Be Careful What You Say

SPEAKER_01 0:01

He he said to me, You know, Barry, how you take initiative and you develop ideas and you participate in meetings, and that's he was really noting that I had moved up in the organization, and that was a good thing. He said, When you're CEO, you have to do those things if you say them out loud. So be careful what you say.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. My guest today is Barry Moline. He is a longtime CEO with nearly three decades of experience leading teams and shaping organizational culture across business, government, and trade associations. A Cialdini certified trainer, he teaches the principles of ethical influence and effective leadership. Barry is the award-winning author of Connect, a book that reveals how to build great culture and highly collaborative teams. He now speaks and consults nationwide, helping leaders bring people together to achieve extraordinary results. He focuses on enhancing leadership, building great teams, ethical influence and persuasion, and AI leadership strategy. Thank you, Barry, for joining the podcast today. It's a pleasure to have a chance to have a conversation with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Becky, it's great to be with you on Short Story Long.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Yeah, it's a it's really wonderful to be able to talk about some of the things that we'll talk about today. And I'm hoping that there's something that everyone can really draw away from the experiences that you've had. So as we get started here today, do you mind just sharing a little bit about kind of that crux of the inflection point that we'll explore?

Volunteering For The Holiday Party

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, I've had a few of these experiences in my life where I volunteered for something and I found that it led to something else that was better. But I had no idea at the beginning and zero expectation that anything good was ever going to happen. There was a time when I was working in Washington, D.C. for a national trade association, and I was a junior level analyst. I ended up working there for about five years, and I rose up in the ranks at a staff meeting. So all hands meeting, 80 people. Right toward the end, the woman who sat two doors down from me, Arsinia, was giving an update on the holiday party. So this was around September time frame, and she was looking for volunteers to be on a committee that would plan the holiday party and some activities and so on. And she said, who would like to be on that committee? And no one raised their hand.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I'm really shocked by this, Barry. I mean, typically everyone wants to be on a committee like that, right?

Planning Beside The CEO As Peers

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Where yeah, right. Well, you know, sometimes it can be kind of fun, but being a part of the holiday party was like, oh, geez, you know, I don't need to spend my time doing that. So there was a pause. Uh, you know, it it felt like a long time. I was looking at the room and I was looking at my friend Arsinia up there, and I felt, I don't know, bad. Uh, and I thought, what the heck? You know, it's the holiday party is not that big of a deal to me. I'll raise my hand. So I raised my hand and she said, Oh, Barry, Barry will be on the committee. And then there was a little bit of a shorter pause, and someone else raised their hand, and then one other person raised their hand, and we had four people now. And our Arsenia said, That's great, we've got a committee, we'll meet next week. So it turns out that at our first meeting, the CEO of the company came and he just sat down with us like he was a member of the of the committee. And he came to all of the planning meetings. And we had very um, you know, vibrant, colorful conversations about the various activities. It turned out he just loved the holiday party and he wanted everybody to have a good experience. I think he saw it as a teamwork adventure for everyone. And he, you know, it just it just meant something to him in a variety of ways.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah. I'm curious as you describe that. You go you're not expecting him to show up at this meeting. And so I wonder a little bit if everyone in that staff meeting would have known that they would have had FaceTime with the CEO, how many of the people in that staff would have actually raised their hands to be part of that committee?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

I'll bet you that if people knew that the CEO was going to be on the holiday party planning committee, at least half the room would have raised their hands. And it may have been more. It may have been three quarters. Because no one knew that there was going to be, and it wasn't just FaceTime for one particular meeting. We had, I don't know, seven or eight meetings. They weren't always long, but they covered a particular topic. We prepped for them. What games are we going to do at the holiday party? What kind of decorations are we going to have? I mean, they were little things, but they were meaningful to everyone and they were meaningful to him. Still, the point is that no, no one, no one knew, and therefore no one raised their hands. Maybe that was part of his plan. I don't know. That's kind of an interesting um perspective on it.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Absolutely. And and you know, one of the things that I think about with stuff like that is we raise our hands to do things, maybe to help a friend out who's a couple of doors down, maybe for a variety of different reasons. When you think about the exposure that you would have had, because you describe yourself as a relatively junior analyst at the time. How much FaceTime, how much shoulder rubbing time did you actually have with executive leadership, much less a CEO in that role prior to that?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

