Are You Building or Diminishing the People Around You? With Doug Crandall

You're listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, your host, your guide, and your coach on this journey. Today, we'll enjoy a conversation I've been looking to because Doug and I come at leadership through 2 very different lenses. His path runs through West Point military leadership and decades of developing executives. Mine runs through clinical psychology, organizational culture, and developing executives and other high performers. Different disciplines and remarkably similar conclusions. About what helps people grow. One of the conclusions is that every interaction leaves a mark. We either build another person's capacity or we quietly diminish it. In fact, that's the title of Doug's newest book, Building or Diminishing. It poses a deceptively simple and deeply challenging question. When people walk away from an interaction with you, do they leave believing they're more capable or less? My guest today is Doug Crandall. Doug is a West Point graduate who taught on the faculty at the Academy, earned his MBA from Stanford, helped build Walmart's High Potential Leadership Program, and now serves as head of teaching at the Referent Group. For nearly 3 decades, he's helped leaders understand that influence isn't measured only by results. It's measured by the people we shape along the way. Doug Crandall, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Thanks a lot for having me, Wayne.

Yeah, it's great to have you here. Seriously, it's— I had a chance to meet you briefly on a pre-call and was really excited about being able to do this with you. Let's, let's jump in. Let's talk about interactions, right? And, and we could dial back the clock a little bit and, and talk about what got you here. And maybe you want to add that to the conversation. I just want to Start with some meaty stuff, which is like there's no neutral interaction. It's a pretty powerful statement you make. So we're tilting, right? We're not— we just have a bland interaction. No, we're either building or diminishing. What got you to think that way?

Yeah, it's during, uh, well, I'll share one story. Our youngest son had come home Uh, one night he, he had been at a dinner for a prospective job and he was telling us, my wife and I, all about the job. And it was really this amazing opportunity. It ended up honestly being too good to be true. A guy had kind of fed him a line of like all the stuff he was going to get. But as he was telling the story, I laughed out loud because it was such a great opportunity. But I mean, he's, he's in his early 20s and he paused and he actually looked at me and said, are you— Are you laughing because you think it's stupid or because you think it's great? And so just that— I was in the middle of writing the book at the time, so it's not like maybe one of the first things that pushed me into this concept, but it was validation that even my youngest son, who knows I love him, was trying to interpret my laugh as either building or diminishing. Like, which was it?

Yeah.

And so, you know, it's just— I think whether it's blank stares on our face or how long we take to respond to a text, We're all— maybe not everybody's been there, but I know I've been there where all of these little things tend to make me wonder kind of what's this person thinking about me, or do they believe in me, or whatever. So, um, I truly do believe that at a subconscious micro level, every interaction is doing— it's chipping away or it's building up.

That's amazing. It, it, uh, You know, we, we attend to so much in what we receive, you know, it's— and we filter so much. And in interactions, we're looking at, is the person present?

Hmm.

Like, that's the first thing I think, right? Is the person really present? Or they may be looking over your shoulder to see who else is in the room, or— right? And And as you engage with something, with someone, it's, it's kind of like, well, did they actually hear what I was saying? Did they hear me? And I think we're looking for acknowledgement. I've been guilty of something similar. You know, it's like, you interpret what the other person's saying, and you have such joy about it that you, you know, you burst out in laughter, or you get this smile. And to them, it's very serious. And to you, it's like, yeah, go.

Yeah.

It's so good. And, and it really brings us back to mindfulness. So it's, it's an interesting thing. How did you— let's talk a little bit about your, about your history. How did you even come to want to write a book and to recognize that we're either building or diminishing?

Yeah, that's a good, good question. I think that Started to share this message. It started off like in all the teaching we do, just as a slide I created with that question. Like you know, am I building? Just getting people to think about that. And I would honestly say I was I was surprised, and it sort of just ran with it at how much that question impacted certain people that we were teaching. I had one gentleman that came up to me and said that in our six-month program, like it was that question that changed him most. Like in the morning as he was walking towards, this was a doctor. And he talked about as he was walking towards his office, he would just tell himself like, build, build the nurses and the people you're working with, don't diminish. And he started to ask himself the question. And so that just having a question like that that goes out there and sometimes stuff's just sticky. So it just felt sticky. It was helping me personally. I mean, I was starting to ask it a lot in interactions with my adult kids, you know, like the one I just talked about with my son where he, he wanted to know whether my laughter was mocking him or kind of praising him. And so those 2 things kind of came together. Hey, this is helping me, like it seems to be helping some other people, so let me dig deeper into it. Um, and then started doing talks like exclusively on that, and that sort of developed into the book.

Did any of that come out of your training at West Point?

