Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Hey there. Welcome to the Impact Driven Leader. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad to be here with you. If you're watching on YouTube, good to see you again. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, Stitcher, I actually learned from the team that produces this podcast, Practice of the Practice that there's over 2000 podcast platforms now. It's amazing. So wherever you're listening, man, I'm glad you're here. Excited today to have the conversation with two individuals. It's three of us here. It is Benj Miller and Chris White. They are the founders of System & Soul. I'm excited for them to share, we really dig into their system and ideology behind leadership. Chris and Benj share their experiences, growing businesses, finding a relationship together and saying, hey, there's more to this that was missing in each of our businesses that we want to combine and help other businesses.
One of the facets that they describe and talk about is going from founder-led companies to leadership-led companies. Now, part of what they share is it doesn't mean you need to bring in executives and maybe just changes the way that you look at it. This is what I see there is when you do that, I have to imagine, and I'm going to have to follow up and ask them this, because I'm going to say, does that mean that people move past where businesses own them? If you're a founder of an organization, if you're working in a small organization, maybe where there's not many people and you've fed felt that, man, I'm just owned by this, I can't get away from it, I know this is going to be a great episode for you to listen to. Or if you know someone that's in that position, or maybe you work for someone, maybe you own a company where that's what it feels like even though you have this large organization, I know you're going to get tremendous value from this conversation. Excited for it and I'll catch you at the end.
[TYLER]
Chris and Benj, thanks for being here, guys. It's a pleasure to talk to you. It's a pleasure to get to know you both. I'm hopeful over the next 45 minutes or so that not only our audience is going to get to know you guys better, but we're going to have a great leadership conversation. So with that, again, I'm excited to be here with you guys.
[CHRIS WHITE]
Yes, thanks for having us.
[BENJ MILLER]
Super awesome.
[TYLER]
One thing, listening to your voice, Chris, and there's probably this amount of tone to it that you're like, man, you take up a presence in a room. I want to start there as I've listened to a little bit of your story. Let's start with that and say from a leadership perspective, how much of that is a value, but how much of that is a challenge?
[BENJ]
What a great question.
[CHRIS]
Well, that is a good question. I'm 6"3, 270, and I look like Mr. Klean and I've got this voice that I've been blessed with. So sure, there is a physicality to all of that. As a leader, even recently I have to be careful, I grew up in a household of eight boys. I'm the eighth boy and no girls. Yes, my mother was a saint, but imagine that environment. It was competitive, it was candid, it was tough. You had to have thick skin. I carried that into adulthood and I carried that into my professions, into the businesses that I've started. I thought I was pretty self-aware but I had had an incident a while back where my voice and my physicality and my tone and my word selection worked against me. It was a really big learning moment for me because it was in my blind spot. The person who I had this incident with, they were, they're like one of the most bravest people I know because Tyler, they stood up to me and they said, "Hey I don't like the way, the words you're using right now." So I'm a learning animal and I took that to heart and you can't have an ego, man. You got to be humble. None of us are perfect, but you have to have a willingness to go look inside yourself and be honest with yourself. And that's what I did. I call this person, at first I thought maybe they were the most sensitive person I ever worked with but when I look back now and the growth he's the most courageous person I've ever worked with.
[TYLER]
Okay, I want to set that on the coffee table here as we're having just a cup of coffee at the local shop. I want to transition that to yourself, Benj. You're a little bit younger, you have a more dynamic, personality, spiked hair, beard. How much of that, and again, this is all going to tie back into something, but how much of that in a leadership position or when you're trying to gain credibility is either an advantage or a challenge?
[BENJ]
Tyler, I actually don't know. The beard is because I just quit shaving and the hair is because I don't know what to do with it. So there's not a whole lot of strategy right there.
[TYLER]
I mean, oh, let's just time out. For those that aren't watching on YouTube, obviously Chris and I have the exact same haircut. This is by not choice, it's just, this is what I was given. You have choice, dude. Let's be honest, you have choice.