It was very limited, I would say. I definitely interacted a lot with my boss, who was sort of three levels down from the CEO. But uh, yeah, I wasn't getting a lot of FaceTime with the CEO.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, it's hard to get that when you are staff level in an organization. And, you know, part of what I'm hearing is that you weren't expecting it. That's obvious. And others likely were not either. And the other element of this is it's it's also not it's work-related, but it isn't the business that we're in. It's something that he's passionate about. So when you think about the relationship that was formed with him, how would you describe that connection with him through that planning process?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, what you're describing is a not a formal work relationship where there's a hierarchy, because he made it clear that he was just one of the members of the committee and he wanted to hear from everyone. He wasn't leading the group. Arsenio was leading the group. He was just a participant. So he wanted to hear everyone's opinions, and he was just one vote. So there was the relationship that we that we developed was much more of a collegial one. Colleagues, I hesitate to call it friendship, but there's no question that it was at that level of friendship where it was like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Let's let's hear from everyone about their ideas. And he was fine with that. He wanted to be, you know, an equal part of the of the group. He didn't want to supersede anyone's decision. So that was really unique to be able to get to know the CEO at that level over a series of very small meetings on a completely separate topic than work.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Absolutely. Yeah. And one of the things that it makes me think about with that is just one with the repetition of it, you there becomes a comfort. Like one time, it's like, okay, it's a one-off, whatever. But doing that over the course of time, you get to know someone a little bit during that time. It's not just, oh, well, he says his vote doesn't matter more than others, but does it or does it not? You start to see that pattern develop, and there's a trust within that relationship. Look, it could have been a distrust if things had gone horribly awry. But the way that you describe it is then the party happens. It's a successful party, and people enjoyed it. What happened in that relationship after the holiday planning and the holiday party event?

The Simple Question That Refocuses

SPEAKER_01 8:56

There was a lesson that I learned just from the experience of meeting in that group. And that is when we had a, I don't know if I'd call it a disagreement, but we had a variety of ideas and we weren't sure exactly what to do, or let's just say how many games we were gonna participate in as a staff and how we were gonna know if people were getting bored or what it might be. And on every element, we had this criterion, this question that we asked, which was what's our goal for this part of the holiday party? And that idea, asking that question is something that stuck with me my entire career. In every meeting, on every project, it's when we get off track, it's what's our goal here? What are we trying to do? Of course, we want to understand what that goal is at the beginning, but nevertheless, uh, we did that in something as you know, silly as the holiday party. And and I saw that in action. That was what the thing was, is that is that we we interacted all of us together when we were getting a little off track on kind of what we might call silly things, but we still did it. And as a young analyst, you know, in the workforce, it had an impression on me. How do we resolve issues? Oh, well, let's focus on our big goal. And is that decision or this that idea get us closer to the goal or farther from the goal? So that helped us, it helped us prioritize.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

And to your point, too, there's the element there of you you had said it at the start, with at the beginning, you you say, What is our goal here? You go into a meeting, you go into a planning discussion, whatever it might be, what is our goal here? What is meaningful about the distinction, I think, that you're making here is that maybe the conversation starts to go a little bit off course. Maybe uh you're you're breaking it down into segments, like you were talking about with the holiday party. What's the goal of this piece? What's the goal of this piece? And it's chunking it in a way. And one of the things that it makes me think about is how valuable it is to be able to come back. Things are sort of scattered. And it's like, what is our goal here? And it may have changed. And it's a really great orienting process to be able to say, these are the things that we've discovered. Is this still our goal? And so it doesn't even need to be keeping us focused on the same thing. It actually gives an opportunity to say, we can stay on course or we can adjust our course based upon what we have discovered in this conversation that we've had. So I I love that and I'm glad that you added that in.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yeah, we want to be serendipitous and we also want to and we want to let the ideas flow. And then when that trickles down, then we say, okay, what's most important here? Yeah. Yeah. Agree. So you asked that question.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yes, about what happened after. Yes, absolutely. Because you have this nice event where you've had a chance to work alongside the CEO in this. Sometimes that relationship just sort of floats away after that. And other times, like I believe in yours, it didn't exactly do that.

