October 6, 2025 • 55 mins
What You’ll Get from This Episode In this conversation, creator, strategist, and educator Mike Saad breaks down what it really takes to build a brand that lasts. From content that converts to the discipline behind creativity, we explore why most creators get stuck in volume over value—and how to shift toward clarity, consistency, and community. Mike and Tyler unpack the difference between chasing views and leading with purpose, revealing why trust and transparency remain the most sustainable growth strategies in the creator economy. Connect With Me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elemental_educator YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ElementalEducator TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@elemental.educator Website: https://www.elementaleducator.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-comeau-961a49310/ For Speaking, Consulting, Coaching, Guest Recommendations, or Other Inquiries tyler@elementaleducator.com Connect With Our Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsmikesaad/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsmikesaad Skool: https://skool.com/the-content-classroom-3968 #AuthenticLeadership #ContentStrategy #CreatorMindset About the Elemental Educator The Elemental Educator podcast bridges leadership and creativity, offering actionable insights rooted in values, resilience, adaptability, and bold decision-making. Each episode is designed to challenge your thinking, sharpen your purpose, and equip you to lead with clarity in a noisy digital world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
Tell people that you're worried. Tell
people that you're scared.
Tell people you're excited.
Tell people that you are blank because...
What is it about yourself
right now that you're happy with?
You know, it made me frustrated, it made
me angry, it made me
upset and for no reason.
Now it's almost like...
What advice would you
(01:00:20):
give your younger self?
It doesn't matter as much as you think it
does. When one of us wins, we all win.
[Music]
(01:00:41):
This is Elemental Conversations, where
leadership isn't just
talked about, it's tested.
I'm Tyler, your host, helping you lead
with your values, push through adversity,
roll with change and make bold decisions.
New episodes every
Monday. Subscribe on YouTube,
follow us on Instagram and if you're
ready to challenge the status quo,
(01:01:02):
then get ready to let the alchemy of
education ignite your
passion for learning.
Fire.
Earth.
Wind.
Water.
This is the Elemental Educator and now
your host, Tyler Como.
(01:01:24):
What advice would you
give your younger self?
It doesn't matter as
much as you think it does.
Why do you say that?
I overthought everything as a kid,
everything. And, you know, there was a
lot of decisions that I made
that maybe could have been better. There
(01:01:45):
was a lot of things I
didn't do. And also,
I just didn't enjoy myself as much as I
should because I was in my
own head about absolutely
everything. And looking back now at,
let's just say my 15, 16
year old self, I literally would
tell this kid, hey, man, it doesn't
(01:02:06):
matter as much as you think it does. What
do you think your 15,
16 year old self would say to you if they
saw you now? I don't know.
They'd probably be, they'd
probably find a reason to be frustrated
by me. Then they find out I was in a
Dragon Ball and we'd
probably talk about video games. And then
they find a point of
relation to me. And I think they'd
(01:02:27):
really dig that because I try to find
relation, you know, things that I can
relate to with students
and, you know, the emerging youth,
because they are of a
totally different mindset.
You know, the first question you said
that you were frustrated
(01:02:51):
and you became somebody that
you're happy with. What is it about
yourself right now
that you're happy with?
I think that I see the world a little bit
more clearly. And I don't
worry about as much of the
things that I used to worry about.
Because I allow myself, I
(01:03:12):
allow myself to feel the feelings,
I allow myself to process the things that
are happening. I allow
myself to reflect on the
things that are happening. And, you know,
having gone through so many
experiences that, you know,
made me frustrated, made me angry, made
me upset, and for no
reason now it's almost like
(01:03:37):
it's less loud up here. And there's
something really calming about us.
Welcome to a new episode. We've got our
amazing guest, Michael Sad
with us who is a communications
professor at Okanalagan College in
Kelowna, British Columbia,
beautiful Canada. Michael,
thank you so much for joining me on our
show today. We recorded
once before, and I say recorded
(01:03:58):
lightly because we didn't actually press
record. We shot an entire
episode without actually
recording things. But thank you again for
taking time out of your
day to join me for another
another round of conversation here. Thank
you for having me, Tyler. I said last
time right at the end,
I had such a fun time. Let's run it back
and looking forward to
it. And I said, we said run
it back and, you know, I'm hoping to
(01:04:18):
bring a totally different
experience to the show for you,
another side of it that you'll get to
see. And before we kick off,
what are the most important
things that the audience needs to know
about you to understand the
rest of our story here today?
Well, I'm a communications professor, as
you said. I very much
believe in education. I very
(01:04:39):
much believe in the power of
communication and what it can do for you
personally, professionally,
in life and your relationships. But the
biggest thing is, you know,
as much as I am in a really
great place in career and expertise and
whatnot, I wasn't always
this way. And it took a journey,
(01:05:01):
and it still is a journey, which I think
is a lifelong journey. So
that's the biggest thing I
want people to know is that we all start
somewhere. And where that leads to,
that's a lifelong quest.
Absolutely lifelong quest. And where we
start is so important than
our why to why we start is also
so important. And that's going to bring
(01:05:21):
us to our first segment
here on Grounded Moments.
I'll come as just one quick thing here
before we get into our
first segment, it would mean
everything to me. If you head over to our
YouTube channel and
subscribe. Throwing the channel
enables me to bring on incredible guests
like Michael and continue
delivering the best show
I can for you. I hope you enjoy the rest
of the show. Three, two, one.
(01:05:50):
Rivet and wisdom driven by purpose,
Grounded Moments is all about our values.
And there is no better way to see what
you truly stand for than
to play a game. Michael,
you already know that we play a game with
every elemental segment
because we did this once before.
And we're going to do it again with a
whole new grouping of
scenarios here. And our first one as
a reminder is principle or preference. So
(01:06:11):
I'm going to share
something that is either a core
value to you and you can respond by
saying principle or it
doesn't matter who does it or
not. It's a preference. You can respond
by saying preference.
Are you ready to play?
Let's do it. I love games. Here we go.
We're going to go rapid
fire. No time to justify.
Never cancel a meeting. Preference. Call
people out in the moment.
(01:06:33):
Preference. Everyone gets a voice.
Principle. Your
mental health comes first.
Principle. You always say yes to growth.
Principle. Turn off your phone at dinner.
Oh, big principle. Take the L privately.
Principle. Stay loyal to your team.
(01:06:57):
Principle. Live by your calendar.
Preference. Always reply to criticism.
Michael, what are the top three things
you look for in a team
member? I look for a growth mindset. So
are they willing to grow with you and
learn and be open to
learn? You find out pretty quick. It's
(01:07:22):
usually on the job. In my
experience, anybody can say
anything to get the job, get into the
position. But when you're in
a team and everybody needs to
contribute and everybody needs to pull
their weight and sometimes you have to
adapt and learn and grow,
either you do or you have resistance to
(01:07:44):
it. And I know that
I've had resistance to it.
And I've also been in a position where I
have learned and grown and
thrive. But you figure that
out pretty quick. And I say it's usually
just from experience and
experiencing the individual in the
moment. So. Growth mindset. I like that.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's the
(01:08:04):
first one. The second one is
collaboration. Is somebody willing to
work with you and
collaborate with you and share ideas,
but also take ideas. And that literally
goes for anybody. I don't care what
position you are in.
If you are tippy top dog, you still got
(01:08:26):
to be able to collaborate and
take ideas and consider ideas
and know that, you know, just because
you're up here doesn't mean
you have the best ideas every
single time. So collaboration is huge.
Yeah. What's the
difference between collaboration and
compliance? Compliance is basically go
along to get along.
(01:08:48):
Collaboration is, hey, I have some
great ideas. Maybe I don't necessarily
agree with these ideas. I
might have something that
can help it, can add to it. Collaboration
can have resistance.
Compliance usually doesn't.
I love that. Yeah. And then the last one,
(01:09:10):
this is a great one. The
last one in a great team member
is, do I want to hang out with this
person? Plain and simple, right? You're
in a team, you're going
to be working with these people a lot and
your personalities have to
gel. And at the end of the
day, when all is said and done, do I just
(01:09:30):
want to hang out with you?
Because you're going to be
hanging out a lot and ideally you want to
enjoy who you're hanging
out. And what about a world
where the people you're hiring aren't the
people you spend a lot of
time with? Does that still apply?
Do you have really a choice? I mean, the
people you're hiring, you
tend to spend a lot of time
with, but if you're not, that's a great
(01:09:50):
question. If you're not, I
think a shift in ever so slightly
in that is just, do they have a good
attitude? What is that
attitude? Are they conversational?
Are they friendly? Do they want to have a
laugh? You can find that
out very quickly with an
individual. Do they feel like they could
(01:10:14):
have fun or is it all
business? Because at the end of the
day, we need people with some
personality. Because again,
if I'm not working with them,
somebody else is and they need to be able
to work together as people.
I really agree with you there. And in
hearing what you're
sharing, maybe a value for you in
(01:10:35):
relationships on top of that idea of
communication and that transparency that
stands out to me a lot
and things that you bring to the table
and you look for in the
table. Before our first recording,
I asked you to share a quote before
coming on the show. And we had this
amazing conversation
around rising tides raise all ships. And
I love the story that you
(01:10:57):
gave behind it. I'm hoping
on a recorded session here,
you can tell it one more time.
Absolutely. This is a quote that was born
out of my group of
friends, the boys, the fellas.
And basically the idea is that when one
of us wins, we all win. And so whether or
(01:11:18):
not it's with a job,
a relationship, personal growth, we share
all of these things. And we
share these things because
again, if somebody has moved forward,
then we got to celebrate that and it
allows us to move forward
with them. It allows us to walk up the
(01:11:40):
mountain with that person. If
someone's got a big promotion
at work, that's worth celebrating because
that's going to elevate
them to who knows, maybe a new
living situation where they can have us
over and a bigger space, a new
relationship. We get to meet
somebody that this person just loves and
(01:12:00):
enjoys and wants to be
around and makes them a happier
person. And we all benefit from that. And
if nothing else too, it's
a motivator for us to say,
"Wow, that was such a big win. I love
that so much. I want that for myself."
And so then it drives us
to be better and it drives us to raise
the tides a little bit
more. So it's something that
(01:12:23):
we really, really, really prioritize with
one another is that
celebrate those wins and know
that when one person wins, we all win.
And I think it's great
because it's also not a competition.
We don't feel like we have to keep up
with one another. Some
person goes and gets this
amazing job or has an amazing
(01:12:45):
relationship or gets engaged or whatever.
