Being Your Best in Business and Loving Your Life with Amy Courter | Others Over Self Leadership Conf

Foreigner is my dear friend. I'm honored to even be able to say that word to her. Amy Corder. She is a Major General from the Civil Air Patrol. She served as the National Commander and CEO of the Civil Air Patrol, which is a federally chartered nonprofit organization and the civilian auxiliary of the U.S. air Force, which is headquartered in Maxwell, Alabama. She also led CAP's 61,000 plus volunteers in the fulfillment of the organization's three congressionally chartered missions and as the commander, she served as Major General two star, the highest ranking CAP officer and was the first and only female to have attained that distinction in now 75 plus years of the history. Even more than that, she is a woman business owner in the state of Michigan. Ladies and gentlemen, Major General Amy Corder.

You have in front of you a few things today. The slide that kind of talks about the being your best. It's a crazy way of kind of finding your way through how, whether it's you or whether it's a team or a whole organization that you can work your way through that. So we'll get to that in a minute. Let me just start out with a story and when we get to it, you'll actually see it's just a hula hoop. Many years ago, it was probably 25 years ago, I was a newly minted executive inside of a. Well, at that point we weren't publicly traded yet, but about to be a publicly traded billion dollar global organization. And we were on executive retreat in the southwest United States, so Arizona if I remember right. And we were there, you know, they always, we take spouses and we set up events and you know, there's some competition because like that's what we do. And so there we were, our team was seven executives, seven spouses. Not of those executives. Yeah, used to kill the spouses. They always got split up and had to go elsewhere. And so, you know, the guide looked very comfortable. We had a guide for that morning. In fact, we had gotten out really, really early because it was incredibly hot. In fact, at 6am we were sweating. Guide looked fine. I was sweating more because I was one of the newer executives or young and younger executives. So the guide says, thank you. So the guide says, get it, get in a circle and hold, hold hands. So you got to remember 25 years ago, I know I wasn't the only female in the team, but almost. And all the guys are like, ew, we're going to hold hands. Ew. It was such a weird thing. But they did. The guide looked at them fiercely and they did. And so she said, here's the objective. She breaks the hands of two people, puts a hula hoop over our arms, and says, you need to get that hula hoop around this circle of 14 people in less than five minutes now without breaking the hand. So think about it. Over the arm, up over the head, down, up to the next one. It's hysterical. Wish I had a video, but then we'd be laughing. You wouldn't be able to hear me. And so we did it. In fact, we thought, this is odd. And we were sweating and trying to figure out how to move this hula hoop around. And we did. And 4 minutes and 42 seconds. We were so happy in this. In the Arizona Sun At 6, we high fived. We were thrilled. She said, less than five minutes. We did less than five minutes. And so the guy just stood there, waited for us to shut up for a minute, and said, you know, there was an executive team here recently that did that in half the time. You should try again. We were demoralized, but we did. So we thought for a minute, okay, well, maybe if we crunch down. So we're just kind of moving, we don't have to move it up and over. That guy, that's six foot three. Why is he six foot three? And we'll figure all of that out. So we did. So it was a pretty. We fell. It was dusty, it was ugly, we were sweaty. We got through all of that, and it was, by God, 2 minutes and 15 seconds. And we thought, wow. And the guide actually said, nice. So we're wiping sweat off our brow, thinking, we're good. Lots of smiles going around. And then they said, yeah. The guide says, yeah, but there was an executive team here over the last year. They were a lot faster. They could do it in half the time. What? So a little cursing. Well, quietly, of course, A little brainstorming. And four of us were prepped on opposite sides of the. Of this group, this big circle, all holding hands, still trying to stabilize the hoop from moving, thinking maybe if we kind of did that, we could get ourselves through and scrunch the dude down. That's too tall and all of that stuff. We went through all of it, and we were just over a minute. So we had absolutely. Just cut it in half again and we celebrated, right? Oh, my God. Hooting, hollering. People who didn't want to hold hands early earlier were now sweaty bodies hugging. Okay, so we were thrilled. And as we did that, the guide, Wanley, is standing there. I'm looking at her because I'm like, no. And she says, yeah, bud, a year ago, there was a team that did it in half that time. What? So the word impossible was being thrown around, a lot more cursing now, not quite so quietly. And. And it was off the rails, like executives were. And the spouses are like, oh, I don't want to get my executive, you know, fired. So they're just being nice. And there we are all trying to figure it out and not trying to figure it out. There we are all complaining about having this, this pressure that we thought was insane. And. And I said, so what if we stabilize the hula hoop and move ourselves through it? So what