56. John Lentini — Engineering Character: The 6-Dial Framework of Determination & Trust

At its most basic, it's mirroring. You know, you're not going to be profiling everyone you engage with, but you can pick up signs. You can tell who the introverts are and the extroverts are from their energy, from their social media profiles, from the way they have their voicemails modeled, from the way their desk is organized, their office, their background on Zoom.

Diverse empathy. You have to be adaptable. You can't talk to the same person the same way. You're not going to get the same result.

There's things you'll learn if you really dig into personality profiles that gives you a sense of who you're dealing with. Is this person very analytical? Everyone is different. Some will have an appetite for more than others, and you have to know your audience and learn it.

Is there a special phrase you have that you could give me right now just for that? Because man, I need to memorize it.

Well, that's the key thing with empathy. There's—

My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery. So, I'll stop that voice and I'll just tell you, this show is here to give you some cinematic fuel, tools, and excitement so you can stop drifting and start directing your life better than any movie. All right, I'm excited for this episode. I'm here with John Lentini and he is the Leadership Engineer. He's a keynote speaker and author, but more importantly, he's a supportive person. We met recently and we've been sending some messages back and forth and he's been supporting me in ways he probably doesn't know. And I appreciate him. I'm so excited to have him on the show. Let's dive into some leadership and community and all the good stuff today on this episode. Welcome to the show, John.

Thank you, Tony. Pleasure to be here.

So before we go into some of the leadership, communication, determination, the trust, the character that you're all about, I wanted to ask you, what are you currently really excited about? What's coming up or what's happening now?

Well, my book is clearly the biggest project. It's been frustrating that I've deferred my release date to 2027. It was the right thing to do, but still a hard decision to make. So, I've been on a campaign for my book release, which probably turned out to be a little bit early, but I don't see it as a burnt bridge in any way. And there will be presales available this summer, and I'll get some digital or physical galley copies out to those who preorder. So, in some respects, it'll be out in the marketplace this year anyway.

Excellent. And what's the title of your book?

Engineering Character.

Engineering character. Yes, that's great. I do think that it's all about having character in life. You got to be— for communication, you know, if you don't have good character, people don't want to work with you, for sure.

Um, yeah, my personal view is that character is sort of a dwindling resource in society at large. So part of my mission with the book is how can I deliver a system that will enable people and hopefully society at large to start to re-engineer character? But it's also beyond just a way for people to develop character in themselves and to foster character in their teams and organizations, a way for us to measure our leaders. So it's a diagnostic tool so we can assess our leaders, whether they be corporate, political, what have you. And I've run my model through AI. I've gotten some interesting feedback. I won't get into that today. But it actually does benchmark leadership. across the board. And I think it tells you some pretty interesting things across platforms.

What's, what's exciting about the process of writing this book? And, and why do you think right now people need the information, the guideline, the measuring tools that you're offering?

Yeah, I mean, it's largely based in what I mentioned, you know, around just the degradation of character, generationally, generationally, societally, what we see. I've got a— what I frame as a 6-dial model, a 6-dial framework to develop character. So it's compartmentalized into how we develop character in ourselves, essentially how we lead ourselves for self-management. And that takes discipline, mindset, and resilience. And the 3 of those things will ultimately yield determination. But once you've led yourself effectively, which is really a prerequisite to lead others, then it takes a separate set of dials to lead others, which are integrity, empathy, and influence, which yield trust. Together, the combination of determination and trust through all 6 dials yields what I frame as character. And I think that's what ethical leadership looks like. Now, I'm very careful how I define each of those components. There's a lot of different versions of many of those things, empathy, particularly influence. So I'm very deliberate about how I frame influence. So it's the right type of influence that yields trust. But if done right and done by the way I define it, I think we get leaders of character, ethical leaders for long-term success.

Yeah, I, I like it. So the 6 levers, I feel like the discipline, the mindset, the resilience is talked about a good amount. There's some great stuff out there, but the integrity, the empathy, for sure, that second part The trust part. Like, can you break up a little bit more with that? Because that's not only helpful, I think, for everyone— there should be classes on integrity growing up in high schools. And I, I say that for so many things I learned late in life. I'm like, that should have been in high school. But I think that and empathy should. So can you break that apart a little bit for the listeners?