[BENJ]
Fair, fair. But I'm not willing to spend much energy on it, so just rough it up and let it go. But here's what I would say to that, is that I decided a long time ago that I was willing to just be myself. If that didn't attract some people, then those people weren't for me. That's it. I went to a stuffy everywhere, everyone in the whole room had on their blazers and collared shirt breakfast networking thing two weeks ago and I walk in in my t-shirt and jeans and it's just look, I'm going to do me. It's not, it might be borderline rebellion, but it's more about like, look here, I've got this tattoo, let's see if we can pull it in the screen. It says, undomesticated citizen of heaven. It reminds me that, one of the things that it reminds me is that most of our constructs of social norms are manufactured by someone somewhere that wasn't me. So it's a little bit of taking back a rebellion spirit to say, I have the freedom to create my own construct here, not you, not some unnamed party that's out there. When we talk about leadership, when we talk about vision and visionaries, I think that's what it is like, wait a minute, we have the ability to see who we want to be or what we want an organization to be, and like go create that.
[TYLER]
I take and ask you guys those two questions, one, because we're sitting here getting to know each other. It's pretty obvious. But man, as I've lived both of those, as I've lived in that situation, the same Chris, where I didn't realize my demeanor was having the impact and effect it was, and then otherwise looking at, hey, how do I show up and what do I look like? Is that going to gain the attention and yield the value that I'm looking to attain? I think if I look at those two issues, man, those are two leadership issues that I don't think many leaders understand they're dealing with, even though they're not dealing with. It's your choice, Benj, to say, Hey, this is who I am. The sooner we get to that man, coming back to what you Chris said, all of a sudden all those things that are showing up that maybe aren't in our heart, start to just get checked off because people aren't assuming, oh, this is what it is.
I want to start there in our conversation because so much of what you guys do with System & Soul is not only create clarity, but also bring the heart into it. So I want to just have that discussion is how did you guys get there both individually, both together and really in this construct of leadership, education and coaching and service to people. What are you guys focused around and why so the modern day leader or the aspiring leader can say, "Hey, I can really take something from this." That's a lot. I'd love to you guys just take and run with it as you guys I know you can and do.
[BENJ]
I'll tell you what comes to mind is, and when you ask, how did we get here. I, in retrospect, was a very soulful leader. I had a company that I was running in my mid- and early-twenties, very, very young to be a leader and I led it very soulfully. I cared a lot about the people, and I cared a lot about the culture, the identity of the organization. That was a lot of fun but it wasn't a fun business to run and it wasn't until somebody introduced me to some systems that were like the blocking and tackling that I didn't want to pay any attention to because it's blocking and tackling. I wanted to do sport alleys and Hail Mary's, like way more fun. But the systems actually allowed the space for those other things to happen.
Then fast forward, and I'm now helping other organizations implement those same systems, and it just kept falling flat for me, not because they weren't getting it, but it was like I was helping create really well run companies, that that didn't necessarily they could block and tackle all day, but they weren't picking up yards, they weren't getting sag, all the other things. So I wanted to bring my, what I had learned as a soulful spirit, and I was able to basically put some systems around the soulful thing to make sure that it maintained truth as you grow and scale and evolve as an organization. So we had the opportunity, Chris and I, maybe Chris has a different version of the story, but we had the opportunity to really package the whole thing and bring it to market. For us, I know it feels way more like a mission or a movement than it does a company.
[CHRIS]
Similarly for me, Benj and I had been coaching and had our practices and teaching. I'm a systems guy, so I'm on the other side of that coin. It was falling flat for me too because I had had all these wonderful clients, but I had a very limited toolbox. So I started to go outside of the given toolbox and finding tools so that I could help my clients with meeting them where they're at type of thing. Then when Benj and I were, were considering a change we, we talked like let's just go pray about it. I don't remember how much time went by, but I got a call from Benj and he is like, "Hey, I got this little bar napkin drawing I got to talk to you about." I said, okay. I said, "But did you get a name? He goes, actually, he goes, "I did." I go, "Okay, what's the name?" He says, "System & Soul." I just, my jaw dropped. I'm like, "That's it. We're not changing a thing. Now you can show me your napkin because it just hit me."
