223 - Understanding the Neuroscience of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership with FranklinCovey's Todd Davis
8 Jul 2024 · 31 min
In this episode of Listening with Leaders, host Doug Noll interviews Todd Davis, senior consultant and former Chief People Officer of FranklinCovey. Davis outlines FranklinCovey’s evolution from the Covey Leadership Center and Franklin Quest into a global performance‑improvement firm focused on behavior change. He describes the company’s flagship solutions—7 Habits, Four Disciplines of Execution, Five Choices, and Six Critical Practices—used to address client pain points such as talent retention, trust, inclusive leadership, unconscious bias, and navigating difficult conversations. The conversation pivots to the science of listening: cognitive versus affective empathy, affect‑labeling, and the neuroscience of de‑escalation (right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation). Noll shares his own background in law, peacemaking, and the triune‑brain myth, emphasizing that leaders must move from a rational‑only mindset to an emotionally‑aware one. They discuss the origin of “soft skills” in the U.S. Army, the prevalence of introversion among successful leaders, and personal vulnerabilities (insecurity, hidden humor aspirations). The interview ends with Davis’s commitment to continue delivering FranklinCovey’s training and a mutual appreciation for the exchange of ideas.
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Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.
Todd Davis, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are now a senior consultant with Franklin Covey, which can be found at franklingcovey.com, but for 18 years you were the chief people officer and Today, you, I think you're engaged in teaching people the Covey principles of leadership, and we want to learn about that. So welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Doug. A pleasure to be here.
Why don't you start off with a little bit of a backstory about how you came to be, get into consulting, and especially with Franklin Covey, and, and a description of what the company does?
Sure. Franklin Covey is a global company. We specialize in what we call performance improvement. We help organizations and teams within those organizations achieve the results they're trying to achieve when the achievement of those results requires a change in human behavior. So we think about changing our own behavior, let alone a lot of other people's collective behavior. But that's what we do. We're the behavior change company. As you mentioned, I've been with the company for 28 years. I joined what was then called the Covey Leadership Center. It was a privately held company started by, by Dr. Stephen R. Covey. He's the bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And I had the great pleasure of working directly with him for many years before his passing. And then the other part of the merger was Franklin Quest, which was the— many know the Franklin Day Planner, the time management company. And so we merged about 26 years ago. And so that's a little bit about the company I started. I was in medical, the medical industry. I was a physician recruiter early on in my career. And that's exactly right. Did that for about 9 years and, uh, recruited and marketed physician, uh, placement services. And then, uh, with some friends of mine, we started our own little outsourcing company, HR outsourcing company, and Covey Leadership Center was one of our clients. And so I did recruitment for them, and then they said, hey, we want to bring recruitment in-house, and that's where I started with them. And then the rest is what I've already shared with you, but that was my entry into Franklin Covey.
How big a company is Franklin Covey? I guess maybe by how many consultants you—
Yeah, so we have, so we employees, we're a global company, so we have a licensee network in most countries, but we have about, about 1,100 actual employees here in North America, and then we have direct offices in Japan, in Australia, in the UK, in Germany. We have about 7 direct offices, and then we have this licensee group that covers 160 other countries.
Wow.
So that's about our size. As the Chief People Officer for 18 years, I was responsible for the talent in all of those areas. Of course, had a lot of help.
That's big. That's a big job with a lot of people. And so describe for us what you're doing today.
Today, so Franklin Covey, we, that planner part of the business that I mentioned from Franklin Quest, we sold that off shortly after we merged. It still exists. There is a Franklin Covey Or excuse me, there's a Franklin Planner Products organization. It's a private company that still does time management and we're, we partner with them, but we are primarily a leadership development company. And so my role, I'm out working with clients and prospective clients, delivering, facilitating. I don't present, but I facilitate the work sessions for our 30-plus and growing solutions, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Four Disciplines of Execution, The Five Choices to Extraordinary Productivity. We're big on numbers, right? Six Practices of Critical— or Six Critical Practices of Leadership. So I go out with clients and facilitate those work sessions.
And when clients hire you, what typically is the pain point they're trying to alleviate?