And it's the notion of
that's a win for them. And I'm going to
go and seek out something
that works for me, knowing full
well that I'm going to be celebrated for
it in the exact same way.
Rising tides raise all ships.
I think you did a better job the second
time of breaking that down
(01:13:05):
for me than the first time. But
that's what they say, right? Nothing goes
this plan the first time
you do it. And it's always
better the second time around. And
thankfully we press record,
but if there was a third time,
we'd probably get the even better version
of the story. We'd knock
it out of the park. I mean,
it would be Oscar worthy. It would be too
good to put on a show. So
we just won't bother. But
(01:13:27):
it's such a, it's a powerful message and
it's one that ties back
easily to these top three things
you look for in a team. We hear back the
stories of collaboration. We
hear back the stories of you
want to hang out with these people. So
the fact that this quote
came from here, that value of
relationships that we talked about not
too long ago here, it's all
apparent in what you stand for
and the idea of building people up. We
(01:13:49):
like to talk about that idea of
collective efficacy and
the idea of collective efficacy amongst
people. And it goes hand in hand with
your quote of rising
tides raise all ships, because what it is
is people believing in
the system and the process
of what you're doing together. It's that
idea of collaborating and
not being compliant with it.
One of the quotes that I really like is,
(01:14:10):
well, the people at the
bottom are busy fighting. The
people at the top are too busy
collaborating. And it's the idea of
rising and bringing each other up.
So I have to ask though, Michael, what's
a hill that you die on or
you're willing to die on
frequently as we just talked about some
of these values? Just in terms of a
(01:14:30):
general belief or an
experience or? Yeah, general belief would
be, let's go with belief.
A hill that I am willing to
die on is to show up as authentically as
possible to wherever you are. And I
believe that so deeply
(01:14:51):
because everything I've talked about with
relationships and
collaboration and supporting
one another, if you're not showing up as
yourself, then you are not creating
connection with anybody.
And that is the number one trust builder.
It's the number one
builder of any relationship is
(01:15:12):
authenticity, is vulnerability, is
knowing that you do not have to be
perfect. I ride or die with
that philosophy is that perfection is the
pursuit of failure with
the noblest of intentions.
We cannot reach perfection, but we can
(01:15:34):
certainly aspire to get
as close to it as possible.
But the more we chase the perfection, the
more we are fake, the
more we are not ourselves,
the more we adopt identities, the more we
try to put on a mask. And that
alienates people more than it connects
people. And so I am very much
(01:15:56):
a believer of show up as you
are, show people the vulnerabilities,
show people the
hesitations, the worries, the weakness,
because somebody is going to look at you
and go, I have those exact
things too. Wow, we're both
human and we have a connection now. So
that's what I believe. And I think you
know what's coming next.
(01:16:18):
I think I do. This is the elevator pitch
where we're going to take this message
and condense that into a little 20 second
piece here. You know, we
were talking beyond the show
around when we put things out, what works
and you raise the idea of
let's try to get it around 20
seconds. So let's see if we can get this
(01:16:40):
around 20 seconds. Okay,
here we go. Show up as yourself.
Be your most authentic self. The more you
try to be someone else,
the more you are not being
the person you know how to be best. Don't
chase perfection. Perfection is a myth.
You will never get there. Tell people
(01:17:02):
that you're worried. Tell
people that you're scared. Tell
people you're excited. Tell people that
you are blank because those
are the things that people
will connect with. Those are the things
that people will latch on.
And at the end of the day,
people will not know your expertise. They
will not know your image, your
reputation. All they
(01:17:22):
will know is you. And that is the biggest
thing that people will
remember. So be authentic because
that's what people are going to truly
see. You know, listeners,
alchemists, if you appreciate
the message that Michael's just giving,
what I want you to do is take
a minute during this episode
and head over to one of his social
medias, which is linked in the
description of this show. Give
(01:17:43):
him a follow, give him a like, let him
know, Hey, I heard that pitch. It was
awesome. I stand by it.
I want, I want to be around you. I want
to see that content that
you put out there as well.
It would mean a lot to show support that
way as well. And you know
what, maybe a little bit more
than 20 seconds there, but that's okay.
That works for me. That's still a very
solid elevator pitch
that we can work with. And in doing all
(01:18:04):
of this and hearing these
values, this relationships,
I want to bring it back to that rising
tides, raise all ships.
And there are times where you
need to be risen, where people need to
help you rise. And
that's the adversity we face.
And to kick off talking about adversity,
we're going to go into
our next segment here,
the air element on
headwinds and tailwinds.
(01:18:29):
In headwinds and tailwinds, we get down
to the mistakes we've made
and what was in the aftermath
to learn to get into the comfort zone of
mistakes. We are going
to play another game,
Michael, and this game is adversity Mad
Libs. So I'm going to ask
you to fill in some blanks
for me. They can be honest truth, totally
made up on hinge. We
(01:18:49):
didn't do this one last time.
Are you ready to get a video? All right,
let's do it. All right. And
all you have to do is repeat
the sentence, but fill in the blanks for
me. Okay. The biggest
mistake I ever made was blank,
but it taught me blank. Biggest mistake I
ever made was thinking
that I knew everything.
And it taught me to be humble. And it
(01:19:16):
taught me to listen better.
I once felt completely unqualified to
blank, yet I still blank.
I once felt unqualified for nearly every
single job that I've ever had.
And what was the last part? Yet you still
blank. Yet I still got
(01:19:36):
hired for those jobs,
which taught me that I indeed had the
skills. My most awkward
professional moment involved
blank and blank. My most awkward
professional moment is the
two times that I was sitting in
my office and forgot that I had class
only to receive emails
from my students about 12
(01:19:58):
minutes after saying, where are you? And
let me tell you, my
sprinting skills certainly paid off
that day. That's awesome. Back then, I
thought blank was the
end. Now I see it was blank.
Back when I finished my master's degree,
(01:20:19):
I thought it was the end of my education,
only to realize it was just the beginning
because I was out of school and into.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. Thanks for
playing the game.
There's a new one for us.
That was fun. I actually, I like it
better than the make it
worse game. I feel like
we get some substance from our guest on
(01:20:40):
this one and I really
enjoy the story behind it,
which we get to maybe talk about a little
bit here. What is
something you had to unlearn?
I had to unlearn imposter syndrome. What
is imposter syndrome?
Pardon me? What is imposter
syndrome? Imposter syndrome in its most,
here's another elevator
pitch, imposter syndrome in its
(01:21:01):
most basic terms is the feeling that you
are in a position that you do not
deserve. So if you get
hired into a position and you feel
overwhelmed or you feel as though you
don't have your footing in
it, you feel like you've somehow fooled
somebody into hiring you into that
(01:21:22):
position. And I certainly
felt that way when I got hired into my
current position as a
communications professor.
What happened was I was looking all
around me and seeing these very
accomplished educators.
And I thought to myself, how did I fool
(01:21:43):
everybody into them
thinking that I should be teaching
alongside these individuals? And I didn't
think I was as smart. I
didn't think that I was as capable.
And truthfully, the only way that I got
over it is I went to therapy
for it. I had to speak to a
professional about this idea of imposter
(01:22:06):
syndrome. And what I learned was, yes,
there are many people
that are so much better at things than I
am in my profession. Having said that, I
am better at certain
things than so many other people. And we
can't compare ourselves
(01:22:26):
in our skill level because
skill levels aren't like this. Skill
levels are just a giant
bar graph of varying degrees.
And the other thing that I had to learn
was the individuals
hiring me and the individuals
recognizing my capabilities. I'm not
(01:22:47):
fooling anybody. These are highly
intelligent people who,
for a living, recognize skill and hire
people for their
skill. So I wasn't coming
in as low-key from Thor and going, "Ha
ha, I fooled
everybody." No, I showed my skill,
I showed my capabilities, and as a
(01:23:08):
result, I was hired for that. And that
was something that I had
to learn. And I also, again, had to learn
that skill can be a vague
term because it can come
from so many different areas. And what
makes you a capable educator is so
different than what makes
someone else a capable educator. And so
(01:23:30):
imposter syndrome has really no place
once you learn that.
You know, one of the things, and we
talked about this in our
first trial and error of the show,
but one of the things I had to unlearn
was the quote, "Fake it
till you make it." We shared a
moment of passion over hating that quote
together. Hate that
term. I hate it so much.
You know, it comes from that. And fake it
(01:23:52):
till you make it an
imposter syndrome, go hand in hand,
right? Because you're creating a mindset.
As soon as you're told
fake it till you make it,
somebody is actually telling you, you
don't deserve where you are.
And you need to fake being where
you are until you start to feel
comfortable or competent, or
you've been there longer than
everyone else around you to then say,
"You're the one that leads it." So the
(01:24:13):
reason that I don't like
that term is because when you say it to
somebody, it's exactly what you're
alluding to an imposter
syndrome here. You're creating a mindset
that you don't belong where
you are, and you need to pretend
like you do. And what I would prefer
people say instead is, "It's
okay to not know everything
right away, and you're going to figure it
(01:24:34):
out along the way. It's our
job to help you." But you need
to know that if you're not sure of
something, there's a team
around you to collaborate with,
to build those relationships with, to
talk to transparently
about, bring it back to our very
first conversation. Because if you're not
having those conversations,
when your boss comes in to
see what you're doing, and you're trying
(01:24:55):
your best to fake it, and you
didn't have conversations with
people because you needed to fake it,
it's going to show. And
they're going to notice that you're
not where you should be, and they're
going to notice that you
didn't play a part of the team.
That's a problem. So I appreciate the
connection to imposter syndrome with one
of my least favorite
quotes of, "Fake it till you make it."
(01:25:17):
Now, with that, what's one
of the biggest mistakes you've
ever made? One of the biggest mistakes I
ever made. Aside from showing up 12
minutes late to class.
I would say that one of the biggest
(01:25:39):
mistakes that I ever
made is early in my career,
and it goes back to what I discussed, is
I felt the need to be
perfect. I felt the need to be the
stereotypical educator that had all the
answers, that could walk
(01:26:00):
into a classroom and never made
a mistake. And it was indeed such a
mistake because it put up a
wall, and it didn't allow me
to make any connection with my students.
And what I learned down the
road was that once you bring
down that wall, and you show that you're
(01:26:22):
not perfect, you
emphasize that you're not perfect,
students suddenly see you as a human
being, and you create
an incredible connection.
