047: David Marquet – Turn The Ship Around! Going From Worst To First

One of the things we say is you got to make a choice, do you want to quote be good or get better? You can't do both, you can't do both, because the behaviors for being good are different than the behaviors again better. So what I said, so we want to get better mindset. Our leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to the Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk and I'm extremely excited once again for tonight's featured leader, it's Captain David Marquet. Before we get to that, I'd like to ask you all to go to my website learningleater.com. If you put your email address into the box at the very top of the website, there are some fun giveaways and conversations and things I'm going to do with people that opt in to that. So I'd encourage you to go do that. Come to tonight's episode, Captain Marquet, he served on the US Summary Enforce for 28 years. He was assigned to command the Nuclear Powered Summary USS Santa Fe at the time ranked last in retention and operational standing. He then realized the traditional leadership approach of take control, give orders, just simply wouldn't work. He turned his ship around by treating the crew as leaders, not followers, and giving control, not taking control. This approach took the Santa Fe from worse to first, achieving the highest retention and operational standings in the entire Navy. After Captain Marquet's departure from the ship, the Santa Fe continued to win awards and promoted a disproportionate number of officers and enlisted men to positions of increased responsibility, including 10 subsequent submarine captains. Further, having been on the ship, Stephen R. Covey said it was the most empowering organization he'd ever seen and wrote about Captain Marquet's leadership practices in his book, The Eighth Habit. Captain Marquet's book, Turn the Ship Around, is labeled by USA Today as one of the 12 best business books of all time. It's incredible. David's incredible. I know you guys are going to love this episode with the great David Marquet. Okay, David, I'm honored to be here on a learning leadership with you as our featured leader. I have a question to get us kicked off really fast, and it's around achievers and high achievers. You've been fortunate to spend time around a lot of high achievers and people that you've helped lead to become big time achievers and leaders themselves. What is one common characteristic or trait that those high achievers all have in common? Well, I think the high achievers have what I call a growth mindset, and they're all open to learning, which is the reason I love your show and calling the learning leaders show. I'll tell you a quick story. I, quote, knew everything about leadership when I graduated from the Naval Academy, based on my naval training, and I knew what leadership, quote, knew what leadership was, leadership was motivating my man, leadership was getting them to do what I wanted them to do, leadership was getting stuff done. And, you know, my story in a nutshell was I went to a submarine, which was not doing well, and oh, by the way, not the submarine I was trained to command, and I gave an order which couldn't be done, the guys try and follow it. And I realized, you know, the problem here is exactly what I think the solution is actually the problem. Me telling people what to do, which I thought was good, is the problem, and I had to stop telling people what to do. So let me sort of wrap that back to achievement. I think achievement is getting stuff done. Achievement is the stuff that you have to do. It's the production part of work. It's getting the machine running, it's seeing the clients, it's writing the contracts, it's delivering content, but leadership is building the capacity for achievement and other people. So in other words, it's almost like the derivative of achievement. So I viewed my job as the leader was not to just get stuff done because that just results in dependency between you and your team. They need you to get stuff done, but to build independence in the team, and this is what I now call leadership. Oh, I love that. That's incredible. Now let's let's take a step back, David and give you the floor to describe some of your life experiences up to this point. The key role you play in leadership amongst, you know, the influence you've had on so many now with both your time protecting and serving our country as well as now writing and helping other people. So I love to give you the floor to describe everything that you've done. Yeah, sure. Thanks Ryan. So like I said, you know, my aspiration when I was a young man was to be a submarine captain. I, I'm 55 now. So I grew up. It was kind of in the cold war. It was the 70s. It was depressing to be in America. You're probably too young to remember it. But you know, it was a terrible time. You know, the Soviets were kicking our butt. The Iranians had taken Americans hostage. The gas crisis had quadrupled the price of gas overnight. And, you know, every time we went to the Olympics, you know, East Germany would win more medals than we would. And it was really a bummer of a time. But my, my thing was I, oh, I'm going to be a submarine captain. You know, I read a lot of books. I was kind of a geeky kid. And amazingly enough, I actually became a submarine captain. And so I sent myself on the path of being a submarine captain. I wasn't able to academy. I learned quote leadership. And this idea that leaders tell people what to do. This is, this is, I could point to my Naval Academy book. It basically says leaders tell people what to do. And they get to actually tell people what to think, right? Well, we now know that leaders. There's no way to tell people what to think. There's no, no way to, to change people's thinking. You can't control people's thinking unless you're Obi-Wan Kenobi. These are not your droids. But, but this was the image I had. And so I show up on this. I get