April 20, 2025 • 54 mins
Leadership isn’t a title—it’s a behavior. And while there’s no shortage of leadership theories floating around, this episode goes beneath the surface. Dr. Paul “Paulie” Gavoni and A.J. Rinaldi take a sharp, scientific look at what truly drives leadership that works.
Instead of parroting popular slogans, they dig into the behaviors, decisions, and contingencies that make—or break—leaders. It’s not about charisma or command. It’s about the observable, measurable behaviors that produce real results.
“We’re not just talking about what leadership looks like—we’re talking about what it produces. That’s where the science comes in.” – Dr. Paulie Gavoni
Whether you’re running a school, leading a team, or just trying to lead yourself more effectively, this episode lays the behavioral groundwork.
📘 Ready to level up? Grab your copy of Positional Authority Ain’t Leadership—a no-fluff blueprint for influencing performance through the science of human behavior.
Pick up a copy of the #1 bestseller: Adaptive Intelligence: The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence Through the Proven Power of Behavior Science
The Behavioral Toolbox equips those charged with supporting behavior change in schools with practical applications of the science of human behavior for making a positive difference in the workplace. In this case, the classroom and school!
Be sure to subscribe to Dr. Paulie's Heart & Science YouTube channel for a variety of content related to behavior science and bringing out the best in yourself and others.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Heart and Science of Leadership, where
evidence meets empathy.
Co-hosted by Dr Paul Gavone, aWall Street Journal and USA
Today bestselling author, and AJRinaldi, a John Maxwell Team
certified leadership coach, thispodcast blends the human side
of leadership withevidence-based practices,
demonstrating that leadershipisn't about title or intent.
(00:24):
It's about impact.
And now here are your hosts,pauly and AJ.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
All right, welcome back, AJ.
Good to see you, brother.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Good to see you too brother, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm good man.
I want to let you know yousound great man.
Would you do somethingdifferently on that side?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, I just upgraded some of my equipment here to
try to give some better qualityfor our listeners.
We've been receiving suchpositive feedback on the podcast
so I thought it was all inright to try to continue to
improve for our listeners here.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, and what's exciting you and I have been
talking about this a little bitthat we're eventually going to
start pulling some people intointerview and we actually have a
lineup of a couple of folksthat are coming out that are
very well-known, successfulleaders in their own right.
So, anyways, stay tuned forthat.
We'll be eager to hear yourfeedback on it, Because in the
(01:17):
end, we want to give thelisteners what they want.
I think people are reallyenjoying this format, but they
also might enjoy us talking toleaders, and maybe they're going
to enjoy that more, or maybethey want to just hear us talk,
or maybe they want to have it goback and forth.
So we'll let the dad do thetalking for on that, that, that
how we're going to approach it,moving forward, Anyways.
(01:37):
So you know, AJ, you're kind oflike the guide.
You're kind of like I'm likethe color commentator brother.
You know what I mean.
Like the guide, You're kind oflike I'm like the color
commentator brother.
You know what I mean.
You're the play-by-play guy.
So what are we?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
going to talk about today.
Oh, my goodness, we have agreat episode planned for our
listeners this morning.
This morning, we're going to betalking about the four hats of
leadership, and so we knoweffective leaders.
They have a versatile skill set.
They need to wear differenthats in different situations.
And, of course, we're nottalking about a literal hat like
(02:06):
a ringmaster or a meter maid.
As a matter of fact, I think ifyou have to wear a funny
looking hat to tell peopleyou're in charge, you're
probably not a very effectiveleader.
But we're talking about thosefigurative hats that we all have
to wear as leaders.
And the four hats of leadership.
It's a concept covered in thebook positional authority Ain't
(02:27):
Leadership, and so we just sohappen to have the Wall Street
Journal and USA Todaybestselling author for that book
right here, my friend, mymentor, my co-host, paul Govani.
Paulie, we're going to get intoeach hat.
But how did you, how did youcome up with this concept for
our listeners?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, let me start off.
Thanks, man.
I'm glad that you want to talkabout this I'm just so
passionate about as we both arespeaking about leadership
Anytime.
I always like to just put thiscaveat on here because of people
here.
But we're going to talk aboutmy bestselling book.
You know they're like thisguy's just trying to push the
book sales guys.
I have hundreds of articles onLinkedIn.
(03:09):
They're all free.
I welcome you to go read thosearticles.
You can bypass reading the bookif you want.
None of the stuff I put out inthe world is to make profit on
it.
You know I really love.
If you're an author, youunderstand that unless you're a
New York times and I'm a wallstreet journal in USA today
bestselling author unless you'rea New York times bestselling
(03:29):
author and you've had millions,that's where you actually start
making some money.
I'm just living my values withthis stuff, man.
I constantly do it, if you know.
You know you see all the stuffI put out.
I'm prolific with it because Ijust love doing it Anyway.
So where did the concept come upwith?
Well, the concept came up withyears of shitty leadership, man.
(03:50):
I honestly, god man, came intothe.
I really stalled coming out ofcollege.
I was being a career studentfor a while, man, I was taking
one or two classes.
I did not want to be in thereal world because it looked
just too scary for me.
And when I got in the realworld, it wasn't what I thought.
It was worse, brother, and whatmade it worse was leadership.
(04:15):
Almost always it was theproblem that I had with people
with positional authority andpart of it.
Now, this is not a science-basedthing, right, but there's.
There's these like, uh,hierarchies I forget what they
call this stuff like alpha, male, beta, male, whatever, all that
stuff you know.
I mean, uh, it doesn't have tobe male, it could be female,
(04:36):
whatever.
Um, but I just I identify withthis, this sigma archetype, and
the sigma archetype doesn't likehierarchies.
I just never see hierarchy,which means I don't see people
above me and I don't see peoplebelow me, and I think that just
resonated.
My folks are really good abouttreating everybody with respect
and equal and I don't ever seeposition.
(04:57):
And so and you and I agree onthis, we've talked about this in
an earlier episode I'm gonnatreat the maintenance guy as
well as I treat the CEO, maybebetter, because I know how
challenging it is and howthey're probably just getting by
, I don't know.
Just a lot of respect for thefrontline employees all the time
.
It doesn't mean I don't respectthe CEO, but in the end I don't
(05:18):
care about your title.
What I care about is how youtreat others and I'm going to
treat you accordingly,especially how you treat the
people with the least amount ofinfluence or power.
So after years of like justexperiencing what I consider bad
leadership, I ended up goingback and getting a couple of
degrees in leadership and Ifound that I was really like
(05:39):
almost angry at not only whatI've experienced from leadership
, but also what I saw otherpeople experience, because it
wasn't always certainly aimed atme.
I felt a certain shame and Iwrite about it in the book about
seeing people talked down to,seeing them forced to do things
(06:00):
and just like treated as if theywere less than for things as
simple as like they didn't havetheir degree or their degree
wasn't high enough right, andthat drove me nuts, aj, um, and
so that built up this well oflike.
You know what it started offwith.
The book was going to be how totell if you're a shitty leader,
um, but it ended up evolvinginto this.
I just wanted to help peopleunderstand, from a scientific
(06:22):
perspective, what realleadership is, and I think in
the end, as you know, the bookis really about behavior.
It's not about people, it'sabout behavior.
That's where the measure ofleadership could be found.
So I wanted to help peoplebecause most people are good
people engaging in bad behaviorright To understand what it
meant to be a good leader, andso that's why I put the book out
, man, and I talk about my ownbehavior in it, like I wasn't
(06:45):
and I still do engage in what Icall ask, ask clownery, you know
so that that was what theimpetus behind writing the book
was, man.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I think, paulie, this is important and I definitely
want to dive into the bulk ofour content.
But I think this is importantbecause we often say we talk
about positional leadershipversus actual leadership and
leadership as is a behavior, nota title, but it's.
I think it's important andrelevant for our listeners.
(07:14):
Like, in no way are we sayingcertain positions and authority,
like we definitely want torespect the authority, we want
to obviously follow thosedirectives and those different
parts about their job that iswithin their title to follow.
But if a leader has thatauthority and they also just so
(07:35):
happen to be exhibiting reallypositive leadership behaviors
and values-based leadership,servant-based leadership, I mean
, pauly, for a person who hasthe authority and they're
emulating those things, I mean Ithink you become what Craig
Grishel calls a leader thatpeople love to follow in those
situations.
(07:55):
Do you agree with that, pauly?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I mean I just wanted to clear that up for our
listeners before we I'm gladthat you did, man, because I
don't want to disrespect theposition right.
And if you're a person who is areal leader and has positional
authority, you can make a ton ofpositive difference in your
organization and the lives ofothers, you know.
(08:17):
But if you don't have thatposition or authority, you can
still be a leader, you can stillhave influence, but as you rise
up the hierarchy, you're nowgiving resources and the title
comes with your ability to makechanges and it makes it easier
because you're in control ofmore contingencies.
(08:37):
You're in control of theenvironment of other people and
we know it's in the environmentinfluences behavior.
So a good leader adapts theenvironment to ensure that they
get the right behavior in theright way from the followers so
they can produce the rightresults.
Because in the end, it's notjust about producing results but
how we produce those resultsright.
So I'm really glad that youclarified that point, because
(08:59):
people work very hard to gettheir positions, you know.
So it's not about knocking thatposition.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, and you, you talked about those.
You know those kinds ofnegative experiences.
You had that kind of set you onthis path.
But, um, we've all had a leaderwho's had that authority, even
if, if they were just a middle,middle manager, um, at our entry
level positions, and theyhappen to have that little bit
of authority and they happen tobe a person that just exhibited
(09:26):
a high amount of character andjust service towards their
followers and, man, we'd runthrough a brick wall for those
folks.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That is so true, man, that is so true.
But there's just not enough ofthose people, I find.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
We need more.
We need more, and that's whatwe're here to do help produce
more Right, paul.
That's right.
That's right, that's right.
I want to dive in now to one ofthe first hats of leadership
that you talk about, paulie, andthis is the leading hat, which
is kind of centered aroundmotivating people, inspiring
people.
We know leadership isinfluencing and motivating
(09:58):
people in an ethical manner toreach a goal for the team, the
group, the organization.
And so, paulie, I want to askyou a question, but I also want
to go ahead and give you thefollow-up.
I want to know what are somegood first steps for our
listeners in wearing the leadinghat, and also, do we sometimes
wear hats that we don't feellike putting on as a leader?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, great question.
I want to start with this one.
Now.
I want to make it clear that Iactually deliberately chose the
term leading because I wanted tomake the contrast as we will do
later on between leading andmanaging and some people think
leading is better than managing,and they're both necessary.
And a manager can be a leaderand a leader can be a manager,
(10:43):
and they both need to be right,because it's going to come back
to behavior.
What I would say about theleading hat is that in the
science of human behavior, wecall it a motivating operation.
Right, that means engaging abehavior that has a value in
behavior, altering effect.