I mean, we had been talking about this for a long time, but he just pulled it together in that title and I'm like, dude, we got the name now, let's go build it. We're a good compliment to one another. I'm a systems guy, he's a soul guy so put us together and you just get this harmony and boom, here we go. We've got this new framework that has evolved out of multiple frameworks that Benj and I are very familiar with and have taught in the past but this is like the next evolution. And Benj is right, and I think I may have said this to him, this is a movement, this is a movement to help small business owners. You, Tyler, you act like our why. That's where we should all start. Because without purpose, what are we doing? So the reason we do what we do is because we believe the small businesses are the lifeblood of their local community. So if we can help them, then that helps that community to stabilize economically providing jobs and that's what we're about. Bringing those two sides together, I think is the evolution of business frameworks.
[TYLER]
So what do you see then is, I guess I would speculate that the biggest challenges, a lot of those small businesses either don't have much leadership experience, they're just entrepreneurs that ended up where they're at or maybe I took over a family business. I grew up on a farm, my family had a farm, I worked within agriculture for a long time and saw a lot of times it was just the next generation that took over. It wasn't that they were a good business person or leader, it was just next man up. Without a lot of that understanding of what real leadership is, it can fall back into, oh, you're just here doing the job. Just do the job. That's what will move the business forward. I think as you guys have both identified, is that doing the job can be, oh, I'm caring for people, or that doing the job can be like, we're building the chair, we're just doing the system part of it but it's not until you put those together that you can actually have an impact. Is that appropriate?
[BENJ]
I mean, it's probably too strong to say that you don't have an impact with either one of them. But when we put them together, we have something, on the system side, we say that we're just trying to accelerate the value creation. So it takes 10 years to be an overnight success. Well, maybe we can do it in seven or six or five. Let's just try and race the clock on this one and learn lessons not the hard way because other people have already learned these lessons. On the soul side, it makes us attractive. It brings the right people into the story and the roles that they are best fit to play, whether it be prospects or employees, and shareholders. It just creates this story with the role for everyone. So now if we put those two together, we have something that can create a competitive advantage and a durable longevity to this organization.
A lot of what we do we talk about when you, to rewind just a little bit with like true leadership. We find ourselves most of the time, like our sweet spot is helping founder led organizations transition to be led by senior leadership teams. So there's a little bit of counseling and psychology that happens for that founder that they've got to grow, mature but then it's also raising up that next level of leaders for that organization and painting a picture of what that looks like and giving them the tools to do it.
[TYLER]
In a lot of essence, I'm guessing you're teaching people how to let the bird fly out of the nest. It's how to hand the baby over to the preschool teacher and say, no, they're going to care for them just as much, if not more than you may be different.
[BENJ]
Yes, yes.
[TYLER]
To tie back a little bit, and I made asked a question, made a statement, so let me go back to the question is, where do you see the biggest challenge in those small businesses today that are just, it's a part of US, it's a part of the business project, not even US, of the whole construct of what leadership is and how that should act
[CHRIS]
Well, in the small businesses, they have limited resources, like a small family business. I can recall I grew up, my parents started out as farmers too. Then they left the farm and went on to build two companies. So me and all my brothers, we worked in those companies. Now, my dad's style of leadership was dictatorial. Your mouth shut and your ears open and your feet moving. That was how he rolled. But in a small business you're wearing a lot of hats and they're typically founder-led. What we want to help them do is go from a founder-led organization to a senior leadership team led organization. Now they may, their senior leadership team, Tyler might be two people. They might be the husband and wife, or it might be just the two partners and a couple of employees, maybe three people on the team. Either way, what we introduce early is our leadership tools, because there's an opportunity to cultivate and grow exceptional leaders in your, even if you're small.
So we have tools in the leadership section of our model where I always encourage my clients like, okay, we're 10 people right now, imagine we're 20. What would you do if we had 20 people? How would you reinvest in those people? Maybe we could be doing some of those things now, or at least laying the groundwork. But it does start with them first in their leadership skills. So we have multiple tools to help them immediately, but also to help them invest in their future leaders in the organization so that they can start to learn communication skills. That there's a wonderful book that we all love called The Only Leaders Worth Following by Tim Spiker. He did five years of research and it narrowed it down. There's two attributes that every leader should have and I'm looking at that, I'm like, yes, that goes for the small business too? Why can't they have access to this material? So that's why Benj and I are creating these strategic partnerships with these subject matter experts around leadership so that we can pull in some tools to help these small businesses. That was long-winded, I'm sorry, but ---
[TYLER]
No, I mean, this is a conversation. I'm sitting and I'm still chewing and I'm drinking, so I appreciate that.
