IDL52 Season 2: Authenticity: Lead Through Principle with Thomas Williams

Do you have a firm grip on you who are as a person and a leader? Are you embodying your principles so that it permeates your leadership? Why must authenticity and honesty be centered in work environments?

In this podcast episode, Tyler speaks with Thomas Williams, a former NFL linebacker. Thomas and Tyler were introduced by Jordan Montgomery (a former IDL guest), and as is the case with people who share passions, they have an intuitive connection. Thomas and Tyler had the opportunity of hosting a virtual leadership conference together, and following the positive feedback they got about the event, they decided to discuss the conference in a podcast - this podcast.

Meet Thomas Williams

Thomas R. Williams is an author, consultant, and speaker. He is also a former NFL linebacker, and played for the likes of the Jaguars, Patriots, Bills, and Panthers.

Thomas ignites and inspires people to embrace their own greatness. He combines his natural infectious energy, inspiration, and openness to connect with audiences, and he helps organizations become more productive and profitable by refocusing on a shared vision and embracing the principles of Positive Leadership.

Thomas works with universities, organizations, adults and youth, helping them get from where they are to where they want to be.

Visit The Thomas R. Williams website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

•       As a leader, who are you? - 13:18

•       Authenticity and environment - 21:25

•       The 5 R’s of mindset - 24:44

•       The 4 C’s - 31:25

•      The 4 I’s - 40:00

•       The 3 H’s - 53:40

As a leader, who are you?

Take the napkin test: write three of your top qualities on one side. Then on the other side, ask five people who are closest to you to write the three top qualities they associate with you.

If those qualities match up, then you are living transparently and embodying your principles well. If they do not – and they often do not – then you need to work on aligning your actions more with your words. Authenticity is a practiced skill.

As much as leaders need to be transparent about who they are and create a business that incorporates their values, employees need to decide whether this culture is one they want to be a part of.

Authenticity and environment

Authenticity is important for the environment because if employees and interviewees know that they are fully welcomed, then they know that they do not have to pretend for your ego’s sake or to keep the peace.

The work environment must be set up in a way so that employees feel safe and excited to be themselves. If they decided to move on, they would be celebrated and not shunned because authenticity is being upheld.

The 5 R’s of mindset

1 – Routine

2 – Reset

3 – Remember

4 – Realistic

5 – Repeat

Depending on which words resonate with you when you are going about your routine and you find yourself aimlessly completing tasks, ask yourself: am I moving forwards or backward?

Are you intentional with your time and energy and creating a version of yourself that you want to be, or are you falling back on old habits?

Figure out what your routine is. What is it that you need to do in the mornings and evenings to get you into your best self?

The 4 C’s

1 – Communicate

2 – Connect

3 – Care

4 – Commit

Thomas’ 4 C’s are vital to any team, whether it is virtual, sports, or office-bound. For example, if in the team there is a void in communication, negativity always fills its place, because people make up assumptions for answers.

Once care has been established due to communication to facilitate connection, commitment follows. We are better able to commit once we care about what it is that we are committing to.

The 4 I’s

These are the four barriers of leadership:

1 – Insecurity

2 – Insensitivity

3 – Inactivity

4 – Intensity

Even though insecurity can be the biggest one that blocks effective leadership – because it avoids critique and is dependent on false acceptance – intensity can also be a barrier.

If the leader is too intense, or the environment is too intense, an employee may not feel prepared or safe enough to give their opinion.

This creates dis-ease, discomfort, and inevitably dishonesty because the person does not feel supported to share how they truly feel or what they think.

The 3 H’s

1 – Hero

2 – Hardship

3 – Highlight

When you are sitting in a room, talk to someone about their hero, their hardships, and a highlight in their life.

This gives you the opportunity to connect with them, and you can go as deep into this conversation as you want.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Thomas R. Williams - The Relentless Pursuit of Greatness

BOOK | Thomas R. Williams - Permission to Dream: I can, I will, I did

Visit The Thomas R. Williams website

Connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn.

The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Coach the person first and the player follows. Most people just coach the player, or in a corporate setting, just speak to the employee, and they don’t speak to the person. When you do that, there’s a block.