Well, I would say one big thing I'd connect to— and I actually was thinking about this as you asked the initial question— um, my time teaching at West Point. I mean, teaching is this endeavor where You got kids raising their hands, and we've all been there. It doesn't really— you're in a group of your peers, and so your peers could be 60 years old, your peers could be 14, but you're with your peers. And so when you raise your hand to answer a question or make a statement, you're risking a little bit. Like, you know, second day of the semester, you don't know all these people. I'm going to answer a question. All a way of saying that I think there's an art of teaching, of building up the people in the classroom. Like, challenging them potentially, but never making them feel stupid. I read a book by a guy named Parker Palmer called The Courage to Teach, and he just talked about like really being servant leaders as teachers in the classroom and serving your students by never humiliating them. A mentor of mine named Bruce Brown, who I talk about in the book multiple times, says never embarrass a willing learner. So I think as a teacher at the military academy, where there's a lot of pressure and cadets under a lot of stress and there's a lot of performance demands. I was cognizant from day one when I was teaching and really tried to develop this discipline of, um, of creating a classroom where we were talking like people weren't just saying crazy stuff and you were letting it go, but how do you rein it back in and keep and still dignify them in doing it? So I think that really put this idea top of mind, uh, and I, I started to pick out the moments where I said something sarcastic as a teacher or could tell it kind of kind of stung the person, and it's just unacceptable to me, like, as a teacher to do that. So I really set this standard of let me go through an entire year of teaching without doing that, if you will.

That's really, that's really great. You know, in my podcast, One Sharp Sword, I do like to pause and tease out the leadership lessons that we could all use along the way. So whether you're leading an organization, whether you're leading your family, or simply acting as a good human out in the world and, and leading by modeling, right? I believe we're all leaders because at some point we're being watched. So, you know, one of the things you said without saying it this way is that dignity is a value.

Hmm.

Right? And, and landing in that mindful space of how do I bring dignity to pretty much everybody around me? I mean, if you, if you go grocery shopping and you're Pushing your cart down the aisle, can you bring that respect to other people who are shopping whether or not they show you that respect? And I just it's like it's the small stuff you're talking about mindfulness. Can you put yourself in that space of being mindful of other people that today I build, today I build, today I build right that it's it's deliberate and. You know, I, I learned sarcasm from my dad, um, and, and, uh, there it was playful, um, and I realized when I took that forward that it could fall flat, that it wasn't always funny, you know, putting somebody down or being slightly sarcastic. That wasn't funny. And so, you know, what you've just said is really, really important that, you know, we, we look at what is, what is the effect that we have on other people around us.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, the way you're sharing that brings to mind one of my favorite stories from the book, which I just took. I wrote a little bit. I mean, I'm not a musician by any stretch, but I felt a little bit like a jazz musician. I was, as I was writing at times, because I was just sort of plucking things that were happening in my world. Like I might be writing and all of a sudden my wife sends me an Instagram reel about something. This is exactly what happened. I saw something about the comedian Nate Barghetti, who I'm a big fan of. And Nate has gone in the last maybe 4 or 5 years from just small clubs to one of the biggest few comedians in the world. And he was interviewed on a podcast and Nate is a clean comedian. So he never, he never swears. He doesn't talk about things that your 14-year-old couldn't listen to. You know, I described him as sort of like he's equally appealing to 20-somethings and their parents.

Right.

And so Nate gets asked a lot, like, why do you do this clean comedy? And I've heard him asked it several times, and he usually kind of just brushes it off. That's just who I am. But in this particular instance on this podcast, he said, well, it actually goes back to a moment I was doing a— I had a bit out there on the internet, like on YouTube or something. about prostitutes in New York City. And I made a joke. There were some headlines about prostitutes being murdered in New York at the time. And my joke was around the idea that like, it's a tough time to be a prostitute because the economy's down and you're getting murdered. And then he had a couple other things he added onto it. And he said he got a message from a woman and he just said, in that line of work, that said, hey, this really hurt me when you made that joke.

Yeah.

And he said it changed him. Like, just getting that email changed him. And the reason he does comedy the way he does it now is he never wants to make anyone in the audience upset, feel bad. I mean, imagine that. Like, you know, my wife and I just saw him in front of like 8,000 people in Lake Tahoe, California, and he wants to do a show where he doesn't make anybody of those 8,000. And yet it makes so much sense.

Like, he's—

They're coming to see you. He's— you're paying money so he'll entertain you. Yeah, he's mindful of the things he's saying and whether that might hurt somebody. And he's risen to the top of the comedy world by, by doing jokes that make fun of himself and his own family and don't make fun of other people.

It's, you know, I think that's, that's tough in comedy because, yeah, you know, we're used to those. I mean, years ago, I remember Don Rickles, like he was the king of put-downs, right? And, and to have somebody who focuses specifically on can it be clean and can it, can it be uplifting? It's hard to find comedy that's like that. So that's, it's a, it's a great story. Let me ask about another, another story that you have in your book, the Everett Spain story and talk a little bit about the— how the Pygmalion effect shows up, um, you know, what we expect in others and how do you draw that out and, um, how that shows up in your life as well.