In short, it's about inspiringpeople.
If people aren't inspiredtowards a goal right, towards
(11:04):
something in the future, there'snot a want to move towards that
goal.
You end up doing, they're goingto end up doing, just enough to
get by, and only when you'relooking right, they need to know
that this is aligned with somesort of value of theirs.
Right?
If I, if I behave this way, isit going to produce some sort of
valued outcome?
You know cause?
(11:26):
I think?
In the end, people want to feelvalued and they want to produce
valued outcomes.
Right, this is the mostimportant thing in the
organizations and that's what'sgoing to get them to go above
and beyond, or what Dr AubreyDaniels, who was my guy father
of organizational behaviormanagement, calls discretionary
effort, right, which I thinkcould be the true measure of the
(11:48):
best leaders, right, whenpeople are going above and
beyond even when you're notlooking.
So it's really about that, andthere's different ways that
people can engage in that, butin where the leading hat, but
fundamental to it, fundamentalto it is finding out what's
important to people and helpingthem to see that by how engaging
this behavior it's going tomove you towards these important
(12:11):
outcomes.
Does that make sense?
Aj, yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And I think, whether you're in different fields,
whether you obviously I mean Iwork in a field where if we do
social work or we work in humanservices, I mean there's just a
lot of intrinsic value forpeople and hopefully your
mission or your organization hasrecruited really purpose-driven
(12:35):
people to that, which couldmake it a little bit easier to
tap into some of that motivation.
But I mean, paul, even ifyou're the CEO of ExxonMobil,
every human being has somethingthat motivates them and, as a
leader, I think it's our job totap into those motivations to
help inspire people, becausemotivation it's not, it doesn't
just stay at a high level at alltime, it ebbs and flows, right,
(12:59):
paul?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, that's exactly right and that's why the
definition of motivatedoperation has it.
It's a temporary value andbehavior altering effect.
Right and sure, we need to getbehavior moving in the right
direction and we want to have itmoving because people want to
right.
They're like oh, I desire.
And some of the greatestleaders in the world, like JFK,
(13:21):
got people to leave their job,uproot their house and go in and
serve in the Peace Corps.
Right, you see, martin LutherKing get people to put their
lives on the line to rally forcivil rights.
You know, I mean, these peopleare amazing.
They tapped into people'svalues and created the wants of
people.
Now we're charged up, ready tomove in the right direction.
(13:43):
Right, it's incrediblyimportant, man.
These guys are visionaries, youknow, and they help other
people see the vision.
But the vision's got to betapped into what's important to
people and they help otherpeople see the vision, but the
vision's got to be tapped into.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
What's important to people?
Yeah, and there's, I mean.
And then I think, as a leader,I mean one thing I've found
successful is just flat outasking people like what do you
want?
Where do you see yourself?
I mean, some people may betrying to move into other roles,
some people may have shorterterm goals that they're trying
to accomplish with projects butflat out asking the question
(14:13):
like what do you want?
What do you?
What's what's what?
What gets you up in the morningright now?
What are you trying to get toand aspire to?
And then, as a leader, I thinkyou can kind of ask guided
questions along the way to helpprompt them and help move them
in that direction.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, goahead, Paul, you in that
direction.
Yeah, absolutely, man.
Yeah, go ahead, paul, you hadsomething there.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
I was going to say that that isfundamental.
It could be as simple as that.
There are other things that youcan dig in deeper.
You know, like, first of all,it always starts with asking
questions, right, great leadersask lots of questions, right?
Less telling more about asking.
And what you're really askingis finding out what's important
(14:55):
to people, uh, finding out whatpotential obstacles are blocking
what's important to them.
You know, uh, maybe asking someother questions about the, uh,
you know, maybe, implications of, for example, let's say,
somebody's not performing to astandard, right, helping them
see the ripple effect on howit's impacting them.
Because let's say it's about,you know, the Exxon, right,
(15:15):
people are like, well, you'rejust making money from oil, but
maybe somebody who really values, like, you say like, listen,
this fuel is fueling our world.
You know it's helping moms anddads make it into work.
You know what I mean.
And put food on the table.
You know what I mean Tappinginto what's important to those
people and making about thatwork.
You know, but sometimes, like,the value, depending on the
(15:37):
position that somebody's in inthe moment, right, think about
Maslow's hierarchy need, right,I hear say principals saying,
well, you got to do it for thestudents, well, that may very
well be, and I really believethat teachers want the students
to be successful.
But if that teacher isstruggling to keep their head
above the water because, let'ssay, they don't have classroom
management in place, but theydon't even know, that's the
(16:00):
reason, right, they're justseeing the behavior.
They're not recognizing that.
Yeah, this behavior isoccurring because you need to do
something, more or less ordifferently, tapping into that
value and making about thatperson, so they can see that if
you engage in some behaviorchange, the class is going to
behave better.
Oh, and, by the way, they'realso going to be in learning.
Right, we have to make surewe're tying it into what's
(16:21):
important to the person and, ofcourse, we want that value to be
tied in to what's important tothe organization.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
You said so much value right there.
I want to unpack a little bitof it.
So, in your ExxonMobil exampleof like, yeah, we're not just
pumping oil, we're providingfuel for the world, we're
allowing parents to drive homeand drive the work and make a
living for the kids Some of thebest leaders I've ever been
around they're translators ofvision, right, they're able to
(16:54):
cast that vision, or they'reable to take an initiative or a
goal or a task and they're ableto help their followers see the
bigger purpose within it.
And then I double back to whatyou said about MLK and JFK.
That's what they were for ourcountry, right, they were
translators of vision.
They were able to motivate amass amount of people with some
(17:18):
of those words.
That was so valuable, paul.
I just had to circle back tothat for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well, I like how you frame stuff like that.
Brother.
You're good with that stuff,man.
That was well done.
You said the translators ofvision, right?
Is that what you said?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, absolutely, I love that, yeah, that's a good
statement, that's great, that'sgreat stuff.
So that's the leading hat whichwe have to wear.
We have to inspire people,motivate people.
That's like a really criticalpoint and a critical hat to wear
when we're talking about beingan effective leader.
Let's talk about the second hat, which is the training hat,
(17:50):
which in the book it talks a lotabout skill acquisition and
good leaders.
No doubt they know how to leadpeople.
Great leaders know how todevelop them.
And so, paulie you know wetalked a little bit about it in
episode two Not every leader isgoing to become the CEO of the
organization.
You know, through our work lifecycle and this is for a lot of
(18:12):
our corporate listeners Mostwill be middle managers and not
always have complete controlover who you work with or who's
on your team.
And for that reason, paulie, Ithink the training hat is
absolutely critical for leaders.
But how do you see that, paulie?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Well, before we dive into that hat, I want to make
this connection.
I should have done it earlier.
When we talk about the fourhats, we can also apply these to
self-leadership.
Right, as an individual, wealso need to have our own vision
, right, what do we want to dowhen we get older, grow up to
right, and we got to unpack thatstuff.
If you don't have that, if youdon't have purpose man, people
without purpose and I love thispit to purpose right, that's
(18:53):
your business.
You know, without purpose,there's nothing pulling your
behavior towards where you'regoing to be one day.
So it's huge.
So this also applies toself-leadership.
Now, back to the training hat.
It's fundamentally important todesire to produce some outcome
in the future.
Right, this is really important, having that want, having that
inspiration.
(19:14):
But it's not enough, right, weneed to have the knowledge and
skills that are going toactually move us or move others
towards that vision, towardsthat goal, towards that valued
outcome.
And this is where you bring theshift to the training hat.
Now, if you're a leader andthis is why we talk about
putting different hats on it, aswe'll move to the other two
(19:36):
hats in a little bit you need toknow what your folks need.
Do they have the skills?
Right?
And if they have the skills,well, we might have to put on
the leading hat or maybe someother stuff which we'll get into
a little bit.
Right, but let's just assumethey don't have the skills.
Let's start from the beginningand would say, okay, we want to
inspire them now.
We have to equip them with theknowledge and skills to be
(19:57):
successful, because you know howare they going to even move in
the right direction, right andum, a lot of people end up
throwing training at folks andthey're like sitting gets aj and
uh, they don't walk away withthe knowledge and skills to be
successful.
I'm finding this in highereducation as well.
Um, you and I are both combatsports athletes.
(20:20):
You did wrestling, I did boxingand mixed martial arts, and
certainly I know that neitherone of us would have had any
success.
Uh, if somebody would just toldus how to wrestle, told us how
to box, told us how to do MMA,dropped us into the combat realm
to combat with people and thenexpected us to perform right,
(20:41):
that is not the way you buildskills.
Skills need to be instructed,right.
People need to be told how todo something modeled.
And then the biggest piece andthis is the piece that folks
miss a lot, but not in sports Insports, we get this a lot is
the rehearsal and feedback right, practice and feedback.
And it's also not enough just topractice.
(21:01):
You need feedback.
You need to know if you'redoing the right thing, whether
it's feedback from a coach oryou're recruiting, feedback from
the environment itself.
You can see that when I do this, it produces this outcome right
, and this is a successfuloutcome.
I need to keep doing it.
It's not successful.
I got to figure out what I needto do more or less or
differently, and this is wherecoaching can help or, you know,
looking at video modeling,things like that but you have to
(21:23):
have the skills to buildfluency.
Fluency meaning you can dothings automatically right.
Fluency meaning you can dothings automatically right,
precisely, and you retain thatknowledge and skill over time.
If you don't build fluency withsomething, people might be able
to demonstrate competency atthe end of a training, but then
they walk away the next day, thenext week, and they forget
(21:43):
everything that they learnedright.
So it's key to train people inpivotal behaviors, meaning
behaviors that are going to helpthem to continue to learn
independently, right?
We can't throw everything.
If everything's important,nothing's important.
There's not enough time totrain people in everything, but
we can train them well enough sothey can learn to adapt on
their own.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, I like that and I mean, obviously, I'm a member
of the John Maxwell team.
We have a process for equippingpeople.
And say so, pauly, if I'mtrying to train you, mentor you,
guide you in how to, like,facilitate meetings, the first
step is, like, I do it andyou're with me.
So, hey, pauly, we're going tohave a meeting, I'm going to
(22:32):
facilitate it, I want you to bewith me, I want you to see what
I'm doing, see my agenda, seethe questions, see how I engage
people who aren't participating.
And then the next step is we doit together.
So, pauly, hey, I know you sawme do conduct our meeting last
week.
This week, we're going to do ittogether.
I'm going to cover these points,you cover these points, and we
kind of split the tasks up andat each step we're debriefing,
(22:54):
we're providing that feedbackloop that you talk about all the
time, paulie, of what went well, what didn't go so well, and
then the last step to equippingand empowering that individual
is now you do it and I'm withyou, meaning I'm with you, I'm
observing, and afterwards I'mgoing to provide that coaching
and feedback on what went well,what we could have done better,
and just having that verysystematic sequence of
(23:16):
engagement in any task you mightimagine man does.
