IDL88 Season 2: My Daily Leadership with Antonio Garrido

Do you make the time to journal? What are the attributes of some of the best of the best in leadership and business? How can you learn to glean wisdom from your daily experiences?

I’m excited to share with you the conversation I have with the author of My Daily Leadership, Antonio Garrido. Antonio and I reflect on his book to ask how a leader can pursue self-development. We hone in on the particular value of reflective evaluation, looking at how daily practices like journaling can help a leader grow. Later, we also consider which five elements the best of the best leaders are focusing on.

Meet Antonio Garrido

Antonio is a charismatic and experienced trainer, speaker, consultant and author in the areas of sales, management and strategic planning. He has over twenty-five years in senior leadership positions with world-class businesses and is an expert in leadership transformation: shaping high-performance leaders out of highly stressed and overworked leaders.

Using the proven Sandler techniques and methodologies, Antonio is well known for his expertise in developing and training powerful sales strategies and tactics – his clients learn how to win more sales, in less time, while creating a common sales language and dynamic prospecting culture.

Visit Sandler and connect on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Gather wisdom from your experiences - 09:26

• Seek out and value feedback - 14:23

• Take responsibility for yourself - 19:00

• What does world-class leadership look like? - 25:08

• The power of insight - 42:14

Gather wisdom from your experiences

You don’t always become great at something as a consequence of time spent doing the thing. You need to assess and redirect where necessary to get the best results.

Doing the same thing over and over may yield good results, but if times change or the market or clients change, then you will need to be able to adapt your process to maintain consistent success.

The wisdom of adaption comes from assessing and evaluating your experiences.

Seek out and value feedback

Leaders create dynamics within their team and company by both their actions and their inactions.

If they never venture to ask for feedback, it may never be given, because their employees may feel afraid to speak honestly and openly if an open space is never provided to them.

This is what it means to practice daily leadership: evaluate your actions, assess your behavior, and seek out feedback from your team.

Take responsibility for yourself

Take stock of each day. Journaling is the practice of seeking feedback (from yourself) and assessing your experiences to glean wisdom.

Almost always, successful and compassionate leaders journal. Ask yourself:

-        What happened today?

-        What can I do better?

-        What can I do more?

-        What could I have done less of?

What does world-class leadership look like?

Even though you may have an idea of what a bad leader is – and you aim to steer clear of it – what does good leadership look like? What model of leadership should you be striving towards?

Some attributes of the best of the best:

-        These leaders work in people development such as helping people reach their full potential and masterful mentorship

-        These leaders work in company development like optimizing processes and systems

-        They work in strategy development

-        They work in leadership development within their teams

-        They work in self-development within themselves

The power of insight

Insight and impact are two aspects of great leadership. You can find your insights by taking – or making – the time to sit with your thoughts and be intentional with your presence.

Think about what you want to achieve, and think about how you want to model it for your team, because they will follow your example.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Antonio Garrido – My Daily Leadership: A Powerful Roadmap for Leadership Success

BOOK | Jim Collins – Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

BOOK | Marshall Goldsmith – What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Visit Sandler and connect on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

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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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The only advantage you have today over yesterday is what you’ve learned.