And yeah, absolutely. I mean, I see the two 3 DAO models as sort of mirror images of each other in a way. Discipline is foundational to determination. It's foundational to leading yourself. I see integrity through the same lens for leading others, right? That's your foundation, your moral compass. So integrity is really doing what's right even when it's difficult, doing the right thing even when no one's watching. So it's really just being married to your own values. So you need to set your values, you need to believe in those values, and you need to live by them and understand when you make your decisions What is the long-term impact of that decision? You know, a lot of my motivation and a lot of where I see the problem with character is driven by our kind of model for society. Our economic model of capitalism really drives short-term thinking because we're only focused on quarterly and annual fiscal results. So it forces us, unfortunately, to be incentivized to make the wrong decisions at times. And I think over the many generations, that has gotten us to a place that requires a little bit of remediation. And politically, it's the same with our election cycle, right? Our political leaders are focused on how do they win the next election every 2 to 4 years, and that forces decisions that drive short-term thinking as well. So true integrity and true character is grounded in the courage of conviction to do the right thing even when it's not popular, because you actually have a true foundational, fundamental belief in what the right thing to do is, not what the expedient thing is that's going to give you short-term payoff.

Yeah, instant gratification is mixed in with that for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. Which is like that exacerbated by our current society of smartphones and social media and just the overstimulation that we all suffer from, the addiction to our devices and everything else, right?

Yeah. Quick pause, everybody. I hope you're enjoying the content. Please hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Now back to the show. Even when you're aware of it and you have your protocols, you still get sucked into it. You know, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. I like long format. I love the idea that you just said, think long term. So when, when we have those temptations to just be like, nah, let's do this now, I don't want to really think long term, what's a trigger we can use, or a phrase, or, or maybe something, some tool that we could do to make sure we snap out of it and think better?

Yeah, you need to check in with yourself daily. This entire model, I envision it as a virtual control panel. So I really— it started for me with the first 3 dials. I did a TEDx talk on the first 3 dials. It talks about my own journey in getting through COVID when I'd started my own business. And I envisioned it as just that, a virtual control panel. I would think every day about where I was dialed in on each of these dials and what needed work. And whenever I reflected, you know, on any challenges I was having in my life or career, I always realized that 1 or 2 of those dials needed some recalibration. And of course, that extends to the second set of dials as well. You need to really check in with yourself. So in order for this to be applied, there needs to be some self-diagnosis. And when you apply this with coaching and, and, and the corporate space, the best practice is really a 360. You know, how do your peers, colleagues, clients, direct managers, direct reports, the whole sphere of influence that you're involved with, how do they think you're doing with each of these dials. So you get some feedback and you need to create a constant feedback loop in that way. But daily check-ins with yourself, honest and careful check-ins about where you really stand on these items is really the key. What I find is some people are really naturally good at being determined and delivering results. That's the first 3 set of dials. Then they get tasked leading others because they've been so results-focused. And they may not be so great at the second set of dials naturally. And that requires more work.

Mm-hmm.

They can still lead as a barrier basher. They can get things done and they may still be recognized and rewarded. And that's the way corporate life tends to work. But they're gonna, you know, manage up more than they lead the people who are within their charge. So, those folks require some coaching around empathy, around, you know, true influence. The converse is also true. Some people may struggle to deliver results. They need to be coached to be more results-focused, but they have more of a natural proclivity for seeing things from the other side of the table with empathy, from influencing people through, you know, natural communication ability and what have you. So, that's sort of the dynamic when you think of the cognitive diversity that we're faced with. Some people are strong on one side, some strong on the others, but coaching helps us all.