One of the examples that I gave in the
last recording was when I
first would come into class,
I teach some professional writing
courses, and I would write a word on the
(01:26:44):
board, and sometimes I
wouldn't know how to spell it. And so for
any letter or area that I
wasn't quite sure about how
to spell, I'd make it more scratchy and
scribbly so that it was kind
of obscure, but it looked like
I knew the word, and fake it till you
make it. And then once I took that wall
down, and I didn't act
(01:27:05):
perfect, I would be that person to go,
"All right, we're going to spell... How
do you spell this word?"
And everybody would look at me and go,
"Aren't you an English
professor?" I'm like, "No, no,
communications professor. I don't know
how to spell this. You got
to tell me." And they would
laugh, and they would tell me how to
spell it. Or they would look it up or
something like that.
But the point I'm making is that that's a
(01:27:26):
real human moment, and
they can look at you and still
know that you know your stuff and you
know your subject matter,
but they can also now have an
added layer of going, "Here's a human who
knows something, not just
some figurehead with knowledge."
And so I would say for anybody, don't
make the mistake of having
(01:27:47):
to go in and think you have to
know everything. In fact, make it very
clear that here are the
things that you don't know about.
It will shock you at how quickly people
will help you know what you don't know.
Do you let heavy emotions
show in front of your students?
(01:28:07):
No. I'm very controlled in the emotions
that I show, but if there's
great joy, if there's great
happiness, if there's great laughter,
yeah, absolutely. The
positive things I absolutely show.
If there's negative things that are
happening to me, that doesn't create any
(01:28:31):
positivity or productivity
for my students, and I don't try to bring
in any negative energy into
a classroom. And so if I'm
experiencing any negative energy, I do
try to check that at the
door. If my students, however,
are experiencing certain negative energy,
let's explore that a bit.
Let's get that out there.
There's a reason why they are acting this
(01:28:52):
way and whether they feel
comfortable expressing that
in the classroom or after class, that's
great. But me, I have
to be more reserved.
So because the classroom isn't about me,
the classroom is about the
students. And so if I come
in with personal things or any baggage,
(01:29:12):
suddenly we're not
creating a good experience for the
students that are there. Now, if we go
back to my point about showing up and
being human and being
authentic, yes, to a certain degree as
someone who is leading the classroom. And
my priority is to be
as authentic with the most positive
things possible because
at the end of the day,
(01:29:33):
I want students leading that classroom
feeling great and feeling good and
wanting to come back.
I don't want to bring the mood down, but
if a student is feeling
a certain way, we have a
great opportunity to have them leaving
great and have them leaving
positive. But it's also that
priority of, yeah, show up authentically,
(01:29:54):
but also know classroom
isn't about you, it's about
your students. So what are we doing to be
as authentic and real as
possible for the sake of
our students? I appreciate that. And
similar to what we do in the world of
K-12 public education,
I encourage teachers, if you're having a
(01:30:14):
bad day or
something's happened, it's okay
to tell students, "It might not be
myself, but I'm going to
bring my best for you today."
But we don't get into it, right? We don't
fully unpack that in a
classroom because it's not the
student's job to unpack that with you.
But on the flip side, just
as you said, it is your job
(01:30:37):
to unpack that with students if they
invite it in their own
lives to bring it to part of the
classroom. You're there for them. So I
appreciate the connection
there, Michael. And with that,
that's the ebbs and flows of working with
people. There's different life
experiences that everyone
brings to the table. And with that can
(01:30:58):
come a lot of change. And
that's going to bring us
to our water element in our next segment
on ripples of change.
[music]
Small shifts, big waves. In ripples of
change, we discover how
to make a lasting impact.
Now, Michael, we're going to play another
(01:31:20):
game here. And this is the
quick tips version. I know
we've played it once before. I've come up
with some new things to
give tips on. Not necessarily
communication theme, but in a way they
can be slightly similar,
slightly different. Ready to
give it your best go? Let's do it. What's
one decision making
habit that changed your life?
(01:31:42):
Sleep on it. What's the fastest way to
reset a bad day? Also sleep on
it. A nap. I always say a nap
or a laugh can solve almost any problem.
Turn it off and on again,
right? That's all you have to do.
Yeah. What should every leader teach
their team by example?
(01:32:03):
Be open to criticism.
You also could have said, make sure you
sleep on things. Have a good sleep. Yeah.
What's one thing you no longer stress
about? Success. Michael, how
has your leadership changed
to what it is now from your first year of
(01:32:23):
doing what you do, whether
it's you want to say your
first year in communications at UBC or
whether it's your first
year and what you would just
consider general leadership? I really put
my faith in other people to
do the job. I was very much
(01:32:46):
a bit of a control freak on like, this
has to be done this way. And
now with a lot of students who
are really keen students and really keen
kids, I put a lot of faith in
them and say, I know you can
get this done. Go get this done. And you
know what? They do. I really
appreciate that. And how was
that different from your first year? I
(01:33:08):
didn't have a sense of students and I
didn't have a sense. And
I think too, because I was closer in age
to the students. So
this was 13 some years ago,
I was closer in age to the students. And
I think with wisdom, maturity,
experience, and being able
to recognize that these kids are sharp
(01:33:28):
and they're motivated
and they're always there.
And so I think with time, as I say, time,
experience, and wisdom, you
get to see the repetition each
year that this group of super keen
students show up, they do some remarkable
things. And you want,
(01:33:48):
now you want to entrust them with bigger
responsibilities and
bigger tasks. And you also
realize that, you know, in the time when
you were young, you were
given these things too,
and you had the opportunity to step up.
And, you know, the
further you get away from it,
the more you realize, oh, that really did
set me up for success. And
now you want to set them up for
(01:34:10):
success. How do you help
someone action their own change?
I put them in a situation that they don't
believe they can do,
because they're not going to put
themselves in that
situation. And you entrust them and
they in many ways think it's, you know,
it's a big deal. And in many
(01:34:30):
ways, it is a big deal. But you
put them in that situation and you say,
listen, I know you can do this.
You, you need to know that you can do
this. And I've yet to see a
situation where a student or,
or, you know, an individual I'm working
with has dropped the ball
on it when they're put in a
(01:34:51):
situation where they believe that they
could fail. If I believe they
can do it, and I know they can
do it, it goes back to that imposter
syndrome, right? Someone hired
me because they saw expertise
in me. Well, I saw expertise and I saw
talent in a student. They
just didn't see it in themselves.
So let's extract that from them. And then
(01:35:13):
at the end of it, when
they are a huge success,
we've just leveled them up. You, you fear
factor them. Did you
ever watch that show?
Yeah. A very different Joe
Rogan. That's right. Yeah.
You just take what they're most terrified
of. And you say, you're
going to do it, but you're
going to do it. You're going to do it in
(01:35:34):
a space where if it's an
absolute fail, nobody cares.
Nobody cares. Right. Nobody cares. And
it's not going to impact you
because it's in an educational
setting where, you know, it's not getting
put up to the world. You're
not getting evaluated on it.
You just get a chance to try. Right. And
the other thing, the
other thing too, and I'll just
(01:35:55):
give a little caveat here. We've put
students in situations like real world
situations with real
clients and competitions and real things
with real stakes. I also
will not put a student in
a situation that I know that they can't
do. And so, yeah, I'm going to put them
in a situation where
they could fail, but only in their own
(01:36:16):
mind. I know they can do it. And I know
they'll get it done.
That's right. And even, even then if they
failed, it's, it's one
client, right? I was just listening
to, I was just listening to a Mr. Beast
interview and, you know, he
talked about, um, it was on
diary of a CEO that he was on and he
(01:36:36):
talked about how when he
brings somebody new onto the team,
they make a decision that cost them
money. He goes back to one of
his closest people in his hands
has cost him tens of millions of dollars.
But they keep him around
because he learns from every
single time he costs them on what went
wrong. Right. And it
doesn't matter what you cost. It
(01:36:56):
matters how you bounce back after that
cost. Right. And that's
the idea of you don't need to
fake it until you make it. You're going
to make mistakes. It's how you respond
to the mistakes that you make is what's
going to help you grow,
develop, and be even better than
when you started. There's no winning or
losing. There's winning or
learning. And you have, you
(01:37:18):
have learned, I have learned, and we are
better people because of it. That's
absolutely, absolutely
right. Now, what steps do you take
personally when you have to change
something? That's a great
question. Um, now as the person I am now,
um, I'm, I'm, I'm very open
(01:37:38):
to critique and things that I
have to work on. Um, I have, as I said,
with rising tides, reds,
all shit, I have an amazing
group of friends who are very honest with
me and they obviously see
something in me that has to
be altered. Um, I have some amazing work
colleagues that have
identified things in me that has to be
altered. I really value expertise and I
(01:38:01):
really value when, um, very important
people see something in
me that needs to change. And so for me, I
always look at it as, okay, they see
something that clearly
I don't see and whether or not I agree
with it or disagree with it, um, I go
(01:38:23):
back, I sleep on it,
but I reflect on it. Where is it coming
from? Why is it being
projected this way? How do I need to
change in what way do I need to show this
differently? And I actually really go
through a process of,
um, never discounting it, but whether or
not I agree with it or not,
I analyze where it's coming
(01:38:43):
from, why it's coming from that
perspective. And if I have the capacity
to change, um, how can I do
that? And if I'm unsure, if I'm unsure,
if I have that capacity, I
ask, how can I do this better?
What steps can I take to do this better?
Um, someone obviously
pointed something out because
they want you to change. So help me do
(01:39:04):
that. Give me more guidance.
Um, I have a huge growth mindset
and I want to be better. So please tell
me. And not everything needs to be
changed, right? Just
because somebody points something out
does not mean you need to hit a reset
button on it. You need to,
(01:39:24):
like we said, hopefully you have those
relationships that you can have a
conversation around it.
And then you can say, why do you see it
that way? What could it look
like for you? Now, if we've
gone down that path and we say, okay,
yeah, we do need to make a
change. How do you communicate
what change you're doing or
do you need to communicate it?
(01:39:46):
I very much, I'm very vocal about the
steps that I'm taking. Um, I don't know
necessarily the, the
perspective that that's coming from,
whether it's like me
validating the person, like, yes,
I am doing this, or whether it's me
expressing, you know, the steps that I'm
taking for feedback.