Becoming The First Question Asker

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Exactly. In January, he just showed up one day at the door of my office, which itself was unusual because the the way he managed was through notes. And in those days, we barely had email. So he would leave a note or his assistant would come and deliver a note and say, Larry would like to meet with you today at four. And and that was sort of the you know, the way that that they rolled. He just showed up at my door and said, Barry, do you have a minute? And I thought, uh uh, yeah. Uh and I just had you know two emotions, like, uh-oh, and like, hey, it's Larry.

unknown 13:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

You know, because we were just a couple weeks ago, we were holiday party planning. So I was really unsure about what it was about. So he came in and he sat down in my my little chair, and uh he said, uh, I really enjoyed working with you on the holiday party. And I noticed that you were the kind of person that had a lot of ideas and you were you weren't shy about sharing them. He said, we have a conference every June, and it's a big conference where 2,000 people come from all around the country. They're from electric utilities and very senior people. He said, We hire uh a famous person. So at the time, uh I think the person that was going to speak was uh General Colin Powell. Okay. And and they would hire national news figures uh that were that were famous at the time, you know, a sort of a conveyor belt of uh famous people. He said, We're paying tens of thousands of dollars for these people to come and give us a presentation for about 45 minutes, and then we open it up to QA. And I don't know what it is, he said, but we've got 2,000 people and no one asks the first question. But once they do, then the ideas start flowing and people get up the nerve to ask the question. I need someone to ask that first question. Would you come to this national conference and ask the first question? And and I thought, and I thought, like, hell yeah. But but I but I said, Absolutely, Larry, yes, I can do that. And he said you'll have other responsibilities at the meeting. You know, it's a it's a five-day meeting, you know, there'll be plenty of other things to do, but I need you to do that. And I said, absolutely. And I'll make sure that it's relevant to what he's talking about. And he said, Yeah, just let's get the party started, get the questions flowing, and then other people will stand up.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

And how insightful he is to recognize that it's one thing to fall, and then others will follow. It's also interesting, the parallel to me, that after the 10-second pause at that staff meeting where you said, okay, right, like, sure, I'll go in. Then it was a shorter pause, and other people jumped in to participate in the holiday planning as well. Where it just becomes, yes, Barry says, sure, I'll do that. And then other people start to recognize, oh, well, if someone can do it, then I can do it. I can say yes as well. And it really starts to show that people really want to see someone else have the courage of their conviction or the courage to say yes before they kind of lean into doing that same thing. Interesting parallel.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah, that is a great observation. I've never thought about that. And it is true that you just have to have somebody willing just to take the first step. And then others follow. And they're very close to follow. So it's not just like get in line right behind that person, but initiative is important to get the ball.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Exactly. Yes.