Yeah, I really like that. And I want to clarify And help visualize for anyone listening or watching. From what I've seen, and correct me, John, or add to it, but John has this little diagram and it looks almost like a guitar amp with dials that you can turn for discipline, mindset, resilience, and then for integrity, empathy, influence. Now, I know personally I'm a very visual person, so having that in my head as a daily check-in, of course, You can, you can draw that out. You could do whatever you want, print it out. But that's really cool because it's not just a talking tool. You can see it and you're like, okay, I see my disciplines all the way to 11. But, but, but my empathy has been really low. And it just— it's— that's cool. It's a very super visual way to see where you're at. So that's, that's neat.

And I think 360s, getting outside feedback is even more important with the second set of dials since it is really geared towards leading others. If you have a real blind spot around empathy, it's probably hard to self-diagnose that. There's probably a lot of denial. And I have experienced that. One of the biggest opportunities with executive coaching in my experience is around empathy because they see it as a dirty word. They think it's coddling people's emotions when really it's their superpower, right? You can't get what you want from someone. You can't win a negotiation effectively if you don't know what the other person wants. Right? So really being able to see things from both sides of the table is what empathy is about. But that is often not a very welcome challenge, or that's not very welcome feedback by senior leaders. And it's a very common problem because, again, many of them are very Type A results-oriented personalities, which is how they get into their positions of leadership and C-level roles to begin with. Then when those cracks start to show, they're probably still getting results and they're probably delivering for shareholders, delivering for the boards of directors, managing up quite well. But they may be driving high attrition rates, low morale, disengagement. And if you want to solve for those problems, which are the sustainable solutions we need to be focused on, you need to be open to how that second set of dials can be managed. And 360 feedback is the baseline tool to overcome.

Yeah, I think the go-getters, the people that are grinding and pushing to the top, especially in America, we all know that that's the thing. Like, what do you do for a living? Like, come on, you got to be pushing and pushing. And, and yeah, there is— it's so important to have discipline and push. But I think that what's hard for people, and it could definitely be that little ego thing, right? No one wants to be corrected really initially until you condition it. You're like, please correct me, and you like it. So the question is, how do we break past that? I'm on this side, like the determination side. Like, I know what I'm doing. I have empathy. I have integrity.

What's a way Someone can—

I don't want to say be open to be embarrassed, but in a way you have to be open to be embarrassed when you're getting feedback from outsiders. Like, I love what you said, asking me, uh, or asking someone, what's my blind spot in with my integrity, empathy, and influence? So what's like a way we can get into that if we're having problems, if we're kind of cut off, and we're— but the person listening now, maybe they know secretly that's who we're talking about, but they know they want that, but they're just refusing to, what can they do?

Well, I do think 360s are a key ingredient that need to be integrated when it comes to coaching. And I've made this mistake earlier in my coaching journey. It's very important that you set the ground rules upfront with what this coaching relationship's going to be. And then I'm going to tell you the hard truths you may not want to hear. I've made that mistake throughout, you know, because it is hard when you're engaged by someone. They're the one signing the checks for you, right? They're the ones who've engaged you. you are somewhat compelled to tell them what they want to hear if you haven't set the framework correctly. They'd love to hear about what they need to do to make the organization better. But unless they're open to it and that kind of ground rule has been set up front, it's often hard to tell them what you see that they're doing wrong. That the people problems they're having are because of them in many cases, right? So, it's very important as with any coaching mentoring relationship to really be very clear up front, get mutual agreement. We're going to be open-minded. I'm going to tell you things you may not want to hear at times. But it's Because that's why you've engaged me, right? You want to find a way to be better. And I've worked with leaders across industries in various capacities. If you engage me because you trust me, then I'm going to tell you things you may not want to hear, but you need to hear.

Yeah. And you should. That's a great coach. Let's bring that into relationships, non-business for a second. I know personally. It feels like we're really talking about disclaimers when you say ground rules as well. And I know when I have some family members or friends and I'm like, oh, they need to know this, this is going to help them. And then if I just go in and say, this is what could be done, this is what you do, they don't take it right. But if you do a disclaimer, a truthful, honest disclaimer, and what you said, get agreement, then the conversation's fluid, right? Is there a special phrase you have that you can give me right now just for that? Because man, I need to memorize that.