Thomas Williams

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. I'm so excited to be with you here today, excited for you to be listening in, and I can't wait for you to listen this conversation. So let me give you some background here. Today's guest Thomas Williams, Thomas and I were introduced several months ago, back in 2021 from Jordan Montgomery. You've heard Jordan on this podcast. You've heard some of the other people that Jordan has connected me with. You're going to hear from more people Jordan has connected me with. Through that point of connecting with Thomas, he and I just kind of strangely enough had this really close right off the bat connection. You're going to hear that and about that in the interview. Thomas and I had the opportunity to do a leadership virtual conference together for Help Desk International, the Western Central New York chapter. One of my college fraternity brothers, Jeff Rick invited me to do that. I got Thomas to go along with me and we thought after presenting that we had such great feedback from everyone that we would talk about it as a podcast. I wanted to share the information. Thomas was so willing to jump on and be a guest. We had a great conversation, probably one of the longer podcasts I've ever recorded. But I'm just going to warn you there is so much good information, you're going to want to have a notebook. We made sure to put all the different notes in the show notes. So go to tylerdickerhoof.com/podcast. You can see all the other podcasts, but you can see the notes from episode 52 with Thomas Williams, have all the details that we release when we talk about rich leadership. I'm so excited to get feedback from this episode. So excited for you guys to hear from Thomas, such a great dude and have tremendously appreciated getting to be friends with him and collaborate on this project with him. So sit back, get ready to take some notes. We're going to have a great conversation where hopefully you learn a few things too. [TYLER] Thomas, good morning. Welcome. Thanks for joining dude. I'm so excited to have you as a guest on the Impact Driven Leader podcast. We've gotten to know each other over the last couple months. I've gotten to know you pretty intimately. We've shared a lot of time together. We've done an event together, which we're going to talk about that today, the leadership event that we are able to put on, but I'd love for you to do this, to, I'll talk a little bit about you in the intro that you haven't heard yet, but I would love for you to just kind of introduce yourself to the audience. Who is Thomas Williams? [THOMAS WILLIAMS] Oh man, Tyler, it's awesome to be here. It's crazy, I feel like over the pandemic we've met people that we would've maybe never even met if the world was opened up. So you and I have met and never met at the same time, which is so cool but we've had these long in-depth conversations. To your audience, hello everyone. My name is Thomas Williams. I am a dad. I'm a subpar, sub, sub, subpar golfer. I'm an okay cook. I'm just a me. I tell people all the time, I'm professional me, originally from a small town in Northern California called Vacaville, which is right between Sacramento and San Francisco. I'm from there. So I can kind of talk about it a little bit. The way that I am is like you wouldn't really necessarily know about it unless you were literally dry from SAC to San Fran or vice versa and you are stopping to get a burger from in and out or fill up your gas tank. So from there, I earned a scholarship and came to USC where we played in 50 or 65 games. We lost five once, 59. That was from 2003 to 2007. Got drafted to the NFL in 2008, played from 2008 until 2012. I had a career and a neck injury. After that, I think like a lot of 18 to 25 year olds, you want to figure out where's your place in this world. So I decided to, or I should say it was decided for me with my purpose of you're going to be transitioning from a game changer to a life changer. So I transitioned from making plays on the field to making a difference in people's lives. So 2012 to now here we are in 2022, I am an author, a speaker, a facilitator, and a member of the John Gordon speaking team. I'm a consultant. I've done some adjunct professor work in the past with athletes, helping them transition into college on a life skills focus and intentional and other than man I'm a guy trying to figure it out. [TYLER] Yes, well I appreciate that. That was a great rundown. I have been to Vacaville, having lived in California for a few years. I mean, you kind of described it how it is. That's fine. That's cool. I mean, just to their own there, I mean, I can tell you about growing up in Northeast Ohio and it's not going to be as descriptive as that. I mean, you hear about those map dot towns. That's where I grew up. I grew up on a farm in the middle of, like I said, Northeast, Ohio, but part of, you know we were introduced. We've built this relationship. We had the opportunity and partly what I'm excited to talk about here is we had opportunity to do a virtual leadership conference for a a chapter of HDI (Help Desk International). One of the things that you just touched on there, you talked about your USC record and your coach when you were at USC was the infamous, the famed Pete Carroll. As we started off that conference, you shared a story about Pete and I'd love for you to share that story and kind of kick off there. I'm going to tee it up this way. It's one of the things that we discussed and talking about leadership is sometimes people enter into a position of leadership and others don't want them there. So let me kick it off that way. I'd love for you to talk about your experience going to USC and your first experience with Pete. [THOMAS] It's great because we can look back and say, oh, it worked out and here's the aha, in the, what is it, 18 years, 20, I think it's 20, 21 years now. But I mean, it just like you described it, how awful would it be to be given the keys to an organization or a department or a team and no one wants you there, especially the higher ups. So that kind of was a little bit of the story at USC. When Pete Carroll came there from the NFL, he had toured the NFL, a couple of different teams and organizations and the knock on him at the time was he's too much of a player's coach. So he's too much love, not enough counter ability, not enough structure, not enough philosophy, et cetera, et cetera. So he lands at USC and it wasn't by everyone's favorite decision. I think it was something that Mike Garrett saw on him, the president at the time who also saw something in him and said, "Hey, we need some new juice." So Pete Carroll gets there and in off season, if you know about football, you really have a quick turnaround from the end of last season to the beginning of the next season, because there's recruiting, there's offseason training. You got to put your roster and your team together. On top of that, he had to find his coaches and his new coaching staff and his own philosophy. So he said, how am I going to get this team to play as a team quickly? So one day during training camp, instead of going to the football field and practicing 11 versus 11, he invited the whole entire team from campus over to the Coliseum, which is where USC plays and in the middle of the field, he had this tarp. So he said, somebody pulled the tarp off. So it was just this big old giant rope. He said, "I want offense to pull five players on this side, defense pull five players and put them on that side, pick it up and when I blow the whistle, I want you guys to pull." So they're pulling back and forth. Finally the offense wins because they're playing tug of war. So the offense wins and they're hyped, they're pumped up, they're high fiving each other and the defense is mad and angry as you could expect any competitive individual or group to be. Defense says, "No coach, we're going to do it again." So coach Carroll goes, "Great. Do it again." So now they start pulling back and forth again and the defense wins. So now the offense is pissed off and upset and then defense is high fiving and coach says, "Great. We're going to be a 50/50 team. This is going to be a defense and an offensive team." Everyone's like, no way, this is either or because we're competitive. So then the offense wins. So he says, I guess it's going to be an offensive team on the third time. The defense was like, heck no, coach. He said, coach Carroll says, well, how about this, defense take your five guys who are on a opposing side from the offense and you guys go stand on the same side as the offense. Now there's 10 people on the same side holding the rope. He says, now. All 10 people pull and they're looking around at each other. They're looking at coach Carroll and the rest of the coach and they're go, what do you mean? He goes, "How was it?" They go, it was easy. He goes, "Of course it was because everybody pulled together in the same direction at the same exact time." He said, "From here on out, we're going to pull in the same direction at the same time." He says, whether you were at home, whether we're away, whether at practice, whether we're in the cafeteria, whether we're in class or out and about, we're always going to pull in the same direction at the