Yeah, it's— and this goes back, um, you know, I talked about stickiness earlier, Wayne, and I— the— our previous book, Permission to Speak Freely, uh, we talk about this story and then I, I bring it up again because it's been a This interaction with Everett's been something that changed my life, like truly. It was, it was 23 years ago, just about. We were sitting in a small office at West Point. We were talking about the process of getting teachers ready to teach in the leadership department. You'll come in as a captain in the Army and you haven't taught before. So we put you through 2 months of pretty rigorous, like all day long for 2 months, practice teaching. And in that practice teaching, You'll have more senior people model what cadets might be like. They'll ask a few cynical questions or pretend to fall asleep. And Everett got kind of indignant with me one day about that process. I was praising it and he's like, I hate that stuff. I hate it when we do that. And Everett, he's now the head of leader development at Goldman Sachs. Like he's a retired general. We were young officers at the time. Amazing human being who I look up to. But Everett's also like, if you play pickleball against him, he wants to crush you. But when my dad died, he drove us to JFK Airport, which is a horrible commute, and got my tires fixed on the way back. And huge heart. So I was, I say all that to say, I'm kind of thinking, well, which Everett is saying I hate this stuff? Like, this is kind of weird. I was like, and I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I've never met a bad cadet. I've never met a bad cadet. We prepare us to get ready for these bad cadets. We're doing the stuff we teach, like the Pygmalion effect, that we get what we expect. So if we, if we teach us to expect bad cadets, that's what we're gonna get. And I, I wasn't buying whatever it was selling, obviously. Honestly, like, I, I walked out thinking I met 2 yesterday. Like, Everett, okay, Everett, like, I've never met a bad cadet. But I decided to go to this classroom, and it was just different. Like, it was immediately different. You could tell that Everett's Cadets perceived that he believed in them, that he liked them, even that he was excited to be with them. And it was just different than the other classrooms I'd seen. And I was fortunate to have four and a half years left teaching there when we had this conversation, and I just decided to never meet a bad cadet. And that was—it's in the attributions we make about behavior. I mean, a simple example I'll give is cadets have to—they have to knock on the door like. 1, 2, and report, like, Cadet Crandall reports late to class. If they're 15 seconds late, if they're 3 minutes late. And then when you're teaching, I would think to myself before Everett and I had that conversation, yeah, slacker probably fell asleep. And it didn't even result in words that I said. It just was what I was thinking about people's intent or the attributions of their behavior. After Everett told me that, I just decided to change that thought to Probably tried to get here as quick as they could, and their calculus teacher held them up. Something like that. Didn't it? Didn't even. I mean, it did probably subconsciously and nonverbally impact the way I responded to the cadet, but I never asked. Like it wasn't. I didn't need to know. I just marked them late. So in all kinds of walks of life now, it became this phrase: assume positive intent. Never meet a bad cadet. Never meet a bad basketball player. I taught at a medium security prison, and. I pledged to never meet a bad prisoner. And I watched it happen. Like, people just show up differently when they perceive that you think they're good, when you think they're great. And I've seen in my own life, when people believe in me, I perform better. I start to believe in myself. So that's the story. It truly was. There's all kinds of social science research behind this Pygmalion effect, and then it's proven true in my own life.

It's rewarding too, isn't it?

Yeah.

It shows up. Uh, I, early on, I did some reading on, um, self-esteem and expectations. And obviously, uh, with a psych background, like, that kind of stuff does show up. And there are studies after studies after studies. I mean, they'd divide classrooms, you know, blue eyes versus brown eyes, and the blue eyes were told how wonderful they were, and the brown eyes were almost ignored. And you'd watch motivation just like shift in a classroom. And it's like this, it's, it's this expectation. And it's also almost a learned helplessness that there's nothing I can do. You know, I think as, as humans, we like to be acknowledged. And I think if you— it's back to mindfulness and dignity, that if, if you treat other people with that kind of grace, that, and that expectation, you're going to get the best out of them. And, and to recognize that maybe someone's best isn't at your best, right? That maybe they can only achieve up to here, but for them, that is their best. And, and I think that that's, that's something too, that, you know, we We need to be able to acknowledge that. This is, to my mind, this is huge because leaders in organizations, you know, whether you're the CEO or whether you're a manager in a department, you've got people that are looking to you, and that's where trust is built too, right? So did you, did you do work around trust as well? Did you dive into that as a topic, or was— or is that just kind of a great byproduct?