happens is no one hears me except the guide. And because they're all screaming and yelling and I'm over there, like, I'm still holding the hula going, gotta be another way. And so the guide winks and says, someone has a good answer, will you listen? Everybody looks around. What? And, and I said, well, I wondered if we need to just take a step back and look at this totally, totally differently than we ever have before. We've been trying to get this hula hoop around the circle. What if we try to get the circle through the hula hoop? Okay? And so we figured that out. We figured out who was going to hold it, how we were going to hand it off as we, as this snake through. Now we were no longer a circle. We were like this little Mobius strip, this infinity loop zipping through there. Yep, we got it done in under 30 seconds. So there we were from four minutes over four minutes to under 30 seconds over. Eight times improvement. Right? Wouldn't we be thrilled if we could do something if we had an eight fold increase in revenue? Woo. Right. If we had an eight fold decrease in, in the time it took us to build our products. Woo. Right. Everything would be lovely. So we would be ecstatic with that. Remember, though, we were pleased with that time of 4 minutes and 42 seconds. We felt pretty good about that, right? We felt really good when it got to 215 and we were celebrating, right. Without the external pressure, we would never have improved. We would have said, we did it, we got it, met the objective. Check the box, we're done. So later that day, the CFO who was on our team came over to me and said, hey, just want to understand why was it that you were calm and still working on that problem when the rest of us were, quite frankly, pretty pissed off about it? And I said, because you make that happen. And he went, huh? And I said, I have never gotten the Budget I've asked for. Let me be clear. There are times you've said exactly those words. I'm sorry, but you've got to do it in half of that. And we have. And so I just want you to think about the fact that having pressure isn't always a bad thing. That ability for us to work efficiently while still achieving the goals and knowing that we can be a little bit better. We had years where I had all these extra projects and you never gave me a cent of extra funding. So I figured out how to get Microsoft to give us some or Dell to give us some or somebody else to give us some. I wrote grants to the state of Michigan to get us, to get us funding. So it is important to think about. There are times, times when we just need to press ourselves and help ourselves to innovate and to grow. And so isn't that what competition, that pressure to be the best does to us as individuals, not just to our organization? And so our ability to then to innovate, basically to grow or die, Right? As we see other competitors taking on, do we say, oh, and swear under our breath or do we say, how in the world can we do it differently? How can we get a different look at it? So I think it's important for us and for those around us that we encourage all to be your best. The next slide is going to take us to a cool picture that is going to have. Being our best starts with a decision. And so whether we're an individual or a team trying to be our best, we really need to change the minds of each individual. In the example that I just used in the Hula Hoop, if some of the people would have sat down in the dust and said, forget it, I'm not doing it. We couldn't have succeeded, right? So we had to get everyone to say, okay, we're going to decide to be our best. We're going to move forward to be our best. And so for 20 years, I served leading teams in a public, global, publicly traded company. I was also the tip of the spear in business continuity. Those are just nice words for disaster recovery. Let's be clear. At the same time, I served as Shelley. Great intro. Thank you, friend. Talked about the Civil Air Patrol. 61,000 people at a point on 9 11, I was the commander for Michigan. So I had the. Remember 1990. So we had the. So 2001, we had the cell phone and pager, right? And then I had the cell phone and pager for work. And then I had my work phone and Then I had. And everything is going off the rails, right? And so, you know, during that time, it was really important for me to figure out, okay, how do we handle all of this all at once? And, and how do we make sure that we're taking care of, of our team? So being our best starts with a decision. I could have said that day, sorry, I actually was sitting in a civilian volunteer billet for the Civil Air Patrol. I could have said, sorry, the people that are paying me for my job and I have people in New York City I have to find right now. We have an office there and it's close. So we've got to figure all of this out. But no, we found another way. I actually took one of my program best project managers, taped up the phonetic Alphabet inside of her cubicle and told her to take copy and to send messages and to handle things. My office at Selfridge was actually being used by the FBI. They called to tell me that. Actually, they called to ask me that, which I thought was weird. Was that a question? Just know that they're not peppermints, they're wintergreen. Don't let it startle you, but it's yours. Don't put your foot in the desk. And so, you know, as all of that is happening, that incredible pressure, what we learned. I remember that project manager coming back to me later and thanking me for that. I thought she was going to kill me. And thanking