Inside JLC: Adaptive Leadership Part 4: Maintain Disciplined Attention

Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to JLC Media. This is for us. It has been a wonderful opportunity to explore the distinctions between challenges that leaders run into and how to adapt to those challenges. So this is the context is adaptive leadership. How do we adapt to situations that unfold? Well, there's three kinds of situations. One situation is just technical, which is, I need to go to my boss or to somebody in authority that can actually solve this problem because it's a technical problem. The second situation that unfolds is a conflation. We put together the technical challenges that are in front of us and the adaptive challenges, which the adaptive fundamentally means. We don't have a ready answer for this. And there's no authority figure or authority entity to go to to help them deal with this particular challenge, this adaptive challenge. Then the third situation is when it's just purely an adaptive challenge, they're not conflated lives by itself. So technical, the conflation of technical and adaptive. And finally an adaptive challenge. Adaptive leadership is about looking at those challenges, being able to see the distinctions and then behave in a way as a leader so that leadership can be exercised throughout the system to deal with the adaptive challenge. So so far, we've talked about identifying the adaptive challenge, getting up on the balcony and look down at the practice field to see how they're doing in responding to this incredible challenge that's unfolded. And then we really wanted to give people a space to regulate their own distress. How am I going to have some place to go to say this is all about dealing with limiting factors? It's a limiting factor. If Joe says to me, well, Ray, tomorrow you're moving to a new state and you're going to have new people, and you have a slightly different. Okay, I'm going to be distressed about that because all the people that I know, the people that I'm loyal to, the relationships that I have here and now, are gone. They're gone in an instant. And now I got to figure out what to do. And those are losses. And there are other losses, like my own personal authority, my own ability to work every day, the competence I feel in doing my work with the people I work with. So this is really kind of a big deal. And I know that's a little bit of a setup for this to get to the fourth episode today. And that fourth episode is about how do we truly maintain disciplined attention of the gang that we are, that has been placed in our care. How do we maintain disciplined attention once we've identified the adaptive challenge? So, Colleen, what Are you hearing me say this? This conversation is about today?

Sure. Well, this is. I heard you say that this is fourth in a six part series. Kind of went through the other portions as well. But today we're focusing on how do we maintain discipline, attention. So once we've kind of unpacked to determine what type of a problem is this, how are we going to address it? Once we created space for people to kind of manage their distress and their upsetness and then how are we going to stay focused to ensure that whatever solution that we've came up with unfolds in the way intended?

Excellent. Vince, are you hearing what did you hear Colleen say and did you hear anything more or different?

No, Colleen, that was very well stated. I heard her articulate. In our series you outlined the background of what we talked about before. And then today we're going to focus on maintaining disciplined tension in a way, how we help the team kind of stay focused and move forward, driving towards whatever the stated outcomes that you have as a leader or for yourself and for the team. So I'm excited to get into this conversation. My mind is already beginning to turn in excitement, anticipation.

Yeah, it is fun. Joe, what are you hearing Colleen and Vince saying? Did we miss anything in my opening comments?

No, I don't think we've missed anything, but I do. As we're talking about this, Ray, I do think about the challenge for leadership to set the agenda for change and to continue to push on it. The idea that you can announce something that needs to be done or you can see a major shift that the organization needs to make. Putting out a proclamation and then expecting others to pick up the banner and run forward, not so much. The leadership has to create the priority and the sense of urgency. I worked for a guy one time. This story has a little bit of age on it. This was before fiber optics were big into lots of electronics. But his requirement was that if you went up to see him on programs and we all had to go see him on our work, he wanted to talk about every program and how they were using fiber optics. And so it didn't matter how mundane or marginal you thought your program was, if you went up there, you had to be prepared to talk about how you weren't using, how you were or were not using fiber optics. And if you were not, there was going to be another degree of grueling about why are you buying old technology.

So that's really a great example of a challenge which is. And your leader, the challenge is expect you to be using the new technology and tell us how and if you're not, tell us what you're going to do to make sure that you do use it. Did I get you right?

