business. But all those things come at a price. And, you know, make sure you're willing to pay that price and just have the humility to know that you're making that decision for other people.

Wow. You have definitely experienced courage. You know what? You've experienced courage in A very profound way. From your sitting— ladies and gentlemen, this is from part 1— from sitting and talking to the coffee boy to acquisitions. That's a huge span.

Yeah.

The definition of courage. First of all, just sitting and talking to a coffee boy, that could be a reputation breaker in itself. as the CEO, and many people don't see that. Uh, you mentioned the term leaders recognizing the smoke. I have to tell you, Mark, that's the title for your book because you've done so well at that. Brock, what is it like being an executive coach for somebody like Mark? He's a powerhouse.

Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy.

Not that easy. It's not that easy, Brock. Come on.

Okay, Brock, let's hear the truth.

You know, when great coaching happens, it's because a leader demonstrates the humility to know that they have areas to improve in. They're willing to learn. They're willing to fail and learn from failure as well as their successes. And they care about people. Like, leaders need to care about people. Mark's mentioned that numerous times today. So that makes the coaching process all that much easier. With, with Mark and leaders like him in Enerflex, You saw that in that initial sort of test that I did with the executive team. I did— we were able to demonstrate a level of humility. Not all of them had it, but most of them had it enough that I knew the project would be successful and that this group wanted to learn and wanted to lead change and wanted to do well and lead through things like values of integrity or be ethical, you know, those sorts of things. So that really is a key You know, key starting point here. And then it allows you to focus on some process. Like one of the things we did was help them communicate a strategic plan. And Mark said, you know, those KPIs, they're drilled right down to the front line in the organization so that everybody has goals tied to the strategic plan and employees know what the strategic plan is. In many companies, that strategic plan is kept at the top of the organization.

Yeah.

Like it's top secret. And they expect their people to execute on it. They just don't want to tell them what it is.

Yeah.

That wasn't the case with Enel X. Let's tell them what it is. Let's show them what it is. Let's help them tie their goals to it so they know how what they're doing, whether it be the coffee boy overseas or a frontline leader here, that this is what you're doing. This is how it ties to our strategy and this is how it ties to a bigger picture. And the key to it really was that humility that you're seeing in Mark. It was in the organization, and if it wasn't there, it's what they hired to as they started to realize the type of culture they wanted and wanted to be.

Mark, I want to ask you a question. I'm thinking about how to phrase it so that you feel comfortable answering it. As the CEO of a very successful organization, Can you share with us things that you would have done differently? Your organization is very, very successful, yet success comes at a price. Is there— are there some things that you are willing to share that you Would have done differently?

I mean, there's a million things that I would love to have a do-over on.

And I have to interrupt here, ladies and gentlemen. This is the mark of a true leader, that answer in itself. But go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I asked that question in performance reviews. And if somebody goes, no, I think everything last year is perfect, I'm like, Okay, we got something going on here that isn't ideal. Yeah, I mean, I think that I'm very critical of myself. And I, whenever somebody leaves the company, I always ask myself, what did we do? Or what did we fail to do that led to this person leaving? And are we okay with that or not? Because not everybody's gonna stay at every company forever and some people grow up and out and they do all those sorts of things. So whenever somebody has to leave by their own choice or we have to let them go, I always wonder if we could have done something a little bit differently in that front. It's hard for me to give you specific examples because I do think there's opportunities to be better at all times. I think one thing I had to be much better at when I became CEO and I'm still not great at it, is really understanding the weight that my language carries when I talk. And because I'm, I feel like I'm a down-to-earth person and I don't think I'm any more important than anybody else in the company. So if I go to a meeting and I'm sitting in on a team meeting, if I'm lucky enough to be invited to a team meeting and if I start acting like I'm a member of the team, that's a mistake because the leader that invited me I've already sort of usurped that person's power and the team is off of them onto my take. And so I, that's a mistake and I made that mistake 2 weeks ago, you know, and then I was in a meeting with some people I knew and they were talking about stuff and I said, well, listen, don't forget we tried that 10 years ago and be really careful because XYZ. And that person took that as a sign that they didn't have to do that. But their leader like, no, this is one of your top 5 things to do this year. And they're like, well, look what Marc said, didn't work 10 years ago. So is this really a thing? So that's a mistake that I make a lot and I try to protect against it. I can't help myself because when I'm in meetings and I hear people talking, you go from the, hey, I'm just here to provide emotional support to I can't deal with letting this go without saying something. Um, but a lot of times that's not where you're asked to be there. You're asked to be there to provide, um, some emotional support to the leader, some social support to the leader, to talk very high level, um, to, to make the people in the room feel that, that you care and, and sort of reinforce the fact that you do care, that you're not being brought in to help with a team solution. So I make that mistake quite frequently. Uh, one of the sayings we, we taught— we were taught when we were young officer cadets at the military academy was you never pass a fault. If you see a fault, you cannot ignore it. You have to stay on top of it. And that discipline that was imbued on me then, I think, is part of what makes me— makes it very difficult for me to come into a meeting and just talk. My strategy, by the way, is get a notebook and write down those thoughts and share them one-on-one after the fact. Like, that's the tactic. And so you exercise that muscle of wanting to say something, but you just do it in an environment that, that, that leader can digest it and say, well, Mark, I hear you, but what you don't know is these 5 things. Ah, okay. Glad we talked about it in private. So I made that mistake just a couple of weeks ago on the acquisition of Exterran as we were going through the very complicated financial in operational due diligence. One thing that I didn't focus on is a cumulative stacking of risks. So you can deal with risks individually and you can get comfortable with a lot of things individually. But if you stack them up like pancakes, eventually the stack is too big to eat. And when you do a big deal like that, it is a stack of pancakes and you have to be able to eat the whole stack at once or else you're gonna choke on it. And there were some things that were— each individual risk was manageable. You could deal with it mentally, but the stack-up of a bunch of risks made the first 14 months post-close very challenging from a financial performance point of view. And then when you have those, when you do a deal that has asked so much from so many people to not then generate the financial returns in a short timeframe, they really start to question your leadership and your decision-making. And so I would recommend anybody that's thinking about doing anything in their professional life, you have to acknowledge that risks stack up. And if the pancake analogy works, I'm Canadian, we eat a lot of pancakes. You stack those pancakes, eventually it gets too big to eat. And that's how you go through life. And that's the way people deal with stress too. People don't deal with stress You know, bit by bit, it's an overall stackup of stress. And once that stress gets too high, people will break down. And that's just how human beings deal with things. But you can intellectualize the risks as one-off things that could be dealt with individually. But that's not the way it works in real life. So that was a mistake that we really didn't sit back and go, well, what if all these things happen? Or what if 4 out of these 5 things happen and we don't control it? How's that, how's that gonna impact the financial performance and operational performance of the company?

