July 1, 2024 • 37 mins
Dean Newlund is the founder and CEO of Mission Facilitators International, a boutique training and development firm based out of Phoenix, Arizona, with the sole purpose of helping organizations become more connected to their purpose and their people.
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Welcome to another edition of CEOs youshould know Phoenix. I'm your host,
joe Yaylor. Please this week tobe joined by the CEO of Mission Facilitators
International, Dean Neulan, joins theprogram. Dean, good to see you.
How are you. I'm fantastic,it's great to be here. You
are someone who is the CEO ofyour own company, who specializes in working
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with and enhancing the work of CEOsand other companies. Correct, exactly.
I mean we do other things.We do a lot of team building and
large scale culture change work. Butwhere my sweet spot is around working with
the top person in a company,i e. The CEO. I have
other people that do other things,but that seems to be the spot that
I keep gravitating toward. And Ithink it's because that's where a lot of
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work gets done, a lot ofwork gets cascaded out from the top person,
and so I find that to bea fascinating place. And because I
like to see things happen, Iwant to get a result. So let's
start with the top person and thenwe can cascade from there. So many
of culture performance everything starts at thetop, right, it really does.
And I wish I could say itwas not that way, but it really
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does. I think that CEOs sometimeshave this inability to truly understand just how
much they're being watched and observed bytheir people. So their energy, their
decisions, what they're wearing, howthey're behaving gets noticed far more than what
they realize, and they set thetone, They set the culture much more
than I think that they give creditto. So, yeah, the CEO
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is in fact, very very importantin the whole hub of what happens in
a company. Well, it soundslike, and we'll get into your background
here in a moment. I've gotthree kids, and my wife's always telling
me. Kids pick up on somany different things that you have no idea
that they're picking up on. It'sa great analogy, you know. And
when the parents are fighting, thekids start fighting. You know. It's
the same thing with organizations, whenthe CEO is not getting along well with
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his or her COO or finance manager, what have you, or the elt
you. I think it's in closeddoors and nobody can see. No,
they all pick up on it,they can sense it. And I think
it's really important to be able toset your tone for the day as a
CEO and really get intentional about howyou're going to show up. It's game
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time. You talk about your sportsbackground. As soon as you hit that
court, everybody's watching you, right, And so I think it's the same
way with the CEOs. Well,before we dive into that world and some
of your values and accomplishments, let'stalk about the background that got to this
point where you're the CEO of yourown company working with CEOs. How did
you find that path, what ledyou on that path, and ultimately what
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were some of the influences that ledyou down that path. Well, it's
certainly taken thirty one years to getto where we are right now. We
started fairly in a small organization andit kind of kept growing and growing and
growing. And I don't know whetherI said my mind is set on the
CEO. I think my mind wasalways set on vision and execution of that
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vision. And so where does thatnormally reside, And that's usually at the
CEO chair, And so I alwayswanted to get to that particular chair to
sort of help that particular person setthat vision, to be able to figure
out ways in which to build theirculture and to execute on those plans.
And so it was just a naturalprogression that happened over time. And it's
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not to say that I don't dealwith the other types of organizations or other
levels in organizations. Is that theCEO is really the perch by which so
many things happen. So I thinkthat to answer your question, I'm always
seeking impact. I'm always seeking tocreate a meaningful experience and always trying to
create a better world. And let'sgo to the people who have the ability
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to make that happen quickly. CEOsare often those people we were talking a
little bit about before we started recordingabout how even in sports, there's been
an increased emphasis on coaching the mentalside of the game from organizations. Absolutely
certainly true on a human to humanlevel. So many people seek to better
themselves through therapy or through finding alife coach that can help them. Business
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is the same. I know withyour business you have a diverse background from
a lot of people that work atyour company. How does that help sort
of build the whole picture for CEOswell, I think that we approach our
work with companies from a team perspective. I mean, if you look at
Mayo Clinic, I think their claimto fame as an organization is there,
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it's a at least their model forcare is around being able to create a
team of people to be able tohelp the address a particular ailment for a
patient to the best that we possiblycan. In our company, we're not
going to be in isolation with thisperson only deals with this particular company,
and this personally deals with this particularperson. We're always trying to collaborate with
each other. It's a team sportfor providing the effective coaching for CEOs.
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It's it's not just me. I'malways asking for feedback. What would you
guys think about what I'm what I'mnoticing? And that really helps because I
have blind spots like everybody else does, you know, And so I think
that the team that I have hasbeen extremely helpful in my ability to provide
better service to the CEOs because theytell me, hey, you know what,
that doesn't make sense, or youshould you should try something else.
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I'm always calling up people. I'malways trying to get somebody else and quite
frankly, you're you have this greatpodcast. I learn a ton from my
podcast. I don't know. Ithink that other people get a lot of
value out of it, but Iprobably get as much or as everybody else
does. I pick up on stuffall the time that directly relates to what
I can do for the CEOs,and whether it's a book, whether it's
an idea, whether it's a tip, whether it's an experience, a case
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study, all that stuff gets usedall the time with the people that we
deal with. So it's that broadnetwork not only within my team, but
across the country and across the planet. By having a podcast has really helped
me provide the right kind of solutionfor a CEO. And I think the
one other quick thing I'll say isthat context is everything. You know.
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I don't have a cookie cutter approachfor any particular CEO. I want to
know what's going on in their life. I want to understand what the the
business situation is, the marketing,their competition, the dynamics of their team,
and create solutions around that versus Hey, you know what, this is
the way you should do it anddo it my way or forget about it.
It's all about context in my mind, and then you create solutions and
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approaches based on that. I thinkthat's so critical to the process is it's
not a fixer. You're not comingin as a like pulp fiction where the
fixer comes in and cleans up everythingand tells them exactly what to do.
It's a much more holistic and sortof partnership right that you're embarking on with
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these companies and CEOs. Absolutely,it's like a great wedding is a well
planned wedding. A great team buildingactivity is a well planned activity. A
great meeting as well planned. Itdoesn't just happen. You have to.
There's at least one hour of planningto every hour of a meeting that I
think happens. It is a generalrule. So we're always looking to get
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to root cause I'm always asking thetough questions. My job is to challenge
the CEO to the point where maybethey even fire me. But I want
to be able to be the giverof truth and help them find their own
truth and their own vision to beable to execute against that. So absolutely,
it is not about being a cookiecutter approach, because what one CEO
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is dealing with is going to bevery different than another one, so we
have to design around those differences.Do you find some time a challenge either
from people you're working with or outsideperception. Is there a belief that if
you don't have a specific plan andwe have to do XYZ, that that's
the only way to fix a problem, or do you find that people are
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open minded to having conversations that eventuallyfigure out what those things are. I
think today, given the speed atwhich change is happening, the mindset has
certainly become one where we have tobe adaptive, we have to be agile.
And there was somebody that wants toldme that the speed of change right
now is the slowest it's going tobe for the rest of our lives.
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Think about what's going on with AI. I was hearing that the CEO of
Google was saying that AI could beas transformative as fire as electricity. When
you hear these sort of incredible statementsabout the change that's going on right now,
change then begets agility. We haveto be able to pivot a lot.
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Sometimes within one day we might pivottwelve times based on what's going on
in the market with our team andso forth. So I don't think people
are now looking for a cookie cutterapproach. I think they're looking for a
process to be able to navigate throughall of this change, and the backdrop
of all this, I have tosay, I think is a tremendous amount
of fear. And one guy thatI was on my podcast once told it
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to me in a rather blunt andstark way. He said, we are
still feeding people a lot of fearporn. And I think that there's something
very disruptive about that statement, buthe was right that we are still so
cautious about what we need to doand how we do it. And now
we have our cell phones and wehave TikTok. We are literally training our
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brains to be distracted and to losefocus and to be anxious. And now
we have a whole populace of kidsthat are coming into the workplace who expect
that and understand that, and whoare addicted to that. And how do
you lead a workforce where you've gotpeople who are in their sixties and seventies
and some of who are in theirtwenties and thirties, and they're all have
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a different approach to work, andthey all see work with different expectations.
