IDL63 Season 2: Stress Management: Take A Fresh Perspective, with Alan Stein, Jr.
Can you depersonalize feedback? Why should you place your focus on your response to stress instead of trying to stop the stress from happening? What is the only thing in life that you can control?
In this podcast episode, Tyler Dickerhoof speaks with author and public speaker, Alan Stein, Jr., about his new book, Sustain Your Game. Alan and Tyler have regular leadership conversations, and throughout this episode, they reflect on the ways Alan’s book helps leaders perform and prevail. In particular, they focus on how to overcome and utilize stress - as well as reframe the way we think about it.
Alan Stein Jr. teaches proven strategies to improve organizational performance, create effective leadership, increase team cohesion and collaboration, and develop winning mindsets, rituals, and routines.
As a veteran basketball performance coach, he spent 15 years working with the highest-performing athletes on the planet (including NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant).
In his corporate keynote programs and workshops, Alan reveals how to utilize the same approaches in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world-class level. He delivers practical lessons that can be implemented immediately.
Alan is also the author of the new book, Sustain Your Game, which releases this April.
Visit Alan Stein, Jr.’s website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
How stress can help success with the right approach (06:24)
Focus on what you can control: yourself (09:32)
Depersonalize feedback (28:55)
How stress can help success with the right approach
Stress in life is a given, but what is in your control is how you approach it and interact with it.
1 – Self-awareness: self-awareness is the first step.
You cannot change or positively impact something that you are not aware of, so be proactive in noticing where stress is present in your life, and how you deal with it.
2 – Place your energy into your response: Do not waste your time and energy trying to control things that you cannot, because stress and difficult times are inevitable.
3 – Learn to control the controllables: what is the response you can take to stress that can help you move forward while decreasing your stress instead of adding to it?
Focus on what you can control: yourself
People try to control impossible things, such as whether stress is present or not, their environment, and the people around them to minimize their internal stress. It is a common response, but it is unhealthy and inefficient.
Focus on what you can control and take care of, which is yourself.
You cannot sort your problems out by trying to manage life and the people around you.
Depersonalize feedback
Do not take things personally, as that is another form of resistance and causes unnecessary stress. There is no reason to heighten stress by trying to resist the truth of someone else.
Go through life with openness, curiosity, and honesty. Ask people questions when you seek further knowledge, and curate a desire to learn more about other people’s perceptions.
Practicing acceptance and being curious about other people’s truths will also help you curb burnout because things will not become stagnant. You reduce resistance and can therefore reduce burnout.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Alan Stein, Jr. – Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best
BOOK | Alan Stein, Jr. – Sustain Your Game: High-Performance Keys to Manage Stress, Avoid Stagnation, and Beat Burnout
BOOK | Donald Miller – Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life
Visit Alan Stein Jr.’s website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn.
Find out more about Isagenix
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Check out the Impact Driven Leader Youtube Channel
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.
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Stress comes from resisting what is. Stress comes from wanting something to be different than how it currently is in the moment.
Alan Stein, Jr.
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad you're here. If you're watching on YouTube, you're seeing my face, you're seeing the full show, the full edits, whether you're on video or audio, if you're listening to this wherever you're listening to podcasts know you can catch them on YouTube. Today I'm so excited to sit down with my friend, Alan Stein, Jr. Alan's got a new book that's releasing, it's called Sustain Your Game. He and I sit down, we talk about the book. We talk about conversation. We have just 5, 6 weeks ago from the point of this recording when he was presenting here in the Pacific Northwest, we had an opportunity to meet up for coffee. I sat down at a presentation he made, which led into a phenomenal conversation about leadership, about everything.
We unpack a little bit in this episode, but really it's unpacking the book, Sustain Your Game. In the book, Alan goes through the three elements that perform, that prevail. One piece that we really talk a lot about, which is happening in everyone's world, there's ways to management, there's ways to nutritionally take care of your stress. If you're looking for options, there's an option in the show notes, natural way to manage stress. But at the same point, reframing what you think of stress. We have stress all around us and if we become complicit with distress, we let it eat at us. But yet when we accept stress for what it is, it's an opportunity for us to recover and adapt and just say, okay, how can I be better here?
Man, to me, that's a pivotal point in this movement from raising your game to Alan's words, sustaining your game. As every leader today, I think you have the opportunity to Sustain Your Game, to prevail in the end and not let stress and burn out and this overwhelm get the best of you. It's really managing that stress, becoming vulnerable, dealing with your insecurities, which we talk so much more about. Again, thank you for being here. I'd love for you to rate, review this episode at the end. Let me know how I did. Let me know how my guest did, because I'd love to share it with them. If somebody shared this with you, I'd love for you to subscribe. Thanks for being here and thanks for listening to this episode with Alan Stein Jr. Here you go. To the interview.