Antonio Garrido

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad that you're here listening in. Whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening wherever you're listening to podcast, glad to have you. I'm excited for the conversation I have today with author Antonio Garrido. Antonio is the author of My Daily Leadership. He writes a lot of leadership articles. He noted that he, when we were conversing, he just wrote an article for the CEO world, talked about, does a leader need a title? Man, what a great conversation he and I are going to have, and we're going to talk about his book, My Daily Leadership, which really opens up a Pandora's box that I think a lot of leaders know that they need to do, but maybe don't make time to do. That's self-development. His premise and the book is really a textbook as I describe about leadership, but also about the value of evaluated reflective writing down on paper journaling as a leader. Man, we talk about a lot of leadership pieces. We talk about our favorite football team, aka, our soccer team, and we really unpack this idea of what are the five elements, what are the five areas, the five key components, the few things that the best of the best leaders are focused on. I'll tip my cards and say, one of them is self-development. Well, we'll discuss that in great length. Again, I thank you for being here, excited for this time, and you're going to get a lot of value out of this conversation. [TYLER] Antonio, welcome to the podcast, man. I am excited to be chatting with you. I'm so fortunate to learn about your book, to learn about you and I look forward to spending 45 minutes or so here chatting about leadership from your perspective. I know that's a big nut to crack, and we'll try our best, huh? [ANTONIO GARRIDO] It is rather, but first of all, thank you ever so much, Tyler for the invitation. I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I really do appreciate you spending some time with me, and I hope your audience gets to enjoy what we're going to talk about, well, leadership development, which I guess is your thing, right? [TYLER] Yes, totally. I mean, it's about leadership. It's, I think, especially reading through your book, My Daily Leadership, which is really a, I would say, a suggestion to people to journal, and then you give so much more to it, is I was reading through it and understanding that leadership is a journey. It's so much of a journey. I think if we were to start there, help us understand, listening to you, where did your journey start and your ebbs and flows and how you got to understand what you are today [ANTONIO] Gosh, that's such a large question, but a great question. I think I'll probably answer it like this and it may be at the same time, a really good exercise for your listeners. I've been so fortunate in my time, and it's really been more by luck than design, I have worked for some immense leaders, I don't mean large individuals, I just mean immense individuals. I first think became most interested in, I'm very old, by the way, I've worked for large companies, some what you would call I guess, Fortune 60 companies, top 60 PLCs in the UK and held senior positions in them and I'm a serial entrepreneur and all of that good stuff. But I once worked for a chairman of a group of companies when I was fairly young, so a million years ago when I fell off my dinosaur going to work. He called me into his office one day, or rather, he put a memo on my desk, so this is way before emails and so on and asked me to pop in along and see him, which I did. Here's what the encounter sounded like, and I'd like your listeners and viewers to think about how maybe perhaps they would've answered the question. So he invited me into his office, we sat down and he asked me if I had ever worked for a poor manager, a poor boss, a poor leader, I mean, who hasn't. So I said, yes, of course, that I had worked for a poor leader. He slid a piece of paper across the desk to me, and he asked me to define what a dreadful leader looks like. You can imagine the kinds of things that I wrote down., I don't want to give too much away for your listeners, but things like micromanager, things like inconsistent, things like doesn't develop people, things like plays favorites, whatever dreadful looks like to you. Then I slid the list back and he said, great, add a few more things. Then I added a few more things, and then a few more things and then half an hour into the conversation, we had this huge list of what does dreadful leadership look like? It's often easier to define what dreadful looks like, rather than what superb looks like. So we had created this list of leadership dreadfulness, and then he said, "Hey, Antonio, will you make me a solemn promise?" I said, "Yes, what would that be?" He said, "Whilst you are working for me and for my company, will you promise never to do any of these things?" I thought, craigy, what a great way of trying to guide me as a young leader to think about the things I should do and things that I shouldn't do? He then asked me to keep that list with me at all times, and he asked that if he ever passes me in the corridor, he may ask me about this list. This list followed me around for years. I genuinely kept it with me. One day, about six months afterwards we were in a board meeting, the company had just done a big 360 or the board of directors and so on about trust and about what the organization felt. So it was like an employee engagement survey, a survey, I guess, more than anything else. We didn't come out too well at that particular point in time and so we're in a board meeting, there are about 13 of us around the table and he asked us all to get our lists out of our pockets of leadership, dreadful dust. In other words, he not only had that conversation with me, but with all of the other directors. He said that the reason that we were in the state that we were in is because we'd all done the things that we'd written on this list. That set me off on a journey, I think, to try and really understand what does dreadful leadership look like and what does really world class, I mean world class, best in class leadership look like. I guess that's what started me on my route. Is that what you asked me, I can't quite remember. [TYLER] I mean, that's a phenomenal story. I