The Hidden Power of Cultural Energy in Leadership Revealed

Welcome to this episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their experience and their customers deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. It is so great to have you here. My guest for this episode is the CEO of Heads Up Communications, Ryan Walter, who also has played 17 seasons in the NHL. But we'll talk about more of that later. Today, we are going to uncover the mindset language that leaders need to adopt and the thinking processes that either hinder or help the success of their teams and their organizations. I just want to say, if this is your first time with us, welcome! It's great to have you along for the ride. I do invite you to check out the other videos on this channel. Each one is chock-full of information and learnings that you can apply to your business right this second. So, if you're caught working in your business and not on your business, you've come to the right place. Part of the problem as I see it is that as leaders, we tend to lead from our past experiences. It's safer. If something worked before, it should work now. If it didn't work before, well, why waste time trying it again? So that Brings me to our Question of the Day. Can you pinpoint a particular mindset that has served you? Even bigger, can you pinpoint a particular mindset that has held you and your team back? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead, share this episode on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. And I'd love to see your comments and for you to be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is the epitome of a leader who is a coach first, Ryan Walter. Ryan has played and coached more than 1,100 games over 17 seasons in the NHL. His many achievements include things like being drafted number 2 in the NHL draft, becoming the youngest NHL captain, and winning a Stanley Cup with my team, the Montreal Canadiens. He is a BC Hockey Hall of Fame inductee and NHL Man of the Year. Ryan was the founding partner in 2 startup companies, a TV hockey analyst, a hockey expert, an actor, He was a board and electronic game creator and the president of professional hockey team. Ryan has a master's degree in leadership business. He is the recipient of Tech Canada 2015. And he was the Speaker of the Year for that organization. Boy, oh boy! Makes me feel like I've done nothing with my life. He is the author of 5 books including his newest book, Hungry? Fueling Your Best Game. Ryan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Marc. Great to be here.

Before we get into today's topic, could you tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Yeah, it's a wonderful question. Thank you. You know, I think that's what you just said at the beginning is so powerful and so important is that it is about the people on the team. It's about the needs. It's about the the growth opportunity and desires that the company or the organization and team has. And so, we do a lot of listening. We try to listen in and say, hey, if we're not the right people to help you, we can certainly point you to the right people. But we work with leaders around growing the capacity of their leadership and also their team capacity. So, how do you maximize who you are and what you do. Maybe, Marc, it's easiest to say what I don't do. And I am so impressed with people, especially doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists that work with people to get them over the hump to 50%. And in our business, we don't have that expertise. So, we'll often say, no, I can't help you. Please find a professional in this area. But what we love to say that we do, and I think this is true, is that we help people get themselves and their team to the next level. And we love high performance. If I could give you a visual, a triangle. On the one side of the triangle is high performance. And I think that that's an area of my past. But it's also my study. I love reading about high performance. How do we develop high performance? Number 2 on the other side of the triangle would be team. So, we focus deeply on team. And then, the foundation of everything, the bottom side is leadership.

Yeah.

My first prof, I went back and did a master's degree in leadership business at Trinity Western University. My first prof, Donnie Page, wonderful guy said this. He said, everything rises and falls on leadership.

And that makes perfect sense that that's part of the triangle, right? If leadership holds— leadership is holding everything up, which I think is brilliant. And I think you found, I mean, obviously being part of the Montreal Canadiens and the Washington Capitals, and you know what high performance is. You know when you have really good leadership. You know the effect that that has on the whole team. really from a game-to-game situation, don't you?

Yeah, very much.

Very much.

Actually, Marc, you'll like this. I just finished up a really good read. Jim Wilder is a guy that I'm tracking, a scientist that I'm tracking. And he likes to put it this way. He said, on my teams, he said, I like to look at weaknesses. So, here's the— when we see weakness on a team or a culture, it's an interesting way to frame it. He said there are 3 types of people. So, this is fun. This will be a good one for all of your leaders listening and watching. The first is what he calls a possum. And possums are awesome. They're important. And a possum's best day says, I hope there's no conflict and everything needs to run smooth.

