Unleashing Potential by Facing Personal Challenges

This podcast focuses on the evolution of leadership and the importance of self-reflection, clarity, and resilience in fostering effective leadership. It dives into navigating challenges, embracing hardship, and building trust within teams for sustainable growth.

• Emphasizing self-reflection and honesty in leadership
• Understanding the value of clarity in team dynamics
• Transforming hardships into opportunities for growth
• The significance of fostering a culture of accountability
• Encouraging openness and vulnerability among leaders
• Identifying the importance of relationships in organizational success
• Engaging in honest, constructive feedback loop practices
• Leveraging personal struggles as catalysts for growth
• The balance between delegation and personal growth
• Features resources and tools for personal leadership development

Chapters

• 0:01 Navigating Complexity in Leadership
• 7:38 Embracing Responsibility and Embracing Challenges
• 13:43 Learning From Mistakes and Taking Responsibility
• 23:51 Establishing Clear Business Aims and Relationships
• 29:11 Building High-Performing Teams

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast with your host, chris Anderson. In this show, chris and his guests will share their knowledge and experience on how to go from zero to successful entrepreneur. They have built their businesses from scratch and are now ready to give back to those who are just starting. Let's get ready to learn, grow and elevate our businesses. And now your host, chris Anderson.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Welcome back to another recording of the Elevate Media Podcast. I'm Chris Anderson, your host, and today we're going to focus on ourselves. We're going to be a little selfish in this episode, so we're going to get to think about how we can improve ourselves as leaders in our organizations, our businesses, to help us get to those next levels, because we're the captain of our ship, right, if we go down, the whole thing goes down and we can only, you know, succeed to the level as where we are as leaders in our organization. So excited to have an expert on the show today talking about just that Adrian Kaler. Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Great to be here, brother. Thanks for having me on, really honored I love your show.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Thank you, I appreciate that. We're excited to have you on and you know we jump right into it here at the beginning. You know your bio is out there. You've done amazing things, worked with some fantastic companies, so everyone make sure you check out Adrian on LinkedIn and I'll let him share at the end where more places to find him. But yeah, just some big name companies out there, which is really cool, but what got you into wanting to help people with leadership and organizations alike?

Speaker 3: 1:31

Well, I've always loved people and I've always I mean, I grew up as we were talking before we went push record. I grew up in small town, southern Illinois, and life was pretty simple. It was great. It was like I grew up in an episode of Friday Night Lights it was fun. My dad was a pretty simple, it was great. It was like I grew up in an episode of Friday night lights it was fun. My dad was a football coach, I was a QB, the whole thing and you know, I always had a an itching for more and as much exposure and as many opportunities and people that I could be with.

Speaker 3: 1:58

And and as soon as I got into the complexity of outside of small town America is like, wow, life's pretty tough, life's pretty tough, there's a lot to manage and we're not. You know, there's like you're kind of on your own or you can go like talk to a therapist or something, or maybe you talk to a pastor, maybe a mentor, something like that. But I know I had a deep yearning growing up to like can we have the real conversation please? Yeah, because there's like like there's so many elephants in this room we can't even move around anymore. That's what it felt like in my house growing up. My parents are awesome, um, both school teachers, salt of the earth, folks but it's like we just didn't have language for experience and language for aspiration. Even, and even in some parts of the of the country, maybe where you're from too, it's like to be ambitious was to be evil. Yeah, you know, to like have a, to want something beyond what you've got, you're actually pegged as being ungrateful or being better than, or being highfalutin. Maybe they would have called it or something like that, um, fancy or something like that. It's like, oh, city boy, something anyway. So I just I I always wanted to get around people that were really smart and I knew I just know it, just because this is how reality works is that the more successful something is, the more complex it is, and the people at the top always want it to be in its most simple form. So that means that we neglect a lot always and we don't have language for, or any training on, how to navigate the complexity.

Speaker 3: 3:30

So that became a deep passion of mine early. I was like a medical student for a while and ended up getting a nursing degree out of college and worked in really high stress environments and my brain could always do the science stuff easy, but it's the human stuff that I was really fascinated by Like, how do you help people navigate crisis and not lose themselves or lose themselves, because sometimes you need to. Like, if you lose a child of course I worked in the pediatric world If your kid dies, all that's coming is the break. I mean, you're supposed to break and you need to, but then how do you reinvent yourself, resurrect or start over, and there's not a lot of people that know how to do that with might, um, and with courage, and that's the only way through.