Yeah. And I think we've all worked for bosses who sometimes could be a little, you know, again, as more junior people in the organization, we felt like they were overbearing or geez, you know, every time you talk to him or her, they're asking about this or about that. I think to a degree we're talking about that kind of insistence that, yes, what's driving the organization. Tell me how what you are doing relates to my goal and not giving up on that theme.

It's almost like the sentence that I pulled out of literature. The preoccupation of pressing forward even in the face of limiting factors. What are you thinking about? What Joe and I were just chatting about Vince.

So in fairness, I guess as I listened to that example, I understood why from what I'm understanding, you know, as an employee or as a leader, when you go to see your boss, you need to be prepared. This boss that you had to be prepared to either tell me how you your program is kind of supporting his desired end state or if it was not, why. And I guess my take on it, I was looking at that a little differently from a different lens. I was thinking about as a leader, if I want to drive my organization towards fiber optics, I wanted my leaders and my programs to really incorporate fiber optics into everyday existence, which they may not have been. And I was thinking about what could I do to enhance that. And what I was thinking of is I have to be very repetitious and telling them on a regular basis why this is important and how the things that we could do to drive towards that and what the value of that is going to be. So as opposed to making an announcement at a meeting and saying this is what I expect and then beating them over the head if they don't come to my office with those solutions. It's my responsibility to get everybody together and go, folks, this is why we're doing this. This is great and this is how I plan to support you. And then what challenges are you having? What can I do to support you? So as you were telling that story, Joe, I was absolutely capturing that perspective. But in my mind I thinking about what I could do as a leader to kind of drive in a disciplined manner the organization towards the goals and instincts that I wanted to achieve. That's what those are my thoughts.

Those are excellent. So there's a piece here in the work that we do in the learning organization, work that we're able to regularly and consistently articulate why this adaptive challenge matters to us. What do we need to understand collectively in order to enable the system, my team, me, to successfully move to the end state so that each person knows how to modify their day to day behaviors to move towards that particular end state. I very often run into situations when I go observe meetings where they get to this place of talking about a challenge. And I hear people say things like this, we all know why we're here. That is probably the most dangerous phrase we can make. And one of the responsibilities of the leader is to over communicate the why, the desired understanding and the expected outcome. And then this is going to lean into the next one we're going to do at that point, once you get to that space, then the next piece is to give the work back to the people that do the work so they're able to make sure they can collectively and individually identify why this adaptive challenge is so important in terms of us accomplishing the end state. And then take the time to build that necessary understanding so we can move forward to the desired end state, if you like. The systems work that we have shared with you before, this lives inside the archetype called limits to success. We identify an end state and we all know that there's lots of enabling pieces in our system. We're good at this and we're good at this and we have great capacity here. And for whatever reason, and I imagine Joe's hit this a couple of times already, thinking about. Human beings have a tendency to not want to talk about the limiting factors, to not want to even bring it up. So they end up saying we have all these strengths, we have all these ways of moving forward. And the literature is exceedingly clear. If we don't identify the limiting factors, which many people will describe as risks to success. Right. If we don't do that, we can't even talk about what do we do to mediate that risk or how to move us forward to this new place. This is really what has happened. I think among the four of us, we become more and more clear about the need to really identify the adaptive challenge and, and then think about what are the factors that we can employ that will help us mitigate against, reduce the impact of this incredibly significant set of limiting factors. Colleen, what are you thinking about this so far?

Sure. Well, I guess what I'm thinking about is those limiting factors. And I think when my colleagues set up really what does maintaining discipline, attention look like? I think what surfaced in me was what are some examples of what it doesn't look like and what's the impact of when you don't. What surfaced within me? We've worked with several large organizations and supporting them through significant change. When you mentioned this preoccupation with that future focus of what it is we're trying to accomplish, when you don't do that with your language, when you're not using relentless repetition and connecting things to the end state of what it is you're trying to accomplish, change fatigue sets in, right? People get lost. How long have we been doing this change? Are we there yet? What are we expecting? And then productivity, of course, is just exceedingly limited. So I think what really surfaced with me as you were laying that out on the table, I went back to limiting factors. And if a leader doesn't continue through this relentless repetition to continue to use that future focused language consistently, then kind of everybody loses their momentum and they get lost and that change fatigue sets in.