Getting Noticed Without Trying To

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Um, so I did that every year for five years at this big conference. And and of course, there were actually two large general sessions at every meeting. So we were hiring two speakers that of national uh renown. And you know, I was the one that was getting the ball rolling at those meetings. And then in the meantime, at my regular job there, I was moving up. I hadn't really thought much about the concept of being, you know, a preferred child or anything like that. I'm sure that that was part of it. I was known to the CEO and other people in the organization took note of me. But I was making regular progressions. So I didn't really, I mean, I just didn't shoot up to be a vice president, you know, suddenly. But nevertheless, I was I was getting promotions, and that was, I think they were merited. So after five years, the job of the CEO opened up at a smaller organization in Florida, and it did similar work to what our association did in Washington, D.C. And the reason why they called me to see if I was interested in the job was because they had attended all those meetings over the last five years, and they saw that I was that first person to get up and ask a very important person, an intelligent question, hopefully. And they said, We need somebody like Barry who will stand up for us and make our case. You know, that didn't get me the job. That got me noticed to get an interview. So I had to compete with other people. Nevertheless, in their minds, they had the the notion that I was a person who took initiative. And and I did get that job.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, and they had a sense of who you were. He's he's a curious guy who is listening and is willing to ask questions to get clarity, which those are really great leadership characteristics to be able to have initiative, to be curious, to stand up when others have not yet stood. And so, yeah, those are the kinds of things, and and they're different things for different scenarios and different situations, right? But one of the things that you said there really strikes me, which is I didn't get hired because of that. I got noticed because of that. And you don't get tapped until you get noticed.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah, that is true. Uh it it's important not so much to make a big splash, but at least be consistently uh out there doing the good thing that you do.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Right, right. Doing quality work, which was the merit for your progression in your career, but also catching the the eye and the attention of leadership so that because he didn't just have you do it for the first year. If it were just, well, Barry seems like a nice guy, we'll have him do it this year, it would have been year one. But to have you do that for consecutive years means that there was also merit to the questions and they saw a value in your presence, not only for doing that initial question kind of task, but I'm sure for all of the other things that they were tapping you to do for that as well. And I think what's really important to really point out in this is how much these small moments can build up over time so that you get recognition for things that were always there. You were always that same guy. And this is a demonstration of those moments where you might have stepped outside of your norm in order to do something kind for someone, right? It wasn't, hey, I'm gonna do this so that I can be with the CEO. You didn't know that. What you knew was my friend needs a little bit of help. I might as well help her out. Oh gosh, you know, here's the CEO. I guess I'll chat with him. And it becomes this layering of opportunity that without that first flip. And to your point of it doesn't need to be a big thing, you raised your hand to help organize the holiday party. And it's not the thing that most people are clamoring to do. And so it wasn't a big splash moment, it was really a small splash moment that turned into a momentous shift.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Yeah, exactly. And I I think it's fascinating to break it down because when you when you break it down like this, what it shows is that we have so many opportunities to do these kind of things almost every day.

unknown 21:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

You know, you said help a neighbor, whatever it might be. It's hard to describe. We don't know where some action that we're gonna take, some initiative we're gonna take is gonna have a positive impact somewhere on either someone else's life and because everyone's going through something, uh, or on our lives. And it and even if it doesn't have a uh sort of a demonstrable effect on our lives. Lives, it it does in terms of the pattern. I did this, it felt good. At least it felt good. Maybe I don't didn't notice anything particularly good come out of it, but that's who I am. That's the kind of person I am. I help others out. Uh you know. And so you never know what the result is going to be. In this case, I can see that through line from literally just raising my hand to help out my colleague to being noticed for a CEO job that I never planned to apply for. But because they saw me, they said, you're the kind of person that we'd like to have.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

And and and also you're the kind of person, not you're the kind of skill sets. You had that too. But other people might have had those skill sets, but they they weren't you, which is why they come to you and they say there are these characteristics, there are these traits of of who you are as a human that makes it interesting to us to have that technical kind of conversation. And to your earlier point, it is not that every single time we raise our hand to do a kind thing for someone else, that we get kudos or a CEO opportunity out of it. We I think all probably know that in our heart of hearts. And sometimes there are those moments when we raise our hands and it's a little awkward. And it's not as nice as the CEO releases hierarchy. I'm curious, have you had other moments in your life where it it maybe didn't go quite as smoothly as this one did?