Speaker 3: 4:13

And some people don't come back from in moments like that. It's an extreme one and I've got plenty of people in my life like that. But, um, suffering, uh, is necessary in life, and but we don't talk about it enough because it reminds us of death, and so we'll just keep on trying to keep up the status quo. So I was just always weird and into that Like can we just talk about it? Like it's messy? And you know, we're all full of snakes and we all, hopefully, have an intention and want to be a good person, and not everybody's like that, and we ought not be surprised when people are just doing what is natural for them, um, but if we don't, but if we're not aware of our own dark side, there's no way we can navigate this dark world.

Speaker 2: 4:57

So it's always introspective, um, and then, if you take full responsibility, then you've, you're uh, ahead of the uh of the crowd, for sure you can navigate in your room. So I just love that shift into you know, bringing that to the surface and talking about that and you know, actually having those conversations, even with yourself, of you know, okay, my weakness is here or I struggle with this or whatever it might be, and I think a lot of times because we get told not to right, I think we don't, we just don't have those conversations so we think we're not allowed to. Or when you do try, you know it gets kind of, you know, stomped on Um, so if someone's trying to figure that out, you know they're, they're starting a business, they know there's gaps, they're trying to figure out what's what's off. Where do you kind of lead them to kind of uncover some of those for themselves so they can start having those conversations internally and with them?

Speaker 3: 6:05

Well, we talk a lot in my business, take New Ground around resiliency, and so you know you only become resilient when you come up against hard times. Yeah, and the first step is always around clarity. So when there's two people in a room and like say the business is struggling, there's two very different opinions on why it's struggling usually. But the boss usually just kind of dictates what he or she thinks and then the other person says or doesn't say what he or she thinks, and then so we're not aligned. So the first thing is is to generate the amount of trust in the room where we can say what's really there for us. Let's, let's put language on current reality and then explore it for a little bit and not get so scared. I mean, it's vulnerable to not know something to our own minds. Right, it's safer to us if I'm right about it and we're prone to want to be right about it because we feel secure, because now I know what's happening. But most of the time people underestimate what they're not seeing. They just can't see what they can't see. We call those blind spots but I just don't know what I don't know. Yeah, period, and that's a large majority. Like we know what we don't know. And then we know. We know that's a called a Cartesian inquiry. That's how we build things and that's how we solve problems in the world. We'd here's oh, I don't know how to fly a helicopter. I can go take a class and I can fly a helicopter. Aha, that's cool. That's cool. I don't know how to build a business plan. Now I can go online, take all these courses and I can build a business plan Wonderful. But what I don't know, I don't know. It's a vast majority of what's going on between my ears, period. We're only conscious of that much so, therefore, the chances of something else happening that I'm not aware of, but probably, more honestly, I don't want to be aware of, because if I'm aware of it, then it's another problem that I either don't don't tell myself I don't have time to fix it, or I don't have the capacity. Or how much of an idiot would I look like if I create, know all these things that are all egocentric and all fear centric? There's just a lot that we don't want to know. And if you, if you're a business person and you've got issues, if you're running a business, you do have issues. If you think you don't have issues. That's your first issue, right? So you know you got to commence.

Speaker 3: 8:19

There's a lot of stuff here and we'll take care of it over time, but we really need to fully understand that people spend most of their times, most of their time, dealing with symptoms and not getting down to causal issues, because, at the end of the day, it's about relationships. So if you, if you're working by yourself, you're going to see parts of yourself You'd rather not see, and, uh, if you have anybody in your team and if, if you take the responsibility score really high, like everybody's really responsible, then your friends that you've hired, they're responsible for maybe a loss of whatever hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars. That's a big deal. Now, it's not the end of the world, but until we get there, we can't get anywhere new.

Speaker 3: 9:03

Yeah, so my answer to your question is really around clarity like what's, what are we really doing? Not like what are we gesturing towards? But is there anything we're actually committed to? Or we just kind of playing, playing business? Yeah, like something that we're actually going to sacrifice for and we're actually going to put our relationships at stake for it, right, right, so we're going to get out of the friend zone and get into like okay, we're partners here, right, almost like a marriage, and get this done. Now, where are all the breakdowns? Let's get really honest about those Right and let's not label them like whose fault they are. Like fault is such a shallow conversation, but really look at it like, okay, this problem, how did I contribute to it, how did you contribute to it? And let's just have a big, open, gracious conversation about it, because if we don't get to contribution, we can't get to correction.

Speaker 2: 9:57

I like that. Yeah, that's a good point, and I like what you said because I so I used to be an athletic trainer before.