(01:40:06):
Right? Here's the steps that I'm taking
to change. Can you add
anything to this? Can you build
anything on this? Um, if I feel I've
reached the end of the
steps, uh, is there a whole other
staircase that you see that I haven't
climbed yet? So I am very vocal about
that because, um, whatever
journey that I have taken to enact
(01:40:27):
change, um, someone else may have taken
that journey and have
experienced something completely
different and can help guide
me a little bit better. So I am
very vocal when there's change to be
made. I'm going to be very
vocal here, Michael and say,
we're going to change to our next segment
where we take the change
that we're talking about and
insert to action and the decisions we
(01:40:48):
make. And with that, we're
going to get into spark or burn.
Hey, alchemists, if you're still
listening to the show
from the bottom of my heart,
thank you for sticking around right
before we get into our
final elemental segment here,
our fire segment, take a minute and leave
a review on apple. If
you're enjoying the show,
give us a five star rating on Spotify.
When you give those ratings,
it improves the reach of the
(01:41:08):
show. And I get to achieve my goal of
impact. I want more people
to listen. I want more people
to be engaged because I want to impact
the lives of others for the better. So
I'd really appreciate
it if you left that review or rating. In
(01:41:30):
spark or burn, we either
tackle the big decisions that
sparked success or burn some lessons into
our memory. And to kick
off this segment, Michael,
our last game, these are decisions, big
decisions that you have to live with.
This is final answer.
It's a would you rather with no
explanations. Are you ready to go? Okay,
let's do it. Would you
rather take a risky opportunity or wait
(01:41:53):
for the perfect one? Wait
for the perfect one. Would you
rather be respected or liked? Respected.
Would you rather be known
for kindness or consistency?
Kindness. Would you rather delegate
something important or
do it late to yourself?
(01:42:15):
Do it late myself. Would you rather own a
bad decision or try to explain it away?
Own a bad decision. Would you rather lose
momentum or lose control?
Oh, momentum. Would you rather rebuild
from scratch or fix what's broken?
Fix what's broken. Would you rather work
(01:42:35):
with high talent or
high trust? High trust.
Would you rather get 1% better every day
or 100% right once a year?
1% better. Would you rather take the
credit or give it away?
Give it away. And there we go with our
final answers. Would you
(01:42:55):
rather, I want to jump back
to one of the ones that we talked about,
which is, would you rather have high
talent or high trust?
And the interesting about that is I do
believe there's a study out
there on the Navy SEALs and
how they recruit. And they recruit people
that they can trust over
the skill because they can
train the skill, but you can't train the
trust. And so I love that
(01:43:16):
you picked, I love that you
pick the trust on that one. It is super,
super important. And with
that, I want to ask, what is
the hardest decision you've ever had to
make in your role either now
or just as a leader in general?
Hardest decision that I ever had to make
was 10 years ago this
(01:43:37):
August, so next month,
and deciding to move from Northern
Ontario, where I'm from, born and raised,
to take this position
as a one-year contract in British
Columbia. I'd never been here
in my life. Outside of school,
I had never lived outside of my hometown
in North Bay, shout out North Bay. And
(01:44:01):
the hardest decision was, am I going to
leave the only life I
knew, my friends, my family,
my parents, my brother, everything, and
take this job? Because I
wanted to be an educator,
and I wanted to have a career. And it was
(01:44:23):
absolutely terrifying,
coming out here and having to establish
myself and get started.
And it was, you know, it didn't hit me
until I realized I can't
drive home on weekends.
You're just here. And the idea that life
will never be the same,
that was difficult to adjust to. But once
(01:44:50):
I got into my job, and
once I developed some
fantastic friends and a wonderful
community, and knowing
full well that my family was
still there, and I could still call them,
and I know how to find them,
you realize that it was the right choice.
(01:45:13):
And there was a quote, I
can't remember who said it,
but they say change and those hard
decisions, change is often terrifying.
But it usually turns
out to be the best thing that ever
happened to you. And, you know, moving
that into maybe a second
(01:45:33):
quote, I think this one Dumbledore said,
so there's my golden
snitch there too, is the hardest
decisions and the right decisions are
usually the same thing. And
so making the most difficult
decision to literally uproot my life for
(01:45:54):
something that could possibly be better,
turned out to indeed
be the right decision. And 10 years
later, I have a very wonderful life. And
I'm fortunate enough to
now be on a podcast with a wonderful
colleague. Would you move again? The
opportunity presented
itself. I always say this 10 years ago,
(01:46:15):
if you told me that I was
moving here out to BC, I would
have said you were crazy. Anything's
possible, right? You never know what life can hold. Never
know what life can hold. Never know. I
like that you're not
shutting the door on it fully. Now,
earlier, we talked a lot about being
vulnerable and that
relationships and the collaborative
(01:46:35):
mindset and how you approach those
conversations. How do you
separate emotion from logic?
Yeah. Wow, that's a great question.
I often say take yourself out of the
situation. So when we
place ourselves in a situation,
(01:46:57):
we place our thoughts, our feelings, our
concerns, and our emotions. And so that
often can drive some
decisions. In many cases, it can drive
irrational decisions
because in many cases, emotion is
irrational decisions. So what I often say
is if ever there's a
(01:47:17):
situation that you have to
make a high level decision on something
and maybe it's very emotionally driven,
personally or professionally, take
yourself out of it. Because
once you take yourself out of it,
you look at it for what it is rather than
what you want it to be. So
you look at, this is a long
(01:47:41):
time ago, I was having a conversation
with a friend who literally
had just broken up with his
girlfriend at the time. And he said, "I
don't know if I've made the
right choice. I don't know if I
made the right choice." And I said,
"Well, what did you like about it?" He's
like, "Oh, we connected.
Like we connected so much." And I went,
"Okay, I want you to take
yourself out of this for a second.
Did you communicate?" "No." "Compromise?"
(01:48:04):
"Sometimes." "Did you support each
other?" "Eh, maybe."
And I went, "Well then, logically, was it
a great relationship?" He
goes, "Yeah, probably not."
And so my best advice to managing
emotions and logic and
separating the two is literally remove
yourself and see it for what it is rather
(01:48:25):
than what you want it to
be. So follow up to that.
Removing yourself. How do you still make
sure your values show
up in your decision?
Well, looking at logic, I think logic is
often built on your
(01:48:45):
values to a certain degree.
Here's what something is based on how
appropriate it is for the situation,
based on if it's a societal context, a
cultural context, a business context,
a relationship context. Your values will
(01:49:08):
always inject themselves into your logic.
Your logic may not be my logic, and
they're always built on our
conditioning to our values,
I think. There's going to be a lot of
people that disagree with that because
logic is very black and
white if you look at it from a philosophy
(01:49:28):
perspective. But I
truly believe that how we
logically build the world starts with the
foundation of where our
values lie. So I think
they're interconnected. And I don't think
that that's emotionally driven.
Michael, how can our listeners get a hold
of you, get in touch
with you if they want to
(01:49:49):
learn more or hear what you're all about?
Yeah, I am on Instagram.
It's micsad with two a's,
s-a-a-d, just like the emotion. You can
find me there, shoot me a
dm, ask me any questions you'd
like. I'm always happy to have a
conversation. Now, Michael, one of the
(01:50:09):
things that we are shifting
away from here is I used to do listener
questions where people
could write in a question and we
would talk about them on the show and
give our best answer. What
I've shifted to is the person
that I previously interviewed is going to
provide a question for my
next guest, not knowing who they
are and what they're bringing to the
table to answer. And so
between the time of our,
(01:50:33):
we're going to call it the best recording
ever that's ever been
done, to the recording that's
happened right now, I did have an
interview in between and they kicked off
the show for me. This
came from a school principal in Ontario,
Michelle Sigmund, and the
question that she's left behind
is what is unique to you? Unique to me,
(01:50:53):
like as a person or in general? That's
the question she left
behind. That's a great question. What is
unique to me? I love seeing
the world in an absurd way.
And I'll give a little bit of context to
that. I've always enjoyed
(01:51:16):
the grandiose. I've always
enjoyed the theatrics, the dramatics, the
gravitas of things. And I
think when you look at the world
in a big way and you look at the world in
an obscure way and as I
say, in an absurd way,
you get to see different things. So
(01:51:38):
rather than going with the
conventional advice perspective,
piece of entertainment, find the things
that are different.
Find the things that are
are weird and absurd because you're going
to extract something
very special from it.
And so if I'm sitting and talking to
(01:51:58):
students, some of the
advice that I give them is,
you know, it's off the beaten path. It
might be more direct. It might be
something they haven't
heard before. If I go into a classroom, I
may do an exercise that
is completely different,
is completely new, is completely out
there. And I think that it's
(01:52:21):
so much fun. And I think that it
provides people with such a different and
unique experience because
it's not the cookie cutter
approach. It's not the cookie cutter
method. So what is the
unique thing? Find the absurd,
find the out there thing because you're
(01:52:44):
going to learn something
so unique and so original,
and you're going to see the world so
different. I love that answer. And
different from listener
questions. I'm not going to jump in and
give my answer to the
questions, but I enjoy hearing the
response to it. And Michael, not knowing
who I'm interviewing
next, when that interview is
happening, what we might talk about, what
(01:53:06):
credentials they
bring. What question do you
want to leave the next guest? If money or
success was not an option
or not an option, if money or
success was not an issue, what would you
do in the question? Now,
before we fully wrap up the show
here, Michael, what is one last message,
one last thought that you
want to leave with the audience?
(01:53:27):
What should they be taking away? Show up
as yourself. If you're
concerned about things,
be concerned. If you're excited about
things, be excited. Just
be, be as honest as possible,
because people are going to love that
about you. We are so concerned. We have
(01:53:49):
that inner critic in
our head that says, "Don't do this. Act
this way. Do this. Be
this person. Be yourself."
And you will be amazed at the remarkable
things that you can
accomplish. And you will be amazed
at the people that gravitate towards you
when you just exist rather
(01:54:11):
than adopting a persona or a
limiting yourself based on what you think
it should be versus what it is.
Michael, I, from the bottom of my heart,
want to say thank you to
you as well. I know we did a
first trial that, what a great
conversation. And I'm so thankful you
enjoyed it. But to turn around
(01:54:34):
and say, "Let's do this again and let's
get it done again right
away," because we just love the
connection. I am so appreciative of the
wisdom you're willing to
share and able to share. And
I feel like from this conversation, we've
gone a whole other level
from even the first one
that I wish I could just put the two
together now and have this big two-hour
episode. But here we
are, but seriously and sincerely, thank
(01:54:55):
you so much for joining me
again for this connection.
