250 - From Stage to Strategy: How Theater Skills Enhance Leadership with iTech AG's Walter Antezana

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. Walter Antezana, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the Chief Operating Officer of iTech AG, which can be found at iTech ag.c— oh, it's com— you're com.

.com. There you go.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Doug. Thank you for having me.

So tell us a little bit about— I'm interested in a little bit about your background and then a little, just a little bit about your company.

So the company has been founded in 2008. We are a technology company where we implement, we help organizations streamline their operations, transitioning them from the legacy systems over to a more modern platform through innovative technologies, solutions.

And how did you end up becoming a co— the COO?

So my, my brother and I both own the company.

Okay.

And we decided he was the younger and the more handsome individual. It, it was a matter of understanding some of our core, our, our, our factors in terms of how, what we know, what we're good at, understanding his, his managing style, my managing style. And, and from there we, we decided from Mike was going to be the CEO, I was going to be the COO.

And what did you do before you founded the company?

So I was a construction management engineering major. I got my degree in construction in California State Sacramento. And over the years, during my internship and my construction management experience, I quickly just advanced and I started fostering client relationships. And, and that was my success, is my network. And then I transitioned from engineering on the construction side to management and business development on the construction, now working and operating with government contracts. Eventually from there, at the time the company was about to be sold or be consumed with another company, I decided to see what the field is out there for, for business management opportunities. And a company called Booz Allen Hamilton reached out to me and they were very impressed with my project controls experience. Project controls is a big factor in construction, right? We do a lot of schedule management, right? And that I know that in development and software programs, they needed that kind of schedule management. So that's how I got into Booz Allen Watson, which is the IT solution consulting company. And from there, I realized that working for some time with a company like Booz Allen Watson and other medium-small companies, I learned that we can do it the same more effectively and cheaper. Again, in the end, it's the taxpayer, myself included, that pays for consultants, for good consultants. And I've seen the labor rates and, and I figured that we can do better.

So that led to iTech AG. So is it, is it essentially a consulting company that helps entities, organizations?

It's like a Booz Allen Deloitte company, smaller. We're consulting firm that, that would provide solution, technology solution ideas. We implement them, we integrate them, and we maintain them.

Oh, okay. So it's everything, not just consulting?

Not just— yeah, not just consulting. We have, you know, technology experts, right, you know, get involved.

So what is it that gets you up in the morning, gets you excited to go to work?

People. Folks, our team.

You love your people. Tell us about that.

I'm a people person, so I, I, I love the collaboration that we have. I love understanding people's points of views and bringing their ideas into the mix of our business or the, the, the solutions that we come up with. And it's not only us that come up with the solutions, it's our team that comes up, right? And then we decide, okay, here's what we're going to be experts in. And then from there, we build a plan, a business plan around it. And we go after certain programs that have certain components that we're really experts in.

And so when you and your brother started the company, how do you go about building the team that you love to work with today?

Obviously, we, we wouldn't be here today without the team. And again, it's the network that we've created throughout the years and the people that I've, that I've met along the road, along the way. A lot of the folks that I've met from different companies, I've developed a relationship with them and they came to work for us. Their role, we have a few folks of ours that are in the C-suites. That people that I've worked with before, actually one of our, our, our executives, he hired me. He interviewed me for, for the position when we were, when I was in a different firm.

And, and now he's working for you.

Yeah, he works for us. Yeah. Again, it's one of those things where you meet folks and you always have a, you keep them in mind and oh, this person would be great to work with. And as I build a business and you always think, oh, what about so-and-so? He would be good for this.

Would you say that the success that you've had so far with iTech AG has been— iTech AG. Yeah. AG. It's been really the ability to assemble a great team.