Speaker 3: 10:03

You look like an athletic trainer.

Speaker 2: 10:04

I appreciate that. Well, maybe.

Speaker 3: 10:06

Yeah, I played football in college so I had trainers all the time. Every day before practice I get my ankle done, so we're hanging out.

Speaker 2: 10:15

That's awesome. But, like what you said, we like to fix the superficial. Put a Band-Aid on the problem solution. That's what I always tell athletes. You know, put a bandaid on the problem solution. That's what I always tell athletes.

Speaker 2: 10:48

And sometimes even, like when I work because I have two little kids, I tell my wife, like a lot of times doctors are, you know, no fault of themselves, like we're just putting band gratitudes or put a vision board on the wall.

Speaker 2: 10:49

But unless we're into, like, the deeper issue of like, are we going to actually accomplish those right, like and take action on that, nothing's going to change. And so you know, I think so with that, like ourselves is is hard for a lot of people, um, because they don't want to kind of open those doors and they don't want to. And how you mentioned, like you have to have that, that quote unquote native that that rough time, that hardship type thing, that obstacles away type moments, that hardship type thing, that obstacle away type moments, how do you, how, how should we approach those? Cause they're going to happen. Life, business, just in general, you're going to have those, those moments where we're going to have to get around through or over an obstacle. Right, how do we do that without kind of just breaking completely and take it as a positive?

Speaker 3: 11:45

Well, I mean, sometimes it's how do I start with this? So there's a lot here. So I'm a personal responsibility freak and in in. So I guess in this way, I say that whatever is happening, I want it to happen. Now, that's a really tough pill to swallow and most people won't and don't. I dare you not. I mean, it's fine not to Whatever, go back to ignorance, but I say that if I believe that whatever's happening, I must want it to be happening because it's happening. Otherwise, because you're an effective, assertive individual I'm an effective assertive individual.

Speaker 3: 12:32

Anything in my life that I actually don't want, it's not here. I can say no to anything in my life and pretty much it goes away over time. I'm speaking in hyperbole, but that's just to make the point. Therefore, if I'm going through a hard time, I think the most powerful question is why do I like it this way? Think the most powerful question is is why do I like it this way? Instead of how do I escape this? Whose fault is it? How do I look good my own eyes? How do I medicate myself so it's not so bad? No, do the opposite man. How? Why did I want this struggle? Why did I want this? And there's always an answer to that question. You gotta like. You know, is a dark.

Speaker 3: 13:14

I'm not the guy people call for a pat on the back, I'm. I'm like more of the I'm the jumper cables guy, so but that's where we go, is like okay if we cause I, if I can put my hand oops, if I can put my hands around that idea the thing I'm complaining about I actually wanted then I can pretty much handle anything. The thing I'm complaining about I actually wanted, then I can pretty much handle anything, because I'll be honest about it and I can get close to it. See, if it's my friend, it's not like in my enemy, like this situation is not my, it's my enemy. I'm going to stay away from it. But if it's my friend, if it's the thing I created, then I can get close to it and take a look at it and ask questions of it and wonder about it and I'll see parts of myself that I'm like oh well, yeah, I was a chicken three months ago.

Speaker 3: 13:54

I knew that I needed to fire this person and I was trying to people please, or not trying to get my wife angry at me, or blah, blah, blah, or he's my buddy from church or whatever the situation is, and so to save myself, I I'm now paying the price of $300,000. That's a that's good for me to know that I pay that tax for my calories. So if I can get close to that and don't even judge yourself about it I mean, I've been through so much in my life and I've made so many mistakes and I've broken my heart a thousand times Whatever, it's just welcome to being, I think, a vital human. So that's what I do first. First off, this is tough. Let's get clear about how tough it is and let's get clear about what I did to get us here and then also be willing to have that conversation with others.

Speaker 3: 14:49

Most of the time, when a leader has some kind of confessional moment like that, you've created to not tell you the truth and people will say the opposite. But if nobody's challenging you, you don't want them to and you've trained them not to. So it's time to like have a meeting of the mind, saying, hey, how long have you known this was going to happen? And honest people if you've got a team around you, honest people will tell you hey, I remember, I told you this, I remember this, I remember this, remember this. Okay. Well, we need to renegotiate these relationships because, you know, let's not be here again.