It create a great way to modelfor folks and actually put on
that training hat and make surethat people are getting skilled
up and building capacity in allthese different areas.
Yeah, and what I will say,these different areas.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, and what I will say to that is that was
well said.
In behavior science we callthat shaping and fading.
In the educational world wecall it gradual release.
Right, I do, we do, you do,it's great.
And what you just set up is agreat segue to the next hat,
because that moves from thetraining to the coaching hat.
Right, what you just said there, it's great and it's necessary.
(23:54):
It's the piece that peopleforget.
They think sending people totraining is what's needed and it
is part of the peanut butterand jelly sandwich.
Right, it's part of the formulafor success.
But training in and of itselfuh, even really good training,
right, the best training, peopleend up acquiring 60 of
knowledge, 60 of the skills.
(24:14):
Uh, this is from some joys andshowers.
Uh, research, that they did,and it was, it was research and
education.
But I've seen this generalizedvery well, right, theory did not
generalize, but like zeropercent of skills generalized
into the natural environment,right, the work environment
modeling, maybe five percent%,even rehearsal with practice,
10%, right, and a lot of people,organizations, are throwing
(24:35):
training but they're missing thenext part and that is the
coaching hat.
Right, so we have the leadinghat, inspiring people the
training hat, making sure theyhave the knowledge and skills to
be successful.
But now we need those knowledgeand skills to generalize into
people actually performing inthe natural environment, and
that shifts from instructing ortelling and you said this when
we talked about your gradualrelease to asking and helping
(24:57):
people be better observers oftheir behavior and the impact of
their behavior on theenvironment.
They need to see that, hey, ifI do this, this is going to
produce that valued outcome,because we've already tapped
into that value earlier.
Or, if I do this, it's notright and this is critical for
people to shift to the coachinghat right To ask questions,
because if they don't, they'llbecome what we call prompt
(25:19):
dependent.
What does that mean, aj?
It's, if you've ever gonesomewhere to the same spot over
and over again, you've used theGPS.
You are prompt dependent.
The GPS is telling you what todo all the time because you
haven't had to assess, you know,make decisions, take action by
yourself, because this thing isalways telling you what to do.
Right, and this happens withwell-meaning leaders, where
(25:40):
people are always coming to themto solve the problem.
And we really need people to beable to be independent, right,
we need them to become resilient.
We need I call this adaptiveintelligence in my new book but
we need them to be able to adaptin the environment in our
absence.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
And so that's the importance of the coaching hat.
I got to pause you there.
I got to pause you there andask a follow-up question so
prompt, dependent.
You used a great analogy aboutthe GPS, like, if you continue
to rely on the GPS to take yousomewhere, you've been a few
times already, right.
But, paulie, have you ever seenwhere it seems some leaders
want that, where they almostwant I mean micromanaging,
(26:21):
whatever you might want to callit, but they actually may seem
to prefer that, instead ofbuilding capacity of their folks
, they almost set it up wherepeople have to keep coming to
them and checking with them.
And have you seen that, paul?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, well, see, I would argue that, yes, I have,
but I would argue that thosearen't leaders.
I would argue those are peoplewith positional authority.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh, wow, touché.
So the coaching hat in yourbook and you use this term a lot
and for I know many of ourlisteners are in the behavior of
science you talk about skillgeneralization.
I want you to, I'm going towant you to dive in a little bit
deeper for our listeners whomay not be in that that field
and break that down a little bit.
I think the coaching hat orcoaching in general, but in
(27:06):
general can be miss, amisunderstood concept for people
.
Some people think it's.
I've heard coaching use, a kindof like feedback has been used,
like when, when people are likeI gave them, I gave them some
coaching like as as somethinglike to correct behavior or
whatever.
Albert Camus has this quote.
I love when I, whenever I thinkabout coaching, it says don't
(27:28):
walk in front of me, I may notfollow.
Don't walk behind me, I may notlead.
Just walk beside me and be myfriend.
And when I think about coaching, that's really what I go to,
pauly is it's walk, comingalongside folks.
And you use an analogy in thebook of like.
When we all learned how to ridea bike, how somebody kind of
(27:51):
started behind us probably wasan adult.
They, they continued to bealongside us eventually, start
to push us out there, push usout there and next thing you
know we're flying down thestreet on our own.
Um, can you go a little bitdeeper into that skill
generalization?
And then you mentioned fading,which I think is a great plug
for that analogy I just used ofriding a bike.
(28:11):
Can you go in depth there alittle bit for our listeners,
paul?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah.
So here's where I learned thisand I'm very proud of this
concept my co-author, Dr NickWedley.
He and I both wrote a couplebooks now on the concept of
deliberate coaching and that wasan extension of deliberate
practice.
Right, Deliberate practice isabout you know, you're
practicing, You're not justdoing something randomly, You're
focusing on a skill, You'relooking at your behavior right,
(28:37):
and you're doing that inrepetition.
Right, You're not focusing oneverything, because if
everything's important,nothing's important.
You're focusing on this thing,right, and you're trying to get
this thing right.
So it's very, it's precise,purposeful and systematic.
And functionally.
Because if you look at thedefinition of coaching, you'll
find a bunch of overlaps oftraining.
There's, of course, feedback,there's goals associated with it
, et cetera, et cetera.
(28:58):
But the difference is infunction, right, Shifting from
okay, the person now knows whatto do.
Now we need to get them to doit well enough in the natural
environment that it producesvalued outcomes, Because when
those outcomes are valued, theenvironment's going to take over
for the behavior and this ishow we end up fading out.
So I learned about this fromthousands of hours training
(29:22):
fighters right, and I noticedthat some of the fighters were
really good hitting the bag,hitting the mitts Right.
They don't like man, that guycan fight.
Then you drop them into likethe the.
The fight came.
You're like what happened to?
What happened to all theseskills?
Man, I'm not seeing anythingthat we worked on.
And then I started to reflecton wait, wait a second.
Some of the fighters are doingreally well.
What's the difference?
(29:42):
And the difference was sparring.
The difference was simulations,right, when they had the
opportunity to practice safelythese skills in dynamic
situations, because it's notenough to know the skills.
You need to do the right thingin the right way at the right
time in these environments.
So then I started to controlthose environments more, right.
(30:05):
So let's say, you know again,it's combat sports, so I'm going
to focus on teaching somebodyto slip a right hand.
Let's say it's a new skill Iwant them to learn right.
And now they're performing itreally well outside the ringer
cage.
They're doing it perfectly.
Okay, great.
Now it's time to generalize thatskill.
I'm not going to put them inthere with this high level
fighter performing, that's doingeverything that they have at
(30:26):
the fighter, because they'regoing to fall back on old habits
, those habits that are going tokeep them safe, and this
happens all the time in theworkplace, right?
This is where I see again ateacher, as an easy example,
that uses punishment to getstudents to do the right thing.
Why?
Because it works.
The fighter in the cage that istaken beating, they're going to
fall back on the things thatare keeping them safe for the
(30:48):
moment.
That doesn't help them to winthe fight.
In fact, it's going to helpthem to lose the fight.
They should be using theirdefense to set up their offense.
It should be an opportunity forthem.
But if you've never done itbefore, you're going to do that
thing.
That keeps you safe.
So I control the environment byonly letting, let's say, the
opponent just throw the jab,right.
And now they're getting highand doing it at 50%.
(31:10):
So now they're getting highrepetition and slipping a live
jab at a little bit of a slowerpace, right?
So now we can shape this up andI'm getting them in touch with
positive reinforcement, right.
Negative reinforcement too,right.
We don't got to talk about whatthat is, but essentially
they're getting success.
They're not getting hit andthey're also getting in a
position where they can hit,right.
(31:30):
So maybe I allow them to slipand counter with the hook or
something like that.
And now we start to increasethe speed of it.
And now I let them to add inokay, now we're going to just do
it with the right cross.
Okay, now we're going to do itwith the jab and the right cross
.
And now they're getting so muchrepetition and now we start to
layer back in the other skillsand before you know it, they are
successfully performing theslip under live conditions and
(31:55):
like oh, I want to slip, I cando it well, I am doing it well.
And this is how we buildfluency in these conditions, and
this drastically increases thelikelihood that they're going to
perform in the real world, thereal workplace for them.
And that's the actual fightDoes that make?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
And I go back to questions,right, and so I think even I
misunderstood coaching just asrecent as maybe four years ago,
three years ago.
The questions are so importantyou mentioned earlier.
(32:32):
You know, when we're talkingabout training people, like is
there a barrier to their success?
I think a lot of leaders ormanagers that I've seen they
often they don't ask thosequestions to see is there a
barrier to the person's success?
(32:52):
Oftentimes, and some managersor leaders they just kind of
judge that person based off theperformance or evaluate that
person based off their lack ofperformance, their lack of
meeting the goal, when the truthof the matter is the person has
some really big barriers thatare kind of getting in the way
of them achieving the goal.
(33:12):
One thing I love about thisconcept that we're talking about
the four hats and I think Italked about it in episode three
when we talked aboutcommunication is I talked about
syncing up the Bluetooth andmaking sure you're having the
right conversation with theright brain.
Like, do they need me to beempathetic right now?
Are they seeking advice rightnow?
That kind of fits in well withknowing to wear the right hat
(33:35):
for the right situation and Ithink, paulie, there's some
times where we have the coachinghat on when it's not needed or
they're not ready for thatcoaching hat in that particular
moment.
I just think that's a reallycritical point when we talk
about making sure we have theright hat for the right
situation.
Is this person in a positionright now to receive that
(33:55):
coaching?
If not, maybe I need to kind ofpunt this conversation, circle
back to it tomorrow or laterthat afternoon.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, absolutely, and that gets into like the end of
the book, but I'll talk about itnow because you put it on the
table.
It's great, 100% right, we'regoing to get into the last hat,
which is the managing hat, injust a second.
But in order to know which hatto wear, right, you need to have
a good assessment andeverything I do with the signs
of behavior, because it can getvery complex, it's very deep,
(34:24):
it's grounded in evolutionarytheory, right, we need to learn
to adapt our behavior.
We need to learn to adapt theenvironment, because our
behavior is a product of theenvironment.
We do the things that producevalued outcomes for us in the
end.
But knowing which hat to wearrequires performance diagnostics
(34:44):
and that's simple, right.
It really boils it down to isit a can't do or a don't do?
If it's a can't do, that's verysimple, right, it comes down to
the training hat.
They can be as motivated asthey want, they can have all the
skills, or they can have a goodsystem in place and all this
stuff, but if they can't do it,they need the skills.
(35:04):
When you get into the don't doand I purposely say don't
because others say won't do andwon't sounds like you're
refusing to do it right.
A lot of people, just you knowthey're not doing it for
different reasons.
