Non-Violence & Leadership ft. Michael Colburn | Ep 131

People seem to forget if you change today, today will change your life. Hello, Michael. How you doing?

I'm doing great, David. It's nice to talk to you.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being here and just for, you know, we were just talking beforehand. I think it's just appropriate to ask you, with all the stuff going on in the world, the pandemic, just checking in that you're, you're okay. And how are you keeping yourself entertained at the moment?

Well, I'm having, excuse me, zoom meetings all the time. Tomorrow morning I have a Zoom meeting with two great friends. I'm also preparing for a virtual workshop with Ashland University on my book and my concepts. And so that kind of gives me some structure, which is good. So I'm having zoom meetings with my kids and things like that. So it tries to have some normalcy. The only thing that I'm really, really missing is tennis. You know, avid tennis player, average player. And I just, that is, I'm having withdrawal symptoms on tennis. So I think next week the tennis courts are going to be opening. So I think I might be able to start playing next week.

And what are the main symptoms of tennis withdrawal?

Well, you know, it's. I don't get the trash talk very much anymore, you know, and also just a social interaction. I play with it, bunch of retired guys and we just have so much fun and it's just, and I play early in the morning, it's such a good way to start the day. I play at 7 o' clock in the morning, you know, for a couple hours with a bunch of guys. Then we sometimes will go out for breakfast. So there's a social aspect to it and a fun aspect to it, and it's great cardio, it's great exercise. Yeah, perfect.

Well, you know, I'm glad to hear that you're doing well otherwise and hopefully you'll get back on the court very soon as well. And so it's a real pleasure to have you, Michael. And for the people listening, just so they can get a good idea for people who might not be aware of your work. Are you happy to just tell us a little bit more about yourself, Michael, and the work you do?

Well, a long time ago I graduated from Ohio State and have a degree in industrial engineering. I worked for almost 10 years in industry, learning my craft and then I got into engineering management. And one thing I find that I come from a working class family and I really enjoyed the people out on the floor, you know, and I think the first company I went with Was many ways a very good company, but very traditional management type of thing. And I really found the people out there, first thing, I enjoyed their directness and the. And I saw they had so much creativity. And early on in my career I said, these people have such creative hobbies. If we could help them really see that in their job and giving opportunities their job, how much better that would be for them. But mostly for the company, you know, quite frankly, because I find they're very bright people just because they didn't have the level of education. They did have the education, but it wasn't formal education, you know, so. And I really had a great affection for people out on the planet because those are the people I grew up, they raised me, you know, those are the type of people that's family I came from. So I did that for a number of years. I really, I found out, I told people I made a career decision by accident. When I was in high school, if you were a good student, particularly you're good in math and science, they said you should go into engineering. So I went to engineering, had no idea what it was all about. And then I found out I really liked it and I was actually good at it, you know, and it was such a joy. And I can't tell you that I don't think I've ever had a really bad day at work. You know, I've had bad moments. But if you really love what you do, I found that that was great. So after a while, about 10 years into it, I said, you know, I'm ready to move on. And so I decided to go out of business for myself, working with companies. And the business evolved over the years. You know, it started off with doing a lot of management development, training and development because that was something I was interested in. And then I decided to go back to school and I went back, got my master's in industrial engineering and business. It was kind of a dual masters. And then I went on get my doctorates in adult education with organizational communications and business as my minors. And so really it kind of grounded me out and I think it made a profound impact on my consulting business. So I went back and I integrated industrial engineering, process improvements, lean with, with leadership and engagement. It all fit together for me, you know, and my business grew and I really worked into my primary sweet spot was closely held companies between 10 and $100 million, often owned by one or two people. And I found out that when someone asked me what my job was, the answer that came out to me was I'm Helping people deal, helping organizations deal with the problems of success.

I love that. Okay, I like that. Yeah.

Because what happened is in the early entrepreneur stage, a lot of flexibility, trying things out, experimentation, not too much on process and things like that. Very strong leader very often who I really admired, you know, these entrepreneurs, but they hit a wall often because they were growing, they didn't know how to take it to the next level. And that's where I came in. So I came in sometimes with industrial engineering process analysis, but always got into executive team development because the strong controlling person didn't necessarily how to build a leadership team. And so that really got me into the strategy issues in executive team development. And so most of my career, my biggest chunk of my career was doing that. I worked with bigger organizations and things like that and I had a wide range of companies, but that was my sweet spot. And also I could speak directly to the CEO because very often they don't have anyone telling them things. Like one of the things, when I first started talking to a potential client, I never tried to close the deal very fast because I wanted to make sure that it was a good fit. So the one question would help me figure out whether or not we're going to go on. So I'd say, David, so if we start working together and you know, I'll be starting off with an assessment and I kind of went through my process. So what happens if I find out that you're a big part of the problem? How do you want me to deal with you? You know, and if they're real thin skinned, the meeting would end, you know, but, but it always happens. They're always part of the problem. And I don't mean they're to blame, they're just, well, they're the chokehold of.

Any business, aren't they?

Right. And I find out that I needed to know. So we used to have a, used to work up this way that we're going to deal. Like if I'm in a room with them and their people and sometimes I'd have a signal to them that they're going off track. So like this one guy who was president, his name was Randy, loved him, pure entrepreneur. And so if I called him Randolph, he knew that he just blew it, you know, you know, it's like being.

Told off by your mum when you like they say your full name.

Michael.

John Michael. Yeah, exactly right.

You know, and so, and I really enjoyed that relationship with them and I found that most of them enjoyed it with me and actually all of them did or they wouldn't have hired me, you know, and because I think they knew I was in the best interest. And the other part was they were not my clients. The business with my clients, they were part of this. And I think coaching is good, where people work with individuals for coaching. And I'm all for that, but I never considered myself that coach. It might be a part of it, but my job was to look out for the best interest of the company and let them know that sort of thing. And so, and so I had a lot of energy around that and a lot of fun around that sort of thing. So that was my big chunk of my work.

