CEO at 91: Saying No To Retirement & Having A Flow-Filled Life

Almost all of the attention so far on coaching has been on the coach and the coach's knowledge and the coach's technique and the coach's skill set. Not very much attention has been paid to the recipient. What can we do to help people become more coachable? And how can we measure that coachability? How can we show them the behaviors that they can practice, which will make them more receptive to coaching, will therefore kind of guarantee the success of the whole coaching process to a much higher, much higher degree.

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before?

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Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance, access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Rhian Dorris, and together with bestselling author Steven Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Jack Zanger, welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. Thank you so much for taking the time.

My great pleasure.

I really appreciate you coming on, and, um, I'm going to read out your bio here to start us off, and then I'm going to ask you a question about your day in the life as a CEO because you've got a very inspiring story on that front, in my opinion. So your career spans more than 5 decades, more than 50 years, and has combined entrepreneurial, corporate, and academic endeavors. You are the CEO and co-founder of Zenger Folkman, which is a firm specializing in 360 assessments, leadership, and organizational development. And you're a world-leading expert in the field of leadership development and organizational behavior and a highly esteemed speaker, consultant, and executive coach with the ability to connect with audiences through your really compelling research, which we're going to be talking about today, and also through inspiring stories. And before forming Zenger Folkman. You were the Vice President of Human Resources for Syntex Corporation. Then you co-founded Zenger Miller and served as its President and CEO until 1991, which the Wall Street Journal named as one of the 10 best suppliers of executive development. And you were later a Group Vice President of the Times Mirror Corporation and then became the President of Provant, a publicly traded combination of 21 companies. In the training industry. I would love to touch on that. That sounds like a fascinating blend of organizations, so I'm sure we'll unpack that a little bit. And then you were also on the faculty at the University of Southern California, USC, which is near where I am at the moment. And you also taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business and served as the chairman of the board of trustees of Utah Valley University. And you're currently a regent for the higher education system in the state of Utah. Finally, you hold a doctorate in business administration from the University of Southern California, an MBA from UCLA, and a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University. And you're the co-author of 7 books on leadership. And after an unsuccessful attempt at retirement, uh, it seems that you freely admit that you're pretty passionate about what you do and you love helping leaders strengthen their leadership skills and their workplaces. And that's where I wanted to start, is if you're open to it, uh, no pressure, but if you're open to sharing a little bit about, um, your, your age and the, the work that you are still managing to do, I think the listeners would find it very inspiring. I know I find it incredibly inspiring. So maybe we can start there.

Oh, I'm not at all embarrassed. So, uh, this, this month I will turn 91. And I've been, as you said earlier, I've been involved in this whole leadership development arena for probably a lot longer than you've been alive, probably 65 years, and in a variety of roles. And I, I find it constantly challenging and, and find there's exciting new things happening in, in the field and So, I did try retirement for a month and a half, and I didn't find that all that rewarding and satisfying. So, I've much preferred to be in the ring rather than sitting in the stands. So, that's basically where I am. And I'm not sure, people ask me when I might want to retire, and I say, I probably will leave horizontally, not vertically, probably from this.

I love that. It's incredibly inspiring, very much so along the lines of our philosophy at Flow Research Collective. What flow says is that fulfillment and happiness comes through engagement, not through consumption or through attempting to maximize pleasure. And so you're a living embodiment of that. Would you be open to sharing what the experience of retirement was like and then why it's more enjoyable to not be retired and to still be a CEO at 91?

Well, I think probably we should involve my wife in this discussion because, you know, when I was at home, I think I was just really a fly in the ointment and kind of trying to bring order to the house and, you know, in ways that she wasn't particularly appreciative of. And I just think we both kind of decided that it was far more enjoyable when I had something that was really meaningful to me and that I enjoyed doing. And so, it's been a mutual decision that, Being at home trying to manage your spouse is not the right approach to having a happy marriage.