me for keeping her focused and keeping her on task with something to do. Something that sometimes we always need to think about when we are under stress, when we do have a stressful situation, I tend to go to action. Thankfully, I typically have a mission to do that. So that's good because otherwise I'll go to action anyway. But always thinking about challenging ourselves, challenging our teams to be our best, regardless of the situation, entering that danger to be our best. I can take you back to your piece of paper. Look for all of you who I plant trees because I do print stuff. I planted two trees last year. I'm behind this year already, but it's just spring. So on your piece of paper there, you'll see there are some questions that get asked across the top because when we're. If we're ready to be our best, the very first thing is that question, you know, are we? Look at that. I just need to do this and then it happens. Okay, I got it. I'm the remote. So are we willing to be our best? Which asks us what? Have we made that decision? Have we? If we're On a team. Has our team agreed to that? Right. The next question, where are we going? Have we created a plan so we just want to be best? What does that mean? Like we have to go find out what we need to do to go there to be different. This could be a. We're going to take on a project that's going to improve what we're doing. This could be. I'm going to learn how to have a forehand on my non dominant side playing tennis. Yes, I did this this year. Last year. No, this year. It was so much fun. And so just decide, like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do to be. That's going to be different and better? What are we doing now? Rocks. Who's familiar with rocks from either Stephen Covey, Vern Harnish? Ever heard that? Okay. You and I, we're a team. No, so. So rocks are a really cool concept. See, I should have brought the. If think about a glass cylinder we can see through, maybe a vase. Okay. And if we have rocks and pebbles and sand and water. Sounded familiar. What happens if we put the water in and the sand in and the pebbles in. And now do the rocks all fit? No. It's really weird how that just doesn't happen yet. If we empty that out and try again and we put in the rocks first, the bigger things get that stuff started, get it into the vase, put the pebbles in, they all sift through. Right. And fit in. The sand sifts through. Pretty sure those are emails, by the way. And then water, definitely. Phone calls and people at my office door. So if we put everything in in the right order, amazingly it fits in the same capacity. So rocks are the most important priorities that we can do in typically when as I'm teaching it to business leaders, to executives, I talk about for the next 90 days. So for the next quarter, most important, 3 to 7, whatever it is, things that we need to accomplish. So when we set a rock, we're taking a part of our plan, right. And we're putting that into action. And so we're getting ourselves that ability to focus in. Right. And with whom, you know, do we have times when we don't get to select people who are on our teams? How many people have been stuck with someone at work, at school, in your neighborhood, in your family? Okay, now all the hands are up. Okay. So just kidding. Those of you who didn't, sorry, but they're that aren't necessarily all aligned with us. So what if, again my hula hoop example, if people had said no, done sweating. Dusty fell down the last time. No way. Not trying it. Right. We wouldn't have the aligned motivation to move forward if we didn't care about being our best. You know, we all had some competition with, I think there were five other teams or something, four other teams probably doing the same work. So we wanted to have the best time, by the way we did. Just saying. And so if we wanted to have the best time, we align what we're doing the way we're going to do it. We're willing to work with each other. We're willing to even hold hands and later hug. What are we using? Well, do we have the right skills now? We did ask someone who was a little bit differently abled and we had, you know, nobody said, oh, I'm sorry, we guide. You come in. We don't want that person because they're going to slow us down. We said, no, let's learn from them. How can we, how can we do this better? And there was a little bit of that that I think helped me think about, well, what if the hula hoop stays and we help the people through? That was a little bit of the. Watching that person move differently. Maybe there's something in there, right? So just having the skills, though, that are needed to do what we need to accomplish and with what? Well, there's capacity. As I talk to teams and capacity is a lot of different things. It could simply be the time to get something done. We tend to think about that. Anybody ever think about, oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed. Right. I have too much to do. Do we? Or is the way we're doing it the way we've always been doing it and maybe it's not as efficient as it could be. Just something to think about. Again, time to throw the paper airplanes at me because I think we're out of food. I heard you always eat all the food. So we think about time, but there's also training. Sometimes we say, well, this person, I want them on my team, they may not have the capacity right now. I think though, with training they could. This would be good. This would move them up. This would help them to be their best so they would get the skills. And then there's all