same time with all of our force and all of our might. The thing that he taught us that day, Tyler is that it doesn't matter about who's against you, who's for you. As long as you are pulling in the same direction at the same time, everybody giving everything that they have, you are a team. You're United. Also what he sparked in us that day is that it's going to be a competitive culture. The philosophy is going to be compete, compete in everything that you do. Doesn't matter if you're playing rock, paper, scissors. Doesn't matter if you're competing on studying for a test or getting ready for your next opponent. If you can compete, you give yourself that much more of a chance to win. [TYLER] So let's take, there's so many great leadership lessons in and of that from how Pete approached you guys to you guys interacting with each other, but let's look at this way. If someone's listening today, they are a leader in organization, they work in an organization and maybe they're in the same place as Pete where they can call different groups together and go through that exercise. Or maybe they're a offensive lineman. Maybe they're a defensive back where they're just a player on the team. Where do you, as you envision that back and as you try to communicate that people in our world today, let's say we're recording on the last day of 2021. We're excited about to get into 2022. How do you see that same thing playing out as you look at organizations in the world today, and how can people use that to say, okay, we can use this ideology as a tool to help within our own organization? [THOMAS] Such a great question. That's what I love about what I get a chance to do, is that I get a chance to take the lessons that I learned through sports and in football and apply it to corporate, whether it's C-level or whether it's the managers or supervisors or whatever it is. I think the best thing that I found out through my experience with working with people is that asking the leader the question, who are you? Pete knows who he is. One of the things that he had a difficult time, he would even admit this through his books and through his podcast is that he wasn't necessarily always knowing who he was. So when he came to USC, he knew exactly who he was. Still to this day, when he's with Seattle, he knows who he is. If you listen to anything, it will always be about competition. Now it's not now what I think he did in that day and then what these leaders can do in today's society. It's that you don't get competition. For him it was competition. He's not trying to get his players to go against each other. He's just trying to create an environment and a culture full of competition. So first and foremost, a leader has to know who they are. I feel like we're in a regurgitation phase of life where everybody wants to, like, I'm going to come to Tyler's house or Tyler's business, and I'm going to take something from him and I'm going to apply it to my culture. Well, that's not who I am because who I am is I'm energetic, I'm passionate, I'm believing the things that are not as though they were. Like that's to my core. That's who I am. But if I try to do something completely different and off, and I try to lead from Tyler's lens, then I'm not necessarily be a hundred percent authentic and organic, and we're not going to maximize who we are. So first and foremost, who are you as a leader? And make sure inside of your culture, inside of your company that resonates and comes through. It's like the old adage, take a napkin and write down three things or who you are, who you represent, like part of your identity. Like I'm funny, I'm smart, I'm humble or whatever it is. Then you ask the five closest people to you on the back of that napkin to write down three words that represent who you are and are those words the same as the words you wrote down. If they are, great. Then that means that you're being a parent with who you are and who you want others to receive you as. But most of the time, it's not that way. So what leaders need to do is make sure that who they are is bleeding through their organization. It's just overflow, [TYLER] I want to jump in here and say, that's such a tremendous exercise because this is what I had to learn. You can write down what you think you are, but it really doesn't matter until you see what others write for you. There's a point you have to own that. Now you can say I don't want that. Those two lists are different, but you have to own how others see you. You can't make those lists the same until you own how others see you and say, oh, I don't want to be seen that way. I don't want to be seen as this hard, callous, intense, things that you've heard me talk about, I had to walk through. I want them to see me as fun and energetic and encouraging and passionate and with a harness on my intensity that helps people rather than dividing people. Those are things that we talked about. Go ahead. [THOMAS] So I also want to say, so I was lucky enough to play for Bill Belichick as well. So one of the most winningest college coaches in all of college football for his time period, Pete Carroll and also bill Belichick. So I played for the Patriots. And what's the difference between Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll? The answer's simple. It's they both get to where they want to go. They just go there differently. Bill Belichick, several times in my tenure there, he said, "Guys, I understand it sucks to play for me. I understand that it sucks, but we win." That's the thing that I want to do, is that I want to win. So to your point, when you're saying sometimes when, what we want to portray or what we want to give off, it might not rub people culturally, the "right way." But you ultimately get the job done. You get to the ultimate place that you want to go. So now you have to understand that, is it worth what we have to go through in order to get where with Pete Carroll, like, yes, it's fun. It's worth competing at every single thing that you do, whether it's a practice, whether it's a walkthrough, whether working out in the weight room. I remember a time where there was two guys on our team who one guy got his jaw broken because he lost in a Madden football game, video game. It was stupid. It was like over like $5, but we were so competitive. Now he's okay and he's all right, but like brothers do, normally they fight and they argue, but they kiss and make up, but it was enthralled and it was worth it, like the rock, paper, scissors and those things. The same thing you have to ask yourself on the opposite end of the spectrum. With Bill Belichick and the new England Patriots is that worth it. Do you really want to host a championship trophy at the end of the year? Well, this is what you're going to have to go through in order to get it. So it's one on the leaders, back to your original question, it's one on the leaders. Understand who you are, be transparent and be extremely organic and authentic doing that. But then also for the people who are in the organization, hey, is this part of the culture that I want to be? I want this outcome, they get this outcome, do I want to go through what it takes to get there? Is the juice worth the squeeze, so to speak? [TYLER] There's this image of me and the image in my mind of you being in a situation, whether it's there in the Coliseum with coach Carroll and or whether it's in new England and you're training with Belichick. At some point they lay out, this is what's going to take. I'm just imagining the way you describe it, there are guys that are like, no, I'm not down for that. I'm not in. They walk away and you probably saw that. And as you just said, I would have to imagine those two coaches aren't sitting there saying and worrying about the people that walked away. Rather than saying that's okay. You didn't want to rise to whatever we have set here, but that's okay. I'm not going to waste my, I don't want to say waste my time on that, but I'm not going to punish everyone else in the organization because someone else decided to walk away. There's just this image of that and how important that is as we're leading an organization. It's like if our vision is to achieve a championship, if our vision is to be the best service provider in our sector, this is what it's going to take to get there. And if you aren't, if that doesn't align with mission and your vision, that's okay. You know what, I'd much rather you go somewhere else that you can find where it fits your mission and vision. I'm just guessing you saw that with those two coaches. [THOMAS] Yes. You see it. It's one of the things that I love that on the John Gordon team that we talk about is that one apple doesn't make a tree, but it can spoil it. It's, one can't make a team, but one can break a team because of the cancers, because of the negativity, because of all of the stuff that's communicated and talked about in a negative light. And I did see it. I mean, I was part of it. I had to, there was a fork in the road for me going into my second year at USC, because I didn't like, I wasn't used to competing every single day. I was the guy who was used to competing on game day, but not on practice or in the weight room or in the film room or just competing, just because I always needed