[BENJ]
The thing I would piggyback on that is, in our model, it's actually behind Chris's head, you can see some of it but when we start talking about people, one of the anchors, the place that we stop and end and camp out on, because it's so core to the model of what we do is leadership. When I explain that we all rise and fall by our definition. Leadership's one of those words like strategy or culture that means everything and nothing at the same time. So it's really important that we explain how we approach leadership, and I say it like, this leadership is about leading yourself well.
Then people think, okay, if I can lead myself, well, then I can lead other people. But I want to put a slight twist on that. If I can lead myself, well then maybe just, maybe I can teach other people how to lead themselves well, and that's a different mindset and it's a different game. So that's the way that we approach this with all aspects from a very, very practical example of how we infuse leadership. This is so simple and tactical, but anybody who would manage somebody in an organization, we try and teach them to drive their car. Car is an acronym. So if we can give clarity, what is the job that I'm asking you to do? What is the mission of that job? How am I going to measure that job? What are you responsible for in there and what are the resources that you have at your disposal? If I can give you clarity, then I can give you autonomy. Go do your thing. If you weren't good at it, I wouldn't have hired you, I would've hired somebody else. I want to be able to give you autonomy. Then if I give you clarity and give you autonomy, then we should be able to have conversations around the results. So, clarity, autonomy, results, Tyler the number one reason that we find that people don't hold their people accountable? What comes to mind?
[TYLER]
It's, of those three, it's the clarity, it's the willing to have the conversation of this is what I expect of you, those expectations and understanding.
[BENJ]
Yes. That's what, but it's usually the guilt people have because they're not sure if they gave their person clarity. So how can they hold them responsible? So there's a, when we start talking about the results, there's a mutual accountability that starts to happen there. Like, I have to be accountable for the clarity that I'm giving, presenting, and that they're receiving. Then if there's a breakdown, we've got to figure out where there is
[CHRIS]
One thing I've noticed in my years at Motorola and then after Motorola and then the companies that have had the great, and I'm thinking of one leader that I had that I really liked, he put me in a position to be successful, and then he got out of my way. He let me run.
[TYLER]
So as I'm thinking about that, Chris, I'm thinking of that leader in myself that did that. I think what's, coming back to what you said Benj is that clarity, the autonomy, the results. As you're telling that, and Chris, as you brought that in your own experience, I'm thinking about a leader when I was 18, 19 years old. I go to work, I have an internship in during college, and he is like, I'm working for you today. Here's the project that we need to do. What am, I how are we going to do this? What are you going to do? That has, again, some 25 years later, made an impact on me. But it's those little instances that I think if you experience that and recognize it and can tap back into it's like, oh, that's good. Healthy leadership. That's what I need to be doing as a leader. I may forget about it. I may have those things, those insecurities that show up or those blind spots or whatever else that cloud it but if you can go back to that or find that.
[BENJ]
Yes, yes.
[CHRIS]
Well, the essence of it is, it's about the who of leadership, not the what they do. It's who they are as a person. I cut you off, Benj, I'm sorry, but it's the who, not what they do.
[BENJ]
The who, are we going to the who? I mean, that's probably---
[CHRIS]
We are
[BENJ]
I was going to change gears a little bit. I think part of, part of leadership that just doesn't get talked about enough is we talk about the clearness with the clarity part of it. But you have to match that with the kindness. Tyler do I know what's important to you? What matters to you? You just came in to work today, but it's been 12 hours since you've been here, and you could have had a death in the family. Your cat could have thrown up on your bedsheets. Your wife is hounding mad at you. Like, if I don't, you can't just walk through a door and that stuff's magically gone. So if maybe in the days of like the industrial age when all you had to do was stamp on the pedal and pound out the sheet metal, like, maybe that worked. But if you're in any kind of engaging work where you're, you're having to use your brain, you're being affected by, all of that in some way, so to have a conscious appreciation for that as a leader, and to know to even go, Hey, Tyler, you don't have the same twinkle in your eye today that you normally do? Is there something going on? Can I be there for you? Is there something I can pick up for you? To have that level of awareness of your people just to take that moment to care, that goes so far. That's miles and miles and miles.