It's a great question. It's all over the board. Sometimes it's just— not sometimes, it always involves how do we retain top talent? How do we not have turnover? So maybe Speed of Trust is one of our Solutions and How Do We Build More Trust in the Organization So We Can Move Faster, Make Decisions Quicker, Push Decision Making Down to the Front Lines. Inclusive Leadership is another work session that has, in these last couple of years, has been a very hot topic. So we go out and teach how to be a more inclusive leader. Unconscious Bias is another work session. And one that I think we're going to talk a little bit about today is, and really you should be teaching me, but it's Navigating Difficult Conversations. And this is a new module that we have.
Interesting. So I take the inclusive leadership as DEI kind of DEI training, learning how to deal with and work with and build diverse, a diverse workforce.
It is, it is. But, and we focus, we have our unconscious bias course, which also is, is more heavily involved in DEI. Inclusive leadership is really whether we have a diverse work group or not, diverse in ethnicity, in that how do we make sure that we are an inclusive leader? I heard somebody explain it to somebody else saying it's one thing to be invited to the party, it's another thing to be asked to dance. And I love that.
Really good metaphor.
Yeah, I loved it.
Yeah, my, my second book that I co-authored with Dr. John Bogart was called Sex, Politics, and Religion: The New Competitive Advantage. But we were way ahead of our time. This book came out in 2007. Oh wow, long before anybody was talking about this stuff. We were just, we were way out, way out on a limb in those days. So you've been at this for a long time, almost 30 years. What is it that gets you up in the morning and get you excited to do the work that you do?
Thank you for asking. I would say the immediate response is how much— it is selfish, but how much I have benefited from our content. I can say that with— I didn't create any of this content, so I can say it with humility. But I think about the person, and I have a long ways to go, by the way, but I think about the person I was, the partner, the colleague, the worker, the neighbor that I was 28, 29 years ago and who I am today. And again, I have a long ways to go, but I am much more effective in each of those roles than I was. And so my excitement, and, and I'm saying this from the heart, it's to share those things that I've experienced and then continue to experience with other people and organizations. And, and I've seen it make them more effective and therefore happier. So it's really, it's very rewarding work.
Summarizing, it's, it, what you're saying is service to others is exciting and watching other people grow, especially younger people grow with new ideas and new concepts and self-development.
And I continue to learn in the process, but you're exactly right. That was a great summary.
Wow. Yeah. It's, it took, I, I took me having, I had to leave the practice of law to get the idea that meaning in life is service to others. And it wasn't about the money and it wasn't about winning big cases or being an arrogant lawyer. It was really learning— I had to get over all that. It was really learning how to serve others.
Somehow I have a hard time believing you were ever an arrogant lawyer. Ah! Believe me. But just one comment. As you say that we, we at The Last Influence went through the, through a hard time which everybody goes through, loss of my mother. And she lived a great life. She was 93, but you caused me to reflect on this, just this notion of service. I can think of another time when my father, who died quite young, when he passed away and one of my family members, we all struggled with it, but one of my family members continued to struggle with it for years. And it was because, and I love this person, but because they were so inward focused, whereas the rest of us were caring for my mom and trying to help one another. And again, I don't want to sound too altruistic here, but just being of service, it is such a reward and so rewarding.
That, yeah, it's not, it's really hard to describe and it's really hard to describe to young people because when you're young, you think that success is defined by money and the car and the house and all the trappings and vacations and all this stuff. And then you get a little older and you realize, no, that's not what it's about at all. But it's re— I think it's, I think it's, I think it's just a journey that everybody has to go through.
Yeah.
And learn for yourself that if you really wanna be happy in life, it's how you can be with other people.
Yeah, totally.
And it's a great, it's a great lesson, hard one to learn, I think, but really once learned is it's really valuable. So what is it, Todd, that's unique about you that you bring to the table at Franklin Covey that makes you and the company successful?