[TYLER]
Alan, good to see you, buddy. It's been a couple weeks.
[ALAN STEIN JR]
Always great to be talk with you.
[TYLER]
It's been a few weeks. It was so nice that you were up in this area. I saw in your schedule that you were going to be in the Pacific Northwest. I said, "Hey, if you're up here and you have time would love to catch up." You invited me to one of your presentations which was a great time. We got to spend a couple hours together and thankful for that. There's a lot of people you get to know and meet virtually, and then there's people you get to spend time with. I'm thankful we had that time to spend together, man.
[ALAN]
I did as well. That was a lot of fun. It's really neat when you follow someone's work, like I listen to your show and follow your work and we started to develop a virtual relationship and then to actually bring that full circle and cement that with meeting in person and sitting shoulder to shoulder for a couple hours and just talking shop. Yes, that was incredibly fruitful, very enjoyable and I'm glad to reconnect with you now.
[TYLER]
So we might dip into a piece of the two of those conversations because I think it actually connects to your latest project, your newest book Sustain Your Game. So we had Raise Your Game and now Sustain Your Game. What's the third in the trilogy?
[ALAN]
It's funny that you mention that, because I am already starting to plant the seeds for that. I'm not quite convinced that it will be a trilogy now, as you know from seeing my keynote, I do love to teach in threes and I love the rhythm of three. But I also, I don't want to force it. If there's not a third pillar or a third leg to the table that makes sense, then I'm definitely going to do another book because I love the process and I think I have a concept that will kind of fit into that trilogy nicely, but I'm not going to force it. If it doesn't fit nicely, then I'll maybe start a new trilogy. So we'll see.
[TYLER]
All right. I mean, from the conversations we've had, I can imagine what that third one would be and I could see it could be pretty impactful but, and we'll get there later. So let's talk about Sustain Your Game. Let's talk about really the three elements that are in the book; it's perform, pivot, prevail and you walk through in your book, those three elements. So I'd love to just kind of kick it off and just say you wrote book, Raise Your Game. At what point did you realize uh-oh I need to really help people, not only raise their game, but figure out a pattern how to sustain their game. So what did you see through your experience of speaking and coaching and everything it's like, oh, that's really what I need to talk about, the next layer?
[ALAN]
Honestly, it was more through my own life experience. It was kind of what I need to do. I mean, when I wrote Raise Your Game, I was in the process of trying to raise my game. I was just starting a corporate speaking career and I was trying to figure out what do I need to do to ascend to the mountain top of the speaking world and to be good at my craft. That was kind of what I went into it. Then now that I've been in the speaking game for five years I realized the real challenge is staying here and staying at top of your craft and continuing to have a desire to improve and being open to feedback. While doing all of that, not getting burnt out, not getting overwhelmed, not allowing yourself, just the plateau and go through the motions and definitely not allowing yourself to succumb to the daily stresses that we all face. So really both books have kind of mirrored where I am in my life and what it is that I'm trying to do and then certainly write them with the intent of being of service to others. So I'm hoping that I'm not the only one going through these things that what I'm putting in these books will be of value to the people reading them.
[TYLER]
One of the things that we talked about right before we got started and that I definitely picked up is going through the book, reading the book is this idea of how do we manage what's going on in our life so it doesn't put us on this roller coaster of emotions every single day? And that's stress. Over the last two years, we've seen people that have had tremendous amounts of stress. We've seen stress thrown at people that they weren't anticipating. Stress is our is a constant in our world and it could be used for good, but it can also railroad us. So let's talk about that real quick and kind of this idea of going through the process of sustaining your game, how stress fits into that, and what mindset you have to kind of approach to the stresses that are going to happen to you in life.
[ALAN]
The first thing, and this is very similar to how I started Raise Your Game, the first thing is simply awareness and a self-awareness. I say all of the time now that you're never going to fix something you're oblivious to, you're never going to improve something that you're unaware of. So first and foremost, we have to be aware of there are stressors in our lives, and there's going to be a variety of circumstances and events and situations, and people saying things and people doing things that have the potential to create or reveal stress in our lives. But the real power comes from how we respond to those things. So first we just have to make sure we have an awareness of it.
I also believe, and this has helped me out significantly, we need to have an acceptance of the fact that the world is unfolding the way the world is going to unfold. I don't have any control over that. I don't have any control over these circumstances and events. I don't control what people say. I don't control what people do and I find that stress gets heightened exponentially when you're trying to take control of something that you do not have control over. That in and of itself is rather futile. So instead of worrying about these things, I put all of my focus into my responses to them. This is really an offshoot of one of the core principles in Raise Your Game, which was just learned to control the controllables. Just focus on your own attitude and your own effort, let everything else go. That actually, that puzzle piece fits really nicely with stress. I don't worry about all of these things that are going on. I acknowledge them. I accept that this is reality, and this is going on and then I focus on what is the response to this that can actually move me forward and decrease my stress as opposed to increase it.