think one of the things that you layer in there is we can this vision, we can have a vision of an organization, we can have a vision of what we're trying to do. Sometimes the best vision is what I don't want to, because I know the feelings that those led to, like you, the dysfunctional, the dreadful leader. You knew when you went home every night how you felt. You knew when on if it was a Sunday night, going to Monday, you knew how you felt when you were on a business trip or whatever. You knew how you felt. I think there comes to a point when someone asks you is like, well, did that feel good? It's like, no, that's why I'm not there anymore. You're like, well, then list those things so you can focus on not doing them. To me, I think that's a great place to start. [ANTONIO] I think the other beauty of that exercise, if you think about it, it forces you to be very reflective. It forces you to consider am I inadvertently straying on back onto this list? Am I inadvertently, because nobody does it by design. No leader comes to work in the morning and think, ah, I'm going to do this. This will really keep everybody on their toes. I mean, nobody does that. All leaders, and I've known many and coached and trained many for years and years and years and years, whether in consultancy or for my own business, no leader wants to do a bad job. What we all, and all employees want to do a good job, what they sometimes lose sight of quite is how to do that. The other issue is, and I think that this is another key principle in the book, so not only define what good looks like,, and one of the ways, as you say, to define what good looks like is to define what bad looks like. But the other key principle of the book, I think is wisdom comes from evaluated experience, this principle that you don't get good at something just as a consequence of time served. I have interviewed, gosh, countless of leaders and coached and managed many of them and they will tell you that they have 20 years leadership experience. What they're actually saying when you dig a little below the surface is they've had two or three years of leadership experience where they've been growing and learning as a leader, and then they've just plateaued and done the same thing for five times on the trot. So this principle of self-reflection, wisdom coming from evaluated experience and really defining what good leadership looks like for you, and then measuring yourself against it very, very, very regularly, is I think what at its heart is what I think the book is about. And the challenge as a leader, Tyler is, I was struck. I, oftentimes, when I'm training and coaching and being interviewed by people, I just tell stories. I loved the story of, I was actually in Miami at the time in my office in Miami. I was watching TV and President Bush Snr., who was no longer president, and you chaps still call ex-president, Mr. President, which confused me somewhat, but anyway, we'll let that pass, he had just come off the 18th hole of a ProArm golf tournament. He walked off the 18 hole and somebody stuck a camera in his face and said, "Hey, Mr. President, how did the golf go?" He stopped and thought for a second, and he said it's amazing how many games of golf he has lost now that he's no longer president. If you think about that for a second,. there aren't many leads who are in their office, and then they hear it like a knock on the door and they say, yes, come in, come in. Then somebody comes into their office and say, "Hey boss, have you got a minute?" They go, "Yes, of course. What's on your mind?" Then they the individual says, "Well, I just thought I'd like to spend 10 minutes just telling you about a dreadful job I think you've been doing over the last six months." That tends not to happen. Without disparaging it, turkeys tend not to want to vote for Thanksgiving because that's just not what turkeys tend to do. So who's to tell the leader that they think they're doing a standup job or more importantly are doing a fairly dreadful job? The fact of the matter is nobody does, nobody tells the president that they're doing a terrible job. I know that people can vote with their feet and one of the indicators of that could be a high staff turnover or poor share price, but that's a lagging indicator. A leading indicator is how they need to do it. So self-awareness is critical because nobody tells them and so many leaders, by the way, if I'm rambling, let's just cut in but so many leaders, when you ask them about how are they developing their people, because of course, that's critical element of every business, they take some pride when they call in the HR director or the chief HR officer and they say, "Hey, could you spend a few minutes in telling Antonio how we develop our people?" They go, "Yes, of course. " Then they tell you all about the annual PDRs, personal development reviews, and they tell you about how they're developing their people, and they tell you how all of that's done, how it's measured, how they don't tie it to salary reviews and all of this great stuff. I say, okay, terrific, great, great, great, great, great. Can I see yours, to the leader, can I see your personal development review? Then there's a lot of embarrassed shuffling of feet and looking up because they know that it's the right thing to do, but for everybody else, and they don't seem to have a very formalized self-development plan or path for themselves. So when I put all of these things together, I thought we need to do better as leaders. We need to be self-aware about what we need to do about the job. Go ahead, sorry. [TYLER] So, well, I mean, there's a couple different paths that I could go down, but, I think there's a question here is because that most leaders don't spend time to do a 360 review, an actual 360, Marcus Buckingham says, ah, maybe they're not real, because people are afraid to say what they really want to say. But to me it's like, if you don't ask for them, then you don't have any clue. But is it that most leaders end up where they are because of what's allowed them to be where they're on there? It's just they end up there by their actions or their inactions, meaning I choose not to ask myself for every day, what could I be doing differently? How could I do that in differently? Or have the trust with those around us to