It's interesting. We, uh, I actually sent the book to, uh, a— I call him young, he's in his mid-30s— but an officer at West Point who I got to know. I got to go back and teach there a couple years ago as a civilian, and, and a byproduct of that was building a couple great relationships with current junior officers in the Army. And so I sent one to a guy named Curtis Garner, who's Incredibly smart, but we think differently. Curtis is very analytical. I'm a little bit more on the emotional side. And he read through the book for me and he actually came back with some really good— I asked him just kind of for high-level strategic feedback. And he mentioned, you know, trust is talked about so often in the book, but there's not a chapter on trust. You might think about that. And I did think about it, but intentionally, I think trust is its own 4-volume You know, said, and there's so many ways to look at trust. We we do we teach it in the work we do. Have studied it. You know, read multiple peer-reviewed papers about trust. The there, but so you can't lead without trust. It's so essential. I think that the words we say, like one way we did approach it, is in building or diminishing. Like if people trust you, your words are going to tend to. Build more because they trust what you're saying no matter how it comes out or no matter how much you're challenging them. If they trust you, that greases the skids. And if they don't trust you, it doesn't really matter what you say. If you say something positive, they might think you're just trying to manipulate them or like butter them up or whatever. So it's the undergirding of everything. And, um, yeah, I, I think that in the end I didn't want it to become a book about trust Per se, but did add a couple paragraphs in there about kind of the general concepts of trust in this context.

Well, I think it's a thread that runs through the work. I mean, when you, right, if people can't believe the message if they don't believe the messenger, right? So how you show up and doing it consistently and how you deliver your message of build or diminish, you know, it's like, Years ago, I don't know if you remember the management technique of what has since become the— I'll be more polite— the poop sandwich. And it's sort of like, hey, you're doing a great job. Here's where you suck. And by the way, keep up the good work.

Yeah.

It's like, what? Like, so people got used to in organizations, that was the way you were gonna deliver feedback. quote unquote feedback. And, and it's like, oh, so what team members learned is that if they heard something positive, something negative was about to follow. And that— I'm so glad that that got blown up and blown out. It was— that was a pretty terrible way of operating.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting to When you bring that up and kind of these mechanics that you mentioned several times in the book, like it, it's about how we think. Like that's why never meeting a bad cadet is so important because it is people, people intuit whether you, whether you really do think they can achieve it, whether you like them, whether you care about them. And, and these mechanics of like saying things a certain way aren't nearly important in my opinion as, as what's inside your heart. And then like what comes out of your heart. But one of the women that we studied around trust in this particular book is Pat Summitt, former coach of the century in college basketball at Tennessee, who has since passed, but had some really interesting comments from a book that was actually written by Bruce Brown, who I mentioned earlier, from some of her players and people who work with her. And one of them that really stood out to me was they said— was one of her players said that when Pat Told you you weren't working hard enough. You trusted her so much that you believed you could work harder. And, and just in that phrase, it starts to make you think about how, how intricate trust is. Like, what that player was saying is, Pat knows what hard work looks like. So I trust that she knows what she's talking about. And she's getting on me because she believes in me and cares about me. And, and so you've got to have both of those things. Um, and then if you do, in Pat Summitt's case, you can say whatever to people almost because they believe you know what you're talking about and they believe you— that she had their best interest at heart. So.

That is key, right? Do you have the other person's best interest at heart? That is, that is a huge foundation. Um, it's— I've talked about this before. I had a gentleman on my podcast a few years back who wrote a book about trust, and he talked about 4 levers and levers that you pull for building trust. And one was to start with that question, you know, do you believe I have your best interest at heart? And I think if we operate from that position, which is, which is what you basically are saying, look, I am a builder, right? I build. And therefore, as a builder, I come to you With, I have your best interest at heart as a builder. That's why I'm saying what I'm saying. And it's, and it's not ego-based. Like a lot of times, I, I've witnessed this and had to coach leaders about, you know, you said that so you'd look better instead of saying that so you'd actually build the other person.

Hmm.

So yeah, do you have the other person's best interest at heart? That builds trust. Um, and it builds the other person ultimately. Um, where along the way, you know, you've— in— I guess this is true for all of us as humans— we haven't always gotten things right. And where, you know, besides with your son, were there other places where you were like, oh, you know what? Personally, this is where I've got to become a better builder.