In reading about your background, I feel a little bit inadequate to share this, but I'll share it anyway. I'll pretend I don't know anything about you and your work. I think, and I, please, I say this with humility. When I, I was in, I started out helping recruit our talent. And then I moved out of that and I went into innovations where we create all of our content, our work sessions and things like that. And when our then head of HR, which they called it back then, when they left, the CEO came to me and said, hey Todd, we'd like you to apply for the, the head of HR position, chief people officer position. And I was flattered, but I said, Bob, that's awesome. I have no experience in HR. I had recruited physicians, but recruitment in the medical industry had nothing to do with HR. I don't know anything about that. And I think you'd need to have somebody who's well-versed in employment law and benefits and all that. And he said, and again, I say this with humility, but he said, we know that, but we also have noticed for how many years you've been here now, you are really good with people. And again, I was so flattered by that. So I, yeah, I applied for the role and was selected and immediately surrounded myself with really smart people who knew all this other stuff. But to answer your question, ever since I was a young child, I, we all have our different gifts and our natural talents. And mine, and I didn't understand it at the time, but mine was empathy, not sympathy, but empathy. And later on in life, when I took the Gallup StrengthsFinder and all those, so many things made sense. Like when I was on the playground at Rosecrest Elementary and I saw another one of my little friends crying, I would immediately, it was embarrassing. I would immediately start to get emotional and choked up, and I had no idea what was wrong or what they were doing, but I would go over to try and help. And as I grew older and learned, oh, that is a real gift. And it can also be an embarrassing gift when you're a little kid, but a real gift to almost take on the feelings of other people.
Called affective empathy.
Yeah. And so I would say, and even when I worked in innovations and helped develop our content, that gift of empathy so that as we were putting together an exercise or an activity, again, certainly not perfect, but I could see ahead and see, okay, Participants are going to feel a little awkward doing this, so they're not going to feel comfortable sharing this kind of— and so it served me my whole life. And again, I have a lot of gaps, but that's one area that I've been really fortunate to—
I can see that you have a presence about you that's very comforting.
Oh, I appreciate that.
That you feel like an instant— you have the ability to build instant rapport with people.
Thank you.
And I think that in your business, that's probably pretty important. Pretty— you're walking into a room of strangers that you don't even know. You're going to be teaching them some fairly advanced concepts, some of which is going to make people uncomfortable.
Yeah.
And as you, as we've all done as trainers and teachers, we all know that we're going to be facing discomfort, but we're also going to be facing skepticism and pushback.
Yeah. Who's this person that thinks they know more than I do?
That happens a lot. And being able to put people at ease and giving them the space to push themselves a little bit and to stretch a little bit seems to me to be a gift that you have that probably is very rare.
Thank you, you're very kind.
And yeah, there are two kinds of empathy: cognitive empathy and affective empathy. I teach cognitive empathy, how to listen to and respond to emotions. But then what happens over a period of time is people practice cognitive empathy, they develop affective empathy, which is the ability to feel what another person is feeling. Now, some people, it turns out, I think I read the number is around 20% of the population already has that ability. And there are some people who identify as empaths or as HSI, highly sensitive individuals, where it's debilitating. Cannot separate out the emotions of other people from their own, and it literally paralyzes them.
But they feel responsible for everyone else, and they can't—
they either feel responsible or they'll walk into a supermarket and they'll be walking on aisle all of a sudden they feel rage. Oh wow. And it's somebody 3 rows over who's experiencing anger and rage, maybe, maybe a mother yelling at a 2-year-old or something.
Wow.
And it's debilitating for them.
And fortunately I have not had that experience.
No, it doesn't sound like—
but I'm so glad I joined today because I'm learning something new right now. This is really helpful.
Yeah, we've got a— my wife and I have a YouTube channel called The Empowered Empath where we have— we help people like that. I can't come at it from teaching them how to listen to emotions so they can begin to recognize and differentiate between their own emotional experience and the emotions of other people. And then my wife has a whole bunch of tools that she helps those people with. But you have the ability to— you're not on that extreme. You just have the natural affinity for sensing what another person is experiencing, and then you're able to relate to them at a level that they understand. That's a rare gift. It, it's a learn— it's a learnable skill.
Absolutely.
You, you've got it naturally, which is really great. That kind of does get me into the whole concept of, part of the concept of this show, which is listening. You guys teach listening and tell me about a little bit about the curriculum you teach around listening. I'm interested in learning more.
So primarily, and I don't know if you've ever read Seven Habits of—
I have. There's a chapter 6 is got what, 27 pages devoted to listening, something like that.
Chapter 5. Yeah. Chapter 5. Yeah.
I was pretty close though.