[TYLER]
So, as you know that leadership podcast, we've talked a lot about that. You talked to a lot of leaders in your speaking career, at the same point books go to leaders. One of the things that I found is kind of probably one of the most stressful things for leaders is feeling like I have to control everything so I can minimize stress and make sure that we perform. So as we unpack that and we look at it's like man, as leaders, why do you think leaders have this idea that they need to create this condition of hyper control?
[ALAN]
Leaders want to ---
[TYLER]
May I stop you? This is a good question. If Alan is like, I got to stop and think about this, this is a good one.
[ALAN]
Yes, no, it's, I always want to be incredibly thoughtful in every single response. I think leaders, it's not even just relegated to leaders, I think all human beings have a natural tendency to want to control the environment because of this fallacy that if I can control everything around me, then everything inside of me is going to be fine. It's kind of this mindset that many people have in postponing their own happiness and fulfillment. It's like when I have this and when I do this, then I'll be happy, but you never quite arrive there. It's the same thing. It's futile attempt to try to control everything, to make the world bend to your needs, is going to do the exact opposite of what you're hoping. I mean, it's going to increase your stress instead of decreasing it.
I do believe that the best leaders are servant leaders that love their people. They care about their people. They want to see their people successful. They want to get everyone on the team to have buy in and believe in so that they can all row in the same direction toward that collective north star. They have such a genuine desire to do that that it's easy to fall to the temptation of, well, if I can control everything around and within our organization, it'll make that an easier path. That's simply not the case. I mean, it reminds me, and I don't know who the first person was that said this, but it's kind of a parenting maxim, is don't try to change the path for your child, but instead prepare your child for the path. I think it's the same thing with leadership. Don't worry about making all of the conditions so pristine that life is fluid. Instead, make your people stronger and improve their skill sets so they can handle anything that's thrown at them.
[TYLER]
I think part of it too, is, as we've talked about which ties into this is if there's an element that a leader saying, hey, I have to control this. My stress is based upon what I can and can't control because people are expecting me to have all the answers. I think back the last two years, the people that have expected to have all the answers probably had a much, much higher daily stress than those that were like my job today is to just move forward and take everyone with me and just assess the conditions as they are. We will make the most of it. If there's a challenge, great, it's a good opportunity.
I think if we look at this major dichotomy over the last two years, as we're recording this here in 2022 is the fact that the people that decided to say, I'm not going to let, what I can't control stress me, I'm going to focus on what I can do and what opportunities they are there, I think as we look back at those leaders today, they're in a great, healthy spot. Because all of a sudden, now they have a lot of people in their organization that want to be there, that they've bound arms with, and they've sustained this production, this game, as you've described it. Whereas others that have said, that have succumbed the stress and feel like I need to control more and almost lowered over their organizations, they're finding themselves more alone because people are leaving than ever.
[ALAN]
Absolutely. You said so many insightful things there, and ultimately, if I really break it down, stress comes from resisting what is. Stress comes from wanting something to be different than it currently is at the moment. That's where the acceptance piece comes in. If I accept the fact that I don't control what is going on right now, and I relinquish or surrender that control, then I can just be, and I can just be in the present moment and I can say yes, what's happening right now is not ideal. It's not my preference. I don't even necessarily like it, but resisting it is not going to do any good because I can't change these things. So instead I can just kind of go with that flow. For me, this has been one of the biggest challenges in my life, is that acceptance piece and lowering that resistance because things happen all of the time in my life that aren't my preference.
Or if I did have a magic wand and someone did give me control of the universe, that is not how I would want things to unfold, but I don't have that power. So fighting against it once I realized that it's the fight against it, not the thing itself, that's actually causing my stress I found that to be incredibly liberating because now I'm in control. It does not matter what happens around me. I can choose responses that can lower stress because I'm not going to fight against them. Yes, to me, that's an empowering feeling. It's a liberating feeling and it's one that I see some of the best leaders leaning into now. And part of that, and you and I had a wonderful little back and forth prior to hitting record, part of that is vulnerability, is leaning into vulnerability and saying, "I am a confident leader, I believe in you all. I care about you all, but I don't have all of the answers."
I know for me personally, I've never had all of the answers. I don't currently have all of the answers and I don't think I'm ever going to have all of the answers. So once again, accepting that is what puts a smile on my face. I would be incredibly stressed out if you expected or I expected of myself to have all of the answers. That is just a level that no one's going to reach. So instead I just accept it and just say I'm going to do the best I can with what I have right now, where I am. I'm not going to blame, complaint or make excuses, and I'm going to lean into this with some vulnerability and I'm going to have responses that move me forward. That type of fluidity is I think the most effective way to lead a team.