That makes sense. No, I hear you on that. And, uh, yeah, you've been working, uh, almost 3 times as long as I've been alive. Um, so what is it that you, that you like about your work and what you do? What is it that you, that you—

you know, there are, there are Several dimensions to it, I think. One is that the nature of the work that we do is one that provides the opportunity to constantly be learning. So I find that there's great joy in learning new things, finding good research that isn't being fully applied, and to find ways of, you know, to practically implement that. What I particularly enjoy about my, my role now is that it has a great deal of variety to it. So I go from doing some externally facing things with clients to being an individual contributor. I love to write, I love to research. I do find, as one of my friends said, I enjoy having written more than I enjoy writing. But I enjoy, I enjoy the process and what that all means. I also think that there's something about position in life where you have leverage, where you can impact things and make a bigger dent than you can if you're just an individual solo contributor. And so I find being part of an organization to be extraordinarily rewarding because I do think it affords you the opportunity of making a bigger impact. So the list could go on, but those are some of the things that are really motivating to me and why I choose to keep on doing it.

One of the things I was struck by, Jack, when we first spoke was just how sharp you are. Cognitively. And honestly, I felt, I felt a little slow, relatively speaking, when we first talked. And I'm curious if you could describe any shifts that you've experienced, you know, from let's say 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s to now in terms of cognitive performance, motivation, energy, drive, things like that. Has there been a theme for each decade across some of those dimensions?

You know, I wish I knew why some people are able to keep working later years, and I would be the first to kind of say I think it's genetics. I think it's luck. I think it's— I do try to take care of myself. I try to exercise every day. I try to eat well. I try to get good night's sleep. And I think part of it is having a happy family life and having good relationships with your kids and your neighbors and being involved in what you deem to be some worthwhile things. But yeah, I think there are lots of things that combine. I honestly feel like I'm as productive now from a kind of an intellectual point of view as I have ever been in my lifetime, going back to my, you know, 30s and 40s and 50s. I'm still writing as much. I'm still, I'm still as curious. I will confess that on weekend afternoons, I, it's very It's very convenient to take a long nap. So physically, there may be just a little less kind of vitality, but I must say that I feel as well today as I did when I was in my 40s and 50s. My physician says that at my age, my chances of living 5 more years are equally as good as they were when I was 50. I do believe that for people in this generation, at the age of 50, your life is probably only about half lived. And I think that's been a wonderful change in our society. It's sad that a high percentage of people in their later years are having some cognitive challenges, and there's this rampant kind of Alzheimer's dementia kind of phenomenon. I'm hoping we'll find some answers to that. But for those of us who are just, you know, lucky and able to not be in that situation, people should not be living in fear of the last couple of decades of their life.

It's a really great point, that. And if you take it one step further and think about the length of your adult life, with your adult life starting roughly 20, 21, by 50, you know, you're, you're just a bit over a third into your adult life. Yes, on that measure. And that, that's a really significant reframe versus what a lot of the conventional thinking is around age and decelerating at around 50. You know, if you're, if you're less than, or if you're only a bit over a third into your adult life, you should be just getting started at 50.

That's right.

Just like you did. So yeah.

Yeah. And I think it, I think that all becomes a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, if you, if you think that, you know, life should end at 65 and you should retire and go sit on the beach and clip coupons, then I, you know, my observation has been that my friends who have done that, they begin to shrink and they begin to decline. And in contrast, the ones who don't do that and who get themselves actively involved in some worthwhile thing, whether it's charitable, whether it's some philanthropic cause, as long as they're active and kind of there's a purpose for them getting up in the morning, uh, it seems to really prolong life to a much— in a much healthier way.

Yeah, that's a, that's a really great point as well. The way in which you think about the arc of your life will largely determine the arc of the life.

Yeah, yeah, I believe it.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Jack. That's really interesting. Let's, uh, Before we go into some of the specifics of, you know, your view on leadership and leadership development, I would love to just zoom back a little bit to your experience as the president of— was it Provant? Am I pronouncing that correctly?