say, hey, what today did I do well? What today could I have done better? Where is that self-awareness? I know you talk a lot about in your book, but I think that's the differentiator between good leaders and managers that just go along their job and the ones that espouse to be great. [ANTONIO] No, no, you are exactly right. I did talk a few months ago to maybe four or 500 leaders in the room. Because of some of the questions that were asked and the way that the audience was leading it, I slightly went off piece off my presentation. So I took a slight risk, but here's what happened, here's how it paid out. So I asked, so let's say there were 400 people just for a number of leaders in the audience, the great and the good from across the globe and I asked the audience if they would, by a show of hands for those leaders that didn't have any leadership blind spots at all, none whatsoever would they put their hands in the air. Thankfully, nobody put their hands in the air. That's a good one but the point is that everybody recognized that they must, because I mean, nobody's infallible. Nobody's entirely God-like, apart from Pep Gu, who we were talking about earlier, but that's for our conversation. So every leader does recognize that they probably do have some leadership blind spots. We were off to a good start, so terrific. Okay, everybody get a pen and a piece of paper and could you please write down what your blind spots are? Of course, it got incredibly difficult because whilst every leader recognized that they can't be unfathomable, that they must have some leadership blind spots. However, when you ask them what they are, they don't know what they are. Why? Because they're blind spots. If they knew what they were, they wouldn't be blind spots. So all leaders, I think certainly, let's say the large majority of leaders recognize that they're not perfect. They're not the finished article. They may have got their luck by good judgment or whatever, and an enormous skill and charm and charisma and all of that gravitas and good stuff but they recognize that they're not perfect and they still have some way to go. If you ever read Bill Clinton's autobiography, he said that whilst he was the president of the United States, and arguably the most important, that's probably not the word, the way that he described it, but in a very critical leadership, world leadership position making decisions on some of the most distressing and intractable and really, really difficult decisions about Palestine and the West Bank and terrorism and the economy and interest, tricky, tricky, tricky, tricky stuff. They were asking him to make decisions about these things every day. He said, "Look, the best I can possibly hope to do is seven or eight out of 10, and hope that the seven good decisions outweigh the three bad decisions, which are absolutely inevitable." So when you talk to some leaders, they just accepted that they're not the perfect item, but they just hope that largely they'll make seven out of 10 good decisions. But the great leaders, and this is Jim Collins' difference, Good to Great or even Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, the best leaders go, no, that's not good enough. I need to be the very best that I can be. Who should take responsibility for that? Well, they should. The best leaders recognize that, and the best leaders, whether that's in commerce or whether it's, or even, let's talk about Pep Gurdiola or sports personalities, or musicians or entertainers or the very, very, very best of the best. What do all of them do? They journal. Because every day they take a proactive review and give themselves a grading, how did I do today from A to F? What's my leadership report card today look like and how could I have done better? What should I have done more of? What should I have done less of? They take responsibility for their own development. That's what the best of the best of the best do. This book really tries to codify that and basically say, look, you have to take responsibility for your own development. Nobody's perfect and that's okay. If you want to be good, terrific, but if you want to be great and best in class and world class and recognize that the only advantage you have today over yesterday, unless you've got some great personal wealth, and some of them do, but the only advantage you have today over yesterday is what you've learned. Because otherwise you're getting closer to dead, I guess. So the best of the best really have a good vision of what does terrific look like, really accept that they have some blind spots, want to figure them out and also recognize that emotional intelligence, which is built on self-awareness needs to improve. If they can work on those things, which is why people journal, then that's great. Did that make sense? [TYLER] Oh, absolutely. I think that you finished it off there with a piece that I think connects it, is like their ability to be self-aware is what allows them to actually, in my opinion, connect better with those that they lead, which then further on enhances the development. If, for example, I realize that hey, I need to grow and learn an order that I can be better, I'm continuing to learn how can I get better, what facets can I make sure that I'm implementing into my daily routine, how do I evaluate my day? If I'm doing that, I'm being an example for others, and I'm also involved in their process. It goes back to what you said earlier, it's like, oh, what type of development process do you have in your organization? They lead you through, they say, oh, this is what we do for our employees. Like, well, what about you. And the CEO that says, well, this is mine and these are the board members, internal, external, that meet with me, that go through this with me. These are the people in the organization that maybe report to me or are 17 levels below me that give me feedback so I can further grow and understand and see what I don't see as I've learned. I think you, so a point out here, those are the leaders that become great. They're not the leaders that just have strokes of genius decisions that lead them to this magical place. It's the ones that continually evaluate. They're the ones that are saying, okay, what went well, what didn't, how can I figure out how to do more of what went well? [ANTONIO] Yes, and