I love that. And you gave a few examples of the sorts of things that I talk about with people in terms of how do you, you know, for me, always it's a two step process. It's. You firstly got to break someone's pattern. Once you break that pattern, then you. They take better action and without, you know, you got to break that pattern first. And I like the Randolph thing as well, because I can imagine that would have instantly like jolted them out of their patterns. Oh. Yep. Well, hang on. I've got a, I've got a switch on again. And so I really like that. And so you made it at that point between you're working in the interest of the business ahead of the client and as it's as, sorry, the client of the individual and as it should be. Now there must be examples or situations where you thought, because sometimes it might have been a, I don't want to say a moral or ethical thing, but you. Where you look at an individual and you want to, you want to provide them something of value and it might not be mutually exclusive to the, to the benefit of the company, but you look at it and go, I really have to put the business interest first, even though I really, I like this individual and I want them to succeed, but this might have to come first and this might compromise them in some way. I mean, did you have situations, not, not necessarily that that was happening, but you felt that if that was the case, how did you kind of, you know, deal with that? How did you always. I guess in some cases you have to have an emotional connection with the individuals, but at some point you've got to remove that connection so that you're always back at the principle of the business has to succeed. So did you have examples of that? And if so, what were they like?

Yeah, Well, I take it as the term you use that reminded me is compassionate detachment.

Mm.

That's that sometimes I had to make sure that I didn't allow my respect and affection for somebody to affect my good judgment, you know, and sometimes. And so I care for them individually in running a business, but sometimes they just need to hear things that they don't necessarily want to hear. I have one sit and I have one situation. I was working with this one company and we just finished the assessment period a couple three months and we are ready to make a major initiative with the organization. So we had an all hands meeting, so maybe about 40 employees. And I was going through a job design to enrich the job of certain important roles in a company. And during the presentation, the president of the company who actually went to high school with me, but we didn't really know each other real well. And so he made a comment because we're setting up a pilot project. He made a comment about one of the women in the group who was a key person in this pilot project that was highly inappropriate. Now it wasn't so much a blatant sexist comments that we might see, but it was a joke that I could tell that really hurt her and I saw and she just shut down. I could tell it. So we went on with the meeting. So after the meeting, I walk to the person's office, the CEO's office, opened it up and I said, are you open for some feedback? And that's always the sign, right? And he said, and of course. And I said, if you're not, I've talked to you later. Well, they can't help it, you know, go in. Then I walked in his office and the second sign was to shut the door.

Yes. Okay. Yeah.

You're getting a picture.

Yeah, yeah.

I said, joe, it wasn't his name. During that meeting, there's some things that really bothered me, you know, when you were saying to Sally, blah blah, blah, blah, that really bothered her. And he said, then he argued with me. We kid all the time like that, blah, blah blah, you know. I said, well, you know, I know a lot about group process and I know she was shut down. She didn't take that as a kid at all. So I hung in there with them, you know, And I said, you forget that she gets a check with your name on it and the name of the company on it. So you're not just pals, she's working for you, you know, and that was inappropriate. And she's a major player in this company. And I didn't leave that office until he accepted that. And to his great credit, he got up Walked out and apologized. Good for him. And I think that was in the best interest, quite frankly of the company. But it was based on an ethical principle. And when I do something like that, and I have several things I've done like that, I can't worry about losing the client because if I'm worrying about losing the client, I'm not going to do the right job, you know, doesn't mean I'm not going to make mistakes, you know, and if I make a mistake, I admit to it. But. But I really think that it was in the best interest of him and the client in this company by doing that sort of thing, you know, and I have a number of examples like that. And sometimes it's different type of stuff.

Really interesting. And you know, especially with the client, you know, business environment, business climate over the last three or four years, people who can, I guess, mediate those sorts of situations, I think is such an incredibly important thing at this time. Because you're right, there's that, that lack of self awareness, but that just as just a kind of a culture shift. And you know, with the example you gave, and rightly we're hopefully trying to move in a more positive direction where people are more aware that of those sorts of comments but that actually people the moment maybe they miss that sort of thing. And I had an situation a while back, a manager of mine. So, you know, and this was before I was even in coaching, I was working in a corporate environment and with a manager we got on unbelievably well. Unbelievably well. And. But we hadn't known each other that long and I'm part Christian and part Jewish. Without going to the details of it, she made a comment or a reference to me being Jewish, which wasn't racist, but there was something in it which wasn't quite right. And there was this thing where. And this is something, it's a moment that I took into me when I started, when I got into coaching, which was that there's this thing here which is we get on, you know, better than anyone else in that company and yet I know this is wrong and I really thought about it in terms of what the right approach is here. And she hadn't been working at the company long. I knew she wasn't meaning any offense. I knew that she, it was a sort of spur of the moment thing and I knew that. I certainly knew she wasn't racist or anything like that. But I really had to think about it because you know, we were getting to a point where There's a lot of a big microscope on what's happening within business and it makes you therefore notice things more. Maybe 10 years earlier I wouldn't have noticed that sort of thing. I would just, okay, you know, haha, whatever. I was lucky enough that the next morning I saw in my inbox she sent me an essay of an email saying that she'd, she'd caught herself and she had me not sleep and she realized that as sort of. It was a really nothing comment but not appropriate either. But probably similar to what you're saying is that she recognized it and that was, and that was enough for me and for people to have that level of self awareness that's incredibly important. But it's not always easy to be that self aware. And I always, you know, I get. Whenever you probably same with you. Whenever you work with a high performer, they judge themselves. When they go, I can help everyone else but I'm struggling to help myself correct. And I always, and this is what I wanted to get onto next, which is I always try and tell people that you know, when people, if people want to let go of something, they have to, you know, it has to let go, it has to come out of them. It has to let go. So you have to talk about things, you have to let that stuff out. So I just wanted to ask you Michael, from your experience in terms of people's own self awareness, obviously at the higher end of the business, they've got so much to think about that they can't possibly think about everything in terms of helping people become a bit more self aware and helping people almost analyze their own process because presumably they a business and individuals, they've got to be able to work and operate in the same way beyond the work they do with you. You won't be there forever with them, so you'll move on to other. So how do you help people with that kind of self awareness at the top end of a business when they've got so much to do?

Well, a couple things.

Yeah.

One of the things I find that was important for a business leader is to get connected with two different groups of people.

Okay.