Well, that's the key thing with empathy. There's no silver bullet for anything. You need to know your audience, right? So cognitive diversity is an important component. I'm a big believer in personality models and profiles. There's a host of them out there. I'm not here to pitch any one of them, but I think that dynamic is key. You need to know your stakeholders. They all respond to different things differently. So you have to meet people where they are. You have to be adaptable. We call it adaptive leadership, situational leadership. So knowing your audience is part of that. And you're gonna have to calibrate how you communicate to each of them. The best leaders will do that. And that is largely what empathy is about, knowing your audience and meeting them where they are and not taking a one-size-fits-all approach to how you engage with people. But you raise a very key point around personalized because these aren't just leadership skills. These are life skills. They apply universally. You know, I run leadership training and it's geared towards, you know, business leaders, business managers, primarily people lead, manage, or supervise others. Not uncommon for me to have graduates hug me and say, you saved my marriage. You fixed, you know, broken relationships in my personal life. Because these are, you know, communication skills. They're, you know, they're here to help you navigate the messy interpersonal human dynamics we deal with at work, which we deal with equally at home. Conflict management, you know, navigating difficult discussions, all these things apply to us throughout our lives.

That's, that's great. Yeah. Diverse empathy. You have to be adaptable. You can't talk to the same person the same way. You're not going to get the same result. So be adaptable. The Tao Te Ching talks about that flexibility. And if you're brittle, you know, you're dead, basically. If you're flexible and adaptable, you're alive. So be alive, people.

Right? I mean, it's mirroring, right? At its most basic, it's mirroring that, you know, you're not going to be profiling everyone you engage with. But you can pick up signs. You can tell who the introverts are and the extroverts are from their energy, from their social media profiles, from the way they have their voicemails modeled, from the way their desk is organized, their office, their background on Zoom. There's things you'll learn if you really dig into personality profiles that gives you a sense of who you're dealing with. Is this person very analytical? Do they want a lot of detail? Are they very, you know, you know, are they a driven driver personality? Do they just want the high-level executive summary? Do they not care how I got to the decision? They just want to know what decision I've made. Everyone is different. Some will have an appetite for more than others, and you have to know your audience and learn it. More information you can gather, the better. But as you get good at this, you can sort of play those Jedi mind tricks, so to speak. Yes.

So I have a pretty large personality. I use my hands. I'm sometimes I'm too loud. And I've learned if you are approaching someone or as a speaker or you're trying to convey something first, like you said, mirror, but you can match They're— if they're a little quieter, a little softer, you can match them, but then you can dial it up and get them a little bit closer to where you want the conversation to be. But you can't go in all crazy because then you'll lose them and then they'll start freaking out, panicking. Adaptability.

Yeah, matching energy. I mean, we both have vowels at the end of our names. I think we both suffer from that same syndrome. It's something I've had to manage down. There's no question that we have a lot of fire in our bloods as Italian Americans, right? You know, in my book, Interestingly enough, a big theme that kind of threaded throughout my book that only unfolded as I was drafting it is a lot around Japanese culture, Japanese tools. A lot of my stories, as I drafted it, I realized how much Japanese culture and Japan in general has played a role in my professional and personal development. You know, I'm a 9/11 survivor, which is a big part of my story. That's how the book opens. It's how my TEDx talk opened. What doesn't come up in my TEDx talk is it was a Japanese bank I was working for, and the leadership who were lost that I pay tribute to were all Japanese nationals. And then I also open up the second part of my book around the second set of dials around a story where I was navigating the Fukushima crisis in Japan when I was working in Asia and I was managing a team on the ground there. I was actually due to fly into Tokyo that morning, and I had to cancel as the earthquake took place. So Japan, martial arts, a lot of different components of Japan and Japanese culture has played a big part in my Uh, in my development. And the reason I bring it up now is that is a big part of Japanese culture, which probably first woke me up to exactly what you're talking about, because I am very animated. I do talk with my hands. I am a high-energy person. Japan as a culture, when you think about introvert versus extrovert, the Japanese culture at large does tend to find, you know, fast-paced, high-energy, a lot of, uh, you know, animated communication to be off-putting and threatening. You do have to be more reserved culturally, from my experience. And I don't mean to generalize, but I think that's a fairly well-understood generalization around Japanese culture. So I spent a lot of time in Japan, and really, it's a fascinating culture. I have a tremendous amount of respect for it. But that was one way I learned to develop myself in navigating personality styles, because these things are personality styles. There are distinctions across generations, distinctions across cultures. All these various dynamics play a role in how you meet people where they are.