For example, maybe they don'tknow the expectation, maybe they
have the skills but they're notin the habit yet.
Maybe they're not gettingfeedback.
Maybe they're being asked to dotoo many things at one time.
(35:25):
Maybe they don't have a processfor doing it.
Maybe they're not seeing theimpact of their behavior on the
environment right, or maybe thatthey don't value the impact,
which would mean you need to goback to the leading hat or again
coming down.
Maybe they can't tell you whatthey're supposed to do or how to
do it right, which makes it atraining hat.
So this requires performancediagnostics in all of my books.
(35:48):
When I came across this, drJohn Austin, who's a friend of
mine, actually developed it, andI love it because it's so
simple.
I've put it in all my books.
I've adapted it for the books,you know.
But people need to be able, andthat goes for ourself.
If I'm not performing tostandard, why Do I not know the
expectation?
Do I not have a process?
I'm not getting feedback?
I'm not seeing the outcome?
(36:08):
Is it too many things at once?
You can actually apply it toyourself.
Or you can apply it to yourselfas a coach, as a manager, when
we're looking at somebody else'sperformance.
Check those boxes before youstart to go in and say, hey, you
need to do this stuff.
Have I made sure they know theexpectations?
Have I made sure I'm givingthem feedback?
Have I made sure I'm givingthem more positive feedback when
(36:28):
they're doing the right thingright and giving corrective
feedback that's helpful to them?
Have I made sure I'm not askingthem to do too many things at
once?
Am I helping them see theoutcome of their behavior on the
environment right, et cetera,et cetera.
It's making sure that I'vecreated this environment that's
going to increase the likelihoodthat they're going to perform
at the standard.
And this requires theperformance diagnostic to let
(36:50):
you know which hat you shouldwear.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
And Pauly, I've seen leaders where I love the
distinction you made between thedon't versus the won't, because
I've seen a lot of leaders whojust assume it's a won't, it's a
won't issue and a won't issueand they don't consider that
don't factor.
And you went into a lot of a lotof different avenues there, but
(37:13):
one of them being a lack offeedback.
Right, too many, too many times, I think, as leaders across all
industries, they sit there andthey may, they not?
They don't consider thebarriers, but they also don't
deliver that feedback.
I think that's one of the worstthings you could do to, whether
you're talking about anemployee at work or even a
student in a classroom orathlete.
(37:35):
One of the worst things youcould do is judge somebody for a
lack of performance, yet youhaven't had the compassion or
the courage to have thatdifficult conversation and give
that constructive feedback to anindividual, and then the
behavior continues and we have aproblem here.
(37:55):
But you haven't asked yourselfthose key questions as a leader
that you just you just mentioned, paul, and I think that's
really valuable for ourlisteners there.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, and the courage to look in the mirror.
The first place I look and Ibet the first place you look, aj
, is in the mirror right Beforewe start correcting behavior.
Am I doing all those things?
And that's where you turn thatperformance diagnostic lens on
yourself.
Have I done this to make surethat this employee can be
successful?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
That's a really powerful point.
Leaders, listeners, please walkaway with that.
Every morning, it's verydifficult to shave without
looking in the mirror.
You want to like what you see.
You want to like what you seeeach morning.
So if there's a problem goingon on your team and your
organization, first thing youwant to ask yourself is am I
part of the problem or what am Idoing to help reduce the
(38:40):
problem?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Right on brother.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
All right, paulie, let's touch on the last hat,
which is the managing hat, andin the book we talk about skill
maintenance and we've we've wornthose other hats well, pauly,
and now we're looking atmaintaining a high performing
individual or a high performingteam.
I've heard someone say in termsof like professional football
(39:05):
games in the NFL, that moregames are lost than actually won
, meaning that sometimes a coachor leader, they just mismanaged
the clock, they mismanaged theplaybook, the situation.
I think that can be true inother leadership situations as
well.
Paulie, can you maybe provideour listeners with just some
really practical advice on howto maintain not only a
(39:29):
high-performing individual orteam, but a high-performing
culture?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, all right.
So a few things.
Let me just go back and reflectthat leadership comes back to
behavior.
The measure of the leader canbe found in the behavior of the
follower, right?
So when that leader is notgetting the performance from
their team, from the folksaround them or even themselves
again, right, I'm not performingtheir standard they need to
think about what do I, as aleader, need to do more, less or
(39:56):
differently?
That's going to increase thatright?
That's the ultimate measure ofit.
Leading was about creating want,right To behave.
Training is about making surethey have the right behavior to
engage in.
Coaching is about making surethat that behavior generalizes
into the natural environment,that people behave well enough
and long enough that theyproduce naturally occurring
(40:17):
outcomes.
Now we need to have and we'rethe first to do this again and I
was the first to do it inpositional authority and
deliberate coaching.
That is defining, managingfunctionally.
That is for maintenance ofbehavior.
Right, we now need to maintainthat behavior.
How do we do this?
Well, if we do it in theabsence of the other hats, we're
(40:37):
going to be using coercion.
I find that if the person's notinspired, if they don't have
the knowledge and skills, ifthey haven't behaved well enough
and long enough that they sawthat they can produce these
outcomes, you're forcing peopleto do things and then it becomes
miserable.
But managing does not have tobe miserable because if you've
put on those other hats, ifyou're sure people understand
the valued outcomes that are init for them right, that they
(40:59):
have the knowledge and skills tobe successful, that they've
done it well enough and longenough, that they saw that they
can produce these outcomes right, then managing gets easy when
there's a system to support it.
Meaning systems should bedesigned to deliberately deliver
positive reinforcement forvalue-added behavior, right.
(41:20):
So I gave the example of driving.
That's a system we all driveright, we all follow the system
and there's lots of positivereinforcement, a stream of
positive reinforcement that'sacting on your behavior as you
drive, all the status coming in,this feedback loop constantly
coming in that guides yourbehavior towards getting to your
(41:40):
ultimate cause of your behavior, which is the destination, and
that's all positivereinforcement.
Now there are things that ifyou do the wrong thing, there
are corrections that will occur.
If you're on the highway andyou get off the path a little
bit, you get the rumble bumpsright.
It reminds you to get back inline.
(42:01):
If you speed, you can getpulled over, you can get a
ticket, you can have yourlicense suspended, you could
even go to jail, and these areall risks that we accept because
there's so much positivereinforcement built into driving
and we're okay with that stuff.
We don't want to get a ticketand have that stuff, but we
accept these right Inorganizations that design their
(42:22):
systems so people are producingvalued outcomes.
They can see the valued outcomesthey're doing.
They're made to feel thatthey're valued.
That's the biggest positivereinforcement.
Anything in between that stuffis just a token of our
appreciation, letting peopleknow they're doing a good job.
I think that helps them feelingvalued right, but helping them
see that they're impacting theorganization and these outcomes.
(42:45):
If it's the maintenance worker,they need to know that, hey,
you've kept this place runningso well.
Our employees can successfullyproduce these outcomes If it's
in the classrooms.
You know the teachers, you knowyou have running water and you
know everything's clean in thereand this helps you to do A, b
and C.
You know the cafeteria workersall employees need to understand
(43:09):
how what they do contributes tothe end goal, and so we want to
recognize that stuff.
We want to have goals thatpeople can achieve right.
They feel good to achieve themright, so it doesn't mean
they're easy goals.
We want to make sure thatpeople feel good about achieving
the goal.
But in the leading hat, when wefirst put that leading hat on
we helped to create plans thatoutline accomplishments right,
and accomplishments are likemeasures of progress towards
(43:32):
success.
And when you have thosemeasures and people understand
what they need to do hourly,daily, weekly and they can see
because they're getting feedbackloops that they're moving that
direction.
The same way, when you'redriving, that you can see you're
getting closer to yourdestination, that takes over for
the behavior and managingbecomes just automatic.
It becomes easy to maintainbehavior because you've set up a
(43:52):
system so well.
Nobody's coming out and tellingyou AJ, go this way, that way
or the other way right, unlessyou've got the GPS on right and
that's having the coaching haton because you've never gone
somewhere before, right.
But we want to fade that outbecause we want people to do it
independently, but without thoseother three hats on.
Then it becomes coercive andthis is where managing becomes
(44:13):
very difficult.
But, as you see, a good leaderneeds to engage in managing and
good managers need to put on theleading hat sometimes, because
if their folks don't have theskills, then they need to engage
in those behaviors or the wantyou know.
They need to create a want Ifthey don't have the skills, the
training hat, coaching, etcetera, et cetera.
Right, because it all comesdown to getting behavior going
and keeping it going.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
I'm so glad you circled back to that.
I was going to ask you couldyou repeat that for our
listeners, but you actually justdid it.
If you're not wearing thoseother three hats first, that's
coercive in that situation andso all of those hats are needed.
Situation and so all of thosehats are needed.
(44:56):
And sometimes we may not wantto wear certain hats or we may
be more confident at putting onother hats than the others,
right, pauly?
But we need to be able to wearthose different hats for
different situations.
Another thing you kind ofalluded to that I like is with
the managing hat.
We are talking aboutmaintaining that performance
with systems.
(45:16):
If you've done those otherthree hats well, now this hat
becomes a lot easier.
And for our listeners just toreally drill down and make it
practical, think about settingup habits and systems that lead
to good management ofperformance.
And so for some people theymight have a one-on-one schedule
with their direct reports.
Or a football coach might haveone-on-ones scheduled with his
(45:41):
quarterback in certainsituations to prepare for the
upcoming game.
That's designing a practicalsystem to make sure that you're
wearing your managing hat andmaintaining the positive
performance Performanceevaluations.
That could be another thingthat's systematically woven in
to continue to manageperformance.
(46:02):
And Polly talked about makingpeople feel valued.
I know a manager who, everytime one of her direct reports
has a birthday, she doessomething really special for
them, provides a meal, makessure they feel valued, takes the
time to look inward andrecognize those folks.
That's a system, that's a habit, that's set up.
And I'll repeat James Clear,the author that said we don't
(46:25):
rise to the level of our goals,we fall to the level of our
systems.
If you're just hoping to do allof this stuff organically, you
might lose the game sometime.
More games are lost than one.
You got to actually make sureyou're setting up habits to win
the game and, by setting upthese systems, to be able to do
(46:45):
these things for your people,don't you think, paul?
Speaker 2 (46:48):
I love that quote, man.
The system wins out every time,and people don't understand how
to design systems.
When I go into organizations orschools, I help them design
systems by starting with the endin mind what's the result that
you want to produce?
And then we begin aligningbehavior up the chain.
And then now we figure out.
You know how are we going toapply these hats.
(47:08):
You know why aren't they doingthis stuff right now.
That helps us to analyze theperformance gap.
And so what interventions do weneed to put in place?
Do they need knowledge andskills?
Do they need inspiration?
Do they need coaching?
And now, how are we going tomanage this stuff to maintain it
?
