#43: Peter Barron Stark on Workplace Excellence

Hi, I'm Sy Wakeman, and you're listening to No Ego, a podcast where we teach you how to ditch the drama, end entitlement, and drive big results in your workplace and your workplace. Welcome back, listeners. I am thrilled to have Peter Stark on the podcast today. He is the founder of Peter Behrens Stark, a wonderful organization where he has for over 20 years Been really focused on executive development, engagement, some really incredible consulting work, all with the goal of just trying to create workplaces where people are excited about coming to work and customers love doing business with these organizations. So welcome, Peter. Love that you have agreed to come on.

I am so excited to be working with you today.

Awesome, awesome. We have some very cool things to talk about. And in full disclosure, the reason I get privilege of having Peter on my podcast, I have an even greater privilege in that Peter is part of a group that I participate in. It's a mastermind group where informally a group of us have come together. And just like I tell all of you to make sure you're surrounding yourself by really smart people who will give you great feedback and push you, push you, push you to think bigger and do better, um, Peter is one of those people in my life. So Some of you ask who I go to for my advice, and you're about to hear from one of them. So Peter and I have been working together in that way for about 6 months. But Peter, I'd love to start right into some content. I know we've got some good history, but, that you can share about yourself. But content-wise, I'm really excited to hear about your 20 years of experience in executive and leadership development. I know one of the things your company does is a lot of 360s. And I do a 360 myself every couple of years. It's a nerve-wracking experience. It's always growth, but it's a bit painful at times. But what are your kind of top-of-the-line lessons you come out of after doing so many 360s with leaders?

There's 2 pieces that I pull from on this. One is the employee engagement surveys where I'm really looking at the data by department and by leader. And in every survey that we do, I'll tell you this, there's a spread. And the spread usually goes from 40% favorable response regarding the leader and their department to all the way up into the 90% favorable response. And the great question is always this. It's coming all from the same company. How can the data be so different? And the difference is individual leaders make a huge difference to the overall feeling of an employee saying, I really love coming to work. Or the other extreme goes like this. I don't get paid enough to put up with that crap. And so, that's one of the areas. And then, the second area I pull from is on these leadership 360s. I maintain a database with about 500 leaders in it. So, I'm able to look at what does the overall data look like. And I'm also able to look at what does the best of the best leaders look like, the very top 25%. And so, you say, what is that difference? And I'll just throw out one of them. In terms of the best of the best leaders, they are much better at being able to say, This is really good feedback. I need to hear it. And there's 1, 2, or 3 themes that I'm going to work on. And you are one of those leaders when you tell me every 2 years, I do one of those 360s and gain feedback on yourself. And I do that also and done that about every 12 to 18 months my whole career. The only thing I've ever— what I call it was kind of one where I altered significantly. The very first one I ever did, I actually had my wife contribute to it too. And that's probably the The only thing is it trains. I dropped her off from that feedback. I didn't need to know on 76 competencies exactly what she thought.

So— You know what's funny? I did the 360 once. I hired a different company and they had like friends fill it out. They had my kids fill it out. I'm like, come on.

Yeah,

it hurt because I'm thinking I'm a rock star at work. And then I hear some of the other things. But, you know, good feedback. I had to let go of my ego on that particular 360, especially because You can really get into this martyr thing. Well, like, I can't please everybody, so why even try? It's like, just go back to the themes and look at what you can improve and quit feeling sorry for yourself.

And so much of what you just said is exactly pinpointed. And so much about what your podcast is about, no ego, really is a huge difference that separates out the best of the best leaders. The ones who don't take feedback well, they actually have something that I call Popeye syndrome. And Popeye was famous for this line, I am what I am and I'm not changing. My boss is screwed up. My people are screwed up. HR is screwed up. And that's why I have to be the way I am. Whereas good leaders are really able to say, that's good feedback. I need to learn and I need to change. And I can do it actually really quickly. You watch me. Which really then demonstrates that I'm not going to let my ego be bigger than my brain.