[TYLER]
So to transition a little bit, but stay along this idea of stress, one of the things that, as you're talking about, and I'm thinking the times that I'm either most prepared, meaning I feel like I'm empowered to handle a situation is probably what helps me manage the stressors the best. I think as I look over and I think about all the things that you had in Sustain Your Game and this idea of what disciplines and routines do you create, if you allow those to create a framework and you prepare yourself around it, for example, if you're speaking and something happens in the audience, if you prepared yourself for what would I do in those situations, then it probably isn't going to be as much a stressor. I find that if our rubber band is stretched too tight and we don't allow for some of that flexibility because of preparation, that's when stress overwhelms us and we're not able to, as you describe it, pivot. We're not able to move to that next spot that we can move forward.
[ALAN]
Well, if you pull that rubber band too tight and it's so tout, it's going to snap. Eventually it's going to snap. So yes, I mean, again, so much gold in what you just shared there. Using the being on stage, speaking as the example I prepare in advance for potential scenarios that could be more likely to happen; the AV cuts out or the microphone stops working, or somebody in the audience drops a glass and it makes a loud noise. So I prepare in advance for things that could potentially happen. But notice that I'm saying prepare, I'm not worried about these things happening. I'm not anxious that they may happen, because I don't have any control over whether they do or not. I just want to say to myself, if something like this were to happen in the moment after I take a deep breath, what's the best audible I can call to continue this dance and move forward?
I also go in with an understanding that while I'm on stage, I don't control these things. So any of these things could potentially happen and if, and when they do, then I'll handle it in that moment. I'll handle it with poise. I'll handle it with a smile. I've always been a big believer as a speaker. I address the elephant in the room. So if someone were to drop a glass and it makes this loud noise when it shatters, I'm not just going to pretend that it didn't happen. I'm also not going to do anything to make that person feel bad or call them out or laugh at their expense but I could make some type of comment and usually would make a comment that is in alignment with my teachings anyway.
So oh, I see somebody just made a turnover. No worries at all. We're just going to move to the next play. That's it. It's diffused. It's over. It's not a big deal. The person doesn't feel bad for making a mistake. I don't get rattled or knocked off my game and I actually have an opportunity in an impromptu situation to solidify one of my primary teaching points in live real action and we just move on. So to me that helps lower the stress as opposed to the reverse, which would be getting really anxious and worried about every possible thing that could go wrong. Then if it does go wrong, worried about how I'm going to handle it and what people think of me. I just let all that go. Somebody dropped a glass, it happens. Let's keep rolling.
[TYLER]
You know, the thing that's just jumping out at me, as you're saying that is this idea of that's you speaking, sharing that as a speaker. Yet, if I'm a an executive in an organization and I'm speaking in front of a sales force, if I'm speaking to people and if I have that tension and angst, to another tangent, if I am a youth sports coach or I'm any sports coach at all, and I have that tension and angst for, if someone drops a pass, if someone misses a basket, wide open basket, if they miss a layup, if they don't complete a sales call, if there's something there, if I have that tension and angst, then that stress that I'm exuding is going to stress others.
The more at ease you are, and we talked a little bit about that, we talked about it before we started recording, we talked about that when we met up a few weeks ago, is this ability to be in control of your own self, to a point to where you're not anxious. Because that's actually way more inviting and people want to be more engaged with that than this, to me, in my previous past, being just extremely intense, is such a barrier that I think as we're talking about this idea of stress and how to manage through it and lead through it's man, we got to be aware of that.
[ALAN]
Absolutely. Even just, we need to be aware of it and how we're feeling, but we need to be aware of it even our terminology. Even the difference between looking at something as being anxious versus being excited is all in how we frame it. That to me is what's most important. I love you went in the direction of the way that leaders are perceiving this and the way that leaders are projecting and behaving has a huge impact on the team. I mean, I think as a coach you can have an intensity about yourself, but you can still relay a calming effect on your team to the point that yes, if you miss a wide open layup, it's going to happen, that's okay. We'll make it up on the next play as opposed to trying to lead or coach through fear, which is this zero tolerance policy that if you're out there and you make a mistake, I'm pulling you out right away because I don't tolerate mistakes and I don't tolerate people missing shots.
It's all part of the game. I would want players that know that I'm creating a safe environment for them where they can give their best effort uninhibited and they know, and I know mistakes are a part of that. When those happen, we will move to the next play and we will find a way to make it work, but that I have their back and that I believe in them. That works in youth basketball and it absolutely works in a Fortune 100 company. If you're working with your sales team is just letting them know there are certain systems and strategies that we'll put in place because over time, these have proven to give results.