Speaker 3: 15:22

So in some ways, a catchphrase for me is don't waste the suffering, don't waste it Right, you don't just escape it. You gotta like get the most, squeeze it like, learn as much as you can, connect as much as you can. I mean, there's nothing like I mean, I spent a lot of time in locker rooms nothing like the brotherhood that can happen after a deep loss. Yeah, you know, and you just watch the game tape gruelingly and you're like, yep, I missed it. I missed it nobody else, it's, it's on me. If you put yourself on the hook that way, yeah, um, and I think that extreme ownership with that I think is a huge.

Speaker 2: 15:56

you know we see Jocko out there talking about extreme ownership, but like I think there's so much value to that. And you know, like, whatever it is in our life, like it's our fault, like you're saying now and I'm curious your opinion on this.

Speaker 2: 16:10

This because I don't necessarily know how to respond to it. So if someone says, well, you know, I got, uh, someone stole my car or someone you know mugged me, how is that my fault? How do I take responsibility? I would love for you can do you have a kind of a conversation.

Speaker 3: 16:27

Yeah, I mean the way yeah, the way I'd handle that is like, of course we're all like victimized at times. Right, we're all taken advantage of, yeah, um, but you know, I live in west hollywood, california. If a homeless guy breaks into my house, I chose to live here that's true you know, I'm no longer in salem, illinois.

Speaker 3: 16:44

I mean, there's like if I were to walk down the street, you'd see a bunch of crazy people. I didn't get here by accident, so if i'm'm like complaint I mean complaining about the traffic in LA it's like I chose to live here, what I'm not. I'm not late to the meeting because of the traffic. I'm late to the meeting because I didn't plan for the traffic period. You know so. But there are, there are times in which and we've all had this, I've had this where someone, you know, uh, took advantage of me or or was betrayed. But if I'm honest, if I'm honest, there's moments all along the way that I wasn't willing to pay the price of authenticity. Yeah, you know what I mean by that. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got one story coming up in my head which I won't share. But I got betrayed by a mentor of mine and, uh, but what conversations was I unwilling? There's a lot that I was on that just maybe I wasn't clear about, and I just lived in this naive trust of this guy and I didn't push all the way through. I didn't push all the way through. Then, all of a sudden, I was betrayed. This is when I was like 23 or something, um, but you know's like so, anytime we do, you know really authentically get taken advantage of, there's almost always some indications and almost always some contribution, which most people avoid for the sake of looking good in their own eyes. And that's just a price. I'll pay that price every day. I'd rather be real with myself. How did I blow it? Yeah, and then, because then you actually believe in your capacity to reinvent yourself Like we know this, that like shiny leaders are not that attractive to us.

Speaker 3: 18:22

I mean, they're sorry, they're attractive, they're. We just don't trust them. Right? People that can tell the truth on themselves quickly are so disarming we almost don't know what to do with it. When you're around a leader that's like, hey, we missed the sales goals and here's what I did wrong and I'm really sorry guys, here's what I'm going to do better. It's almost like what? Because nobody talks like that, nobody owns it, clarifies it and makes a commitment moving forward. Most people don't operate that way. So those are the types of leaders we like, we love working with, either in the big corporate space, which we've done, and it's impressive and such, but our heart is always working with entrepreneurs, because they're always much more scrappy.

Speaker 2: 19:02

Yeah, and I mean you have to be right Starting out the scrappy.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Oh yeah, you have to be in the same.

Speaker 2: 19:07

And I think you know you always hear the stat like, whatever it is now I don't even know what it is like barely any businesses ever survive. Um, and I think that's more to the fact that, in my eyes at least, people they can't deal with the discomfort long enough right succeed so they give up or they shift or or things of that, do you? Do you think that's kind of the same thing, or do you see it differently?

Speaker 3: 19:32

uh, yeah, well, if you're, we've worked with tons of. I mean, there's very known patterns in the founder world, uh, and we work with tons of founders. I spend most of my time coaching founders and I've got smart guys that come and do the business consulting side of things, um, but most of my work is fierce advocacy work for the founder and they almost, if they're successful, they get to a place where they've built a company and they don't want to run it anymore because they didn't. They don't want to be a ceo. They could have gone I mean, they don't have the chops for it, literally but they also don't want to go run meetings all day long. They're pioneers and they're no longer pioneering now. They're like taking care of the farm. I'm like, no, I don't want to take care of the farm, I want to go back out again and therefore, because of that uh, paradox that they're in, or that tension they're in, they act squirrelly and they treat people poorly because they have no business running a company. They were, they are world-classes starting a company, um, but running one is not of their interest, but they don't want to let go as well, because it's their baby, right, right.