something else to push me to an environment, to push me to compete. So it was a folk in the road, "Hey, Thomas, you can get off this train, but you can't stop it. This train isn't going to stop to make you feel comfortable, to make you feel like you're a part of it. So you can either join," and thank God we had great leaders like Carrie Colbert and guys like Sean Cody and Tupu and Matt, I mean, I can literally go on and on, because we had guys who were like, who made it fun and said, look, you can come along. It's easy. The only thing you have to do is show up. And just because of, and this was the only time in my life that I've seen osmosis really work. It's like, you hang around long enough and you're going to catch this bug too. It's like, we had coaches in the locker room, so to speak, who almost policed us to say, "Hey, look, we compete in everything that we do. But if you don't want to be here, just like to your point, don't mess it up for the rest of us. We're not going to stop you from leaving. We're actually going to encourage you to leave so that you can go find a place that you get excited about because we're excited about winning. We're excited about competing and having fun." So it's the same thing with people in the world today who go to work, who are part of non-profit organizations, who are part of for-profit organizations that finding the culture that fits your personality or the personality that you wish to be like is extremely important. I tell all the times like a lot of my students that I teach who are transitioning into college, and we're talking about the transition process, because you got to prepare for your transition while you're still playing, for when you're done playing. I talk about when you go to get interviewed at a job, you're interviewing that company just as much as they're interviewing you because you don't want to lie to have to get a job. Because you're going to have to stay a liar to keep it. You're going to get angry and upset and kind of off. [TYLER] So wait, one second. That was so pivotal that I want you to say it again. Because I think it's important, not from the standpoint of our personal self, but if we create an environment to where people need to do that to be in our organization, then we have a bunch of liars. So I want you to state that again. [THOMAS] If you're going to lie to get a job or to get a position, if you're an employee going to an employer and you're in the interview process, if you're going to lie to get the job, "This is what I do well. Doesn't bother me to work late hours or Monday through Friday," whatever it is, if you lie, they're going to expect you to do that day one, through day 10, through year of 20. So if you lie to get it, you have to lie to keep it. It's like anything. It's like dating. It's like getting a job. But you would rather come in and say, "Hey guys, this isn't for me. And I like that you guys are top 50 in the country, top 20 in the world, whatever it is, but this isn't part of my culture." And I think now more than ever, we've had the past two years to sit at home and really self, you know, self aware and evaluate what is it that works for me. I love talking with the companies and the organizations and having, this is one thing, another thing I learned from coach Carroll, he said, "If you can't write down your personal mission in 30 words or less, then you don't know it." Your personal mission of who you are, what you want to represen.t and you can also do this for your business. So I love asking the CEOs and the presidents what does your culture stand for? They're like, well, they start, ums and kind of like, and sort of like, and a little bit of this. I'm like in 30 words or less, right now, what does it stand for? They're like, we don't know it. I'm like, well, how do you expect the people who are following you or the people who are working with you are underneath you to know it? [TYLER] Yes, totally. I mean, that all goes back and all ties together. It's when we're pulling together, it's so much easier, but if you don't know which side of the rope you're pulling, then you have no idea how you can be together. And the point of that is like, how do you iterate? If I'm laying this, if coach Carroll would've just said, oh, there's rope, just get at that rope without giving the direction and the mission and the vision, and then iterating it changing it along the way to accomplish this specific goal, it would've never worked. So I want to transition. So one of the things that came up and one of the, actually the guy who invited me, who then brought you in to head up this conference that we did, his name is Jeff and I was talking to him afterwards. He goes, "Tyler, did you realize that you guys talked about rich leadership?" I said, "No, I had no idea. Thomas and I just put this together. We wanted to make something super fun and engaging." You had a couple segments, I had a couple segments and we broke out some different topics, some mindsets, you know you start off with that story, obviously, Pete Carroll. But then we got into the five R's, the four I's, the four C's and the three H's. We had no intention. It wasn't necessarily in that order. Afterwards it was like, oh, that was pretty cool. So I'd love to do this is, and I'm going to read them off because I have them here, the five R's, I'm going to start the five of mindset, which are routine, reset, remember or not, realistic, repeat. So for the audience we're starting there. Take your notes. I'll hit those again. But one of the things that we did is I presented that and then you kind of discussed it. We led into a breakout group. So it's been a couple weeks since we did it, I know, but as you just heard that list again and that idea of mindset, what hit you? [THOMAS] Man, I would love to say all of them. [TYLER] To, I mean, you can't do that. [THOMAS] I mean, because, here's why I say that. [TYLER] Okay, you can do that. [THOMAS] As you broke them down in the conference, I mean, say the list again, like for people to really understand this. [TYLER] All right. So the five R's of mindset, routine, reset, remember or not, realistic and repeat. [THOMAS] And repeat. I think as you refresh my memory, the two that sit really close to me is routine and reset. Routine, so one of the things that I feel like a lot of us in the professional or personal development space are kind of going over and over and over, whether it's with the individual clients or with group clients, is they're trying to find out what is their routine, because they're burned out. I need a routine. I need to get back to who I am. So when you say routine and reset, it's reset after each day. I mean, we're coming up on the end of the year. We're coming up on, okay, are we going back to something? Are we going forward to something? Are we in the normal? So I need to reset all of this. So those two stick out to me the most, because for me, I think athletically and personally, there was always a routine. I mean, you have animals, you have a farm, there's things you know. So you probably sleep on the same side of the bed. You put your alarm clock in the same place. You set it at a specific time. You know which animals you're going to first. You know which tool you're going to use. You just have a routine. It's not, I'm just going to go out there tomorrow morning, 4:30 and I'm going to see what I have to do. And it's clockwork. That's what helps you be efficient. That's what you helps you be proficient and then also effective at the same time. Then you go throughout your whole day and then you reset and you're going to do that same thing again. And what I loved about the conference is that there was a lot of people on the call. Like okay, I know there's something off. I don't know how to get it back on track. I don't know how to get it back in alignment. That's what I loved about your five R's is that, hey, we're going to get a routine. Find out your routine. What is it that you need to do, whether it's, I see you have your coffee or tea and your mug, or maybe the water. You have your thing that gets you going. I remember you talked about, you read book and you listen to your audio books or your podcast or your sermon or something to get you going. I feel like that was one of the things that we gave a ginormous breakthrough to a lot of people, because we not only said it, we talked about what is it, Tyler that can help somebody get a new routine so that they can get to reset and go out throughout their day? What about you? What were some of the ones that, I mean, obviously you came up with five, but that you thought that landed great with the group? [TYLER] I think the one that really, as I'm thinking now is the repeat. It's kind of the reset and say, all right what worked today, what didn't, and the repeat and kind of this reset. It's like, oh, you're going to do it again tomorrow. So that process starts over again. If you're not looking at saying, how can I maximize and create efficiency routine, let me talk a little bit about football world. You know this from many years of practices and I know this from sports. There's no downtime. It is every single minute of training, every single minute of your day is identified where it's going to be and maximized for efficiency. When