Wow, that's a lot of good stuff. Yes, I have not been to Japan, but one day I will, and I'm going to keep that in mind when I go. I like that.

I highly recommend it.

Yeah.

Yes.

And, uh, let's take a quick tangent. You told me that you're into films and filmmaking, and you were actually on your way maybe to becoming a director early on in life. Give me a little snippet. What, what's a favorite movie of yours? And, uh, and tell me a little bit about that. I wouldn't— I want to get to know that part of you.

Yeah, I don't know if I can go so far as to say I was on my way to becoming a director. I had that aspiration, and I have some regrets at times that I didn't follow through on it. But yes, I covet a lot of what you've done. I'm in the presence of greatness, someone who's played a role in a Scorsese film. Absolutely. But I— yeah, I've been passionate about film from the time I was young, particularly to films of people like Coppola and Scorsese, Tarantino, but all films, foreign films, you know, Japanese films, Italian films. I really dug into film as an art form.

Yeah.

throughout my life, you know, to the point where I was a bit obsessed. I think most of my friends knew me that way, poked fun at it because I, I was— I had that sort of obsession like Martin Scorsese and Tarantino have in a way. I had a very kind of cataloged memory of every film, every actor, every, every detail. I can quote lines like gospel from just about any film going back decades from well before I was born. Um, to name a favorite film is hard. It's a bit cliché, but The Godfather obviously had a huge impact on me. Pulp Fiction is probably the film for my generation as a Gen Xer. But there's so many that I could list, it would be unfair to even narrow it down. But I ended up graduating undergraduate as a finance major in my business school, which is so far into my natural DNA. That happened because I'd landed a role in banking through my network summer after my freshman year in the World Trade Center. So I pivoted from the liberal arts school into the business school. I went to a Jesuit university, so we had a large core curriculum of liberal arts. So it gave me some flexibility to do that. that. But interestingly, I was a finance major. I was set to graduate with a double minor in economics and international business. So I had 3 classes to finish my minor my senior year of college. And I would've had to take some early first classes, which started at like 8:15 in the morning, which I'd avoided my entire college career. I was living at the beach off campus. It was a bit of commute to school. I was not about to start with— early first my senior year with the senioritis that I was involved with, right? So what I did was I dropped my 3 classes, graduated with no minor, and I took 3 film classes. And I dug into them. Was a class, uh, 2 classes around theory, one on Alfred Hitchcock, one on the Atomic '50s. Uh, really enjoyed both of those, learned a lot about film, film theory.

Mm-hmm.

But the, the 3rd one was more about how movies work and it was more practical. And we ended up having a small film festival at the end of that. And I made a short film on, on video, like probably Hi8 or whatever it was at the time. And, uh, we had a small film festival. My, my short film was called Parking Problems, had a sort of a Tarantino-esque, uh, bent to it because that's what was going on back then in the late '90s. And I won 6 out of 10 awards at our little Fairfield Film Festival. Best Director, Best Actress, who was my girlfriend at the time, whole host of different awards. Best Original Screenplay, I think. I don't recall, but I have a copy of it somewhere. But I then had, you know, through the film department, I ended up getting an interview scheduled with a film editing company. There was this system called Quantrell, I think it was called at the time. Quantell or Quantrell. They did nonlinear editing, which is extremely archaic today, but it was cutting edge at the time. They did the film trailers for Twister and James Bond's GoldenEye. And, uh, we had it in our film department, which was like a, a 6-figure piece of equipment, which was cutting edge. And they had a relationship with our film department. So I got an interview to, you know, get my foot into the door with the film industry with them. But I also got an offer to work for a few banks, including the one I'd been interning with. And the bank that I'd been interning with gave me a very attractive offer at the time. I was forced to accept it and start 2 days after I graduated. I had planned on going cross-country. Instead, I took the role, and I still had that interview planned, and I was going to take it. It would've been June 10th, 1997. I know that because it was my mother's birthday. And I ultimately canceled the interview because I got settled into the role. I was in there a month. I didn't take the interview. I know some people took roles with it, and 6 months later they were laid off. So I don't know if that was a good thing or not. Who knows where my life may have gone? But that was the last time I ever considered it full-time. I did get involved. I became very avid in scuba diving. And I did get involved with a lot of underwater filming, and I was involved with some small, um, you know, documentary projects with underwater filmography, which became a big passion. Jacques Cousteau and a lot of that stuff was a big interest of mine growing up as well. But yeah, for the most part, I've left it behind, and I just look to people like you as an inspiration.