less of what does dreadful look like? Just to make another point, Tyler, because you said it twice, I let it slide the first time, but I'm going to bring you back here [TYLER] Please. [ANTONIO] We cannot rely on the people around us to point these things out and I don't care, you're probably going to get letters, but I don't care, how many people say, "Hey, listen, we do entirely anonymous 360s. We are very careful with our working and we're very careful with the way that we ask and interpret and statistically analyze the questions." I don't care if somebody has to make some comment on the leader very often they do have one weary eye on their checkbook and who assigns the parking spots in the car park. There is just no other way around it. Here's the other point as well, that somebody has to take responsibility for future proofing the business not only figuring out what needs to be done today, but what needs to be done in the future. The person that, so you would ask a lot of people around the leader to say, how's he doing? They'll give you you a view of today or recent history. They'll say, "You know what? He deal, he dealt with that well, she dealt with this merger well, he dealt with this issue well, she dealt with that crisis well," which is a commentary on now and recent times past. But that's not a leader's job. One of the main functions of a leader, of course, is to do all of those good things, but they have to futureproof themselves, the people and their company. So that's difficult for people to imagine. So really, the truth is they know thyself. Frank Roosevelt said the three hardest things in the world are diamonds, steel, and knowing thyself and he wasn't wrong. So self-awareness is key. There's another piece to it though as well, I'd like to mention, if that's okay with you. Whilst I mentioned, and I wouldn't want people to get the wrong end of the stick, that it's important to define what does bad look like. We talked about that and we've put that to bed. That is a really, really powerful exercise. Then to grade yourself against each of those attributes. The other important thing which we discuss in the book a lot is, well, okay, well, what does good look like? What does great look like? What is the model that we should be trying to follow? So part of the research that we did around this, my third book was we did a real deep dive into those leaders who by popular consent were world class or best in class, or the best of the best. We started to look at what are the particular attributes, capabilities, competencies what does world class look like? So what I'm saying, or when I said earlier Tyler, that we need to be very self-aware, we need to build our self-awareness muscle because most people are not nearly as self-aware as they think they are. We developed a proprietary very high level leadership assessment for the book, which we found on our website, but it modeled against this principle of the best of the best of the best. We discovered that the best of the best of the best are interested in a bunch of things, but not everything, a quite a tight limited number of things. It's very easy for leaders to get distracted, not only just by purple, I was going to say Purple Cows, Seth Godin's book, but by squirrels. It's very easy to get distracted and it's very easy to jump on the modern, trendy band wain of leadership. But I'd like to share with you what we discovered in terms of what are the attributes of the best, of the best of the best. Would that make sense? [TYLER] Yes, please. [ANTONIO] Again, as we're going through this list, and I'm not going to give you the full list because it, pretty soon we'll become a bother, stay and boring, I imagine. But as we're going through the list, I'd like your leaders to consider again, give themselves a score from A+, A, A-, B+ B, you get the idea, so a leadership report card against these things. The area that most leaders, all good leaders do well is people development. Great. That's a given. That's your entry. You have to do that to get in the game. So they recognize that people development is critical and there are some elements to people development, which is around helping people reach their full potential masterful mentorship, understanding motivations, getting people not to just communicate with each other, but coordinate with each other, cooperate with each other, and collaborate with each other. That's obvious, and everybody knows that stuff. Where they then go is company development. Typically company development is something that also most leaders recognize that that's important to do and improve company processes and long, medium, short-term planning and all of that stuff. Strategy development, again, intuitively they know that that's important to them. Where they start to fall down is in leadership development, in other words, developing more leaders. They seem to take a pretty haphazard view of they know it's important but don't quite know how. Then the big one is the self-development piece. So we have this people development, company development, self-development, strategy development, and leadership development. As you think about, or people that are listening to this, if they're so minded, think about how do you rate against each of those things because none of us are the finished article. This daily reflection, this daily analysis, reflective and reflexive practice helps you get there because nobody else is going to tell you. Makes sense? [TYLER] Absolutely. I think as I evaluate and I'm thinking about different individuals that I've worked with and interacted with and worked for, what I pose here is if you focus on the last two, the self-development and the leadership development, I think quite honestly, you'll find that the other three just happen. It does take some intention with strategy, but when you think about the people development and the company development, if you're focusing on your own self-development and the leadership development of those in your leadership capacity, man, it just leaks out. I know I'm going to state something. I would say it's probably not the people listening to this podcast, but it may be the case, where there's a lot of leaders that say, I don't have the time to work on self-development. Oh, that's not a priority in our business right now. I