The first one are their customers and I don't mean a sales call. So almost always when I'm working with a company, one of the early things I do is I teach them how to go out and interview their customers and have them ask four fundamental questions. You know, the first question is so what is our company doing well for you? How are we creating value for you? What are we doing good when they ask that question. They're not just finding out what they're doing well, but also they're finding out what the person values, what they're paying attention to. Second question. So what are your needs and expectations for us? And that's kind of the longest question. Then you kind of dig in deeper to each one of those. Then they typically give you categories of things, technologies, sales. Then you take each one of those and you ask a question. So tell me more about our technology support. How, what does that look like? And what would be a player? Then the last question is, so what can we do better? How can we improve our performance? We do that with all the customers. And then that's really important because that really is a big group of information for strategy. But then I have them do pretty much the same thing, particularly the president with his people. You know, what am I doing well? What are your expectations of me? You know, you know, how should I measure my performance? You know, what can I do better? And I find that, I believe that the boss, whatever level that is, is not the customer of the employee. Yeah, they are, they're important. They're an accountability issue. They bring integration, they bring all those things together. But unless we create value for external customer, we do not have the right to survive. And so I had them treat their employees first as a customer. And so it takes away from the patriarchy of very traditional management. And then I want them to keep in touch with them because they need to let their employees, their team members, feel it is okay and encourage them to give them feedback, honest feedback. And I find very often, especially the organization grows, that middle management group sometimes filters out information to the top. I had this one client I worked with a number of years, matter of fact, he did something that was great to make sure that he was self aware. Once a week he would go as a construction company, he would go to a crew and bring them lunch. And he said, the price of lunch is I want you to give me an idea what I can do better to run this company, you know, and he did that with the crews, then he did it with the teams inside. He's a good friend. I admire him so much. Matter of fact, I even quoted him in my book, you know, and that sort of thing. One other example was working with a big distribution company. And I came in to do problem solving training. So my industrial journey had on. And we set up teams to work on specific projects. So when I do it in context, don't just give a general thing. So I worked with them over about three months, these teams. And I would meet with the general manager, who's a great guy. And I remember early on he said, you know, Michael, I have an open door policy, but people just never come up to talk to me. And I said, fred, have you ever walked up to your office, second floor, a long aisle, you open their office door, big mahogany desk. That would take an awful lot for these people to do that. So I said, first thing, I really believe that he meant what he meant, said. I said, if you want them to talk to you, you're gonna have to go to their area. And when you go to their area. And then. So that went on and didn't talk much more later on about us closing out the project. He said, michael, I found out what my job was. That is great. What was it, Fred? He said, my job is remove barriers for people's performance. So he'd walk around the shop area and he'd come up to a person who's running equipment or doing something like that. And he said, so what's an obstacle to your performance and what can I do to help you? So I think it's encouraging people to give honest feedback, which is critical, you know, and to invite feedback and saying, what can I do better? You know, it helps them give a little mirror in front of them and start seeing themselves from a different point of view. That's always valuable. And I think those are the types of things I find when leaders start to do that, they really become leaders.

Yeah. And so, and that's that first. I love those particular questions and those examples. And there's that thing about self awareness, but there's also that bulletproof skin that you need right now. I think part of, you know, if you do what is easy in life, your life will be hard, right? If you take, you know, so by the same process, right? You have to hear the feedback, you have to be self aware, you have to go through those questions, you have to go through hearing all that stuff in order to build that skin and to be, you know, to be able to deal with these things. And you have to go, same thing going through the problems. Once you got, you go through the problem, you've got the experience. However, you always want to do that market research and obviously do that market research on yourself and the value that you provide. How do you balance that off and how do you help people? Because I've got my own process of doing it with what I do. How do you balance that off with helping people develop that thick skin that is required at top End of leadership, which is incredibly important because it's not for kind of mid level management or anything else. You know, confidence is I might do this well or I might not. At the top, it's your survival. You don't. And that's the sort of thick skin without that sounding too dramatic. But you know, people need to be confident in order to really perform at the highest level. How do you help people deal with that? Both that, that self awareness and how you go about it, but also keep them in a position to be well balanced and have that thick skin that's required.

Yeah, well, I think there's, I was just thinking about an example when you, when you were talking, you know, you know, certainly involvement with groups like I'm in a mastermind group with fellows and we are, we've been meeting for three and a half years and we're now meeting virtually and it is great because first thing we know that we really respect each other and can accept feedback. So you have to be with people that you respect that can give you honest feedback and invite that. But I also have found, David, that in organizations there's two sides of this story too. It's also helping their team members or subordinates to be open to them. So they have a part in this too. And I'm always dealing with my struggle with how do I help organization demonstrate good leadership and support with their people. But also I never want to do that in such a way that I'm creating patriarchy, you know, or dependence, you know. So very often when I worked with these companies, they would always say anybody in the company can talk to Michael because I'd help them with their learning plans and doing things like that. So there's a coaching element in there. And very often they might start thinking they know that I have a good relationship with the big guy, you know. And so very often they'll be complaining to me about their boss and really, sometimes they really want me to fix it. So I said, you know, I'm, I hear what you're saying and I think you got a lot of valid points but unfortunately your boss is not in a room right now. So I can't fix your boss, but I can help you work with your boss. So it's really. How do you manage up? I had this one situation. So part of it is getting courage to people to talk honestly to the boss. That's one part of it, you know, and so if I always put a sign on the board if I get too much complaining, I said no global whining. You know, you know you have to claim the power that you have. I had one of my biggest challenges working with the boss. He was a cardiologist in a hospital and they're starting off this new health center. And I got started, I was able to help him in startup, which was fantastic. Right. And he didn't run the day to day operations but because he was over a much bigger area. But he would have regular meetings with his staff and he was a very smart, highly controlling, not always highly self aware.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I realized, so he would have me sit in on these meetings even if I wasn't facilitating to protect him from himself.

Okay. Yeah.

So I remember this one time he had like six, seven people in room and we were working on a project, you know, and they, a really important project. They'd work through things. Well, in the middle of the night this guy woke up, came up with a different idea. He's very creative. Came up, came into the meeting with a PowerPoint that completely was a whole different approach to his project, you know, and he said, and I could look at the team and who put so much energy into this, you know, and they were down and he was oblivious to, he was oblivious to how they were reacting to him. He thought that he had the greatest idea. So, so he, so at the end of his presentation he said, so what do you think of this? You know, he got this. Yeah, I just put a guy, you know, just whining type of stuff. So anyway, so that was, that's when I had to come in. So I said, you know, I'm hearing a lot of yes in this room, but I'm not feeling much yes. So what's going on here?

That's good way of putting it.