You know, we called it Provant. Provant was a, a company that was initially kind of the brainchild of some people who had done industry consolidations. They looked at the training and development industry and said, wow, this is a highly fragmented industry. Why wouldn't it make sense to bring these companies together? They turned to me and asked if I would serve as a consultant with them. I agreed to do that and help them to kind of find 21 really good companies. It was all done at a difficult time. It was in the 2008, 2009 timeframe. And, you know, there were some properties that they overpaid for. And so from a financial point of view, it began to have some real challenges and ultimately unraveled. I would say that probably merging companies in one industry can be fairly simple. Merging companies in the intellectual property world a whole different problem because people feel so passionately about their intellectual property, their ideas, that merging them together is a little bit like merging religions, and it, it's not always an easy fit. And so some of the hoped-for synergies, uh, this did not ever occur. And I think in hindsight, maybe we should have been able to see that, that where this group had had success in the past was merging ambulance companies who had a regional or a local presence, and you could combine them and use common technology and buying power, and you could, you really could combine those in a meaningful way. Companies in our, you know, our kind of industry are a different matter.

And is that because of the differing viewpoints on leadership and the IP that could be contradictory, or at least not synergized?

Yeah, I think so. And I just think that there are— there it is a much more difficult integration where you're trying to integrate different philosophies and different points of view and different mindsets, and rather than just merging different tangible products or, or, or, or different regional territories where they're all doing the same thing.

What were some of the big lessons about the overall leadership development industry that you took from that experience? I imagine it was fruitful.

Well, I think the big lessons were that, that people become very enamored with, with their, their own product, their own philosophy. They have real passion about that. For them to kind of effectively market and represent differing points of view and different, different disciplines is a big stretch. And it isn't that there was antagonism or, you know, any kind of warfare going on between these organizations. It's just that they had a hard time really fully adopting and integrating their sales function, their marketing function with others. And so I just think it was a good lesson.

And then at Zenger Folkman, your current organization, what is the view on leadership, I suppose, that you personally take? And I'm assuming that aligns to the view that you have at Zenger Folkman, but yeah, I would love to hear about just your definition or description of leadership.

I think our current take on leadership is that maybe it's a paraphrasing of what Benjamin Franklin said, that there are 3 hard things in life. One are diamonds, quartz, and knowing about yourself. I think what we fundamentally stand for is that effective leaders need to have a good understanding of their impact on their colleagues, particularly their subordinates. And that kind of self-knowledge doesn't come from them going through psychotherapy or going through counseling. It doesn't involve them going off to retreats and, and, you know, practicing yoga. The kind of knowledge that they need is to understand the impact that they have on people with whom they work. And the best way that we found to give them that kind of insight is through a 360-degree feedback process where we're using some empirically derived instrument. You can help them get a good grasp of their strengths and the things that they don't do quite so well. Our research has clearly pointed out that the most effective leaders are certainly not perfect people, but tend to possess a handful of strengths. And it's not the same, it's not the same strengths from person A to person B. But of the maybe 19 competencies that would typically be measured by a traditional 360-degree feedback process, if leaders can be really, really good at 4 or 5 of those, they almost invariably will be seen as being outstanding, kind of stellar performers in their company, in their industry. And if you can help leaders understand their strengths and magnify their strengths and be confident in using their strengths, that's the biggest gift that you can give to them. Now, for about 20% of leaders, our data is pretty clear. They are often doing some 1 or 2 or 3 things that clearly detract from their performance and drag them down. And until you can help them see that and help them overcome that, they're never going to have the kind of success that they would otherwise have. But that opportunity to see what they do well and what they, if they are having some flat sides, some problems that really just are millstones around their neck, which kind of, they drown. And the most recent research that we've done is just understanding why is it that in an economic downturn, certain group of executives gets terminated? What do those executives who were terminated have in common? And what we find is what they have in common is they weren't coachable. They weren't receptive to feedback. They weren't receptive to information from their bosses and their colleagues. About what they were doing that kind of detracted, and they just, because of their arrogance and their complacency, their careers are derailed.

Have you found, Jack, that 360s specifically are one of the most useful tools or interventions for, you know, increasing leadership ability, or If so, why? And if not, what are some of the most useful tools or interventions?