I love that title because it's such a good description, the Popeye syndrome. The ego is so sophisticated that it can come up with seemingly sane responses or reasons or justifications why you won't change. And I've never heard it called that, but I run into that with leaders where it's like, well, I just am who I am. Or employees will tell me, well, I'm just bringing my whole self to work. I'm like, well, please bring just your evolved self to work. You know, this, this, I am who I am. Now, when I work with leaders, and I'm sure you do it too, there are some things hardwired you may never change, but you do have a responsibility to either overcompensate for that weakness or bring somebody in that can offset that. Or like, it doesn't mean that I can probably change my personality. One of the things I do is jump ahead very quickly when I'm hearing information. And skim some of the details. Now, I can work on improving that and pausing. But what mostly helps me is I have a chief of staff in a lot of meetings who asks detailed questions. And if she's speaking, I just be quiet because I know I'm skimming. And so, it doesn't have to be you have to change who you are. But you definitely have to change how you show up in the world if you can to be more effective.

I don't ever want to change who you are. And I tell every client that I work with, I'm not going to change you because your core is who And so, if I use myself as an example, I'm a bottom-line results-oriented person. I'm going to say, Sy, what's the goal? How long are you going to give me to accomplish this goal? And I'm going to bring the plane in for an on-time landing. But what I do feel is critical for a leader's success is this answer to this question. When you open your mouth, do you move one step closer to your goal? And people are motivated to move in the direction that you're going.

That's a great question for self-reflection right there.

Yeah. I recently saw a woman in the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport going through TSA checkpoint, and she started to mouth off to the TSA agent, which they took her to secondary inspection and then to the private screening room. I just wanted to get a hold of her and say, when you said that little line, like, if there was a bomb in my bag, you're so slow, it'd probably go off before you found it. What exactly was your goal? Because if your goal was to get into secondary screening and then into private screening and then missed your flight, you were highly successful. But—

Yeah, it's like, are you moving closer to it or farther away from it? You know, one of the coaching questions we use a lot is, what is your goal? And then what's your current approach? And how's that working for you? Because a lot of times people go, my goal is to motivate my team. I'm like, well, what was your approach? Well, I stood and screamed at them for 30 minutes. I'm like, well, how's that working for you? They're like, well, it's not. I'm like, well, what part of that would you like to change? It can be that simple. It can just be that simple.

Yeah. And what's neat, whether you're an individual contributor or whether you are leading a team of 10, 50, or 100 people, that concept of when I open up my mouth, do I move closer to the goal is really applicable to all of us. And so, I go back to, I'm a bottom-line results-oriented person. But sometimes the best 2 minutes of my day or 5 minutes of my day was keeping my mouth shut and just listening to someone and valuing their opinion.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So as you're working with people on 360s, you know, what's kind of the percentage point? Do you say, you know, there are some— a key difference maker is if people can, you know, take that feedback and if they're willing to move beyond ego and really self-reflect. And I worked with Aaliyah recently and he got tough feedback, I think far beyond what it was due, because he got feedback from a board that were holding him accountable for some things in my perspective weren't even his. And he basically sat there and just said, thank you. Thank you. I will look at that. Thank you. And it was amazing to watch him just self-reflect when he could have blamed his circumstances or found it unfair. But I also work with a lot of leaders, whether it's Popeye syndrome or something else. They just aren't going there. But since I don't have this database or do enough of it, do you kind of have a sense of like, do, you know, 30% step up and grow and, you know, others stay the same or others feel like— what happens? Do you have a sense of the trends that happen after you are involved with some great coaching with them?

So, I'm going to go back to it's— I really feel half of the world is pretty good at taking feedback and acting on it. And the other half got whacked with Popeye. But you just mentioned There's one example that I hope all of your people listening to this podcast will take out of this. And that is, if you have the ability to say, this is good feedback, and I may have not handled this right in the past. And so you have this president who got feedback from the board and said, I'm going to actually do something different because I have not communicated with this board as well as I could have. And on these 3 types of decisions, I should have involved the board more and sooner rather than coming in and telling them what action to take or what my recommendation was.

That's exactly right. Exactly. He took accountability for every piece of it. And his development plan showed that. It wasn't like they're overreacting. It was like, gosh, that tells me I need to up the cadence of my meetings with the board.