I want you to execute those to the best of your ability. I want you to focus on your own attitude and your own effort, and then whatever's going to happen is going to happen. We're going to pivot accordingly as a group, but as a leader, it's so important that your team understands, this is not me versus you. This is you and me. We're in this together arm and arm. I'm not here to talk at you. I'm here to talk and be with you. Those things are vital, but yes, everything starts with leadership. I mean, everything starts with leadership, especially when it comes to organizational performance, everything starts and stops with the leader's ability to do all of those things I just mentioned.
[TYLER]
So the third section in your book Sustain Your Game is the topic point prevail. In there you share a segment about the best players and good players and great players. You say the okay players just want to be alone. The good players, the players that want to improve, they want be coached, but the great players want the truth. I think about that the same for leaders; a leader that wants to be alone, they're not really helping anyone. Now, a leader that's willing to be coached, okay, that's good. But the leader that's willing to be told the truth, expect the truth and tell the truth those are the great leaders. How have you seen that, as you've talked about that, l and maybe dig into it a little bit deeper and think about the organizations that you've been a part of to say, okay, I could see that breaking out differently in that maybe evolution of a leader over time or someone growing over time through that paradigm.
[ALAN]
Well, I'll actually continue just to speak from the first person and talk about myself. I mean as we mentioned, roughly six weeks ago from this recording you came and supported me during one of my keynotes. Then we went to a coffee shop and had some wonderful dialogue and conversation. I very much appreciated the fact that you cared enough to tell me the truth on how you solve things. I'm going to rephrase my terminology a little bit because truth is, truth is a fascinating one to me, because in my opinion, there are very few actual truths in the world. Most of these things are perspective. So what you cared enough to do was share with me your truth, which I very much appreciated, which is all you can do.
I wanted to be very open to that because you're someone that I admire and respect, and I wanted your vantage point because I'm at a point in my life now where I have the humility to acknowledge, I kind of know what my truth is and how I see the world and I certainly know what I saw while I was on stage, but you had a very different vantage point. I wanted you to share those things, which you were kind enough to do and I wanted to be very open to those things. We had some wonderful dialogue. Even before we hit record today, I've already told you about how I've implemented some of those things and they were very helpful and they were literally blind spots that I wasn't privy to because of how I was seeing the world. I want to welcome that.
Had this occurred five years ago, I wasn't at a maturity level that I would've been open to that type of feedback that even if you did care enough, then to try to share those things, I was probably too insecure at that time to take some of that on. I most likely would've defended my perspective or my truth, or I would've deflected, or I would've made some type of excuse or I would've just said in the back of my mind, he doesn't know what he's talking about. I know exactly. So I'm thankful that as I've been on this journey, I've become much more open to hearing other perspectives and other truths, and I can filter out the things that can certainly help me continue to grow.
I do look at it very sincerely as a point of this person cares enough to tell me the truth. Lots of times, when we have to have hard conversations or yet you have to tell someone something difficult, we lose in all of that that you're doing this out of love. You're doing this because we want to confront the truth head on, and let's really get to the root of this as opposed to sugarcoating and blending these things together. So, yes from the first person perspective it's incredibly helpful in any type of leadership position to be open to these things and to welcome this feedback and to create the type of environment while someone feels safe to share these things.
[TYLER]
We've talked about this, the previous time we spoke together, we've talked about each of our conversation and we've talked about earlier today. The barrier that insecurity blocks this ability to be vulnerable, to go through what you just shared there and your own personal experience over the last five years, but just the evolution and Hey, I want to get better. I can't see what I can't see. What you see is of this same situation, but from a different viewpoint. Let's compare those notes. Let's be willing to interact with those notes to say what makes, what's really the picture? I've heard this told that no two people see the exact same colors, but yet as we describe the colors, then it becomes this vibrant picture that we wouldn't otherwise have. It's, I think the situation to where we're too guarded to be afraid of what someone else might think that we aren't willing to open up and share. Well, then all of a sudden we are stuck in one viewpoint and I only believe I absolutely believe that is a driver of stress.
[ALAN]
Oh, absolutely.
[TYLER]
If we could just let go and say, oh dude, okay. I got to, I have a gray shirt on today and you're like, no, dude, it's black. Well, it's a little faded. I'm sorry, I've worn a few times. That was probably closer to the middle. But it's that acceptance and it's that simple to where instead of deflecting and defending say, oh, okay, what am I missing here? Because to me that's the epitome of being able to prevail.
[ALAN]
Well, it goes back on what we were saying earlier in this conversation, the stress is a result of resistance. So you care enough to share something with me. If I'm so riddled with my own insecurities, that I'm resisting what you are trying to share, that's, what's causing the stress. Then in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, well if he's giving me this feedback, then that means that I'm less than perfect. If I'm less than perfect, then what are these people thinking about me? Am I going to be, and it just starts to spiral out of control. All of those thoughts are going to increase stress as opposed to just simply taking a deep breath and saying, I just did the best I was capable of on stage. I prepared and executed to the best of my ability. I'm proud of that and I'm open for other people's interpretations of what they saw. I'm open.