No, that's, that's fun. What that did is triggered your creativity early on, and you probably have carried it with you in a lot of things you do. Does that seem like that's what happened?

Yeah, there's no question. I'm a, I'm a right-brain thinker. And, you know, I was in a left-brain industry in investment banking for well over 20 years. And largely that's how I differentiated myself. And I was kind of a thought leader in an industry that didn't have a lot of thought leadership, more execution, less kind of original thinking. So it caused a lot of friction in some ways, but I'd say healthy conflict in a lot of ways because you need that. But it is largely how I found success. But it's also how I pushed up against ceilings at times. I enjoyed my career throughout. But, you know, it was a good opportunity for me to pivot and flex my more right-brain instincts, which is how I kind of ended up in leadership training, development, and coaching, which allows me to kind of be more freeform in the way that I operate.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Hmm. Fun stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

So let me— let's see, um, I had a note here. I talk about life and how we just drift sometimes and how we need to course correct and be the directors of our lives. And I, I believe in that. I believe it happens even when you're going great for a couple years. You can drift without knowing it. So I practice the awareness and try to catch myself as soon as I can. I took a note. We were corresponding and you mentioned the word drift. So, I'm interested in what that meant and where you drifted or if you helped— I'm sure you helped many others drift back into direction.

Well, no, my view on drift is this. I actually considered my second book. I was considering Drift as the title of my second book. I already have a few books in mind as I think we all do, right? Once you write a book, it becomes a bit of an addictive passion. Drift was, you know, I, I see drift as a problem I'm looking to solve largely when you engineer character, because my version of drift— there's many different definitions of drift. I know people specialize in drift, but they mean something completely different. I mean societal drift. When I say that character is, is diminishing, I see that as drift generationally, societally. We, you know, we're drifting away from where we were. If we go back to what We might look back at the Greatest Generation, right? The World War II generation character was very well organically established and developed because they went through hard times, right? It's that old adage, those who live through hard times make strong men. And here we are today, right? Now we think times got soft and maybe that's where the character started to dwindle.

My Uber's taking—

Over time. What's that?

My, my Uber is taking forever to get here, you know, or my Uber Eats.

That's a big problem, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the Great Depression was very formative. I, you know, the mandatory draft for all, you know, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that we go back to that, but things like that, you know, the, the what I call, you know, fountains of formation, whether it be, you know, things like that, mandatory military service, the ties to community service, to institutions like religious institutions and, and you know, and what have you. Those things just naturally created universal character. Everyone's kind of out for themselves now. Everybody has their own flavor and everyone has their own value set. Some may be good, some may be mixed, but, but we don't have a uniform way of developing character. And we also don't have a uniform set of values and even information anymore. So I'm trying to just give us something that we can focus on. And if I can spread the word, I think good things will come.

