Finding the "I" in Team (feat. Jim Hotaling)

Foreign. Drum. And welcome to the enlightened executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on building resilience, and I'm happy to introduce my guest, Jim Hoteling. Jim currently serves as the head of Leadership development and assessment at N2 Growth. Jim's experience in the military leading teams, including crisis management, is what we'll be focusing on today. Jim served as Command Chief Master Sergeant of the Air National Guard, serving as an advisor to senior executives within the U.S. department of Defense. He also spent 20 plus years within special Forces, giving him a unique perspective on leadership and resilience. So welcome, Jim.

Thanks, Susan. I'm really happy to be here. I'm excited to talk about the topic of resilience and leadership and how it all plays at the executive level. I love your podcast. They sing to me. I think we speak the same language. So it's going to be a quick half hour for sure.

Awesome. Well, I'm really excited to have you here. And first of all, thank you for your amazing service to our country.

Oh, my honor, my honor. I tell everybody that I never worked a day in my life until after I retired because I was meant to do that. I loved every single second and just it was an honor.

That's amazing. Well, let's just kick it off. What helped you the most in your journey to become a more conscious leader?

Well, I tell you, I tell everybody this very common story. It absolutely is directly related to my military experience. You know, I left home at 18 years old to join the military. But my journey actually began when I was 7 years old when I joined the first football team, my Pop Warner football team. And from seven years old onward, I learned the value of team. It was all about. It's not about the singular person, but the power of the team and what it takes to move forward like that. So when I joined the military in special operations, it was all about the team. And so early on, it reinforced what I started to learn at 7 years old about the value of it. And as I grew into my Special Forces career and then kind of took the beret off and just did executive leadership at a very large enterprise level, those same leadership factors still applied, even at an enterprise level. And then after retiring and dealing with C Suite executives every Single day. It's just human nature. It's about taking care of yourself and being important. And by taking care of yourself, you'll take care of others and therefore take care of the team.

Absolutely. Tell me more about what were some of those principles that you learned while in the service that you now apply to CEO leadership.

Yeah. One of the things, like in reference to resilience is, you know, the old analogy of body, mind, soul is true. I mean, those things are everlasting. And there are different people that have different pillars of resilience and all of that. But if you really break it down to body, mind, soul, the body, it is taking care of yourself. It is really the onus is on you as a leader to lead effectively. And in order to lead effectively your organization and your people, you have to start with yourself. Now, a lot of people will say, that's very selfish. You know, that's a very selfish attitude. Take care of me. But if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take good care of others. And you know, Susan, it's pretty primal if you think about it, that back in caveman times, right, the caveman had to make sure that there was shelter and fire and he had a spear so he could go kill something for his family, all those kind of things. It's a primal thing to take care of yourself, and that's what you have to do. On that body thing, are you getting enough sleep? Are you, you know, is your diet, nutrition, exercise, all correctly? It's all those small things that mean a lot, right? So. And then, you know, in your mind, it's coming to work realizing that leadership matters. And every single day, the title that you have earned, you've earned this title, you better earn it with respect every single day back to your people in your organization, right? So you have to have that mindset that this is very important to do these things. And when things go bad, and we'll probably talk a little bit more about this, but when things go bad, it's okay because you've got the mindset that not everything is bubbles and rainbows. And so you're already prepared to do that. And then on the soul side, that's kind of a level of spirituality that's not necessarily religious, but it really just is believing in something bigger than yourself. So if you're a leader, you better believe in what your organization's values are, right? Believe in those bigger than yourself values and embody them. And if you do that, people will follow you and the organization will be successful. So the body, mind, soul kind of things absolutely relate to what I learned early on in the military to. Even in the corporate boardroom today.

Yes. Well, that's a great summary. I want to key off a little bit with the last thing you mentioned, which was this idea of getting connected to something greater than yourself or a meaningful. I call it the meaningful mission outside yourself. Because if you're being motivated by your looking good or being right or being in control, that's actually pretty obvious to everyone else. That's exactly right versus being connected to a meaningful mission outside yourself. And guess what? In today's marketplace for talent, you better walk the talk and make that mission critically important. Otherwise people will go elsewhere where it has been defined.