That's another thing, is very few people resist compliments. Like if you just wanted to give me a long list of things that you thought were excellent about my keynote, I mean, no person in their right mind is going to resist that. It's like, oh yes, please pile that on. I want to hear about the admiration. Well, if we're going to be open to people's compliments, then we should be open to other forms of feedback and open, you know whether you like the word constructive criticism or not, you can choose your terminology, but be open to all of it. For me, what's helped with that is learning how to completely depersonalize that is when someone is sharing something to help me see a blind spot.
It's not a personal attack on me as a human being. They're noticing something that they believe could add value to me. Even with that said, it doesn't even mean there has to be an agreement. It doesn't even mean that everything someone shares with you you have to agree with. You may have a difference of perspective and opinion, and that's okay, but there's no reason to heighten stress by trying to resist it and fight it and force it away. So for me, I try and go through life with an incredible openness, a curiosity, a fascination.
I know that several of the things that you suggested to me, it wasn't like you just said them and then we went on. I started asking follow up questions, like, okay, that's interesting to me. Explain more about why you feel that way, or I'm fascinated with that fact because I've given this keynote 150 times and no one has ever mentioned that to me before. So I'm really curious how that became your truth and what you saw. I want to learn more about this. Anytime, in my experience, as a leader you lean in with curiosity, you lean in with fascination, you lean in with vulnerability, you will drastically increase connection with the other person or with your team, and you will drastically decrease stress. I think those are the directions we're trying to move in.
[TYLER]
As I'm sitting here and I'm filing what you're saying and creating this organizational pattern of thoughts and realizing it's really the manifestation of stress, the unwillingness to be vulnerable and have those conversations and have that curiosity that leads to burnout. Because it to me, and I think about yourself, all right, let's just, I'm going to talk about you, Alan. All right, I'm going to clue in the rest of our listeners, even though they weren't there, but we've kind of painted this picture of us sitting down this coffee shop in cour d'Alene Idaho. We're just having a conversation like we are now and talking about this and saying, if you wouldn't have been open to have that conversation, and just wonder from a different perspective, how enjoyable would the presentations you've been the last month, because you're like, I've done this 150 times. I've done this over and over again. I'm at the end of one book, I'm getting into the new book. I'm just kind of burn out I'm over it. I want something new.
That's my perception and I have to think because of the willingness for you to say, yes, I've made this tweaks and the audience is actually a little bit different. I haven't done enough to really understand, but there's this curiosity of, oh, how is it going to be different? To me, even if you were at the point of burnout, there's no way you could possibly be today because you're willing to say, how am I going to create a different play? How am I going to create a different skill in this that I'm not perfect on because maybe I haven't done a lot, or honestly, it's a lot more natural. I'm at ease and I'm not projecting something that I'm not. So those are all the thoughts I just had.
[ALAN]
Oh, no, I love that. That is one way to beat burnout, is to constantly keep things fresh and new. So even if the major pillars of my keynote have been, and will be the same, the major focal points and strategies, there are so many little nuances and ways to do things differently. That's what keeps me excited, changing the order of something. I have a signature story about Kobe Bryan. I'm capable of telling that story in 30 seconds, I'm capable of telling that story in five minutes and 30 seconds, depending on what that presentation calls for or how much time is allotted and there's different nuances. So yes, I'm always looking for ways to kind of reevaluate, recalibrate and evolve. I'd like to believe I've never given the same keynote twice, not the exact same. Certainly, some of the big rocks are in place, but that's what excites me.
One other point that might be a little bit off what we're specifically talking about, but is really, really important, and I don't even know if you realized that you did it, but the very first thing you did was you asked for my permission to offer that feedback. You said, Alan, are you okay with me sharing some thoughts with you? Which one I think is incredibly polite and courteous, but you gave me an opportunity to say, no, thank you, which again is not an alignment with my current life philosophy. So of course my answer was yes but I really appreciated the respect at which you asked that and just said, "Hey, I've got some things that I'd love to share. Are you okay with it?"
I think that's a great way, especially in organizations to approach members of your team and say things like are you open to me giving you feedback on what you just did? Are you open to me coaching you and holding you accountable so that you can continue to grow and mature within our organization? Because then it's not one directional. It's a two-way street, it's a relationship. It's, you're asking for my permission. I have to be able to accept and concede, and then we have a dialogue about it and everybody's better for it. So that little nuance, I didn't want to go unnoticed. I thought that was a great way for you to initiate the conversation.
[TYLER]
So I'm glad I remembered to do that, but I say that in earnestly of yes, that is imperative something I have absolutely learned. I also think about that in that situation. I think this, again, ties into the sustaining your game, but as a leader, as much as how are you helping the people on your team sustain their game? I think that's where to me, Raise Your Game, Sustain Your Game, I'll share it right now, the next level is as a leader, how do you help others in their game? This idea of what are we doing to transfer these practices and I look at that from a simply same point. I was curious, why do you do it the way you do it? This is how maybe I see it differently or thought.