Right.

The second type of person in weakness on teams is a predator. And the predators are looking to exploit the weakness of the possums. And they might not eat them. They might not kill them. I'm not talking that. But they have this deep desire for whatever reason. Maybe it makes them feel better if they can put somebody else down.

Yeah.

And the third person that is in pretty much every team is what he calls a protector. And so, you can look back at all the teams that you ever played for and you can see, okay, so was it predator-run or was it protector-run?

Yeah.

That's an interesting way to look at the cultures that we have.

Yeah, it's interesting. I cite a lot of my experiences when I was back in 1978, my first job. And I was working at McDonald's. And it was okay. That was definitely predator-run. It was, don't question me. I'm the boss. You do what I tell you to do. And that whole carrot and sticking thing the whole time. In fact, when I became a supervisor, I got chastised because I didn't yell enough. And it's like—

I love it.

And it taught me a really good lesson of I now knew The leader I didn't want to be.

Right?

It's really interesting. You know, we're talking today about cultural energy and kind of this idea of leadership mindset. Why do you think that this is such an important topic today? Post-pandemic, things have changed. Things have skewed now. And it seems like leaders have lost more and more control.

Yeah, that's good. You know, I'd go right back to the foundation. We like to start at foundational stuff. And an old hockey player, Marc, by the name of Aristotle many years ago said this, thoughts are causes. So, leaders tend to get to— they want to get to the causal part of whatever happens. And so, thoughts are causes. I think if we as leaders cannot sort of better understand the mindset of ourselves and of our people, we're going to have trouble or we're going to get frustrated in trying to actually influence the behaviors of our people. So, the construct that we use is that we look at 6 mindsets. And it's a very simple mindset process that allows leaders to really understand their mindset, where they spend their time, How they can generate better awareness of their thinking. And then, also have some language because the 6 mindsets turn into 6 pieces of language that actually give them an opportunity to understand where their people's mindsets are at. Very simple stuff. Remember, you got an old hockey player here. You don't have a social scientist here. But I think that the That concept though is so simple that it's so valid. Because of that, it's valuable.

Yeah, we'll get into that in a second. Part of what you talked earlier on, this idea of being called up by leaders to help change the cultural dynamic that they have, to help hone and build their skill sets. Part of the challenge with that is you need to have leaders who have some level of humility and some idea that they don't have all the answers. Why hasn't leadership changed significantly in the last 30 years? What's going on?

Yeah, you do. I mean, leaders have to recognize that the first awareness of leadership is that leaders are learners, right? Is that I have to get myself to the next level. I think if I could say one thing to leaders, it is that you as a leader, we as leaders are the glass ceiling. Our growth is the glass ceiling to our organization. And so, I really respect organizations across the world. It could be EO, could be Tech, could be Vistage, others that really focus on the growth of the leader. And so, people in that room I love to honor because if you're in that type of room, you actually— I know that you're a leader because you're wanting to learn. John Maxwell said, obviously famous leadership guy, said to a friend of mine who hired him to come and speak to us and be part of training of his team. And John said to my friend Jeff, he said, Jeff, He said, workers will always work for thinkers.

That's powerful.

And then, he said, show me your calendar. Right? Like, where is the time that you've etched out as a leader of this organization? So, your point to me earlier, Marc, was you have many clients that work in their business but not on their business.

Right.

They don't take the time to think. And so, the first piece for leadership is a journal. We believe that the number one skill, the foundational skill, so simple, of leadership growth today is metacognition, which is thinking about thinking. And the way to do that as a leader, the best way to do that, the foundational way to do that Yeah.