Yeah, we need more of that. I like it. It's like a, you know, there's, there's the scrolls in The Greatest Salesman in the World, right? That book. And I love that book. I've read it several times. It's a small book. But I've written those scrolls down. And whenever I go back and check in with them, it's just a little moral compass. And it helps me direct my life better. And there's so many different ways and new perspectives. So, with your 6 dials, like I said, I love that because it's visual and I could actually— I could do a little NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and I could turn that switch when I need more discipline. Like, all right, I got to get back to writing. Turn the switch, you know, so your mind connects to your hand. So, that's—

Yeah, it's interesting. One of the branding agents I've worked with actually suggested they thought a good name for my book might be something like Old Wisdom, Modern Leaders. Which I liked. And again, I am where I am with engineering character, but that theme comes through because I do think sometimes we focus too much on what the new information is when I think we used to have all the wisdom we needed and it's been eroded. I think Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a great example of that, to see the insights that that guy had at that point in time and how perfectly relevant they are today. I keep that on my nightstand and I refer to it regularly. That's just one example. Of course, if you're religious, you're really, you know, the Bible is, or whatever it is people believe in, there's tremendous ancient wisdom there that applies to people and guides their lives. I talk about mindset in my model. I talk about finding your faith or flexing your faith, right? If you have faith, God bless. I don't preach what faith or if you should have a religious faith, but you need to believe in something, right? And if you have faith, flex it. you know, flex your faith and let that guide you. If you don't have faith, find one. You need to find a faith, whether it's religious or otherwise. You need to, you know, find something to believe in that sets your moral compass, and that's what'll drive that integrity dial. The key thing about my 6 dial models, they're all interoperable. You know, they all feed and, and they either strengthen or detract from each other. Um, so, and that, that I think comes out in the book. And, you know, you talk about the physical dials. I've actually had the concept. I think I will get there at some point. of building a kind of plastic prototype. Yes, that'd be so fun. Yeah, and they can set them based on, say, what the 360 feedback is for them, so they know what they need to work on. They can keep it on their desks, they can keep it in their workplace, their home office, and you can look at it daily. Where am I on this dial today? And I do see that as something I will get into at some point. I haven't started working with the manufacturer, but it's definitely part of my long-term vision.

Yes, it would be great to have that as a bonus when you buy a few books or something.

That's a thought.

Yeah, that sounds so fun. And what a great thing. It's, it's a visual trigger for you to just be like, oh yeah, I gotta, I gotta get to work. Let me crank the discipline a little and let's do it.

Well, and again, this comes down to different personalities. I ask people to envision it as a virtual control panel in their minds. Some people, visualization like that works very well. Other people, having the physical, you know, you know, gimmick or whatever you want to call it on their desktop would probably be more effective. And they can look at it each day, check in with it each morning, because I do see it as a minimum daily practice. For some, it may be, you know, several times a day, but you really need to check in with yourself every day. And we're all going to fall off. The point is not around being perfect. We're all going to fall off. We're all going to— we're all going to be failing in some components of that. But if you— if you manage it, then you will determine, you know, the first 3 dials. And I really mistitled my TEDx talk. It's called 3 Dials to Lead You. You should never name a TEDx talk— for those out there listening, never name a TEDx talk after your framework. Name it after what you're trying to deliver. My TEDx talk actually just hit 200,000 views today, I believe.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It was great. I think it would obviously do much better if it had a name that drew people in as to what they can get from it as opposed to how they get it. So I named it after the framework. You really want to name your TEDx talk after— so after what it delivers. And I think a better title would have been something like How to Determine Your Own Outcomes, which is really what it's about. And the 3 Dial Framework is the framework that helps you do that.

Yeah. You know, I really— I'm going to say it again. I love that it's 6 dials for the framework, but they are separate into the determination and the trust. That is so cool. Like, again, I'm super visual, so I really admire that, and I love that. I can't wait to get one of those boxes one day.