I love what you just said. I've learned so much from what you said, and I, um, I'm there with you because as the CEO of ACEC, the biggest mistakes that I've made is attending meetings and speaking up to the detriment of the atmosphere of the meeting.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember when I was meeting with my board of advisors and they said to me, CB, we'd like to say something. And I'm like, of course you could say something. They said, what is our job? And I said, what are you talking about? We've been meeting for like 6 years and you don't know what your job is? And so I I gave them the long list of responsibilities, and they said to me, so, CB, when are you going to let us do our job? And I said, what are you talking about? And they said, every month we meet, and you tell us what you're doing and what's going on. You don't ask our perspective. We don't have a chance to talk. We have a chance to listen. And I said, are you telling me you want me to shut up? And they said, yes. I was so hurt by that. And then I was listening to Dr. Marshall Goldsmith interview Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford. And Marshall said, what's the greatest lesson you learned as a CEO? And he said, to shut up. And I thought to myself, darn, you're in good company.

Yeah.

And Marshall said, well, why is that? And he said, because I am the CEO, anytime I make a statement, it changes the dynamics. And I don't get to hear the advice So it's so good to hear an incredible leader such as yourself say the same thing. Brock, one final question.

Mm-hmm.

Do you want to continue to work with Marc? As an executive coach?

So, I would love to work with Mark as an executive coach. I haven't. I've done a little bit of strategic work with Enerflex in the last couple of years. Part of our business model, my wife and I run this company. We've sort of taken the analogy of teach a person to fish, don't feed them fish. And with all of our customers, including Enerflex, our intent was to allow them and help them to build competency in-house to do what we do. So from a leadership development, organizational development perspective, they have developed a lot of internal competencies to aid themselves in getting there. But to answer your question, uh, to work with somebody one-on-one like Mark would be an absolute privilege.

I asked that question, um, from this perspective. Mark has a lot of humility. He has a lot of knowledge. He has a lot of experience. His company is a success. What else can an executive coach do? He said, oh, I'm sorry.

That'd be dependent upon work.

Good answer. Well, ladies and gentlemen, didn't mean to put you on the spot, but you know, when I look at and I hear people like the CEO of Google, former CEO of Google, who you see are at the top of their game, And yet these people are hiring executive coaches. The world must say, why? They're already good.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it's an important question and answer for us to know, because our field, executive coaching, has been known as we come in and we save the day and we leave. Or we fix things that are broken and then walk away. And that is so not the definition of an executive coach the way ACEC sees it. As the world keeps changing, different things happen where an executive coach needs to be on the spot, be part of the organization, needs to be an enterprise-wide business partner. Versus a coach that comes in and asks, what would you do? And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank Brock and Mark so much for appearing on this show. We've had an incredible view of the relationship between an executive coach and a CEO. Mark, is there anything you would like to say as we close out?

Uh, no, thanks, thanks for having me. And, and, uh, Enerflex is better because of Brock, and I'm better because of Brock. He's a tremendous coach.

He is, he is. Brock, any last words?

No, CB, it's been a pleasure to, uh, to, to chat, and, uh, I've enjoyed listening to Mark. He's a great, um, he's a great leader. And, uh, he, uh, has a growth mindset and will be a key reason that Enerflex continues to be successful into the future.

And you know, Brock, he's a great coach too.

I think you're right.

With that, ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you next Tuesday. Bye now. This is CB Bowman.