Yeah, I mean, I think in, in every way, you know, like, so you come at it from— I can look at the moments in my life, um, and I still have them at certain points where I'm, I'm exceedingly task-focused because I, I want to win. Like, I'm a competitive person. Like, if one of our core values at, at the, um, Team I'm part of is is that we strive for excellence, and that you know that means in a lot of different ways. So want to do stuff with excellence, and and there were times, and I don't I'm qualifying it because I don't want to like go back to 2000 to say this is where because I probably did this last week, and I think we as leaders we fail a lot. We I was just talking about this with the group I was with yesterday that that the leaders will be vulnerable, and like when you screw up, they'll say oh I screwed up. I've screwed up before and they'll talk about something when they were 24 and now they're 57, you know, like, oh, right. I mean, I, and the, and we all, it was a really interesting conversation. She said, yeah, it's much more like, it builds much more trust when you say I screwed up this specific thing, failed in this way last week. Right. Like, here's where I did it. Um, so. Sorry, that's a long way of saying like, there are plenty of examples in my own life, but definitely one I look at is when I was a lieutenant and captain in the Army. I think I had a really good sense of like high standards and like felt my job was to Enforce the standards, make sure we accomplished our mission. And that's 100% true. But I had a moment that I came out to a training exercise, like all the, all of our company was already out there. And I came out about an hour after it started. And the first sergeant who's, you know, at that time was probably 10 years older than I was and more experienced and, and my right-hand mentor pulled me into a room and he was just like, Sir, every time you come out here, like, everybody just braces for you to find what's wrong. Like, you never tell anyone they're doing a good job. I don't think I have. I'm fairly self-aware. Like, I have lots of flaws, and my self-awareness exposes them to me often. I was totally caught off guard. I didn't, you know, I was head down trying to fix a culture that I'd been told to fix. And I was accomplishing that in certain ways, but I was chewing people up and making them miserable in the process and, and got called out on it, rightly so. So, you know, that's one example of where I think I just wasn't— I didn't even realize it. And I think it's a good warning to, to me at least, but to all of us that, hey, where are we feeling like we're getting stuff done? But have we stepped back, been mindful, and realized what we're doing to people in the process? And then I've course corrected, and I think I've— I became one who like wanted— didn't want to hurt people and wanted to build them up. And so I wasn't always getting the most out of them. I know as a high school basketball coach, I talked about that in the book, that I look back and built a lot of belief. Like, I'm not— I think I did a good job in that sense, built a lot of confidence, but left probably performance on the table by not wanting to tell like a young woman she wasn't working hard enough because I wasn't sure if I knew what, like, whether she was or wasn't. So, um, I, I think a lot of these things that we fail to do as leaders, like, sometimes they come from good places, and it just takes a lot, like, of the work you do with individual leaders, like processing, what am I doing? What's the impact? Why am I doing it? Where can I get better? Uh, it's— we're all unfinished, I think, for through this journey.

Well, yeah, the work isn't done until, until the body's expired, I think. Yeah. You know, like, and then Who knows? Do we start it all again? I don't know. But yeah, it's, it's, it's an ongoing— that's the whole thing about, about personal and professional development. And, and I don't know that a lot of people realize this, but if you stop growing, then you are— you've stopped building, and therefore you are diminishing yourself. Right. So unless you're really actively pursuing what is my next phase of growth, you're, you are stagnating and therefore dying and probably killing the people around you energetically. And I mean, if you, the best way to think about it is, you know, at 10 years old, you know, you're full of energy and running around, but you don't think about what's it going to be like at 16? What's it going to be like at 20, 21? Right? And yet you get there, and then you get there, and it's sort of like, oh, I did grow. Well, you know, you and I are both talking about being mindful. We're talking about being conscious of, of that growth. And as adults, we can say, cool, what's my growth edge? What do I need to be working on for me? And so far, I mean, the theme that's coming through this is the mindfulness. It is the belief in people. And I, that's like, that is so valuable. It is so essential that we show up as that beacon of light for others so that they can trust that it is, there's a sense of safety to go where you're shining your beam. You know, it's like, that's, I think that's, that's huge. Yeah.

And I really, um, My hope, and this is the way we teach, and I tried to write the book in some of the ways we teach, that we're simply reflecting the importance of that mindfulness and reflection on our experience. I mean, growth is not a given. Experience doesn't make you better. Reflection on experience makes you better. And so the book, especially in the introduction, just charting this, hey, growth mindset that I haven't always been skilled at in my own life, you know, feed I've been defensive about feedback. I can— I know that. And yet it's so essential to not be and to be honest with yourself and to never stop reflecting.

Let's, let's talk a little bit about the difference between being kind and being nice. And there's, along those lines, there's a difference between really believing in somebody or just being a cheerleader for them to get them to move. So what's like, how do you handle building versus maybe like, is it ever appropriate to lower a standard so that you're moving someone forward?