How do we lead all of that? Going back to your point, we
have to be agile and we haveto customize the solution because one size does
not fit all. So let's talkabout that focus issue that you bring up,
because I think it's a wildly interestingone that all of us encounter in
our day to day lives. Whenyou talk about people with shorter intention spans,
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TikTok, I think there's a stereotypethat it's, oh, that's just
the younger generation, that's just kidsthat are getting brought up on screens.
Have you found that at the CEOlevel an inability to focus has also been
an issue that you have to addressat the very top of organizations. Absolutely,
that is such what's so ironic.On one hand, we need to
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be agile, to our point recently, on the other hand, we need
to be focused. So they almostseem to be in competition for one another,
but they really aren't. We canhave a focus that is a consistent
vision, a consistent strategy for wherewe want to head it as an organization
or as a team, but thesame time be agile knowing that the world
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is going to be changing today andtomorrow and the next day, so we
may not necessarily change the overall directionof where we're heading, but how we
get there might cause us to zigand zag in ways that we never anticipated.
I was always been thinking about thefact. To your point around focus,
there was some research by Harvard BusinessReview many years ago that said that
the number one skill for CEOs wasself awareness. I really think that was
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app right, because you can't changeyour team or your organization, and yet
unless you use yourself as the repositoryfor learning, like, okay, what
did I learn about that last situation, that last meeting, that last board
meeting. That self awareness tool isthe source of so much learning. There's
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a great author who kind of coinedthe phrase about psychological safety, and she
wrote an article about why hospitals don'tlearn from failures, which was really a
metaphor for why don't all organizations learnfrom failures because we don't set them up
for learning, We set them upfor execution. So, going back to
the point about focus, I thinkactually the number one skill right now is
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not self awareness. I think it'sfocus. Because you can't be self aware
unless you are focused. So let'sgo up stream of focus. Excuse me,
let's go up stream of self awareness. And I think what you'll find
at the mouth of that stream isfocus. We have to slow down,
pay it attention, to what's goingon. We have to be brutally honest
with ourselves. We have to createcultures where there's the ability for us to
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really be truthful and honest and providefeedback a lot of times, and through
that trust starts to increase, collaborationstarts to increase. We have more innovative
ideas that come from that. Butwe have to create that foundation of trust,
which creates that foundation of all theother things I just talked about,
And all of that requires focus andself awareness. If we're if people are
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listening right now, and maybe they'renot the CEO of a company, but
everybody is effectively the CEO of theirown life, right decision making. Yeah,
when you're talking about focus, you'retalking about both literal focus and figurative.
Right, You're talking about the literallike, hey, sometimes you do
need to put the phone or thescreen down and focus on things. And
you're also talking about generally you haveto have a focus so you know what
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goal you're trying to accomplish. Absolutely, and how how how how much has
that changed in the in the sortof literal focus for people who are on
their phone or are on a screen, and how much of a challenge is
that to get people to change thosehabits, Well, it's an addiction.
It literally is an addiction. Wehave a neurological desire to continue to look
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at our phones and to see howmany likes we have on Facebook, et
cetera, et cetera. It literallyhas to be almost like an intervention to
say I'm going to create time forthese kind of things in my life.
One of the most common things Itell CEOs is that they need to schedule
time for them for themselves and theyhave to put it on their calendar.
If it's not calendar, it's nota commitment. So if you need time
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for your own self development, foryour own strategic thinking about your career,
about your team that isn't about thedoing, but more about the strategic thinking
about that, create the focus andput that focus into a calendar meeting and
say I'm not going to let anybodyget into that meeting and let's you know,
the building is falling down, right, So yeah, I think it's
an absolute thing is you have tobe able to create that sort of decision
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that overrides the addiction of all ofthese distractions. Like there was one study
we found I forget maybe Fast Companymay of you know, shared it,
but essentially it was this that ifyou take a meeting, which we spend
a lot of time in meeting CEOs, right, this is a more where
we live in our meetings, Right, that's what we spend most of our
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time. If you find out thatpeople are on their phones or even have
their phones turned off, but theycan see it in the peripheral their eyes,
they are actually less empathetic and lessintelligent than those who actually cannot see
their actual phone. So they dida study with students and they had equal
intelligence within these two different groups ofstudents, and they all knew the material
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equally well. One set of studentscould see their turned off phone, the
other set of students could not.It was away. The students who could
not see their phones got a fullletter grade higher than those that didn't.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, isan example of the benefit of focus.
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When you said, if it's notscheduled, it's not a commitment, really
resonating with me, because in ourhousehold, my wife and I had to
literally plan every Sunday to sit downand talk about meals for the week,
so that by Tuesday we weren't like, oh did you come up and then
we're just oh, let's just reheat. Like you have to schedule things you
do, eat, even date nights, you know, with your partners,
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with your kids, you know,your vacations. My wife and I finally,
to her credit, she said,we are taking a three week vacation
at least once a year, andif we don't do that, you know
we're going to be the business willbe in trouble. She was right.
So now it's a focus. Imean, you have to, you know,
schedule the time to be unscheduled.Yeah, you have to schedule the
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time to not have to do anything. And I know it's almost empathetic and
it makes no sense, but that'swhy vacations are so important. We give
back vacations to our companies all thetime, but we should be taking those
vacations and sitting on those beaches andlooking at our toes as it gets lapped
up by the sand and just letour brains go because all sorts of stuff
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comes that way. We have aplace we actually kind of bifurcate our time
between Arizona and up in Bend,Oregon. I have a particular walk that
I take or a run that Ido around this particular river, and I
come back every time with ideas aboutsomething because I'm out of nature, I'm
seeing the trees go through, youknow, what their motions. I can
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hear the you know, the babblingbrook of the river, and by the
time of about two or three milesin, like, oh my god,
I've got ten more ideas that allgo back to helping my clients. So
if I do that as a CEOof my little company, would that not
be something that a company of saytwo billion also find benefit by able to
take time away. One of thebiggest problems I think that ceo some of
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them do, not all of themdo, is that their their teams become
their family, which I believe me, I think is absolutely right. But
I think that CEOs also have tohave family outside of their work, friends,
people they care for, people thatcan pull them out of the the
the mindset of work. You know, take vacations. That is business time
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as it is as is, itis business personal time. I need I
need to pick your brain on that, because when I run, all I
hear is, hey, you shouldprobably stop now, That's the little mental
voice in my brain is your brainis saying that. Yeah, my brain
is like, I think you've gonefar enough. Maybe you just walk from
now on. So I need tofigure out a way to get the brain
on the good ideas part, becauseI need to train my brain that way,
right right, No, absolutely,you know, And you have to
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disrupt the pattern of your distracted mind. And it's addiction for immediate gratification and
create that space. If it's meditation, if it's yoga, if it's like
running. Your obviously a runer.I can tell by the way you dress,
in the way your body is setup. You know, whatever your
discipline is, but find a disciplineCEOs out there that bring you back home
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to yourself. You also mentioned somethingthat I wanted to dive a little deeper
into, which is about the truthand CEOs being comfortable with speaking the truth.
If I were to guess from ageneral public perspective, the most negative
stereotype that exists in the general publicis probably this is the person that has
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learned how to deceive the most andthat's how they get to their position.