Yeah, I think that's very well stated. The change fatigue can get us. And sometimes change fatigue looks like no response. It looks like I'm just sitting here. Tell me what you want, I'll do it. Rather than, wait a minute, there's something more for me to do. So I was thinking of an example. So I'll give you an example, and I'd like you three to weigh in on it. So I had a run where I was an associate director of a leadership center, and as part of my responsibility was to talk to some students in the undergraduate program that were dealing with problems. Okay, So a problem surfaced that the dean of the college handed to me. He says, you're good with kids this age, so you go talk to them. So here was the problem. After the assignments were made, the room assignments were made for the youngsters. As freshmen at this college, this youngster called home and told his mother and father that he couldn't stand his roommate because his roommate didn't see the world the way he saw it, which was code for he was not like me. And what they asked me to do then was to meet with the parents and that kid and figure out what to do. Well, the parent expectation was that the dean, me, now in place of the dean, was going to tell the kid that was not behaving in accordance with this other kid's mental models to stop acting like that. And of course, I didn't do that. What do you think I did? Because this was not a technical problem. This was adaptive. What do you think I did.

Okay? Well, that was a good question. So what do I think you did in that situation? I think you brought them both in and you walked through some of these steps that we've been sharing. I think you got them up on the balcony. I think you helped them understand how can you see this from a different perspective? I think you held up the mirror and asked them some questions. I think you helped them identify more of the root of the challenge without blame and without judgment. So perhaps they could start to see things from a different perspective. So I would assume perhaps when you sat both of the gentlemen down, you could have a conversation where, like I said, you identified what it is, and they talked about plausible solutions to ensure that they could live together in a way that everyone could get along.

I really noticed the silence, those of you that were listening, because all three of my colleagues were thinking about, I've probably been in that situation, and I wonder what that really looks like. And to try and get them to read my mind is so powerful. It's almost like trying to get us to read someone else's mind when we're coaching them and trying to make sure they get it. So let me get Vince and Joe to respond to your thoughts. Joe, what did you hear Colleen saying? What are you thinking? Do you think that was a good approach?

Yeah, I think as you're talking about your situation, I think it's a ladder of inference issue. I think people are at the top of their ladder going, oh, I can't do that, or I can't be like that, or that's not me. And so I think it becomes a discussion, as Colleen said, of perspective, walking people back down their ladders to say, okay, let's talk about what's occurring here and how we believe those pieces could be viewed differently to make us a more effective organization or what is the change we need about it? Right.

Yeah. Notice that Joe immediately went to a preoccupation of the end state. Let's assume that the two of you are going to live together for an entire year. What is the end state for both of you and whoever is holding this conversation? And at that time, it was me. Let's talk about this preoccupation for success. So if we don't have an end state in mind, we end up talking about our problems kind of in isolation, rather than really saying, no, this is the end state. And whatever problems, challenges that you're facing right now in this situation, they will have an impact on your ability to successfully achieve the desired end state. It's obvious for freshmen. They want to be successful in school. They want to have the social life on and on. There's plenty of pieces in there. If we don't preoccupy ourselves, and in that case, the three of us in identifying that end state, then these are just a whole bunch of problems for us to try and solve. Trying to solve a technical set of problems is not the solution. This was an adaptive challenge. How are these two kids, young men, going to adapt to one another's behaviors in order that they could be successful? Vince, what are you thinking right now?