Yeah. I mean, the first thing that your question makes me think of, it's a great question. And this book really made me think of like Confront is this idea that I do believe it's really hard to lead someone you don't believe in. I mean, and so, um, I started, you know, well, so what happens if you don't believe it? I mean, I, I don't know that I have the answer to this. I think it's a really interesting discussion, but I, I did come to a conclusion that if I truly don't believe someone can reach the standard that we need someone to reach, then I need to stop leading that person. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're fired. It might mean they're— They're sent, they're, you know, put some, given a different leader or whatever. But I do think that's an important thing for all of us to consider is, is what do I really believe this person can achieve excellence? Now there's a real world out there where you can't just be moving around, like moving, shuffling people around. And we, we have to lead a mix of people. Lots of people are in leadership endeavors where they're not given A choice in who they're leading. But I think it's fair to say, like, the Pygmalion effect is real, that our job as leaders is to get people to believe in themselves. And it's really hard to do that if you don't believe in them. Given that you do, and I think, Wayne, what you said earlier about this lack of ego, that it's not about making myself look better, I think this has also made me realize, like, if I believe in this person, And I truly do have their best interest at heart, then feedback and correction and pushing them is always kind, right? Like that now, if I can check those 2 boxes and say I have their best interest at heart and I believe in them, and you can get them to understand that you are coming from that perspective, then it just opens doors to be able to teach and coach and improve and achieve excellence along the way that I think is, gonna make every organization and people better. But, yeah. And so I, that, that would be my reflection on this idea of kind. I mean, nice is a different story. It's kind of interesting to think about that. But, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's okay. Yeah. It's kind to actually help someone grow. And sometimes you say things that they need to hear so that they can. Right? And that's, you know, we We don't grow until we push out of the comfort zone, right?

Yeah.

One of the things I teach is what happens, what happens if you stay in your comfort zone? And the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing happens, right? It's like, right? So when you grow out of your comfort zone and you have the support of somebody who believes in you to push outside of that comfort zone, um, You know, growth happens and you end up stretched to a new dimension. You can never go back to who you were. I think, I think that's huge. Can you talk, um, just to dovetail on that, you know, there's the cheerleader and the builder. Um, you've got 2 other kind of, um, archetypes that you talk about in the book.

Mm-hmm.

You've got the builder, you've got the driver, you've got the cheerleader, and you've got the belittler. Where do you think most leaders are or find themselves? And obviously, I think you, you want to help people, you want to help leaders get to the builder place. Where do you think most leaders are? And what's the work What's the work that maybe each of those archetypes needs to focus on?

Yeah, it's a great, great question. Um, yeah, this is just a journey we're launching, and it's interesting. I, I would say completely anecdotal and what I've watched, I'd say there's probably like a 60% cheerleader, 40% driver, and it's really those two. Like, I'd break those two out, and people who are actually thinking about it and want to get better, and what do I need to do? And I've received a lot of LinkedIn messages and notes back from people who have started to read the book, and that's kind of the breakdown of their own self-disclosure, if you will. Like, I'm not asking this question; I'm just getting this unsolicited feedback. I mean, there's this—I don't know what the percentage is—but there's a there's a there's a there's a healthy percentage of belittlers who just don't care, aren't trying to get better, don't care about people, come to work and and just are toxic. It's a— it was one of the lessons that got added to the core leadership curriculum at West Point over the 20 years that I had been there, was we were teaching a— we were calling it counterproductive leadership, but it was really just a lesson on the research around toxic leadership. And I, I think that there are belittlers who have some hope because I've been there. Like, I was at points where I was a belittler in terms that, you know, had gotten lost a little bit.

Yeah.

I don't spend a lot of time on that. I think that we, in those corners of cheerleader who gives all the positive communication but isn't necessarily holding a standard of expecting excellence, and a driver who's expecting excellence and pushing performance but isn't giving a lot of positive communication, I'd say that's more where it lands. And how do we get to builder? And I think something you said earlier is really, boy, if I could break it down to just like one thing is, is need to hear. Like, what do the people you lead need to hear? And that you can come at that from either place. Like, cheerleaders are really good at being positive and building people up and making them feel valued, but they shy away. I shy away. I've been there, um, from saying that, from providing the tough feedback because of fear of damaging the relationship or hurting the people's feelings. I'm— it's, it's not always something as sinister as like, I'm afraid to You know, to say it. I'm afraid of confrontation. I actually think a lot of times it's— it comes from kind of pure motives. And then drivers, you know, equally like don't understand these people who can't hold people to a standard because they do it. But I would step back and say, well, I don't necessarily understand the person who can't just tell someone they're doing a great job, or I believe in you, or I value you, or thank you, or here's a handwritten note. So I just think those 3 words, what do they need to hear? Can, like, what am I not saying as a cheerleader? What am I not saying as a driver?

Those are great questions for self-reflection. What am I saying? What am I not saying? I, uh, I'm a big fan of assume nothing except make only one assumption, and that's that you're missing something.

Hmm.

Missing something about the interaction, the context. You're missing something about the other person, or you're missing something about yourself. And so if you ask, you know, what does this other person need to hear? If you run the other questions like, what am I missing about the other person or the context? And you start there and you start to explore, you might actually be able to, to, to build that question up a little bit, to build the answer up, what this person needs to hear. Based on what you learn about context.

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's just that curiosity, um, and it just is another— curiosity is another just sort of like, um, amplifier of self-awareness, right? Like, hey, let me, let me think about this.