told, hey, I'm going to command one submarine. The last minute they ship you to another one, the USS Santa Fe. Now, the Santa Fe was what I call the Enron of submarines. Poor guys there were working hard, but they just were, you know, they weren't having a good time. They weren't getting it done. They were making a lot of mistakes. And the captain quit. He said, you know, I'm not really with the solution. And so the Navy said, well, we need to put a, we need to get a guy over here. March, hey, you've gone through school. Yeah, it's for this other ship. But, you know, we're going to put you on the Santa Fe. And so my story is just kind of starts with this. Hey, I just took over the worst performing ship. But oh, by the way, I don't know it. But oh, by the way, I'm trained to tell people what to do. And I tried that. Of course, it didn't work. I call that. So the traditional leadership is called no wall tell all leader knows everything gives all the orders. And I call this, you know, no, not to tell all right. Why would you tell them because that's what we did. That's what Navy captains do. Well, I got my guys together and said, hey, we're, we're screwed here because you know, I don't know the ship. And if you just do what I'm saying, you know, every once in a while, I'm going to say something wrong. And you're going to still do it. And so we agreed that I would not give any orders. And this is, I think, really important. Leaders too often say, oh, it's on you. I need you to be more proactive. I need you to take initiative. I need you to be empowered. I need you to be engaged. This is wrong. The leader needs to take the step first. And the step that I took was to stop telling people what to do. And this scares a lot of leaders. So that means giving up control, giving up certainty and moving to a place that's uncomfortable. But when you do that, you release this amazing amount of creativity and talent and passion and the people around you. It's there. You don't need to empower them. You just need to stop disempowering them. And so the book is about what happened. Of course, we didn't know whether it was successful spoiler alert. It was not only in getting the ship performing better, but in the long run, creating more leaders than any other submarine. And this is what I really talk about. It's the short term stuff while I was on the ship and how we did there. That's again achievement. And that's important. But I think it's sort of dwarfed by the magnitude of the people who went on to do amazing things, things that they weren't maybe sure that they could ever achieve in life. And this is what I now call leadership. So now I'm I've kind of become an annoying zealot of this idea that leaders got to stop telling people what to do and let people make their own decisions. It's an incredible book USA Today wrote an article of the 12 best business books of all time. And your your book, turn the ship around is one of those 12 and it's there's other classics on the list like the innovators dilemma. Now the effect of executive that's Peter Drucker's James Altasur is on the list. Dale Karna, you went how to win friends and influence people. I mean like these are these are classics. It's incredible and I got to believe that it's telling that you have written the book that's also a part of all these classics that have been around for a while in some cases. Yeah, thanks a lot and and I tell you right in the book was hard for me. I'm kind of this introverted engineering type, you know, ones and zeros of the language that I speak and it took me a long time for the book to come to life and I wrote it and wrote it and wrote it and finally it kind of came to life when I finally started getting vulnerable and sharing the fears and worries that were going on in my own head and I'll tell you there's like nothing physically hard about leadership but it's emotionally and psychologically very difficult because for me every time I went into the control room and I thought I knew what the answer was and I was looking at the chart and I just my instinct was just like point to the chart and say drive this ship here you know this is what we need to do why you guys going over here I had to suppress that instinct and say and ask my guys well you know hey what's the plan what are your intentions what what are we trying to achieve here and then go back to my stay room and wait five minutes and come back out and say hey what did you guys come up with and I was like well I think maybe we should be going over here like okay well we intend and we change the language we said okay look say these words I intend to I love these words and they were really powerful so my guys will start saying Captain I intend to submerge the ship and tend to load us for people and intend to reposition south of the silent and then we'd have a conversation about why they thought that was the right thing to do and I am really a big fan of the idea that the leader has to take the step back first the leader has to give control first too many times I see people say well I'm gonna give John more authority as soon as they demonstrate that they're ready for more authority how could John demonstrate more authority if you never give them the opportunity to to practice with authority the leader has to step back first the leader has to say you know John I'm gonna give you a little bit more decision making I want to see how it goes but it's not like John and then disappears you keep the communication open that's why this I intend to work because the decision rested with them but the communication still came to me and in those communications John says hey I intend to load a torpedo okay well why well because of this okay how are you gonna make sure it's safe because of that and you have a conversation and you understand is John ready for more leadership is John ready to make more decisions that's the job of the leader this is this is one of my favorite topics David so I love that we're