Yeah, so I like how both my colleagues kind of laid things out. And Joe focus was the ladder, right? You know, people up there, Atlanta. And I was thinking just about drama. You know, this is a drama triangle issue to me, where, you know, one of these students is playing the victim. You know, perhaps one is the persecutor. And there you are being assigned to be the rescuer and to come in to rescue his problem. So as Colleen was articulating the steps that you took, what I was really thinking was your ability not to fall into and succumb to those roles. You want to make sure these young men, there was going to be no victim and no rescuer, no persecutor. We had to look at how to solve this adaptive issue differently and get them to really basically take some ownership and understand the environment and what it meant to them. You had to close the loop with them. You had to get them to understand from each other's perspective, what are you hearing your roommate say? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What did you hear John say? And what are you thinking? And when you get them to understand that you can break the cycle of drama, I was thinking about in the context of drama triangle, how do you get out of the drama?

And I would say to you, Vince, the young men and women I've worked with in their early days in college, they use their parents as rescuers. And I'll call up and say, oh, Joe, let me tell you what's going on now, blah, blah, blah, blah. And how can you help me with this? Well, the pivot is generally not to work with that as an adaptive challenge. Remember, we're adapting to a whole new world, and it's not an adaptive challenge. I'll call somebody over there and make sure that they step in and fix this. You can even hear it. It's just. It's almost like a constant set of interactions where I am now up my ladder. Given the data that the kid's given me. So I am now coming to a common conclusion with my youngster and okay, now what am I going to do? My kid's a victim of this other kid and I'm going to call somebody in authority to fix it. It's not a technical problem. It's not a technical problem. And as I was preparing for this, I'm identifying all these places I've been and situations where people were trying to get me to do something right. The truth was they needed to do something together. They needed to adapt to each other. And the four of us have dealt with people in many different organizations where the idea of adapting is almost foreign. No, I'm not adapting. Do it my way and then things will get better. This is so important that the adaptive challenge must be clearly identified so we can see the limiting factors and then figure out how to help those, in this case, two young people learn to adapt to each other so I don't become a victim of that kid and that kid doesn't be my persecutor for the rest of my life. And I don't need the parent or ray to show up and solve my little problem going forward. Over to you, Colleen, what are your. This is really just. I think it's a great example for people to use because they can. I think adaptive leadership happens in families all the time, so that's why I chose a family one. It happens all the time. This is a chance. I really want you guys to really suspend your certainties and just lean back into learning and be very vulnerable with me. What is the takeaway that you're getting from this right now? And then I'm going to ask you to invite the listeners to listen to you. So, Colleen, let's start with you. What's a big insight that's unfolding for you right now? And sometimes this ability to be vulnerable in this space is harder because you probably all had, well, we could have done that. We could have done that. Teach them this, teach them that. And there's something here, I think, for the listeners to grab onto that I think the three of you can give us. Colleen, how about you? What's the big insight that's unfolding?

I think one of the big insights is clarifying the problem that's huge because to your point, you know what, how many times, I mean, my son, he's come home and he says, you know what? Call me. When he was in college, that professor, they didn't grade my paper right. They didn't give me full credit. I did a project in a Collaborative group and mom. I got an A on the test, but in that project I got a D. So clearly there's something wrong. I think so many times if you don't pause because I want to be a good mom supporting my son, how easy is it for me just to tell him what to do or to jump in and try and fix. And so I think it's pausing to clarify the problem. Do you really need my assistance to support this? What can you possibly do? I really think that pausing because we quickly want to respond and it goes back to going up. I can go up my ladder. I can be thinking about that teacher's not teaching my son. I can be jumping in, as Vince said, and playing the role of a rescuer very, very easily. So I think that taking that pause to truly clarify the problem is critically important.

Yeah. What is the challenge? What is the challenge? And to keep stay there. That's a preoccupation with understanding the challenge and see how it connects to the desired end state. To Joe's point, my kids would run up and down the ladders all the time when they were in high school and early college. And it would be so simple to say, oh Ray, just do this, Doug, just do this. Brian, just do that. And that's me exercising my authority as a subject matter expert parent and tell them what to do rather than have them recognize you have come to a conclusion. You have come, you went up your ladder to a conclusion. Every conclusion I've ever come to, and I submit that you've ever come to Israel is based on missing and or faulty data. You have data that just supports your conclusion. Therefore, this kid is persecuting me. Anything that I particular, anything I notice now from that point forward, once I say I sanction that belief, this kid is persecuting me, I'm just going to be a victim for the rest of the time I'm around him. And this, this, this plays itself out so deeply all the time. Joe, what's resonating with you on this one?