That might be the most negative versionof the general public perception for you and
your experience. Not only is theCEO. But somebody who works with so
many successful CEOs, how important isthe truth in earning the trust of your
workforce and earning the trust of thepublic that you may or may not need
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to be successful. Well, it'sone of those dichonomies, you know.
CEOs are human beings who have strengths, and those strengths sometimes become their weaknesses.
There's there's always a you know,an opposite to these things, and
so telling the truth is the sameway. You know, there are sometimes
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when you would say, well,I can't tell the truth because my HR
department has told me that we havea legal issue at hand if we really
talk about why we let that persongo. So therefore I'm going to have
to say something that is maybe nota lie, but it's it's not the
full story. And we all knowso and so left because they were let
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go, but we have a narrative. That is not that we have a
narrative, but well, they founda better position. You know, they're
moving on to greener pastures, andwe wish them well and we have the
utual decision, but we all knowthat they got their ass kicked. Right,
we understand what happened. Sometimes andI understand the CEOs are bound by
legal and compliance issues that they haveto be very careful with, and they've
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got their HR people whispering in theirear. Be careful. You can't say
that their legal people say the samething well in the areas that are not
so sensitive when it comes to legalissues. I don't want the CEO out
there to think that that means thatthey have to be careful about what they
say all the time. It's likeagain, sometimes yes, we have to
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be careful what we say. Othertimes we should be just telling the truth.
And CEOs need to be vulnerable.They need to share the fact that
they're human. We need to bringhumanity back into the role of the CEO.
I interviewed a guy on my podcastlead Ovation. His name is Gerardo
Segat and if I got it pronouncecorrectly, wonderful gentleman. And he's going
to the World Economic Forum this nextround and he's doing a whole exercise around
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helping these world leaders get vulnerable,get human again. And I said,
well, why are you doing that? Why are they bringing you into this?
He goes, because they realize thatthe decisions they make will be better
if they start from a position ofheart, not of fear, not of
control, not of narrative, butwhere they're real, the human being can
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come into those conversations. So Ithink that yes, CEOs need to be
careful about what they say, andthey have to have good counsel by their
legal people for all understandable reasons.But the rest of the time, be
a human being. Tell the truth. And that means guts. Because you're
going to have to say things topeople that they don't want to hear.
You need to create the trust.So for that to happen, you need
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to be able to accept feedback fromother people that you may not want to
hear. One of the biggest issuesthat CEOs have is they don't really know
what's going on. They have afiltered, repackaged set of information that by
the time it gets to his orher office, it's not the same thing
when it started on the shop floorfor example. We need to be able
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to have the CEOs get unvarnished truth, and they need to get out of
their ivory towers and go walk withtheir people and hang out with them and
listen and ask questions and create thattrust for people can know that they can
say the truth. Creating a cultureof truth creates a culture of engagement,
of innovation and longevity. I alwaysthink like, why do we have I'm
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sorry going off on a tangentary.Why do we have this perspective that we
understand that because of the tight talentmarket, that we're only going to have
a person on board for three tofive years. I understand statistics say that,
But what if you were to havethe paradigm as a CEO and a
ELT that we are going to createa culture that is going to want for
people to stay here for the restof their careers. What if we create
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lifers? Now? Is it possible? Probably not? Is it? Is
it realistic? Hell no? Butbig, hairy, audacious visions and goals
create some amazing results. But whatif you were to create that perspective,
But we want to create a culturewhere people never leave? That's a whole
different, different world, right,world right? But we don't think that
way. It's interesting because when youwere talking about how truth and vulnerability and
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at the highest level world leaders,I was thinking about my experiences with different
CEOs that I've worked with or organizationsthat I've been a part of. To
me, the leaders that i've alwaysenjoyed working with. The most are those
that appear relatable to me, eventhough we're in completely different worlds and I
know their responsibilities are completely different frommine. When I find them relatable,
I find myself more likely to wantto give more. And what's more relatable
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than to be vulnerable as a human? Right? Right? So is there
a part of this that is importantof not appearing to be relatable or presenting?
But how important is relatability from aCEO to the rest of their employees?
One hundred percent important? I thinkyou just relatable. Isn't that you
have to wear the same clothes andhave the same watch, and drive the
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same car, or go to thesame high school? Those things are they
happen or they don't happen. Butrelatable from the human being perspective, you
know, relatable in that you listento me, you listen in you care.
Everybody is walking around with sort ofthis invalue, with this sort of
invisible placard that's in front of theirchest that says, would you just listen
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to me? Will you just getme? You know, we are these
sentient beings and this skin and thisbones, all wanting to connect with other
individuals and to be acknowledged, whetherit's acknowledgment of it, a success or
a failure, whatever it is.We just want to matter. Everybody wants
to matter. And if the CEOhas a perspective of I care, and
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I truly care. I'm not justmaking this stuff up because some coach told
me to, but I really care, and I'm going to listen and I'm
going to acknowledge what I see infront of me. With this human being,
all of a sudden, you becomerelatable, whether you're you know,
whatever you're wearing, however much moneyyou make, all the other things that
might typically separate somebody from somebody else, get back to the core of humanity,
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which is people just want to beheard and listen into and connected on
a deep level. Dean Newlan isthe CEO of Mission Facilitators International, joining
us here on CEOs. You shouldknow, Phoenix a couple questions before we
wrap things up here. And Icould talk to you all day because you
were talking about your podcast how muchyou take away and I'm like, I
could sit here and learn stuff fromme all day long. But there are
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two things that I wanted to detacklebefore we let our listeners know how they
could find out more information. Oneis, have you found that over the
last few years, and we coulddefine that as decade, half decade,
whatever is most appropriate in the contexthere. Have people become more open minded
to having this sort of coaching andconsulting. Have companies become more open minded
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to talking about things and to kindof reaching out and getting your coaching and
consulting, or do you still findthat there's sometimes a stigma that is attached
that, well, it's got tobe a problem if I'm reaching out to
somebody. It's a great question.I sort of have grown up in the
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evolution of coaching. I started in, you know, nineteen ninety two.
I remember being in a radio showjust like this, and the person who
was sitting in the chair like toyou would say to me, so,
Dean, I understand that you're partof a that you do coaching, So
what professional sports teams do you coach? And I went, oh, geez,
I've got to have to sort ofrefocus this person's interview towards business coaching
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because back then it was brand new, nobody knew about it. It was
still a sports metaphor. It becameI could give you the whole history of
it. It's really quite fascinating.But it grew and grew to the point
where now you have coaching being taughtat Harvard and Stanford. It is deeply
embedded in our lexicon of phrases,in our words, and our processes.