Right. So, this president is actually going to do even better with the board coming out of this. He's going to have an even stronger relationship with the board than if these concerns had never surfaced. So, you shared that president-board type of example. I've worked with 2 in the last year who have gotten fired from the board. And you say, why? The board gave feedback. It wasn't accepted. In fact, one of them told me the board is wrong and I'm having a difficult time educating them, which never usually goes real well. And the board finally said, we don't think we can communicate with this person anymore. We've tried. We tried to get them a coach. This is not working. And therefore, we're going to let them go. A fun example, and this is probably about an 8-year-old example. But I worked with a CEO. Board hired me to work as a consultant. as an executive advisor to this particular person. And I said, you know, if you don't change, what's going to happen? And this person looked at me and he goes, I'm probably going to get fired. I said, are you okay with that? And he said, I am because at least I'm going to say I did it my way. And I thought, so let me just ask a question. You've got a pretty good position here and I'm going to pick a number. Let's say you make $500,000 a year. If you get fired as a physician leader and you have to go back to be a physician, what's going to be the difference in your salary? And he said, it's about $250,000. And I said, so, how much more do you want to work here? And he said, I'd like to work here another 10 years. And so, I said to him, then, it really is a question. Is it worth $2.5 million for you to change? And this guy looked at me and he said, I don't know.

That's how expensive the ego is, right? Right.

So, the next morning, he called me. It was like 8:01. And he said, I need you to know That may have been one of the best questions anybody's ever asked me. And he said, my wife actually told me to call you and tell you it is absolutely worth my time to get better.

But I think the ego does such bad math, right? So when you're in ego, you'd rather be right than successful. Like you'd, you'd literally like to prove the board wrong by losing $2.5 million. And here's the deal about those lessons. You get another physician leadership job, guess What you get to learn all over again. The lesson doesn't go away. So I, I'm like, I learned early in my life, like, just learn the lesson. Otherwise it repeats itself and I'm tired of the lesson.

So I want to steal that one with you. And I'm even going to share that one with my 17-year-old. The ego does really bad math. So one of the takeaways for your listeners is this. If you can say 2 things, I screwed up, I don't think I should have handled it that way. Because the minute you say, I screwed up, my line is this: the target drops off your back. As long as you keep defending yourself, the target gets bigger.

That's such a great visual. I really want my listeners to pick up on that. Hold that thought, because the inability to say, I screwed up, that's the ego needing to be right over being successful. And people don't get fired for screwing up. They get fired for being uncoachable or unwilling to say, I'm sorry. Like, the most successful person in the world is the one who acknowledges it. And as a therapist, I would teach people all the time, a repair attempt isn't just saying, I'm sorry. It is admitting specifically what you did and showing insight. I screwed up. I now see I could have communicated more regularly, preemptively with the board. Insight. And then it says, what can I do to make this right by you? Where I'm asking for a repair attempt and then you make the amends. If you get skilled in just the ability to say, I screwed up, can you help me? Or how can I make this right? You can live fearlessly because you can make all the mistakes you want. You know, honestly, you don't want to make more than your fair share, but you can make all the ones you want. And with that, you get such forgiveness because all people want to know is that you have insight, that you see it, that you That you acknowledged it. So, I love that.

So, you hit the second one that I was going to hit. And that was, I screwed up. Number 2, ask for help. It's really neat if— and this is kind of a fun one because a lot of people's ego won't let them ask for help. And so, if I have the ability to say, you know what? I got a problem and I need your help, is most people will go out of your way to help you. So, 2 great takeaways. And then, I'm going to add the third. Based on the feedback you receive, take action. Do something different. So, thank the people for the feedback and then go. And my favorite line is, you usually don't have to change much to be seen as a great leader who really takes feedback well. And when you talked about that, you know, I'm going to quit. Okay, what's the first thing you're going to have to do at the next company? You're going to have to change a lot more than you would have if you've just stayed there and changed these 1 or 2 themes. Because the next company for sure is not going to put up with that crap.