Yeah. Thank you, Tyler. Thank you for
having me. As I said last
time, this was so much fun.
And I was so happy to do it again because
I had a blast and you did
such a great job on here. And
it was such a great conversation. So
thank you as well. Thanks for sticking
(01:55:17):
around to the end of
the show. If you have feedback, a
suggestion, or just want to start a
conversation, fire off an
email to Tyler at elementaleducator.com.
I actually read them. And if
this episode sparks something,
leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It
helps more leaders find
the show. And don't forget to
subscribe on YouTube, where I put out
(01:55:38):
additional content. I'll see you next
time. Same time, same place.
Tell people that you're worried. Tell
people that you're scared.
Tell people you're excited.
Tell people that you are blank because...
What is it about yourself
right now that you're happy with?
You know, it made me frustrated, it made
me angry, it made me
upset and for no reason.
Now it's almost like...
What advice would you
(01:00:20):
give your younger self?
It doesn't matter as much as you think it
does. When one of us wins, we all win.
[Music]
(01:00:41):
This is Elemental Conversations, where
leadership isn't just
talked about, it's tested.
I'm Tyler, your host, helping you lead
with your values, push through adversity,
roll with change and make bold decisions.
New episodes every
Monday. Subscribe on YouTube,
follow us on Instagram and if you're
ready to challenge the status quo,
(01:01:02):
then get ready to let the alchemy of
education ignite your
passion for learning.
Fire.
Earth.
Wind.
Water.
This is the Elemental Educator and now
your host, Tyler Como.
(01:01:24):
What advice would you
give your younger self?
It doesn't matter as
much as you think it does.
Why do you say that?
I overthought everything as a kid,
everything. And, you know, there was a
lot of decisions that I made
that maybe could have been better. There
(01:01:45):
was a lot of things I
didn't do. And also,
I just didn't enjoy myself as much as I
should because I was in my
own head about absolutely
everything. And looking back now at,
let's just say my 15, 16
year old self, I literally would
tell this kid, hey, man, it doesn't
(01:02:06):
matter as much as you think it does. What
do you think your 15,
16 year old self would say to you if they
saw you now? I don't know.
They'd probably be, they'd
probably find a reason to be frustrated
by me. Then they find out I was in a
Dragon Ball and we'd
probably talk about video games. And then
they find a point of
relation to me. And I think they'd
(01:02:27):
really dig that because I try to find
relation, you know, things that I can
relate to with students
and, you know, the emerging youth,
because they are of a
totally different mindset.
You know, the first question you said
that you were frustrated
(01:02:51):
and you became somebody that
you're happy with. What is it about
yourself right now
that you're happy with?
I think that I see the world a little bit
more clearly. And I don't
worry about as much of the
things that I used to worry about.
Because I allow myself, I
(01:03:12):
allow myself to feel the feelings,
I allow myself to process the things that
are happening. I allow
myself to reflect on the
things that are happening. And, you know,
having gone through so many
experiences that, you know,
made me frustrated, made me angry, made
me upset, and for no
reason now it's almost like
(01:03:37):
it's less loud up here. And there's
something really calming about us.
Welcome to a new episode. We've got our
amazing guest, Michael Sad
with us who is a communications
professor at Okanalagan College in
Kelowna, British Columbia,
beautiful Canada. Michael,
thank you so much for joining me on our
show today. We recorded
once before, and I say recorded
(01:03:58):
lightly because we didn't actually press
record. We shot an entire
episode without actually
recording things. But thank you again for
taking time out of your
day to join me for another
another round of conversation here. Thank
you for having me, Tyler. I said last
time right at the end,
I had such a fun time. Let's run it back
and looking forward to
it. And I said, we said run
it back and, you know, I'm hoping to
(01:04:18):
bring a totally different
experience to the show for you,
another side of it that you'll get to
see. And before we kick off,
what are the most important
things that the audience needs to know
about you to understand the
rest of our story here today?
Well, I'm a communications professor, as
you said. I very much
believe in education. I very
(01:04:39):
much believe in the power of
communication and what it can do for you
personally, professionally,
in life and your relationships. But the
biggest thing is, you know,
as much as I am in a really
great place in career and expertise and
whatnot, I wasn't always
this way. And it took a journey,
(01:05:01):
and it still is a journey, which I think
is a lifelong journey. So
that's the biggest thing I
want people to know is that we all start
somewhere. And where that leads to,
that's a lifelong quest.
Absolutely lifelong quest. And where we
start is so important than
our why to why we start is also
so important. And that's going to bring
(01:05:21):
us to our first segment
here on Grounded Moments.
I'll come as just one quick thing here
before we get into our
first segment, it would mean
everything to me. If you head over to our
YouTube channel and
subscribe. Throwing the channel
enables me to bring on incredible guests
like Michael and continue
delivering the best show
I can for you. I hope you enjoy the rest
of the show. Three, two, one.
(01:05:50):
Rivet and wisdom driven by purpose,
Grounded Moments is all about our values.
And there is no better way to see what
you truly stand for than
to play a game. Michael,
you already know that we play a game with
every elemental segment
because we did this once before.
And we're going to do it again with a
whole new grouping of
scenarios here. And our first one as
a reminder is principle or preference. So
(01:06:11):
I'm going to share
something that is either a core
value to you and you can respond by
saying principle or it
doesn't matter who does it or
not. It's a preference. You can respond
by saying preference.
Are you ready to play?
Let's do it. I love games. Here we go.
We're going to go rapid
fire. No time to justify.
Never cancel a meeting. Preference. Call
people out in the moment.
(01:06:33):
Preference. Everyone gets a voice.
Principle. Your
mental health comes first.
Principle. You always say yes to growth.
Principle. Turn off your phone at dinner.
Oh, big principle. Take the L privately.
Principle. Stay loyal to your team.
(01:06:57):
Principle. Live by your calendar.
Preference. Always reply to criticism.
Michael, what are the top three things
you look for in a team
member? I look for a growth mindset. So
are they willing to grow with you and
learn and be open to
learn? You find out pretty quick. It's
(01:07:22):
usually on the job. In my
experience, anybody can say
anything to get the job, get into the
position. But when you're in
a team and everybody needs to
contribute and everybody needs to pull
their weight and sometimes you have to
adapt and learn and grow,
either you do or you have resistance to
(01:07:44):
it. And I know that
I've had resistance to it.
And I've also been in a position where I
have learned and grown and
thrive. But you figure that
out pretty quick. And I say it's usually
just from experience and
experiencing the individual in the
moment. So. Growth mindset. I like that.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's the
(01:08:04):
first one. The second one is
collaboration. Is somebody willing to
work with you and
collaborate with you and share ideas,
but also take ideas. And that literally
goes for anybody. I don't care what
position you are in.
If you are tippy top dog, you still got
(01:08:26):
to be able to collaborate and
take ideas and consider ideas
and know that, you know, just because
you're up here doesn't mean
you have the best ideas every
single time. So collaboration is huge.
Yeah. What's the
difference between collaboration and
compliance? Compliance is basically go
along to get along.
(01:08:48):
Collaboration is, hey, I have some
great ideas. Maybe I don't necessarily
agree with these ideas. I
might have something that
can help it, can add to it. Collaboration
can have resistance.
Compliance usually doesn't.
I love that. Yeah. And then the last one,
(01:09:10):
this is a great one. The
last one in a great team member
is, do I want to hang out with this
person? Plain and simple, right? You're
in a team, you're going
to be working with these people a lot and
your personalities have to
gel. And at the end of the
day, when all is said and done, do I just
(01:09:30):
want to hang out with you?
Because you're going to be
hanging out a lot and ideally you want to
enjoy who you're hanging
out. And what about a world
where the people you're hiring aren't the
people you spend a lot of
time with? Does that still apply?
Do you have really a choice? I mean, the
people you're hiring, you
tend to spend a lot of time
with, but if you're not, that's a great
(01:09:50):
question. If you're not, I
think a shift in ever so slightly
in that is just, do they have a good
attitude? What is that
attitude? Are they conversational?
Are they friendly? Do they want to have a
laugh? You can find that
out very quickly with an
individual. Do they feel like they could
(01:10:14):
have fun or is it all
business? Because at the end of the
day, we need people with some
personality. Because again,
if I'm not working with them,
somebody else is and they need to be able
to work together as people.
I really agree with you there. And in
hearing what you're
sharing, maybe a value for you in
(01:10:35):
relationships on top of that idea of
communication and that transparency that
stands out to me a lot
and things that you bring to the table
and you look for in the
table. Before our first recording,
I asked you to share a quote before
coming on the show. And we had this
amazing conversation
around rising tides raise all ships. And
I love the story that you
(01:10:57):
gave behind it. I'm hoping
on a recorded session here,
you can tell it one more time.
Absolutely. This is a quote that was born
out of my group of
friends, the boys, the fellas.
And basically the idea is that when one
of us wins, we all win. And so whether or
(01:11:18):
not it's with a job,
a relationship, personal growth, we share
all of these things. And we
share these things because
again, if somebody has moved forward,
then we got to celebrate that and it
allows us to move forward
with them. It allows us to walk up the
(01:11:40):
mountain with that person. If
someone's got a big promotion
at work, that's worth celebrating because
that's going to elevate
them to who knows, maybe a new
living situation where they can have us
over and a bigger space, a new
relationship. We get to meet
somebody that this person just loves and
(01:12:00):
enjoys and wants to be
around and makes them a happier
person. And we all benefit from that. And
if nothing else too, it's
a motivator for us to say,
"Wow, that was such a big win. I love
that so much. I want that for myself."
And so then it drives us
to be better and it drives us to raise
the tides a little bit
more. So it's something that
(01:12:23):
we really, really, really prioritize with
one another is that
celebrate those wins and know
that when one person wins, we all win.
And I think it's great
because it's also not a competition.
We don't feel like we have to keep up
with one another. Some
person goes and gets this
amazing job or has an amazing
(01:12:45):
relationship or gets engaged or whatever.
And it's the notion of
that's a win for them. And I'm going to
go and seek out something
that works for me, knowing full
well that I'm going to be celebrated for
it in the exact same way.
Rising tides raise all ships.