Yep. You assembled a great team, you collaborate, and then you understand the relationship between ourselves with management. And from there you grow these, you grow your folks, you empower them, you give them bits and pieces of certain things and see how they act, how they react, and then their management skills. Then you start to understand what their skills are, what skills What are they good about them? Where would they excel more? I've always been an advocate for understanding and providing the right tools to, to our folks because if someone's doing really good at one thing, it doesn't mean that person can be good at the other or, or become a manager. Some people don't wanna be a manager or you take 'em out and you put 'em in a management position and they fail and that would be a failure on you because you didn't see, you didn't understand what that person can bring.

Sounds like for you, leadership is a lot about coaching and, and growing people.

That's correct. It's empowering. It's empowering your folks.

How do you go, how do you go about doing that?

So what you wanna do is understand, first of all, their skillset, right? Understand some of the, and to understand, you've gotta have meetings. You've gotta continuously develop a cadence of touchpoints and one-on-ones or team collaboration. And from there, your leaders are gonna come up. You're gonna pop up, you're gonna know this person's gonna be, he's good, he'd be good for as, as a leader. And in order for someone to be a leader, you have to learn how to follow as well. And there, there, there's a component of humbleness that comes through that. And those are the type of leaders that you want. But from there is you start to empower them and give them more, I would say power, or give them more tasks and then see how they lead. And then you bring people under them. And then from there, the people that are under them, they're gonna voice their opinion on if they have a good leader or not, because that's what happens. People leave companies because of their manager.

That's right.

Not because of a company. Most of them leave because of their manager.

That's right. So you're teaching the people below you to be good leaders to the people below them.

That's right.

Yeah. That is one of the great things.

It's, it's a, it's like a waterfall, right?

You, that's right.

As a leader, you empower your folks, your direct reports, your leads, And then they're gonna, then they should do the same.

That's right. So I tell, I, when I'm coaching leaders, I tell them you should be coaching the people below you to replace you. And you should be, you should always work 2 levels down, but you should be also coaching your direct reports to coach the people below them to replace them.

Right. Yes.

And you should always be working 2 levels down. Who's on the, who's, who's down there below.

Yeah.

I think you've got a small company, so you, that's probably pretty easy for you to keep track of that.

Yeah, it's growing quite rapidly. We got over 300 folks now, and yeah, and every year it's growing exponentially, 20%, 30%.

That's amazing.

So one of the biggest hurdles is to be able to release control.

How do you let go and become a leader, not a doer?

That's right. You gotta release control.

Problem a lot of people have is that they were graded or evaluated on their performance of doing things.

Yeah.

Now when you become a leader, you no longer do. You manage, you're leading the doers.

Yeah.

And you're managing the resources that allow them to do what they do, but you're no longer doing. And that means that's a completely different mind shift or mindset than when you're actually a producer yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the, in, I'm to a point where I hire people to tell me what I need to do. If I have to be the one that's telling you how to do your job, then I hired the wrong person. If you're going to come up to me and ask me an HR question, I wouldn't know. That's why I haven't. But those are the things that I keep a really close eye on, is that I'm— I listen and I follow. There's ideas that come, come to me and that maybe I might not agree, but they might sell me on the idea. So then the leader becomes the follower and I'm like, okay, I'll follow you on their idea.

That's great. So that does lead me to, uh, one of the core questions I always like to ask my guests, which is the importance of listening in leadership for you.

Yeah, that's again, the importance of listening is I've been married for some time now and communication and listening is a big part of my success as a married man for 22 years. And it goes the same way with, with, with people, with folks, people that you collaborate with. Is listening. We're always so quick to come up with the answer. And that's one, one of the hurdles that I used to have is because as I'm, as somebody, as I'm listening, I'm already formulating my idea on how to respond, but then it's not, I didn't finish listening the whole, to the whole story. And so in the end, you can't jump the gun too quick. You have to just sit and be patient and listen to the end.