talking about it so you're really big I know on turning followers into leaders and what that means to me is that means training them to think not just blindly obey so how my question is how do you maintain discipline and chain of command principles while expecting people to think be curious kind of have a mind of their own when like you said in the past the military is not always like that there's there's you know there's chain of command well you know I tell you what to do when you do it and you're you're kind of going against the grain so I'm curious about that aspect of it when it comes to maintaining discipline yeah so I never really had a problem with discipline what I the way I thought about it was I wanted the following two things number one I want to distribute a decision making because it's the giving people the ability to make decisions which invokes the thinking right if you just have to show up to work and do what you're told there's no reason to bring your brain to work so you said they're daydreaming so if you want your people to think you have to give them decisions to make now the problem is part two I also wanted unity of effort I wanted the ship moving in the same direction I wanted everyone marching with the same ultimate output and so that comes from what I call organizational clarity or really understanding our purpose or why or the intention of what we're using what we're trying to use the submarine for not and kind of a vague right at the highest level the US military is purpose is to support and defend the Constitution well that's really too vague it's too abstract for me when I'm standing watch this officer the deck or in the engine room taking logs and I see a problem to know how to make a decision about what to do so we really had to bring that down to to the deck plate level and talk about okay you know there's a problem with this blue boil pump should you shut it down or can you let it run for a little bit longer and and what are the and how do you make that decision and how do you communicate it to the people around you and so we spent a lot of time I saved a lot of time because I wasn't running around making answering questions and making decisions all the time but I I used that time to talk about and listen to my guys talk about what we thought the purpose of the submarine was so that's kind of that's kind of the key I think the unlocking both you want distributed decision making and unity of effort both of those things together I got you so you mentioned earlier you when you got tasked with leading that that submarine it was poor performing it was one of the worst or the worst so how do you begin the process of converting poor performing followers yeah into high-performing leaders so I took over the submarine they had the worst inspection scores they had a worse morale of the 33 guys who had an opportunity to sign up to just stay in the Navy during the year before I got there only three of them did which is really way below average and I just asked them I said do you guys first of all there was trying to satisfy action right no one likes being in a workplace like that and so I just asked I said do you guys want to have control over how the submarine operates and they shook their heads up and down I said yeah of course we do I said well how about this how about I stopped telling you what to do and you tell me that you say quote I intend to you don't ask permission you don't say request permission to submerge the ship or mother may I or bring me a problem without a solution but you just say this is how I see the world and I intend to do the the following and you know there was sort of a not there was sort of this reflexive yeah oh yeah head nodding and we talked a little bit more about what that would mean in terms of ownership and accountability and they they kind of got on board but remember the first step was me I had the problem was me telling them what to do I had to stop telling them what to do and I can tell you some guys got it right away go back in the control captain from my watch I intend to do the following do do do do do very well you know boom then they were opposite the races some guys took a little bit more time and there would be awkward moments where I would I would have to decide how long am I gonna let this go how long I am I gonna let us drive in the wrong direction how long am I gonna wait to tell him hey we really need to get this torpedo loaded now and how long am I gonna risk making a mistake so that we learned the lesson that you really do own your your life but there are a lot of things that we do because of what you said you I mean you got it right too many people want to come you know we just want our people to quote do our jobs right we come and work do our work not think our work and I think the world is changing we're thinking now is is more important than doing so the things we learned about doing getting people to do are don't work when it's about getting people to think keeping a to-do list for my subordinates is great if I want people to do it's the opposite of what you want it if you want people to think so these traditions rituals behaviors patterns for doing that we've got deeply ingrained actually take us in the wrong direction very interesting so let's talk a little bit about tension and rules specifically you know this this goes for probably the military as well as any organization that people listening may be working in so how do you manage as the leader how do you manage the tension between an organization like an organization's need for rules in order to be followed with the need of people and circumstances to know that sometimes the rules may not be right or dare I say may need to be broken yeah so first of all two constructs number one Lego assembling Lego construct so there's certain things that we viewed as Legos you know the building blocks loading a torpedo submerging the submarine starting up the reactor these things are involved