So there's as much that, and I believe as a leader, when you can go into a situation, if you're leading someone, whether you're new an organization or not, and just say, "Hey, just explain to me why you do it the way you do," and maybe there's great reason, or maybe you're like, well, I don't know., it's just the way I've always done it. Oh, well this is how it felt. Is that what you intended or did you expect something different? Again, I could relate this to relationship interactions from a leadership perspective because all relationships have that opportunity. If we think of our leadership specific supervisory to managerial roles as this one way tier it's not going to work. It is really a circle and to me, that's thinking back, and as you've described it's how do I look into this from a concept of it's a two-way street. I think that's important because again, I think that comes back to how you manage stress, how you use stress in a good way and not let it overwhelm you, but then keeping people that you're around from burning out too.
[ALAN]
Absolutely. With everything you just said there, one of the main reasons, I'm such a huge advocate for diversity on teams and diversity and in many different ways we can think about it; age diversity, race diversity, background, skill sets, thought diversity, because the more diverse your group, then the more differing vantage points you have. So you now you have several people that see things slightly different because we have to realize once again, going back to this concept of the truth versus our truth, each of us sees the world differently. Because we're all riddled with a whole slew of biases. We're riddled with biases based on our age, our race, our sex, where we grew up, how we were parented, certain religious beliefs, political beliefs.
When you grow up, where you grew up, you're going to have different values put it into you than I've had where I grew up on a separate coast. All of these things make our perspective incredibly unique. We should want to tap into that. As leaders of organizations, we should welcome that once again, not try to resist it, not try to push back, not try to get everybody on the team, just to walk in your straight line, but instead say, what is it that you see? How are you feeling about this? What is your truth, or what you're seeing through your lens, and then create the type of environment where folks feel safe and encouraged and open to share that without being ridiculed, without being dismissed.
That's what the best leaders do. Then once you kind of get everybody open about their own feelings and thoughts and perspective, then as the leader, you can take the reins to try and mold that and to get everybody to increase their buy-in and believe in to get that going in the same direction. But yes, to me, that's one of the most important parts and it's all in this same theme of stop resisting and pushing against and start just letting things be and be much more fluid. I mean, I hope you can see from the smile on my face, this really is the lowest stress I've ever had in my entire life, because I finally learned to just let go of these things.
[TYLER]
There's one last, I would say, boulder, that's a part of this. You discussed it and you make mention, you said you can't be fulfilled until you know what fulfillment looks like. To me, that comes along these lines and that's not this massive tangent like, whoa, Tyler, where did that come from? I believe when we're talking about stress, when we're talking about all the elements of leadership being open to that, it's, if my fulfillment is different than yours, that's okay. How are we working in alignment towards that, the vision that we collectively hold, even though our fulfillment maybe different?
To me, I think it's so imperative because we find ourselves in a world where we're often trying to play with somebody else's playbook. Yet we don't have the same skills. We don't have the same abilities. We're not playing the same game and yet we're trying to follow this playbook. Donald Miller in his book, Hero on A Mission, talks about following scripts. A lot of times we follow these scripts, we get to the end of the story, we get to the second act and we're like, "I hate this movie. This sucks. I don't want to be here." I think that's very stressful and I think that could be very disingenuous. You have this point again, that I think some of that leads to burnout and this idea of, with the passion that you speak of the vulnerability in it and say, my fulfillment is not a title, a status or whatever else. It's something different. I share this and kind of want to really wrap up with this idea that my belief, we can only sustain our game if we understand what game we're playing, meaning the game we're playing is we're reaching this success, this point of significant in of that fulfillment. You want to dig a little bit deeper there from what you wrote and kind of how you tie all this together because I think it's really impactful?
[ALAN]
Well, I love that you went in that direction and I love the analogy of the game and know the rules of the game and know what game you're playing. This again, is one of what I consider the most liberating and empowering feelings is there are certain games where the game and the rules and the definition of winning are already preset. If you fly to Vegas this weekend and you're going to play some blackjack, they've already determined those are the rules and you have to play by those rules to play that game. If you and I decide to go play some pickup basketball or golf or anything else, same thing. While there might be some slight nuanced differences in pickup games, generally speaking, everybody's already agreed upon the rules of that game, but when it comes to our own lives and running our own businesses, we actually get to decide what game we're playing and the rules at which we're going to play by and we even get to decide what winning looks like or what that north star looks like.