we think about that, why is that? Not to just absolutely squash people's personality. It's to limit the amount of thinking so that way you can be most effective when you need to be. And I think for a lot of professionals that maybe haven't gone through that they're like, just give me all the freedom. I want all the freedom. I want to be able to do whatever I want to do. And what's really hard there is your mind is frantic all the time, as opposed to, I'm going to have a routine, I'm going to reset what needs to be reset, I'm going to remember what I need to remember, or just block away that bad play, that same route where I didn't cover the tight end and we went for a touchdown and we got burnt. I need to forget about it and go back to my training and understand what do I need to do next time? The next time you're not going to get rubbed by the guy coming from the slant and that you get taken off the play. But yet, the repeat is you have to repeat and have to be realistic to say, dude, I can't cover this guy. How do I need to make sure if he's coming at me again, that I can move in order that I can do the best that I can? I think those are all elements that we can, as professionals realize, oh, some of these structures, some of these ideologies are for my great benefit to maximize my abilities rather than hinder me and make me less where I'm just a cog in the wheel. It's like, no, it's going to allow your abilities to really play out in their best. [THOMAS] Yep. Less choice, less decisions that go into it. I mean, I always love to use the analogy of Southwest. So many times we get on a Southwest flight. It's great. No shout out. I've worked with Southwest before and shout out to Southwest, but also understanding when you give people the option to sit wherever they want, it takes a little bit longer to board a flight. But if you know that you're sitting in 17C, you take the choice out of it, which means you already know where your bag's going to go. If you have a carry on, you already know where you're sitting. You don't need to look up and say, well, do I want this one? Does this one have more leg room? Oh, the shade doesn't work. Oh, the tray table, like, you take all of the thought out of that part of it. So it's the same thing, like what you're talking about with people on a personal, professional side. When you can take the thought out of what you do, it just alleviates you from making the right or the wrong decision. It's just a decision and then you move forward and you can be productive. [TYLER] Awesome. All right, let's transition a little bit. We're going to be out of order here, but just bear with me. I'm going to jump to the four C's. The four C's that you shared, which are communicate, connect, commit, and care. You want to give just a quick rundown what those are, how those apply, and then I'll share some notes on those. [THOMAS] Yes, man. I love it. I didn't even think about the 5, 4, 3 that you did at the very beginning of this. It's like, it's crazy to sit there and think about how much gold came from us collaborating and bringing our full selves to the engagement. So the four C's, like you mentioned, it is communicate, connect, care, and commit. It's what all great teams do. It doesn't matter if you're an athletic team. It doesn't matter if you're a team that works in an office or cubicles or you're working remotely; is that you have to communicate. Remember, and this is a thing that I've learned from John Gordon, from several years back, that when there's a void in communication, negativity fills its place. You think about a text message, you think about an email, you think about when there's that awkward silence in a conversation that's verbal and you can see face to face. When there's a void in communication, negativity always fills its place. So that's why in sports, I used to love this thing where it was sign, co-sign. It's that I would say, "Hey, I got left, left, left." The person who I was communicating that to would always repeat it back. So they would co-sign left, left, left. Now I'm just using that just for the sake of the argument. So what we do in sports, we don't necessarily always do in the relationship with our a partner. We don't always do in the relationship with a teammate or a coworker. We just assume that they heard it, or they assume that we acknowledged it. So when we don't do that properly, then there's that void and then there's that break in communication. But then you ask the question of why do you communicate? We communicate so we can connect. What is a connection? Is that when we can connect and we know who the other person is on the other side of this call, on the other side of the computer or even who's working right next to me at the desk? One of the things we found out during the pandemic is that we work with people, but we have no idea who we're working with. It doesn't matter if it's been three months. It doesn't matter if it's been 30 years. I didn't know that Tyler lived on a farm. I didn't know that he has three beautiful children. I didn't know that he was from the Midwest. I didn't know he grew up a Buckeye fan. But what we're finding out now is that now we're able to connect because we're forced to communicate more. We're on these Zoom calls all the time. We're picking up the phone, we're channeling and connecting and communicating more than ever. That puts us into our third C, which is commit, or I'm sorry care. So people don't really care how much you know until they know how much you care. So really caring about who you're working next to, who you're working beside. Then once you get that buy-in, then you get commitment. I always tell the story about how Ronnie Lott hurt his finger and he was told that if you have surgery on your finger, then you're not going to be able to play in the playoffs. This is when he was playing for the 49ers and they were having all those great championship runs. He looked at the doctor and he was like, "Well, what about if I just cut it off?" They're like, "Well, if you cut it off, you don't have to do any rehab. You don't have to miss any games." He's like, "Cool. I'll be ready in 15 minutes." So I always joke with people and say, which hand, left or right? Are you really committed? But we have to understand those four C's and you can break down any relationship formed whether it's personal, professional. If you see a breakdown in your relationship, it's usually because of one of those four things. When we can have more of them and be very intentional with the four C's then it gives us the chance to be successful and then also understanding the collaboration and the partnership. [TYLER] So a way for me to summarize, and I think those four C's are actions that we can partake in and encourage others that display and really create empathy. When we choose to communicate, when you say like you shared, "Hey, left side, left side" and the other, the will backer says, "Hey, left side, left side," then all of a sudden, you guys are communicating. There's a care, there's an empathy, like we're in this together. I think that's where that communication, the idea of care, committing to it. None of that matters if we're not willing to connect. I think that's, again, the four C's are actions to really display and really engage in empathy. My definition is empathy is putting your arm around someone and walking with them. If I take that right now, if I put my arm around someone, I care about them. If I put my arm around someone, I want to connect with them. If I put my arm around someone, I commit to them and you can't put your arm around someone without communicating with them. I think that's what really hit me as a virtue of leadership. It's like, man, if you're not practicing those four C's with anyone that you're leading or in relationship with, then you're not being empathetic and there's absolutely no way that you can possibly lead them. [THOMAS] No, no. And I love what you're saying because when you did mention that and you're like putting your arm around someone and right now that's all we want. That's all we want. Does Tyler care? We've had endless conversations. I mean the way that you communicated with Jeff and Nathan and then the other people on the HDI call, it was, "I'm here with you. Let me put my arm around you so if we need to stop here because you're not understanding something or maybe you want to input something here a little bit more," it was so beautifully done. That's why we had the engagement that we had because people felt like you cared. And that's in any organization, top down leader, anyone who cares. I'll never forget the time when Pete Carroll came up to me and I didn't know if I was going to get a red shirt. Again, I'm an 18 year old freshman and I have no input on whether we win a game or not. So I don't know if I'm a red shirt. I'm a little bit uncertain and uncertain. I just go, "Hey, coach would love to talk to you tonight after practice on my future." He's like, "Great, come by the office." And like a lot of times things happen and you don't follow through with your word the next morning at breakfast, he came up to me and goes, "Hey, I was in my office last night. You never came by." I knew at that moment, coach Carroll cared about me, in that moment at 18 