Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Ryan McCarty and Mark Goulston

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on our LinkedIn Live today. So I'm really excited about that. I've got 2 amazing guests that I'm also glad to call friends. So let me start with Ryan McCarty. Ryan and I have known each other 5-ish years, something like that.

Maybe even more.

Maybe more, yeah. I don't know. I actually— you're, you're, you were the motivation for my beard way back when at South by Southwest. Wait, I've got clients that don't shave, why do I need to shave? So thank you for that. Thank you for that.

You're welcome.

You're welcome. Um, so Ryan is the co-founder of A Culture of Good and the co-author of a book called The Culture of Good, as well as a bunch of other things that we'll get into. My other guest is an old dear friend. Mark and I go back 15, 17 years or so. Mark is trained as a psychiatrist. He's written 11 books. He's part of the MG100, and he's one of the smartest, most insightful, amazing human beings on the planet. And I am proud to call him a friend as well. So that are the more compliments that I've given to human beings in the last 5 years. So you should be happy about that. And it was sincere. So let me start with what I was thinking about getting ready for today. So I was trying to think— I like to put together folks to make this interesting. And what I was thinking is both of you actually in previous lives were serving people in very, very different ways than you did before. So Mike was— Mark was a practicing psychiatrist. You're still a psychiatrist, but you're not necessarily practicing anymore, although I wonder on some of our calls what— where the line is, right? But Mark was a practicing psychiatrist and then moved into sort of helping folks in the workplace. So one of your breakout books was Get Out of Your Own Way, then it was Get Out of Your Own Way at Work. So you've basically found dysfunction in the workplace to help people. And then Ryan, in a previous life— and this is a fascinating story— was a preacher. So clearly of service and helping people. And he moved on to sort of the dark side and helping people inside of organizations from a cultural perspective. So maybe, Ryan, start with your journey first of how you got where you are.

Yeah. So as you said, I did the ministry life and nonprofit work for over 20 years, really cut my teeth in that space. You know, when we're younger, we look for ways to serve. So we look for, all right, what can I do? A police officer, I could do— be an EMT, a nurse. We're looking for service, right? How can I make an impact? And really found that in ministry and did that for 20 years. Very missional type work, community-driven purpose, giving people a sense of meaning in their everyday lives by going out into the community and making an impact together. And from there, met I met Scott Morehead, the CEO of the largest Verizon retailer, and he loved one of my messages around what you do and why you do it and how important it is to really know your why and that force for good or that higher purpose every day. And his thought was, let's bring that into my business and my thousands of employees across 42 states and let's start a movement that engages employees in their soul and their heart. And that's what I was used to doing, right? So when I came into corporate America, I thought, hey, there's a lot of employees that don't know their purpose. They don't know why they come to work every day other than a paycheck. Here's a great opportunity to engage people beyond a program and really give them a sense of calling in life. And that's, that's what I launched. So really taking the ministry philosophy and bringing it into business.

And the gist of a lot of the work you do is really encapsulated in bringing your soul to work. Mark's work— so let's go to Mark's story because it's They're parallel but different, right? Well, can you be parallel and different? I guess you could, but sure. Anyway, I don't know if that would work in physics, but tell us your story, Mark. How'd you go from, from being a practicing psychiatrist to, uh, someone that's working at the highest levels of corporate America globally for 20 years or so?