We have found that the 360 is one of the most useful tools. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it's probably the most economical, the most— it's personal, it's empirical. And if people enter into it and into the process with the right mindset, they can derive enormous benefits from it. And so because self-knowledge is so valuable and the kind of self-knowledge is the knowledge of your impact from, you know, to other people. And so you need, You need external sources of that information. It can't— it isn't very successfully derived just by me sitting cross-legged on the floor and kind of humming my mantra together. I mean, its best comes from the objective inputs from others. And I think that willingness to seek feedback and ask for feedback and to to reflect on it and to process it and then to kind of implement it where, where appropriate. That's what really seems to be the hallmark of leaders who succeed.

And just to quickly describe for folks how it works, could you give a quick breakdown on what a 360-degree feedback process looks like?

The 360 process is, is a process in where you In our case, what we did was to empirically create an instrument that we looked at some 2,000 behavioral items and said, when you use those items, which seem to be most consistently able to separate the high-performing from the average or poor-performing leaders. So if you can create an empirically, you know, derived instrument. And then you can give that instrument to a number of the manager's colleagues. And by a number, we average maybe 14 or 15. And that would be usually kind of the manager himself or herself, that, that person's boss, their, their manager, it would be 5 or 6 of their peers, it would be all of their direct reports, which may be 6 or 7 or whatever number. So on average it's 14 or 15, but we've had a dean of a medical school who invited 400 of the medical school's employees to complete a questionnaire about him. So it can range, you know, wide ranges. But the beauty is that if you get all this data and you have very specific questions, usually about 40 or 50, You can't have too many questions because people tire and there's a survey fatigue that can set in. But then if you give them a chance to answer 2 or 3 open-ended questions about what this person's strengths are, what their flat sides might be, what would be most important for them to work on in order to be more effective in their current role. If you combine all that information in a, in a positive way, and you give that information to the, the participant, it's amazing how many times all you need to do is to, is to help them be sure they understand it and then just to step aside. And often they will make a lot of mid-course corrections on their own. Sometimes it really helps to kind of meet with them and have a coach periodically talk with them and help them create a personal plan of development. And so that creation of a plan of development is, is key. And then over time to kind of have some sustainment tools, some monitoring devices, some ongoing pulse surveys or a repeated 360-degree feedback process which monitors their progress. So the, the whole thing can be put together in a very positive way. Now, are there people who have had bad experiences with 360s? Sure. Our, our observation is that it's very often when some outside firm slaps one together administers it, sends it to them by email. No follow-up, no help in implementation, no ongoing sustainment processes, and people just look at it as being kind of an exercise in kind of in futility, and it's up on the shelf, not doing anything. But I would say that it probably is potentially the most economical, valid, practical leadership development tool that we have.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Thanks for listening to Flow Research Collective Radio. Before we dive back into our conversation, there's something to consider. It may be that today we are under-challenged. We're drowning in and comfort. Now, in his book Antifragile, statistician Nassim Taleb pointed out something that's of key importance. Quote, undercompensation from the absence of challenge degrades the best of the best. The best horses lose when they compete with slower ones and win against better rivals. Now, put another way, who we could be, or our highest potential, is squandered by safety, coddled by comfort. If you want to train with us at the Flow Research Collective, we will require boldness. But what's life without a little adventure, right? To learn more about how you can get more flow in your life and achieve your professional and personal goals in less time and with more ease, go to getmoreflow.com. If you're a good fit, we'd love to train with you. All the best.

Is it something that you recommend, Jack, even for people who don't have direct reports or even managers? For example, solopreneurs, would you suggest they do it with vendors they work with or with peers even?

And the answer is absolutely. If people don't have lots of direct reports, we have a program that we've designed for individual contributors. It measures very much the same things, and people find enormous value from that. And the earlier in people's careers that they can do this, the more valuable it is to them because it helps shape their early, early path. In talking to a very senior leadership development professional a few years ago, I said there, you know, if you were doing all this again for your organization, what would you do differently? And without hesitation, she said, I would begin earlier. We wait too long in people's careers. So the average age of participants that go through our process is 46 years. And, and the average supervisor gets appointed to her or his position when they're about 27 or 28. And you think about that, there's this big gap very often between when they're first put into some managerial supervisory position, and when they get any real development and help about what does this really mean to you and how should you be changing your behavior to adjust to this new role, many years have gone by. That's sad.