So, fundamentally, that systemis going to win out, but it's
systems and leadership, becausea good system won't work without
(47:30):
good leadership and goodleadership won't work without a
good system.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Good system won't work without good leadership and
good leadership won't workwithout a good system.
Yeah, and people always go towhere the systems take them, so
we need to design good systems.
Paul, I want to set you upFirst of all.
(47:54):
This episode has been just jampacked with value for a leader
who's going to self reflect onsome of these, these principles
and concepts, and then figureout how you can make it
practical and actionable withyour followers, with your
students, with your athletes, ifyou're a coach.
But, pauly, I want to set youup with kind of a part and shot
and a question for our listeners.
Certainly, as leaders, we maybe more comfortable or stronger
with certain hats, or not enjoy,maybe, wearing that coaching
hat or that manager hat as much.
(48:16):
They're all important at somepoint.
But, paulie, out of the fourhats, is there one hat that is
more important than the others?
You think?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
You know it's hard because it's going to be based
on the needs of the followers,but I find that the hat that's
conspicuously absent a lot isthe coaching hat.
Wow, people might rally thetroops at the beginning of the
followers, but I find that thehat that's conspicuously absent
a lot is the coaching hat.
People might rally the troopsat the beginning of the year,
you know, at the beginning ofthe quarter or whatever.
They might send them totraining and then they skip
right to managing right, and ifpeople haven't behaved well
enough and long enough toproduce those outcomes now,
(48:48):
you've got a problem right.
So that's why we've actuallywritten a whole book on
deliberate coaching, becauseit's really a systematic
approach to it.
So that's the hat I find ismissing the most.
But you really need them all,based on the needs of your
followers.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
You know, Paulie, is that because I agree with you on
that?
But is that because coachingrequires that asking of the
questions requires a listener,which can be hard?
For most of us, I'd saylistening can be a hard skill,
especially for assertive leaderswho want to interject and
impart their wisdom on people ortheir advice or directive on
(49:26):
people.
Do you think that's why, Paulie?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
I think it's simpler and that is because it requires
more effort.
I think it's easier to train awhole bunch of people right at
the beginning right and thensend them out in the workplace
and assume they're going to dotheir job.
It requires showing up to seewhat they're doing right and
help them see the impact of it.
So you've got to get on siteNow.
It doesn't mean you always haveto be on site.
(49:53):
Part of my coaching process ishas people to self-monitor and
report out, because we can't beeverywhere seeing everybody's
behavior.
But they can certainly look attheir behavior and the outcomes
that they're producing, reportout to you.
And now you show upintermittently to do like inner
observer agreement right, Seewhat they're doing, see if
they're producing it right.
But I think it's reallyimportant that immediately
following training that we needboots on the ground, we to see
what people are doing.
Like I can't train a fighterright.
(50:15):
Then send them in the spa and acouple weeks later you know, go
coach them in it.
I need to do it fresh off theskill right and help them to see
that by doing this, otherwisethey're going to fall back into
old habits.
It's going to happen all thetime, and it does happen all the
time that's's great.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
That's great.
Well, man, this has been anabsolute blast.
Great episode, great dialoguewe've had.
Paulie, I know you're not goingto do it because you're just
operating in your passion andtrying to change the world in
your corner of it, but I willsay this is a phenomenal book
Positional Leadership andAuthority.
(50:52):
It has many, many other greatconcepts, just like the four
hats of leadership.
So I'm going to give ashameless plug for my guy.
Take a look at it.
If you're an aspiring leader,if you're a leader that has
fallen into a rut, so to speak,or if you're a high performing
leader and you just want tocontinue to double down on being
(51:13):
the best leader you canpossibly be, go ahead and check
that out and, paulie, I'llalley-oop it up to you, man, for
any final thoughts for ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
No, this was.
I love talking about this stuff, man.
I love talking shop.
I want to say that if you'renot producing the outcomes,
don't beat yourself up.
The first thing is awareness.
You know, you got to be aware,you got up.
The first thing is awareness.
You know, you got to be aware.
You got to see yourself.
You know, understand that themeasure of your leadership is
found in the behavior thatfollows, or found in your own
(51:41):
behavior.
It's all going to come back tobehavior, but I think
self-awareness is important andthen you can start to seek out
some of the solutions, becauseyou and I have had both had
successes and we both hadfailures.
I've learned a lot from myfailures, um, you know, but I
always, always reflecting on mybehavior because, in the end,
it's not about intent, right?
It's about impact.
All right, brother, we'll seeyou next time.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
All right, take care.
Welcome to the Heart and Science of Leadership, where
evidence meets empathy.
Co-hosted by Dr Paul Gavone, aWall Street Journal and USA
Today bestselling author, and AJRinaldi, a John Maxwell Team
certified leadership coach, thispodcast blends the human side
of leadership withevidence-based practices,
demonstrating that leadershipisn't about title or intent.
(00:24):
It's about impact.
And now here are your hosts,pauly and AJ.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
All right, welcome back, AJ.
Good to see you, brother.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Good to see you too brother, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm good man.
I want to let you know yousound great man.
Would you do somethingdifferently on that side?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, I just upgraded some of my equipment here to
try to give some better qualityfor our listeners.
We've been receiving suchpositive feedback on the podcast
so I thought it was all inright to try to continue to
improve for our listeners here.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, and what's exciting you and I have been
talking about this a little bitthat we're eventually going to
start pulling some people intointerview and we actually have a
lineup of a couple of folksthat are coming out that are
very well-known, successfulleaders in their own right.
So, anyways, stay tuned forthat.
We'll be eager to hear yourfeedback on it, Because in the
(01:17):
end, we want to give thelisteners what they want.
I think people are reallyenjoying this format, but they
also might enjoy us talking toleaders, and maybe they're going
to enjoy that more, or maybethey want to just hear us talk,
or maybe they want to have it goback and forth.
So we'll let the dad do thetalking for on that, that, that
how we're going to approach it,moving forward, Anyways.
(01:37):
So you know, AJ, you're kind oflike the guide.
You're kind of like I'm likethe color commentator brother.
You know what I mean.
Like the guide, You're kind oflike I'm like the color
commentator brother.
You know what I mean.
You're the play-by-play guy.
So what are we?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
going to talk about today.
Oh, my goodness, we have agreat episode planned for our
listeners this morning.
This morning, we're going to betalking about the four hats of
leadership, and so we knoweffective leaders.
They have a versatile skill set.
They need to wear differenthats in different situations.
And, of course, we're nottalking about a literal hat like
(02:06):
a ringmaster or a meter maid.
As a matter of fact, I think ifyou have to wear a funny
looking hat to tell peopleyou're in charge, you're
probably not a very effectiveleader.
But we're talking about thosefigurative hats that we all have
to wear as leaders.
And the four hats of leadership.
It's a concept covered in thebook positional authority Ain't
(02:27):
Leadership, and so we just sohappen to have the Wall Street
Journal and USA Todaybestselling author for that book
right here, my friend, mymentor, my co-host, paul Govani.
Paulie, we're going to get intoeach hat.
But how did you, how did youcome up with this concept for
our listeners?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, let me start off.
Thanks, man.
I'm glad that you want to talkabout this I'm just so
passionate about as we both arespeaking about leadership
Anytime.
I always like to just put thiscaveat on here because of people
here.
But we're going to talk aboutmy bestselling book.
You know they're like thisguy's just trying to push the
book sales guys.
I have hundreds of articles onLinkedIn.
(03:09):
They're all free.
I welcome you to go read thosearticles.
You can bypass reading the bookif you want.
None of the stuff I put out inthe world is to make profit on
it.
You know I really love.
If you're an author, youunderstand that unless you're a
New York times and I'm a wallstreet journal in USA today
bestselling author unless you'rea New York times bestselling
(03:29):
author and you've had millions,that's where you actually start
making some money.
I'm just living my values withthis stuff, man.
I constantly do it, if you know.
You know you see all the stuffI put out.
I'm prolific with it because Ijust love doing it Anyway.
So where did the concept come upwith?
Well, the concept came up withyears of shitty leadership, man.
(03:50):
I honestly, god man, came intothe.
I really stalled coming out ofcollege.
I was being a career studentfor a while, man, I was taking
one or two classes.
I did not want to be in thereal world because it looked
just too scary for me.
And when I got in the realworld, it wasn't what I thought.
It was worse, brother, and whatmade it worse was leadership.
(04:15):
Almost always it was theproblem that I had with people
with positional authority andpart of it.
Now, this is not a science-basedthing, right, but there's.
There's these like, uh,hierarchies I forget what they
call this stuff like alpha, male, beta, male, whatever, all that
stuff you know.
I mean, uh, it doesn't have tobe male, it could be female,
(04:36):
whatever.
Um, but I just I identify withthis, this sigma archetype, and
the sigma archetype doesn't likehierarchies.
I just never see hierarchy,which means I don't see people
above me and I don't see peoplebelow me, and I think that just
resonated.
My folks are really good abouttreating everybody with respect
and equal and I don't ever seeposition.
(04:57):
And so and you and I agree onthis, we've talked about this in
an earlier episode I'm gonnatreat the maintenance guy as
well as I treat the CEO, maybebetter, because I know how
challenging it is and howthey're probably just getting by
, I don't know.
Just a lot of respect for thefrontline employees all the time
.
It doesn't mean I don't respectthe CEO, but in the end I don't
(05:18):
care about your title.
What I care about is how youtreat others and I'm going to
treat you accordingly,especially how you treat the
people with the least amount ofinfluence or power.
So after years of like justexperiencing what I consider bad
leadership, I ended up goingback and getting a couple of
degrees in leadership and Ifound that I was really like
(05:39):
almost angry at not only whatI've experienced from leadership
, but also what I saw otherpeople experience, because it
wasn't always certainly aimed atme.
I felt a certain shame and Iwrite about it in the book about
seeing people talked down to,seeing them forced to do things
(06:00):
and just like treated as if theywere less than for things as
simple as like they didn't havetheir degree or their degree
wasn't high enough right, andthat drove me nuts, aj, um, and
so that built up this well oflike.
You know what it started offwith.
The book was going to be how totell if you're a shitty leader,
um, but it ended up evolvinginto this.
I just wanted to help peopleunderstand, from a scientific
(06:22):
perspective, what realleadership is, and I think in
the end, as you know, the bookis really about behavior.
It's not about people, it'sabout behavior.
That's where the measure ofleadership could be found.
So I wanted to help peoplebecause most people are good
people engaging in bad behaviorright To understand what it
meant to be a good leader, andso that's why I put the book out
, man, and I talk about my ownbehavior in it, like I wasn't
(06:45):
and I still do engage in what Icall ask, ask clownery, you know
so that that was what theimpetus behind writing the book
was, man.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I think, paulie, this is important and I definitely
want to dive into the bulk ofour content.