Well, there's always a backstory to everyone, and one of my backstories is I dropped out of medical school twice. for untreated depression, and I finished. And the second time I dropped out, they wanted to kick me out because they were losing matching funds. But the Dean of Students, who cared more about students than funds, saw something in me that I didn't see. What he saw is he saw a future for me. And, uh, when the school wanted to kick me out, the head of the school sent me to the Dean of Students because he didn't want me to do something self-destructive. And upon hearing that I was being kicked out, and when I met with the Dean of Students, uh, he shared with me that that's what they wanted to do. They wanted to kick me out. And what happened is, I'm not a, I'm not a religious person. Uh, I don't even think I'm spiritual. But when he told me, I, uh, and he read the letter to him about, uh, that the promotions committee was going to ask me to withdraw. I said, what does this mean? He said, you've been kicked out. And I felt something wet on my cheekbones, and I thought it was blood, so I kept looking at my hands like this, and it wasn't blood, it was tears. And then he said something that changed my life and the whole direction of my life and what I then became. He said, Mark, you didn't mess up because you're passing everything, but you are messed up. But if you get unmessed up, I think this school would be glad they gave you a second chance. And even if you don't get unmessed up, even if you don't become a doctor, even if you don't do anything with the rest of your life, I'd be proud to know you. And he said, you have a streak of goodness that we don't grade in medical school, and you have no idea how much the world needs that goodness. And you won't know it till you're 35, but you have to make it till you're 35. And I'm at that point, I'm just sobbing. He's hitting me with compassion. And then he said, and then he pointed his finger at me and he said, and you're going to let me help you. So he set up an appeal and I had to meet with the promotions committee and make a long story short, they saw, they saw that goodness in me that he also saw. And they gave me a second leave of absence and I went out to the Menninger Foundation. which was a big psychiatric institute, and I was able to reach schizophrenic farm boys. And I'm from a suburb of Boston, so I came back, finished med school, and I became a suicide specialist. And for 25 years, none of my patients died by suicide. I also trained FBI and police hostage negotiators. But how this applies to what I'm doing now in the last year, you know, fast forward I formed a company called Michelangelo Mindset. And Michelangelo saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set it free. So what I saw in suicidal patients was hope that they couldn't see or feel. And when I connected them to hope, they started to cry and it set them free. And so when I coach executives, what I say is inside your people, are people who want to feel trust for you, confidence in you, feel safe with you, respect you, admire you, feel inspired by you, and like you. And let's carve away everything that doesn't cause that in them.

Yep. So let me just add to that, then I've got questions for Ryan as well. So what I've seen in my— our work together, Marc, is you've got these experiences, you know, people in corporate think they're, you know, they've got problems, right? And they're sweating over things, and they're sweating over things. And it's like, Okay, that's a PowerPoint that you're delivering tomorrow or a contract that you're trying to get renewed or, you know, and quite frankly, no one's going to die if it doesn't happen. It doesn't mean it's not important. And you have this amazing ability to put it into context, right? So you used to— a big part of your work was telling stories about being an FBI hostage negotiator where, you know, we talk about feedback in the workplace. You'd get a call at 4 in the morning to go to some crazy scene and a drugged-out lunatic's got a gun against somebody's head. you're going to get the feedback really quickly whether you as the psychiatrist connected with that person and defuse the situation. I mean, that's about as real-time, high-stakes feedback as it gets. So you bring that into the corporate world, you're like, geez, okay, wow, if he could do that, I can do that. And then you work with suicide, similar. And I—

Right.

I think there's a parallel in a lot of your work at Culture of Good and seeing both the trouble and the goodness in people. And I'll just sort of set this up. the company that you work at, they've got 1,200, 1,400 Verizon-branded retail stores, right, in primarily tertiary and tertiary markets that they're typically not in a big city.

Sure.

Not the most glamorous and sexy job. So your typical employee, probably a community college dropout in, you know, Kalamazoo, good people, salt of the earth people working hard. But that industry has such a massive turnover because it's, you know, it's a grind of a job. And one of the beautiful things about The impact of Culture of Good is your turnover is— I forgot what the exact number is— less than half of the industry average, the amount of people that refer others to come work. So tell us about, about what you're doing and, and, you know, the laboratory that is Culture of Good inside of TCC.