You were pretty, I'm impressed, Doug. So yeah, seek first to understand. Understand than to be understood. And it's the empath— it's the habit of empathic listening. And the short story, or the principle here, is the question is, do we listen with the intent to reply, or do we listen with the intent to understand? And 99% of us as human beings, we listen with the intent to reply. And in my experience, I found that it comes from a good place, even though it's not helpful when someone needs to be understood. It comes from a good place. We're fixers.. And so I'm hearing someone, I'm already assuming what they're going to tell me, or I'm hearing just enough to think I've figured it out. Oh, okay, I know how I can help them. But I keep nodding and pretending to listen, but I've already formulated my response. And my help at some other time may be important or may be useful. But when the need is to just feel understood, we are so much more influential and so much wiser if we can suspend. And I love the word Dr. Covey used to use it all the time. Suspend our feelings, our input, our opinion long enough. I'm not giving it up, but I'm suspending it so that I can be 100% present and really hear the heart of what you're saying. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. And you, again, I feel a little bit awkward talking to someone with your experience, but when I'm talking to someone or when I've talked to people about this, I can tell sometimes they feel like, wait a minute, if I don't say anything, they're going to think I'm agreeing with them. And that couldn't be further from the truth. But if you'll just seek to understand. And there's in this, there's a pretty basic formula that for some who aren't naturally good at this, it feels formulaic and almost insincere to reflect back what the person is saying and feeling, but in your own words. And I've met with so many people and coached so many leaders when they say, I would never talk like that. And I say, I know, but let's work through it and just get the practice of saying, gosh, Doug, it seems like you're pretty concerned about the new project we've just been handed. That's an empathic statement, and it just lets the person know that you're really hearing them. Or it gives them a chance to say, no, I'm not concerned, I just don't think it can be done. Oh, tell me more about that. These are all empathic statements versus, no, you're worrying about nothing, we're going to get this done. We had one, and in fact, and a lot of people— and I'll stop talking here in a minute— but a lot of people will think, okay, you got to use empathy when the person's sad or upset or mad. That's true, or your best to use it then, but also when they're excited. I had an experience just last week where somebody— we were in a group and somebody said, hey, we got a new car. And this other well-meaning person jumped in and said, oh, Mike and I got a new car too, we got the blah blah blah blah blah. And I thought, I think Cheryl wanted to tell us about her new car, but she's not going to get a chance to do that now. And so whenever emotions are high, it is best to just slow down and use empathy.
That's exactly right. And that's— I teach it I, I'll explain how I teach it because you're exact— I agree with you. So the first thing I do is I teach people never use an I statement. Whenever you're— it's 3, it's reflective listing, not active listing. And whether you're paraphrasing for messaging or affect labeling, you're always going to use a you statement. You are, or you said, or what you, what you mean is. And at affect labeling, which is the deepest level, you're going to simply reflect back the emotional experience. That they're having in that moment. So I'd say, hey man, Todd, you're— man, you are really pissed off. You're frustrated, you're angry, you feel completely disrespected, you don't feel heard, you feel unsupported, you feel— and you feel completely unappreciated and unsupported, and it's really concerning to you.
And right now, Doug, as you say that to me, I want to say thank you. Exactly. You for taking that and, and being with me in that moment.
And that's, that's the reaction that every single person has. There are brain scanning studies that show what happened in the brain when you engage in this process called affect labeling, based on the work of Matthew Lieberman at UCLA. And what happens is that when, especially if somebody's a little upset and the emotional centers of the brain are escalated, when you affect label, just tell 'em what they're feeling with a you statement, the emotional centers of the brain are diminished. And the part of the brain called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is activated. And it turns out that the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is where emotional data is stored in the brain. So essentially what we're doing when we're listening to somebody's emotions is we're lending them our prefrontal cortex for the time it takes their prefrontal cortex to come back online, which is about 90 seconds. And it is amazing to watch this happen. I stumbled on this I had an epiphany back in 2005 in a really difficult mediation. And ultimately, I wrote a book about it in 2017 called De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less. And the thing that's so cool about it is that if you're the angry person, you cannot help yourself but to calm down because it's the way our brains are hardwired.
Yeah, you're giving them that psychological error. You told me you were previously, you were a practicing lawyer. I didn't know you were a brain surgeon as well, but you got told.
Well, there's an interesting story behind that. So in mid-career, I was 48 years old. I, through a series of events that I won't bore you with, I decided that I didn't want to be a trial lawyer anymore. I wasn't serving people. That was my first moment saying my life is about service, not being a trial lawyer. And so I went back to school and earned my master's degree in peacemaking and conflict studies. And in all of that, I came across the work of Paul MacLean, who was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. And he's the guy that came up with what's known as the triune brain theory. You've heard the term reptilian brain, paleomammalian, neomammalian brain. Turns out he's all wrong. There's no science to support what he said. But I happened to be introduced to John Lawman, who at that time was a neuroscientist at Caltech. And I went into his labs and he started educating me on, on this stuff. And this is back in the late '90s when nobody knew what neuroscience was.