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So I think ninety nine percent ofthe time people do not look at coaching
as a bad thing. Certainly,you do bring in coaches sometimes to be
the last ditch effort before we letsomebody go, But most of the time
coaching is seen as a positive benefitto a person's career development and an indication
that the company has invested in them. I've had people say why am I,
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Why are you wanting me to coachthis person? And they says,
because we do think this person isa high flyer. But we also can't
pay them anymore, and this isanother benefit. So coaching, I think
has gotten to that point where nowit is part of the toolkit that that
CEOs use. Now, on theother side of that, I want to
say something that we had our ownmarketing company do some research on coaching,
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and again just one data point,but they said, in some cases coaching
has gotten a little bit of ablack eye. You know, it's sort
of had a honeymoon and it gotto be really mature, and now some
people are kind of looking at itwith some concerns. And the concerns are
this that coaching sometimes has been tellingthe other person or the company what they
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already you know, and then youknow, walking away and letting them deal
with the you know, the fallout. Whereby we've always seen coaching is almost
a conglomerate of training and of consulting. So our process is, yes,
we're going to find out who youare as an organization. We're going to
create a customized approach to help youget to where you want to go,
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and if you want us to,we are going to help you get to
the finish line. So our littletagline is we're going to help you develop
your people, clarify your visions,and execute on your plans. When we
found out that that was something thatwas a unique kind of approach for a
lot of coaching practices out there,we went, good, we're heading in
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the right direction. So we kindof are, yes, we're coaches,
but you know, wink wink,we're probably as much a consulting company a
trading company. Facilitation company as anythingelse, and all of them come together
based on the circumstance that is needed. So, in answer to your question,
long answer, yes, coaching isnow I think a fully acceptable,
(29:07):
accepted practice for almost any organization andis seen as a benefit. How many
CEOs have you encountered that reach thehighest level of their of their respective business,
that aren't totally ready for that job, that aren't totally ready for the
mental demand of that job, thataren't totally ready for the you know,
decision making of that job, Andhow much are you sort of able to
(29:27):
help prepare them for what they're aboutto encounter. I think most people are
not prepared for being a CEO.I mean, it's it's the biggest position
in a company, and and soit's a it's a it's an on the
job learning opportunity. And that's whyI think coaching can help you in your
onboarding get to I don't know whereto go to and now I'm fully capable
(29:51):
of running this organization. So Ithink that that coaching is a good way
to help people get to that point. But I don't think anybody truly knows
how to be a CEO. Youcan read all the books you can understand.
You can go to TED talks,and you can go to conferences,
but you know, it's a verydifferent experience when you are the top person.
(30:11):
It is unlike it's unlike being adepartment head. It's unlike being an
individual contributor, and you're dealing withcreating a team at the top. That's
the most difficult to create. Agreat author out there by the name of
John Kotzenbach who wrote The Wisdom ofTeams and Teams at the Top. He's
from Harvard, basically said the hardestteam to create is the CEO c suite
(30:33):
level team. And the reason becauseis all of these particular people who are
on the c suite have been trainedto be leaders. They have not been
trained to be team players, orthey're out of practice. And so now
you get these mostly type A peoplewho are all in their room with maybe
one CEO who's leading the charge andgetting them to be all on the same
(30:53):
page and make that team their firstteam, not a group of people are
just coming in porting off on what'sgoing on with marketing and manufacturing. But
now that's our first team, becausethat's the core of everything that's going to
come forth from here from a strategyperspective, a culture perspective. Getting that
right and making that happen is notonly the thing that I find the most
(31:15):
rewarding, but it's also really difficult. Sometimes following can be a form of
leadership. Absolutely it has to be. You have to be able to going
back to agility. I'm a teamplayer now, but when I leave this
room now, I'm a leader.So you have to go back and forth.
And it's fascinating to be able towork with the c suite level to
be able to juggle both of thosevery important roles. So last question,
(31:40):
and I think I saved the juiciestfor the last. Oh goodie, all
of this work. CEO can havea c suite team. That's awesome.
They can have all this research,they can have all this analytic data driven,
they can have all the information.But they might be the problem.
It might be they are the onesthat is holding the company back or preventing
(32:06):
success. How do you deal withthat? How do you recognize that?
How do you deal with that?Meaning me, as the coach consultant for
the CEO, you have to providethem that very honest feedback in set of
context that tells the CEO, Listen, there is strengths. There are strengths
that you have that we never wantto lose and we want you to continue
(32:28):
to build and get better at.But just as much as you have strengths,
like any other human being on theplanet, you have derailers, you
have setbacks, you have saboteurs thatare just part of the human psyche.
And so it's important for the CEOto understand that what makes them great and
sometimes what makes them bad. Soit's important to know when are you transitioning
(32:51):
from this is a skill, thisis its strength that I have, and
now it's becoming the very problem thatis holding our team back or our company
back. And I think the telltalesign, quite frankly, is being able
to teach the CEO enough self awareness. Going back to that theme before about
when stress is beginning to get thebetter of them. Stress management is different
(33:14):
for each person, but at somepoint, stress can be the point that
tips that strength into a derailer ora saboteur, or a setback or a
blind spot. And if you cantry to get the CEO to notice when
they are actually entering into that transition, then they can make a choice to
override it, even though there isan almost an addictive tendency to keep going
(33:38):
towards what we were always doing becauseit's my strength and I've always been doing
it that way. But no,that's the time to stop, go for
a walk, you know, takea deep breath, get out of the
office, reframe the situation, callyour coach, call your husband, your
wife, something, but get youout of that stress induced focus that can
(34:01):
lead to a real problem. Andagain, CEOs are like anybody else.
We all have our strengths, weall have our weaknesses, we all have
our demons, We are all vulnerable, we all feel like you know,
you know, fakes and phonies everyonce in a while. That's part of
being human. But for the CEOto let people know that that's what's going
(34:23):
on and to have the awareness tobe able to stop that transition from a
strength to a weakness, that's agreat skill set for CEOs to have.
But yeah, CEOs can be theproblem. Sometimes the natural follow up is
how does that typically go over?When you bring that up to it to
CEO? You know, you mightget depending upon the person you're dealing with,
they might discount it. You know, they might continue to argue with
(34:45):
you. But then you have toargue back. You know, you have
to be able to go or youhave to provide them data. We do
a lot of three sixties in ourcompanies. Our company whereby it's not a
go online, you know, threeo'clock in the morning, fill out this
form. These are customized three sixtiesthat are live interviews over the phone that
take an hour. The questions arespecifically chosen for that person in their career,
(35:07):
in this particular state of the economy, all of the other things.
And that feedback is irrefutable because sometimesCEO say, well, that's just your
opinion. Well, no, it'snot just my opinion. I've got fourteen
to fifteen other people who are sayingthe same thing. And then sometimes that
creates enough leverage and credibility for themto go, okay, I need to
(35:28):
pay attention to this. Dee Newlandis the CEO of Mission Facilitators International.
I've really enjoyed the conversation likewise,obviously not just for my own personal but
also for people listening. How canwe hear more from you? Where can
the podcast? What can you tellus a website? Where can we get
more information about you and your company. Well, the company name is Mission
(35:51):
Facilitators, as you had mentioned.Thank you very much for the question.
We're MFI. Leadership dot com isour website. We have a podcast called
lead Ova, and that podcast isreally almost like what you're doing here,
but more focused on guests who havewritten books, who have read led companies,
who are the thought leaders in theindustry, about leadership, about team
(36:15):
development, about being able to navigateour way through this extremely dynamic time of
AI and the speed of change beingwhat it is. I mean, the
talent issues that we are now having, how do we know retain and keep
grid people, the humanity of leadership, all of those things we talk about
(36:35):
on this podcast. And I've justbeen extremely blessed to have some incredible guests
and we've got a ton more coming. So thank you for the question.
And that's how people can get atachma. Of course, LinkedIn is always
a great place to hang out andcommunicate with. Of course, if you're
CEO listing right now, those areall great ways to reach out and get
even more good stuff from Dean andhis team. Absolutely, Dean appreciate you,
(36:57):
Tom. Thank you very much forjoining us on CEOs you should know
Phoenix. Thank you, it's beena lot of fun until next time.
Thanks for listening to CEOs. Youshould Know Phoenix on your free iHeartRadio app
Welcome to another edition of CEOs youshould know Phoenix. I'm your host,
joe Yaylor. Please this week tobe joined by the CEO of Mission Facilitators
International, Dean Neulan, joins theprogram. Dean, good to see you.
How are you. I'm fantastic,it's great to be here. You
are someone who is the CEO ofyour own company, who specializes in working
(00:22):
with and enhancing the work of CEOsand other companies. Correct, exactly.