And you're not talking about computer journaling either, right? It's handwritten journaling because there's something about the connection between sitting down and writing something and the connection to that to your brain. You know, it's interesting because I've talked to leaders before and a lot of times, I just get sneered at because it's like, you know how many things I have to deal with? Do you know what? How do you expect me to take time to take a course?

Yeah.

Journal, develop my skills. And it seems to me that there's still a lot of very reactive leaders out there who haven't gotten the memo.

Yeah, yeah. Or I guess the challenge that we've been challenging leaders across North America around is exactly what you said but maybe just in a different way. And then, my challenge to leaders is, are you too busy to lead? So, if you're at your desk doing your work and your head's down, you haven't talked to anybody throughout the day, are you leading? That's the question. Yeah.

And again, just prior to the show, we were talking about your experience as a coach. And some of the conversation we had around that was a coach will never get on the ice during a game to take over for one of the players because it just doesn't make any sense. And yet, in business, Time and time again, we have leaders with a huge to-do list of stuff. And so then, it makes me question, is the doing the definition of a good leader? Or is it the not doing and the actual coaching aspect of their job is what makes them the better leader?

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you and I would have to look at the different companies and And sort of make our minds up as we look at those 2 options. But I think where you're going is a good place. I mean, I think if you look at the vernacular now in the workplace, and I'm not a generational guy. I don't do a lot of work in that area. But the new generation coming into the workplace really doesn't look to have a boss. They look to have a coach.

Yes.

So, I think that the coaching of people and to coach their best. And I think that's what I love about and loved about professional coaching is I'm not on the ice. It's your point, right? I am helping those players be the absolute best that they can be so that we have a chance to win that game. That's it. And I think that that connection, we like to say that the principles in professional sport transfer well into professional business.

Absolutely. And yet, so much Even though a lot of people would be nodding their heads at that, when they actually try to look at their business, that's not how they're running their business, right? They're still running that business with the old, my job is to be the manager. I have to make sure people are doing their jobs. I have to make sure all the boxes are getting checked and whatever, right? And so, yeah, to our point, I think we have to figure out some way to stir this pot So that people can come out and go, yeah, as a leader, I need to evolve. I need to change. And to your point as well though, the coaches themselves have coaches.

Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And you know what's interesting? Over the years, I've had a coach. And I love this guy, my buddy Bob. And he challenges me. He challenges me in our business. He challenges me in different areas. And he's a great ear. And He has brilliant questions. And actually, Marc, there is some new areas you mentioned early on. Why aren't we sort of evolving as leaders? I think that this construct of metacognition is a really exciting sort of new area of leadership. So, we want to get people to be thinking about their thinking. Most jobs in today's society are thinking jobs now. Before, we had a shovel. We put it in the— we dug a hole, or we cut wood. Those are important things. I'm not dissing them. But most jobs are in working with computers. They're actually creating things. So, metacognition is so powerful because you want to increase or help to develop the thinking of your people. And you know what's fascinating about this connection to coaching? You can't do it with statements. Metacognition develops through questions. And so, we go back to this idea of coaching. And Jenny and I have been— my wife and I have been at this a lot, 25 years now. And here's our statement. We've had to think about this. Listening to answer Yes. Listening to ask is coaching. Hmm. And so, it's a mindset.

And ask to respond is management.

Yes, don't respond.

I like that. That actually works out quite well. That's awesome. And so, when you bring these to the leaders, then does this create the aha moment that they need?

Many times, I think especially in this area of metacognition and Aristotle's point of thinking is a cause, like it's the beginning of everything. We tend to get really good connection with leaders in this area. I would say the newest area for us is the area of language. And we spend a lot of time thinking with leaders around the language of their culture. What are you hearing? How are you hearing it? How are you messaging the language of your culture? But I think this idea of language is powerful. There's an author that said, language is reality. Right? So, current language, if you're hearing powerful, what we would call generative language, then your culture is probably in a pretty good spot. But if it's in a regression place, or if it's in a very highly negative, looking backwards, disappointed place, then that's when leaders have to step up and change the language of their culture.