would challenge, based upon what you've said and what I've experienced myself, the leaders that do, man, they're able to navigate through some of the biggest obstacles and challenges and opportunities because of that. [ANTONIO] You are absolutely, a hundred percent true. I haven't met a leader of, let's call a sizable or sufficiently complex or difficult challenging environment that sits around twiddling their thumbs all day with stacks of time to do. Mainly they are very, very, very time poor, which is interesting because it conflicts with, I read so many statistics that say the best CEOs read 60 books a year. And I ask them, how much time do you devote to reading? They go, oh yes, yes, good amount. I said, okay, well how many books have you read in the last year? It's two or three, sometimes four or five, but it rarely gets beyond there. Where these guys are that read books a year? I just don't know because, because these people just genuinely don't have time for this stuff. So we have an issue now with the most, well, one, okay, so a resource that is time that evades most of these people and their work life balance is also very, very screwed up sometimes. So how do you get somebody who is so time staffed to be able to spend time doing this? It's the thing that they all recognize that they must do, and yet they blame circumstances for not allowing them to do so. When I then ask leaders, "Hey, do me a favor, will you, can you write down on a scale of top five, for example, what are your most, describe or list the most valuable resources that you have at your disposal." Most leaders will say things like people, people are our most valuable resource. They always say that. They always say that. You go, okay, great. [TYLER] They're conditioned. [ANTONIO] Exactly. It's very Pavlovian. It's absolutely a conditioned reflex. You say, okay, great people, what else? They'll go, customers. Okay, terrific, what else? Then they'll go our culture. Oh, great, yes, yes, yes. They list the regular stuff. I say you know what, the best of the best of the best of the best that we could absolutely find anywhere in the world, they recognize that the most valuable resource that they have is this principle of action bias. The principle of action bias is getting things done. You get so many leaders who say things like, I'm too busy mopping up the floor to turn off the faucet because they're so time constrained and they're constantly running from fire to fire to fire. I get it. They're constantly in the high urgency, but high importance quadrant instead of the high importance, low urgency quadrant. That's entirely their fault. Sometimes some of them actually engineer it that way because it gives them a sense of importance and also helps them deal with imposter syndrome at some level. That's a deep one if you think about it. But the point is that they have to make time. They have to find the time. If they can't find the time to develop themselves, that in itself is the litmus test of why they need to develop themselves. Those people that say, well, it's important and it's true, but I don't have time to develop myself, is the reason that they need to develop themselves because they're not prioritizing properly, they're not delegating properly, they're not concentrating on the important things. I think it was Jim Ro that said, if you have more than three priorities, if you have more than three critical priorities, you have none. When you get leaders to accept that one of their top three priorities is their own development, good things happen. But they have to prioritize it, otherwise it'll just never happen. Make sense? [TYLER] Well, and I would speculate there, as I'm analyzing and I'm thinking about this, this priority to think this priority to develop yourself, and it can't be without the priority to act. You talked about this, having an action bias. Well, you can have an action bias. That's what takes the person who's the consummate student, like the person that takes in all the courses, they read all the books, but they never do anything. It's because they don't have an action bias. But the leader that does read, the leader that does put themselves into new communities with others to learn and to grow and develop yourself with an action bias, those are the ones moving forward. I think that's putting those two pieces together. I think is probably really imperative that you stop and say, okay, what can I do to make sure that my time is very well used? But yes, I also make time to say, I have to stop. I have to think, I have to process, I have to evaluate, and I have to grow. Man, those are, that's not a lesser use of your time. [ANTONIO] Oh, that's so beautiful. Do you know what, I wish, that was so beautifully said. [TYLER] I'm already, good thing it's recorded [ANTONIO] I'm already writing the next book. That's going to go in it. I think that [TYLER] Okay. [ANTONIO] I'll give you credit, don't worry, I'll give you, but yes, we were talking, I just have to make this point, and I think this is a critical point. Before we turn all of this on, turns out that Tyler and I are both lunatic Manchester City fans, which is why we'll both be assured our place in heaven, I'm sure one day. The individual who currently is the head coach for Manchester City is the best coach in the world, guy called Pep Gurdiola, for those that don't know. But anyway, here's the point, Pep Guardiola has surrounding him, let's just accept even if only theoretically, because there may be some lunatic Liverpool or Manchester United fans listening but let's just accept the Pep Guardiola is surrounded by some of the genuinely best, most talented athletes in the world. Fair? [TYLER] Mmh [ANTONIO] The best in the world, like in the world. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, he's surrounded by tremendous, tremendous talent like world-class talent. Interestingly enough, none of them, not one of them, well, what do they do every day? What do they do every day? Every single day they try and get better. These are the best in the world, in the world. What do they do every single day without complaint, without any aggravation, without any resistance, they realize that part of the gig that they get. Do you have children, Tyler? I don't know. Do you have children? [TYLER] I have three. [ANTONIO] Okay, I have four. How old are your kids? [TYLER] 16, 14, and 13. [ANTONIO] Okay, so a million years ago when they were, when they first arrived, so when these little bundles of curiosity first arrived, part of the gig of being a parent, there were some things that were non-negotiable. Like you couldn't say do you know what, I'm just not feeling the love for changing nappies today or diapers. I'm just not feeling it. I heard the other day that diapers and politicians have to be changed regularly for the same reason, which I thought was great. So there was --- [TYLER] They get soiled. [ANTONIO] Yes, because they're full of crap. But there was never a day when you thought I don't, I'm just not feeling the love for changing the diapers today, or I'm just not feeling feeding them today. I'll feed them tomorrow. There are certain things when you're pregnant, it's just the gig. You accept implicitly 100% that these are the things that I do. When people sign on for, to be working on the teams, run by people like Pep Guardiola, they just accept that every day it's just the gig that we try and get better in as many different places as we can. We don't complain. We train. And these are the best in the world. Well, if Pep Guardiola and all of his band have to do it right then, I don't care what a leader you are. It's not good enough to say, what got me here will get me there. It's just not good enough. The gig is you are constantly having, it's just the gig, you have to try and get better every single day. Those that don't, they don't deserve the position. It's strong words, I agree entirely but the great ones, the Pep Guardiolas of this world work very, very hard on self-improvement, self-development, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and all of that good stuff. [TYLER] I think there's an element where I'm guessing they probably never evaluated this way but there comes a situation, I know I experienced it, where if you're not growing, you're dying. I think there's almost an element there where at some point in the trajectory of career a leader comes to a point of, it's like, I'm going backwards. How do I stop this? It's like, the moment that you stop growing is the moment that you're done. It comes back to that what got you here won't get you there. The only way to get there is to continue to grow and there has to be a switch that flips. You talk about the leaders that you had that led you down that pathway of saying, what does dysfunction look like? Or you recount another one in the book that just says, hey, did you have a great day or did you, the yes, no question. I think those are elements of, those are great examples of leaders that said, "Hey, I'm going to out of my own self pour into you and help you through this process because ultimately we're both growing through this process." [ANTONIO] For sure. For sure, for sure, for sure, for sure. The other thing is, I think it's really important, and I would hate for us to wrap up without getting this really important point in, the world is complex. Is it with time more complex or less complex? More complex. Are things increasingly difficult or less increasing difficult? Things are, are they moving faster or slow? Faster. Is the more uncertainty or less? More. By any measure, it's tricky and I get that, a hundred percent get it. The speed of the trickiness increases. Here's another really interesting point about the best of the best leaders. When you look at some of the decisions that they have made and some of the big decisions at that they all seem to share this principle of remarkable insight. You think, how did they make that decision bearing in mind the information that they had at the time when they were making that decision, the circumstances that prevailed and yet they seem to somehow drive through all of that and come to a really great impactful, insightful decision. Now, this principle of insight and impact is quite a tricky thing to get your arms around. It's really important for leaders. We talk a lot in the book about insight and impact because that seems to be one of those things to separate the good from the great. It's then beholden upon us to think, okay, well where does that insight come from? You mentioned something earlier, which reminded me to think about it when you said, sit down with a piece of paper. The best of the best all seem to have thinking time in their calendars, which is time blocked out in their calendars, typically, interestingly enough, in either red or blue boxes, for some bizarre reason, mention City of Manchester United perhaps, specifically just to think and to strategize and to model. Not enough leaders use enough modeling in their thinking and modeling is so important. We talk a lot about it, about business models and using models to understand problems, anticipate issues, and also then describe the sets of circumstances to their people. But this principle of insight, we give loads of examples in the book because it's really, really, really important. Here's what the difference is. Here's one of the differences between the good and the great. All leaders are pretty good at gathering data. So they gather lots of data from lots of parts of the industry that drop lots of thermometers around the company. They gather, gather lots and lots and lots of data, but data in itself is useless. So what they then do, as the good ones, take the pieces of info, of data and turn it into information because information is a subset of data. The good ones then connect all of those pieces using their intelligence and knowledge and then figure out, well how do we get from here to there? Now we're coming to this principle of wisdom and insight and impact. Well, going from data, information, knowledge, insight, wisdom, impact, again, that's a process and that's a muscle that's like sit-ups that can be developed. Steve Jobs was great to take. Sam Walton was brilliant at it. There are some leaders who actually specifically work on insight and impact. Not enough leaders do that. Where are you going to do that? Of course, journaling is the mechanism to do that to really, well identify a problem, figure out what some of the issues might be, we talk about how to do it in the book and then get to the point that's a real big differential between good and the great, is this