That's a, that's a great point. That's a great point in general. Yeah, just don't wait too long. I think a concept that I find really valuable is instead of just thinking about the time value of money, which people are very familiar with, the fact that, you know, if you can hold money for a long time, you can compound it by getting interest. Thinking about the time value of time in a similar way is a big one. In other words, if you front load certain interventions or learnings or you know, change mechanisms earlier in life, you get to ride the benefit of those for a longer period in the future. So I think that's a really great point and definitely something, yeah, that I'll recommend to all the listeners. I wanted to ask you about coaching, Jack, because, you know, coaching is such a buzzword. People hear about coaching all the time. Everyone hears about instead of being a manager, being a coach. But it's one of those topics that I think people actually feel a little bit murky about even though they hear about it. It a lot. So I would love for you to describe how you see coaching and how you see its application within the overarching activity of management.

Yeah, well, certainly if you were to look at the overall field of leadership development and say what's been one of the major changes that has occurred, it has been this— the advent and greater utilization of coaching. I can recall 25 years ago being in a meeting with chief learning officers where one of the first people making a presentation said, yeah, we use coaching. We identify our bottom 5% of our leaders and we make coaches available to them. And some of us just kind of grabbed our foreheads and said, oh my goodness gracious. But years ago, coaching was primarily done for people who were in trouble, were kind of, you know, nearing, you know, being terminated. And it was an attempt to rescue them. And now that's completely changed. And we're using coaching the way the world of athletics uses it, you know, that the best people retain coaches and hire coaches to help them get even better. So the use of it has greatly increased. I think the reason for that is that the practice of coaching tends to put it, make operational a lot of the principles of leadership that we've always known were important. Treating people with respect, understanding what they're thinking, not just what you're thinking. And conveying that respect to them by how you deal with them. What we found recently is an added dimension to this whole coaching question, Ryan, and that is that almost all of the attention so far on coaching has been on the coach and the coach's knowledge and the coach's technique and the coach's skill set. Not very much attention has been paid to the recipient. What can we do to help people become more coachable? And how can we measure that coachability? How can we show them the behaviors that they can practice, which will make them more receptive to coaching and will therefore kind of guarantee the success of the whole coaching process? To a much higher, much higher degree. We have this good friend, Kevin Wildey, who used to be the Chief Learning Officer of General Mills. And he had done some research at a time when General Mills went through a layoff of, and they had to lay off several of their key executives. And he came to us and said, you know, can you help me in hindsight figure out What was it that was in common with these people who were laid off? And what we discerned was that, in a word, they were not coachable. Their managers had tried to kind of convey concerns, but they had not been receptive. They had not listened. They had not acted. They had not thought about the messages and what the underlying issues were. And so it was their lack of being coachable that ended up in their being terminated. And so we think that this— we probably have this opportunity to pay more attention to both sides of the equation. The skills of the coach, the knowledge of the coach, the process the coach uses. Yep, those are all important. But we can also do some things on the receiving end to help people who are being coached be better prepared for that.

That's a really great point that you very rarely hear emphasized. I also really, really like the way you said that, to paraphrase, leadership operationalized is essentially coaching in a sense, you know, the, the managing in a way that embodies strong leadership ends up in coaching. It's kind of what I'm concluding from that, which is a really, really great way to put it. So I love that point. You know, Jack, obviously you've been through the gambit of leadership development initiatives and trends and, you know, buzzwords and things like that. One of the things I've noticed in the industry a lot is that people tend to get sucked into topic-driven sales. Where there'll be a hot topic, whether it's psychological safety or trust or D&I was a big one. In some ways, flow, in some ways can even be guilty, I think, of that, or certain people can use flow as a hot topic, so to speak, to sell against. And so, I'm curious what over the years you've seen stand true and continue to hold intrinsic value versus what things have turned out, in your mind at least, to be more transient or fad-like within leadership development in general?