[CHRIS]
Kim Scott in her book, Radical Candor. In her two by two axis, it's the vertical axis that goes up, she says. If you're going to be a leader or manager, you fundamentally have to care about your people that you're leading. Old leadership was more transactional but there's a huge shift to what Benj is talking about and becoming more relational. That means more communication, more taps on the shoulder. It's not the thumb down type of leadership. It's the human connection and Instead of the transaction and it's building that relationship. I mean, I was in a session one time, I was blown away and we were doing a check-in and I always have people share like good news from their personal life to start the meeting.
This was a probably a, I don't know, 20 million company and over a hundred people. The one female executive checked in and said, "Hey my personal good news is my daughter graduated from high school over the weekend," and another executive said, "You have a daughter?" I was like, what? Do people not ever talk outside of this room? How does that even happen? But I was just, to Ben's point, leadership now is you got to, one, you got to be a voracious learner because to be a great leader, great leaders read and read and journal. They do a lot of habits. Those are habits I teach my smaller companies too. Like, hey, Benj and I wrote a book teaching executives how to journal. But you want to be a good leader? You should sit down with this book and challenge yourself to answer some of these questions we're asking you so that you can protect your confidence right when you're going through this stuff. That's another thing leaders do. They really are empathic, self-aware, curious.
[TYLER]
As you describe all that, Chris, and even going back to the all the things you shared, I'm guessing that's really your definition of soul, Benj. And I would almost, I'm going to ask that first, what is your definition? How do you describe when someone's like, ah, all right, I get system, but what's soul?
[BENJ]
It's hard to describe, but we all know it when we see it because we can feel it.
[TYLER]
I think that was the definition of pornography at one point, wasn't it?
[BENJ]
Oh, no, no, that hurts me. [crosstalk]
[CHRIS]
There's our branding
[TYLER]
He speechless. Well, let me bail you out here.
[BENJ]
Well, it's a, I have to answer this question all the time, but it's a combination of how your approach to leadership, the culture that you're creating, the identity of the organization, the purpose and destination that you're framing up but ultimately it's how you decide you're going to treat your people.
[TYLER]
The way that I would define what you guys have said, and this is my words, and I think this is where I see in the stuff that I talk to people about and as I've had to grow and overcome sharing a lot of the things that you first started with Chris, that showing up in a room and not realizing my facial expression, how I carry my body affects people. That's when I started to understand what I describe as empathy. I define that as putting your arms around someone and walking with them. As you guys are talking about soul, as you're talking Chris about being in that executive room and finding about the daughter and the other executive not knowing that, well then they never put their arms around each other.
I look at organizations today and empathy is thrown out so much. Yet I look at that and say, okay, how many people understand it though? How many people understand what does that really mean because it's thrown, thrown out. Oh, put yourself in someone else's shoes. I quickly say, well, if you're doing that, where are they? If you're putting themselves in their shoes, where are they? But if I'm standing side by side, I'm putting my arm around you. We're walking together. I can't drag you. You can't drag me. We have to figure out a pace that works. To me, everything you described as the soul man, that's active empathy. That's what real empathy looks like. Having that, not caring more than them, but caring about them because of its impact to the organization and everyone in it.
[BENJ]
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Tyler, our new chief evangelist for System & Soul
[CHRIS]
Well there, I recently read, I think it was a LinkedIn post or something. It was a culture thing about soul. I think it was something to the effect of if you want to know the soul of your business find out how your employees feel Sunday night before, if they come to work on Monday morning. Then another one was the a company's soul could be the feeling your customer or client has after engaging with you.
[TYLER]
Yes.
[CHRIS]
What is that feeling that they have? That would be another way.
[TYLER]
Well, going back to that transactional piece that you were mentioning earlier, Chris, I don't think those were thoughts. You have a job, show up to the job, do the job, doesn't matter. Or, hey, we did the job for you as a customer. Just be glad we did the job. Or, well, what do you mean we didn't deliver? It's now understanding, oh, if you want your business to actually grow and thrive and what I would say make a lasting impact, man, that stuff is so important. It's so transformational within a community. I believe those are the organizations that we've seen and look around to say, man, they're changing the world.
[CHRIS]
Well, yes, that was the thing that like, and I pinpointed just the years that we had been coaching and identifying all the gaps and all these other systems of what they're missing. We have a saying at, as to the system side of your business makes the soul side true and the soul side makes the system matter.