I think you did a better job the second
time of breaking that down
(01:13:05):
for me than the first time. But
that's what they say, right? Nothing goes
this plan the first time
you do it. And it's always
better the second time around. And
thankfully we press record,
but if there was a third time,
we'd probably get the even better version
of the story. We'd knock
it out of the park. I mean,
it would be Oscar worthy. It would be too
good to put on a show. So
we just won't bother. But
(01:13:27):
it's such a, it's a powerful message and
it's one that ties back
easily to these top three things
you look for in a team. We hear back the
stories of collaboration. We
hear back the stories of you
want to hang out with these people. So
the fact that this quote
came from here, that value of
relationships that we talked about not
too long ago here, it's all
apparent in what you stand for
and the idea of building people up. We
(01:13:49):
like to talk about that idea of
collective efficacy and
the idea of collective efficacy amongst
people. And it goes hand in hand with
your quote of rising
tides raise all ships, because what it is
is people believing in
the system and the process
of what you're doing together. It's that
idea of collaborating and
not being compliant with it.
One of the quotes that I really like is,
(01:14:10):
well, the people at the
bottom are busy fighting. The
people at the top are too busy
collaborating. And it's the idea of
rising and bringing each other up.
So I have to ask though, Michael, what's
a hill that you die on or
you're willing to die on
frequently as we just talked about some
of these values? Just in terms of a
(01:14:30):
general belief or an
experience or? Yeah, general belief would
be, let's go with belief.
A hill that I am willing to
die on is to show up as authentically as
possible to wherever you are. And I
believe that so deeply
(01:14:51):
because everything I've talked about with
relationships and
collaboration and supporting
one another, if you're not showing up as
yourself, then you are not creating
connection with anybody.
And that is the number one trust builder.
It's the number one
builder of any relationship is
(01:15:12):
authenticity, is vulnerability, is
knowing that you do not have to be
perfect. I ride or die with
that philosophy is that perfection is the
pursuit of failure with
the noblest of intentions.
We cannot reach perfection, but we can
(01:15:34):
certainly aspire to get
as close to it as possible.
But the more we chase the perfection, the
more we are fake, the
more we are not ourselves,
the more we adopt identities, the more we
try to put on a mask. And that
alienates people more than it connects
people. And so I am very much
(01:15:56):
a believer of show up as you
are, show people the vulnerabilities,
show people the
hesitations, the worries, the weakness,
because somebody is going to look at you
and go, I have those exact
things too. Wow, we're both
human and we have a connection now. So
that's what I believe. And I think you
know what's coming next.
(01:16:18):
I think I do. This is the elevator pitch
where we're going to take this message
and condense that into a little 20 second
piece here. You know, we
were talking beyond the show
around when we put things out, what works
and you raise the idea of
let's try to get it around 20
seconds. So let's see if we can get this
(01:16:40):
around 20 seconds. Okay,
here we go. Show up as yourself.
Be your most authentic self. The more you
try to be someone else,
the more you are not being
the person you know how to be best. Don't
chase perfection. Perfection is a myth.
You will never get there. Tell people
(01:17:02):
that you're worried. Tell
people that you're scared. Tell
people you're excited. Tell people that
you are blank because those
are the things that people
will connect with. Those are the things
that people will latch on.
And at the end of the day,
people will not know your expertise. They
will not know your image, your
reputation. All they
(01:17:22):
will know is you. And that is the biggest
thing that people will
remember. So be authentic because
that's what people are going to truly
see. You know, listeners,
alchemists, if you appreciate
the message that Michael's just giving,
what I want you to do is take
a minute during this episode
and head over to one of his social
medias, which is linked in the
description of this show. Give
(01:17:43):
him a follow, give him a like, let him
know, Hey, I heard that pitch. It was
awesome. I stand by it.
I want, I want to be around you. I want
to see that content that
you put out there as well.
It would mean a lot to show support that
way as well. And you know
what, maybe a little bit more
than 20 seconds there, but that's okay.
That works for me. That's still a very
solid elevator pitch
that we can work with. And in doing all
(01:18:04):
of this and hearing these
values, this relationships,
I want to bring it back to that rising
tides, raise all ships.
And there are times where you
need to be risen, where people need to
help you rise. And
that's the adversity we face.
And to kick off talking about adversity,
we're going to go into
our next segment here,
the air element on
headwinds and tailwinds.
(01:18:29):
In headwinds and tailwinds, we get down
to the mistakes we've made
and what was in the aftermath
to learn to get into the comfort zone of
mistakes. We are going
to play another game,
Michael, and this game is adversity Mad
Libs. So I'm going to ask
you to fill in some blanks
for me. They can be honest truth, totally
made up on hinge. We
(01:18:49):
didn't do this one last time.
Are you ready to get a video? All right,
let's do it. All right. And
all you have to do is repeat
the sentence, but fill in the blanks for
me. Okay. The biggest
mistake I ever made was blank,
but it taught me blank. Biggest mistake I
ever made was thinking
that I knew everything.
And it taught me to be humble. And it
(01:19:16):
taught me to listen better.
I once felt completely unqualified to
blank, yet I still blank.
I once felt unqualified for nearly every
single job that I've ever had.
And what was the last part? Yet you still
blank. Yet I still got
(01:19:36):
hired for those jobs,
which taught me that I indeed had the
skills. My most awkward
professional moment involved
blank and blank. My most awkward
professional moment is the
two times that I was sitting in
my office and forgot that I had class
only to receive emails
from my students about 12
(01:19:58):
minutes after saying, where are you? And
let me tell you, my
sprinting skills certainly paid off
that day. That's awesome. Back then, I
thought blank was the
end. Now I see it was blank.
Back when I finished my master's degree,
(01:20:19):
I thought it was the end of my education,
only to realize it was just the beginning
because I was out of school and into.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. Thanks for
playing the game.
There's a new one for us.
That was fun. I actually, I like it
better than the make it
worse game. I feel like
we get some substance from our guest on
(01:20:40):
this one and I really
enjoy the story behind it,
which we get to maybe talk about a little
bit here. What is
something you had to unlearn?
I had to unlearn imposter syndrome. What
is imposter syndrome?
Pardon me? What is imposter
syndrome? Imposter syndrome in its most,
here's another elevator
pitch, imposter syndrome in its
(01:21:01):
most basic terms is the feeling that you
are in a position that you do not
deserve. So if you get
hired into a position and you feel
overwhelmed or you feel as though you
don't have your footing in
it, you feel like you've somehow fooled
somebody into hiring you into that
(01:21:22):
position. And I certainly
felt that way when I got hired into my
current position as a
communications professor.
What happened was I was looking all
around me and seeing these very
accomplished educators.
And I thought to myself, how did I fool
(01:21:43):
everybody into them
thinking that I should be teaching
alongside these individuals? And I didn't
think I was as smart. I
didn't think that I was as capable.
And truthfully, the only way that I got
over it is I went to therapy
for it. I had to speak to a
professional about this idea of imposter
(01:22:06):
syndrome. And what I learned was, yes,
there are many people
that are so much better at things than I
am in my profession. Having said that, I
am better at certain
things than so many other people. And we
can't compare ourselves
(01:22:26):
in our skill level because
skill levels aren't like this. Skill
levels are just a giant
bar graph of varying degrees.
And the other thing that I had to learn
was the individuals
hiring me and the individuals
recognizing my capabilities. I'm not
(01:22:47):
fooling anybody. These are highly
intelligent people who,
for a living, recognize skill and hire
people for their
skill. So I wasn't coming
in as low-key from Thor and going, "Ha
ha, I fooled
everybody." No, I showed my skill,
I showed my capabilities, and as a
(01:23:08):
result, I was hired for that. And that
was something that I had
to learn. And I also, again, had to learn
that skill can be a vague
term because it can come
from so many different areas. And what
makes you a capable educator is so
different than what makes
someone else a capable educator. And so
(01:23:30):
imposter syndrome has really no place
once you learn that.
You know, one of the things, and we
talked about this in our
first trial and error of the show,
but one of the things I had to unlearn
was the quote, "Fake it
till you make it." We shared a
moment of passion over hating that quote
together. Hate that
term. I hate it so much.
You know, it comes from that. And fake it
(01:23:52):
till you make it an
imposter syndrome, go hand in hand,
right? Because you're creating a mindset.
As soon as you're told
fake it till you make it,
somebody is actually telling you, you
don't deserve where you are.
And you need to fake being where
you are until you start to feel
comfortable or competent, or
you've been there longer than
everyone else around you to then say,
"You're the one that leads it." So the
(01:24:13):
reason that I don't like
that term is because when you say it to
somebody, it's exactly what you're
alluding to an imposter
syndrome here. You're creating a mindset
that you don't belong where
you are, and you need to pretend
like you do. And what I would prefer
people say instead is, "It's
okay to not know everything
right away, and you're going to figure it
(01:24:34):
out along the way. It's our
job to help you." But you need
to know that if you're not sure of
something, there's a team
around you to collaborate with,
to build those relationships with, to
talk to transparently
about, bring it back to our very
first conversation. Because if you're not
having those conversations,
when your boss comes in to
see what you're doing, and you're trying
(01:24:55):
your best to fake it, and you
didn't have conversations with
people because you needed to fake it,
it's going to show. And
they're going to notice that you're
not where you should be, and they're
going to notice that you
didn't play a part of the team.
That's a problem. So I appreciate the
connection to imposter syndrome with one
of my least favorite
quotes of, "Fake it till you make it."
(01:25:17):
Now, with that, what's one
of the biggest mistakes you've
ever made? One of the biggest mistakes I
ever made. Aside from showing up 12
minutes late to class.
I would say that one of the biggest
(01:25:39):
mistakes that I ever
made is early in my career,
and it goes back to what I discussed, is
I felt the need to be
perfect. I felt the need to be the
stereotypical educator that had all the
answers, that could walk
(01:26:00):
into a classroom and never made
a mistake. And it was indeed such a
mistake because it put up a
wall, and it didn't allow me
to make any connection with my students.
And what I learned down the
road was that once you bring
down that wall, and you show that you're
(01:26:22):
not perfect, you
emphasize that you're not perfect,
students suddenly see you as a human
being, and you create
an incredible connection.
One of the examples that I gave in the
last recording was when I
first would come into class,
I teach some professional writing
courses, and I would write a word on the
(01:26:44):
board, and sometimes I
wouldn't know how to spell it. And so for
any letter or area that I
wasn't quite sure about how
to spell, I'd make it more scratchy and
scribbly so that it was kind
of obscure, but it looked like
I knew the word, and fake it till you
make it. And then once I took that wall
down, and I didn't act
(01:27:05):
perfect, I would be that person to go,
"All right, we're going to spell... How
do you spell this word?"