But I think this is importantbecause we often say we talk
about positional leadershipversus actual leadership and
leadership as is a behavior, nota title, but it's.
I think it's important andrelevant for our listeners.
(07:14):
Like, in no way are we sayingcertain positions and authority,
like we definitely want torespect the authority, we want
to obviously follow thosedirectives and those different
parts about their job that iswithin their title to follow.
But if a leader has thatauthority and they also just so
(07:35):
happen to be exhibiting reallypositive leadership behaviors
and values-based leadership,servant-based leadership, I mean
, pauly, for a person who hasthe authority and they're
emulating those things, I mean Ithink you become what Craig
Grishel calls a leader thatpeople love to follow in those
situations.
(07:55):
Do you agree with that, pauly?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I mean I just wanted to clear that up for our
listeners before we I'm gladthat you did, man, because I
don't want to disrespect theposition right.
And if you're a person who is areal leader and has positional
authority, you can make a ton ofpositive difference in your
organization and the lives ofothers, you know.
(08:17):
But if you don't have thatposition or authority, you can
still be a leader, you can stillhave influence, but as you rise
up the hierarchy, you're nowgiving resources and the title
comes with your ability to makechanges and it makes it easier
because you're in control ofmore contingencies.
(08:37):
You're in control of theenvironment of other people and
we know it's in the environmentinfluences behavior.
So a good leader adapts theenvironment to ensure that they
get the right behavior in theright way from the followers so
they can produce the rightresults.
Because in the end, it's notjust about producing results but
how we produce those resultsright.
So I'm really glad that youclarified that point, because
(08:59):
people work very hard to gettheir positions, you know.
So it's not about knocking thatposition.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, and you, you talked about those.
You know those kinds ofnegative experiences.
You had that kind of set you onthis path.
But, um, we've all had a leaderwho's had that authority, even
if, if they were just a middle,middle manager, um, at our entry
level positions, and theyhappen to have that little bit
of authority and they happen tobe a person that just exhibited
(09:26):
a high amount of character andjust service towards their
followers and, man, we'd runthrough a brick wall for those
folks.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That is so true, man, that is so true.
But there's just not enough ofthose people, I find.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
We need more.
We need more, and that's whatwe're here to do help produce
more Right, paul.
That's right.
That's right, that's right.
I want to dive in now to one ofthe first hats of leadership
that you talk about, paulie, andthis is the leading hat, which
is kind of centered aroundmotivating people, inspiring
people.
We know leadership isinfluencing and motivating
(09:58):
people in an ethical manner toreach a goal for the team, the
group, the organization.
And so, paulie, I want to askyou a question, but I also want
to go ahead and give you thefollow-up.
I want to know what are somegood first steps for our
listeners in wearing the leadinghat, and also, do we sometimes
wear hats that we don't feellike putting on as a leader?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, great question.
I want to start with this one.
Now.
I want to make it clear that Iactually deliberately chose the
term leading because I wanted tomake the contrast as we will do
later on between leading andmanaging and some people think
leading is better than managing,and they're both necessary.
And a manager can be a leaderand a leader can be a manager,
(10:43):
and they both need to be right,because it's going to come back
to behavior.
What I would say about theleading hat is that in the
science of human behavior, wecall it a motivating operation.
Right, that means engaging abehavior that has a value in
behavior, altering effect.
In short, it's about inspiringpeople.
If people aren't inspiredtowards a goal right, towards
(11:04):
something in the future, there'snot a want to move towards that
goal.
You end up doing, they're goingto end up doing, just enough to
get by, and only when you'relooking right, they need to know
that this is aligned with somesort of value of theirs.
Right?
If I, if I behave this way, isit going to produce some sort of
valued outcome?
You know cause?
(11:26):
I think?
In the end, people want to feelvalued and they want to produce
valued outcomes.
Right, this is the mostimportant thing in the
organizations and that's what'sgoing to get them to go above
and beyond, or what Dr AubreyDaniels, who was my guy father
of organizational behaviormanagement, calls discretionary
effort, right, which I thinkcould be the true measure of the
(11:48):
best leaders, right, whenpeople are going above and
beyond even when you're notlooking.
So it's really about that, andthere's different ways that
people can engage in that, butin where the leading hat, but
fundamental to it, fundamentalto it is finding out what's
important to people and helpingthem to see that by how engaging
this behavior it's going tomove you towards these important
(12:11):
outcomes.
Does that make sense?
Aj, yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And I think, whether you're in different fields,
whether you obviously I mean Iwork in a field where if we do
social work or we work in humanservices, I mean there's just a
lot of intrinsic value forpeople and hopefully your
mission or your organization hasrecruited really purpose-driven
(12:35):
people to that, which couldmake it a little bit easier to
tap into some of that motivation.
But I mean, paul, even ifyou're the CEO of ExxonMobil,
every human being has somethingthat motivates them and, as a
leader, I think it's our job totap into those motivations to
help inspire people, becausemotivation it's not, it doesn't
just stay at a high level at alltime, it ebbs and flows, right,
(12:59):
paul?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, that's exactly right and that's why the
definition of motivatedoperation has it.
It's a temporary value andbehavior altering effect.
Right and sure, we need to getbehavior moving in the right
direction and we want to have itmoving because people want to
right.
They're like oh, I desire.
And some of the greatestleaders in the world, like JFK,
(13:21):
got people to leave their job,uproot their house and go in and
serve in the Peace Corps.
Right, you see, martin LutherKing get people to put their
lives on the line to rally forcivil rights.
You know, I mean, these peopleare amazing.
They tapped into people'svalues and created the wants of
people.
Now we're charged up, ready tomove in the right direction.
(13:43):
Right, it's incrediblyimportant, man.
These guys are visionaries, youknow, and they help other
people see the vision.
But the vision's got to betapped into what's important to
people and they help otherpeople see the vision, but the
vision's got to be tapped into.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
What's important to people?
Yeah, and there's, I mean.
And then I think, as a leader,I mean one thing I've found
successful is just flat outasking people like what do you
want?
Where do you see yourself?
I mean, some people may betrying to move into other roles,
some people may have shorterterm goals that they're trying
to accomplish with projects butflat out asking the question
(14:13):
like what do you want?
What do you?
What's what's what?
What gets you up in the morningright now?
What are you trying to get toand aspire to?
And then, as a leader, I thinkyou can kind of ask guided
questions along the way to helpprompt them and help move them
in that direction.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, goahead, Paul, you in that
direction.
Yeah, absolutely, man.
Yeah, go ahead, paul, you hadsomething there.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
I was going to say that that isfundamental.
It could be as simple as that.
There are other things that youcan dig in deeper.
You know, like, first of all,it always starts with asking
questions, right, great leadersask lots of questions, right?
Less telling more about asking.
And what you're really askingis finding out what's important
(14:55):
to people, uh, finding out whatpotential obstacles are blocking
what's important to them.
You know, uh, maybe asking someother questions about the, uh,
you know, maybe, implications of, for example, let's say,
somebody's not performing to astandard, right, helping them
see the ripple effect on howit's impacting them.
Because let's say it's about,you know, the Exxon, right,
(15:15):
people are like, well, you'rejust making money from oil, but
maybe somebody who really values, like, you say like, listen,
this fuel is fueling our world.
You know it's helping moms anddads make it into work.
You know what I mean.
And put food on the table.
You know what I mean Tappinginto what's important to those
people and making about thatwork.
You know, but sometimes, like,the value, depending on the
(15:37):
position that somebody's in inthe moment, right, think about
Maslow's hierarchy need, right,I hear say principals saying,
well, you got to do it for thestudents, well, that may very
well be, and I really believethat teachers want the students
to be successful.
But if that teacher isstruggling to keep their head
above the water because, let'ssay, they don't have classroom
management in place, but theydon't even know, that's the
(16:00):
reason, right, they're justseeing the behavior.
They're not recognizing that.
Yeah, this behavior isoccurring because you need to do
something, more or less ordifferently, tapping into that
value and making about thatperson, so they can see that if
you engage in some behaviorchange, the class is going to
behave better.
Oh, and, by the way, they'realso going to be in learning.
Right, we have to make surewe're tying it into what's
(16:21):
important to the person and, ofcourse, we want that value to be
tied in to what's important tothe organization.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
You said so much value right there.
I want to unpack a little bitof it.
So, in your ExxonMobil exampleof like, yeah, we're not just
pumping oil, we're providingfuel for the world, we're
allowing parents to drive homeand drive the work and make a
living for the kids Some of thebest leaders I've ever been
around they're translators ofvision, right, they're able to
(16:54):
cast that vision, or they'reable to take an initiative or a
goal or a task and they're ableto help their followers see the
bigger purpose within it.
And then I double back to whatyou said about MLK and JFK.
That's what they were for ourcountry, right, they were
translators of vision.
They were able to motivate amass amount of people with some
(17:18):
of those words.
That was so valuable, paul.
I just had to circle back tothat for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well, I like how you frame stuff like that.
Brother.
You're good with that stuff,man.
That was well done.
You said the translators ofvision, right?
Is that what you said?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, absolutely, I love that, yeah, that's a good
statement, that's great, that'sgreat stuff.
So that's the leading hat whichwe have to wear.
We have to inspire people,motivate people.
That's like a really criticalpoint and a critical hat to wear
when we're talking about beingan effective leader.
Let's talk about the second hat, which is the training hat,
(17:50):
which in the book it talks a lotabout skill acquisition and
good leaders.
No doubt they know how to leadpeople.
Great leaders know how todevelop them.
And so, paulie you know wetalked a little bit about it in
episode two Not every leader isgoing to become the CEO of the
organization.
You know, through our work lifecycle and this is for a lot of
(18:12):
our corporate listeners Mostwill be middle managers and not
always have complete controlover who you work with or who's
on your team.
And for that reason, paulie, Ithink the training hat is
absolutely critical for leaders.
But how do you see that, paulie?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Well, before we dive into that hat, I want to make
this connection.
I should have done it earlier.
When we talk about the fourhats, we can also apply these to
self-leadership.
Right, as an individual, wealso need to have our own vision
, right, what do we want to dowhen we get older, grow up to
right, and we got to unpack thatstuff.
If you don't have that, if youdon't have purpose man, people
without purpose and I love thispit to purpose right, that's
(18:53):
your business.
You know, without purpose,there's nothing pulling your
behavior towards where you'regoing to be one day.
So it's huge.
So this also applies toself-leadership.
Now, back to the training hat.
It's fundamentally important todesire to produce some outcome
in the future.
Right, this is really important, having that want, having that
inspiration.
(19:14):
But it's not enough, right, weneed to have the knowledge and
skills that are going toactually move us or move others
towards that vision, towardsthat goal, towards that valued
outcome.
And this is where you bring theshift to the training hat.
Now, if you're a leader andthis is why we talk about
putting different hats on it, aswe'll move to the other two
(19:36):
hats in a little bit you need toknow what your folks need.