those crazy EIAIOs at the end here. Right IQ, right intelligence quotient. Do they have the intelligence to do this? Do they have the eq, the emotional intelligence? Are they going to be able to work well with the team? If they're going to understand how they impact the team and how they can help the team be better. And a newer form of this is the cultural intelligence or cultural quotient. Knowing how we can integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into what we do to help give folks the opportunity to not only be in the room, that's diversity where we count people, but to also be included where people count. They can get, you know, their voices heard. And then in. In equity, it's giving them what they need to have their voices heard, not giving everything, everybody the same thing. And so that cultural competency is really important as well. Lastly, accountable for what? Hey, I'll tell you now, we're going to go to the next slide in a couple of minutes. Okay. So see, I've been learning. Just saying. All right, so accountable for what? What expectations? She's doing great. Thank you. What expectations and communication do we need? Because if we're not in a position where we can tell people, hey, we're going to expect this out of you. That guy. Yeah. Under five minutes. I was so mad. You told us under five minutes, then we hit it. And then less than that, less than that, less than that again. Reminded me of the CFO's budget. You know, Amy, you can spend. Oh, no, now you can't. We had something change. Really? Okay, so thinking about the answers to all of those. Well, if you look at your. Your paper, that's what we're going to be looking at now on the screen someday, in a minute. What. What I think is important. It's all good. It's all good. So I did. The majority of my career was in technology, so it has now been a complete presentation. When we have technology challenges, we always said, we know we've done it well. Now we've got. When the tech is not our friend, it's all good. So if you look at your piece of paper there, you'll see that there's different areas. Right. Thank you. Great job. That we have some questions in vision. Remember I asked, are we willing? Have we made the decision to be our best? I've said, dare I. Does this have a. Oh, I think this is actually dead. That's what. Nope, you just can't see it. So are we willing? Decision to be our best? Where are we going? Plan to be our best. What are we doing? Rocks to be our best. Those shorter plans, all of that is really kind of the vision and direction. Right. Then people in leadership with whom aligned values and motivation. The team who. Who is us, they may be. They may look differently, have different cultural elements than we do. All of that stuff can be different. But we need to align our motivations and our values and then using what the skills that they need to be their best and that we give them the. In the next. With what the capacity may be training to get there. Maybe they already have all the other skills they need. And then accountable to what. What are we trying to count? What are we trying to qualify and quantify to make sure that we get there and what communication needs to be in place to make that happen. So that's how you read this chart. If we do all of that in that. I have no idea what that color is. Apricot. If we do everything in that, then what we're. Are we going to achieve on the right. The behavior we achieve is best. Okay. What happens when. So I did say my assistant put this together because if I did it, it would be. You wouldn't be able to read it. I said go back to like a Batman comic and where it had pow. Bam. Yeah, that's. That's what I want in there. If it's missing, so what if the decision is missing? So everybody is saying, yeah, plan. I got it. Sounds good. Rocks. Yep. I got it. I can do that. Team. Yeah. We're all together. Skills. Got it. Capacity. Okay. Results. We know what we're going to accomplish. We actually get a lack of change or less change than we should because we didn't decide we actually wanted to go on this journey. So it doesn't matter if we have the plan. It doesn't matter if we have the skills. If we haven't had that decision, that mental implant of we're going to do it, we don't get there. Similarly, if we are missing the plan to be the best we've decided we have. We have the right. The right rocks, the team and all that. But we get some chaos because we're. Where are we going long term? I don't know, but we're doing this. So are we moving? Yeah, but not consistently and efficiently in the best direction. And then if we're missing our. The rocks. So we. We know what the big plan is. So here's your annual plan. Go. Execute. What happens to that? If we don't break it down, we tend to end up with procrastination. So back to the rocks in the cylinder. If we didn't put rocks in first, we're overcome by events. It would be easy to say, but I was busy, but those darn email, those phone calls and interruptions, but I was serving the customer right instead of saying no, every week I'm going to Get a little bit done on that longer term vision. That's going to be the rocks that head us toward the plan. So that's where we get some procrastination. Maybe we do fine in the first quarter. Typically that's what I see from clients. They'll do fine in the first quarter, but then we kind of lose it the rest of the year. Not so much pretty soon or at the end of the year, you know, so breaking it up is important. If we don't have alignment on the team again, we can have a diverse