Speaker 3: 20:32

So and then who do, I trust, and all these dynamics which are just natural and normal, but they don't have language for it, so they can't find themselves through. I mean, for us, we see language as like the kind of the uh handles on reality. If we can get language for something, then we can move it around, but if it's all vague and you know my people are dumb or whatever their big generalistic, you know vague term is that's not helpful. But who isn't like, let's get specific, yeah, so, um, you know people, yeah, they're on those transition moments and most of the time I mean, we've bought into this it's lonely at the top story, um, and it in some ways, it is just because there's less people there.

Speaker 3: 21:14

Yeah, but it doesn't have to be lonely. You just got to be more humble. The world, the world, wants you to be perfect. It does, because it doesn't want any more trouble, right, and you know like your team wants you to have it all together, but you don't have it all together right and we'll settle for hiding and blaming instead of having an open, big dialogue about how imperfect we are and how great that is.

Speaker 3: 21:36

And if you do that well, you generate a whole scene of camaraderie. It's like we need each other and that's a pretty vulnerable place to be in, because we're just here to get paid. No, maybe we're here to do life together, right, and some people don't have that view of work. Some people have a view of work as very transactional, instead of like, oh, we're investing a huge portion of our life to working alongside of each other. How about we make it awesome, right? Yeah, let's say that's possible. Yeah, instead of us. You know, it's kind of having these superficial conversations or judging each other silently. Let's just open up the kimono and get real with one another, but that's, you know other, silently, let's just open up the kimono and get real with one another. But that's, you know, right, that's uh, that's a big, that's a big gamble that most folks, based on their history or based on their patterns they've seen around them, they just don't know how to do or are unwilling to do so how would someone start that you know they want?

Speaker 2: 22:25

maybe they haven't started that way with their, their team, or even, you know, themselves or the family. If it's, maybe it's just them and their spouse, something whoever they're working close with. How, how can they take steps to start to build that kind of culture or that kind of camaraderie of being open and and sharing like that?

Speaker 3: 22:45

yeah, well, it's tough to see the water you're swimming in first. Yeah, right, so you know everybody, you're inside the culture and you created it, if you founded it, especially if you're running. I used to work with tons of husband-wife combos and so it's very muddled and it's high stakes, right, because everything's connected and family life and intimacy, life and all that and future and all that. So it's complicated, excuse me. Um, so it's good to get an outside set of eyes. It is that's why a lot of people hire us, because we can see things that they can't see. And, you know, to get somebody that knows this terrain, because the map is always different than the terrain. It always sounds good, we could read all the john maxwell books and all the simon sennick books and this all sounds great, but it's not the way. It is, like when I'm in the room in the meeting, and that's just distinct, right. So, uh, and those guys are both great and I'm fans of both of them, um, but you know, you need, you need to be able to look at reality from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Speaker 3: 23:51

So if you're trying to reset this culture, let me try not to be simplistic about it, at least when we're, but most of the time folks do this only when it's in significant breakdown, when things are cruising. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. People just love that viewpoint. It makes sense. But usually then that means your issues are going to move from. You know, you got a couple shit hors d'oeuvres around, but you don't want to eat those, and so those become a shit sandwich and eventually people call us when it's a shit buffet, it's like this is bad, yeah. But if you're not at that point yet, I mean we, we analyze any kind of breakdown with is okay, there's always something that's working. What's working here, and there's probably a long list. I mean especially if you're working with a spouse or even just a partner or whatever, based on the context, context being what we said.

Speaker 3: 24:45

We're committed to annual goals for this year where we'd be by you know whatever, okay, good, so that's the bar that helps everything make sense. Like some aim. You have to have an aim, yeah, because then that sets up the hierarchy of concerns, that sets up all the meaning. Like, what does this mean now? Well, I only know this in the context of what I seem committed to, and Jordan Peterson does brilliant stuff on all this, but get really clear on what the aim is. And if you're not willing to be clear on the aim, then you don't really have a business. You just have like a hobby and a thing you like doing. That's cool, sure.

Speaker 3: 25:22

But you're not going to, like, really grow. You might get lucky, but you're not going to really grow because you're not creating a mechanism by which to produce value for customers. You're doing it for yourself, right? No big deal, that's cool. There's lots of those, but you can't correct unless there's constraint and an aim gives you constraint. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 25:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's something you can. You know, measure and have data and and and you know. Actually, like you know, smart goals or specific same kind of any of those work any of those work, but it does.

Speaker 3: 25:57

It all gives. It gives you a yard stick to look at reality from. And then, from, that is okay. What are we doing now that's working? Make a long list, start there. What are we doing now's working? Make a long list, start there. What are we doing now that's not working? There's probably maybe an equal list there. Um, and then, what's wanted, needed, but it's the most important question to get us from where we are now to there.