principle of impact and insight. Journaling does that too. [TYLER] I think one of the keys here that I probably, I would love to just have you weigh in on it. Of course, your book is talking about journaling where just segmented there. I think one of the great attributes that sometimes, it said that no two days in a row are great days for a leader. There's going to become times and points, you're going to have challenges like, how am I going to get through this? That's going to continue as long as you're in a role of responsibility and leadership and where there's expectations of you. I just have to think, and I think about this myself, when you can look back and say, what was I most worried about five years ago? What was I worried about on September 13th, 2017 as it's the day that we're recording, that's five years ago? What is the most important thing that I'm thinking about today, when you skip ahead a year, two years, three years, and you're evaluating that, it's like, oh, that's what I was worried about. That worked itself out. That worked itself out because of the process. Well, what I find is if we aren't recording those, we don't remember the problems that we overcame and when we do record them, we can keep in mind that the problems we have today are manageable. We can get through them somehow. Some way they may be challenging today, but because of our past and recording that and learning from it, we can get through those today. [ANTONIO] Hundred percent. That's such a great, that looking in the rear-view mirror, it's so important. It's also, you talk to these leaders, busy, busy, busy chaps. They're dealing with a million thoughts a day to say nothing of 500, 600 emails a day. Talk about how busy, busy, busy lives, how many great, world class thoughts come into their head and go out because they get crowded out. How many of those really, really good, good intuitive can't really be defined and encapsulated thoughts come and evaporate, disappear and go into the ether? But wouldn't it be great if you could grab them, capture them, mull on them, marinate on them. That is another great principle of not only looking back, but also working through these principles of insight and impact, but they just get crowded out. There are genuinely some leaders that we coach who genuinely, it sounds like an exaggeration, but get hundreds, hundreds of emails a day. What kind of rain man, individual can deal with all of those in any efficient and more importantly, effective way? It can't be done. It can't be done. It's possibly, no. [TYLER] It's a difficult situation. Antonio, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. This has been wonderful. Excited for people to read your book, My Daily Leadership, which I really look at, it's really a textbook. I hate to qualify it that way, but it's packed full of so much great information, especially the basis of recording these notes, but systematically with a roadmap. I encourage everyone to get it. I'm excited to talk to you and thank you for your time again. [ANTONIO] An amusing textbook, Tyler. I don't make it sound too dry and --- [TYLER] Yes, no, no, no it is. And listening is even more enjoyable. I mean, I listened to it, I have a copy here, I'm going through, but I knew I was going to enjoy this time with you because of the quips. And I think there's a part of that that it's like you know what, if some of this stuff can get so deep, it's just stop and guess what, we're all people. It's okay. [ANTONIO] Yes, yes, yes. There aren't many people. [TYLER] Don't take yourself too seriously --- [ANTONIO] Yes, there aren't many people on the deathbed that wish should spend more time in the office. We do also need to show out a bit, don't we? I think. [TYLER] Yes. That's something I've had to learn and yes, I appreciate it. [ANTONIO] Yes. Well, thank you very much, Tyler. I have enjoyed it. So maybe the next book, we'll meet again. [TYLER] Yes, for sure. [TYLER] One of the areas that Antonio really goes into in this book, and describing this leadership journey is self-awareness. Now, I believe it, we talked a little bit about this, where does self-awareness come from? I think you have to be willing to get it anywhere. A lot of times that's personally reflecting and ask questions, why did it go the way it went and then finding people around you, finding mentors to ask, hey, this is the situation I had. Can you shine some light on them? Well, in my belief, that's really a part of layered learning. That's learning with others. That's what we do in the Impact Driven Leader round table. To me as a leader, it lends to the development that Antonio was talking about. We're actually, as part of the round table, we're going to go through a lot of the pieces of my daily leadership. We're going to go through some of this process of journaling in and that experience because I think it's so imperative. I invite you to be a part of our book club. I invite you to check out the round table to see if you're a fit and if you want to join that community where we learn together as leaders. Because one of the greatest points for a leader to grow is their self-development. But it can be hard, as Antonio suggested. How many people in their organization want to come up and say, "Hey, you're an a-hole. Hey, you are not nice. Hey, you missed the boat on that." The reality is, we don't have it, but we need it. The only way for a leader to grow and develop is if we have those moments where that can happen. Now, a big part of that is journaling, evaluating our day, what we've done and what we're doing. But sometimes that's with the help of others saying, "Hey Tyler, I'm not sure if you notice this." That's been huge for me in my life. I'm thankful to have that. Sometimes it's watching the experiences of others to say, ooh, I've done that too. Ooh, yes, that stung when that happened. Then how can we learn and develop and go through it. There's a link in the show notes to learn more about Antonio Garrido and the My Daily Leadership, everything they have. But you can also look to join the Impact Driven Leader Roundtable. I'm excited to lead you through that process where you can awaken, where you can grow, and you can lead to be an impact driven leader. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening in. Till next time, have a good one.