I love that. And you know what? I would love to dig a little bit deeper into that. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am here with leadership coach Ryan Walter. Ryan, a little bit off topic. You played in the NHL for 17 seasons and you were the youngest captain in the NHL at the time. Then, at some point, you became a coach. On the show, we've often talked about high performers getting promoted. to the ranks of a leader only to fall down because they didn't have the skill sets to succeed. What made, as a high performer, what made you be able to step into that role of being the coach leader and make you such an effective leader? What were some of the things, aha moments, some of the developmental things that you had to do in order to become more effective in that role?

Yeah, it's a great question. I'm going back to John Maxwell again. I should be his agent, shouldn't I? John Maxwell says that leadership is influence. If there's only one word that we're allowed to utilize for to describe leadership, then Maxwell says, and it wasn't just him that said it. Many people before him said that leadership is influence. If you'll give me 2 words, Marc, I'll tell you what our definition of leadership is in 2023. And that is that leadership is intentional influence. I think that most people say, well, and here's where I'm going to answer your question. Most people say, well, I'm in a position of leadership. So, so here's, here's what goes wrong in pro sport. And I think this is where it goes wrong in pro business is, is that a player on the ice is a good leader. Let's say they're the captain of the team and they have what we would call personal You know, professional, but they have personal influence. So, they're actually on the ice with the team in the dressing room so that they have that connection. When they become a coach, it's interesting because they still have some connection but they lose. They're not part of the team now. They're not one of the guys. And that's the big differentiation that, you know, it's hard to change. They're in another room. So, they have— here's the cool thing from an influence point of view. They still have some personal influence. But they actually have more positional influence because they're the coach. Now, take it one more. And here's the hardest part from pro hockey is when a player becomes a general manager. So now, they're in the other room. They're way over there. They have no influence personally. very little influence personally on the game or on the players in the game. But they have a lot of positional influence on who the coach is, right? So, here's my point. Over the years, what I found is that where you are positionally changes how you influence the game. And so, most players, most managers, most high performers— let's take the highest performing salesperson you have. and make them a sales manager now. The change positionally and the change personally has to be developed and understood in the construct of influence. How do I now influence from the next room instead of being in the room?

I love that. That creates a nice little line drawn in the sand. about one's role. Because all too often, the promotion happens because it's like, Mike, you're the best salesperson we have. Why don't we make you the sales manager and you can teach everybody how to become just like you?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you're right. If you turn it around saying, okay, let's take a look at your role now, Mike. As a sales manager, let's talk about what your influence is going to look like. And that's a completely different That to me is an aha moment, I think. Awesome.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, for poor Mike. And connected to influence, Marc, is an area that we talk a lot about from a leadership development point of view. And I say this very humbly. I don't hear a lot of leadership people talk about this. And that is the word credibility.

Yeah.

Right? Without credibility, you won't have influence. And without influence, you can't lead.

Yeah.

So, one of the things that we spend time with young leaders talking about is how do you increase your credibility, right, in the culture that you're in at this moment, but also with the clients that you have. So, the credibility gap of businesses is what sinks businesses.

Yes. And I think before you get to the credibility piece, competency I think comes into it as well. Because I don't believe that you can have credibility without having competency, which means you need to have the training. You need to have the development. You need to have the coach in order to help you build that. That's amazing. Like, we've gone completely on a completely tangent. But this is just such a thrilling to me. It's such a thrilling awareness if people can tap into that. What I'd like to do is let's talk about the How important it is for leaders to be aware now. You mentioned this before the break, aware of their mindset and the impact that their mindset has on the corporate language or the language of the workplace.