team, but we have to have the, the value and motivational alignment. If we don't have that, we get resistance. Why? Because I don't know, I don't want to work with this. You know, I don't know if I'm with you on the journey. I mean, yeah, I decided I wanted to be my best, but not the way you want it. Right. So I feel differently about it. So when we're missing skills, we get frustration, sometimes anxiety. When we're missing capacity, we. I usually use the term hitting the ceiling. Why? Because we all say we're busy. We all say we're overwhelmed. All of that stuff happens all the time. We really need to look at it and say, though this is different than normal, I am stuck. So I literally use that as a term, hitting the ceiling. We can hit it as individuals. I've got so much going on. Hey, I was in Casper, Wyoming yesterday, stuck. So I'm glad I got back. I could have said, hey, hit the ceiling. Sorry. But I did say hit the ceiling and had, thank goodness United Airlines help find some flights once the weather cleared. And so they did make me run through an airport though. Did I say that? Okay. It was good for me with my backpack on. So we have hit the ceiling and where we're just kind of get stuck because we're just trying to figure out all the parts and pieces. And then lastly, if we're missing the accountability piece so we don't know exactly what the results are supposed to be. We got the rocks. We know that. But how, how, what's it going to look like when it's actually done? If we don't have that, we have a lack of accountability, which sometimes people will call neglect. If we say clean the room, but we don't say, oh no, all the tables need to be back the way they were going to be. Oh, wait, all the trash is outside. Oh, wait, so it's the little things. Right? And so here's how you use this crazy chart fold it up in an airplane. No, how you use it is look in the behavior on the right column. So if you're trying to change something in yourself, if you're trying to change something with your team, if you're putting a new project in place, if you're doing a cultural. I'm adding some more people into the team. How am I going to make sure that all fits in? Look at what you're getting in the right column, and it could be a combination. So if you feel like, Amy, it's a bit of chaos, but then I've got some people resisting. Guess what? If I got chaos and resistance, I'm missing the plan or not understanding the plan. And I don't have alignment of my team. Okay. So you can look at it as one thing or multiple. I've used something similar to this for ever. For decades, actually, before the hula hoop thing, because, like, I already had to figure out how to move people forward when we didn't have budget and didn't have capacity. So we figure out how we're going to get there. So I hope this is helpful. This is. This is really about this. Does this resonate? Yes, very much. Yeah. Any questions on that? You'll have some later. It'll be good. So, dude. Oh, and she's on it. Look at her now. Look at her go. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. So I'm moving now into thinking about how we build that team, get those motivations, do all of that. How do we attract others who don't see things the way we do? Because they're going to help us. If we all thought the same way in the hula hoop exercise, they'd still be down there sweating and they wouldn't be hugging. Right? So I love this. We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. Is a. Is a lovely. You can move up. Lovely way for us to think about it. What does that mean? So if you look at this screen, you know, if we pay attention to our thinking. Look in the screen. How many different people are up here? You got it? It is three. Says the person in the back of the room. Did you cheat? It's. It's three people. But even if you hear three, it's hard to see that, right? What we look at the perceptions that we have, how someone dresses, that's all that's different here. That's all that's different. And all of a sudden, we see everything very differently. That's just to help us. We can go to the next one just to help us think that we have bias. So all humans have cognitive bias. Our thinking tends to be clustered around the cultural domains that we have. If we're used to seeing people in hoodies, whatever, then we all go, yeah, no big deal. But then the suit, oh, that's different. Vice versa. If we go to the next slide, it's really a fascinating thing that our brains are amazing and they do all kinds of great things for us and they are flawed. So we have brain gaps. Our brain will automatically fill in. It's amazing with third hand, not even stuff we know or experience or someone else, but we will even listen to whatever we hear on the media, learn from stereotypes, etc. Whether it's fact or false, our brains will fill in whether it's with facts or false, things that we've heard. And the way it is. I'm sorry if I'm in your view, I'll move. We can go to the next slide. And so cognitive bias, our brain automatically fills in gaps. What do you all see under that? Yeah, is, is, is the letter P there? Kinda. Kinda, yeah. So you could all. Maybe you could all even read my handwriting then, because that would be nice. So, yeah, so look how we fill in the gaps so we can go to the next slide when Kelly's ready. And so this is a little exercise in the back. It might be a little hard to see this next one, but I'm hoping it helps. So a quick exercise in unconscious bias. Our cognitive. Our brain does this for us. Can you read the paragraph?