Yeah, I think, well, a couple of things are resonating. I think it's important to recognize that on the part of leadership that the workforce is going to be resistant to change. Not because they're bad people or they're somehow deep state or something or another, but whether that they are human beings and a human being's natural reaction is not exactly pro change, it's more resistant to change. I think it requires leadership to think deeply about what they are looking for. Colleen to something that Colleen said earlier about being Insistent on pressing every time. For example, if you have a command and you say that readiness is important, and as commanding officer, I believe that our training programs and how they are tied into our readiness, extremely important. And I expect to talk with you about that in every aspect. And then when you go through your routine, your daily meetings or whatever, you have briefings and things, if you stop those briefings at the beginning and say, tell me how this improves training. Before we start talking about this, demonstrate to me how this improves training and therefore improve our readiness. So after you wind up shooting a couple like that, you train 100 and now suddenly everybody will know. Exactly. Okay, if you're going to go in there and talk about this, you're going to have to be prepared to show the boss how this ties in. And so I think that's driving the bureaucracy to come along and to demonstrate how they are thinking this problem through and how they are seeing that they can move. But I think the other thing that is incumbent on leadership is to, as you begin to think about the things in your command that need to be changed or improved, that you think long and deep about change management, about what is required to enable people to move forward on the change. Maybe it's training, maybe it's system training, maybe it's organization wide training, maybe it's a very individual thing that can be handled at a very much smaller scale. But without that type of deep consideration of what are we trying to do, where are we trying to get to and how do we motivate the workforce to move in that direction? Only if you have that kind of thinking behind you, are you going to be able to think about this systemically.

That's brilliantly stated. And that's what adaptive leadership is about. What is necessary to mobilize everyone to move toward the desired end state. Joe made a great point in the beginning. I want to reinforce it. Homeostasis is important to me. I need to feel comfortable. If you tell me my life is changing and I have a new bar, or you have a new set of operating principles, or your job is expanding, or you have more people under your care, that's upsetting. And in order for me to move forward, I need to feel comfort. So if they don't have that space that Joe alluded to a while ago to really talk about the discomfort that they're feeling, it's very difficult for me to press forward. The other thing he gave you, listeners think long and deep. Is this a technical challenge or is this an adaptive challenge? Or are the two conflated let's pull them apart so we know what we can do, what leadership can do from an authoritative perspective, and what we can do to mobilize everyone to deal with the adaptive challenges that are unfolding. Joe, that was magnificent. Vince, what's some big insights for you?

So for me, I heard my colleague Joe just kind of eliminate some systematic approaches that we have to take as leaders to drive the organization. And something happened at the beginning of this meeting that resonated with me just from a very individual kind of perspective. As an individual leader, there are some things that I need to manage within myself to help drive towards those systematic changes. And so one of the things that resonated with me was you'd asked a question at the beginning of our setup, and there was this sustained moment of silence between the three of us, right? And so, you know, silence sometimes can be very uncomfortable because as individual leaders, we are accustomed to reacting and responding very quickly. And Colleen brought this forward. Sometimes that moment of pause before you answer to give yourself the opportunity to reflect is okay. The silence doesn't mean, I don't know. It just means I'm being very thoughtful before I get a consideration. And so it seemed uncomfortable, probably to some of our listeners, but that is actually an okay thing. So that really was a modeling, natural modeling response from us as leaders, I thought, stood out to me. And the second thing that really resonated with me today in our conversation was the power of repetition. You know, if you are really driving towards changing an end state, it can't be a one and done. You can't pull a gun out, shoot from the hip and go, this is what we're doing, and this is what I expect. You have to be able, as an individual leader, communicate and overly communicate the drive and the desired instinct that you want, in addition to supporting the individual leaders towards those outcomes. So those are two things that resonated with me as highlights from our conversations today.