[TYLER]
I love that. Can you say that again?
[CHRIS]
Sure, the system side of your business makes the sole side true. The sole side of your business makes the system matter.
[TYLER]
Because you can have one without the other so often, but until they're bound together
[CHRIS]
Again, I think that's our differentiator. That is clearly separating us from the pack.
[BENJ]
If we're talking about the people here and then we're, what we're driving toward is ultimate human dignity like giving them the dignity of both the clarity of exactly what's expected. You were hired here to do a job, let's not skip past that. You need to be a profitable employee. But on the flip side, I can at the same time, truly care about your wellbeing. If your wellbeing is to graduate beyond this organization, and so be it, I want, I need to be in your corner for that. But whatever your best interest looks like, I need to be in your corner or side by side with my arm around you like you said. I love Chris', I'm going to steal Chris's quote more, more shoulder taps and less thumb presses. That's my new quote.
[TYLER]
That's good.
[CHRIS]
There's a lot of great systems out there. There's a lot of great systems out there, but I believe that they're, to Ben's point, they're lacking the humanity piece. That's really all we did, is we looked at that people's, and we need to be people centric now more than ever. 2019, we had the Dorian that took out Freeport Bahamas and just sat on it. It was terrible. We've had all, just so many things, the pandemic, everything. We got to show more grace, man. We got to bring grace in. We got to bring humanity. Everybody's been affected in one way or another and those people, those effects come into work. We just need to acknowledge that and we need to be mindful, we need to be intentional. We can't, don't run from it. Run towards it and help your people, double down on your people. I will make that bet all day long. Double down on your people.
[TYLER]
Well, I think we're seeing now as we're finishing up 22 and launching into 23 that the organizations, the leaders, the industries that have said, hey, whatever happens, happens, but let's focus on the people that are making that happen, man, we're going to continue to move forward. The ones that have just said, well, you're just another cog in the wheel. If it's not you, we'll find someone else. I tend to see that those organizations have struggled not only to fill positions, but they're struggling internally where we see this quiet quitting, where we see the resignation, where we see all these fractures in leadership. To me that comes back to really what you were suggesting growing up, Chris is, we followed a system that was dictatorial because that's what we knew. We followed that and we followed that even to your point, Benj where you're saying, I followed the system of soul because obviously that was what you knew, but yet it didn't have maybe the repeatability or it didn't have the effectiveness that lasted. When you blend those, as I'm hearing from you guys, man, that's when we actually moved past the dictatorial to more transformational. That's with the soul and the heart and actually caring about people, which a generation, two generations ago didn't really comprehend.
[CHRIS]
No. They were term soft skills. That's a terrible way to describe these leadership skills.
[TYLER]
Especially as a male
[CHRIS]
Especially for a male.
[TYLER]
Yes.
[CHRIS]
We we're the ones that don't want to admit we don't know. No, I got this. it's certainly harder, but yes, that's our idea, man, is just pull these two sides together and put them in synchronicity. Your people have to be in sync with your design or it just doesn't work. I mean, it can work, you can be successful, but it's going to be a grind. You won't be as happy.
[TYLER]
I don't think it lasts very long. I think that's the thing. It's the rocket ship and it's like ---
[BENJ]
You're always pushing uphill.
[TYLER]
Yes.
[CHRIS]
We're always pushing uphill, yes.
[TYLER]
Instead of getting the snowball to roll.
[BENJ]
Yes. One of the things that we're talking about a lot right now, as we, like you just mentioned, going into setting up 23 and what do we want 23 to look like, we talk about strategy a lot and what is strategy? Well, strategy fits in between a vision for what we're trying to create, where we're going and confident execution. If we don't have confident execution, then people give up on strategy because it's not, we've done this before, great ideas, they just don't happen. We can't get them done so we give up and it becomes drap. So we need to have the confident execution and we have the tools for that's the system, put that in place so that you're a machine, but in the middle lies this focused strategy. Part of that is what are we going to do but part of it is getting really, really clear on who are we, why does that matter, where are we going and then how are we going to get there. If we can start to answer all of those things, now we've got everybody aligned, energized, and focused.
[TYLER]
Somebody listening in, to clarify that you guys have a tool, right? You guys have a diagnostic tool that helps start that?