It's so true. Learn the lesson in front of you so that it doesn't keep getting presented to you. I think the universe just presents the lesson louder and louder and louder until you learn it. Because my weird view of the world is that you're here to burn off your ego, and so the universe helps you with that, and it will just keep coming back to you time and time again. And I think that's so counterintuitive. In fact, I use this technique even when I'm not getting the feedback. But let's say somebody's really schooling me on something, or, you know, over-presenting me with information. Presenting something that it's just basically agreeing with what they're saying and ask, you know, what's one thing I could do differently that would really improve the situation right now? And it, in a weird way, you getting out of ego gets them out of ego. Because when you said the target gets bigger, if I can't help you understand or see what I'm trying to tell you, and you ignore that, that ignites my ego. It punches my ego in the face because I'm like, oh, you are not going to not hear this. I'm a board member, or I'm You know, your boss. So when you're in ego, what it does is it ignites others' egos. If you want to get out of— if you want somebody else out of ego, you go first and move out of ego, and then it creates all this space in the room for them to move out of ego naturally. You really can control others more than you think.

And what's neat is if you can't take feedback, there are certain types of people who will keep what I want to call strong ego, and that is, I'm going to keep telling you when this is an issue, and I'm going to keep this in your face, and you're going to have to make A decision. You want to change. There's a second type of behavioral style in conflict that just what I want to call withdraws and doesn't deal with it. And what they do is they work around you. They just won't work through you. And I always say, if you got a boss that's one of those, or you got a partner or a significant other that's one of those, and you feel that all of a sudden on that topic they go silent on you, it's never a good thing. Because many times when they go silent, they're strategically planning, whether it's personal or professional, you're just not in the future picture.

Wow, that's powerful. That's, that's powerful. I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, when they go silent, and it may feel good, like you may have like avoided this bombshell, but it's not good. It's just quiet.

It's one of those, if it was my boss or my wife or partner, I'd want to go back and say, I know we didn't get this resolved. And I know you're still not happy. Here's one or two things that I'm going to try and do differently. Will that help? Or is there something else you think I could do, my boss, in this situation? So, we're trying to reengage the conversation.

Love that. I know my listeners are eating this up. This is really, really good stuff. You wrote a whole book on why leaders fail. And I think you even called out 7 prescriptions for success or something like that, if I'm remembering correctly. And I'm assuming that's based just on these great themes you've just seen over and over, either help people engage and grow or really help people create their own future exit from the company or disaster. Is that what the book is about? It is.

And I actually want to kind of give you a piece of getting my ego out of the way is that I've written 11 books, 9 in leadership and then 2 in negotiation skill, Going back to that principle of opening your mouth and moving one step closer to your goal. And on this last book in leadership I wrote on why leaders fail and the 7 principles of success, part of the reason I wrote it is because it's really different. And although there's like 2 billion books on leadership success, there's only 2 out there that talk about why leaders fail. And so, I thought I was really onto something and was— it's kind of like I've skied up a slope and taken the same chair each time. I'm taking a different mountain and a different chair. And what was fascinating to me is very quickly I realized that many of the people that I coach that struggle, they don't even want that book around them. It's like, everybody knows I'm failing, so I can't have a book that says Why Leaders Fail and the 7 Principles of Success. So, it's been kind of fascinating.

And not the book you want on your desk if you're not open and humble and have some humility. Yeah, exactly.

So, that was a kind of a wake-up lesson for me that I think next time I'm going back to the positive.

There's a reason those books are titled differently.

But I always say this to people is, you know, put it with like a brown shopping bag over it like we used to do in school as your book cover. But you really do want to look at this because I really do lay out what gets a leader into either getting their career frozen, getting something taken away, or getting fired. And then, the second half of each chapter is exactly what leaders do. So, I want to leave your leaders and your independent contributors with a couple of just what I want to call those key points that come out of that book.

I would love that. Take your time. We got time. Okay.