Speaker 3: 26:15

Now, people love to talk about strategy and tactics. That's cool, um, and that's, you know, helpful. It's just usually not where the problem is. Where the problem is is relational, at least in our view of things. But we're weird, right. So you know, I've got an old McKenzie Stanford MBA guy, but he gets the fact that it's human beings.

Speaker 3: 26:34

All business problems are human problems, not business mechanics. Yes, there are those, but if we have business mechanics problems, some humans said it was okay, right, yeah. Have business mechanics problems, some human said it was okay, right, yeah, right. So exactly that we got to get to that, thinking how do we justify losing a million dollars? And maybe we're too busy? That's a human question. Maybe we're understaffed? That's a human question. Maybe we didn't want to fire Tom. That's a human question, but these are all human issues.

Speaker 3: 27:04

So I would say what's missing, you know, having a conversation about what's working and not working in the relationships in the room, and that's vulnerable Once again. That's why it's good to have an outside person, cause I can step in and have that conversation easily and it's messy and it's beautiful. That's I. I think that's what's great about it, right, um, but we're all scared to death that somebody's going to leave us and somebody's going to judge us and they're going to see the worst in us, that we see in ourselves and all that kind of core, human, one-on-one stuff. Yeah, but if we can get, if we can get past the horror of all that, then we've got a life right. Then we got some vitality, we got some possibility, we got some trust, we got some momentum.

Speaker 3: 27:40

Um, and if you're working with a spouse, if you're not in a conversation about what you're, you know how good do we want to get? That's an important question. Do we want to run a mom and pop thing? That fits our capacity? That's fair. Maybe we want to do that. Maybe we want to build a business that we can work together. That's the goal. Cool, then don't study other companies, because they're not doing the math like that. Yeah, they're finding the most talented people that can hit x results, but that's not what we've done.

Speaker 3: 28:08

We want to hang out together and do something yep right now, and I'm I'm not a static personality theory guy people we can all grow sure, as as long as we're willing to be humble and learn a lot. Yeah, probably in that order, humility is the first, most important thing yeah, I like that and yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2: 28:25

I think you have nowhere you want to go before you can build a plan to get there and tweak and things along the way. Otherwise you're just, you know, out there in the dark hoping to right on Well there are others.

Speaker 3: 28:39

Yeah, and there's natural tensions that exist that we don't have language for. Um, we use this, this assessment called the harrison assessment. There's only 150 of us consultants in the us that get to use it. Uh, it's cool, one of the reasons and I've taught them all. I've taught strengths, finders and myers-briggs and disc and blah, blah, all that stuff. I don't teach any of those anymore. That's the only one I use because it lays out the leadership journey in all these paradoxes which are, uh, like gravity, like they are happening if we decide to see them or not. Like, for example, easy one like communication paradox.

Speaker 3: 29:11

What's my preference for being frank? What's my preference for being diplomatic? Yeah, like saying things in a nice way, tactful way, or being straightforward, directing to the point. Everybody's on that grid somewhere. What your preference is right? Yeah, and if you're really frank and not very diplomatic, you're blunt, yep, and if you're really diplomatic and not very frank, you're evasive. You don't tell the truth all the time. For the sake of relationship, you'd call it, and both of those are trouble and we ought to know where we are. And ironically, the evasive person, under enough stress, becomes blunt, right, like, finally, I can't stand it. This guy's not listening to me now I got to tell him how it is.

Speaker 3: 29:55

But yeah, that's at the end of a long road of not telling him the truth right um and the same way, I'm like if I'm really blunt and then I think the person's not listening, you know what I'm just done talking. They're not listening, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:08

You know, I think, being able to see it on the scale, to like, in a like in those real senses because, yeah, I think someone, you're, you're somewhere on that You're somewhere.

Speaker 3: 30:18

That line yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:19

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:21

And there's 12 of those paradoxes. That's just the easy one to look at. But opinions and strategic acumen and risk, and there's 12 of those, so we use those a lot just to give people once again kind of a lay of the cultural land. Even if there's two people like they're not going to be aligned and when we can put these things together in a culture map, they laugh about it because it's so dang accurate, it's hilarious. Laugh about it because it's so dang accurate, it's hilarious. Um, now, what to do about it takes obviously some humility and discipline and and willingness to listen and willingness to you know value, be less superior, like we all are at some level, like I'm right and they should learn or whatever.