So, well, I'm going to give you a little bonus, Tony, because we talked about creativity. I know you come from a creative space, so you know, giving away how my book ends, I have a bonus dial. So it's really a 6+1 model. You know, and the reason I did this is working in leadership development as I do with Crescom and, and going through a full comprehensive leadership curriculum. When I looked at my framework, there was one glaring omission. I was like, how do I drive innovation? You know, things like decision-making come out of my model, even though there's no decision-making dial. There's, you know, everything you need to do as a leader in my estimate comes out of those 6 styles if, if done right. But innovation was missing. So what drives innovation, right? Creativity. My view was, you know, you, to be a good, effective leader, you don't need to be creative yourself. You don't need to be a right-brained thinker, for example, to be an effective leader. But you do need to be able to what I call steward creativity. And this becomes particularly topical in the world of AI because increasingly people are gonna be managing less and less people. And perhaps managing more and more technology. And it requires responsible ethical leadership, which is what these 6 dials produce with character, leaders of character, to then steward creativity. So creativity is the bonus dial. And the, the key is you don't have to have that creativity yourself to a large extent. You don't need to dial up your creativity. You need to surround yourself with creativity, whether that means engaging creative people, working with creative agents or agencies, or the black box of AI. Right? But you need to be a leader of character managing those 6 dials in order to responsibly steward us into the future using creativity the way it should be used. So, creativity is the bonus dial. That's my big reveal for you today.

That's great. No, that's so fun. I love that. Yeah, they all work together and they can all produce that. You know, it's true if you're applying this to health or something, you don't get the greatest sleep, it affects the other dial and how your body maybe absorbs that nutrition over there. So they all work together, and you got to manage all of them. That's profound. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you where people can find you. Give us a couple links. And then I have a final question that we'll get back to.

Sure, I'm available on most social media, you know, John J. Lentini on Instagram or LinkedIn. johnjlentini.com is my site, which is it Still, you know, a bit raw, but it's out there. You can, you can subscribe to the Leadership Engineer newsletter on LinkedIn. It's also available on medium.com.

Okay, so that's johnjlentini.com.

That's right.

Put the J in there because I think, I think there's a John Lentini the poet. I looked up— I don't know.

There is johnlentini.com. There's a poet up in Rhode Island, I believe. But more interestingly, I'll show you, there's another John Lentini who I've become very friendly with. He's a published author. He sent me his latest book yesterday, signed it for me, wishing me luck on my book. We've gotten to know each other over the years. We've met up many times.

Wow.

But it causes a lot of confusion. He's also John J. Lentini. We're not related.

No.

Connected all over social media. This is his second book. So he's, he's probably the top thought leader in his space, but it's a niche space. He's in forensic science investigation. He defends wrongfully accused arsonists.

Whoa.

But yeah, we've gotten to be very friendly and, uh, it does cause a lot of confusion. He, uh, he's out there all over the, all over the map too. So interesting dynamic. He just sent me his book and I'll have to review his book. I told him I'm gonna love confusing the public. John J. Lentini reviewing John J. Lentini.

Well, I'm glad it's a very different niche. That, that's good. That's good. But wow, interesting. Okay. Well, with everything we talked about, You've brought out some great points, and, uh, I'm excited to get your book. But I have a question that might encapsulate a lot of what we said, but I'm curious how you might synthesize it. What does it mean to you to direct your life? Hmm. See the hand thing I did there? Direct your life.

Well, I'll tell you what, I mean, it's almost too cliché for me, but that is really what The 6 Dials is about, particularly the first 3. You know, as I said, the better title for my TEDx talk, which is The First 3 Dials, essentially is how to determine your own outcomes, which is really another way of saying how to direct your life, how to be the director of your own storyline, right? You define what you want to get out of life. If you navigate discipline, mindset, and resilience— easier said than done, I get that— but if you focus on all 3 of those things, understanding that 1 or 2 are often going to need some work, You will be able to direct, you know, the film of the story of your life. And I do, as I am a film aficionado and passionate about it, I think of everything in terms of film. And I do, you know, you want to think about how do you want your movie to end, right? And if you have an idea of how you want your movie to end, well, you can achieve and determine those outcomes through discipline, mindset, and resilience. But if you want to bring other people along for the ride, and you really, you know, it takes a village, you can't do it on your own. own. So if you want to steward others to help you, as you know, as a film director, you can't do it alone. It's a cast of many who help you succeed. Then it's going to require integrity, empathy, and influence to get those others to help support you in achieving that vision so you can live the life you see in your future.

Well put. I like that a lot. That was great, John. Thank you so much. So everyone out there, check out John Follow him on the socials and look forward to his book. Thank you so much, John, for being on.

My pleasure. It's been great. Thanks, Tony.

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