[BENJ]
Yes, well, we have a diagnostic that looks a more holistically at your organization through the lens of the six elements of our model. We also have the roadmap that I just mentioned, which is that tool that sits in between vision and execution. We'd be glad to give that to all of your listeners.
[TYLER]
So make sure we'll have that in the show notes so that way people can access and take a look at it. To me those are help directing. It's like, okay, to your point, Chris, as we started, is you didn't realize it was a blind spot until someone said this is a blind spot. I think some of those tools, as I found it in myself, it's like, oh no, this is where you really need to work because this is what's showing up, is the foundation of the holes in your bucket that is causing everything to leak out.
[CHRIS]
Well if you want to be an exceptional leader, I will tell you though, you're going to have to get out of your current comfort zone. You have, you can't have an attitude, "I got this." You've got to perpetually engage, over communicate, but you also got to educate yourself and continually learn and improve. You can learn a bunch of different skills, but the idea is when you can become, it's not a healthy dance of emotional maturity in your leadership but here's the thing, Tyler, this is a lifelong journey. There's no end. We can continually improve ourselves, like Benj was saying, focus starts, it starts with us. If we continually improve and we can demonstrate that through our actions and our language, then that's just going to start permeating. But the great leaders take it to the next level and they teach the next generation of leaders everything they learn. They pass it on
[TYLER]
And see that as as an opportunity. As you're saying that, and I'm reflecting in this learning and being open to it, sometimes that mid-level manager, right, that mid-level leader, or maybe I'm thinking about the person that you shared Chris, that was brave enough to point out your blind spots mean that's our opportunity a lot of times to help the leaders around us is now they have to be open and willing. Sometimes we don't know if they're open and willing until we say something, until we help them identify that. Then that can come back twofold, meaning, oh, I learned that, great. Here's everything else that comes from it.
[CHRIS]
Absolutely
[TYLER]
Guys, I've loved the conversation. I know there's a lot of ways to keep up with you. I know, Benj, you had mentioned the newsletter that you have, the daily newsletter, the 261. I recommend people subscribing to that. We'll make sure we have that in the show notes. I'd loved it. Quick little read. What I found is how much, and this conversation proves that, how much that what you guys have experienced, what I've painfully experienced too, is really an alignment. That's where I'm such a fan of what you guys are doing because again, I've experienced it and through this conversation too, have seen it, and especially through the work that you guys put out. So I appreciate the time here. I appreciate you sharing with everyone. Yes, I look forward to more.
[BENJ]
Thank you, Tyler. Great questions.
[CHRIS]
Thanks.
[TYLER]
Oh, thanks guys.
I hope you got tremendous value from Chris and Benj. I know they provided, are going to provide such great tools. Yes, it's in this show note links where you could go to the roadmap. You can check out the 261. I'm thankful for those guys to provide it. In doing so, because I think if you can provide clarity, as Benj went through clarity, autonomy, results, spend time focusing on clarity, spend time with those expectations, that communication piece. As a leader, man, I think that's where so many, including myself, I am saying me, this is where I get in trouble. What am I doing to provide clarity so that way autonomy is a part of that. Then we can measure results because without it, and it's like Chris said, we end up being dictatorial. It's just show up, do your job. You're a cog, you're not a part of the organization.
I believe this, in sharing what Chris and Benj did, this idea of getting people to buy in, to be a part of the organization is really creating a system that centers around soul and a soul that centered around a system, as Chris went through that really defines a leadership ideology. I'm convinced of that. I'm convinced when those pieces come together as so many of the thoughts that Chris and Benj and I share together as we evidence today, that that's when you can make an impact.
Man, I'm excited that you're here. Look for this coming up in the next month or so after the release of this episode. I'll be doing a special two day training to discuss some of these pieces, some of the impact driven leader, pathway, ideology. Look for that. That'll be coming at you. Hopefully that you'll be able to sign up for that. Be glad to share more with you and expose a little bit about what the Impact Driven Leader roundtable is about. Would love for you to join that as well. Thanks for listening in. As always, if you got value from today's episode, please share. Please share for Benj, for Chris, for everything that they're trying to do as an organization to help the world of businesses get better. As well, I'd love for you to share so someone else can be a part of this community. Thanks for being here. Catch you next time.