Do they have the skills?
Right?
And if they have the skills,well, we might have to put on
the leading hat or maybe someother stuff which we'll get into
a little bit.
Right, but let's just assumethey don't have the skills.
Let's start from the beginningand would say, okay, we want to
inspire them now.
We have to equip them with theknowledge and skills to be
(19:57):
successful, because you know howare they going to even move in
the right direction, right andum, a lot of people end up
throwing training at folks andthey're like sitting gets aj and
uh, they don't walk away withthe knowledge and skills to be
successful.
I'm finding this in highereducation as well.
Um, you and I are both combatsports athletes.
(20:20):
You did wrestling, I did boxingand mixed martial arts, and
certainly I know that neitherone of us would have had any
success.
Uh, if somebody would just toldus how to wrestle, told us how
to box, told us how to do MMA,dropped us into the combat realm
to combat with people and thenexpected us to perform right,
(20:41):
that is not the way you buildskills.
Skills need to be instructed,right.
People need to be told how todo something modeled.
And then the biggest piece andthis is the piece that folks
miss a lot, but not in sports Insports, we get this a lot is
the rehearsal and feedback right, practice and feedback.
And it's also not enough just topractice.
(21:01):
You need feedback.
You need to know if you'redoing the right thing, whether
it's feedback from a coach oryou're recruiting, feedback from
the environment itself.
You can see that when I do this, it produces this outcome right
, and this is a successfuloutcome.
I need to keep doing it.
It's not successful.
I got to figure out what I needto do more or less or
differently, and this is wherecoaching can help or, you know,
looking at video modeling,things like that but you have to
(21:23):
have the skills to buildfluency.
Fluency meaning you can dothings automatically right.
Fluency meaning you can dothings automatically right,
precisely, and you retain thatknowledge and skill over time.
If you don't build fluency withsomething, people might be able
to demonstrate competency atthe end of a training, but then
they walk away the next day, thenext week, and they forget
(21:43):
everything that they learnedright.
So it's key to train people inpivotal behaviors, meaning
behaviors that are going to helpthem to continue to learn
independently, right?
We can't throw everything.
If everything's important,nothing's important.
There's not enough time totrain people in everything, but
we can train them well enough sothey can learn to adapt on
their own.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, I like that and I mean, obviously, I'm a member
of the John Maxwell team.
We have a process for equippingpeople.
And say so, pauly, if I'mtrying to train you, mentor you,
guide you in how to, like,facilitate meetings, the first
step is, like, I do it andyou're with me.
So, hey, pauly, we're going tohave a meeting, I'm going to
(22:32):
facilitate it, I want you to bewith me, I want you to see what
I'm doing, see my agenda, seethe questions, see how I engage
people who aren't participating.
And then the next step is we doit together.
So, pauly, hey, I know you sawme do conduct our meeting last
week.
This week, we're going to do ittogether.
I'm going to cover these points,you cover these points, and we
kind of split the tasks up andat each step we're debriefing,
(22:54):
we're providing that feedbackloop that you talk about all the
time, paulie, of what went well, what didn't go so well, and
then the last step to equippingand empowering that individual
is now you do it and I'm withyou, meaning I'm with you, I'm
observing, and afterwards I'mgoing to provide that coaching
and feedback on what went well,what we could have done better,
and just having that verysystematic sequence of
(23:16):
engagement in any task you mightimagine man does.
It create a great way to modelfor folks and actually put on
that training hat and make surethat people are getting skilled
up and building capacity in allthese different areas.
Yeah, and what I will say,these different areas.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, and what I will say to that is that was
well said.
In behavior science we callthat shaping and fading.
In the educational world wecall it gradual release.
Right, I do, we do, you do,it's great.
And what you just set up is agreat segue to the next hat,
because that moves from thetraining to the coaching hat.
Right, what you just said there, it's great and it's necessary.
(23:54):
It's the piece that peopleforget.
They think sending people totraining is what's needed and it
is part of the peanut butterand jelly sandwich.
Right, it's part of the formulafor success.
But training in and of itselfuh, even really good training,
right, the best training, peopleend up acquiring 60 of
knowledge, 60 of the skills.
(24:14):
Uh, this is from some joys andshowers.
Uh, research, that they did,and it was, it was research and
education.
But I've seen this generalizedvery well, right, theory did not
generalize, but like zeropercent of skills generalized
into the natural environment,right, the work environment
modeling, maybe five percent%,even rehearsal with practice,
10%, right, and a lot of people,organizations, are throwing
(24:35):
training but they're missing thenext part and that is the
coaching hat.
Right, so we have the leadinghat, inspiring people the
training hat, making sure theyhave the knowledge and skills to
be successful.
But now we need those knowledgeand skills to generalize into
people actually performing inthe natural environment, and
that shifts from instructing ortelling and you said this when
we talked about your gradualrelease to asking and helping
(24:57):
people be better observers oftheir behavior and the impact of
their behavior on theenvironment.
They need to see that, hey, ifI do this, this is going to
produce that valued outcome,because we've already tapped
into that value earlier.
Or, if I do this, it's notright and this is critical for
people to shift to the coachinghat right To ask questions,
because if they don't, they'llbecome what we call prompt
(25:19):
dependent.
What does that mean, aj?
It's, if you've ever gonesomewhere to the same spot over
and over again, you've used theGPS.
You are prompt dependent.
The GPS is telling you what todo all the time because you
haven't had to assess, you know,make decisions, take action by
yourself, because this thing isalways telling you what to do.
Right, and this happens withwell-meaning leaders, where
(25:40):
people are always coming to themto solve the problem.
And we really need people to beable to be independent, right,
we need them to become resilient.
We need I call this adaptiveintelligence in my new book but
we need them to be able to adaptin the environment in our
absence.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
And so that's the importance of the coaching hat.
I got to pause you there.
I got to pause you there andask a follow-up question so
prompt, dependent.
You used a great analogy aboutthe GPS, like, if you continue
to rely on the GPS to take yousomewhere, you've been a few
times already, right.
But, paulie, have you ever seenwhere it seems some leaders
want that, where they almostwant I mean micromanaging,
(26:21):
whatever you might want to callit, but they actually may seem
to prefer that, instead ofbuilding capacity of their folks
, they almost set it up wherepeople have to keep coming to
them and checking with them.
And have you seen that, paul?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, well, see, I would argue that, yes, I have,
but I would argue that thosearen't leaders.
I would argue those are peoplewith positional authority.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh, wow, touché.
So the coaching hat in yourbook and you use this term a lot
and for I know many of ourlisteners are in the behavior of
science you talk about skillgeneralization.
I want you to, I'm going towant you to dive in a little bit
deeper for our listeners whomay not be in that that field
and break that down a little bit.
I think the coaching hat orcoaching in general, but in
(27:06):
general can be miss, amisunderstood concept for people
.
Some people think it's.
I've heard coaching use, a kindof like feedback has been used,
like when, when people are likeI gave them, I gave them some
coaching like as as somethinglike to correct behavior or
whatever.
Albert Camus has this quote.
I love when I, whenever I thinkabout coaching, it says don't
(27:28):
walk in front of me, I may notfollow.
Don't walk behind me, I may notlead.
Just walk beside me and be myfriend.
And when I think about coaching, that's really what I go to,
pauly is it's walk, comingalongside folks.
And you use an analogy in thebook of like.
When we all learned how to ridea bike, how somebody kind of
(27:51):
started behind us probably wasan adult.
They, they continued to bealongside us eventually, start
to push us out there, push usout there and next thing you
know we're flying down thestreet on our own.
Um, can you go a little bitdeeper into that skill
generalization?
And then you mentioned fading,which I think is a great plug
for that analogy I just used ofriding a bike.
(28:11):
Can you go in depth there alittle bit for our listeners,
paul?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah.
So here's where I learned thisand I'm very proud of this
concept my co-author, Dr NickWedley.
He and I both wrote a couplebooks now on the concept of
deliberate coaching and that wasan extension of deliberate
practice.
Right, Deliberate practice isabout you know, you're
practicing, You're not justdoing something randomly, You're
focusing on a skill, You'relooking at your behavior right,
(28:37):
and you're doing that inrepetition.
Right, You're not focusing oneverything, because if
everything's important,nothing's important.
You're focusing on this thing,right, and you're trying to get
this thing right.
So it's very, it's precise,purposeful and systematic.
And functionally.
Because if you look at thedefinition of coaching, you'll
find a bunch of overlaps oftraining.
There's, of course, feedback,there's goals associated with it
, et cetera, et cetera.
(28:58):
But the difference is infunction, right, Shifting from
okay, the person now knows whatto do.
Now we need to get them to doit well enough in the natural
environment that it producesvalued outcomes, Because when
those outcomes are valued, theenvironment's going to take over
for the behavior and this ishow we end up fading out.
So I learned about this fromthousands of hours training
(29:22):
fighters right, and I noticedthat some of the fighters were
really good hitting the bag,hitting the mitts Right.
They don't like man, that guycan fight.
Then you drop them into likethe the.
The fight came.
You're like what happened to?
What happened to all theseskills?
Man, I'm not seeing anythingthat we worked on.
And then I started to reflecton wait, wait a second.
Some of the fighters are doingreally well.
What's the difference?
(29:42):
And the difference was sparring.
The difference was simulations,right, when they had the
opportunity to practice safelythese skills in dynamic
situations, because it's notenough to know the skills.
You need to do the right thingin the right way at the right
time in these environments.
So then I started to controlthose environments more, right.
(30:05):
So let's say, you know again,it's combat sports, so I'm going
to focus on teaching somebodyto slip a right hand.
Let's say it's a new skill Iwant them to learn right.
And now they're performing itreally well outside the ringer
cage.
They're doing it perfectly.
Okay, great.
Now it's time to generalize thatskill.
I'm not going to put them inthere with this high level
fighter performing, that's doingeverything that they have at
(30:26):
the fighter, because they'regoing to fall back on old habits
, those habits that are going tokeep them safe, and this
happens all the time in theworkplace, right?
This is where I see again ateacher, as an easy example,
that uses punishment to getstudents to do the right thing.
Why?
Because it works.
The fighter in the cage that istaken beating, they're going to
fall back on the things thatare keeping them safe for the
(30:48):
moment.
That doesn't help them to winthe fight.
In fact, it's going to helpthem to lose the fight.
They should be using theirdefense to set up their offense.
It should be an opportunity forthem.
But if you've never done itbefore, you're going to do that
thing.
That keeps you safe.
So I control the environment byonly letting, let's say, the
opponent just throw the jab,right.
And now they're getting highand doing it at 50%.
(31:10):
So now they're getting highrepetition and slipping a live
jab at a little bit of a slowerpace, right?
So now we can shape this up andI'm getting them in touch with
positive reinforcement, right.
Negative reinforcement too,right.
We don't got to talk about whatthat is, but essentially
they're getting success.