Well, you're certainly correct that there have been a long series of books written by gurus, and you know, between you and me, I don't think that's going to stop. We're going to always have people who are intellectually curious and trying to make greater sense of the world that they're facing. But it does feel from someone with my vantage, I guess, looking back, that things do seem to kind of keep going round and round and round and keep coming back. You know, the fundamental practice of good human behavioral psychology, the fundamental treatment of people with dignity and respect, The fundamentals of the best leaders perceiving themselves to be the servants to the people that they manage rather than to being their master. Those are so basic and so fundamental and they don't seem to change very much. I think we've certainly seen some marvelous changes in my lifetime. When I was a graduate student in business school, there was lots of emphasis on command and control and, you know, and what some would say the hard stuff. But it's really the soft stuff, it's the hard stuff. And it's the helping managers to realize that it's how they treat people, it's how they, how they deal with people that is, is so crucial. You know, it's fascinating that Google did this big study of, you know, successful employees in the Google organization back in 2017. And their conclusion was that their most effective contributors were not the ones who necessarily got the highest grades in school or came from the most prestigious colleges, but it was the people who had empathy, compassion, concern, who were good listeners, who were collaborative, who were team players. It wasn't possessing, you know, the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math. It was possessing the human qualities. And they went on to kind of, you know, do another project just to say some of their best output didn't come from their, their most prestigious and brightest scientists. It was the— what someone might say— the B teams who practiced good interpersonal relationships within the team itself who were the most productive. And so, you know, I, I think we've made progress. We continue to make progress. I think the recent interest in Greater diversity and inclusion is a healthy thing, but the, the bedrock fundamentals of managers treating their colleagues with the utmost of dignity and respect is really the heart of good leadership.

That makes, that makes total sense. I think that's a great point, and something just for me to clarify is it's not that trust or flow or diversity and inclusion or any of these things aren't important. It's the singular focus on them and especially the focus on them as a sales tool, I think, that can be more along the lines of the transient approach. And one other thing, Jack, that I wanted to ask you about is succession planning. And I heard a quote recently, which I thought was really interesting. Made me pause and think, which was that the number one client of the entrepreneur is their successor. And I hadn't thought of that before. I'd always thought obviously it's the actual clients or customers or the team, or maybe it's the owners, the shareholders. But I thought that was a really interesting way to put the number one client of the entrepreneur is their successor. And so I'm curious what you have seen lead to really good succession planning such that an organization can continues to thrive, and what you've seen lead to the opposite of that.

I, I'm going to be a little cautious in what I say, only because I am not a good example of, of, uh, of one who's really found the right answer to this. You know, the, the plight of finding successors, particularly in a smaller organization, you know, like our own is that you're not always financially in a position to kind of create a bench of really capable people waiting in the wings for some senior position to emerge. I mean, everybody needs to be productive. And I've been thinking a lot about this lately because of my own situation. And I think part, you know, part of the challenge is that The organization is often founded on some ideas, some concepts, some good research, and the founders kind of try to magnify that and they expand upon it. And most of the organizations that I know, you know, really do have a challenge in finding a wonderful second product to kind of join join their original claim to fame. And so finding, finding thought leaders, I think maybe we haven't been creative enough about how we do that. Maybe rather than believing we can go out and hire somebody who's a clone, or who has the same skill set we do, only but they're 40 years younger, Maybe we need to kind of team up with people who are, who are thought leaders and really kind of work in tandem with them and introduce them to our clients. Maybe we don't, we don't believe that we're gonna find the exact image of the original founders to come in and take their place, but there'll be a, there'll be new, new people with different skills. And they will build on what the founders really created and lead the organization into an even better place. But it won't be because they were kind of replicas of the original thought leaders who began that organization. It is indeed one of the toughest problems, and I would be very remiss and very, very duplicitous if I told you that I thought I'd found the answer to it, because I, I'm not a good example of a person who's found the answer.

Got it. Well, no, thanks for sharing that, and that makes sense. There's a really interesting concept that I've heard that says that every organization usually has one source, or one or two sources, and usually it's a, it's a founder or a co-founder And the person who is the source has this sort of instinctive, intuitive ability to know how to operate the business and lead it to success. And what this concept says is that when the business is cut off from its source, it can really quickly go south. And the only way to have it not go south is to install someone and let them become the new source by really letting them stand themselves up. Rather than getting caught in that middle purgatory sort of land. So, yeah, I thought that's an interesting point. What have you seen as characteristics of organizations or leaders that have made workplaces you've observed particularly high in access to flow state or engagement throughout your career?