Yeah, you know, it's really about how do you operationalize culture without losing that, the soul and the heart of what you're doing. If anything, the culture is the very heart of your, your business and I like to say that employee fulfillment is really the new employee engagement. People are really longing for a sense of fulfillment, connection, belonging, to be a part of a movement, something bigger than themselves where they know that they can contribute toward that and it matters that they contribute, but also how it benefits them and being a part of a community of people. Really, the culture of good looks at the individual, the team or department, but also the organization as a whole, and really wants to engage every single person through meaningful, fulfilling work. And so a lot of the basis of Culture of Good was originated out of a desire to engage employees and customers through community work, and we certainly continue to do that, but it's continued to evolve where we're really meeting the needs and problems that are arising in companies through change. And so we've evolved to really address change management as it leads to cultural transformation. So we're identifying, you know, the pain points within a business. We have, you know, several different topics around that, from recruitment to engagement, onboarding and retention, all the way through to the scope of building skills within certain teams and parallels so that everybody's engaged with change and transformation that's taking place in the organization.

Yeah.

Everybody knows their place in it as well. We're really looking to engage companies and organizations that have a heart for their people, but also a heart for the community, and leveraging that to really build their business and drive the success of their company so that over time they can continue As their profitability increases, they can continue to drive purpose throughout their organization. I, I like to take those 2 terms of purpose and profitability and put them together and call it purposeability. It's purpose that's profitable, right? And so, you know, doing good and making good money do not have to be at odds. If anything, having purpose and a sense of meaning within the organization and engaging individuals, teams, and collectively is able to be the catalyst for even greater profit so that more good can happen. So it becomes that circle of success that we're looking to define and build within, within companies we engage with.

I love it. So, Mark, I want to take you to the other end of that. So a lot of the work you've done historically is working with C-level execs and their senior team, right? And getting that— because if that group's not fixed, the beauty about Ryan's organization is it starts at the top. They're aligned, they're authentic, whatever. It isn't some stickers on a wall, but the CEO is doing other obnoxious things or whatever. It's truly aligned. It's— there's total integrity and authenticity. You're often called in, Mark, either as an executive coach or a leadership coach, or as from an intervention on the top level. Yeah. And from a style perspective, I have seen you on more than one occasion look a CEO in the eye and be able to give feedback that's pretty blunt and direct and would have killed somebody else's career and say, the reason nobody trusts you or likes you is because you do things like you just did to that person over there. Or everybody else is sitting around this table in fear, clenched, that they're going to be the victim of your wrath at this meeting and be thrown under the bus. And unless you stop that behavior, This organization is never going to grow. So maybe touch on the other side of that, how you can't get to sort of Ryan world unless you got your act together at the top of the house.

I think that's true. And, and you're exactly right that the— that people, especially with millennials, people are not going to tolerate being afraid or being enraged at you. They're just not going to. Older generations are sort of used to that, kowtowing to people who are more authoritarian than they were authoritative. And so, uh, uh, what I also believe, one of the ways you convert people over is you share analogies and stories that are kind of riveting. So something else that I did in my career is I did house calls to dying patients. And sometimes at the 11th hour, or 11:30 if you will, I tried to help them make peace with their lives. And I remember one person, and I shared this story with some of these CEOs I've seen, and I said, I saw this person. He was beloved by the world. Hospitals were named after him, but he had multiple marriages. So his personal life was kind of a shambles. And I remember I was seeing him and I said, You look like crap, and I don't think it's because you're dying. You've been dying as long as I've known you. What's going on? And he looked at me and said, I don't think I've ever done anything important. I said, are you kidding? You got a hospital named after you. You got millions of people who adore you. And he looked at me and he said, don't con a con man, especially when he's dying. I've got all the love that money can buy. And that's all it's worth. And, uh, right, and he said, maybe, just maybe, I outsmarted myself. And this is where I bring it to the CEOs. And then he said to me, everything I thought was important isn't, and everything I thought was unimportant is, and I've run out of time. And so stories—

Part of what you're saying, Mark, that millennials have that piece of it right, because it's better that he had that sort of breakthrough on his deathbed than not. But with not a lot of time left, I'd— it would probably be better to have that perspective at 25 or 35 than 75 or 85.