Can you restate the first one again for me? Because I went listening to the second one, and I love both of them, by the way.

So I believe what I was trying to state was I thought that Joe pointed out quite well the power of systematic changes that leaders have to employ. And as he talked, it made me think about what I should do as an individual leader to drive, to help drive the organization towards those systematic changes. And I think that sometimes as leaders, we can forget the importance of our individual reactions to drive them towards us. That was emphasis. Joe really brought forth a good state of what do we need to do? To drive systems changes. And I was thinking as he was talking, how could I react and respond as an individual leader to help us go in that direction?

So, Ko, I just love the three of you today. Let me play with that just for another second. When people develop us as leaders, they're always telling us how we should behave in different situations. And silence sometimes feels off putting. Even when we're coaching people, it's quiet. I should do something, I should say something, I should make a joke. I should do so. It's almost like an adaptive leader.

Needs.

To be able to, for themselves, lean into the discomfort. I don't mean that the discomfort is about, I don't like Ray or Ray's example sucks or anything like that. It is. Silence is an example of people really reflecting on what's going on and thinking deeply about it. I don't know where that particular capability came to me, but it didn't come in an epiphany. It came over time where I would learn that me adding my two cents to a particular piece when I was uncomfortable, when there was discomfort in me because there was silence, I actually negatively impacted the opportunity for me and the persons I was chatting with to learn. To learn requires a level of discomfort. And you've seen our work before. Team and those of you that have been with us watch us. I stand people up, I move them around, I make them talk to different people. I actually bring them out of a point Joe mentioned before. I take them out of homeostasis stasis. I make them deliberately uncomfortable because it opens up something inside our brains that tends to be silent and quiet because we're always trying to quiet ourselves down. So this ability to maintain disciplined attention requires great discipline by the leader not to come back to Let me fix this, let me solve this, let me add a word, let me tell a joke, let me do something here. So in practicing the disciplines of a learning organization, we learn how to lean into things that are uncomfortable, that have some edge of discomfort. When Joe talks about the latter for me, it's a constant reminder to myself that, okay, what I think's going on here may not be what's going on here. And the best thing I can do for those few seconds is shut up. I just think this one was really good. Notice how we connected things. Like we have to help people regulate their distress. We have to get up on that balcony and see what's going on. And when I'm quiet, I'm up on the balcony. Somebody said to me just recently that was working with on Adaptive leadership. Can I be on the balcony during a meeting? Yes. Be quiet, watch the people, look at the feedback, find out what's going on. Silence is your friend. And so many of us, we don't see that we actually want to add something in. I didn't tell them enough. I need to teach the concept better. So what you guys did here today was a dramatic modeling vulnerability and learning, which allows us to maintain disciplined attention on an adaptive challenge. Adaptive challenges, they're everywhere. And the key, I think from my vantage point is to make sure we don't confuse technical and adaptive challenges. You guys were unbelievable today. Let me do a checkout because we're just about out of time. So, Colleen, I do this every time. Make believe your best friend's listening. And they say, well, I like this adaptive leadership stuff and I love Colleen. What is something you would say to your best friend that's listening, that would help them move themselves to a space of learning how to maintain disciplined attention. Once the adaptive challenge has been identified, what would you tell your best friend?

I would probably say just to embrace the silence, the pause. Because I think so many times our world, we move so quickly and people believe that they're under this pressure to hurry up and solve and fix. And I think many times that might be our intuition is just, I gotta hurry because I move on to the next thing. I have so many things I gotta do. So my invitation would be to just discipline yourself, to pause and reflect prior to responding. And I'm out.

So notice the listeners. That ability to pause and reflect allows you to generate a different response. If I don't have it, then my reflection is I reflect about my current ppk, my current practical knowledge and my current beliefs, my current methods. Oh, silence, pause. I might actually generate a new way forward. That was brilliant. Joe. Your best friend's out there and he's an aspiring leader and he's interested in adaptive leadership. And he's looking to you for one thing to say about this sense that we put together on the four things we've done already. Any one of them is fine. What would you tell this person to practice and learn how to embody? And I love the way you talk about this, Joe. You can't do this work unless you internalize it and embody it. So what's something you would tell this good friend of yours that's an aspiring leader?