pieces of metal the laws of physics and Mother Nature Mother Nature doesn't care what a good person you are you know if the if the pipe wall is too thin the water is going to come through so when it comes to Legos that's where we want to compliance that's where we you know the Legos would have you know things where we applied Legos felt like very traditional workplace is where we want to conformity we want to compliance we want to repeat ability and that kind of thing and the first sort of you know a test to see whether it was a Lego or not is it didn't involve the laws of nature of an evolving laws of nature, it's a Lego. Number two is assembling Lego. So picture, you know, an amazing sculpture build out of these Legos. Here you want creativity, here you want innovation, here you want thinking, here you want experimentation. And the problem is you gotta apply a different rule set than the Lego rule set. And so most companies, they make both kinds of mistakes. I've seen in fast growing new startups, tech startups, everything is Lucy Goosey. There's no, they have no defined processes, roles or anything like that. And it's chaos, it's not, it's a mess. And everything is being treated as basically as an assembling Lego. On the other hand, you get 150 year old manufacturing company or a 220 year old organization like the United States Navy where we applied over, overly, you know, engineered their processes, everything becomes a Lego sitting in the meeting, right, you know, how we sit in the meeting, how, you know, how we address each other, the, you know, all these kind of things, like who signs the leaf papers? There's a good example, right? There's no law or vacation, we call it leave in the military, but there's no laws of nature that are violated. And who gets to sign the vacation papers, right? It's just, it's a human to human interaction. So, I try to make it clear with my guys, hey, is this a Lego or is this assembling a Lego? Because I didn't want them playing fast and loose on the Lego side, and I didn't want them being overly arthritic on the assembling Lego side. So that's a question people can ask themselves and they get your team together and say, okay, what are our Lego processes? What are our assembling Lego processes? And which ones do we might not have it in the right column? That's the really interesting point. I'm gonna dive in a little bit deeper here. So when it comes to, let's say a big company that people listening may work at, I would say, I mean, a lot of the decisions don't involve a law of nature, though. You know, like if, if, if certain, I guess you could say rules or certain policies aren't followed, like a torpedo is not gonna be loaded wrong. You know what I mean, or the, you're not gonna shoot the wrong target. Exactly. I mean, a pipe's not gonna burst. The legs aren't gonna go out. So I think, so are you saying that when it comes to an organization that some of the policies and rules we have, we have in place that people treat them like their Lego's when in reality that they're not? Exactly. Okay. Right, because it's easier for the organization to have one sort of philosophical approach to doing business, right? Yeah. It's intellectually challenging to say, yes, sometimes I'm gonna just need you to follow the rules and sometimes I'm gonna need you to test the rules. But let's talk about when you know it's A and when you know it's B. And oh, by the way, we're gonna have a constant, low-level chatter. Constant, low-level chatter is really, really important. It's not like silence on the line, right? You know there's a problem then. And so in the Navy, I can give you more examples. For example, we had these to-do lists. Well, when an inspector came on my submarine, they would ask to look for the, look at the to-do list. Because these are things like, you know, all kinds of planned maintenance, scheduled maintenance that we should do, like with your car. You know, change the oil, rotate the tires. And every once in a while, you might get a message that says, oh, by the way, check this part number. If the part number was built between this year and this year, it's faulty, you gotta replace it. You know, it's like a recall. And so you have hundreds of these things on a complex submarine. The inspector would come down. They'd wanna see that to-do list because they made it very easy for them to say, oh, you didn't do this, you didn't do this. Well, I got rid of the to-do list because I refused to keep track of what your job was. Now, you can maintain a to-do list for yourself. So the engineer would have his, the navigator would have his. And each officer could maintain it. And you could keep a to-do list for your boss. He would say, hey, boss, these are the things I need you to do for me. That was okay. But bosses could not keep to-do lists for their subordinates because the minute you do that, you're taking away their ownership and their engagement. And you're saying, oh, it's my responsibility to make sure you do your job. And I wanted the overwhelming message to be, no. Imagine you're the vice president of something in some corporation and no one's gonna come down and say, oh, hey, how are you doing on item number seven today? No one, it's all on you. How powerful is that- - Full ownership. - Exactly. One of the things that I think is necessary with that mindset, which, by the way, is incredible. And I love it, is trust. And you must have an immense amount of it. So talk to me about that. - Okay, so again, I think most people misunderstand what trust means. When most people say trust, they actually mean the combination of trust and competence. Here's what I mean. So Ryan, I come visit you and then you start, and then you take me to the airport to drop me off. And we get to this intersection, and I think you should turn right, but you actually turn left. Do I trust you? Okay. Do I trust you? Well, if I think you are also trying to get me to the airport, and the issue of turning right