Yeah, absolutely. Something I said, and I'll try and go through this quickly, uh, before we got on, is something I, I, I'm now calling the Four Horsemen, uh, of alienating millennials. And because I hold a mirror up to these high-potential leaders, but they're just— these are the 4 things that they strike out on. The first thing is they talk over or at people. That's the first thing that's a blind spot.

Right.

The second is they don't listen to other people. The third is they don't understand how 1 and 2 can be negatively affecting And the 4th, which is the more— the most sinister of them, is they don't care how it's affecting them. And so those are the 4 Horsemen blind spots.

Yeah.

Say, if you have all of those things, you talk at or over people, you don't listen to people, you don't understand how that's pushing people away, and your good people are going to say, I don't have to put up with this crap, and they'll go somewhere else. And the 4th thing, which really people pick up, is they don't care how it's affecting them. And make them run for the exits is you don't care that you're that way.

Right.

And that's something I will point out to the board because the board will hire me and say, we have someone who's so brilliant, but as brilliant as he is— and it's usually a he— he really doesn't get how destructive he is. And then I'll point out those 4 things. Oh, by the way, uh, how does he check the boxes? And they'll stare at me like deers in the headlight and say, He's all of those.

Not so good. So I want, I want to go in a different direction for the next couple of minutes because we're kind of tight on time here. So underneath sort of the pinnings or the foundation of both of your work is solid thought leadership. So Ryan's done one book, and I know that was a lot of work and a lot of effort and energy. Mark, you're a repeat offender with 11. So I'm just using book as proxy. Talk for a little bit about the importance of using thought leadership to show the world who you are, to build your brand, to find clients, and to make it really easy that, you know, when someone comes to you after reading one of the books or a piece of thought leadership or interview, they kind of know what to expect, right? It's kind of a warm self-selection process. Like Ryan, and, you know, in your case, if it's a don't-get-it kind of company, your work's gonna tissue reject them. And I would say the same to yours.

Yeah.

So Ryan, you wanna talk about that?

Yeah, I think thought leadership in terms of books and so forth. I heard something that I think is a really good idea around it is it's really not true unless it's written down, right? It's not fully communicated unless it's written down. Like, we build trust with our brand and what we believe when we're willing to put it out there on paper. It's one thing to have a lot of videos out there and you're talking and it's in the moment, but to really sit down and say, this is what we believe. this is going to matter so much that I'm willing to put it on a piece of paper, on a blog or something that could potentially reach millions of people. And I think being able to have that type of leadership and being ahead of the curve on— because all of us have written or read a book at some point and one chapter stands out to us. There's plenty of business books out there. And so what we wanted to do with Build a Culture of Good. I've got it right here. With Build a Culture of Good isn't just simply to give a bunch of pointers to people on how to do that, but to really share the heart and soul of the business and why we do what we do. And also share stories, as Mark was talking about how important it is and the vulnerability of short storytelling, to share the stories that the culture of good has impacted. those employees and be able to share those stories, which I think is really important for companies to do as well. You know, companies can be thought leaders within their industry when they stand out and they really position themselves as a forward-thinking, progressive-type business. But they also have to share the stories internally of the impact because that's really what the business is about. And so, you know, we wrote the book and then at the end of each chapter, I think what's really unique about it is that it There's several questions that Scott and I— so we wrote this together as really a conversation of sorts. And at the end, there's questions that leaders can ask themselves. But also there's, you know, they're really great conversation starters.

Yep.

For leaders to talk to their team and say, all right, you know, why does this matter? When was the last— like, I just picked one out here. When you define your cause effort or your force for good, are you meeting the trends of your customers and employees? Like, are you doing community work just because you want to do it, or is it meeting the passion of your employees and your customers as well?

Yeah.