Yeah, it's very good. So, you had mentioned to me that you're writing your next book and we're just finishing up Breakout, which is our next book. And it will have this 6 mindset model that we've developed. And the only reason I mentioned that is that in chapter 2, the first chapter will be discovering the 6 mindsets. But right on the heels of chapter 1 is chapter 2, which is totally on awareness. You know, one of the great players during my career was a young guy by the name of Wayne Gretzky. And so, even if you're not a hockey player, even if you're not a sports fan, you'll recognize that name. He's maybe the best player ever.

Hmm.

And I played with Wayne in 1978. You were just at McDonald's. I like that. I'm learning about you, Marc. And I was in the World Juniors playing with Wayne Gretzky during the 1978 winter. It was the Christmas break. And then, I played the next 15 years of my NHL career against Wayne Gretzky. Here's my point. Wayne was a talented guy. Wayne Was a pretty good skater. Wayne had a great shot. Wayne was a great passer. Wayne was not very physical, but those skills didn't differentiate Wayne. What has hit me recently is that most of us in the world of hockey would say that the skill that Wayne developed over anybody else was what we would call game awareness. He had the ability to see the game differently, to be aware of where players were on the ice and where the puck was going to be. His famous saying of, you know, people go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck will be. Game awareness. Okay, so that insight is such a powerful piece. And I think That leaders would all agree but not all apply, that the first key concept of leadership is awareness. So, we have to be aware of our thinking. Most people just go right to behaviors. And I get that. And I don't mind that. Behaviors are important. If you can change a behavior positively, go for it. Please do it. But what drives the behavior? Well, the heartbeat does. But mostly, It's the mindset, right? And it's— so, we build a little process around negativity, positivity, the flow zone, and mindfulness. And it's a simple process. But with that awareness, we get a chance to teach leaders how to pause and actually understand their thinking.

So, what difference does that pause then make as far as their own personal awareness is when it comes down to the impact this is going to have on their language?

There's a great— one of the— I wish I could know this man, Viktor Frankl. And many of you have read his books. But there's a great quote by him and he says, between stimulus and response is And in that space is our ability to choose. Yeah, you keep going, Marc. That might be the most important leadership thought of this century. And I think that this is where leaders without awareness have no space or little space because it's, I'm stimulated. And I'll respond. And so, I'm upset, I'll get angry or however that works. But with awareness, we pause and we expand our space. I think that expanding that space is the great leadership dilemma of 2023 because it takes time. Well, we've got to work on it.

Gotcha.

We have to. It takes time and it takes focus and it takes energy and probably it takes coaching. Right? A third pair of eyes to go, okay, hold it here. Here's what I saw. Did you see that? And so Marc, I think that it's a great opportunity for leadership to grow in this area of awareness. And I would call it game awareness just because that's my background. But understanding to a higher level your people, their thinking, their mindset, their language. You know what's cool? And you and I are coming back to this. So, 6 mindsets create 6 new pieces of language. But the end result is sort of fun because it generates 6 new pieces of energy.

Yeah. And I'd love to get into that. But before we do, can we just do a quick little check-in? If people are resonating with your message here, how can they get a hold of you?

Thank you, Marc. Yeah, it's ryanwalter.com. Pretty simple. Wonderful. And you can just, in the contact area, you just send me a quick little note. Love to know. And make sure that you put on there that Marc and I were talking and you listened in or you watched. And love to track that a little bit. And I get right back. That's my place. I get right back to you. And if you call, that's my cell phone.

Wonderful. So, You mentioned thinking processes. What are the thinking processes before we get into how they drive things? What are these thinking? You did mention one thing about the pause and the mindfulness. Is that part of the thinking process or is there more to what you've been talking about?