or left is simply an issue of reading a map, local knowledge, road closures, then yes, I trust you. And the issue of turning right or left is simply one of competence. It may be correct to turn right, it may be more correct to turn left. And that's just an issue of knowing the roads, the traffic, and that kind of thing. It has nothing to do with trust. And it's important to break those two things apart because trust is a very emotional thing. So when people say, "Don't you trust me," right? It feels emotional. And so I wanted to be able to have hard conversations about, "Why are we turning left?" Or like, "Why are we turning left?" Without the stigma of the emotion. So I trust that you are trying to take me to the airport, but let's have a knockdown drag out fight about whether we really should turn right or left. And then once we decide, "Okay, we're gonna turn left." Great, it's over. There's no emotion. You see, it all feels good. Because it's just the competence. And so, for me, on the submarine, I would walk around and ask my guys questions. And when I first got there, a lot of them were, "Oh, don't you trust me." Yeah, I trust you. That doesn't mean what you're doing is right. It does not-- - Yeah. - Yeah, I was gonna say when it comes, go ahead. - Yeah, so trusting that you're intending to do the right thing, and that you are doing the right thing are two separate issues, not issue of trust. It's an issue of competence. - So, let's say, again, this is really interesting. And I think everyone listening, and I'm hearing what you're saying. And I'm thinking of, and all of us are probably thinking of people that maybe you work with. And what I'm thinking is it takes both sides really to understand that. And it's great that you understand it. And it's great that I understand it. But what if I'm speaking to somebody and they get really defensive when-- - Yeah. - And I'm sure you've worked with people like this, and I know I have where you wanna be able to question what they said, because really you're not questioning, you certainly trust them, and you know they're good people. How are what they're saying simply isn't right? Or it is maybe showing that there's not a high level of competence there, but maybe in the past, whenever you've questioned them, they getting extremely emotional, defensive. They may go talk to a number of other people in your organization, and it creates a huge problem for you. And so what you do, you just kinda shut down, or you like steer clear, and you're like, you know what, I don't wanna deal with that. So how do people, 'cause a lot of people listening, probably work in organizations, they probably had these things come up. What would you say to those people how they should handle the situations? - Okay, so all behavior is a combination of our internal propensity to be a certain way and the environment that we're in. And the environment is really, really important. The environment is generally more important than we think. So say for example, if desired behavior is, I'll just call it growth mindset, but the idea, I'm open to learning, I'm open to criticism, I'm open to testing that I might not be correct on this issue. Right, that's the desired behavior. You need to create an environment where it feels safe, because basically what happens is people are afraid for their jobs, they're afraid they're gonna look bad or whatever it happens to be. And they're used to getting challenged by their boss and being personally sort of put under attack. Now, if you've done that, and as a leader, you've created, you got 10 people, and nine of them are perfectly happy, they come up to you and say, hey, how could I have done better here? Give me some feedback, I seek feedback. But you got one person who's just not interested. - Or maybe that one person's a colleague or even someone who's higher up in the chain than you. - Yeah. Well, well, then the solution I was gonna that was a say, you know, you got to get rid of them because that's poison That's point that that's poison for the group and because It spreads the site One of the things we say is you got to make a choice. Do you want to quote be good or get better? You can't do both you can't do both because the behaviors for being good are different than the behaviors again better So what I said so we want to get better mindset, right? So at the end of the podcast you say hey, David. Let me give you some feedback that I'm like Okay, great. Thanks Ryan. That's awesome, you know, or I say oh jeez. What did I say right so the OG's what I say? That's that's I wanted to quote be good. I want to protect the idea that I was good Oh And you can't do both you got to make a fundamental decision and obviously if you want to be good You're not gonna You know, I think you want to get you know, you want to get better and so these people are are representing a be good My like they want to and as soon as you become an expert in something Then it gets really hard to maintain that sort of useful curiosity and I'm gonna want you know as soon as I quote No, the causes of the Civil War. I'm no longer opening open to learning about the causes of the Civil War So step one to learning is to say I don't know Yeah, it kind of goes hand in hand with my show is all about man. Yeah exactly or am I not I might not know right? And being being willing and secure enough in yourself as a leader to say I don't know Or to ask questions or to be willing to have an open mind you've mentioned When I asked about high achievers at the very beginning of our conversation the first thing you said was Having a growth mindset right and it reminded me of Carol Dweck's book mindset the new psychology of success I I assume you've read that love it. Yeah, okay, cuz I mean you kept talking about I'm like cuz I'm low I learned from that book I love it so much because of it talks about having a growth versus a fixed mindset and a difference in the in the people with a growth mindset and their