So very thought-provoking ideas and questions in there for people to really take a self-assessment. And I think that's really what thought leadership really is able to ask, the curious questions that lead people to think for themselves and to ask questions of themselves and really go beyond what they thought was possible. And so I think it's really valuable to have a book out, to have been writing. Peter, you encouraged me to write 2 or 3 blogs a week. I have not been doing that recently, but during that time I evolved as a person as well. And so I think—

Right.

As we help others, we help ourselves in that way also.

So Mark, talk about, I mean, you're a thought leadership machine, the sheer volume, forget the quality, forget that the quality's high, but just the massive amount of volume in so many different formats and podcasts and books and videos. What's underneath that? What drives that? And how does, you know, how much of it is cathartic and how much of it is great to separate you from the pack?

Well, something I've been doing since, you know, 'cause I was a medical doctor, medical doctors by nature are not necessarily writers or authors, But when I finally finished medical school, uh, the day I graduated, I took out a little crappy journal and I wrote my first sentence, and it said, I can't believe I made it through. They've released the crazy person. That was 1976. I'm on volume 255, 45,000 pages. And what happens is, uh, Like, after this, I, I, I'm going to write down some of the things that Ryan has said because they're so helpful. And so what I do is I just keep writing things down, and then when things seem to connect with each other, I say, well, geez, that's a blog, or gee, I can't get this out of my mind, maybe that's a book. And so something I would say to you, if you're watching or listening, you say, I don't have the time to read. Well, I've heard that Bill Gates and maybe Warren Buffett, they read 2 to 3 hours a day. And someone once said to me, you're an idiot to not read books from thought leaders because they're taking the time to distill the best of what they know in something that you can read in 5 or 6 hours. And you can try and find out on your own in a hit-or-miss way, and it might take you months or years or never. But they're distilling what the best of what they know in a way that's understandable. I love the format of Ryan's book. Something that I will mention, I'm happy to give you a blurb because of even just that question you asked. And what I would say is, you know, the best insight is the hidden in plain sight, counterintuitive, but intuitively correct observations of life. It's, uh, it's, uh, uh, counterintuitive because you'd say, you know, I never would have thought of that, but that would work. And it's intuitively so because it would work.

So here's some of the things I've heard in my work. Why does someone go through the, you know, the effort to write the book? In many instances, Forget the market, intrinsic. It's a forcing mechanism to get you to codify your thinking. So, Ryan, you and I worked together fairly closely with Culture of Good, and you guys had a ghostwriter, and it's a little more complicated when there's 2 authors, but it really forced you to say, what we mean when we say X is X.

Yeah, yeah.

Sometimes that would evolve into 8-hour dinners with a couple of cocktails, whatever, to say, no, it's this. No, it's— but you really get tight together internally. Then you put it on, you know, ink and paper. Then when you put it out on the market and somebody challenges you on it, You've got to defend— you can defend that position. It doesn't mean it's always right. It doesn't mean you don't evolve and change or whatever.

Sure, sure.

But it is a forcing mechanism. The other end of the continuum is everybody thinks that, you know, when you're introduced as an author, your IQ went up 40 points and you, you know, sit there smoking a pipe in a tweed jacket and, you know, in your spare time. So there is a branding piece to it, and it's a way to separate from the pack. I would say, Mark, in our work together, a lot of the books you've written started— you know, I didn't know about the journaling you did. That's pretty cool. Probably out of curiosity, something that was gnawing at you that you couldn't get out of your head, whether it's coming from a client or real interaction. So when you, you know, you did, you know, Talking to Crazy, you did Just Listen, you did Get Out of Your Way. Each and every one of your books was, was not to extend the analogy, you know, sort of a chapter in your world, chapter of your life of where your head's at at a certain space. What would you say to that?