Yeah.

Thank you for reading that. Yeah. Everybody get there. Fascinating. Yeah. And so that's our brain at work. Just know that it's amazing, it's awesome. And it's flawed because it will put in what our. What we're used to. Right? It's going to put in. We see how we see things, right? We see through the view of. Of what we. What we have recognized. So we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. We're used to that. Perfect. And so crazy. Got to have a cartoon, right? Got to have a cartoon. So in the interests of fostering diversity, we're abandoning our birds of a feather policy. Okay. So obviously it's not the way. The way to approach diversity, right? It's. Yet it happens from time to time. Have you noticed? You know, well, okay, we're no longer going to call it the guys club. So now women can fly too. Or Right. Those things get said Things get said because we're like, okay, we're breaking that down to put in something else. What we need to do is kind of start over. Back to the hula hoop, like, start over, think differently. We need to have our core values aligned. Yes. But diversity plays a very large role in the way that we can include others to help us get to our goal and get where we need to be. I was honored to lead in the Civil Air Patrol. You've heard a little bit about that, and I'll give you an example from that. That was fascinating. So I'm the national commander at this point. I'm leading. Whatever took it over at 54,000 people, took it up to 61,000. We'd been bleeding about a thousand members a year. And we changed a lot of things to make it different. And as we did that, one of the things that I wanted to change, but I thought, well, I'll change that after my term. I don't want it to appear crazy during. It was that much like the United States when we were founded, the second in command, the vice president, was actually the second highest vote getter or was elected separately from the president. So think about it. You're. You're competing, and then one of you becomes the president. One becomes a vice president. How does that work afterwards? Hey, cool, thanks. It was just an election, right? No, it's, like, weird, right, because you're competing and you're probably even saying some bad things. And. And then. Right. And then, boom. We fixed that in 17. Anybody know, 80 something. Yeah, we fixed that a long time ago. Civil Air Patrol had not. So the second in command is. Is separately selected. And so from all the. The. The teams that were. Or people that were available or. Sorry, that could apply, there's one of the guys that. Now, there I sit. You got to know I run a board. Then out of the 61,000, I had a board of 67 people. One other woman and myself. No issues at the restroom during breaks. Yes, it was beautiful. I called really short breaks just to mess with it. I'm just kidding. I didn't really. But. But as that changed, though, I did say, hey, what happened? Now I have to stand in line. And. And so, you know, one other woman, right. 65 guys, mostly older than I, because that's just what. You know, I had to take time out of my career, literally, to do that full time. So I had to sideline it. And so, you know, the. The candidates are up giving their presentations, and one gets up and uses the Band of Brothers theme I already was the commander. Like, that wasn't a. Like, oh, that just happened. How could I have known? I'm already in a position for a year or two. And here comes a candidate using band of brothers, right? All the way through, all the materials, everything he handed out, the music, going on, the whole thing. And I was like, wow. So my thinking was, was that intentional? Was it not? I don't even know. I'm not even sure that it was. I think it was on unconscious bias. I think it was like, here we are in uniform, here's what we're doing. You know, by the way, we were searching rescue and disaster relief. Not combatant. I was a non combatant commander. And so it was just a very interesting, you know, very interesting consideration. So think about that when you're rallying and go to the next slide. Rallying people in the teams, you know, how are we making sure that we're doing that in a way that is absolutely inclusive and enabling everybody to be a part of it? I did have a lot of people. All the guys actually came up afterwards and said, that was really weird. And I'm like, that's okay, that's all right. Unconscious bias, hopefully. So why would we want to have other folks not like us on our teams? So in our quest to be the best, why would we want to do that? Well, for anyone who points out that, you know, multicultural teams don't perform as well, this is the bell curve, where monocultural teams, teams that are more alike, it could be. It could be color, it could be gender, it could be all kinds of things, right? But when we're more alike, we tend to have this normal bell curve. Some teams don't achieve or perform quite as