And everybody would look at me and go,
"Aren't you an English
professor?" I'm like, "No, no,
communications professor. I don't know
how to spell this. You got
to tell me." And they would
laugh, and they would tell me how to
spell it. Or they would look it up or
something like that.
But the point I'm making is that that's a
(01:27:26):
real human moment, and
they can look at you and still
know that you know your stuff and you
know your subject matter,
but they can also now have an
added layer of going, "Here's a human who
knows something, not just
some figurehead with knowledge."
And so I would say for anybody, don't
make the mistake of having
(01:27:47):
to go in and think you have to
know everything. In fact, make it very
clear that here are the
things that you don't know about.
It will shock you at how quickly people
will help you know what you don't know.
Do you let heavy emotions
show in front of your students?
(01:28:07):
No. I'm very controlled in the emotions
that I show, but if there's
great joy, if there's great
happiness, if there's great laughter,
yeah, absolutely. The
positive things I absolutely show.
If there's negative things that are
happening to me, that doesn't create any
(01:28:31):
positivity or productivity
for my students, and I don't try to bring
in any negative energy into
a classroom. And so if I'm
experiencing any negative energy, I do
try to check that at the
door. If my students, however,
are experiencing certain negative energy,
let's explore that a bit.
Let's get that out there.
There's a reason why they are acting this
(01:28:52):
way and whether they feel
comfortable expressing that
in the classroom or after class, that's
great. But me, I have
to be more reserved.
So because the classroom isn't about me,
the classroom is about the
students. And so if I come
in with personal things or any baggage,
(01:29:12):
suddenly we're not
creating a good experience for the
students that are there. Now, if we go
back to my point about showing up and
being human and being
authentic, yes, to a certain degree as
someone who is leading the classroom. And
my priority is to be
as authentic with the most positive
things possible because
at the end of the day,
(01:29:33):
I want students leading that classroom
feeling great and feeling good and
wanting to come back.
I don't want to bring the mood down, but
if a student is feeling
a certain way, we have a
great opportunity to have them leaving
great and have them leaving
positive. But it's also that
priority of, yeah, show up authentically,
(01:29:54):
but also know classroom
isn't about you, it's about
your students. So what are we doing to be
as authentic and real as
possible for the sake of
our students? I appreciate that. And
similar to what we do in the world of
K-12 public education,
I encourage teachers, if you're having a
(01:30:14):
bad day or
something's happened, it's okay
to tell students, "It might not be
myself, but I'm going to
bring my best for you today."
But we don't get into it, right? We don't
fully unpack that in a
classroom because it's not the
student's job to unpack that with you.
But on the flip side, just
as you said, it is your job
(01:30:37):
to unpack that with students if they
invite it in their own
lives to bring it to part of the
classroom. You're there for them. So I
appreciate the connection
there, Michael. And with that,
that's the ebbs and flows of working with
people. There's different life
experiences that everyone
brings to the table. And with that can
(01:30:58):
come a lot of change. And
that's going to bring us
to our water element in our next segment
on ripples of change.
[music]
Small shifts, big waves. In ripples of
change, we discover how
to make a lasting impact.
Now, Michael, we're going to play another
(01:31:20):
game here. And this is the
quick tips version. I know
we've played it once before. I've come up
with some new things to
give tips on. Not necessarily
communication theme, but in a way they
can be slightly similar,
slightly different. Ready to
give it your best go? Let's do it. What's
one decision making
habit that changed your life?
(01:31:42):
Sleep on it. What's the fastest way to
reset a bad day? Also sleep on
it. A nap. I always say a nap
or a laugh can solve almost any problem.
Turn it off and on again,
right? That's all you have to do.
Yeah. What should every leader teach
their team by example?
(01:32:03):
Be open to criticism.
You also could have said, make sure you
sleep on things. Have a good sleep. Yeah.
What's one thing you no longer stress
about? Success. Michael, how
has your leadership changed
to what it is now from your first year of
(01:32:23):
doing what you do, whether
it's you want to say your
first year in communications at UBC or
whether it's your first
year and what you would just
consider general leadership? I really put
my faith in other people to
do the job. I was very much
(01:32:46):
a bit of a control freak on like, this
has to be done this way. And
now with a lot of students who
are really keen students and really keen
kids, I put a lot of faith in
them and say, I know you can
get this done. Go get this done. And you
know what? They do. I really
appreciate that. And how was
that different from your first year? I
(01:33:08):
didn't have a sense of students and I
didn't have a sense. And
I think too, because I was closer in age
to the students. So
this was 13 some years ago,
I was closer in age to the students. And
I think with wisdom, maturity,
experience, and being able
to recognize that these kids are sharp
(01:33:28):
and they're motivated
and they're always there.
And so I think with time, as I say, time,
experience, and wisdom, you
get to see the repetition each
year that this group of super keen
students show up, they do some remarkable
things. And you want,
(01:33:48):
now you want to entrust them with bigger
responsibilities and
bigger tasks. And you also
realize that, you know, in the time when
you were young, you were
given these things too,
and you had the opportunity to step up.
And, you know, the
further you get away from it,
the more you realize, oh, that really did
set me up for success. And
now you want to set them up for
(01:34:10):
success. How do you help
someone action their own change?
I put them in a situation that they don't
believe they can do,
because they're not going to put
themselves in that
situation. And you entrust them and
they in many ways think it's, you know,
it's a big deal. And in many
(01:34:30):
ways, it is a big deal. But you
put them in that situation and you say,
listen, I know you can do this.
You, you need to know that you can do
this. And I've yet to see a
situation where a student or,
or, you know, an individual I'm working
with has dropped the ball
on it when they're put in a
(01:34:51):
situation where they believe that they
could fail. If I believe they
can do it, and I know they can
do it, it goes back to that imposter
syndrome, right? Someone hired
me because they saw expertise
in me. Well, I saw expertise and I saw
talent in a student. They
just didn't see it in themselves.
So let's extract that from them. And then
(01:35:13):
at the end of it, when
they are a huge success,
we've just leveled them up. You, you fear
factor them. Did you
ever watch that show?
Yeah. A very different Joe
Rogan. That's right. Yeah.
You just take what they're most terrified
of. And you say, you're
going to do it, but you're
going to do it. You're going to do it in
(01:35:34):
a space where if it's an
absolute fail, nobody cares.
Nobody cares. Right. Nobody cares. And
it's not going to impact you
because it's in an educational
setting where, you know, it's not getting
put up to the world. You're
not getting evaluated on it.
You just get a chance to try. Right. And
the other thing, the
other thing too, and I'll just
(01:35:55):
give a little caveat here. We've put
students in situations like real world
situations with real
clients and competitions and real things
with real stakes. I also
will not put a student in
a situation that I know that they can't
do. And so, yeah, I'm going to put them
in a situation where
they could fail, but only in their own
(01:36:16):
mind. I know they can do it. And I know
they'll get it done.
That's right. And even, even then if they
failed, it's, it's one
client, right? I was just listening
to, I was just listening to a Mr. Beast
interview and, you know, he
talked about, um, it was on
diary of a CEO that he was on and he
(01:36:36):
talked about how when he
brings somebody new onto the team,
they make a decision that cost them
money. He goes back to one of
his closest people in his hands
has cost him tens of millions of dollars.
But they keep him around
because he learns from every
single time he costs them on what went
wrong. Right. And it
doesn't matter what you cost. It
(01:36:56):
matters how you bounce back after that
cost. Right. And that's
the idea of you don't need to
fake it until you make it. You're going
to make mistakes. It's how you respond
to the mistakes that you make is what's
going to help you grow,
develop, and be even better than
when you started. There's no winning or
losing. There's winning or
learning. And you have, you
(01:37:18):
have learned, I have learned, and we are
better people because of it. That's
absolutely, absolutely
right. Now, what steps do you take
personally when you have to change
something? That's a great
question. Um, now as the person I am now,
um, I'm, I'm, I'm very open
(01:37:38):
to critique and things that I
have to work on. Um, I have, as I said,
with rising tides, reds,
all shit, I have an amazing
group of friends who are very honest with
me and they obviously see
something in me that has to
be altered. Um, I have some amazing work
colleagues that have
identified things in me that has to be
altered. I really value expertise and I
(01:38:01):
really value when, um, very important
people see something in
me that needs to change. And so for me, I
always look at it as, okay, they see
something that clearly
I don't see and whether or not I agree
with it or disagree with it, um, I go
(01:38:23):
back, I sleep on it,
but I reflect on it. Where is it coming
from? Why is it being
projected this way? How do I need to
change in what way do I need to show this
differently? And I actually really go
through a process of,
um, never discounting it, but whether or
not I agree with it or not,
I analyze where it's coming
(01:38:43):
from, why it's coming from that
perspective. And if I have the capacity
to change, um, how can I do
that? And if I'm unsure, if I'm unsure,
if I have that capacity, I
ask, how can I do this better?
What steps can I take to do this better?
Um, someone obviously
pointed something out because
they want you to change. So help me do
(01:39:04):
that. Give me more guidance.
Um, I have a huge growth mindset
and I want to be better. So please tell
me. And not everything needs to be
changed, right? Just
because somebody points something out
does not mean you need to hit a reset
button on it. You need to,
(01:39:24):
like we said, hopefully you have those
relationships that you can have a
conversation around it.
And then you can say, why do you see it
that way? What could it look
like for you? Now, if we've
gone down that path and we say, okay,
yeah, we do need to make a
change. How do you communicate
what change you're doing or
do you need to communicate it?
(01:39:46):
I very much, I'm very vocal about the
steps that I'm taking. Um, I don't know
necessarily the, the
perspective that that's coming from,
whether it's like me
validating the person, like, yes,
I am doing this, or whether it's me
expressing, you know, the steps that I'm
taking for feedback.
(01:40:06):
Right? Here's the steps that I'm taking
to change. Can you add
anything to this? Can you build
anything on this? Um, if I feel I've
reached the end of the
steps, uh, is there a whole other
staircase that you see that I haven't
climbed yet? So I am very vocal about
that because, um, whatever
journey that I have taken to enact
(01:40:27):
change, um, someone else may have taken
that journey and have
experienced something completely
different and can help guide
me a little bit better. So I am
very vocal when there's change to be
made. I'm going to be very
vocal here, Michael and say,
we're going to change to our next segment
where we take the change
that we're talking about and
insert to action and the decisions we
(01:40:48):
make. And with that, we're
going to get into spark or burn.