The Shock Of Becoming CEO

Finding A Mentor Who Will Not Judge

SPEAKER_01 23:40

It it's funny that when I became the CEO, so I interviewed, got the CEO job, and honestly, and I I haven't admitted this hardly ever. But no one's listening, it'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. That's just you and me. Um I really wasn't ready to be a CEO. And in fact, at the job at where I was working, I wasn't a vice president, I was a department director. And and that's where I had Rose up to. Uh, but even still, I wasn't really ready in my mind to be a CEO. I didn't know everything that it would entail. And the way that I got a little tip-off before I started was when I got the job, and then the the guy that was the CEO, Larry, he retired, and we got a new CEO and uh and who was also a good person. He he said to me, you know, Barry, how you take initiative and you develop ideas and you participate in meetings, and that's he was really noting that I had moved up in the organization, and that was a good thing. He said, When you're CEO, you have to do those things if you say them out loud. So be careful what you say and and create advice. Yeah, and the conversation was a little longer than that because he wanted to share experiences in his his life where he had to be careful about what he said. And he said, listen to people, let them say things and and be curious and talk through ideas, but don't commit to things until you've really thought about them. Because when you say, Oh, wow, that's a great idea, or that's a direction I want to go, whatever it might be, people take that as the gospel. So just be careful. So that combined with um, you know, going from managing, you know, four people to managing 15 people and having a significantly larger budget and way bigger impacts and so on, uh, I really wasn't ready for it in the in the sense that I just didn't know what it would take. So I had a you know, sort of a paradigm shift. I had to look at this new landscape in front of me and say, not so much what have I gotten myself into, but it's more like, hmm, I've gotten myself into something. Let me figure this out. And and the hardest part of that entire experience, and I think this isn't just a new CEO, but I think it's it's just being a new manager. It's finding somebody. And it could be, you know, two people, but usually it's just one because there's not that many. Just somebody to talk to who wouldn't judge, who I could ask dumb questions of and try to figure things out. And so I finally found that person. And and I uh, you know, it wasn't easy, but I I did, you know, some some testing of a few people just to see how they'd respond. Uh, and and then my life got a lot better because I could have private conversations, and and the we we did these mostly over extended lunches. And it wasn't just like, what do I do here? And what do I do there? It was like, here's here's some things that I'm thinking about. Help me think through this before I sort of let it out to the world, or before I share it with others and and we brainstorm. I just want to make sure that I'm at least a little bit on track. And the person that I confided in, his name is Fred, uh, was just a great counselor. He was he was very good at just, well, let's step back and take a look at the various pros and cons and see what we can figure out. He didn't have all the answers, and I didn't have all the answers, but at least we sort of laid out the image on the landscape.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, it's really having that sounding board in that moment to be able to talk it through. And to your point, it's not only CEOs. In fact, what I find is that emerging leaders and new managers in particular, they they don't know what they know and they don't know what they don't know. And so one of the things that that happens in the work that I've ever done, whether it was my HR career or is in coaching, was helping them sort out how do you know that? Do you know that that's true or do you just think that's true? Is that a belief that you have? And if so, where is it grounded and where does it, where's the limit to that? And then as management and leadership goes up that ladder, whatever that looks like for anyone's career, because uh most of the time it's not exactly the same, it it becomes how does that shift as you get more and more seniors? Someone could say, look, as a deputy director, you are still leading a team, you know, budgets don't matter, size of teams don't matter. I disagree with those comments, but people will say that sometimes. But it's to your point, it's that shift in perspective of who am I and who am I seen to be in these moments, where me showing initiative when I'm a staff level or a lower level leader within the organization is taken in one way. But then when you have that same initiative as a leader, then people are saying, well, Barry's got all the ideas. He doesn't need us to say anything, right? If it's positioned incorrectly, it's now you've become the dictator, not the guy who has initiative. But in your mind, you can think of yourself as the same guy because you are. It's it's your impact and the footprint that you leave every time you step into a discussion with people. And having sounding boards where people go, yeah, so how did that actually go for you when you said it that way? And you go, Yeah, it was kind of great, or oh my gosh, it was an absolute disaster. And okay, let's peel back and figure out what was going on there so that you can see it through an objective lens. Because so often when we do that inside of our own heads, the stories that we come up with are tragedies. They're they're never the really beautiful heroics that can happen out of that. It's usually the, oh my gosh, I'm the worst person ever kind of scenario. And what I'm hearing you say is you found this guy who could really help you. And you said you went through a couple of people with that. Barry, I think people would be really interested to know how is it that you came to discover that Fred was your guy for that?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Well, I had private conversations with a variety of people. And what I found was that I got the feeling that they weren't all on my side, I guess. Or maybe another way to say that is non-judgmental. Uh the response would be, well, you know, that would be a total failure. So, I mean, we're just brainstorming an idea. And they're they're jumping to the conclusion of implementation when I'm just saying, I wonder how to approach this. And as opposed to saying, okay, here's an idea. Hmm, I think there's probably three to five other ways to approach it. And have you thought about any of those ways? And and that concept there, just you know, letting the flower bloom or other flowers bloom, and then considering what other ideas might be. The people that I found that were not as much of a good fit were just a little more closed-minded. They didn't have as much of a growth mindset as I did. I was interested in learning and understanding as much as possible. And they were more focused on, okay, Barry wants to do this. Hmm, not sure that's such a good idea. And they didn't see a bunch of other ideas that could be in front of us.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Yeah. And in that, it's someone who will join you in the exploration rather than feeling like they are supposed to give you advice. It's one of the things as a coach I find all of the time is, and I say to people all the time, I actually don't care what you choose. I'm not vested in what choice you ultimately make, because it's yours to make. I'm vested in having you feel comfortable as you make that decision, that it feels right or it feels like the best of the worst, if that's all you have to go from. But it's the the right thing for you to do as your first step going forward. And to be in a place where you're CEO and you're new to the shoes, if you will, and people are telling you, well, that's good, bad, or indifferent, that isn't very helpful, is really what I'm hearing you say, what you really wanted and needed. And I would also say that this is true again for all the levels, is what you need is actually someone who challenges your thinking as opposed to puts you into a different box or holds up a stop sign and says, you can't do that. I don't know about you, but when people tell me I can't do something is exactly when I want to prove that I can. And that isn't always in my best interest either. And so our ability to be able to have someone listen to us. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to kind of dig into what was it about him that made him your person for that part of your life at that time, because that also changes sometimes as well. Like he may not be your guy forever, he's your guy for right now.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