I mean we do other things.We do a lot of team building and
large scale culture change work. Butwhere my sweet spot is around working with
the top person in a company,i e. The CEO. I have
other people that do other things,but that seems to be the spot that
I keep gravitating toward. And Ithink it's because that's where a lot of
(00:46):
work gets done, a lot ofwork gets cascaded out from the top person,
and so I find that to bea fascinating place. And because I
like to see things happen, Iwant to get a result. So let's
start with the top person and thenwe can cascade from there. So many
of culture performance everything starts at thetop, right, it really does.
And I wish I could say itwas not that way, but it really
(01:07):
does. I think that CEOs sometimeshave this inability to truly understand just how
much they're being watched and observed bytheir people. So their energy, their
decisions, what they're wearing, howthey're behaving gets noticed far more than what
they realize, and they set thetone, They set the culture much more
than I think that they give creditto. So, yeah, the CEO
(01:29):
is in fact, very very importantin the whole hub of what happens in
a company. Well, it soundslike, and we'll get into your background
here in a moment. I've gotthree kids, and my wife's always telling
me. Kids pick up on somany different things that you have no idea
that they're picking up on. It'sa great analogy, you know. And
when the parents are fighting, thekids start fighting. You know. It's
the same thing with organizations, whenthe CEO is not getting along well with
(01:52):
his or her COO or finance manager, what have you, or the elt
you. I think it's in closeddoors and nobody can see. No,
they all pick up on it,they can sense it. And I think
it's really important to be able toset your tone for the day as a
CEO and really get intentional about howyou're going to show up. It's game
(02:13):
time. You talk about your sportsbackground. As soon as you hit that
court, everybody's watching you, right, And so I think it's the same
way with the CEOs. Well,before we dive into that world and some
of your values and accomplishments, let'stalk about the background that got to this
point where you're the CEO of yourown company working with CEOs. How did
you find that path, what ledyou on that path, and ultimately what
(02:38):
were some of the influences that ledyou down that path. Well, it's
certainly taken thirty one years to getto where we are right now. We
started fairly in a small organization andit kind of kept growing and growing and
growing. And I don't know whetherI said my mind is set on the
CEO. I think my mind wasalways set on vision and execution of that
(02:59):
vision. And so where does thatnormally reside, And that's usually at the
CEO chair, And so I alwayswanted to get to that particular chair to
sort of help that particular person setthat vision, to be able to figure
out ways in which to build theirculture and to execute on those plans.
And so it was just a naturalprogression that happened over time. And it's
(03:20):
not to say that I don't dealwith the other types of organizations or other
levels in organizations. Is that theCEO is really the perch by which so
many things happen. So I thinkthat to answer your question, I'm always
seeking impact. I'm always seeking tocreate a meaningful experience and always trying to
create a better world. And let'sgo to the people who have the ability
(03:40):
to make that happen quickly. CEOsare often those people we were talking a
little bit about before we started recordingabout how even in sports, there's been
an increased emphasis on coaching the mentalside of the game from organizations. Absolutely
certainly true on a human to humanlevel. So many people seek to better
themselves through therapy or through finding alife coach that can help them. Business
(04:01):
is the same. I know withyour business you have a diverse background from
a lot of people that work atyour company. How does that help sort
of build the whole picture for CEOswell, I think that we approach our
work with companies from a team perspective. I mean, if you look at
Mayo Clinic, I think their claimto fame as an organization is there,
(04:24):
it's a at least their model forcare is around being able to create a
team of people to be able tohelp the address a particular ailment for a
patient to the best that we possiblycan. In our company, we're not
going to be in isolation with thisperson only deals with this particular company,
and this personally deals with this particularperson. We're always trying to collaborate with
each other. It's a team sportfor providing the effective coaching for CEOs.
(04:46):
It's it's not just me. I'malways asking for feedback. What would you
guys think about what I'm what I'mnoticing? And that really helps because I
have blind spots like everybody else does, you know, And so I think
that the team that I have hasbeen extremely helpful in my ability to provide
better service to the CEOs because theytell me, hey, you know what,
that doesn't make sense, or youshould you should try something else.
(05:10):
I'm always calling up people. I'malways trying to get somebody else and quite
frankly, you're you have this greatpodcast. I learn a ton from my
podcast. I don't know. Ithink that other people get a lot of
value out of it, but Iprobably get as much or as everybody else
does. I pick up on stuffall the time that directly relates to what
I can do for the CEOs,and whether it's a book, whether it's
an idea, whether it's a tip, whether it's an experience, a case
(05:31):
study, all that stuff gets usedall the time with the people that we
deal with. So it's that broadnetwork not only within my team, but
across the country and across the planet. By having a podcast has really helped
me provide the right kind of solutionfor a CEO. And I think the
one other quick thing I'll say isthat context is everything. You know.
(05:54):
I don't have a cookie cutter approachfor any particular CEO. I want to
know what's going on in their life. I want to understand what the the
business situation is, the marketing,their competition, the dynamics of their team,
and create solutions around that versus Hey, you know what, this is
the way you should do it anddo it my way or forget about it.
It's all about context in my mind, and then you create solutions and
(06:16):
approaches based on that. I thinkthat's so critical to the process is it's
not a fixer. You're not comingin as a like pulp fiction where the
fixer comes in and cleans up everythingand tells them exactly what to do.
It's a much more holistic and sortof partnership right that you're embarking on with
(06:38):
these companies and CEOs. Absolutely,it's like a great wedding is a well
planned wedding. A great team buildingactivity is a well planned activity. A
great meeting as well planned. Itdoesn't just happen. You have to.
There's at least one hour of planningto every hour of a meeting that I
think happens. It is a generalrule. So we're always looking to get
(06:59):
to root cause I'm always asking thetough questions. My job is to challenge
the CEO to the point where maybethey even fire me. But I want
to be able to be the giverof truth and help them find their own
truth and their own vision to beable to execute against that. So absolutely,
it is not about being a cookiecutter approach, because what one CEO
(07:19):
is dealing with is going to bevery different than another one, so we
have to design around those differences.Do you find some time a challenge either
from people you're working with or outsideperception. Is there a belief that if
you don't have a specific plan andwe have to do XYZ, that that's
the only way to fix a problem, or do you find that people are
(07:40):
open minded to having conversations that eventuallyfigure out what those things are. I
think today, given the speed atwhich change is happening, the mindset has
certainly become one where we have tobe adaptive, we have to be agile.
And there was somebody that wants toldme that the speed of change right
now is the slowest it's going tobe for the rest of our lives.
(08:01):
Think about what's going on with AI. I was hearing that the CEO of
Google was saying that AI could beas transformative as fire as electricity. When
you hear these sort of incredible statementsabout the change that's going on right now,
change then begets agility. We haveto be able to pivot a lot.
(08:22):
Sometimes within one day we might pivottwelve times based on what's going on
in the market with our team andso forth. So I don't think people
are now looking for a cookie cutterapproach. I think they're looking for a
process to be able to navigate throughall of this change, and the backdrop
of all this, I have tosay, I think is a tremendous amount
of fear. And one guy thatI was on my podcast once told it
(08:45):
to me in a rather blunt andstark way. He said, we are
still feeding people a lot of fearporn. And I think that there's something
very disruptive about that statement, buthe was right that we are still so
cautious about what we need to doand how we do it. And now
we have our cell phones and wehave TikTok. We are literally training our
(09:07):
brains to be distracted and to losefocus and to be anxious. And now
we have a whole populace of kidsthat are coming into the workplace who expect
that and understand that, and whoare addicted to that. And how do
you lead a workforce where you've gotpeople who are in their sixties and seventies
and some of who are in theirtwenties and thirties, and they're all have
(09:28):
a different approach to work, andthey all see work with different expectations.