So, a couple of— one's going to be easy and then some are going to be what I want to call, I haven't thought that through. And that's a really interesting point. So, one of them, the easy one, is the best of the best leaders have a very clear, compelling vision of the future. And what's interesting is that all leaders have visions of the future. Every one of them does. And so, sometimes we think about really negative people and we say, well, they're not visionaries. No, they may be an even better visionary than the positive people because they actually tell it to more people, influence more people. But number one, the great leaders have a very compelling positive vision. And when I use the word vision, it's just a fancy word for a clear mental picture of the outcome. And my best analogy is If some of your listeners love doing jigsaw puzzles, one of those 1,000, 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, there's always like a quarter of the population that love those. I hate them because I always get like 5 or 6 pieces strung together. It took me 2 hours. And then I look at the box top and my only thought is, why would I be duplicating the effort? I mean, it's not going to be a surprise. When you get done, you got the end result staring at you. And there's one of 3 visions. Number one is a positive vision. Tomorrow is going to be even better than it was today. And somebody's going to walk up and say, you really think you can make this better? You know, my whole career I've been focused on doing what leaders do. They continually improve the condition of the organization and the team every single day.

I love that definition. Continually improve the condition of the organization.

And so, somebody's going to walk up, a negative person, go, you really think you can do it here. And I actually do. And everything I've ever put my time and my energy to, I've been able to improve the condition. And I love looking at really negative people. And I'm really excited about you helping me do it. The second vision is vision of status quo. I just want to hang on to what I got. And so, if there's somebody listening and you're late in your career and you only got 5 years left, it's just like, I hope we don't get a new CEO because I don't need my cage rattled right now. I just want to hang on to what I got. And the third one is this, a negative vision. And it goes down like this. You think today's bad? Just wait. And they have a vision tomorrow's going to be even worse. So, to your listeners, if you know someone like that and let's say you're leading someone who has a negative vision, this next piece is not going to be motivating. They're never going to leave you ever. They don't like the company. They don't like your department and they don't like you. But they're not leaving. Sai, you and me, we would leave if we were on the Titanic. We're going on a Carnival cruise because that one's not sinking this week. And so, they're not leaving. And they're actually not leaving for 2 reasons. They have a vision that their next place would be worse. And number 2, no one that they've ever worked with, if they leave, is going to take them with them. So, part of being a great leader is holding people accountable to the right outcomes. And if we do that long enough, we usually end up with people also that have a positive So, that's a common one. Your listeners probably all heard that one. Here is one that's not so common. The best of the best leaders, that top 25%, they recognize one thing that many other people don't. And that is we are all on the same team. And you say, what does that look like in an organization? Is they do not get into cross-departmental conflicts. I

love it. Stop judging, start helping is what we say. And don't lend, you know, don't collude with people around it. It's like they're on our team. They're our colleagues. Let's help them get better.

And so, if any of your listeners have a desire to be promoted, the number one recommendation I have for them is to build a reputation. And when I say the word reputation, there's only 2 types. There's good ones and there's bad ones. The people that float in the middle are the ones that are not People good or bad. have no reputation. But to build a reputation for being a great cross-departmental communicator, collaborator, and team member. And if you think this through, why is because if I have a reputation for going across the organization as a great communicator, collaborator, cross-departmental team member, you have the possibility of being promoted. Because when we raise your name in the informal vote, there's a bunch of people go, you know, I've worked with her in the past and I would really feel good about her being my boss. If you have a reputation for protecting your own department, defending your own department, blaming other things on other people's departments, when your name gets floated in the informal vote, even though you might be the best technically qualified, you get taken down. So, the more you're able to see this, we're all on the same team. And really, you have that reputation of being supportive, helpful, collaborative, a good communicator, somebody who's able to defuse conflict, Increase it, your chances of being promoted significantly increase.