well. Others perform higher. The bulk is in the middle. What happens when we have a team that's different than we are? Well, this can happen. So for everybody who says, see, it's really hard to have folks that are different on a team, leaders ignore and suppress cultural differences. Cultural differences become an obstacle to performance. And they're exactly right. They don't perform as well because we're not doing it right. On multicultural teams that outperform perform better than any other monocultural teams can. And look at how much more. I mean, and it's crazy that this is literally. These are data points of, I put the stuff at the bottom. Leaders acknowledge and support cultural differences, and cultural differences become an asset to performance. Hey, you've been in a different branch of service. You might have had different training. And think of this differently. You have a Different mos, you have a different functional area. You might think of this differently. Like, when we really look at that and say, this is an asset, look at what happens. That's really cool. So for all those times when somebody goes, yeah, we've tried that. It hasn't worked very well. No, they haven't worked very well. Right. They haven't worked very well. The leaders haven't worked well. So, next slide. And so just a quick look at this. This is kind of a fun thing, kind of a Different than. We often think about intercultural development. So if we're trying to be culturally aware, the monocultural mindset, you know, the. The lowest point there is denial. Yeah. I don't. I'm not racist. I'm not this. I'm not that. It's. It's. I just. I don't even see it. I'm colorblind. Right? Have you had people say that? Okay, so that's denial. Polarization is where, hey, I see it, but I think it's wrong. I don't think. You know, I've had people say those people don't belong. I've had them say that about me. Those people don't really. Let's talk about that. So they're polarizing. They're actually creating this strife. They're adding to the. To the stress. Not the stress. We want to be our best. Right. This is the wrong stress. Minimization is where most of the world lives. Well, most of the United States lives in minimization, where we deemphasize the difference. It's okay. We're all alike. Are we? No. No. We have great cool things that people bring that we don't even know what they are until we find out. Right. Till we learn from them. And so minimization isn't where we want to be, but that's where we usually are. Most of the United States thinks that we're in acceptance. So the good news is we're trying. The good news is we're trying to make it better in our minds, but not always in our actions. Right. And so acceptance is where we deeply comprehend the differences and we figure out how to best use those to have that best team. Right. And then above that is adaptation. I'm not an expert in this. I lead a board committee that's literally working just to have a board not just look different, but act different, be different. And. And so. And we're, you know, very much like normal. And there are percentages. It's something like only a couple percent of the. Of the US will actually be in adaptation. Only 5% will be in acceptance. The bulk will be in minimization. And similarly it's a, it's a bell curve. And the, on the left side, not as much. But so just, you know, just know that that's the case. What should you take away from this? Maybe that most of us are minimizing all the time. Let's try not to do that. Let's try to be better at accepting and learning and adapting. And so if that's a takeaway, that helps. I wanted you to know that. Next slide, please. Look at her. All right, so quick thing on Civil Air Patrol, I just wanted to share that and you can flip to the next slide. Even the concepts that I gave you about being your best, I really put in place. So I am the one of two women in the top level of all of Civil Air Patrol. The other one was a state commander from Kansas and is now 10, 11, 12 years later is a brigadier general. So she's a one star. So she's made it to the vice commander role. So it's really cool. But on my watch, a lot of things change. So let me tell you just from a. The cultural perspective, because we just kind of came off that diversity thoughts and considerations. The gentleman after me was the first African American commander in the Civil Air Patrol. The gentleman after him was the first Hispanic that made it through a term. So these are, you know, did I hand select them and say, you're different than I am here? I said, no, let's open it up, let's make it equitable, let's get people at the table. If you're not at the table, you can't move from there. On my watch, we changed a lot of things though that were very system. So I would tell you, don't say, okay, that chart she gave me, I don't know, it's kind of weird. Don't use it. Don't say, I'm only going to use it for this or