To me, that's incredibly exciting. So we want to start with that and then work backwards and be able to say what do we want the north star to look like? Or what do we want the end result to look like? We may have to change our terminology to everyone on the team to get them to kind of see what it is that we're going for and then we work back from there. So to me again, it's in this concept of fluidity and openness to be able to say, all right, we've got our team together. What does excellence look like to us? What does fun look like to us? What does fulfillment look like to us?
Everyone on this team is going to make major sacrifices personally and professionally for the betterment of this group and you're going to want to make a maximum contribution to this team. What are you going to get out of that? What is it that you're going to get for doing those things? Let's get crystal clear on what that looks like, so that we all continue to show up every day with a definitive purpose of why we're doing what we're doing. To me, that's my favorite part about this, is, especially in my own life. I'm the one calling the shots. I determine what success looks like to me. I determine what fulfillment looks like to me. I create the rules of the game as opposed to that being imposed on me, which once again, I would find incredibly stressful.
[TYLER]
I think that's why we've seen people be willing to change the game they're playing so much the last year to six months. There's a part of me from a leadership perspective I see, man, there's a tremendous amount of need for what you just said of explaining that to a lot of leaders. It's also a great opportunity to help leaders evolve to that but then there's as well finding people in the right position at the right game, to go to the Jim Collins, is like, get people in the right seat on the bus. Well, it's like, where's that bus going? Is it the right kind of bus for me? I think those are all the things that are coming. I believe this. I believe your work is impactful. I think Raise Your Game has been great book that we featured in the book club. Sustain Your Game. I loved it. I loved it for again, continuing these ideas and thoughts, and it's a lot of the points that we discuss that as we talk together and the stuff that you and I both believe in. So I appreciate it. I appreciate you bringing it to a bigger audience. Thanks for your time today, man.
[ALAN]
No, my pleasure. I tell you what, I get something massive out of every interaction we have. I just kind of, while you were saying that had another slightly epiphany moment, and that is, I think the third leg of the stool, the end of the trilogy may just well be about change the game or something along the lines of what we were talking about. I just had this kind of deep moment where I'm thinking let's raise the game, let's sustain it. But overall, where is it that we're going, where is this bus trying to go to? We have the ability to change the game and work backwards, as opposed to following what everyone else says and what everyone else does. So don't hold me to that yet but in a couple of years, you might see a third book and under some type of title around changing the game or changing the game. If so, that will make this an incredibly monumental episode right here.
[TYLER]
You want a co-author on that?
[LEO]
Yes, I may need to, and the very least get you to write the forward because your mind's going in that direction. So I love it.
[TYLER]
Let's make it happen, but dude, thanks again. I appreciate you. Appreciate your time. I appreciate you sharing it with everyone you have today. Everyone, in the show notes, you can find out more about the book. You can grab Sustain Your Game, the audio book, which I know you just got done finishing up, hopefully, besides some edits probably. That happens.
[LEO]
Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun as always.
[TYLER]
Thanks man.
One piece that I really took from that conversation is not only the excitement around potentially participating, helping with the book, change the game, as we talked a little bit more afterwards. A couple years, of you see that title, you know this is where it came from, which is so exciting to be a part of that, be a catalyst. I don't need credit for it, but it's fun in situation to be in. But I think about this is I'm looking down at my notes and one of the greatest pieces to stress is awareness of what's creating the stress, what you control, what you can't control, why are you trying to control it? Is it an insecurity where you're afraid of how others might view you and what you can offer, how you can lead, how you can be involved there? My encouragement is to find an individual like Alan allowed me that day to just be curious about your leadership style, where you're at, maybe even being curious about someone else and opening up those windows to where you can communicate to each other.
Because it's through what we try to control and we can't that our stress boils over. I believe this is my belief on burnout as burnout comes from people doing things that they're not equipped to do. Sometimes that's the management of stress. If you're not able to properly manage and work through stress, you're going to burn out. I've seen it in my life. I've seen it in people around me. We talked about that last winter when I interviewed Carrie at your best in his book, he talked a lot about it. If you didn't listen to episode, go back into the show notes, go check those out, check out that episode, tremendous amount of value, talking about this idea of stress and burnout.
The last thing I believe really can affect it the most is our preparation. I prep for each episode. I prep for this time together. I prep because I want to be able to prepare something good for you. But I also know that's how we manage stress. People say that if you're not nervous, it really doesn't mean much. My belief on that is there's a difference between being nervous, meaning I'm not sure if I can handle this as opposed to being prepared and to say, "Hey, whatever comes. I know I have the ability, I have the skills I can control what I can control and I don't let that stress overwhelm us, overwhelm me." I believe there's a difference between being stressed and being nervous, being anxious. Anxious and anticipation to me is not the same as stress. I hope you got value out of this today. I'd love for you to share with somebody. As I said in the open, I'd love for you to subscribe to this episode, give us a rating and review so more people can find these episodes. Thank you for being a listener for the Impact Driven Leader podcast. And until next time, have a good one.