Yeah, completely. Each of my books, there's So much of me in it, and I'm in my 70s, and so there's a lot of me to be put into books. But something I wanted to share that I think you'll both, both enjoy— a friend of mine who helped design Disney Paris, Disney Tokyo, he came up with the term mental real estate. And what mental real estate is, is you share something that's familiar, but then you twist it. So the familiarity causes people to open their minds to you, and when you twist it, you have more mental real estate. So just listen has a certain amount of mental real estate. Talking to crazy has even more mental real estate. And I spoke in Russia, headlined with Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner. And I said, why is it that you have me with a Nobel Prize winner? And they said his book did not go viral. Because the Russian edition of Talking to Crazy is How to Talk to Assholes.

Hey, I want that book.

That's mental real estate. But I think Culture of Good has good multi— because culture of something sort of prepares you. But then when you hit it with culture of good, It hits someone right in the gut saying, yeah, yeah, I want to feel good about my company. I want my company to do good. I want to do good. I'm too self-absorbed. We're too selfish. Oh, I like that. So I just wanted to share that because I think it lands mental real estate.

No, I love that. And the culture, you know, culture of good and titles matter. Just listen, the shortness of it is like, okay. You, it, it broke my trance. Just listen. Okay. Is that a command? Is that a question? Is that a, you know, what is that? And then culture of good, you know, in a very few words leads you to this sort of, huh, I wonder if I have one. It's aspirational. It's where I'd like to go. What does that actually mean? And then when you dig deeper into it, as Ryan alluded to before, they're clearly not anti-profit, right? Like actually the better the culture got, the better the business got. And it became sort of this gratuitous flywheel.

That's the promise, because as the business grows, so does the good, you know. And it goes back to what Mark said earlier about the, the friend or whoever it was that he was speaking with that said, you know, toward the end of the life realization, like, you know, what did I really do with a sense of meaning, you know. And I'm grateful to have been raised in that type of culture from an early age after losing my mom. I know we're not going to get into all Yeah. But Mark, I lost my mom to suicide at 6 years old, and my dad was a heroin addict. And so me doing this type of work has less to do with business than it does to do with my own sense of meaning and my own sense of purpose. So it comes from a place of my own heart and soul. And I think if we're going to be thought leaders, if we're going to be business leaders, whatever the case is, we have to lead from a place of our heart. And, and be the type of leaders that we would want to follow, right? And, and really create and cultivate those type of relationships that allow us to build a real good sense of, of community, like I said, and culture that leads to that good. And I'm starting another book called Bring Your Soul to Work. Peter, you talked about it, like people want to bring their kids to work, but a lot of times we check our soul at the door. We have to fit into, fit into the construct of work, and we lose—

What I love about that, Ryan, from a generational perspective, is I'm a Gen X. I'm on the older side of Gen X, but Gen X still, right? Is, you know, when I was coming up, my first couple of jobs, the mantra was, whether it was written down or not, it was clearly understood: check your baggage at the door. I mean, literally, I can remember those words being used by leaders to someone Oh my God, how come Sheila the receptionist is crying? Well, her mother just died. Okay, well, check your baggage at the door. Somebody's gonna answer the phones. That's the way it was. And, you know, bring your soul to work doesn't mean let the phone rings, abuse the customers, whatever. But how do you accomplish both? Because guess what? After 9 to 5, there's 5 to 9. Yeah, stuff happens. And yeah.

Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, it's a lot healthier for us to come in fully ourself. And to have leaders in place that can coach, that can show up.

And there's boundaries around that. I mean, we're not coming in and— Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, you gotta have boundaries. Anyway, I wanna thank you both. I love you both. You both have been dear friends for a long, long time. I encourage you to connect offline. You can find Ryan at his website, ryanmccarty.com. Mark, you got your fancy QR code there?

There it is.

There we go. You Gen Z.

That's my link code. Thank you.

And you can find Mark anywhere online if you Google him or his books or his blog or— all his other stuff. I encourage you to follow both of these guys, read their stuff, check them out. Lots to learn from both of them. And more importantly, they're both real and good people. So thank you both.

Thank you so much for having me.