So I was uh a CEO of two trade associations, and my well, the members of the trade associations were large electric utilities. I dealt with the CEOs of those electric utilities. Those are the people, my counterparts. And I can tell you that as I got to know those CEOs, they were as insecure as anyone else just walking down the street. Yeah, they had a lot of responsibility and a lot of financial oversight, but individually, everybody has something going on in their lives. They also had things going on in their lives, and they weren't always good things. And they needed somebody to talk to, and they too had difficulty finding people to talk to. So I was their confidant. I was sort of modeling my experience in the past of you know, having had a positive mentor and someone that I was comfortable talking with. So uh I can just tell you that it's everywhere. That issue is everywhere, and it's not just at the CEO level, it's literally at every level. It's valuable to try to find someone to talk with that doesn't judge, you know, a good coach, a good mentor, and at every step of the way and almost every area of your life.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Absolutely. And one of the things that I know to be true is that idea that work and life cross over all of the time. We talk about work-life balance, but the fact of the matter is they're integrated from the very get-go. And life happens even while you're at work. And work happens during your life sometimes. And it's it's how we manage that back and forth. And when I first started as an executive and leadership coach, I thought, nope, it's just work-related stuff. I don't want to get into people's lives. I don't have a place there. And it took me, I think, months. It did not take long for me to recognize, well, that's just dumb. Even when I was in human resources and I was on the corporate side of their life, I had people coming in talking about exactly the kinds of things that you were talking about. They would come in, they would sit in my office, and we would talk about this is what's going on in my life. These are the things that I'm dealing with. And I don't feel like I'm showing up at work in the same way that I did before or in the way that I want to, because I'm so distracted by X, Y, and Z. And maybe they weren't showing up that well. And so, how is it that you talk to your leader? How is it that you talk to your board to say, this is what's going on, this is what's happening for me? And ideally, those leaders would be understanding and flexible and things like that. But knowing whether or not they are flexible or not is way better than wondering whether or not they are, because then you know what you're dealing with. And if they're going to be rigid, then you know what that expectation bar looks like. And if you have no idea, then you might be doing a lot more than what you actually have to in terms of those integrations. You might have some flexibility, some openness that's there that doesn't have you driving yourself into the ground in those moments. So I absolutely appreciate what you're talking about with that for sure. I'm curious when you were a CEO later, how did some of these lessons show up for you as you were leading these organizations?