That's right. There are two, there are really two kinds of listening, type 1 and type 2 listening. Type 1 listening is when, is the normal kind of listening that you were just describing, where you typically thinking about your response or what you're gonna say or how you're gonna react to what somebody's saying. And you, and, or you're getting information from somebody. And that's the kind of listening that most people engage in. The other kind of listening I call type 2 listening. And this is where your only agenda is to make sure that the speaker feels heard from the speaker's frame of reference. So you're listening to validate the speaker. I call it listening other people into existence. Yeah. And that sounds like the kind of listening that you engage in with your people. You want your people to feel heard as well as you need information, of course. But would that be a fair statement?

That's a fair statement. People want to be heard.

Right.

And that's a very true statement.

How did you learn that skill?

That's a very good question.

It's a rare skill.

And it shouldn't be rare, but it is.

It's not. You're right.

It's, I learned way back when I was in, in my college years, I was working for a, a company in, you know, under the business development side. And that's how I was put myself through school. And I used to read a lot of self-help books. And one of the books that I read and one of the ideas of prioritizing or putting into quadrants certain personality traits.

Mm-hmm.

You've heard, you've heard the, the saying, do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Sure.

I never follow that rule. After I've read and after my countless hours in reading these books, it's not about that. It's about doing unto others as they want to be done.

Very good.

Because they are not—

that's exactly right—

like you. We are not the same.

Right.

There's gonna be people that are the same, you know, character, same personality as I am. But if you wanna effectively communicate with people, you have to switch your head on and understand his character, his personality. So then that way you can reach him at his, at that person's level. And that level is not a high or a low level. It's just different, a horizontal level. Exactly.

The thought just came, you went to Sac State. I lived in Sacramento for 3 years. I went to law school in Sacramento.

Is that right? You, did you go to McGeorge or did you go to Lincoln?

McGeorge. Yeah.

McGeorge was great. Yeah, I know, like George.

Yeah. Wow. But I enjoyed my time in Sacramento.

Oh yeah. Sacramento was great. I, I, I, but I remember when I flew into Sacramento in '94, the airport was really small, but then after the years later, they built a bigger airport. Where am I going to come to a small town? And I was looking to see if there was cattle anywhere, but no, they didn't have cattle around there, but it was very small. And I liked it. 10 years. I lived in California in Sacramento for 10 years.

And oh, wow.

It was very nice.

I thought you'd find that interesting. So do unto others as they want to have done unto themselves. I think that's really a wise way of framing it. In my work as a peacemaker and teaching people how to stop fights and arguments, it's all about listening other people into existence. How do we validate people in a way that they feel so heard that they don't need to fight or argue anymore, even though there's still sharp disagreement? So that's what I teach people how to do.

That's great. That's a really good— that's, and that's important. I think if we got more people to jump into those type of lessons and learning, that would be— we wouldn't have too many— we would have arguments, but constructive and good arguments.

Exactly. Imagine what our culture would be like, right? Listen to each other.

It's easier said than done. I understand.

Actually, what's interesting about that, Walter, is it's not that hard to do. Once— there are tricks. It's counterintuitive, but once you learn the trick, it becomes part of you, and it's just really easy. To listen to another person in this way, but you got it, but you would never figure it out on your own. And I took me a long time to figure it out, but, um, you know what, but it is easy.

Like you're, I mean, it's hard when I say it's hard, it's easier said than done because that other person is not as receptive if they don't, that's what's difficult about it. But when I say difficult, it, but see, here's where when the communication aspect and understanding what kind of personality that person is. Once you do, then that person would become a lot more receptive. And then that's where you're— then when you're at that, that even playing field, then you can communicate effectively and then you can understand. Then there would be very good, uh, constructive issues that would be resolved.

That's right. Once people feel heard, you have loyalty, you have trust, you have connection in your personal life, you have intimacy. It makes all the difference in the world. Yeah.

And that's, that's a successful company right there. Not just building a company, but building relationships outside. But that, that's, that right there is for everything. That's life.

And that's why I teach what I teach because it changes lives in so many ways. So positive. Yeah. So what is it, Walter, that's unique about you that you bring to the table that makes you and your company so successful?