Yeah, I'm going to give you a little visual. And for people, even if you're not a sports person, you'll have in your mind, you'll have this idea of an ice arena. So, on the top side of that ice arena, let's build a model. So, in the net on the top, we're going to put positive thinking. And then, the net on the bottom, the other net, we're going to put negative thinking. So, so far so good. On the left-hand side or boards, we're going to put past thinking. And on the right-hand side boards, we're going to put future thinking. So, That context, those 4 sort of areas define 2 opposites that create 6 mindsets. So, track with me here. Negativity is in the bottom net. And on the left-hand side of that, as you're looking down at this ice arena, is past thinking. So, we call that piece of the quadrant past negative thinking. So, let me just ask you the question, Marc. When I say past negative thinking. What are some of the indicators that would come to mind for you?

We've tried it before. So, it's that mindset of we've done that. We've tried it. It didn't work. Again, what I opened up with earlier today was we've always done it this way. So, why change something that's worked for 20 years? So, it's all that calling back to the experiences. A perfect example as well is when I look at control systems in businesses. And it's like, oh yeah, well, 20 years ago, we had somebody who stole $5,000. But that was 20 years ago.

Totally. And those dominate, right? They dominate our current thinking. That was your point. So, regrets and disappointments and losses and blame live in past negative. And a really hard word by the name of shame lives in past negative. Here's our point is that until this moment, and I say this humbly, Most of us on Marc's podcast here didn't have a name for past negative thinking. We understand. We've been there and all of that. So, science, current science, new science is saying to us, if we can name it, we can shift it. So now, with past negative, we have an awareness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of regrets and I've been thinking about them. And okay, that's good. I have an awareness so I can then shift. So, you can see in these 6 mindsets, and I'll just lay them out very quickly, you can see that the key element is the simplicity and the awareness. So, let's go from bottom left to bottom right. Future negative thinking.

Right.

And future negative thinking for a professional sports person, is, we're in trouble, right? I haven't scored a goal in 10 games and I'm not going to score a goal forever, right? And you know what's interesting about past and future negative, Marc, is it sounds like a news cycle.

Yes, it does.

Most of the people that come into your business are coming from a news cycle of negativity. And then, you're asking them to influence your culture. Past negative thinking is powerful. Future negative thinking is powerful. Past negative has a remedy. And here's the remedy. You want to frame your past negatives through a learning lens, a learning frame. Because if you can do that, you can get better. That's how we get better in life. Or you're going to ruminate in past negative and you get stuck. In future negative, you want to frame your future negatives. You want to see it through a learning— sorry, not a learning lens. That's past negative. Through one of these lenses that allows you to see this, your future, as an opportunity to understand the risk and then build a plan. So, you want to see it through that idea of a risk element and then build a plan. Top left, past positive thinking. Brilliant place. Gratitude. Thankfulness changes our lives. So much research on how past positive journaling can absolutely revolutionize and increase the performance of your people. Top right, we love that one. Future positive thinking. And that's where our meetings and our, you know, all of the great business plans and goals and all of these are there. And there's lots of science in that area. So, D-zone, past and future negative. Offensive zone, past and future positive. In the neutral zone, we have 2 brilliant places. One is mindfulness.

Hmm.

So, I'm in this place of in the moment and I'm really not past. I'm not future. I'm not positive. I'm not negative. I just am. And this is where the thinking happens, where the cognition happens in the prefrontal cortex. And then, in the top side of the neutral zone, we call it the flow zone. And there is so much power in— we have 2 huge questions for all the businesses, Marc, that are listening in here. Number one is, how do you increase flow across your business? And we can teach you what flow is. Number 2, how do you protect flow? You see, flow is our best game. Flow at the NHL level Was when I was in games, I was in flow. It's non-conscious action versus mindfulness, which for me is practice. I'm thinking about what I want to do. The problem with mindfulness is I'm slow. Zimmerman says that we can access about 40 bits per second if we're in conscious thought. But if we can go to non-conscious thought, we can access close to 2 million bits per second in our brain. So, this is the construct of high-performance habits versus high-performance learning.

It also seems to me that that aspect of being in that high-performance situation, that flow state is seeded by all the training and all the work that you do beforehand. It's not something that will automatically happen until you build up the capacity to be able to do it.