Right. Yeah.

And seeing how that is. So I think that that's a great, great point that you brought up.

It's funny how you say, you know, it's obvious and the most blind person to it is the selfish person.

Yes.

They're the most blank. It's so obvious and everybody knows it. It's crazy. I do tell leaders very often when, you know, they refuse to take leadership development or professional development for themselves or they refuse to do it for themselves because it's not the right time or, you know, you know, the budget's pretty tight right now. You know, I asked them, do you truly love your organization? Do you truly love it? Because you say you do. But if you're not investing in your people or yourself, then do you really love your organization? You know, it's all these little selfish traits that they're blind to all the time that they don't realize, you know, again, these things that are bigger than themselves is truly what should set them free.

Yes. Yes. Well, let's dive in a little bit more to talking about building resilience. And I'd love to hear some of your lessons from that, from the military, and then we can look at how we should apply that to senior leaders today.

You know, I think Johnson and Johnson got it right years ago when they called people corporate athletes because senior executives should absolutely believe that they're a corporate athlete. You know, if you are going to perform at the highest levels as an executive, then you have to, you know, really buy into all of that. And resiliency is a piece of this puzzle of being the corporate athlete and why I like to term it that way. And again, I stole that from Johnson and Johnson, another one who came up with the term. But if you think about it, if you're right, now, studies kind of say that most senior executives get about five and a half hours of sleep a night. And people are like, well, it's because I got so much on my mind, I'm so busy and all those kind of things. But you need to realize, unless you're getting at least seven hours of sleep, and neuroscience backs all this up. If you do not get seven hours of good sleep a night, you are basically suboptimized. You are walking into your office every day like you had two beers inside of you already. And just think about that. Are you truly leading? Well, if you just blow your sleep off and people are like, well, what is this all related? Well, this is a part of resiliency. Resiliency is having that sound body to perform well. And so these are one of the things that you have to really look at is the fact of how do you optimize yourself to be the leader that you need to be? And when we talk about resiliency, kind of like in a big overarching perspective, it is all these small things that talk. You know, another, you know, I'm not really a scientific wonk, but I like some data points that back me up. And another one is, you know, science has found out a couple years ago that the combination of vitamin D and omega 3s, if you take those, they call it the happy pill combination because it works very hard or in conjunction with your body to defog you, right? To help you think clearly and all of those kind of things. So when people say, well, you know, tell me some techniques about resiliency, I could get into, you know, you know, should you meditate, should you do yoga, breathing exercises, the box exercise, all of those things? Yes, yes and yes. And most people either practice those things or at least think of them most often. I always try to come about a different angle for resiliency. And like, sleep is the one, the omega 3s and vitamin Ds I'm a huge believer in. Because believe it or not, back to my military time, the Department of Defense is the one who did that study. And they found, unfortunately, that in the majority of people who, who conducted the act of suicide in the last 20 years, when they did autopsies with them, they were vitamin D deficient.

Wow.

And this led to a lot of the research on the importance of vitamin D and Omega 3s, defogging your mind, lifting your spirits and allowing you to think clearly. Resilience is about that. Resilience is leaning into the wind, not being just completely blown around. People say you bend, don't break, of course. Right. But you Lean into it. Being highly resilient is leaning into something. And you have to be able to think clearly. And it's these small little things that make a big difference in how you lead at the executive level and at any level, by the way. And guess what, Susan? Doesn't really cost you a dime except for to go to the store and get you a bottle of vitamin D and omega 3s, right. It isn't something that's wazoo. It's not something that's not out of touch for everybody. You literally can control these things. Sleep better, lead better.

Yes, yes. And it's within your control again, that brain chemistry, Right. So that you can be in peak performance as the corporate athlete does.

Right.

Do you have some stories for us on exceptional resiliency and leadership either from your, you know, again, your military days and. Because I just think there's so much wisdom there to extrapolate for those fighting the corporate battle.