success Versus the people who are fixed and and you've been describing it basically this entire conversation It's one of my favorite books and everybody should read that one as well as yours But I think the power in your mindset is an is just incredible and thinking you can from a growth perspective Right, so you know, just a quick recap. So what what Carol Dweck the Stanford psychologist is saying is that you know individuals Basically live on the spectrum between their open to growth and growing Versus their sort of become defensive and protective and the and what the way I would translate that the leadership is Okay, so so we we want to apply that sort of idea of of how individuals are in that spectrum to how an organization is Right, so do we have a culture of curiosity of testing of experiments of tolerating experiments that fail and being open to learning So in other words when you write your strategic core, okay, I'll make it very specific A lot of guys okay here are objectives for the quarter are there your objectives for the quarter? We're gonna sell 10 million widgets Or are your objectives do your objectives say anything like we want to learn the answers to the following questions Right you're quarterly objectives in terms of learning objectives Okay, what do we want to learn this year? That's When you'll start winning for the long run Now you go from companies to companies and helping people do that you give key notes Yeah, what's what's that process like for you going in to help others because I think that the toughest thing I've asked this question a lot But I it's because it's important I believe and that is I think a lot of people a lot of leaders people whatever in general are good at seeking Information help asking questions some people are good at that But then when it comes to actually implementing what you're teaching and executing on it. Yeah, it's it's it's it's completely different So talk to me about how because what you're saying is like you know, like I said I got two pages of notes here already And we've been talking for 30 minutes, but what how do you? Ensure there's there's implementation of what you're teaching okay? so I'll give you a couple of images number one leadership Training or what ever you want to call it learning about leadership is more like sports camp than it is like history class Right too many times, oh, I'm going to go to leadership seminar and they picture a classroom where I sit down and I Injects knowledge into my brain. This is not Leadership training this I don't know what it is, but it's not leadership training Leadership training is like sports camp where we say okay, do this drill do this backhand do this backhand do this backhand Do this okay now hold the hold the rack like this now do the backhand now do the backhand now That's what leadership training is like it's practicing Racting with other people in a way that Get a Different behavior out of them not that they're manipulated into it, but it just opens the space for them to to to behave in a different way So that's number one number two We act our way to new thinking we don't think our way to new action and again Most change things go wrong because the idea is oh Ryan I'm going to convince you that you really need to be more generous So I'm going to you know, I'm going to show you pictures of Mother Teresa, and I'm going to tell you some just stories of generosity Now please go be generous. Okay. This is not the way humans work What we need to do is actually practice in a very small way being generous So I might say so if you're a client in my economy say I'm just making this up So you know, we'll see how this comes out say, you know, I really want to be more generous. I say, okay, you know what? I want you put your I want to put you a bunch of pennies in your pocket 10 pennies every day and every day You got to give away 10 pennies to 10 time for people Okay, that's it. We actually don't even need to talk about generosity I just need to say this is your goal for the day every day Take these 10 pennies and when I when when you come back and when you have zero at the end of the day So another we practice Something that that's kind of a simplistic thing, but the idea I'll give you probably a more significant one Which is for me a lot of executives need help giving up control They're all control freaks because of by the way humans are control freaks So so I say okay your task is To go get coffee but turn to the person next to you and say you know what order my coffee for me you pick what I want You pick what I'm going to drink Oh my god, you know It's and maybe even they get tea. I don't know. I it's oh my god They're not going to get my normal thing you good, but it's the idea is that we practice the things that we want To how we want to train up right now when you go to work and you got to give control to your people Those same feelings come up, but at least now you know. Oh, that's what it feels like oh, and this is right Because your brain's gonna say it's the wrong way to behave because your brain likes control And you say ah, this is what it feels like when I give control. It's what leaders Do and then the third thing is so number one Number number one is the more like sports camp number two is we act our way to new thinking we don't think a new way to new action number three is We get people to say it's the ideas to go from idea to adoption. So we get people to We have a weekly we call it a nudge. Mm-hmm. It's a little 45 second video of me saying things just like You know come to a meeting five minutes late Have someone else order your coffee, you know come to meeting five minutes late. Well, yeah, why? Oh, it's awesome because what you tell your people hey, I'm gonna be five minutes late. You know make up some reason and And you let you see what happens without you let you say hey start without me Right, what about just saying have the meeting without me? Yeah, so these things are all