Agreed, agreed. And we call those habits in business, right?

Amazing! I love that whole analogy. And I do encourage people to check out your website because I believe that whole metaphor is on your website. I saw it this morning. I thought it was brilliant. Adopting one's mindset. Really to me, it is like creating this new habit now. The problem with it, especially for leaders, is that it takes intentionality. How does one stay focused? Like, how does one become aware? And so, to your point, it was game awareness. There's also a business term called situational awareness. And then, of course, there's this whole thing called empathy where you should be knowing how you react. But how does one analyze where they are on the ice and how do they get focused enough to get back into the flow?

Yeah, it's good. I think this is probably, Marc, in— I don't know. I'm just giving you my context. I think this is where coaching is helpful because I think sometimes we don't see it. Right, right. We're we're busy. We're our heads down. We're working hard. We're trying to make the business run. I got off a coaching call this morning with an executive that said, you know, it's yeah, I've never been so busy. I'm a little bit like you. I go, okay, so what are we busy with? Right, like is it absolutely necessary? But but a pair of you know a second pair of eyes, a third pair of eyes sometimes allows you know from a coaching point of view. us to have sort of a different view but also an ability to hold that person, that leader accountable to what they want. And I think that's leadership at the highest level today. It's really helping people move towards their goals and holding them accountable to, you know, and coaching them towards those goals. So yeah, I think you have to know. You have to be aware Or nothing will happen. Without awareness, we can't lead.

And that's part of the challenge, right? Again, earlier when we were talking offline, we were talking about this whole thing about leaders working so busy working in their business and not working on their business. If they're not aware and we stick ourselves in our little bubbles of our assumptions and our biases and so on. And to your point, bringing on a coach can help that. Out of curiosity, As a professional hockey player, how many coaches did you have in any one team? Was it just the one coach?

Yeah, it's different now. You know, it's really, it's very different. When I started off, it was 2 coaches. So, you had a sort of a head coach that was the offensive coach and then the assistant coach was the defensive coach. Typically, that's how it happened. Today's NHL/pro sport has multiple coaches, mental coaches, goalie coaches, D coaches, power play coaches, penalty kill coaches. Like, yes, multiple, multiple coaches. So, I think that as business is sort of getting into the understanding of, gee, as a leader, I need some coaches and my VPs do. And my board needs a coach, right? And you want Marc to come and help your speaking so that when you present to your company, right, you have credibility. So yeah, I think that's a good analogy.

And to me, that was such on— like I got goosebumps as you were saying that because I've always said to people, oh yeah, I'll talk to— oh yeah, I used to have a coach but it didn't work out. It's like, how many coaches did you have? Because there's so much capacity that we need as leaders in the coach. Because I mean, really, we are the umbrella under which everything is working. We're holding it up there. We're the organizational effectiveness. We're the marketing. We're the HR. We're that umbrella. And if we're not getting coaching in the different aspects of who we are as individuals, then how How can we possibly think that we know that we can do the work without having somebody to be able to pull back the band-aid and poke the wound?

Ouch!

Yeah. Ryan, this has been a fantastic conversation. I'd like to get into some cautionaries for the people who are thinking, I want to apply something new. I want to do something different because I know something's broken. So, I'd like to get into cautionaries and we'll get to that. Right after this.

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I am having a fabulous conversation with the fabulous Ryan Walter. As you can tell, Ryan and I are really passionate about serving business owners and managers just like you. If you're planning a leadership or management training in the near future, or perhaps you belong to an association that could use some of what we're talking about today, feel free to reach out to Ryan or myself to explore how we can help support your leadership growth and your team's growth. Our contact info is in the show notes. Ryan, you said you're working on a book right now. But your most recent book, Hungry: Fueling the Best Game, can you tell us just a little snapshot of what that book is about?