How do we lead all of that? Going back to your point, we
have to be agile and we haveto customize the solution because one size does
not fit all. So let's talkabout that focus issue that you bring up,
because I think it's a wildly interestingone that all of us encounter in
our day to day lives. Whenyou talk about people with shorter intention spans,
(09:50):
TikTok, I think there's a stereotypethat it's, oh, that's just
the younger generation, that's just kidsthat are getting brought up on screens.
Have you found that at the CEOlevel an inability to focus has also been
an issue that you have to addressat the very top of organizations. Absolutely,
that is such what's so ironic.On one hand, we need to
(10:13):
be agile, to our point recently, on the other hand, we need
to be focused. So they almostseem to be in competition for one another,
but they really aren't. We canhave a focus that is a consistent
vision, a consistent strategy for wherewe want to head it as an organization
or as a team, but thesame time be agile knowing that the world
(10:35):
is going to be changing today andtomorrow and the next day, so we
may not necessarily change the overall directionof where we're heading, but how we
get there might cause us to zigand zag in ways that we never anticipated.
I was always been thinking about thefact. To your point around focus,
there was some research by Harvard BusinessReview many years ago that said that
the number one skill for CEOs wasself awareness. I really think that was
(10:58):
app right, because you can't changeyour team or your organization, and yet
unless you use yourself as the repositoryfor learning, like, okay, what
did I learn about that last situation, that last meeting, that last board
meeting. That self awareness tool isthe source of so much learning. There's
(11:20):
a great author who kind of coinedthe phrase about psychological safety, and she
wrote an article about why hospitals don'tlearn from failures, which was really a
metaphor for why don't all organizations learnfrom failures because we don't set them up
for learning, We set them upfor execution. So, going back to
the point about focus, I thinkactually the number one skill right now is
(11:41):
not self awareness. I think it'sfocus. Because you can't be self aware
unless you are focused. So let'sgo up stream of focus. Excuse me,
let's go up stream of self awareness. And I think what you'll find
at the mouth of that stream isfocus. We have to slow down,
pay it attention, to what's goingon. We have to be brutally honest
with ourselves. We have to createcultures where there's the ability for us to
(12:07):
really be truthful and honest and providefeedback a lot of times, and through
that trust starts to increase, collaborationstarts to increase. We have more innovative
ideas that come from that. Butwe have to create that foundation of trust,
which creates that foundation of all theother things I just talked about,
And all of that requires focus andself awareness. If we're if people are
(12:31):
listening right now, and maybe they'renot the CEO of a company, but
everybody is effectively the CEO of theirown life, right decision making. Yeah,
when you're talking about focus, you'retalking about both literal focus and figurative.
Right, You're talking about the literallike, hey, sometimes you do
need to put the phone or thescreen down and focus on things. And
you're also talking about generally you haveto have a focus so you know what
(12:54):
goal you're trying to accomplish. Absolutely, and how how how how much has
that changed in the in the sortof literal focus for people who are on
their phone or are on a screen, and how much of a challenge is
that to get people to change thosehabits, Well, it's an addiction.
It literally is an addiction. Wehave a neurological desire to continue to look
(13:20):
at our phones and to see howmany likes we have on Facebook, et
cetera, et cetera. It literallyhas to be almost like an intervention to
say I'm going to create time forthese kind of things in my life.
One of the most common things Itell CEOs is that they need to schedule
time for them for themselves and theyhave to put it on their calendar.
If it's not calendar, it's nota commitment. So if you need time
(13:43):
for your own self development, foryour own strategic thinking about your career,
about your team that isn't about thedoing, but more about the strategic thinking
about that, create the focus andput that focus into a calendar meeting and
say I'm not going to let anybodyget into that meeting and let's you know,
the building is falling down, right, So yeah, I think it's
an absolute thing is you have tobe able to create that sort of decision
(14:07):
that overrides the addiction of all ofthese distractions. Like there was one study
we found I forget maybe Fast Companymay of you know, shared it,
but essentially it was this that ifyou take a meeting, which we spend
a lot of time in meeting CEOs, right, this is a more where
we live in our meetings, Right, that's what we spend most of our
(14:28):
time. If you find out thatpeople are on their phones or even have
their phones turned off, but theycan see it in the peripheral their eyes,
they are actually less empathetic and lessintelligent than those who actually cannot see
their actual phone. So they dida study with students and they had equal
intelligence within these two different groups ofstudents, and they all knew the material
(14:50):
equally well. One set of studentscould see their turned off phone, the
other set of students could not.It was away. The students who could
not see their phones got a fullletter grade higher than those that didn't.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, isan example of the benefit of focus.
(15:13):
When you said, if it's notscheduled, it's not a commitment, really
resonating with me, because in ourhousehold, my wife and I had to
literally plan every Sunday to sit downand talk about meals for the week,
so that by Tuesday we weren't like, oh did you come up and then
we're just oh, let's just reheat. Like you have to schedule things you
do, eat, even date nights, you know, with your partners,
(15:33):
with your kids, you know,your vacations. My wife and I finally,
to her credit, she said,we are taking a three week vacation
at least once a year, andif we don't do that, you know
we're going to be the business willbe in trouble. She was right.
So now it's a focus. Imean, you have to, you know,
schedule the time to be unscheduled.Yeah, you have to schedule the
(15:54):
time to not have to do anything. And I know it's almost empathetic and
it makes no sense, but that'swhy vacations are so important. We give
back vacations to our companies all thetime, but we should be taking those
vacations and sitting on those beaches andlooking at our toes as it gets lapped
up by the sand and just letour brains go because all sorts of stuff
(16:17):
comes that way. We have aplace we actually kind of bifurcate our time
between Arizona and up in Bend,Oregon. I have a particular walk that
I take or a run that Ido around this particular river, and I
come back every time with ideas aboutsomething because I'm out of nature, I'm
seeing the trees go through, youknow, what their motions. I can
(16:40):
hear the you know, the babblingbrook of the river, and by the
time of about two or three milesin, like, oh my god,
I've got ten more ideas that allgo back to helping my clients. So
if I do that as a CEOof my little company, would that not
be something that a company of saytwo billion also find benefit by able to
take time away. One of thebiggest problems I think that ceo some of
(17:02):
them do, not all of themdo, is that their their teams become
their family, which I believe me, I think is absolutely right. But
I think that CEOs also have tohave family outside of their work, friends,
people they care for, people thatcan pull them out of the the
the mindset of work. You know, take vacations. That is business time
(17:23):
as it is as is, itis business personal time. I need I
need to pick your brain on that, because when I run, all I
hear is, hey, you shouldprobably stop now, That's the little mental
voice in my brain is your brainis saying that. Yeah, my brain
is like, I think you've gonefar enough. Maybe you just walk from
now on. So I need tofigure out a way to get the brain
on the good ideas part, becauseI need to train my brain that way,
right right, No, absolutely,you know, And you have to
(17:45):
disrupt the pattern of your distracted mind. And it's addiction for immediate gratification and
create that space. If it's meditation, if it's yoga, if it's like
running. Your obviously a runer.I can tell by the way you dress,
in the way your body is setup. You know, whatever your
discipline is, but find a disciplineCEOs out there that bring you back home
(18:10):
to yourself. You also mentioned somethingthat I wanted to dive a little deeper
into, which is about the truthand CEOs being comfortable with speaking the truth.
If I were to guess from ageneral public perspective, the most negative
stereotype that exists in the general publicis probably this is the person that has
(18:33):
learned how to deceive the most andthat's how they get to their position.