And I think that's so important. And with promotion comes more good that you can do for the organization. And so, you know, assignments being like, those of you listening, like, what is your mental picture of the future? And, and are you public with it? Because it's one for you to have a mental picture privately, but when you're out amongst the negative people, do you publicly advocate For the fact that, yeah, you, you're going to make it happen. There's also a lesson in there that folks, those folks with negative pictures aren't going to leave you. You've got to take action and be courageous. But I actually learned the second one personally. It was pretty devastating to me early in my career, Peter, following a 360 where I was told people found me intimidating. I'm like, I am the nicest person I know. I even asked the guy to check the name on the front cover of the 360 report to make sure he had the right report. I was in that much cluelessness. I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, I thought my job was to represent my function. So when I went into meetings with my other departments, my colleagues, it's like I fought for my department. I thought my job was representing my function, my functional area. And I even remember another guy got a promotion that I was more qualified for. And I went to my boss who was so honest. And I said, she said, Sai, You need to form better relationships with the colleagues in all these other departments because you don't have good relationships. You represent your people, but you don't think enterprise-wide. And your allegiance needs to be to your colleagues, not your people. And I'm like, what? So, he gets promoted. I'm so hip-hop and mad. I go in there and I'm like, what? And she goes, Sai, I gave you a 360 6 months ago. You ignored the feedback. You're trying to prove to me you're not intimidating. That feedback was from your peers. And so, when your name got floated up, no one wanted to work with you. They feared you getting more power in the organization because they figured you would just represent your part of the organization. I'm like, dang. So, I spent a year being a nicer, kinder, collaborative person, like getting to know my colleagues and working on joint goals, not just my goal. But where the and was instead of the or. And I got a promotion a year and a half later. And I said to my boss, I'm so glad you realized I wasn't such an ogre as you thought I was. And she goes, oh, no, be very clear. You were an ogre and you changed. And that's the only reason this time when I put your name up that people were willing to give you a chance. Exactly what you're saying stalled my career for almost 2 years.

Just the way that you said it in terms of the more I can build relationships across the organization versus protecting or supporting my people is— I said it earlier in the pod, but your job is not to protect or support your people as much as it is to improve the condition of the team and the organization. And one of the last concepts I want to leave your people with is great leaders keep their people uncomfortable, not comfortable. And what I mean by that, any change that you make in the organization— we're going to change a piece of software, we're going to change a procedure or a process. We're going to be more inclusive of bringing this other department in to work with us versus launching it and chucking it over the wall. Any change you make is going to be fought. And it's not comfortable. Even if I asked you to take a bracelet or a watch and take it from one arm to the other. If I asked you to get in the shower and wash from a different order or direction, it's going to mess with you. And you say, what's going on? Any change, any change, and it doesn't matter what it is, is not comfortable. It's uncomfortable. And Great leaders recognize that and are willing to work what I call through the J curve. When you start at the tip of the J, at the end of the J, as soon as you make the change, you're going to go into the belly of the J. Yeah. And it's going to meet resistance. The worst thing you can do as an individual or a leader is go backwards when you meet that resistance. Great leaders help people feel uncomfortable and work through it. And then, we can rise up the stem of the J to a level that we've never been in.

That's so wise. And in fact, in our work on accountability, when we ask high accountables how they got that way, they lay out for us a series of what they think developed their accountability for them in their lives. But the number one thing they cite is, I had leaders who kept me challenged. They not just challenged my work, but challenged my thinking, challenged my behavior, and didn't rescue me. So this combination And really builds accountability too, where if I challenge you and don't rescue you, don't enable you or try and slow change down for you, is super, super powerful. You know, just a side note to that, we're doing some research right now where we have found a difference in discomfort with change depending on your accountability level. So I'll just do a teaser for listeners of what we're going to talk about coming up. But people that rate high levels of accountability, so they're high accountable in their mindset, They get more uncomfortable when change isn't happening, and people that are lower in accountability get more uncomfortable when change is happening. So high accountables are like, "Why aren't we keeping up with the competition? And why aren't we addressing that disruption? And why aren't we changing the way we do business?" Low accountables get nervous when we start changing anything. So it's fascinating to me. I think listeners are now starting to see why a very exclusive group of people I let into advice. me on my business and my own mindset, and that you're one of them, Peter. This is incredible. I would be remiss if I didn't also ask you a question I get asked all the time. People ask me all the time, Sy, what's the difference between being confident and being in ego? And I know that you address that, the difference between, you know, kind of confidence and arrogance, and that great leaders know the difference. Can you speak towards that before we sign off? I just think it's such a great topic.