So I'm thinking of this as a series of things Colleen talked about. Managing the silence, if you will. I think it's important to ask open ended questions so part of what we advocate for is for every meeting to have a context, a purpose, and an outcome.

Excellent.

And I think many times we talk about how leadership, at least I talk about how leadership has a responsibility to really own that part of the meeting, to set the context, purpose, and outcome. One of the things I practice in my time in leadership roles would be not to always give the group by saying, okay, why are we here? Why are we talking about this? Which again, forces them to pull back for a little bit tactically into okay. And many times what I found is that they are so engaged in the tactics of it, they've lost that thread of where we're going. So I think managing the silence, but also being able to manage to use that tactic along with questions is very important and powerful.

There's a piece you just gave the listeners that's incredible. I sometimes go into an adaptive challenge meeting and I have an idea about what I'm trying to work on. If I shift it to why is this important? Why is this important to us? Just that simple question, why should we continue this conversation? I'm tired of talking about it. Why do you guys think we should talk about it? What a great coach that is. You just gave a tremendous coach to the gang. And I do think leadership owns. Owns the cpo. I do think that's true. And if people tell you why they think they're there. One of our the gifts of the leader is to connect their why to the big why. And I think sometimes we don't. We don't always see it happening, so we don't always get it, but that is the leadership game. Okay, I can understand why you think that's significant. Let's talk about how that connects to why it is we're talking about this in general and why this adaptive challenge is so significant. Joe, that was beautiful. Thank you. Vince, how about you? What would you tell your absolute best friend who's listening to this podcast besides go have something to drink and just forget about Ray buys that piece. Right.

So, you know, my focus is for today's podcast and my perspective. I'm really focused intra really on self and self regulation. So you know what I would. My colleague Colleen talked about embracing silence, and I heard my colleague Joe talk about the importance of connecting the whys. And then my take is understanding yourself and managing yourself so that you're better prepared. You're best prepared as a leader to be able to help the organization look at those adaptive challenges. As I was coming through the ranks, man, I would tell my best friend about my own with families. I'll tell you this, I was getting ready to move up and I had a boss who gave me an evaluation and gave me some feedback and he made a comment in my critique as I was going into command. He said, Vince Starks is a very capable leader, except he likes to bring value to every conversation. And it hurt my feelings initially because I thought I was a pretty good problem solver and I was. But I guess before I allowed to Joe's point the team to bring issues to the surface so that I can get the best thinking of the group and the team to help solve these adaptive challenges. I was always trying to come up with the solution very quickly. And so I had to learn not only to embrace the silent, but I had to learn as a leader to become silent so that I could hear and understand and help my organization identify adaptive challenges. So self regulation, self monitoring is probably for me today is a very important component to achieve the end state and outcomes that we've been discussing today. And I'm out.

That's just really good, Vince. So those of you that are listening, we have some podcasts on something called Resilience. It's a whole little series and what Vince identified there was so beautiful. I am actually humbled to hear that. And it has to do with what happens to me every day where everybody wants to react to what's going on. Let's react to the situation that we see in front of us and pick anyone you want, anything that's out there in the media right now. We are always quick to react. The ability to self regulate, to pause, to reflect and maybe you have to think about your reaction and your reflection a few times before you get to reset and recover so that you can afford effectively respond. Those things are all part of high quality leadership. And again if I can respond, I'll create an even stronger relationship. And this work is all about the quality relationships. Ladies and gentlemen, beyond impressed with the three people that I got to chat with today, I just am incredible interested in their thinking all the time and they offer so much to these, to these podcasts, please if you'd like to talk to one of them, give us a ring. If you'd like to make a comment, do so want to learn more about us and what we do, go to gojlc.com we are so grateful that you took some time to be with us today and I am so grateful that these three people are in my life. Thank you for listening, take care of everyone. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.