Yeah. And quiet for a while. And of course you'll know you never break the silence. You never break the silence. So one person who is actually a doc, but not quite the same level is the big guy. He said, well my, you know, you know, we've been working on this for a while and you came in, I know you put a lot of work with it, but you kind of took the wind out of her sails. So he had courage, you know. Then finally another person said, yeah, this and everyone, this got everyone started. Mike took that well, you know, you know, he was completely unaware. So partly I have to also help people to have courage, you know. So I've got to work with both ends. And that's why I put a lot. The book I wrote, I wrote to the job holder, not to the boss. Yeah, And I don't mean it's for frontline people because the boss is also a job holder and so they just have different reporting relationships. So my ideal situation is to teach the tools as high as level as I can. But they have to want it. I never force.

Yes, absolutely. Do you have to want it?

Yeah, matter of fact, sometimes when I teach these tools of self management, the one rule I say is never require anyone to use them. You can require performance, you certainly should. But if you require them to do what Michael says you should be doing, then that is opposed to self management. Yeah, but give me the people who want it, not the people who need it.

I really like that. So I really like the different ideas that you have in terms of, you know, the different level coming from all the different angles in a business and being able to understand how we can perform our roles better. I think the courage aspect of it is probably something that I think a lot of people might almost forget about when it comes to performance in a workplace and the bravery and the courage to do that. And your examples, there are just perfect examples of just open communication. My thing with communication is it's always one of two E's. It's empathy, expectation. It's always. And if you lead with empathy, you know, you have to have expectation. But if you lead with empathy, it's a really easy way to encourage a warmer conversation. And I think those examples are perfect examples of that. I wanted to get into talking about your book owning your own career. And I just want to talk about that one particular, just briefly, because I can say for anyone, you know, and lots of people listening to this from a kind of entrepreneurship point of view or not an entrepreneur, they just want to take more control. It really resonates with me because I didn't want to start a business, but I wanted to own my life. And that was really important to me. And I think, you know, you don't have to start a business to own your life. But that concept of owning your life is incredibly important to me. I want to ask you, do you believe anyone and everyone can own their own life? Because there are lots of sort of things within a, you know, if you are working within a business and anything, there are certain strings in place, there are certain structures and things like that. Even working your own business, there are certain requirements. So what's your view in terms of anyone being able to own their life in that way? Because I think lots of people want to do that.

Yeah, good question. That's a question. I get a lot So I have found working with companies in terms of self management and owning their job and what they're in is I think vast majority of people have the capability to take charge. Not necessarily. They may not be ready or may have, may have some blocks in the way. I did some research on my master thesis which has helped me a lot because it was very practical research. It was a long time ago. I did, I had a course, it was kind of a precursor to my book. I was teaching people how to set goals and manage their time in the workplace. And I would do this course, it's like a five week course, two hours a week, and show them tools. I'm very tool oriented. And some people would come out of that workshop or that series of sessions. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is changing my life, you know. Well, that sort of thing, which is great for the person here. Then some people came out completely frustrated.

Yeah.

And so I was saying. So my first course, one of the first semester I took in my master's program, I was looking at job design and things like that. And a lot of times people get this down to individual characteristics. I said, hmm. And I looked at people who were having problems with it versus the people who weren't. And I said, looks like their job is different. So I did some research and I won't go into detail on, on it, but I did get my thesis approved and, and I looked, I identified a number of job characteristics based on some previous research. I didn't develop these that correlated with people's ability to self manage.

Okay.

Now one of them is, there's three major ones. One is task significance basically is what I do really counts. There's something in here. I'm creating value for somebody, you know, either in or outside the organization. If that's high, that's a good sign. The second thing is autonomy. Autonomy is not so much you always have autonomy of the goals, but you have autonomy in how you do your work, how you do your work. And it turned out that relatively high autonomy is good, but not necessarily absolute autonomy. Then the third thing was feedback. And I'm not talking about personal feedback. Feedback that the job itself gives you.

Yes, okay. Yeah.

And so, for example, a craftsman gets automatic feedback because they see when it's going well and not going well. I have a friend who's an artist, you know, he's a wonderful artist. He doesn't need someone giving him a performance appraisal, you know, on how well he did. He knows it when he makes a mistake, when he does something well when those three things mesh where task significance is high and feedback and autonomy is moderately high because you can have too much Booth. Then I found out that highly correlated the job itself with ability to do that. So when I go into an organization, I very often I'll run this, you know, now I only give people individual feedback on that one, but I kind of coach them on whether or not that's maybe a good thing for them. And it doesn't mean I won't work with them, but it'd be a different set of tools, you know, maybe a more short term goal setting as opposed to long term goal setting, you know. But there's an individual characteristic that came out also was internal growth need. And what that is is how much growth that they want out of their job. If a person has a lower growth need on their job, does not mean they're not motivated. There might be other things, family issues, might be going to school or things like that. Doesn't mean they're not a good worker, but it just means they don't. That doesn't keep them up at night. Right. And so, so when that's, when those three things are high, that's the sweet spot, you know, and so I typically will have run that. And if they're low, I might work with management and saying, is this really what you want out of this job? You know, and sometimes we'll go into a job design process before we go into this, we might, how can we increase the autonomy of this job and still meet the needs of the company?

And I just. One of your blogs, I remember reading one of your blogs which said, titled, don't wait for the promotion. Create your ideal job.

Right?

And so I assume you're sort of touching on that a little bit now in terms of. I think there's always that thing which is, you know, if anyone's ever stuck in, in their life, it's. It's two parts. It's either life doesn't match the blueprint of how they think it should be, right. Or they feel and they feel like they don't have the control to change it.

Correct.

And so I always think with those two things is either we show how you've got some control, or we just swap out the old plan for a new plan, which is so much better, we go screw the old plan. Now, when you create your ideal job, obviously there's probably a bit of both in there, isn't there? There's actually showing. Well, you actually have more, you know, tap into the autonomy aspect you have a bit more control to cultivate and create the type of job that you want that you're already doing or that there's a new plan. And the new plan could be a new job or the new plan could be actually the plan is this is what your job is really about and getting an understanding. And I think a lot of managers probably look and say actually I want to tell them the why and the what, but I want them to do the how. And if they're really good at using their having their autonomy to do the how, then they can make their job what they want. So in terms of creating your ideal job, what else would you say to that? Michael, in terms of how someone sat where they are, maybe they're, you know, they're working from home at the moment and they're thinking this job is just not quite giving me those things that you spoke about in terms of task, significance, autonomy, feedback, all of those things. Yes, they're going to need support from the business to help make those things happen. But how can someone create their ideal job right now where they're sat, they actually feel better about the work that they're doing. What can they do?