I certainly don't have the expertise that you do, Ryan, on the question of flow. My observation would be that the, that the leaders who have been most effective in, in creating that general quality have been those who were capable of creating a safe environment in their organization where people felt that they were valued and respected. They weren't constantly looking over their shoulder. I think that flow state really occurs most frequently when there is this genuine feeling of safety. I think it happens when there's also this general feeling of camaraderie and respect. I've been impressed recently with what strong influence one person can have on a company's leadership team. If they bring into that team contention, conflict, you know, confrontation, even though they don't intend to kind of change the culture or change the climate, I think that behavior does seem to me to be very contagious. And so I think the other quality is this positiveness and the creation of a culture of positivity rather than one of confrontation and conflict.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, overall optimism and cohesion. Um, final question, Jack, is a question about a question that we like to ask everyone with academic expertise who comes on the podcast. We call it the research genie question, and, uh, it goes as follows. So if you could instantly click your fingers and have all the academic research done to answer any question that you've been pondering, what would the question be that you would immediately have the answer to?

You know, I think the question that I would love to have the answer to, and that is, what is it that, that we can do to help more people at a younger age have higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence? And I know that there's been a lot of, you know, talk about it and a lot of jokes about it, but I, you know, I believe, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that one of the keys of a strong leadership team is the level of confidence that they feel in themselves to make decisions and to act and to lead. I see that the difference in young people It happens that I have 37 grandchildren and 15, 20 great-grandchildren. And I am amazed at how at a fairly young age, you see some that have this wonderful inner feeling of confidence and self-esteem in contrast to a few others who don't. And if I had some magic potion that I could share, it would be how do you enable everyone to have that, that inner feeling of, of peace, of confidence, of contentment with themselves, and the courage to step out into uncomfortable territory, to not always think that life has to be comfortable, but to have the confidence that if I step into an uncharted territory, I'll find a way to progress. I'll find a way to get through it. I'll deliberately tackle hard things because I know I can do them. Uh, it's, it's all that Carol Dweck research on, on mindset and, and how do you help young people have that growth mindset and not, you know, not a, not a, a fixed mindset. That's, that's the question I'd love to have the answer to.

No, that makes sense, Jack. That's a great question. And, uh, yeah, again, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and time and I just want to say, you know, I find it just incredibly inspiring that you're still getting after it. And yeah, it's really inspiring to me personally, and I know it will be to a lot of our listeners as well. So thanks for setting such a great example for us all. And where can people learn more about you and the work you do?

Well, they can go to our website, which is www.zengerfolkman.com. There's a lot on our website. We've published some books. We publish regularly in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and LinkedIn, and a few other places. So if you Google us or use a search engine, you can find more than you really wanna know probably about what we do and what we think.

Super, perfect. I'm sure people will go that way. And again, thanks so much for your time, Jack. Really appreciate it.

You're welcome, Ryan.

Alrighty, take care.

You bet. Thank you.

Bye.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Summer's here, things are heating up, and ice cream is calling. But imagine that instead of just getting to enjoy ice cream, you had to run an ice cream business. Meet Nikki Schroeder, a recent graduate of Zero to Dangerous and Chief Revenue Officer of High Road Craft Ice Cream. Nikki runs the fastest growing ice cream manufacturer in country. Before training with us at the Flow Research Collective, her life was understandably hectic. Running the company, taking care of her family required Nikki to be on her feet nonstop. As she put it after finishing training with us, quote, Zero to Dangerous has given me powerful peak performance tools for me to take back control of my life and find balance in my hectic lifestyle. Now we're delighted that you got so much out of Zero to Dangerous, Nikki, and we wish you nothing but success with your business. If you're listening in, you want more control balance and flow in your life, come train with us. Just go to getmoreflow.com. That's getmoreflow.com. All the best.

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