Mm-hmm.
And I, I had the insight that peace and conflict all starts in the brain. So we ought to be understanding how the brain is processing all of this information. And that's how I got into it.. And so everything I do is based on science, not based on psychology. And it's, uh, the practice itself is remarkable. And to your point, you've got a leader in a meeting just as you were describing it before. And the lead, the leader says, you know, you're really upset, you're frustrated, and you're a little concerned and worried about this project. And all of a sudden now I'm validating this person's feelings and they feel heard and listened to. And they'll follow you anywhere.
And then the creative part of their brain can open up so we can start.
That's right. All of a sudden.
Yeah.
That's right. Now they're calmed down. Their prefrontal cortex is back online and now we can problem solve.
Yeah.
And to your point, the other example that you gave, which was really critical, is that we jump to problem solving too soon.
I say that for me. He's laughing because I've done it too many times.
We've all done it and we see it all the time.
Yeah.
And why? And here's the thing that's really cool. The reason why we jump to problem solving is because we have unconscious anxiety that we're not aware of and we're trying to self-soothe our own anxiety around another person's emotions. And so that gets us into emotional invalidation and early problem solving, which just makes things worse.
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense.
That, so that in a nutshell is what I teach. So when you go into these companies and they're paying you probably big bucks to come in and teach them what I'm sure. How do you move them, move their minds from being wrapped up in this rational, logical, linear, critical thinking thing that they think this is the— I'm a CEO and I've got to be this Spockian guy who shows no emotions, right? How do you move them to the place where they begin to see as a whole and complete human being? We are emotional beings, not rational beings, and therefore we have to develop emotional tools to work with human beings effectively.
Yeah, with some it takes a lot more work than others, but, uh, but I start, and we start with this premise of, look, at the end of the day, we're all measured for our results. And certainly executive teams, and I was on one for many years, we are focused on the results of the organization. Every organization has its measurable results, but unless you are in an organization where you're the only employee. The rest of us get our results with and through other people. And so when we talk about effective relationships, developing and building effective relationships, it's not this soft— it is, it can be put into this soft skill category, but it really is the foundation for getting the results an organization needs. Jim Collins, the bestselling author of Good to Great and several other leadership books, he talks about making sure you have the right people on the bus. And I totally agree with that 100%. He's a friend of our founders and of our chairman of the board. And I would add, based on my experience as the chief people officer for almost 2 decades, it's actually the nature of the relationships between those people that is the real magic, if you will, to producing profound results for the organization. And so that's— and again, hard to do this in a few minutes, but that's the paradigm that we try and help CEOs and other leaders of organizations see. And most of them grab on pretty quickly. I have a virtual course I'm teaching as soon as we're finished here. And that's with a person who is a little bit more senior in his tenure, a lot more senior than you and I, and is maybe a little bit slower to respond to that. But the rest of his organization are younger, much younger than we are. And so it's, we're getting the message through. Good for you.
Soft skills. Do you have, do you know where the term soft skills came from?
Oh, tell me.
US Army Training Command in the 1960s. The US Army Training Command figured out that in order for a battlespace commander to command the battlespace, they had to do, they had to have a separate set of skills other than being able to shoot a rifle or drive a truck or a tank. So Training Command distinguished hard skills, which is what soldiers, shooting guns, marching, doing all that stuff, from the soft skills, which was strategy and decision-making and, and listening and empathy and team building and all that stuff. And that's where the term soft skills came from. I love that. The greatest leadership development institutions in the world is the US military. And yet it got pushed into business and now as a pejorative, oh, it's so soft skills.
Yeah.
It just cracks me up when I hear people say that because it comes from some of the most hard-nosed people in the world.
Yeah. That's really helpful to know. I appreciate it. Crazy. I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's really nuts. The, the term that I'm using now, I'm, I keep thinking about this stuff, but I'm telling people If you want to have good relationships in your organizations, abandon reason. Forget the idea that—
I saw the book you wrote on, I don't remember the exact title, but it's when couples run a business together.
Yes.