Speaker 2: 30:57

Um, but if, if, that, if we become a curious culture and a learning culture, your sky's the limit yeah, yeah, and that's like just on you know my journey, having to really adapt and change a little bit and and and learn, like you're saying, on the communication portion, and not only just in business, but also you know marriage too, it's it's another place. You have to learn it as well. And you know, you know in business, learning a lot about myself shortcomings. You know my strengths, things like that, trying to to build on those or know where I just have to have someone to support where I'm not as good or where it's not my strength, and it's been right on. It's been an interesting thing and I just read a book by Dan Martell called buy back your time, and he talks a little bit about that A fan of Martell.

Speaker 2: 31:53

Yeah, he's great. It puts great content out there and I really enjoyed that book because I feel like I feel like I'm getting to that point where you know we have a team and you know, trying to figure out, like, do I want to delegate or bring someone on for certain activities that they'd be better at and enjoy, versus me just doing it because I need to, and I'm pretty, I would say, one of my strengths is saying where I'm not good at something, sure, and so it's just been to see, looking back when I started to now, like how the changes happened in myself and things that you've had to overcome and learn again. Like I can't say that enough. I think you have to be able to learn and be humble and know you don't know it all.

Speaker 3: 32:40

Yeah, Well, I worked with tons of solopreneurs when I first got started. I've been coaching like 15 years now and you know weird journey health care stuff I talked about. Then I was a pastor for several years and then I ran a foundation and we worked in prison doing leadership trainings and murders and then I started coaching people so fascinating world, um. But you know, and I just grew organically. I didn't like pick a client, I just I knew a bunch of people and I'm doing this now and anyway, got into this whole solopreneur world lots of creatives, filmmakers, photographers, that kind of thing, and you know some folks, if you're listening, you're very committed to the struggle and you don't know, you don't recognize or willing to own how much you love it to be hard so you can look like a suffering. You know, uh, solopreneur and to the point of like, should you hire people? Yeah, as long as they can create more value than you pay them. Yeah, it's not, that's a math problem, uh, but it's also a cultural issue. Like, do they make the team better, right? Do they elevate the dialogue? Are they? Do they make the team more Right? Do they elevate the dialogue? Do they make the team more committed? So, don't make exceptions. When you're hiring people, raise the bar super high and if you can afford it, you can always fire them. Sure, I always hire people with like, hey, we're going to do this for three months and then I'm going to either rehire you or let you go. That's how this is going to work, and you either blow my mind or we just won't work together. And I love you, yeah, but that's the deal. I'm sacrificing so that it and I get better, and and uh, with a lot more words than that, but it's like that's it, cause I hold myself to that standard. Right, you know, I've got an assistant. I've worked and working with her for I don't know seven, eight years now, and when I hired her, I said listen, I do want you to be perfect, it's true. Why? Because I hold myself when I'm scheduling stuff. I don't make a mistake when I'm scheduling stuff, because I check it three times, and so you're not going to be perfect, and that's also okay. So the difference is when you either knock it out of the park or when you blow it. You just got to solve it so fast. I barely even notice it. That's your job, yeah, and if you blow it big, you just apologize profusely and I'll forgive you as long as your heart's there and then we'll get up and go again. But, like, this is not lazy, we're not like getting sloppy here and I'm not your buddy, like we're working together, we're co, you know partners. So that's all about the kind of ethos you want to build, um, and I think at any moment in time, especially this moment in time in our culture, uh, we need the brave to stand up and have the real conversations, um, because everybody needs that. Uh, we all need great leadership around us and we all need to follow.

Speaker 3: 35:26

Very well, I love following my team. I love not being the boss in every arena. I love, like, being a student in some meetings and tell me about this oh, I don't even know what you're talking about. Accounting, I am not the accountant. Yeah, I don't run the pnl. I don't um, because I got smart guys to do that much better and I don't like need to look like that guy either. Right, all right, yeah, it's probably a lot of people are listening. You're like okay, I feel this way.

Speaker 2: 35:52

Um, yeah, I like that and like that's kind of my mindset with it too. Like, uh, and I can't remember. Now I heard this story I can't remember which president is or no, it was Henry Ford, I think. He was being in front of his board. They were asking a bunch of questions or something why he did certain things the way he did, or budget. I can't remember the exact story, so forgive me for listening, but basically they were asking questions and he said I don't know the answer.