Yeah, I think words matter a lot. And so, like going back into the military timeframe, one of the biggest things that we talk about on the special operations side is never quit. Right? Never quit is one of the mantras that you grow up with. And it is amazing how that builds into your deepest, darkest moments in time. You know, your deepest, darkest moments. Or when you do want to give up or you want to slow down or you can, or you start to make excuses, right. The devil on your shoulder starts speaking louder and louder. But by growing up in a culture of never quit, lean into things, all of that allows you to overcome it and become more resilient. I think a lot of corporate executives have to work harder with their people and themselves and their peers, especially on creating mantras that embed the corporate culture of where they are working with a resilient culture. They have to. A lot of times people get into the mission vision statements and all that, and it's really just very corporate centric about the bottom line or about their product, but they fail to weave in resiliency in the messaging. But if you think about this, never quit is just two words, right? That's a pretty small statement, never quit, but it's pretty darn powerful, right? So you should spend time making sure that whatever you are going around telling your people or whatever's in your collateral, in your brochures or what in your commercials really has a sense of resiliency weaved into it. And if you do, the people that work for you are going to buy into it more, will naturally be more resilient. And guess what? Even your Clientele and your customers will appreciate the fact of how you. Again, I'm overusing the word. You lean into it more and you represent that kind of an organization. So I think that's very important. And that's one of those core skills that I learned very, very early on. And just as a subtopic to that, one of my favorite ones also is that people are more important than hardware. And by having that statement that more important than hardware is another good example of something that's a pretty simple statement, but will make your organization tremendously resilient because guess what? They realize. People first. People first.

Yes, yes. So I love this mantra piece of. How do you boil it down to something really simple? And I'm curious to get some examples of different types of mantras that you've seen leaders use in the corporate space.

Yeah. Okay. So I'd like to share my personal mantra with you first because I think this because I'm selfish right now. There's iron sharpens iron. Now that's a biblical statement. It comes from the Bible, but it's non religious in context on how I use it. I love the fact. Right. Just that the visual of iron sharpens iron. I believe it's the embodies servant leadership. You know, it's about one person making another person better by being a little hard on them. Right. By being critical to that person. It's never going to do you any good, Susan. To just say, susan, you're the greatest, you're the greatest. Everything's fine, everything's perfect all the time. You will grow numb to any criticism and you really won't grow. You need somebody that's going to say, hey, Susan, that was good. However, how about this? Or have you thought about that? All of those different kind of things. We all need that well intended critic in our corner all the time. And so I'm a huge believer in iron sharpens iron.

Oh, I like that. I just want to add from my own experience. So on the one hand it's like, oh, being really critical and hard. Do we want to be that as leaders? But when I think back to my own experience, I had a very challenging leader when I was first learning to facilitate team environments. And he would write a whole list of things that I was doing wrong. And it was brutal at the time, I remember, I mean, it was at the time I would have said, this is terrible leadership. But I gotta tell you, 10, 20 years later, I am so grateful for that person because they really honed the skill that I have today. And it's sort of a signature skill that I don't see in other consultants in that way. And I. And it's totally from him. I know it is. And so I'm grateful. You know, I often wonder, well, could have he done it in a better way? Maybe. But you know what? It was incredible motivation because I actually wanted to be like him. He was extraordinary.

We do need those critics in life, and in a politically correct environment that we are now, it's harder and harder for people to have the courage to do that. But, you know, courage is really about fear. In overcoming the fear, most people don't have the courage to say, hey, I think you were wrong, or can you make that better? Because they fear the outcomes of the interaction. If we could get over that, people are going to be just so much better by having that interaction. There's no doubt.

Yes. And I think if you also do some work helping that person become more confident in themselves, they can hear the message better. Right. It's the energy with which you deliver the message.

Absolutely correct. Right. The meaning behind it about getting better, it's how you deliver that meaning of get better. You know, you could do better. There's no doubt. And that does take skill. That does take skill. When. When people are very gruff about it, obviously, it turns people off. So there is some skill to it. But it is all about the act of doing, you know, you need to still do it. You still need to still kind of be that person for somebody else. You know, back to another military kind of example. You know, fighter pilots. Everybody. Everybody sees the classic fighter pilots in a briefing room and they're chasing their watches, you know, and they're doing this and everything. Most fighter pilots, most pilots in general, will actually debrief almost two times longer than their actual flying time. Why is that? Because they're. They're actually critiquing how they flew. They're critiquing the event, they're critiquing the training that went on, all of those kind of things. The harsh debrief, when done correctly, is the most valuable thing that you can have. And it is that iron sharpens iron kind of thing that really makes people grow.