Well, the first thing I have them do one thing I tell people that when I teach them how to use it, tools of self management. I always say everything I'm going to teach you you can do without permission. Now it may or may not work, but you can do without permission. So one of the first things that creates your ideal job is I had them create a performance agreement with their organization and that's much different than a job description. Job description helps the company see what type of person you hire. But once a person's hired, I'm sure they don't read their job description. So what I do with them is doing two things. First thing is you want to have some self awareness right about sometimes people think they can be this and that maybe it doesn't fit their skill set, you know. So two things I do is one thing is I have them do discovery of their talents, their strengths and their passions. And I have a number of exercises, some of them I've created but a lot of them are out there, you know, different tools and saying I want them to have a great self awareness of their strengths and their limitations, but mostly strengths, you know, and so that they, so their idea, their ideal job fits reality for them. And so I have to do a good self assessment, you know, and I give them choices to pick out things, you know, and very often so that's a start. The second thing I haven't do is to identify their key work relationships. You know, people who they serve, they provide product or service to, you know, people who provide service to them or teammates that they work with. And I have them interview them and what do you think? The questions I ask? The same four questions I mentioned to you before? Yeah, same four questions. What am I doing? Well, you know, and I say, what's working? And I never haven't asked the question of what's not working. Not a very good question because it's a pastor where you end it. However, when we get so what am I doing well, what's working? What are your needs and expectations? For me in my position as accountant, what are the ways I can, excuse me, measure my performance? And the last one is what can I do better? You know, when you ask that question last and out of those things, we take all those two sets of information. I can show them how to create their job, their ideal job. Now they still can't do it. Then they go and negotiate it with the organization. Here's what I think I can do. And they negotiate back and forth. And very often they might find they can create their ideal job in their current job.

Yeah. What I really like about that approach genuinely, is that one of the things that drives me mad is the amount of people who come to talk about working with me and I ask them, what's their experience in terms of seeking help elsewhere? And they'll have maybe spoken to this person, this person, this person. And the number one thing that I always seem to find is that they've spent a lot of time with someone else talking about what they don't want. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want this to happen. I don't want to have this conversation. And then it's fine. That's the survival brain, isn't it? We talk about what we don't want, Right? But for the person who's kind of facilitating or coaching them or whatever is to fully function and deal on that problem. Now, you have to help people overcome things. But a very, very simple way to transform someone and get them to pause in their tracks. If you get someone who's a rambler or talks a lot or moans a lot or, you know, you know, whatever, and they're just a lot of negativity come out of them. Very simple way to get, you know, to make them quiet is to ask them, what do you want?

Right.

And then all of a sudden, because they've. Because. And it's, you know, it's no judgment on the. On the client, per se, because again, that's just how our brain is designed to look for what's wrong and where do we need to improve and what's, you know, how do I keep myself safe and all of those sorts of things. I love your approach because it's very much focusing what you do want and that. And I always talk about it as a, you know, having a picture, a picture frame up on the wall of what you do want. And there's only one nail that holds that picture frame up. And usually for me, that nail is feeling good enough. Right. And that one nail and people, it'd be, you know, people, it'd be ridiculous to try and keep that picture and hit that hammer. Sorry, hit the nail on the head with a hammer. By randomly throwing the hammer at the. Towards the picture, hoping you hit that nail, hoping that you keep the picture up. I think for most people, that picture. We've not hit the nail on the head. The picture's fallen on the floor out of our line of sight. And if you don't focus on what you want, you immediately focus on what. If you don't focus on what you want, you immediately focus on what you don't want. I love that approach in terms of creating your ideal job, not by ripping out what doesn't work and what isn't this, but very much. Yeah, you've got to have an understanding of where we need to improve, but understanding, well, what is it you do want? Because most people just don't seem to know the answer to that question. I don't know how you found that.

In that improvement question. It's not necessarily, what am I doing wrong? That I can.

Yeah.

How can I leverage a strength? You know, I talk to people about what do you really. I have one of the tools that I've used, I think I created. I'm not sure I have. People write success stories. Tell me about a situation that you were very successful in. And it doesn't have to be work anytime, anytime in your life. And then I have them do that and just keep writing, you know, and write them in third person and just have there. And then take a look at it and say, so what are some of the common themes you're seeing coming out of this? You know, and every time I was successful, I had great organizations or I had interpersonal skills or technical skills, and it's all good. And I find that overcoming weaknesses is a big waste of time most of the time. And I Don't even like to use the word weakness because it has a certain moral. So I use the word limitations. What are my limitations? You know, like after you and I talk. A friend of mine, I'm doing a virtual workshop and I need to learn a lot about technology. We've been doing videos and things like that. He's a wizard that you know and he can walk me through it. It would take me 10 years to do what he's helped me to do in a few days. And knowing that I can be that to somebody else and they to me is one of the great gifts of real true friendship in terms of doing that. Because he's doing it just because he cares what I'm doing, you know. And I would do anything for him too.

Yeah.

And I think over identifying limitations but not trying to overcome things that you can't, you know. You know, I'll never be. I love tennis, but you'll never see me at Wimbledon. Okay. You know, even in my best days, you know, you will see me there. I did go to Wimbledon once as watch it. You'll see me there as a fan, but never as a player. No amount of time is going to make that change, you know.

And it's. I totally agree. And there's no point. You know, you have to. When it comes to things like fear and everything and doubt and everything you have, you can't. It's like nature. You can't fight nature. Right. Nature just wins. It does win. And with those things, you have to work with those things. But once you become sort of become friendly with it and I always the sort of. The limbic which is where you have your sort of. What might be referred to as your irrational thought process. I always get people to kind of identify that as a, as a. As a sep. Almost a separate object in terms of, you know, if they can associate it with their. What their favorite toy was when they were younger or something. Anything along those lines that allows them to kind of not see as non threatening and something to work with. And so I really, really like that approach. And what I want to ask is collating a lot of this stuff together is your kind of models for leadership.

I want to.