Speaker 2: 36:18

And they said wait, you, henry Ford, you're running this company, you know CEO, and you don't know the answer to whatever it was. Finance question Like, no, he's like. You know why he's like? Cause I can pick up this phone, hit a button and I can find out the answer from somebody who's smarter than I am in that area Right on. He's like cause I built a team where I don't have to know it all I'm good at my thing.

Speaker 2: 36:40

And that's what I love. And you, you know, as far as elevate goes, like I'm I've always been about and it could be the incorrect way to do it, but you know I'm gonna learn. I guess is, you know, our profit margins are smaller, probably than other agencies, because I think I've built a team faster, because I I understood that more of like I can only go so far by myself and I'd rather have a team where I can, you know one, support them, help them, and then they're gonna, you know, teach me things as well along the way. And it's building that kind of community here, with an elevate too, which is fun. So like it's awesome. All that, yeah, but learning how to to do it well, um, and I think you know I try to keep that humility piece and openness, because I know I'm far from perfect, but you know listening, this has been a great episode. So again, adrian, I appreciate you sharing everything.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Happy to be here. If they were to leave this episode and want to immediately go kind of work on their own internal conversation, what would be one question you'd have them ask themselves to go sit on Well that's good. One question I don't know if I can do one, okay, maybe let me go look in the mirror and say, let me do a two-parter okay, yeah, so, uh, just because I think any self-reflection without feedback is vanity.

Speaker 3: 38:03

okay, we ought to be self-reflective, but we lie to ourselves so quickly. That's my point is like we all want to look good in our own eyes. I mean even those of us that are humble or practice humility and you know you do that, obviously, and I want to do that as well in my life. I'm also. It's just, you can't do surgery on yourself, so it's good to sit down and say, okay, good, what are the three things I did last year that I need to stop doing and what are the three things I thought about doing that I need help doing Even those two questions. But then I would also ask the people closest to you and you probably need to put some context around it and hey, I'm doing some self-reflection. I need you to help me get better. So please be unfettered. I promise I won't punish you for your answers.

Speaker 3: 38:51

But what do you do, right? And if they don't have an answer? You've trained them to be dumb. You've trained them to not think right. So, because they're smart people, they're around you. So if they don't have an answer, they say they need some time. Okay, so if they don't have an answer. They say they need some time. Okay, but notice, that's your impact. Like they don't. They either haven't been thinking about how to make you better and that's what their job is and how to make company better or they're scared. So either of those two things that both are feedback. So I'd ask those questions. That's what I would do. I would got to hop on a coaching call here.

Speaker 3: 39:24

But if you want to get some feedback, you were saying at the beginning, what do people do? We've got a four-day personal leadership training called the Revenant Process. There's one in Boise. The next one's in Boise in March. It'll be your world. It's awesome. It's full of business leaders, but the conversation is very personal around your world and how you see what you've made up about the world and yourself and your history and all that kind of stuff. It's kind of like 10 years of therapy in a weekend and I'm not a therapy guy, but the breakthroughs are awesome. It's all Adlerian versus Freudian. If I had time I'd go into it, but it's all future-focused, that type of thinking, not kind of navel-gazing, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 40:05

But, you're engaging, not like taking notes in a seminar. You're in it. We're inviting you to fully participate, take a bunch of risks. So people have huge breakthroughs. At the last 2,000 people we just surveyed, 97% of them said it's one of the top three experiences of their life. Okay, awesome and so people listening.

Speaker 2: 40:24

If they want to get connected with you, to find out more about that or get signed up, where's the best place for them to go?

Speaker 3: 40:29

you can go to take new groundcom and then you can look under the public trainings.

Speaker 2: 40:33

it's called the revenant process awesome so I'm sure you can get connected to through adrian on that website as well, guys. Um.

Speaker 3: 40:42

So yeah, you can follow find me on instagram, adrian, or at Adriank. Love to connect with anybody here, anybody in your world, Chris Very happy. So Adriank on Instagram or go to TakeNewGroundcom.

Speaker 2: 40:55

Awesome. Yeah, everyone take them up on that. Get it checked out, get connected with them, start learning, start growing in your leadership.

Speaker 3: 41:03

You'd love it. You'd love it bro yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:05

I'll definitely get out, that's for sure. I'm definitely going to go check it out after this, for for sure, and make it work as long as I'm available that weekend. So, um, but Adrian, again, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Speaker 3: 41:18

Happy, happy to be here, thanks.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yep, and make sure you share this with someone else who could benefit from it. We can do so much together by doing that. Thanks again for tuning in and until next time, continue to go out there, elevate your life, elevate your brand, and we'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 1: 41:35

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Media Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. See you in the next episode.