Yes, Marc. Thank you for that. How do we stay hungry? So, one of the things that we've noticed over the years with leaders is that basically, your company runs on your energy. And secondly, that your people emulate your energy. So, how do you as a leader stay hungry? And we explore that in 9 different sort of ways. ideas around staying hungry. Those ideas also work culturally. So, it's sort of personal and cultural. And so, how do you keep your team hungry? And that's the leadership aspect of it. So yeah, we've loved writing Hungry. We try to make it as practical as possible. Each chapter ends with how do you apply this. And We'll do the same in our next book called Breakout. Although it will be, I wouldn't say academic. I would just say it has deeper sort of connection. So, it's more of a philosophical read than an action read.

Gotcha, gotcha. And this idea of being hungry, what percentage of the book have you dedicated to the word profit?

Profit as in?

As in corporate profits. As in stakeholder payouts. And right, I have a sneaking suspicion that what we're talking about when this thing about hungry is feeding not only the inner soul but the influence that we have as well, right?

Yeah, 100%. And it ends up being the other P word. It's about people.

Yes, love it. Look, we've been talking a lot about mindset required to succeed. Does that mean that leaders should avoid things like negative thinking? Is that a bad thing?

Great question. I think it will be impossible to avoid negative thinking. But here's the challenge that we'd love to leave with your leaders today is I'm not asking you not to be negative. What I am asking you from this moment forward is to be much more intentional with your negative.

How so?

Why would we allow ourselves to be negative when it doesn't really serve the purposes of our business or our leadership? So, is there room for the gap, for that little pause, for that Viktor Frankl's piece to pause and to be more intentional with You know, there's a time when I need a little kick in the rear end to get going. And if you're my leader, I need you to do that. But that's probably 1% of the time, right? So, I think that understanding how to utilize negativity and positivity is a skill like other leadership skills like communication, or credibility, or other pieces.

I love that.

And so, being intentional about that and understanding that you are in a bad mood. You are having a bad day. But there's a way to become intentional to make that more positive rather than reactive.

Totally. Good.

For the people who might be looking at this going, yep, I need to change. What are some cautionaries we should be forewarning them about? About making a change in how you've been for the last 20 years and now you want to shake that Yeah, start slow.

Start slow. Sorry about that.

No worries.

There we go. Start slow. I think that this is a process. It's a journey. And you want to get good information and then you want to move on that information. I would say the other piece though for me is, and I'll just give a little practical advice. I would start by increasing positivity throughout your culture with what we call positive gossip. So, this is a great leadership skill. It's so simple to implement but we forget to do it. And so, talking third party, something very positive about a person. Hey, did you hear Jane did a brilliant job on that last job site and really impressed But you're not talking to Jane. You're talking to Henry about that. And it always gets back to Jane. I think positive gossip is one of the great underused skills of leadership in 2023.

I love that. So, if you take anything away from this episode, positive gossip. It takes intentionality. It takes you to be present. But I think if we do that, my goodness, the change that it will make is going to be life-changing. Ryan, this has been so thrilling to have you here. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Yeah, I always have last thoughts. That's the problem. You and I love to speak. But I would say this as we end up. Be true to yourself. I mean, you cannot be Marc and you cannot be Ryan, nor should you be. You're who you are. We are individuals with individual talents and individual personalities. So, I would take some of the skills here that Marc and I've been talking about and take one and journal it and practice it and review it and get help with it. And if you'd like to reach out, we'd love to help you too. You can connect with Marc or it's just ryanwalter.com.

Terrific! Thank you so much for reinforcing that because that was my very, very last question. Ryan, thank you so much. You sharing your passion, your expertise, your history. This has been a thrilling ride for me. So, thank you so much for doing this show. Thank you so much for endearing us with everything that you bring to the world. I really appreciate you.

Thank you, Marc.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, please feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor for me to be of service. And if you enjoyed today's episode, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this channel? Leave a comment or review. I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? It has been so great being here with you today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.