Slightly tough question I want to ask because you get so many different types of leaders, right? You get the leaders that they lead by how they perform. You get the leaders who are great at delegation. You get leaders who are very much on the ground. You get all these different types of leaders. So from your own perception, your own belief in terms of the things that you've created and also the experiences that you and things that you've learned. Do you think these models work for all types of leaders or do you think it works better for some types of leaders? What's your thought process on that?

You mean kind of the leadership style type of thing?

Yeah, I guess so, yeah, Yeah.

I do believe in situational leadership. You know, as a young manager, I made a big, big mistake. You know, I'd read all of Maslow's and hierarchy and all the leadership principles. And so I had this team of engineers and technicians. I took it over this department from a person who was let go. He was terrible, you know, and they hired me and so I gave a high degree of freedom to people thinking that they could handle it. And I had this one young man who just ate it up and spit it out. His performances popped up. I had another one, a young man who, his only career was under a authoritarian boss who wouldn't let him do anything and actually also gave him some bad habits and he couldn't handle it of that. And I end up, I had to fire him after a while and I made a big mistake thinking that I should treat everybody the same. Now you treat everyone fairly and ethically, obviously, but in terms of he was not capable. Now the best thing I did with him about a few weeks before we let him go and I had a meet, I had this face to face meeting and I said, you know Pete, you're really not doing it and I've been trying to coach you a little bit and you're not doing that. Doesn't look like you're going to make it here, but I'm going to give you a certain amount of time. But I have to tell you, unless you make a dramatic improvement, you're probably not going to make it. Well, the good news was he started looking for a job. So by the time he didn't make it, I had to let him go and I probably did him a favor. But that was a big mistake by me treating everyone the same. I think there's certain principles of how you treat people and authenticity, things like that. But people are in different levels of readiness to. And some situations also require a more directive leader, you know, and.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, and so but to me, what the mistake I made with that young man was helping him grow to being more self managed but taking it one step at a time. And I had to be a bit more directive with, with him than I had other people giving him more feedback and maybe even some tough love at Times, you know, that it's not as comfortable for me to do that sort of thing. I learned a lot.

I think you have a very. You mentioned Maslow's hierarchy needs. I think you've probably got a very similar approach. You know, it sounds like your approach has changed over time, which is always great, but my, my approach would be very much the same. I love those commonalities between every human being on earth. So Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one of those things which helps you explain every. Everybody on earth. And I'm always, I've always been of that type. Well, I want to know the pattern so that if I can narrow it down to that I'm only looking for, you know, a handful of patterns, then it's going to be one of these. I can help someone quicker. As much as I love all of that, I totally appreciate what you've just said, which is that actually from experience you have to understand that whilst these are models and whilst you know something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs is held in, you know, it's been almost, almost by this point sort of mythologized and is, you know, almost made bigger than it probably was at the time type of thing and people really sort of lean into it and fall into it. It's understanding that actually nothing beats the kind of experience of realizing you can't, as good as these models might be, you can't put everyone in similar boxes. You have to understand that just because this model looks really good and helps in a lot of ways, maybe it doesn't answer everyone's problem and you can't use Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain every single thing or this model or this model. This model, you can definitely. What I love to do is get all of these things together and cross reference them. And then a bit like what you said earlier about success in terms of write down what your success was in this moment, in this moment, this moment and then find what the common threads are. I do exactly the same thing. These success gives you answers and it's always a shame for I think it's one of the things that drives me mad about business is how poor post analysis or reviews of projects or things, how poor that can be because it's. And it's usually a time constraint reason. It's oh, we've got to get on to the next thing. But if you want to save yourself time for when you do this again in a year's time to spend though that week or those days or whatever to create this post analysis, I think is incredibly important. Same thing for an individual success is to go, well, where have you been? Really good. What are the three things you do in all of these things? And there you go. And I just think that's the approach you have to take with things rather than trying to imprint a model or process is, well, what does work for you? Okay, that's what works for you. Look, it works every time you do these things. So there we go. And then use them. So I really, I like that you've said, actually, I had an approach. I loved all of this stuff, but I had to recognize that also I had to blend what I do with. With experience and what other things that I do as well. Just a few more things. And it's just because of all the research I've got that I'm reading so many different sorts of questions. So maybe it's a case of having you back. Back on again at another point. But I really wanted to get on to fight. You know, you're. You put a blog on fighting a lot of fires. Sorry. Basically a question saying, fighting a lot of fires, you may be the arsonist. And I just, I guess, really to ask you, what are some of the things that people may do that, you know, create or even magnify a crisis?

Yeah. Interesting. The first article I wrote on that, years ago, a business paper asked me to write one on conflict crisis management. I don't know why. And I said I'd rather talk about crisis prevention. The premise is that we create most of our own crises. My crises today is often the result of a bad decision I made before. So one of the things is sometimes we make unrealistic expectations, commitments. So if everything goes perfectly, you know, then this is the way it's going to be. And so when we, when we do that, either by pressure from the boss or pressure from a customer, and we kind of give into that sort of thing, we're setting up, we're. We're putting kindling down there for the fire to start. Right. You know, so that's one thing. And the one story I tell, I had this one engineer working for me who was a very good golfer. He's an OSU golf team. We, I met, I maybe was at best a bulky golfer. And we were playing one day, a round of golf, and I hit this ball and it was a little bit on the right side of the fairways, dog gate, right? And I pick up my club and. And he looked at me and he said, what are you doing, Michael? I said, well, If I just hit that ball underneath those limbs and it fades a little bit over the water, I can hit the green. He said, you know, I'm a pretty good golfer. I would never try that shot. You know, you're probably going to hit in the woods or in the water. You're going to get a seven or eight, you know, just take your wedge and hit it out there, take a stroke, you know. So partly is making unreleased expectations, you know, and basically they're on best case scenarios, you know, so that's one way that we create our fire. The other one is a lack of communication. It's a crisis because of the time. So part of the thing on crises management is as soon as it looks like something's not going to go right, that's when we got to communicate. So I talked to David, I said, david, I know I was going to get this report to you. I run into some things and I was supposed to get to you by next Wednesday. I don't think I'm not going to make it. So I tell you before the fact that point there we can negotiate, you can maybe jump in to help me. Or you say we could put it back two days. Part of that is open communication about your own performance. No spinning, no blaming. You know, performance is what it is. And I'm not always at my best, you know, great quote by Somerset Maugham is only a mediocre person is always at their best, you know. And so part of it is having the courage to speak early on what you can do and not do. The other part is to communicate on a regular basis, good, bad and indifferent, so that people that you can make changes in your, in your area. So part of the, what I wrote that the name, that article or that blog was that people blame the situation for the crises and not for their lack of preparation for the crisis. We've seen this in the whole Corona 19, right? Look at the Taiwan. Taiwan was as closest to China, right? And what they did was they were prepared ahead of time with all they had a plan together for a pandemic and had all the materials and things like that. And they've had I think like 500 deaths, we've had a hundred thousand. And so I listened to that. It was on TV the other day, I listened to that. They, they didn't predict the pandemic was going to happen, but they said we better be ready for it when it does. And they were. And the crisis was not so much the pandemic, it was a lack of preparation for it.