great. Okay, gradi grade or graduate The only reason I said that is because I think of leadership and like one of the things is valuing the time of others And if you're late to the meeting that's showing that your time is more valuable than theirs is that I mean I mean, I don't know what you say is don't wait for me. No if they wait for you. Yes, right when I first got to the serving They would wait for me. That's wrong. So what you do is you say start without me. I got you and then because if you come to the meeting You're sitting there at the head of the table and you say hey start go ahead and start just pretend I'm not so the lowest level is Pretend I'm not here, right? Yeah, yeah, but that's hard because you're still sitting there. So you say okay now go sit in the back of the room Now pretend I'm not okay. Well, that's a little bit easier, but if you're actually not there, but it might be too much of a jump to say skip the meeting All together. Yeah, I see we're seeing a weekly meeting normally they are chairing it. Yeah, you can't you can't you might might be too much Another thing we do is say okay turn your phone off for the evening. Yeah, oh my people got to get a hold of me Okay, well that indicates that you haven't built enough capacity in your people to make decisions So here's a plan in a month. I need you to turn your phone off for an evening I need then I need you to turn the phone off for the whole weekend Then I want you to turn the whole phone. Oh, you're gonna go on vacation in six months our objective is on that vacation You're gonna have you're gonna not take any work phone calls, but you got to set it up ahead of time, right? You can't just go to cold turkey, but you can't take these little steps like you say I'm just gonna turn my phone off for the evening you go into work the next day say what happened? Yeah, I got you and that's where you understand what your people can and cannot do yeah I think the being late to struck a little bit of a nerve with me because of It's it's it's and I you're right what you're seeing is right. I think in regards to It's just a pet peeve when I have leaders who just show up late without saying anything. And it makes me feel like they think they're times more valuable than mine or anybody else's. And I hate that. You know, I can't stand it. Yeah. Sorry. Let me just jump on that. No, you're good. You're good. I hate that. But the subtext of what you're telling me is, oh, by the way, and the meeting can't start until I get there. Correct. Exactly. That's the point right there. Instead of for 11. So we all just sit there and wait for you. Yeah. We'll see that's the problem. Not that they were late. The problem is that we can't do anything without the leader. Exactly. That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people can probably envision that you're sitting in this some conference room. And it's 10 minutes past and then being supposed to start the leader's not there. And everyone's just wasting time sitting there waiting. Leave. Yeah. Yeah. I yeah. You know, I know you're not tall. Look, the worst thing a human being can do is to be in an environment where they don't feel like their value where they don't feel like they're in control. It takes a toll on your health. You're killing yourself. Get up. Leave. Oh, it's only if we start, you know, don't put up with this bad behavior. You have more power and authority than you think you have. It's like, well, you know, where do I go? Yeah, he got tired of you being late and you left. Dude, you would be the, you would be the person with the power and authority. You would immediately go up and stature. What if, what, what if though the leader was very insecure and they, they, they immediately took measures to fire you. It's probably not a place you want to work anyway. I'm guessing then. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thank you so much for making it clear that I didn't want to work here to begin with. Yeah. I mean, it's easy for me to say, I have a job and I have a retirement plan and you know, whatever. I don't want to be overly flippant, but I do want people to, people ask me, okay, I'm in a crappy work environment. How do I know whether I should quit or not? And I, and this is the test I give them. I said, okay, I want you to imagine that your son or daughter is working at that place and, and you knew exactly what they were putting up with. Yeah. Would you want them to quit or not? Yeah. That's the test. Yeah. And if you don't think your kids should put up with it, then you shouldn't put up with it. Yeah, I see exactly what you're saying. That's a great point that you bring up and that I mean to get off on that tangent because I, I personally, you know, I've been a, that's happened every once in a while. It's certainly not a regular thing for me. Yeah. So it's not, it's not, I enjoy what I do on a database in a big way in fact, but I work with some, some great people, but I know there have been moments, you know, over the years of the last 10 years where you have some of those types of meetings where it did strike a court. And what it did to me though, I'll tell you, David, though, as when I became or when I was elevated or promoted into a leadership role, there was no possible way, unless like a family emergency, where I would, you know, I can't be there. There was no possible way I would ever be late to a meeting simply because it would bother me when, when others were, if I was in like an individual contributor role and then I was promoted because yeah, I wrote that down on my notebook every single time. Don't ever do this. Don't ever do this. Don't ever do this. And it, I made a point of it. But I think what you say is even, even better to occasionally tell them to run, you know, the first part of the meeting without you to empower them even more. This is what, this is what you want. You want them to not even care whether you're there or not. Yes. It's 11 o'clock, the meeting