years old because he remembered enough. Again, I'm a Swanee, 18 year old freshman, not going to play, have no implications on this year season, but he thought about it enough that there was something in it. He goes, "Hey, I may ask this kid how's he doing? What does he need from me in this moment? He's my player. I told him I'm going to care about him. I told his mom I'm protect him. I got his back the whole time." But how many times do we have those chances and those opportunities, whether it's with our families, whether it's with our team and we remind them, "Hey, there was something you said you needed my eyes on, an extra set of eyes. Hey, I'm still here." Not just in the moment, but what do we have to do? We have to be present. [TYLER] As you shared that story, and I think there is, that part of grace is important. It's to know that, you know you didn't share why you didn't go to that meeting. You shared, obviously that that memory is ingrained in your head of that experience of how coach Carroll reacted. He had grace on you. He didn't come to you and just say, "Hey, you blew me off. So we're done. Go find a new team," whatever else. He could have in a way. There's coaches that do that, but he really showed that he did care and there was that grace in the moment to say, "He's an 18 year old kid. If I show him care, man, that's going to unlock so much more rather than me getting in his face and chastising him because maybe that isn't what he needs. He just needs me to care right now." So I love that. Let's jump ahead to the four I's. So I shared this at the event. I came up with this the night before. It was amazing me to me how well it's played out. I've shared it with future podcast guests. They're like, wow, that's pretty cool. It just came to me. It's not something I can collect other than a higher spirit is where it came from. So what I identified as the four barriers of leadership, I'm going to read through them, give a quick little context and then I'd love to get your feedback. So they happen to all start with I. So the four I's, the barriers of leadership are insensitivity, insensitivity, inactivity and intensity. As I shared those, it was pretty amazing as we went into breakout groups and we discussed it and people were saying, oh, yes, I can see the insensitivity. I can see the inactivity, how that plays out, where I choose not to engage. I choose not to make that extra call. I choose not to have that conversation with someone. But then there is the intensity. That was the one that caught people by surprise. It was probably my biggest barrier over time is that my intensity pushed people away. As we discussed that along with insecurity is like, I'm just not sure what value I have here, I don't know where my worth is, to me, all four of them connect, all three of them, excuse me, all connect to insecurity, but they're displayed in different ways. And it is this barrier, I believe if we go back to your four C's, one of those represents the biggest barrier that we have in being able to actively lead and be a leader that our organization, our world, our family needs. It was fun to me to see how that resonated with people but also this idea is some of them said, I never thought that intensity could be a barrier in leadership. It really was a fun experience to hear the feedback from people. [THOMAS] Man, you nailed it. I mean, it was fun talking with you and you're like, "I'm going to switch it up. I think I'm going to go with these I's." As you were reading the I's, I was like, yes, I think insecurity probably would be one of the biggest ones. Then as you kind of rolled out the intensity piece, and then you shared your own personal story with it, one of the things that I loved is that there were people on the call who said they were the intense one, but they also experienced the leader who was intense, which made them feel a little bit taken back. I can't come to the leader with either a problem or even, maybe even a question. It reminds me of how many times does a leader ask, does everybody got it on a call? There's somebody on the call who doesn't get it, but they don't speak up. Why? Because either the leader's intent or the environment of the group is too intense for them to be vulnerable. So then now I can't show my insecurities as somebody who's in the group. And I was like, you nailed it. I mean, I think that was the greatest part where, because you pull back some layers for people to expose them to some of the things that they knew about themselves, Hey, this still pricking you? You might want to pay attention to this. Then it was, here's something that you don't know. It's like the don't know what you don't know, type thing. This was the don't know what you don't know. So that was just beautifully articulated because when people got in there and rolled up their sleeves and said, I've been intense, what made you, what do you think for you has been the intense moment, that has been a barrier for your leadership? [TYLER] Oh, I mean, it's my personality. It is, I want to get done. I want to move. I want to push. I want to go. Part of that was, as I shared with you and shared with the event, that was how I dealt with some trauma in my life. I've shared that with podcasts before, a guest before and I think that became just how I operated. It's like, because I can feed into it with my personality, it's like, I enjoy being intense. I much rather be intense than just kind of ho, ho, move along, move along. It's like, I find a situation it's kind of like the ball's not moving. It's kind of like, give me that darn ball. We're going to move it. Let's go. Because I don't want to just sit here and stand still. Sometimes that's out of, I don't want to say an insecurity of fear if I stand here and sit still. Am I going to be able to have value? Or if we just allow things to marinate, which sometimes is good, like just let this play out, I'm going to think about, you shared because I think this is a good tie in that your roommate at USC was Reggie Bush. I was thinking about this last night watching football and the difference between the great running backs are the running backs that know when to go all out and when to just hesitate and allow things in front of them to play out, to allow those blocks, to just develop. It's the difference in the salesperson that goes to make the sales call and they push it and say, "I need this sale done today as opposed to, oh, there's a pushback here. Well, let me just let this thing just kind of just settle out on its own. I'm still going to be here. I'm going to know when to follow up. I'm going to know how to follow up and I don't need to be so intense that I have to get this deal done today." Because ultimately, and I think this comes back to the comment that you made earlier is if you are lying in the beginning, you got to keep lying the whole time. I think when that's done in say a leadership or a business and you're so intense, well, the only way to maintain that result is to be so intense, but that's exhausting. That's exhausting from an emotional point of view, that's exhausting from a physical point of view. And when people get exhausted, they look for the door. I just happen to be where I'm pointing is the door in my office, but they start looking for the door and I think that's what was shared and you kind of iterated this idea of this intensity. It's okay for a little while and then all of a sudden people start looking for the door because they're like, "I don't want to do this anymore. I can't handle this anymore. It's too much." [THOMAS] Yes, man, that's just such a beautiful illustration. I feel like, well, let me ask you this question. So now you're aware of it or you've been aware of it, what has settled your intensity or has it been settled? Because I feel like this point in making, now that we've given people the window or we pull the curtain back of this for them, how can we help them with this? What's worked for you and what's something that you would prescribe if you were a doctor with the I's. [TYLER] I think it goes back to your four C's. It's learning that empathy. I used to describe it this way, and it it's such a, for people that get it, they get it but it sounds very bad, is I had to learn how to be lazy. That sounds like what, and for the people that I've discussed that with, they're like, oh, I get it. But it's not a good way to really describe and really lay out the practice. It is. It's choosing to communicate. It's choosing to connect. It's being committed. It's caring with people. It's doing that. To me, it's being empathetic, it's putting your arm around people because when you put your arm around people and you're intense, you have to slow to their pace and walk. Now you can still walk with them. You can still lead them. You can still move together. It's not putting your feet in the ground and just stopping. It's still going the process but if you're not walking with them at a pace they're willing to walk, then you're not going anywhere. [THOMAS] Yes. [TYLER] And I think that is, for me, I had to slow down to go faster. I had to slow down to be able to go with people to say, "Hey, we're going to accomplish something bigger." It is really the African proverb, "One goes fast, many go far." Well, you