It's true. Um, people who know me know that I'm a huge fan of curiosity. I keep Curious George around me, like little George. I've brought Curious George to board meetings. Like, I'd set a stuffed monkey at the head of the boardroom table, and people are like, what are you doing? Like, what's that? It's like, what's with the monkey? It's like, hey, it's not just a monkey. And someone will go, hey, it's George. And someone else will go, no, it's Curious George. And it's like, that's awesome. Here's the thing about curiosity. Like, and I bring Curious George for 2 reasons. One, he reminds me to stay curious, and if you can be curious, you are out of judgment. And 2, um, that little guy always makes me laugh, and what a great place to start, right? So, you know, starting with something fun, and it's, it's— I'm a huge fan of curiosity, and I use, uh, Curious George to leverage that.

Um, I love that, by the way. You had shared that when we were in our pre-meeting a little bit, and I had I've already told several people about it. I thought that was super cool.

That's awesome. Um, we help shape other people's identities, uh, and that's a huge responsibility because when, you know, I think it's one of the points you make is that identity is often shaped by repeated interactions. I know that from You know, in psychology, you've explored that and recognized it as that's the reason to be a builder. How quickly do you think a leader can reshape another person's belief about themselves?

Huh, that's a great question. Really quickly, I think, honestly. I'll share 2 examples, one from personal experience and It goes way back. I mean, I think there would've been a question around, maybe you get asked a lot, like, who's someone that believed in you? Who's someone that built you? That's a question we ask when we teach. And I was thinking about that question for myself. And it was as simple as, I wouldn't, it was nothing dramatic. 8th grade basketball, I was on a middle school travel team and my confidence and everything about who I believed I was was just decimated. Like, I'd come in confident, Um, you know, the, the coach was a driver to me. He felt like this old guy who didn't, didn't even know my name, but spent the whole season just kind of feeling crappy. My freshman year of basketball, I wasn't that great a player. I played on our team's high school freshman team, and the coach was a guy named Steve Files, and he was probably 25 years old. He wasn't charismatic. He was, you know, there wasn't— but I felt like he cared about me. And he just didn't diminish me. And it was truly like, I can feel 2 or 3 days into practice, like, oh, it doesn't have to feel like it felt last year. Um, I, I still— I wasn't a starter, you know, I played a little bit, but I don't remember him ever yelling at me, ever embarrassing me. Um, when I was struggling with the drill, he just helped me. And I would say in that case, like, it was— I don't know, Dr. P, but like maybe within a week. He had, he had made me realize even at 14 years old, I wasn't as crappy as I thought I was. Uh, and nice. I have a friend who, she ran a, uh, a private school in Nicaragua for 17 years, I think it was. She, she took that job when she was like 23, went down there. Um, she's from Yakima, Washington. And so this was, this was a huge leap for her. And she built this school into something that was so awesome for kids that it threatened the members of the government in Nicaragua. And she got put on a list and, and Gnarly had to basically leave the country if the school was going to stay open. And she turned it over, the leadership of the school, to her brother. But she went from 2 decades of that was where she lived and what she was experiencing. And she was this character like. transformational leader in Nicaragua to kind of being dumped in the middle of Ohio and having to just get a normal job. And, uh, she—

Whatever that is these days.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, uh, she really lost a sense of self with that. And, and, um, I won't go too deep into it, but the leadership she experienced made her feel really diminished. And so it was almost instantaneous in that sense. And then she found a new job and she's— and a guy named Dan Olawabi, who was at this nonprofit in Ohio, who she felt like was a transformational leader. And he immediately shifted how she perceived herself and her ability to do things in this new phase of her life. So it was like flip-flop, flip-flop. And so I think it's really quickly that we can have an impact on people, especially when, if you're down, having someone to pick you up can happen really quickly.

It builds that trust instantly if you're present and it goes back to presence. There's phone on the table research that affects our interactions, like the research about bringing technology to the interaction. Can you talk a little bit about where we miss in being really human with each other, the human connection? And just talk a little bit about, you know, that, that phone on the table research and what it means in terms of really being a builder or a diminisher.

Yeah, the research, which I'd heard cited, then I looked it up to make sure I had it straight for the book. And it's been— several studies have been done, but we cited one in particular, but that just the presence of a phone on the table requires cognitive load. So like, if your phone's on the table, you can kind of see it out of the corner of your eye. Your brain is kind of working in the background, wondering if something's coming, just wondering what's on the phone, even when it's not doing anything. So just phones on the table tend to distract and take away from our social interactions. They cause a little bit of anxiety. And, and that's a simple example. I know in my own life, I'm super guilty. And it's just one of those habits that, that, that's where I turned to this book Atomic Habits that 20+ million people have turned to, to get to break it. But, you know, my kids are talking to me, and I'm, I'm fortunate that I have 20-something, 30-year-olds who still want to spend time with my wife and I. And they'll be telling me something and I'm on my phone, right? And like, how— It sucks. It's horrid. It's stupid. Like, it's like I want to slap my hand. Just put it down. Be in the moment. I have tried to do that at times. Just leave it at home when we go somewhere. And whether it's a phone or a computer or even just you're thinking about someone else, no one else can see that. But someone's talking to me, but I'm thinking about someone else. Especially as leaders, people sense that. I've had leaders who When I, and I've mentioned a few of them in the book, I've had leaders and friends who, when you're talking to them, they're 100% all in on what you're saying. And then I've had leaders, and I have been a leader who I'm only 70% in or I'm 30% in. And, and we get that and it makes us feel like something else is more important than we are.