Yeah, so there really is a fine line line between being confident and being ego. And so when you used the example earlier where people resist feedback, and actually I'm gonna steal your example.

Are

you sure the name on this report is correct? Could you please, before I even look at this any further, can you go back and verify this is my data?

So Peter, that's how clueless I was. I kept, I kept tilting my head and the person sharing the feedback with me goes, is there something wrong? I go, I'm just trying to make sure I'm Cy. Is this Do you have the right report? And this poor guy, I mean, he's thinking, I have 6 coaching sessions with this woman.

It's a beautiful example. But I go back in terms of the confidence only. So I want to give in terms of people helping as a leader or as an individual, moving the ego out of the way. But one of the lines that will help you be confident and not arrogant is to be able to look somebody in the eye and truly mean this. That's good feedback. I need to hear that. Now, sometimes I've added to it, I didn't want to hear it. But it's good feedback and I need to hear it. So, number 2 is having the ability to say, I screwed up. Only confident people can do that. Arrogant people will defend what they did wrong to their death. And they are intending to outlive you. So, 1, that's good feedback. 2, screwed up. And then 3, I need help or I need your help. Only confident people can ask for help. With kids, I've just worked so hard to say, you know what, if you would ask for help, ask a teacher, ask another student, ask me. Asking people for help, most people, it takes a jerk to go, I'm not helping you. Most people are motivated by that. And number 4 is, I think, another piece of confidence that takes you totally away from arrogance is to be able to look at each one of the people in your life and each one of the people on your team Find the things that they do that make your life a joy and a pleasure and tell them, I just want to let you know you did a great job on this, and I need you to know I am so grateful you are on my team. Only confident people can do that. Arrogant people can't do that.

That is one of the best answers I have heard to that question. I love it. It's a great recap of our time together, Peter. People are going to be wanting to find you, so fill them up with information about your name of your book again and just how they can get involved with you on social media and, and your company.

Okay, so in terms of my website, it's peterstark.com. I do do a weekly blog where I'm talking about a leadership and most of the times a coaching issue. So they're all issues that I'm working on where people struggle with or are excelling at and put that out there. So peterstark.com. I am on Facebook, Peter B. Stark, and And the books, the easiest way to get them is on amazon.com. And the books I reference from today are going to be Why Leaders Fail and The 7 Prescriptions for Success. The second one, I wrote a book that's actually been out for 20 years now, and the publisher's republished it 3 times called The Competent Leader. And I tell people, if everybody did what's in those 19 chapters, I would be gainfully unemployed. And then, the third area that I pulled content from for this podcast is I wrote a book with random House called The Only Negotiating Guide You'll Ever Need. That book has sold over 150,000 copies. It was one of the more simple things I've written and absolutely caught me blindsided in terms of the impact it's had. In fact, usually the big publishers don't come back and say, we want to republish this and update it. In 2016, it came out for the second time, totally republished.

And that's what I love about your stuff, Peter, is it's research-based, it's evidence-based. I love how professional you are with— you're not just out telling your opinions. I mean, this is really good stuff from your work. Plus, you're just an amazing resource where whether it's a big publisher asking you to republish multiple times, or those of us in the business, the person we seek out advice from ourselves is you. So I couldn't be thrilled enough that you came on the— thrilled more that you came on the podcast. And speaking of that gratitude, I really appreciate I appreciate the help you've given me, and you're one of those easy people to come to and say, I need help. So I appreciate that. I think the assignment— I always kind of give one for self-reflection— is I love that question: when I open my mouth, did I further us towards our goal? And I'll add another piece to that: and did I improve the quality of life for the people around me? Did I, did I keep the quality of life high around here? So just notice your answer to that question, then that will tell you when you're in ego or not in ego. Because when you're in ego, you're going to be furthering your own agenda, not your goal. And when you're out of ego, you're going to be doing great stuff towards moving the organization forward. So with that, I encourage everybody to have a great week. And thanks again, Peter, for coming on.

Thank you so much. It was awesome. And I learned from you too.

Thanks. Thank you so much for joining the episode today. If you're If you're loving this podcast, just make sure that you check me out on Facebook and Instagram, and especially YouTube.