could go fast and far, but you're going fast together at the rate that everyone else can go. It sometimes means that you have to start going back to the teams that you were a part of, is you have to find people that their normal walking pace is your normal walking pace. And once you do that, you can go as fast as you want. It's when people have different paces and then all of a sudden you're trying to figure this out. And this can happen in a lot of organizations. Like, do we find the pace that works for people and do we allow them to get off the train when the pace is too fast for them and saying I need you to get off the train because you're better suited on a different train and that's okay. I want to go on the high speed bullet. You're looking at riding the polar express. That's cool. Go for it. That's right. There's a place for it but it's understanding, which that is, to me, that is empathy. It's putting a harness on that intensity. [THOMAS] Yes. I think a leader needs to have that understanding. In my mind right now it's like, I see either a trainer, who's getting someone else in shape, maybe a client, maybe a friend, and maybe they're starting out on their fitness journey. So the trainer is the triathlete, swims, runs, bikes, does the whole thing, but this person is just day one of their journey. So the trainer can't say, "Hey, today, we're going to run 26.2 miles, swim 2.4, bike 112 on the first day. First day is like, "Hey man, we're going to walk around the block. We're going to do five pushups and do 10 sit-ups." And that's day one. But what I noticed, for me, because I was also the intense one or I should say, I still am and working on it. I'm learning now that eventually we'll get there to where "I am." But I need to come to, not down, but I need to come to where the other person is and I need to go on the them with that journey because I also don't want them to go too fast too soon because I want to go far. I don't want to quit. I want to go far and I want them to go far with me and I want to go far with them. So bringing them along, like what Jay-Z says is that what you eat doesn't make me go to the bathroom. But he uses other words. So what I understand is that because we can't go as fast right here right now with that person, it doesn't take away, I can do my own intense thing when I want to. I can wake up in the morning at 2:45 and play my ACDC and drink my pre-work out and do that. But when we get together, that might not be the radio station that everyone's playing. So listen to my radio station with me and with the other people who also like to listen to that station, who they are the intense ones. But then also understand that, hey, we're going to sit around, drink eggnog and listen to Christmas music. We're going to hang up ornaments. We're going to chill. But I think that's been one of the biggest things because it's not an "either or." It's "and both." [TYLER] I think to just camp out a little bit longer as you share that, one of the things that I realized is how uncomfortable my intensity made people. It was simply, it became the way that I operated. I had to be willing, as you just shared there to care enough about others, to not force them, to listen to my radio station. There's a time and place for that. I can go listen to the ACDC with people, but there maybe times that I need to go listen to Michael Buble. And that's okay. I may not enjoy it and that may not be my gig, but yet if I come into the room and I am the bull in the China shop, which one of the things that you and I shared, and I think this is something that's dear to my heart is I can, with my intensity and might look sometimes be that bull in a China shop, especially by Enneagram eight. And I have to understand that sometimes does way more harm than good, but yet there's a place for it. I just have to understand where that place is and that's learning how to gauge and manage that intensity. It's still something I actively have to work with within my family, probably the most now. Is get intense within my family. My wife even mentioned it yesterday. She's like, "We're not sure when you're going to just kind of," my daughter was sharing something about, "She didn't want to do something because I don't know if you're going to yell." And I'm like, "Well, just do it. Just get it done." But, and it's having to learn that. [THOMAS] Great learning, great learning. This is goal. This is goal for people because the thing that I love about your podcast is that it speaks to the person holistically, as opposed to in just one sector and area. This is going to help some people out personally, which will then carry over into their professional lives. [TYLER] Yep. All right. Let's finish it up. The three H's, let me read those off, hero, hardship, highlight. It was kind of this amazing little cap that you put on the a day in event in a kind of very reflective way. So I'd love for you to kind of go through that a little bit more for the audience. [THOMAS] It's not mine. It's definitely from the Power of Positive Leadership, which was written by John Gordon in the trainings and in some of the workshops that we do. It's how do you connect on a faster pace and how do you connect, because everyone doesn't always necessarily want to connect at the same rate. We are conversationalists. Tell me your biggest fears. Tell me what you're working on. Tell me what your biggest childhood successes are, or maybe one of failures or moments that you're not most proud of. That can be a little, we can go back to the word intensity. That could be a little intense for someone who you're just meeting or even people who you've known for a long time. Again depending on our personalities we just have different ways of kind of pulling back some of the layers and diving in. So what I love about John's program is again, from the Power of Positive Leadership, is that there's a way to connect and it's called hero, hardship, highlight, the three H's or triple H, whatever you want to say. We have all of them. And when you're sitting in a room, or now we're in virtual breakout rooms, and you say, "Hey, talk to me about your hero, your hardship, and a highlight in your life," it gives you the opportunity to go as deep as you want. Because we all have a surface answer and we all have kind of the ocean's deep answer of who's your hero, what's a hardship and a highlight of your life? And I just love how quickly and those three simple things we can connect. Because a hero can be a family member. It could be a coach or a teacher, a distant relative. It could be somebody who we watched on TV, because we didn't necessarily have a great example of who a hero is. I've heard answers, everything from a family member, mom or dad to an aunt, uncle, coach, teacher, or even like Spiderman, somebody who they never met. That was their hero growing up, because that was somebody who showed them how to overcome adversities or superpowers or whatever it is. Then a hardship, what's a hardship that you've gone through? Again, the reason why I love it is because it talks to on your scale from one to 10, what's something hard that you've gone through, and obviously it was difficult for you at the time, but you made it out because you're here to tell about it? So that just gives us, when we can connect on a hardship level, it brings us together because it goes, "Wow, either me too, I've gone through something like that or I know someone who's gone through something like that. So I know how hard that was." It gives, like what you talk about, which is empathy, but it also talks to how hard have you had it? I sit there and see Tyler, who's just this, looks great and has a beautiful, shiny balded head. There's this great infectious smile and just this guy who has it going on, because he has a beautiful family and life and et cetera. He goes, oh, wow, you don't have a silver spoon. You've gone through some stuff in your life. Holy cow, all right. That's good enough in evidence and advice that I can make it through whatever I either just went through or that I'm going to go through. The last one, which is highlight, talk to me about something that's going to put a smile on your face by talking about it, and also going to put a smile on my face because I hear it. And that's the one thing of life, is that what's a hero? Who's somebody who you look up to? What's a hardship, maybe your lowest time or a low time? And now bring me back up on a high where somebody goes, a highlight and they start to talk about their kids or being the first person in their family graduate college, or the job that they have, or going from living in their car to owning their home or whatever it is and you see the body language just shift and then change. It allows us to connect on a deeper level as opposed to, "Hey, did you get the P and L from last quarter? Yes, okay, what do we need to do with the expense report?" Then you go, whoa, there's a person inside of the employee. There's a person. The best piece of advice I ever got was from Ken Norton, Jr., who coached me and a lot of guys in college, is coach the person first and the player follows. Most people just coach the player or in a corporate setting, they just speak to the employee. They don't speak to the person. When you do