It caught my eye because my son and his wife run a, they have 3 bridal stores for bride, for brides, for bridal shops, and they get along famously. But I'm anxious to pick that up and, and read what you suggest.
Well, the, the, what I've learned is that Relationship is all based on emotion. When you think about reasoning provides, we do 4 things with reason, right? We gain information, we analyze it, we make strategic, we think strategically, we problem solve, and we make decisions all based on reasoning. Where in that mix is relationship? It's not. And yet we tend, and I, I know you've seen this, people tend to bring reasoning and logic and all critical thinking and they think that's how they're going to solve relationship problems.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it doesn't work that way.
Abandon reasoning.
Abandon reasoning. Abandon.
Good advice.
And that's, it works. It works. So you've been at this now for 28 years. What's next?
Boy, I just, I'm only a year into this, out on the road. I did, when I was Chief People Officer, I was honored to write a couple of books for Franklin Covey. So I was out on the road doing a lot of keynoting while I was the Chief People Officer. And during that time, I remember thinking it was wonderful and it was really hectic. And I thought, I wonder what it'd be like to just do this full-time and not have the Chief People Officer duties. And so now I'm in— careful what you wish for— but I'm in that role for almost a year now. And honestly, I'm gonna do this for the next couple of years. It's very rewarding. And then we'll see what's next. Thank you.
According. So right now it sounds like you're gonna continue doing this work that you're doing, the training work. Until something. Yeah, I can tell you're really excited about it.
Thank you.
You get a lot of satisfaction. You look at the smile on you, you can just see the energy coming off you.
That's because you're teaching me all these new things.
There you go. One more question, then I'll let you go, Todd. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?
Ah.
One thing that you would never know unless I reveal it to you— I'm actually— I don't know if I'm an introvert, but I'm actually quite insecure. Huh. I hide it well.
Hide it well.
And honestly, that has served me in— I, I wish I weren't, but it has helped me be more in tune with seeing everyone as just people. We're all here to learn and grow and hopefully be of service to each other, like you shared. Is, is your life's mission. And yeah, that, that is something I, I tend to bring a lot of humor into my training. I, I actually had a secret desire once to be a, a writer for a comedy series. I took some classes in that, and I had a desire to be a stand-up comic. But I've realized all those things mask sometimes the insecurities that I'm feeling.
Thanks for sharing that. You'll be interested in knowing that I— you're probably episode 225, 226 of this podcast.
Okay.
I have interviewed, of the 225 or 226 people I have interviewed, mostly all C-level executives, owners, and entrepreneurs, only one has been an extrovert.
Interesting.
Every single leader, successful leader that I've interviewed and met so far, and I'm an introvert myself, all self-proclaimed introverts. Isn't that interesting?
I was telling a group this morning, when I was in my early 20s, working for a particular organization. I was supposed to take something up to the CEO, and he was like going to the Wizard of Oz. I was supposed to take something to the CEO for my boss, and I was pretty young in my career, and I was standing outside of the CEO's office, and he was talking quite loudly, and I could hear him over the phone, but he was telling this person, whoever he was talking to, that he didn't know what to do. He was really— and I remember as a young 20-year-old or early 20s thinking, oh my gosh, the CEO doesn't know what to do. But that has stuck with me my whole life just remembering, not as a criticism of that person, but just thinking we're all just human beings. We're just trying to do the best we can. And so anyway, anyway, well, this has really been a great conversation, Todd.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate your time, and, and thanks for all of the new things that you've taught me.
You're welcome. Great.
Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.
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364 - Mastering Mind, Body, and Spirit: How to Build a Revolutionary Training System with Mark Divine


363 - From Military Service to Executive Coaching: A Journey of Leadership and Emotional Awareness with Bobby Humes


362 - Building Connections in a Virtual World: The Importance of Empathy in Remote Work with Ben Gaddis


361 - Embracing Technology Without Losing the Human Touch in Leadership with Chip Higgins


360 - From Code to Connection: Transforming Engineers into Emotionally Intelligent Leaders with Vidar Hokstad


359 - Untangling the Communication Knot: Mastering Emotions in Leadership with Maria Garaitonandia


358 - The Puzzle of Business: Finding Harmony in Leadership and Team Dynamics with Joe Zentmyer


357 - Listening Like a Pro: How to Break the Cycle of Misunderstanding with Terri Lonowski