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I became much more of an observer of situations before I responded than I was reactionary. And unless there was an emergency. And if there was an emergency, and that was part of um what I was responsible for in Florida, when you look at the weather channel uh during a hurricane, I was responsible for getting all those trucks on the road and have them drive into Florida to restore power. That was an emergency. And you know, working at the emergency control center, you know, in the Capitol, and working with high-level officials and the governor and so on, and making sure we had enough line workers to restore power. So those were emergencies when you just have to act and you don't have time to think. Um and but even though things are moving fast, there's still a little bit of time to gather your thoughts and figure out what the best solutions are. Actually, in those kind of situations, we would rehearse. We would literally practice. We know we're gonna be in a tense environment and we wouldn't have time to make decisions. So we would practice uh, you know, the actions we would need to take in a hurricane a month before a hurricane would strike with all of our staff and so on.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

So kind of simulations of that in a sense, it sounds like, where this is the scenario, this is what we're dealing with. Imagine a world like this and and okay, go do your thing, right? It's almost like the emergency evacuations for fire drills and all of those kinds of things in a building, I'm guessing on a much larger scale. Um, and certainly with with stronger consequence to how you and your team. Where is it that you think that as a leader you were finding ways to promote initiative and get people to recognize that the courage to stand up and do the thing would be a really great step for your team members?

Helping People Grow Into Bigger Roles

SPEAKER_01 40:08

I would go to people in quiet moments when I'd seen them do something well on their own, and I would say, this is just one-on-one, where it's just the two of us. And I would say to them, I see you in a bigger role. I don't know if that's here in the organization or somewhere else, but I know you've got a lot of growth in you, and you can be bigger than you are right now. And I don't know what that is gonna be for you, but I want to talk with you about it. What do you think about it? And I will tell you that every single time I had that conversation, and I had that conversation a lot because I wanted to encourage people and do it in a way as sort of like a third party, you know, looking at their lives. I wanted to do it so that they would imagine what the world could look like and and let them dream. Um, I mean, I wasn't making it up. I definitely saw times when they when they stepped up or volunteered, when they just said something in a meeting. It that was okay. You know, if they just had the confidence to talk about what was going on in their department. And I and rather than just say, thanks for giving your report, I would go to them when they had done that many times and built up the confidence to say, that's the kind of confidence you need to be a higher-level manager. What do you see for yourself in this organization or in another organization? And let them go. And you know, it's kind of funny. I had that experience with one person. He was um a senior person in our communications department. And he said that when I just asked him to just dream, what did what do you want to do? And he said, I really want to um work in sports. We were working in the electric utility industry. And he said, I really, I really want to work in sports. I I you know, he's in communications, he was accustomed to sports writing and and maybe something related to video and sports, and who knows. But it was not what we were doing here at the organization. And and I said, Wow, okay, um that that's different. You know, I have a friend, and this is what I told him. I have a friend, his name's Don, and Don writes sports books. And I don't know if you know if Don has has a need for any partners or any assistance in some way, but I'll introduce you to Don, and you never know. And so I did. And it seems like I was sabotaging my own you know employee, right? Uh, you know, like this this slot of the company. I wasn't trying to get rid of them, but I didn't know if there was something that that Matt was his name, that Matt could do on a part-time basis with Don, or maybe Don just had some ideas, who knows what. But he talked to Don, and there was something that he could do very part-time related to helping Don write books. Uh, and he worked with Don worked with famous athletes. He wrote their autobiographies. Okay. So he needed some assistance on that. And Matt started to work with Don just on the side, a couple hours a week, and it really fulfilled that desire for him to work in sports. And he continues to do it just a couple of hours when Don needs help. And then there was something else that was that even got closer to what Matt was interested in. Well, closer, I don't Know, but different in that he was also interested in video. He said that. And I thought, video, you know, how are we ever gonna uh accomplish that? You know, I just sort of tucked it away in my mind. And then we initiated something called a line worker competition. So if you you may have heard of these things where firefighters will get together from different firehouses and they will have drills where they're competing against each other to how long does it take to put out a fire? And there are other professions that have this. Well, the electric utilities have it for line workers. How fast does it take to change those wires? Right. And and again, there's other professions as well. So uh we started to have a line worker competition, and there was it was all about the line workers and and creating the the uh it was all about the line workers and creating the events, the things that they would compete in to try to figure out who was the best team of line workers. And then Matt said, Well, you know, could we make video from this day where we could show it later and then people could share it with each other? I was like, hell yeah, we can. And Matt led that effort. And what was it? Was it sports? Well, kind of. It was a competition, and that's what he was really interested in. He was really interested in showing the competition and and having a sort of the clash of the titans and creating the storyline of it all. So we were able to keep Matt in his job, in communications, in the organization, you know, with a contact outside where he could engage with some athletes for a couple hours, uh, you know, a week or a month, fine. But then he took on the responsibility of uh being in charge of the videos for the line worker competition. Yeah. And and that really fulfilled him. And it came out of a conversation that we had of, you know, it looks like you can move up to another level. What are you interested in? And then we shared that, and then it accomplished that goal.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Yeah, and and what's what's really, I think, so important from a leadership perspective on that is that you wouldn't have known but for asking that these were the things that were important to him. And the introduction, yes, it might have taken him out of the organization, but I've always been one who said you don't want someone in your organization who doesn't really dream of being there. If they don't want to be there, they're probably going to leave eventually anyway. So facilitate that shift so that you've done something that that helps them achieve their dream. People remember that kind of thing. And also it strikes me too that, you know, he started then looking for, well, if I want to do video, if I tell Barry I want to do video, maybe Barry says yes. And so it creates this opportunity within the organization. And, you know, you mentioned the word through line earlier. And the through line seems to be sort of this, hell yeah. Hell yeah, I'll try. Hell yeah, you should try, right? And so it becomes this true pattern of behavior of if you can find a way to say yes to something, why wouldn't you in a way? And and I'm recognizing that we could talk a long time about this, and I would really enjoy that. Um, but at the same time, I guess I'm kind of curious whether there's anything that you would want to talk about that we didn't discuss, or are there any questions that you might have?