Yeah. You also bring up another point, which is the length of the debriefing. I find leaders are just onto the next thing, and there really isn't time to look back and analyze what worked and what didn't. So we can make changes in the future. It's like we're just onto the next thing. And so you never really capture the Learnings, you stay busy all the time, but are you getting more efficient? And I think to some degree that's why there's been such a rise in the 360 feedback model as well, to give you some of that. However, I do believe if leaders were a little bit more direct and had more frequent feedback or debriefing conversations, we wouldn't be so heavily reliant on the 360 because people would be getting that feedback. And the reality is, like you said, they're afraid of it. They shy away from it. They say things. I mean, I know because when I do both quantitative and qualitative 360, in the qualitative 360, when I'm actually interviewing them, you get the real story.

Yep, absolutely. And it's funny, you know, like a couple things. Leaders have always had a really bad habit of not creating enough white space for themselves to think through events, debrief it in their head, debrief it with others, create the breathing space so they can really think about what happened besides just on to the next thing. The other thing that's very dangerous, Susan, that I see happening is the last two and a half years during the COVID period of the Zoom nation. Now, if you really kind of look at the stats, most people's calendars, because of being at home and Zoom meetings and all that, have stacked their calendars even closer and closer than you did when you were in a brick and mortar facility. When you were in brick and mortar, you may have to drive across to the other facility. You may have to go from the fourth floor to the second floor. And you had all this kind of artificial time built in. With Zoom, it's like, I'm off this zoom call at 2:30 next meet, you know, next one's at 2:31. You know, those kind of things, they stack them. And so it's creating bad habits for the next generation of leaders. And it's something that I truly think needs to be addressed for sure, because that critical breathing moment is just not there.

Yes, yes. And, you know, one easy strategy is why do meetings have to be 30 minutes? Why can't they be 25? Right. And make that a policy? Or as opposed to an hour meeting, it's 50 minutes. Give people that breathing room. And. But you've got to stick to that though, too. And I think that that's another piece that people, in terms of building resilience, if you want your team to be fresh for the next meeting, give them that breathing room. Don't stack it up. I mean, I see leaders saying, oh, I don't even have time to eat. Well, how are you going to be resilient if you don't fuel the body?

That's exactly right. Another military story. When I, my very last position in the military, I was running a very large. I was the command chief master sergeant of the Air National Guard, very large organization. And I used to pride myself, and I cringe at this now. Oh my gosh. I used to pride myself in showing people my calendar and it was in 15 minute increments for 10 hours a day. And I used to say my executive assistants had to put in time when to go use the bathrooms and even. And when to take a drink of water and all those things because it was, and I was so private. See how busy I am? See how important I am?

Called the busy badge. Oh, yes, wear the busy badge.

Oh my goodness. Right? You know, it's like, it is literally the worst thing that could have ever. I could have ever have done. And thank goodness I've grown up out of that and try to coach leaders into this. I will tell you your example about making it a 50 minute or a 25 minute thing. That's what leading is. When we say you're the leader, you need to lead. And so when you have someone that's a junior person in your organization that's making the schedule, they're not at the same level of you are in awareness to understand that 25 minutes is just fine, you know. Yeah, it's not 30 and all that. You have to lead and you have to set those examples and actually do it. Don't be the victim of. Well, it was on the calendar. You know, somebody else put it on there. It was on the calendar. How about you lead and be victorious in it instead of a victim in it?

Yes, yes. And creating that balance. So you could say the other end. Well, what about the never quit? Like never quit. We have to keep working. I mean, I think when you create these mantras, again, circling back to that, you also have to define the use case for them.