Yeah. Yeah. Comes back to presence and like, that's really how you become a builder. I think is, you know, are you there? Are you there for the other person? Are you, are you all in? Or is the other person just a task on your long list of to-dos? Yes, I'll listen to this person for an instant or whatever. So it's back to mindfulness and presence. And that's, it's so important. It's so important. Um, let me ask you this. This is kind of in— because it's been a fast, for me, fast interview time. So just in wrapping with you, if someone has read your book, 5 years out, what are you hoping that they will have brought forth? What will they be experiencing? What will the people around them experience as a result of that. Well, that's a—

yeah, I love that. Um, I will caveat, it's not a cop-out, that I think it's gonna be— yeah, it's gonna be different for everybody. And the book's written in that fashion, right? Like, it's not a book where it says, hey, in the last, you know, last 20 pages, here's the 7 steps to builder, because the, the journey to builder is, is as different as all of us are. Um, I do think— I do have this hope, I really do, that this question, am I building or diminishing, starts to become part of just people's operating system. Like, it has for me. I'm by no means perfect, but I'm way better than I was 3 or 4 years ago. And the things I say and the things I don't say to the people I love, to the people I work with, to the person I just happen to be interacting with, like you said, at, you know, at a concert. I mean, I I am much more cognizant now of how I'm making people feel, partly because I have— I'm an introvert, and just even my quietness can be unsettling for certain people. Like, what's he thinking right now? So I would love if 5 years out, after people have read this book, they've actually gotten the discipline of asking that question: am I building or diminishing? And then what building means is going to be different for everybody. Does that mean that now, like my friend Tom, who we had actually used as an example in the book, who I work with closely, went into a job and realized, like, to be a builder, he needs to raise his level of expectation and have harder conversations and push people more because he's more of a cheerleader. Um, or I had a friend text me— I've had 2 friends actually text me, Wayne, who, who said they real— they were in the middle of reading the book and they had horrible interactions with their adult kids. 2 different really good friends. And they, they said, boy, that was— I got— I hung up the phone, I realized I'd just been totally diminishing. And I— both of them, I went back and I said, I'm sorry. So that to me, like, it almost choked— it almost like, that warms my heart. If that, like, if, if all this does is improve some relationships between a parent and adult kid because this parent's more cognizant of the words and how that's impacting their child, um, then that would be awesome. So that, that's my hope, really, like, for anyone that reads it. I hope it impacts people in multitude of different ways, but, but that the words we're using and the expectations that we are setting are both going up and to the right.

Perfect. Love that. How do people find out more about Building or Diminishing? How do people find out more about you, Doug Crandall? Are— do you want people to find you on LinkedIn, or do you Want people to find you at reference?

Yeah, great question. I think LinkedIn's a great place to connect. We also, we're fortunate to get the buildingordiminishing.com website name. So we have a pretty simple but quality website up. We actually just built a self-assessment. It's free. All you gotta do is, you do have to enter an email and that's not so we can grab your email and do anything with it at all. It's just kind of the mechanics of the website. So, you can have your own account, but you can fill out a self-assessment. There's actually a builder coach on there where you can— it'll take your assessment and create some conversations for you. So, that's a good way to connect for sure. And there's contact info on there. But I love engaging in discussions around this. It's a topic that's growing organically. I mean, it's not settled by any means. It's truly an exploration. So, that's fun for me.

I love that. It is an exploration. Growth is— it's got to be a continuing exploration. buildingordiminishing.com, is that right?

That is correct. Yep.

Okay, that's awesome. And LinkedIn, it's Doug Crandall, C-R-A-N-D-A-L-L. So yeah, please find Doug. Please find buildingordiminishing.com. And again, Doug Crandall. Doug, thank you. Thank you for being here today. This— it's been great.

Awesome privilege. Thank you.

Awesome. You— yeah, so good. So good. Alrighty, well, this is One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I am your host, guide, and coach on this journey, Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Uh, please like and share these episodes if you have enjoyed it. Um, and you know Check out Building or Diminishing. Alrighty, we'll see you here next time. Thanks again for being here. Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer Dr. Wayne Pernell. For more information, please go to onesharpsword.com.