that. I use it for everything. Whether it's putting systems across the nation. I'm looking and I'm getting like this fits and starts. I'm getting that kind of. And I'm like, whoa, we got to back up, lose the chart. What does it tell us? And we put pieces in place. Somebody was missing communication. We weren't setting the right expectations, whatever it might be, on everything. So during my four year term, we put financial systems across the nation and got the first unqualified or that's considered a plus audits ever in the 70 some years, General Schwartz and my outbreak tapped my shoulder board my epaulette with the financial report. If I hadn't had poison ivy under it would have been nicer. And he did. I was like, don't touch me. And said, you know, good on you. I know how hard this was because I had to convince 2500 squadrons that I wasn't taking their money. Oh, by the way, it wasn't their money. Start there. And, you know, and we needed to get it in a system. Right. And in fact, we found millions of dollars we didn't know we had. We can't put that to good use if we don't know. Right. So we found we could invest some things. Aircraft maintenance, 552 aircraft. We're going to consolidate the maintenance, put it across the organization. And everybody thought I was going to take their planes. I said, no, no, if we do this, we'll be good. We'll have better maintained aircraft. It actually cost us less than to do that. Those are my. Those are dollars we can put into training and flights and all kinds of stuff. But if you don't want to do it now, I want your plane. So.

All right.

I didn't quite do it that way. All right. With one guy, I did, but. But the other 551, that was good. So, you know, we did a lot of different things. Public trust, selected selection processes so we wouldn't have band of brothers playing during it. So all kinds of cool things. And next slide. And so just know that it works. Whether you're talking about creating teams, whatever it is that you might be doing. We're just going to kind of buzz through this quickly. Equality is not equity. Equality means here that every kid gets one. One crate. Not so helpful for the shortest of them. All right. What is equity? We give what somebody needs to be able to do what they need to do. Right? Yeah. And in that example, we're using the same resources. Even like this doesn't cost more. So this is. Oh, you might need to click. Nope. Yep. One more. So equality and equity, for those of you. I have a math minor, so for those of you who need it, treating everybody the same. That's equality. Equal equity is getting everybody the same starting place. It's fair. It's a function of what we do to X to give them the fairness. Right. So, next slide. And so loving your life. I'll just leave you with this I've given you. There's a fun flyer there about. Next slide. About what? What I do is help teams to see if we share the vision across the organization. If we get traction by telling people what's needed, we have the plan, the rocks, the expectations. We end up being healthy because we now can say, you know what, I screwed up. I missed that. It's clear, everybody knows I missed that. I'm hitting the ceiling, I need some help, whatever it might be. And it's built around this model that's on that piece of paper and that what we know is that statistically teams are usually at about 20% effectiveness and I get them to 80%. So not quite as. What was I an eight fold increase in the hula hoop exercise? Right. This is only four, but I'm still aspiring to be better. So what are the best ways to, you know, do your best in love life? Decide to be your best. Choose which one you're going to take. Get ready to be your best. Use that as it helps you and use a system. And I think Shelly might even use a similar system in what she does. She does. It works. It works. So last one up here is the next slide. Okay. Is, let me just say this, it's the, it's the great frontier today is the exploration of the human potential. Our seemingly ability, limitless ability to adapt. Right? To improvise, to overcome and to find and invent our own destiny. There's much to learn, but we already know this. The future need not happen to us. We can make it happen. I hope you will all take this. Be your best, make it happen. Love your life. Thank you.

Only Major General Amy Corder could give a message like that. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. You can't leave the stage, ma'.

Am. Oh hey, we have, I do have a few of these books. You can, you can use this to help you traction, you know, is good for whether it's career, yourself, etc. And I have a few of those and if you need more, let me know.

The EOS system that Major General Amy teaches, I do implement in my business as well as the Women Veterans Strong program runs off of it. So feel free to talk to me

if you are interested or just talk to Shelly.

Go ahead and pick a door friend.