that, then there's a block and you can only go so far with the player or with the employee, but there's an in depth perception in point with the person. And the person has a heart, the employee, the player, maybe not so much, but the person always has a heart. When you can speak to the heart of somebody, then they'll go that much further. They'll always push eh, 89% coasting, or can I kick it into 90%? So through the triple H exercise, as we saw, there's a lot of people who connected but also thought a little bit differently than they would normally think to think about on something like that. [TYLER] I mean, what I love about the three H's is it is an action steps to take, to go back to those four C's of learning that connect and then going through that process. As you share this about, as Ken Norton was your coach, I can imagine there's a point where you can tell the difference between a coach bringing out the best of a person, as opposed to being the player the moment he no longer refers to you by your number. Instead of being, "Hey, 47, hey, 45, hey, 22," he comes up and says, "Hey, Reggie, hey Thomas, hey," whatever name it is. All of a sudden it's totally different. You're like, "Oh, I'm no longer that number." When I think about that, organizationally, that we're no longer that position, that person in a position they start to care about, oh, I you're a person here that's making all this happen, but it's only because you're a person here. [THOMAS] That's what I love about doing the triple H exercise. It's that inside all of these organizations, now you find out about, oh, I didn't know Tyler, a hardship was going from living in France, K through eight, and then coming over to United States. I moved from Puerto Rico and I had to make new friends. So now we're connected. We have something else that bonds us as opposed to a business card, which can change at any moment, or we park next to each other in the parking lot. There's that connection, which again, to the person, as opposed to just the employee and the position that you might do. [TYLER] All right. So I want to share this for everyone listening in, all of those, all if I get my numbers, right, 16 of those items will be listed in the show notes. It was a lot of fun to go through it and see it afterwards, how it kind of laid out as we discussed. But I want to hear your final thoughts, your final thoughts on this, your final thoughts on kind of this idea of 2022 and our leadership opportunity moving forward. What do you got for me? [THOMAS] Man, one of the things I feel like, is I was reading recently and it was like the old Chinese bamboo tree. One of the things I feel like it's the correlation between the bamboo tree and where we are right now is that in the process every single day, you got to till the soil, you got to water it, you got to nurture it. It doesn't grow for the first four years as you plant this seed. Then in like the fifth year, it grows, in the first three months, it grows 60 to 90 feet. The question is always did the tree grow in the fifth year, in those three months or did it grow in the first four years when nothing was happening? And obviously you and you and I know that it's in the four years, but the thing about it is if you miss a day or you miss a week in doing what you're supposed to do, then the process stops. You have to start all over again. I feel like right now, we are in this process of trying to wait, that we're going to start moving when we see the tree grow,. we're going to start moving when we see like, oh, it's poking through the ground, oh, it's growing 60 to 90 feet. But the reality of the situation is that nothing happens until you do. Nothing happens until you do. So I really want to encourage people, and I think that's what we got from the RICH leadership is that it all starts with you. Leadership is an inside out job. It's not, I'm going to start being a better leader when this happens. I'm going to start devoting a little bit more time to my team when this happens. It's, I'm going to start devoting time to my team because I want this to happen. I'm going to start devoting more time and more energy, more focus to my family because I want this to happen, or I'm going to dedicate more time to myself because I want this to happen. So just like the bamboo tree and just like who we are as part of our responsibility on this earth is that continue to act in the way that you want for the results and for the outcomes and not because of the current circumstance. [TYLER] That is so much, so much good bits in that, that I would take another 20 minutes and we continue to talk about it. I don't know, we're not doing the Joe Rogan podcast here, so I'm not going to keep you for three hours. But dude, thanks so much. Thanks so much for sharing. Thanks so much for this opportunity. I love everything you shared. I am imagining and knowing that audience is going to get so much from it. So thanks, dude. I appreciate it. [THOMAS] You're awesome, man. I mean, if I could have just a tidbit of kind of the last impromptu change in events that could come out in this gold, like you had with the I's, bro, that's amazing. So continue to lead with your heart and your gift and to be directed and guided by the spirit. [TYLER] I will share this. It's not me, it's God. So I have no problem sharing that. Thanks so much, dude. One last thing is if people want to learn more about Thomas, it'll be in the show notes, but where can they find out about Thomas Williams? [THOMAS] They can, I'm not on social media. So I've been off of social media for two years today, which has been amazing and great. I mean, I guess maybe check out the next podcast that I'm going to be on, continue to listen to this. But, I guess I'll just be coming to them to a a podcast or an event near them, but I'm pretty much the guy you never hear about. [TYLER] Yes, but you have a website. [THOMAS] I have a website. [TYLER] Which is your website? [THOMAS] Thomasrwilliams.com. To find out more information there. [TYLER] That's good. All right, dude. Thank you so much. [THOMAS] Appreciate it man. [TYLER] All right. So one of the greatest things that I appreciated from Thomas and you heard about, we talked about in that episode, it was complete just us collaborating together. Through that collaboration, RICH leadership came out, the five R's, something I've talked about in the past, the four I's, which came up literally the night before the presentation, the four C's that he discussed, and then as he went through the three H's that he is a part of the John Gordon company presenting at different presentations. It really combined into this pretty fun event. This is what I'm going to ask, share with you. If that's something that you would love for Thomas and I to present at your organization, man, we would love to do that. It was so much fun. Either in person or virtual, we would love to do that, make that available. But this is what I'm hoping you can do too, is break those down and share those within your own life and those around you. One of the things that we talked about and I think is so under stressed as leaders is we think that, oh, we learned something. We need to go share it with everyone else. Well, that's a big part of it, but if we internalize it first, then we go share it with people, that's when we really learn, because when we internalize, we have to figure out how to communicate it to others. As we did, when we presented that, I think having the breakout rooms and having just discussions and talking about mindset and the barriers of leadership to how are you going to impact people and then how can you connect with people, to me, it was a phenomenal event. And I'm glad to be able to share it with you all that are listening. Have you got this episode? because someone shared it with you? I surely hope you subscribe. That way you get alerts on each one of the other episodes. I'd love a rating and review to know how I'm doing. I'm drawing in this process. We're into the second season. This is the third episode to release in season two. I'm so excited that everyone is joining. I'm growing through of the process. I hope I'm becoming a better leader and helping others on that journey too. And one of the things that maybe you don't realize as part of the Impact Driven Leader community is we read a book a month through the Impact Driven Leader book club. As the round table, we sit down and we break it down. We go through weekly Zooms or talk about how to apply lessons in that book. Also that opens up the opportunity to do hour long coaching with me individually, to share some of the lessons and dig down and go through together. Kind of like you heard the conversation with Thomas and I, this back and forth and let's see how we can dig and find and learn together. To me that's when you make an impact as a leader. It's not about me sharing this great revolution and you walking away in awe. It's like, how can we dig through this together? So that's what I offered to you. My goal and hope and desire is to help other leaders get healthy too. That's what my purpose is. That's why I have this podcast. That's why I have the Impact Driven Leader community. I thank you for listening in. Until next week, be good. Have a good one. I'll catch you later.