starts. Yeah. If the, if the quote, leader is, if the captain's there, you know, maybe the captain runs in meeting or maybe the captain kicked it off and says, okay, the engineer will not run them. If the captain's not there, it's, it's like no one even blinks. They just say, okay, today the purpose is like, if you're, what does it take for your people to run these, like what's the purpose of the meeting? They need to understand like, is it, are we making a decision? Are we trading information? What is it? They got to be able to do that without you. If they can't run a meeting without you, then you're really screwed. Yeah, it's a great point. You know, and psychologically, oh, it feels good. Oh, everyone, oh, look, they're all stood up when I came in the room. You know, oh, it feels so good. They're all sitting there waiting for me. And now I'm here to impart, you know, it's crap. Yeah. It's crap for everybody else. Yeah. How do companies respond to, to your coaching and leading and training them when you, when you get them, get into topics like this that at times could potentially be different from what they're used to? Look, they only hire me if they, if they have a sense that they want to move in this direction. So in general, they're good. Yeah, they're very enthusiastic. You know, and I've got sports teams, hospitals, educations, tech companies, manufacturing, big, huge companies, million employees, small companies, 25 people. And, and, and fundamentally, it's all the same. It's, it's people who want to have lives that matter and leaders who appreciate that and can create an environment where there are people who feel valued. I'll just give you one more story. Sports team, batting coach, university baseball team, batting worse than the league. Batting coach reads the book. He says, you know what, this is exactly what I'm telling them what to do. I'm just, I'm, kid gets up to bat. I'm like, you know, choke up, stand closer to the plate. You know, for this picture, did it. So I'm going to stop. So kids get up to bat and the coach says, what's your plan? I don't know. Well, long story short, next year, top in the league, signed a player to the majors for over a million bucks. And this coach, assistant coach got promoted and now with head coach at another college because he, not because he did more, but because he did less because he stopped telling the kids what to do and the kids owned the problem. By the way, after the first pitch, you can't talk. I mean, the kids got to figure out what's going on anyway, right? So this is the image for, for work, right? You can't, you know, telling people what to do all day long just creates a dependency on you and it diminishes them as human beings. Building their ability to stand on their own two feet makes them feel good and they're going to want to come to work and make decisions, but it's going to feel very scary for you as the leader. That's why leadership's hard. Man, this is good stuff, David. I appreciate I get to talk to you for hours, but I know we're up against the clock and I want to be respectful of your time as well as my understanding the people listening have things to do with that said, one final question and it's around the whole purpose of my show and what being a learning leader is all about. And to me, it's, it's, it's, it's on two topics that I love and that's, that's obviously leadership, which we've talked about this entire time as well as constantly learning, growing, having that growth mindset as Carol Dweck would say. And as we've talked about a lot, but when you hear the phrase learning leader, is there a specific person that comes to mind or any more further definition regards to it that you have? Probably not. I don't know if there's specific person, there's a specific kind of person, I think. You know, if I were to ask your, you know, this is to a mind, a quick mind experiment with your listeners, I say, who's, who's been a major, who's been the CEO of General Electric in the last couple decades and who's been the CEO of Costco in the last couple decades? And it turns out, you know, most people would know Jack Wells, but not Jim Cinnigall. Now it turns out in the, in 1980, if you invested $10,000, you'd have much more money today if you invested in Costco than if you invested in General Electric. But we, we gravitate to the sort of self-promoting achiever, right? We like the achiever, the hero, the personality. And we know, we can say the, we know who that person is, we can say their name. And then we have the leader who just makes it about the people around them and who has, you know, there's not a lot of drama, there's not a lot of television appearances. They just work relentlessly to create an environment where their people can think and make decisions and, and improve their lives. And in the short run, the sort of the charismatic personality captures their attention, but then they kind of flame up and they go away, and you know, who knows what happens, and oh, by the way, GE needed a $50 billion bailout. But on the long run, I'm not saying anything, I'm not saying, but in the long run, the people who are dedicated to creating a better world for the people around them are going to, are going to come out way, way, way ahead. So, so that's kind of the, that's kind of the picture, that's kind of the person that I have in mind. I love it. It's great, David. And I, again, I'm so grateful and thankful that you are, have shared all this wisdom with us today on a learning leader show. I really appreciate it. I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both, you know, progress in our journey, so I just appreciate you being here. Sure, sure. Well, thank you so much and thanks for having me on your show. Of course, man. We'll talk soon, David. Thank you. This episode of the learning leader show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter @RyanHawk12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on the learning. leader show.