That might be the most negative versionof the general public perception for you and
your experience. Not only is theCEO. But somebody who works with so
many successful CEOs, how important isthe truth in earning the trust of your
workforce and earning the trust of thepublic that you may or may not need
(18:55):
to be successful. Well, it'sone of those dichonomies, you know.
CEOs are human beings who have strengths, and those strengths sometimes become their weaknesses.
There's there's always a you know,an opposite to these things, and
so telling the truth is the sameway. You know, there are sometimes
(19:17):
when you would say, well,I can't tell the truth because my HR
department has told me that we havea legal issue at hand if we really
talk about why we let that persongo. So therefore I'm going to have
to say something that is maybe nota lie, but it's it's not the
full story. And we all knowso and so left because they were let
(19:38):
go, but we have a narrative. That is not that we have a
narrative, but well, they founda better position. You know, they're
moving on to greener pastures, andwe wish them well and we have the
utual decision, but we all knowthat they got their ass kicked. Right,
we understand what happened. Sometimes andI understand the CEOs are bound by
legal and compliance issues that they haveto be very careful with, and they've
(20:00):
got their HR people whispering in theirear. Be careful. You can't say
that their legal people say the samething well in the areas that are not
so sensitive when it comes to legalissues. I don't want the CEO out
there to think that that means thatthey have to be careful about what they
say all the time. It's likeagain, sometimes yes, we have to
(20:22):
be careful what we say. Othertimes we should be just telling the truth.
And CEOs need to be vulnerable.They need to share the fact that
they're human. We need to bringhumanity back into the role of the CEO.
I interviewed a guy on my podcastlead Ovation. His name is Gerardo
Segat and if I got it pronouncecorrectly, wonderful gentleman. And he's going
to the World Economic Forum this nextround and he's doing a whole exercise around
(20:48):
helping these world leaders get vulnerable,get human again. And I said,
well, why are you doing that? Why are they bringing you into this?
He goes, because they realize thatthe decisions they make will be better
if they start from a position ofheart, not of fear, not of
control, not of narrative, butwhere they're real, the human being can
(21:10):
come into those conversations. So Ithink that yes, CEOs need to be
careful about what they say, andthey have to have good counsel by their
legal people for all understandable reasons.But the rest of the time, be
a human being. Tell the truth. And that means guts. Because you're
going to have to say things topeople that they don't want to hear.
You need to create the trust.So for that to happen, you need
(21:32):
to be able to accept feedback fromother people that you may not want to
hear. One of the biggest issuesthat CEOs have is they don't really know
what's going on. They have afiltered, repackaged set of information that by
the time it gets to his orher office, it's not the same thing
when it started on the shop floorfor example. We need to be able
(21:53):
to have the CEOs get unvarnished truth, and they need to get out of
their ivory towers and go walk withtheir people and hang out with them and
listen and ask questions and create thattrust for people can know that they can
say the truth. Creating a cultureof truth creates a culture of engagement,
of innovation and longevity. I alwaysthink like, why do we have I'm
(22:15):
sorry going off on a tangentary.Why do we have this perspective that we
understand that because of the tight talentmarket, that we're only going to have
a person on board for three tofive years. I understand statistics say that,
But what if you were to havethe paradigm as a CEO and a
ELT that we are going to createa culture that is going to want for
people to stay here for the restof their careers. What if we create
(22:38):
lifers? Now? Is it possible? Probably not? Is it? Is
it realistic? Hell no? Butbig, hairy, audacious visions and goals
create some amazing results. But whatif you were to create that perspective,
But we want to create a culturewhere people never leave? That's a whole
different, different world, right,world right? But we don't think that
way. It's interesting because when youwere talking about how truth and vulnerability and
(23:03):
at the highest level world leaders,I was thinking about my experiences with different
CEOs that I've worked with or organizationsthat I've been a part of. To
me, the leaders that i've alwaysenjoyed working with. The most are those
that appear relatable to me, eventhough we're in completely different worlds and I
know their responsibilities are completely different frommine. When I find them relatable,
I find myself more likely to wantto give more. And what's more relatable
(23:26):
than to be vulnerable as a human? Right? Right? So is there
a part of this that is importantof not appearing to be relatable or presenting?
But how important is relatability from aCEO to the rest of their employees?
One hundred percent important? I thinkyou just relatable. Isn't that you
have to wear the same clothes andhave the same watch, and drive the
(23:47):
same car, or go to thesame high school? Those things are they
happen or they don't happen. Butrelatable from the human being perspective, you
know, relatable in that you listento me, you listen in you care.
Everybody is walking around with sort ofthis invalue, with this sort of
invisible placard that's in front of theirchest that says, would you just listen
(24:07):
to me? Will you just getme? You know, we are these
sentient beings and this skin and thisbones, all wanting to connect with other
individuals and to be acknowledged, whetherit's acknowledgment of it, a success or
a failure, whatever it is.We just want to matter. Everybody wants
to matter. And if the CEOhas a perspective of I care, and
(24:33):
I truly care. I'm not justmaking this stuff up because some coach told
me to, but I really care, and I'm going to listen and I'm
going to acknowledge what I see infront of me. With this human being,
all of a sudden, you becomerelatable, whether you're you know,
whatever you're wearing, however much moneyyou make, all the other things that
might typically separate somebody from somebody else, get back to the core of humanity,
(24:56):
which is people just want to beheard and listen into and connected on
a deep level. Dean Newlan isthe CEO of Mission Facilitators International, joining
us here on CEOs. You shouldknow, Phoenix a couple questions before we
wrap things up here. And Icould talk to you all day because you
were talking about your podcast how muchyou take away and I'm like, I
could sit here and learn stuff fromme all day long. But there are
(25:17):
two things that I wanted to detacklebefore we let our listeners know how they
could find out more information. Oneis, have you found that over the
last few years, and we coulddefine that as decade, half decade,
whatever is most appropriate in the contexthere. Have people become more open minded
to having this sort of coaching andconsulting. Have companies become more open minded
(25:42):
to talking about things and to kindof reaching out and getting your coaching and
consulting, or do you still findthat there's sometimes a stigma that is attached
that, well, it's got tobe a problem if I'm reaching out to
somebody. It's a great question.I sort of have grown up in the
(26:03):
evolution of coaching. I started in, you know, nineteen ninety two.
I remember being in a radio showjust like this, and the person who
was sitting in the chair like toyou would say to me, so,
Dean, I understand that you're partof a that you do coaching, So
what professional sports teams do you coach? And I went, oh, geez,
I've got to have to sort ofrefocus this person's interview towards business coaching
(26:26):
because back then it was brand new, nobody knew about it. It was
still a sports metaphor. It becameI could give you the whole history of
it. It's really quite fascinating.But it grew and grew to the point
where now you have coaching being taughtat Harvard and Stanford. It is deeply
embedded in our lexicon of phrases,in our words, and our processes.