Right, Great point. No, it is a great point. So in the context of resilience, never quit. Okay, yeah. Somebody could take that as, I'm not leaving at 5, I'm not leaving. You know, like I, you know, I've got a deadline to make. Right. And I would tell them they are absolutely wrong about that. You know, I mean, like, you need to walk away, all of those kind of things. So, yes, it is in context. And this goes back to the importance of A leader being able to describe how culture fits, resilience fits into the culture no matter where they are and to be able to tell the story. So that's a great example, Susan, of how like if a leader's in a town hall or something and say they've come up with never quit, how they put it in context. This is what never quit means to me, you know, and all of those kinds of things. And it should be like never quit on myself. You know, I am the most important person when it comes to resilience because I have to take care of myself. So never quitting also means I am not going to quit on myself. So I will find the power to get up out of my desk at 5 o' clock to take care of myself and walk away so that I will be clear headed tomorrow morning and finish the project. You know, all of those kind of things. It is the story and the context on how leaders have got to place it in there.

Yes, yes, that is great. And I think you could weave in what it means and what it doesn't mean.

Right. Amen.

Very good, very good. What is something that you would recommend to leaders given all the, the rate of change is happening faster and faster. Right. And I think overwhelm and burnout has become an issue for both leaders and teams. What's something that you would recommend tomorrow or today that they start to do?

I think for leaders in today's context is something that I revisited at the beginning of the year with a New Year's resolution. And I revisited stoicism. And the reason that I revisited stoicism is because one of the stoics biggest mantras is to live in the present, live here and now. And they have. One of the sayings is momentous mori in Latin, which is remember mortality, which means you never know if tomorrow's coming or not. You should forget about yesterday, live today. And leaders should kind of take some of these things as guidance about, okay, we've all gone through a really weird period of time. We have to get over that we are leading. You're the person that's clocking in as the leader. So you must lead today and don't worry too much about tomorrow. How are you doing today? And have you checked yourself? Have you looked in the mirror and said, am I doing everything that I can do to live it today? So I think that's probably one of the biggest takeaways that I would say for everybody about what all this stuff's going on. And one of the things that I would recommend is if they've never looked at stoicism or anything like that, there's some really good stuff out there. And just read a little bit about what it's like to be a stoic, and I guarantee you probably 95% of the folks that look it up and kind of look at some of the initial things on what being stoic is about. It will resonate with leaders.

Yeah, yeah. And so how would you define it for our listeners to give a little insight for them to research further?

Yeah. So the Stoics. The Stoics. You know, there are several very well known Stoics. Marcus Aurelius is one of them. So back to almost 2,000 years ago, and they really. And Marcus Aurelius Memoirs is probably one of the best stoic books that anybody can read. And it's really just a philosophy of living in the present. Right. It is about what you can control and it gets kind of deep into. Don't worry about what other people's are. People are thinking about you because you can't change that. So it's about how you can control your universe. It's about how you see the world, how you live in the present, and how dangerous it is to constantly think about the past or to be so infatuated with what the future could hold that you're kind of missing the whole moment now. So it's my belief to be a really, truly effective leader in today's world, sometimes you have to look back on things that are over 2,000 years old, that still today is a universal language and thought process. And many people will say, yeah, it's a philosophy, but if you practice some of these things from a leadership point of view, you will be more resilient, you will be a better leader. And it's truly just a way to. To get over all the noise.

Well, we've had wisdom from 2000 years ago and yet we're still repeating the same mistakes. Right. I couldn't imagine that's more appropriate now than ever. Right. About 2,000 years ago.

Fascinating. Yeah. I always tell people it is about the action of doing it is leadership is an actionable thing. You have to do these things both with yourself and to your people and all that. It is about doing it. And, you know, you can sit and read philosophy and go, this is amazing, and not do anything about it. Then there's nothing that's happening. You have to actually have action.

Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Where can people learn more if they want to connect with you and your work?

Well, I've got a YouTube channel that's called the Iron Sharpens Iron Movement. So all you got to do is go to YouTube and type in Iron Sharpens Iron Movement. And I've got a ton of little mindset moments. They're three minutes and under and they're just this kind of conversation, and I think that'll be a great place for people to start.

It's a great program because I really enjoyed talking with you. I've been on it, too, and I think there's incredible wisdom there. So really encourage our listeners to go there and check it out.

Yeah. Great. Thank you.

If you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with David Rendell, who discusses our strengths and flaws as a leader and how we can utilize both and become our very best. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive. Sam.