Yeah, I like that. And I think that use that as a kind of analogy for people as well. Just even one of my clients this morning saying to them that, you know, they're dealing with grief in a particular thing and they're sort of kind of down the road with it where it, you know, it sort of will be okay. Then it crops up and it'll be okay. Crops up with it. And saying to them that rather than sort of judging yourself for, or trying to, you know, deal with it when it comes is, you know, you know, using the emotional part of your brain, you know, or the logical part of your brain, you know, logically it's this. But your emotional brain is going to take over. So. So that's just the reality and we can't fight it. So actually, rather than hoping that these things don't show up, is being prepared that you are going to have the moment in a few weeks time, in a month or whatever, we're going to have that moment and how do we prepare for it? Prepare for it. That it's going to still be difficult, it's still going to be hard, but create a level of certainty that actually this is how I'm going to best deal with it ahead of time. Now, does it mean that you're then painless? No, no way, shape or form. But just building confidence that you're going to have ways to cope in the future gives you confidence in the present. I think, and I think the Taiwan examples are the perfect example actually of just being prepared for the crises. And I can certainly see that for businesses and individuals is really being, you know, preparation is key. And I was a footballer and I always remember one of my coaches saying, you know, fail, fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And that's. And that's always the case. So I totally agree with you. I just want to move on to a slight tangent, which is to talk about. I know you're a member of the Ashland center of Nonviolence and the work, you know, having looked through the work is really interesting and I kind of wanted to talk to you in terms of why do you, you know, I've got my own answer to this question, my own opinion on this question. I just want to hear what yours is, which is why do you think violence remains the means of expression for some people? And I've got my own thoughts on that. But I just curious as to why you got involved and what your answer to that is. Kate?

Yeah, I think there's probably people who can better answer that question than me, but I think when people feel helpless and sometimes people don't have the ability to communicate, speak, you know, they take violence. You know, I've heard that before where that when a person has the inability even have good verbal skills and things like that, it has to come out in some way, you know, and it might come out in violence or a sense of hopelessness, you know. The organization I'm working with, I'm also a member of. It started up as a kind of protest to the Iraqi war and you know, typical protest and then. And they were professors, community members at Ashland, which is a small city in Ohio where the college is. And so I got to know them through some work. I was doing work gratis, worked with a dental clinic in Ashland. And the wife was the president of that and her husband, they're both professors and he was started up leading the. After this protest against the Iraqi war, they said, well, what are we going to do about this? You know. And so they decided, they formed this organization and it grew into much more than an anti war thing. It dealt with violence in the schools and bullying, mediation in families and things like that. And that would bring in major speakers and things like that. And so I think what I've learned from them, matter of fact, I'm working with them now virtually on a strategy for the next few years, is realizing, you know, what, what is their role and what is nonviolence? And it is really much broader than just not physically beating up people, things like that.

And so if I asked you the question to sort of, I guess put you on the spot a little bit, if I was to ask you what is nonviolence from a point of view that if people could kind of broaden their horizon in terms of what people, you know, when people mention nonviolence, I think you're absolutely right. Most people think it's just, okay, well, just don't be violent. If we try to kind of broad help people, broaden what that can actually look like, not in terms of this is what people should do necessarily, because I'm sure it's very complicated situation. But when you think of nonviolence and broadening that out in terms of what the possibilities could be, what does that look like to you, Michael?

Yeah, well, part of it is maybe, actually I had a conversation with a whole group of people this past week, Zoom educational piece. And they really got into this conversation very much because these are people who were really focused on nonviolence, but also the different faces of nonviolence. There's peace, social justice, dignity, of people. These are the kind of the positive qualities that drive out violence. And so I'm not even sure if the word nonviolence is always the best one, but it's a start. And so what can we. To me, it's, what can we do to create a better world? And the world starts in my family, in my relationships, in my community, and of course it spreads out from there. And the Gandhi quote is to be the change that you want to see in the world. And what I admire about this organization because I started working with them, I was invited to work with them, and I've done strategic planning for them and helping them with things was to. So they're into helping people with conflict resolution and mediation and building healthy communities and things like that. To me, what we found in our discussion last week was people had different views of that and. But they all kind of molded together, you know, into some overall principles of human dignity and fairness and justice, you know, And I know those are fairly broad words, but.

No, but they're more specific than nonviolence. And I sort of agree with you in terms of nonviolence can almost. It's sort of just. It's kind of the opposite. It doesn't, it doesn't really explain. It doesn't really provide that much, does it? Non violence. And so, no, I think when you talk about dignity and justice and the various forms of non violence, I think that's. I think that's really good to hear because people can sort of nod along, go, yeah, that. You're right. There's. There's. It's sort of a bit more of the why when we do that, okay, well, why. Why be nonviolent? And actually which of those categories does a particular situation or incident or whatever fit into? So I think that certainly helps people come, almost break it down in their minds for them a little bit.

It's interesting. The first time I worked with M1 strategy, about five or six years ago, one of the initiatives that came out was to have peace scholars, an internship for students, which. I like that word. And so they had. So now there's a group of students in this university that are peace scholars, you know, and doing things to really promote peace, you know, and I really like that term. It's much better than nonviolent scholars, you know, and they're doing some wonderful things and they're teaching these young people, you know, letting them be involved with things and really understanding the broader view of peace and social justice. And I really admire, and I love working with them just because it's great work with people who are doing things that's going to better the world, you know.