Persistence, When To Quit, Closing

SPEAKER_01 48:01

I think the one thing that is also sort of a steady drumbeat throughout my career, but I see it everywhere, is that I don't know, life gets boring at times and and you start something and it doesn't go well, and you just have to set it aside and maybe come back to it, or maybe it's not going well and you have to figure out how to make it go well. And I found that I've had to persist over time. And I think the the the more, I don't know, popular term today might be grit. But whatever that is, to me, it's you know, that means persistence in that there's a lot of people along the way, and we've talked about this, who will just say no to things. Eleanor Roosevelt said something like, you'd be surprised how little other people think about you.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

So so we think, you know, we're the center of our universe, and no one uh is in that universe. Very few people are.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

It could be a very lonely place, actually. Yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

And as a result of that, when we have an idea, we're working on a project, or you know, we've got a set of railroad tracks we're going down, it's completely separate from others. And if there's a little speed bump along the way, it can look like a mountain if we don't say, huh, well, let me look at some other ways to get over this or go around. And and I think that persistence is really important because if we don't have that, then it's easy to give up. And of course, then the question is, well, at what point do you give up because you put a lot of effort into it? So that I don't know the answer to that question. There's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Yeah, there's some cause fallacy of the world up right there, right? Where it's, but I've invested all of this in there. Well, but why would you keep on dumping money into a lost cause or dumping time into a lost cause? And the other the other thing that it makes me think about is there there are times when it is appropriate to say no, or it is appropriate not to raise your hand. And I think it comes back to what we were talking about earlier. What is the goal? Where is it that you're trying to go? It's not just for how we facilitate and manage meetings, it's also how do we facilitate our lives and our careers. It becomes what is that thing? I guess the popular term now speaking of is like the North Star. That's a little esoteric for my preferences, but that's what came to my mind. But it really becomes, and again, I am a perfect example, it sounds like you are too, of a person who that that kept moving. It wasn't something that was the same for me throughout my career. I know people who have had a single focus, even as they changed employers. This is the direction that they wanted to go. And that's fantastic because it's a really clear decision point. There are other people, certainly like myself, and like I say, it sounds like you as well, where we get a little bit more perspective and our our goal evolves and it changes. And suddenly we're going to take an exit ramp and go on to a new highway because it seems kind of interesting to go that way. And that's now our goal. It doesn't mean the last one was a bad goal. It just means it's no longer on the list and we've maybe completed in that space, and now we're ready to move on to the next direction. So I think it's been such a great opportunity to have this conversation with you, Barry. Thank you so much for your time today, and I'm just really appreciating that you joined me.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Thanks, Becky. It's been great talking.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

If you have interest in connecting and learning more about today's guest, check out the show notes for ways to connect and follow up. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.