(26:51):
So I think ninety nine percent ofthe time people do not look at coaching
as a bad thing. Certainly,you do bring in coaches sometimes to be
the last ditch effort before we letsomebody go, But most of the time
coaching is seen as a positive benefitto a person's career development and an indication
that the company has invested in them. I've had people say why am I,
(27:14):
Why are you wanting me to coachthis person? And they says,
because we do think this person isa high flyer. But we also can't
pay them anymore, and this isanother benefit. So coaching, I think
has gotten to that point where nowit is part of the toolkit that that
CEOs use. Now, on theother side of that, I want to
say something that we had our ownmarketing company do some research on coaching,
(27:37):
and again just one data point,but they said, in some cases coaching
has gotten a little bit of ablack eye. You know, it's sort
of had a honeymoon and it gotto be really mature, and now some
people are kind of looking at itwith some concerns. And the concerns are
this that coaching sometimes has been tellingthe other person or the company what they
(27:59):
already you know, and then youknow, walking away and letting them deal
with the you know, the fallout. Whereby we've always seen coaching is almost
a conglomerate of training and of consulting. So our process is, yes,
we're going to find out who youare as an organization. We're going to
create a customized approach to help youget to where you want to go,
(28:23):
and if you want us to,we are going to help you get to
the finish line. So our littletagline is we're going to help you develop
your people, clarify your visions,and execute on your plans. When we
found out that that was something thatwas a unique kind of approach for a
lot of coaching practices out there,we went, good, we're heading in
(28:45):
the right direction. So we kindof are, yes, we're coaches,
but you know, wink wink,we're probably as much a consulting company a
trading company. Facilitation company as anythingelse, and all of them come together
based on the circumstance that is needed. So, in answer to your question,
long answer, yes, coaching isnow I think a fully acceptable,
(29:07):
accepted practice for almost any organization andis seen as a benefit. How many
CEOs have you encountered that reach thehighest level of their of their respective business,
that aren't totally ready for that job, that aren't totally ready for the
mental demand of that job, thataren't totally ready for the you know,
decision making of that job, Andhow much are you sort of able to
(29:27):
help prepare them for what they're aboutto encounter. I think most people are
not prepared for being a CEO.I mean, it's it's the biggest position
in a company, and and soit's a it's a it's an on the
job learning opportunity. And that's whyI think coaching can help you in your
onboarding get to I don't know whereto go to and now I'm fully capable
(29:51):
of running this organization. So Ithink that that coaching is a good way
to help people get to that point. But I don't think anybody truly knows
how to be a CEO. Youcan read all the books you can understand.
You can go to TED talks,and you can go to conferences,
but you know, it's a verydifferent experience when you are the top person.
(30:11):
It is unlike it's unlike being adepartment head. It's unlike being an
individual contributor, and you're dealing withcreating a team at the top. That's
the most difficult to create. Agreat author out there by the name of
John Kotzenbach who wrote The Wisdom ofTeams and Teams at the Top. He's
from Harvard, basically said the hardestteam to create is the CEO c suite
(30:33):
level team. And the reason becauseis all of these particular people who are
on the c suite have been trainedto be leaders. They have not been
trained to be team players, orthey're out of practice. And so now
you get these mostly type A peoplewho are all in their room with maybe
one CEO who's leading the charge andgetting them to be all on the same
(30:53):
page and make that team their firstteam, not a group of people are
just coming in porting off on what'sgoing on with marketing and manufacturing. But
now that's our first team, becausethat's the core of everything that's going to
come forth from here from a strategyperspective, a culture perspective. Getting that
right and making that happen is notonly the thing that I find the most
(31:15):
rewarding, but it's also really difficult. Sometimes following can be a form of
leadership. Absolutely it has to be. You have to be able to going
back to agility. I'm a teamplayer now, but when I leave this
room now, I'm a leader.So you have to go back and forth.
And it's fascinating to be able towork with the c suite level to
be able to juggle both of thosevery important roles. So last question,
(31:40):
and I think I saved the juiciestfor the last. Oh goodie, all
of this work. CEO can havea c suite team. That's awesome.
They can have all this research,they can have all this analytic data driven,
they can have all the information.But they might be the problem.
It might be they are the onesthat is holding the company back or preventing
(32:06):
success. How do you deal withthat? How do you recognize that?
How do you deal with that?Meaning me, as the coach consultant for
the CEO, you have to providethem that very honest feedback in set of
context that tells the CEO, Listen, there is strengths. There are strengths
that you have that we never wantto lose and we want you to continue
(32:28):
to build and get better at.But just as much as you have strengths,
like any other human being on theplanet, you have derailers, you
have setbacks, you have saboteurs thatare just part of the human psyche.
And so it's important for the CEOto understand that what makes them great and
sometimes what makes them bad. Soit's important to know when are you transitioning
(32:51):
from this is a skill, thisis its strength that I have, and
now it's becoming the very problem thatis holding our team back or our company
back. And I think the telltalesign, quite frankly, is being able
to teach the CEO enough self awareness. Going back to that theme before about
when stress is beginning to get thebetter of them. Stress management is different
(33:14):
for each person, but at somepoint, stress can be the point that
tips that strength into a derailer ora saboteur, or a setback or a
blind spot. And if you cantry to get the CEO to notice when
they are actually entering into that transition, then they can make a choice to
override it, even though there isan almost an addictive tendency to keep going
(33:38):
towards what we were always doing becauseit's my strength and I've always been doing
it that way. But no,that's the time to stop, go for
a walk, you know, takea deep breath, get out of the
office, reframe the situation, callyour coach, call your husband, your
wife, something, but get youout of that stress induced focus that can
(34:01):
lead to a real problem. Andagain, CEOs are like anybody else.
We all have our strengths, weall have our weaknesses, we all have
our demons, We are all vulnerable, we all feel like you know,
you know, fakes and phonies everyonce in a while. That's part of
being human. But for the CEOto let people know that that's what's going
(34:23):
on and to have the awareness tobe able to stop that transition from a
strength to a weakness, that's agreat skill set for CEOs to have.
But yeah, CEOs can be theproblem. Sometimes the natural follow up is
how does that typically go over?When you bring that up to it to
CEO? You know, you mightget depending upon the person you're dealing with,
they might discount it. You know, they might continue to argue with
(34:45):
you. But then you have toargue back. You know, you have
to be able to go or youhave to provide them data. We do
a lot of three sixties in ourcompanies. Our company whereby it's not a
go online, you know, threeo'clock in the morning, fill out this
form. These are customized three sixtiesthat are live interviews over the phone that
take an hour. The questions arespecifically chosen for that person in their career,
(35:07):
in this particular state of the economy, all of the other things.
And that feedback is irrefutable because sometimesCEO say, well, that's just your
opinion. Well, no, it'snot just my opinion. I've got fourteen
to fifteen other people who are sayingthe same thing. And then sometimes that
creates enough leverage and credibility for themto go, okay, I need to
(35:28):
pay attention to this. Dee Newlandis the CEO of Mission Facilitators International.
I've really enjoyed the conversation likewise,obviously not just for my own personal but
also for people listening. How canwe hear more from you? Where can
the podcast? What can you tellus a website? Where can we get
more information about you and your company. Well, the company name is Mission
(35:51):
Facilitators, as you had mentioned.Thank you very much for the question.
We're MFI. Leadership dot com isour website. We have a podcast called
lead Ova, and that podcast isreally almost like what you're doing here,
but more focused on guests who havewritten books, who have read led companies,
who are the thought leaders in theindustry, about leadership, about team
(36:15):
development, about being able to navigateour way through this extremely dynamic time of
AI and the speed of change beingwhat it is. I mean, the
talent issues that we are now having, how do we know retain and keep
grid people, the humanity of leadership, all of those things we talk about
(36:35):
on this podcast. And I've justbeen extremely blessed to have some incredible guests
and we've got a ton more coming. So thank you for the question.
And that's how people can get atachma. Of course, LinkedIn is always
a great place to hang out andcommunicate with. Of course, if you're
CEO listing right now, those areall great ways to reach out and get
even more good stuff from Dean andhis team. Absolutely, Dean appreciate you,
(36:57):
Tom. Thank you very much forjoining us on CEOs you should know
Phoenix. Thank you, it's beena lot of fun until next time.
Thanks for listening to CEOs. Youshould Know Phoenix on your free iHeartRadio app
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