Hey, alchemists, if you're still
listening to the show
from the bottom of my heart,
thank you for sticking around right
before we get into our
final elemental segment here,
our fire segment, take a minute and leave
a review on apple. If
you're enjoying the show,
give us a five star rating on Spotify.
When you give those ratings,
it improves the reach of the
(01:41:08):
show. And I get to achieve my goal of
impact. I want more people
to listen. I want more people
to be engaged because I want to impact
the lives of others for the better. So
I'd really appreciate
it if you left that review or rating. In
(01:41:30):
spark or burn, we either
tackle the big decisions that
sparked success or burn some lessons into
our memory. And to kick
off this segment, Michael,
our last game, these are decisions, big
decisions that you have to live with.
This is final answer.
It's a would you rather with no
explanations. Are you ready to go? Okay,
let's do it. Would you
rather take a risky opportunity or wait
(01:41:53):
for the perfect one? Wait
for the perfect one. Would you
rather be respected or liked? Respected.
Would you rather be known
for kindness or consistency?
Kindness. Would you rather delegate
something important or
do it late to yourself?
(01:42:15):
Do it late myself. Would you rather own a
bad decision or try to explain it away?
Own a bad decision. Would you rather lose
momentum or lose control?
Oh, momentum. Would you rather rebuild
from scratch or fix what's broken?
Fix what's broken. Would you rather work
(01:42:35):
with high talent or
high trust? High trust.
Would you rather get 1% better every day
or 100% right once a year?
1% better. Would you rather take the
credit or give it away?
Give it away. And there we go with our
final answers. Would you
(01:42:55):
rather, I want to jump back
to one of the ones that we talked about,
which is, would you rather have high
talent or high trust?
And the interesting about that is I do
believe there's a study out
there on the Navy SEALs and
how they recruit. And they recruit people
that they can trust over
the skill because they can
train the skill, but you can't train the
trust. And so I love that
(01:43:16):
you picked, I love that you
pick the trust on that one. It is super,
super important. And with
that, I want to ask, what is
the hardest decision you've ever had to
make in your role either now
or just as a leader in general?
Hardest decision that I ever had to make
was 10 years ago this
(01:43:37):
August, so next month,
and deciding to move from Northern
Ontario, where I'm from, born and raised,
to take this position
as a one-year contract in British
Columbia. I'd never been here
in my life. Outside of school,
I had never lived outside of my hometown
in North Bay, shout out North Bay. And
(01:44:01):
the hardest decision was, am I going to
leave the only life I
knew, my friends, my family,
my parents, my brother, everything, and
take this job? Because I
wanted to be an educator,
and I wanted to have a career. And it was
(01:44:23):
absolutely terrifying,
coming out here and having to establish
myself and get started.
And it was, you know, it didn't hit me
until I realized I can't
drive home on weekends.
You're just here. And the idea that life
will never be the same,
that was difficult to adjust to. But once
(01:44:50):
I got into my job, and
once I developed some
fantastic friends and a wonderful
community, and knowing
full well that my family was
still there, and I could still call them,
and I know how to find them,
you realize that it was the right choice.
(01:45:13):
And there was a quote, I
can't remember who said it,
but they say change and those hard
decisions, change is often terrifying.
But it usually turns
out to be the best thing that ever
happened to you. And, you know, moving
that into maybe a second
(01:45:33):
quote, I think this one Dumbledore said,
so there's my golden
snitch there too, is the hardest
decisions and the right decisions are
usually the same thing. And
so making the most difficult
decision to literally uproot my life for
(01:45:54):
something that could possibly be better,
turned out to indeed
be the right decision. And 10 years
later, I have a very wonderful life. And
I'm fortunate enough to
now be on a podcast with a wonderful
colleague. Would you move again? The
opportunity presented
itself. I always say this 10 years ago,
(01:46:15):
if you told me that I was
moving here out to BC, I would
have said you were crazy. Anything's
possible, right? You never know what life can hold. Never
know what life can hold. Never know. I
like that you're not
shutting the door on it fully. Now,
earlier, we talked a lot about being
vulnerable and that
relationships and the collaborative
(01:46:35):
mindset and how you approach those
conversations. How do you
separate emotion from logic?
Yeah. Wow, that's a great question.
I often say take yourself out of the
situation. So when we
place ourselves in a situation,
(01:46:57):
we place our thoughts, our feelings, our
concerns, and our emotions. And so that
often can drive some
decisions. In many cases, it can drive
irrational decisions
because in many cases, emotion is
irrational decisions. So what I often say
is if ever there's a
(01:47:17):
situation that you have to
make a high level decision on something
and maybe it's very emotionally driven,
personally or professionally, take
yourself out of it. Because
once you take yourself out of it,
you look at it for what it is rather than
what you want it to be. So
you look at, this is a long
(01:47:41):
time ago, I was having a conversation
with a friend who literally
had just broken up with his
girlfriend at the time. And he said, "I
don't know if I've made the
right choice. I don't know if I
made the right choice." And I said,
"Well, what did you like about it?" He's
like, "Oh, we connected.
Like we connected so much." And I went,
"Okay, I want you to take
yourself out of this for a second.
Did you communicate?" "No." "Compromise?"
(01:48:04):
"Sometimes." "Did you support each
other?" "Eh, maybe."
And I went, "Well then, logically, was it
a great relationship?" He
goes, "Yeah, probably not."
And so my best advice to managing
emotions and logic and
separating the two is literally remove
yourself and see it for what it is rather
(01:48:25):
than what you want it to
be. So follow up to that.
Removing yourself. How do you still make
sure your values show
up in your decision?
Well, looking at logic, I think logic is
often built on your
(01:48:45):
values to a certain degree.
Here's what something is based on how
appropriate it is for the situation,
based on if it's a societal context, a
cultural context, a business context,
a relationship context. Your values will
(01:49:08):
always inject themselves into your logic.
Your logic may not be my logic, and
they're always built on our
conditioning to our values,
I think. There's going to be a lot of
people that disagree with that because
logic is very black and
white if you look at it from a philosophy
(01:49:28):
perspective. But I
truly believe that how we
logically build the world starts with the
foundation of where our
values lie. So I think
they're interconnected. And I don't think
that that's emotionally driven.
Michael, how can our listeners get a hold
of you, get in touch
with you if they want to
(01:49:49):
learn more or hear what you're all about?
Yeah, I am on Instagram.
It's micsad with two a's,
s-a-a-d, just like the emotion. You can
find me there, shoot me a
dm, ask me any questions you'd
like. I'm always happy to have a
conversation. Now, Michael, one of the
(01:50:09):
things that we are shifting
away from here is I used to do listener
questions where people
could write in a question and we
would talk about them on the show and
give our best answer. What
I've shifted to is the person
that I previously interviewed is going to
provide a question for my
next guest, not knowing who they
are and what they're bringing to the
table to answer. And so
between the time of our,
(01:50:33):
we're going to call it the best recording
ever that's ever been
done, to the recording that's
happened right now, I did have an
interview in between and they kicked off
the show for me. This
came from a school principal in Ontario,
Michelle Sigmund, and the
question that she's left behind
is what is unique to you? Unique to me,
(01:50:53):
like as a person or in general? That's
the question she left
behind. That's a great question. What is
unique to me? I love seeing
the world in an absurd way.
And I'll give a little bit of context to
that. I've always enjoyed
(01:51:16):
the grandiose. I've always
enjoyed the theatrics, the dramatics, the
gravitas of things. And I
think when you look at the world
in a big way and you look at the world in
an obscure way and as I
say, in an absurd way,
you get to see different things. So
(01:51:38):
rather than going with the
conventional advice perspective,
piece of entertainment, find the things
that are different.
Find the things that are
are weird and absurd because you're going
to extract something
very special from it.
And so if I'm sitting and talking to
(01:51:58):
students, some of the
advice that I give them is,
you know, it's off the beaten path. It
might be more direct. It might be
something they haven't
heard before. If I go into a classroom, I
may do an exercise that
is completely different,
is completely new, is completely out
there. And I think that it's
(01:52:21):
so much fun. And I think that it
provides people with such a different and
unique experience because
it's not the cookie cutter
approach. It's not the cookie cutter
method. So what is the
unique thing? Find the absurd,
find the out there thing because you're
(01:52:44):
going to learn something
so unique and so original,
and you're going to see the world so
different. I love that answer. And
different from listener
questions. I'm not going to jump in and
give my answer to the
questions, but I enjoy hearing the
response to it. And Michael, not knowing
who I'm interviewing
next, when that interview is
happening, what we might talk about, what
(01:53:06):
credentials they
bring. What question do you
want to leave the next guest? If money or
success was not an option
or not an option, if money or
success was not an issue, what would you
do in the question? Now,
before we fully wrap up the show
here, Michael, what is one last message,
one last thought that you
want to leave with the audience?
(01:53:27):
What should they be taking away? Show up
as yourself. If you're
concerned about things,
be concerned. If you're excited about
things, be excited. Just
be, be as honest as possible,
because people are going to love that
about you. We are so concerned. We have
(01:53:49):
that inner critic in
our head that says, "Don't do this. Act
this way. Do this. Be
this person. Be yourself."
And you will be amazed at the remarkable
things that you can
accomplish. And you will be amazed
at the people that gravitate towards you
when you just exist rather
(01:54:11):
than adopting a persona or a
limiting yourself based on what you think
it should be versus what it is.
Michael, I, from the bottom of my heart,
want to say thank you to
you as well. I know we did a
first trial that, what a great
conversation. And I'm so thankful you
enjoyed it. But to turn around
(01:54:34):
and say, "Let's do this again and let's
get it done again right
away," because we just love the
connection. I am so appreciative of the
wisdom you're willing to
share and able to share. And
I feel like from this conversation, we've
gone a whole other level
from even the first one
that I wish I could just put the two
together now and have this big two-hour
episode. But here we
are, but seriously and sincerely, thank
(01:54:55):
you so much for joining me
again for this connection.
Yeah. Thank you, Tyler. Thank you for
having me. As I said last
time, this was so much fun.
And I was so happy to do it again because
I had a blast and you did
such a great job on here. And
it was such a great conversation. So
thank you as well. Thanks for sticking
(01:55:17):
around to the end of
the show. If you have feedback, a
suggestion, or just want to start a
conversation, fire off an
email to Tyler at elementaleducator.com.
I actually read them. And if
this episode sparks something,
leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It
helps more leaders find
the show. And don't forget to
subscribe on YouTube, where I put out
(01:55:38):
additional content. I'll see you next
time. Same time, same place.
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