So apart from the, the effectiveness of communicating and listening that makes our company successful, it's our people because our people need to, to, if they see how we are, they see how leadership is and they start to adopt effective situ— effective tools for communication that we do. We have a lot of meetings. We, we provide a lot of hours or coffee status, um, our engagement. I think it makes us unique is our engagement. We, we went through a cultural transformation, which meant we looked at ourselves, what we were missing, how we would need to adapt and evolve to be able to— not just communication was great, but now as the company grows, there's a— it starts to form a culture, and that culture needs to be watered and to be, and to be finely tuned. And that was one of the things I thought that having happy hours and having a wine fridge would be great, would be a great day. That's our culture. It's a lot more than that. It, it's constant fine-tuning. It's constant. It's always constant. Every year, every 2 years, every 3 years as you get new folks from, from, from coming outta college, our gen generations have changed. You, you gotta continue fine-tuning it.

That's right. And, and What, what a lot of people don't realize is when you have a new person come into the firm, into the company, it's for them, the company begins on the day they, they, they start their employment and they don't have any past history and they don't have any reference points.

That's right.

So for them, the culture, they, they start building the culture from their first day of work.

So, so having an established culture so that somebody that comes in, they can fit in. That's why we have a rigorous process and, and recruitment and, and interviewing.

Yeah.

Because we wanna also make sure that, that, this individual fits our culture. Because when you have, you know, 1 or 2 people or even just 1 that doesn't fit, they won't be around for too long. They're not going to like it, or they're— they would— they would affect what we have already going on. But it's very important. You can have somebody who is great and is an expert and he does great work, but if he doesn't fit in the culture and he's not collaborating, and it can start affecting everyone else because we're all emotional, right? We're all energy. That all energy.

Talking my song, man.

Yeah, I maybe, yeah, we should.

This is what I teach. I say we, there's no such thing as rationality. We're all emotional beings. And you're right, energy and motion, emotion.

That's exactly right.

And so we have to learn to relate to each other as emotional beings, not rational beings.

Yeah.

And when you do that, things shift because now all behaviors that before didn't make any sense to you now make perfect sense because you see it through the lens of emotion rather than through the lens of rationality. Sounds like you picked up on another good big lesson.

Yeah, that, that's, it got me through a lot. It really did.

Yeah. One more question and then I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Walter, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

I was a theater major before I came here.

Theater major?

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted—

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's why I went to Sac State because Tom Hanks, he started his acting career at Sac State and then he went and moved on to Oakland. But I've always liked theater because it was a stage that would give you a pass to be whatever you want. And I— and no, no judgment. Just that, just the notion of standing in the middle of the stage where the lights are off, about to, about ready to, to speak your part, or the light, when the light comes in on your— you can feel the energy that's in front of you, and it's the audience. I think that is the high that I loved in theater.

I can see you light up as you think about it.

Yeah.

And I can see you doing Shakespeare.

Yeah. Oh, I tell you, it's— I've wanted— I've changed. I'm one of those people that kind of changed degrees a couple times, but again, my passion was the arts and I did a lot of community theater. That— it was great. It's still my dream to be able to do some community theater where I'm at here, but I've got a lot of things going on and I got such a great business that's flourishing thanks to the great people that work for us and work with us. And it's— I don't I can't, I don't have 3 or 4 of me and I do have a family and my wife does wanna see me from time to time.

So, right. And theater is somewhat demanding of time. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Rehearsals and right. Then when you're on in production, it's, it is, it's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding though after that.

I say you, you're glowing right now. Yeah.

Yeah.

You, well, I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for taking time outta your day to speak with me, Doug.

I appreciate you having me. In this interview, and I wish you well. And hopefully we could interchange some notes on some of the things that we've talked about.

Absolutely. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Yep. Sounds good. Thanks, Doug.

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. Doug Noll, D-O-U-G-N-O-L-L.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.