Absolutely. And so thank you for sharing and thank. Well, firstly, thank you for being a part of that work and obviously it's a very noble cause as well. So thank you for sharing the insights of that and before we sort of think about wrapping up. And I really want people to be aware of where they can get your book and just some of the many things I've written down personally for myself to take away in terms of both self management and understanding leadership has been really useful for me. So thank you for that. Michael, before we get into where people can grab your book, is that I asked you beforehand, before we started this conversation, you know, part of what's writing the book about, and you said, you know, I don't need to do it for a business point of view anymore or anything like that. And it's, you know, it's really collating or collecting your experience. But it's, it's, I guess how you talked about legacy, but really how you're leaving a footprint with people or footsteps for other people to follow, which is always a really nice thing to hear when people have that kind of mindset. Rather than what does this do for, you know, what does it do for me is what can I leave for other people? So I want to ask you, I had someone on a few weeks ago, they talked about leaving a footprint. So I asked them the question, do you feel you have left a footprint so far? Now, you didn't use the word footprint, but if I asked you in terms of legacy and everything else, what you've hoping to leave, you know, what you've hoped to leave behind, what you're hoping to leave behind, what is the main thing for you that you want to leave as a legacy to other people? And do you feel you've been able to leave, leave some footprints so far?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, to me, I'm at the point in my life, I'm in good health, great friends and good family and a lot of things to be thankful for. And I'm finding now my, I was a consultant, I was kind of an action person getting things done and all the examples we've talked about. But I'm finding now that I really want to leave something of value that will outlive me and not in an ego, but a healthy ego. I have to say, and it might sound kind of cocky, but I wrote this book and I actually read it, you know, after I wrote it. And not that there's not always some changes and things like that, but I had to say, Michael, this is a good book. It's worth people reading. And I had to self publish. I had some people trying to get me in some big publishers and even some great writers. And I appreciate that. But that's the good part about maybe self publishing. I got to write down what I need to write down, you know, and I'm working now to kind of get it out. So I think the legacy is that it goes beyond. It doesn't even have to have my name attached to it. When people take ownership of it and even change the words and change the names of tools when my clients do that, I think that's great because that means they own it. But I want people to have an impact in their life. And the last part of my career, my last 10 years of my regular career, I'm in my last chapter. Thing is I was teaching at a college, a faculty for 10 years and I taught MBA business students, both MBA and undergraduate students. And that has been the most significant thing in my life. I'm still in contact with my students. You know, I talked to one yesterday, you know, and, and it's great to see how well they're doing. And I had this one student and just came to me as I'm talking and asking. He was from Ghana and had a number of international students and a nice young man and his goal was to go back to Ghana after he got his MBA and he wanted to start a clinic, a medical clinic. So he's going to go and get his doctor, you know, md. But then I met him and he said, I said I'm going to be a med, a nurse practitioner. I think I. That's all I need to do to get it going back there. And it was such great. But he brought me and two other people a which call a shawl and it had my name on it and it's, it's a Ghana robe or something like that that they give to royalty.

Wow.

You know, I'm just moved, you know, it was such, such a gesture, you know. And he did it to me and one other professor and one other person university. So he didn't give to hold anything. So it means he, it meant something with him. So when you, when you see people, my children, my students doing good things, staying connected, that's as close as I can get to living a little bit of my legacy right now. And the other part is not being worried whether or not people ever remember your name. You Know, that's kind of ego, but doing something that really counts. And I think that's the part that I want to have. I did something that might sound kind of morbid, but my friend who nonviolence group, he brought me in husband, wife, team, I loved them both. And he, he passed away a few years ago, about three years ago. And he got buried by a natural barrier when I said, of course that's what he's going to do, you know. And so I decided to write out my passing plans, you know. You know, and we're not morbid at all, you know, in terms of that. And I'm also doing something. I'm writing something now probably won't get published. It wasn't writing to be published. I'm writing stories to my grandchildren because I realized they know me as grandpa and my children and I'm writing stories and every story is about somebody who has made an impact in my life, you know, and I. And I'm going to share it with them and it'll never end. But I'm starting to type it up to get to my children look at. And I read these stories and I'm so moved by the wisdom of these. So many people I've met. And so they, they pay forward with me. And so it's my job to pay forward with them. So that's what I wanted to end my legacy to be. And hopefully some of it's coming through now.

And when it comes to your, you know, the, for example, the Ghanaian student that you mentioned, I'm not. I've only spoken to you for an hour, Michael, but I'm not surprised you received that sort of gesture because I genuinely have felt a real warmth. But you know what? The stuff you've shared is a real passion for what you do, a genuine passion for what you do and providing value for people, which you've. You've clearly done. So I want to say thank you very much for your time. Michael, for people who are really engaged and maybe beyond, beyond just hearing it and your words going into their head, but they can feel it a bit more in their heart. Where can people find your book?

Well, it's on Amazon. So they hit Amazon and put Michael Colburn and the title of the book is own your job 5 tools for self management in the Workplace. So if they just hit Amazon with that, they'll probably find that. And I checked it out myself, I could actually find myself on there then. The other one is I have a website, I think you've looked at www.and Michael Colburn small letters. M I C H A E L C O L B U r n PhD.com and there information about the book. I have a number of blogs I'm going to be adding some things to people particularly who buy the digital copy of the book. All the handouts in the book. It's going to be on the website so people can print.

Yeah, yeah, great.

And I'm going to start putting on some videos. You haven't seen the videos yet? I just produced video a couple weeks ago with my, my friend who I could have never done alone and I put it maybe like 15 minute videos about various aspects of self management. Maybe they just. Sometimes people just need to see it and you know people, we learn different ways, right? Yeah, absolutely. That. So I want my website and there's no special code to that. Anybody can look at it, you know. And, and I love to sell some books. A lot of my friends who I think are good, they sell their books and are good books. Like Gleb, I have his books to build a business. I'm almost, I want to build, use my business to sell my books. I'm doing workshops because I think I don't want to go back to the full time consultant but I want to help people with their part of the business, you know. And that, that gives me great pleasure.

Yeah. So. And just on that. So how long and just, just so I can get an idea in terms of how much is going into that book. So how many years have you been consulting or working with businesses and high performers and coaching people? How many years are we talking about? Over 30.

Over 30.

If you've enjoyed an hour's conversation with Michael, if you want 30 years worth of experience wrapped up into one, then definitely have a look at his book. But Michael, I just want to say thank you very, very much for your time and hopefully get to speak to you again in the future.

I would love that. This has been quite lovely, David. Great.