They're not getting hit andthey're also getting in a
position where they can hit,right.
(31:30):
So maybe I allow them to slipand counter with the hook or
something like that.
And now we start to increasethe speed of it.
And now I let them to add inokay, now we're going to just do
it with the right cross.
Okay, now we're going to do itwith the jab and the right cross
.
And now they're getting so muchrepetition and now we start to
layer back in the other skillsand before you know it, they are
successfully performing theslip under live conditions and
(31:55):
like oh, I want to slip, I cando it well, I am doing it well.
And this is how we buildfluency in these conditions, and
this drastically increases thelikelihood that they're going to
perform in the real world, thereal workplace for them.
And that's the actual fightDoes that make?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
And I go back to questions,right, and so I think even I
misunderstood coaching just asrecent as maybe four years ago,
three years ago.
The questions are so importantyou mentioned earlier.
(32:32):
You know, when we're talkingabout training people, like is
there a barrier to their success?
I think a lot of leaders ormanagers that I've seen they
often they don't ask thosequestions to see is there a
barrier to the person's success?
(32:52):
Oftentimes, and some managersor leaders they just kind of
judge that person based off theperformance or evaluate that
person based off their lack ofperformance, their lack of
meeting the goal, when the truthof the matter is the person has
some really big barriers thatare kind of getting in the way
of them achieving the goal.
(33:12):
One thing I love about thisconcept that we're talking about
the four hats and I think Italked about it in episode three
when we talked aboutcommunication is I talked about
syncing up the Bluetooth andmaking sure you're having the
right conversation with theright brain.
Like, do they need me to beempathetic right now?
Are they seeking advice rightnow?
That kind of fits in well withknowing to wear the right hat
(33:35):
for the right situation and Ithink, paulie, there's some
times where we have the coachinghat on when it's not needed or
they're not ready for thatcoaching hat in that particular
moment.
I just think that's a reallycritical point when we talk
about making sure we have theright hat for the right
situation.
Is this person in a positionright now to receive that
(33:55):
coaching?
If not, maybe I need to kind ofpunt this conversation, circle
back to it tomorrow or laterthat afternoon.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, absolutely, and that gets into like the end of
the book, but I'll talk about itnow because you put it on the
table.
It's great, 100% right, we'regoing to get into the last hat,
which is the managing hat, injust a second.
But in order to know which hatto wear, right, you need to have
a good assessment andeverything I do with the signs
of behavior, because it can getvery complex, it's very deep,
(34:24):
it's grounded in evolutionarytheory, right, we need to learn
to adapt our behavior.
We need to learn to adapt theenvironment, because our
behavior is a product of theenvironment.
We do the things that producevalued outcomes for us in the
end.
But knowing which hat to wearrequires performance diagnostics
(34:44):
and that's simple, right.
It really boils it down to isit a can't do or a don't do?
If it's a can't do, that's verysimple, right, it comes down to
the training hat.
They can be as motivated asthey want, they can have all the
skills, or they can have a goodsystem in place and all this
stuff, but if they can't do it,they need the skills.
(35:04):
When you get into the don't doand I purposely say don't
because others say won't do andwon't sounds like you're
refusing to do it right.
A lot of people, just you knowthey're not doing it for
different reasons.
For example, maybe they don'tknow the expectation, maybe they
have the skills but they're notin the habit yet.
Maybe they're not gettingfeedback.
Maybe they're being asked to dotoo many things at one time.
(35:25):
Maybe they don't have a processfor doing it.
Maybe they're not seeing theimpact of their behavior on the
environment right, or maybe thatthey don't value the impact,
which would mean you need to goback to the leading hat or again
coming down.
Maybe they can't tell you whatthey're supposed to do or how to
do it right, which makes it atraining hat.
So this requires performancediagnostics in all of my books.
(35:48):
When I came across this, drJohn Austin, who's a friend of
mine, actually developed it, andI love it because it's so
simple.
I've put it in all my books.
I've adapted it for the books,you know.
But people need to be able, andthat goes for ourself.
If I'm not performing tostandard, why Do I not know the
expectation?
Do I not have a process?
I'm not getting feedback?
I'm not seeing the outcome?
(36:08):
Is it too many things at once?
You can actually apply it toyourself.
Or you can apply it to yourselfas a coach, as a manager, when
we're looking at somebody else'sperformance.
Check those boxes before youstart to go in and say, hey, you
need to do this stuff.
Have I made sure they know theexpectations?
Have I made sure I'm givingthem feedback?
Have I made sure I'm givingthem more positive feedback when
(36:28):
they're doing the right thingright and giving corrective
feedback that's helpful to them?
Have I made sure I'm not askingthem to do too many things at
once?
Am I helping them see theoutcome of their behavior on the
environment right, et cetera,et cetera.
It's making sure that I'vecreated this environment that's
going to increase the likelihoodthat they're going to perform
at the standard.
And this requires theperformance diagnostic to let
(36:50):
you know which hat you shouldwear.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
And Pauly, I've seen leaders where I love the
distinction you made between thedon't versus the won't, because
I've seen a lot of leaders whojust assume it's a won't, it's a
won't issue and a won't issueand they don't consider that
don't factor.
And you went into a lot of a lotof different avenues there, but
(37:13):
one of them being a lack offeedback.
Right, too many, too many times, I think, as leaders across all
industries, they sit there andthey may, they not?
They don't consider thebarriers, but they also don't
deliver that feedback.
I think that's one of the worstthings you could do to, whether
you're talking about anemployee at work or even a
student in a classroom orathlete.
(37:35):
One of the worst things youcould do is judge somebody for a
lack of performance, yet youhaven't had the compassion or
the courage to have thatdifficult conversation and give
that constructive feedback to anindividual, and then the
behavior continues and we have aproblem here.
(37:55):
But you haven't asked yourselfthose key questions as a leader
that you just you just mentioned, paul, and I think that's
really valuable for ourlisteners there.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, and the courage to look in the mirror.
The first place I look and Ibet the first place you look, aj
, is in the mirror right Beforewe start correcting behavior.
Am I doing all those things?
And that's where you turn thatperformance diagnostic lens on
yourself.
Have I done this to make surethat this employee can be
successful?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
That's a really powerful point.
Leaders, listeners, please walkaway with that.
Every morning, it's verydifficult to shave without
looking in the mirror.
You want to like what you see.
You want to like what you seeeach morning.
So if there's a problem goingon on your team and your
organization, first thing youwant to ask yourself is am I
part of the problem or what am Idoing to help reduce the
(38:40):
problem?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Right on brother.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
All right, paulie, let's touch on the last hat,
which is the managing hat, andin the book we talk about skill
maintenance and we've we've wornthose other hats well, pauly,
and now we're looking atmaintaining a high performing
individual or a high performingteam.
I've heard someone say in termsof like professional football
(39:05):
games in the NFL, that moregames are lost than actually won
, meaning that sometimes a coachor leader, they just mismanaged
the clock, they mismanaged theplaybook, the situation.
I think that can be true inother leadership situations as
well.
Paulie, can you maybe provideour listeners with just some
really practical advice on howto maintain not only a
(39:29):
high-performing individual orteam, but a high-performing
culture?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, all right.
So a few things.
Let me just go back and reflectthat leadership comes back to
behavior.
The measure of the leader canbe found in the behavior of the
follower, right?
So when that leader is notgetting the performance from
their team, from the folksaround them or even themselves
again, right, I'm not performingtheir standard they need to
think about what do I, as aleader, need to do more, less or
(39:56):
differently?
That's going to increase thatright?
That's the ultimate measure ofit.
Leading was about creating want,right To behave.
Training is about making surethey have the right behavior to
engage in.
Coaching is about making surethat that behavior generalizes
into the natural environment,that people behave well enough
and long enough that theyproduce naturally occurring
(40:17):
outcomes.
Now we need to have and we'rethe first to do this again and I
was the first to do it inpositional authority and
deliberate coaching.
That is defining, managingfunctionally.
That is for maintenance ofbehavior.
Right, we now need to maintainthat behavior.
How do we do this?
Well, if we do it in theabsence of the other hats, we're
(40:37):
going to be using coercion.
I find that if the person's notinspired, if they don't have
the knowledge and skills, ifthey haven't behaved well enough
and long enough that they sawthat they can produce these
outcomes, you're forcing peopleto do things and then it becomes
miserable.
But managing does not have tobe miserable because if you've
put on those other hats, ifyou're sure people understand
the valued outcomes that are init for them right, that they
(40:59):
have the knowledge and skills tobe successful, that they've
done it well enough and longenough, that they saw that they
can produce these outcomes right, then managing gets easy when
there's a system to support it.
Meaning systems should bedesigned to deliberately deliver
positive reinforcement forvalue-added behavior, right.
(41:20):
So I gave the example of driving.
That's a system we all driveright, we all follow the system
and there's lots of positivereinforcement, a stream of
positive reinforcement that'sacting on your behavior as you
drive, all the status coming in,this feedback loop constantly
coming in that guides yourbehavior towards getting to your
(41:40):
ultimate cause of your behavior, which is the destination, and
that's all positivereinforcement.
Now there are things that ifyou do the wrong thing, there
are corrections that will occur.
If you're on the highway andyou get off the path a little
bit, you get the rumble bumpsright.
It reminds you to get back inline.
(42:01):
If you speed, you can getpulled over, you can get a
ticket, you can have yourlicense suspended, you could
even go to jail, and these areall risks that we accept because
there's so much positivereinforcement built into driving
and we're okay with that stuff.
We don't want to get a ticketand have that stuff, but we
accept these right Inorganizations that design their
(42:22):
systems so people are producingvalued outcomes.
They can see the valued outcomesthey're doing.
They're made to feel thatthey're valued.
That's the biggest positivereinforcement.
Anything in between that stuffis just a token of our
appreciation, letting peopleknow they're doing a good job.
I think that helps them feelingvalued right, but helping them
see that they're impacting theorganization and these outcomes.
(42:45):
If it's the maintenance worker,they need to know that, hey,
you've kept this place runningso well.
Our employees can successfullyproduce these outcomes If it's
in the classrooms.
You know the teachers, you knowyou have running water and you
know everything's clean in thereand this helps you to do A, b
and C.
You know the cafeteria workersall employees need to understand
(43:09):
how what they do contributes tothe end goal, and so we want to
recognize that stuff.
We want to have goals thatpeople can achieve right.
They feel good to achieve themright, so it doesn't mean
they're easy goals.
We want to make sure thatpeople feel good about achieving
the goal.
But in the leading hat, when wefirst put that leading hat on
we helped to create plans thatoutline accomplishments right,
and accomplishments are likemeasures of progress towards
(43:32):
success.
And when you have thosemeasures and people understand
what they need to do hourly,daily, weekly and they can see
because they're getting feedbackloops that they're moving that
direction.
The same way, when you'redriving, that you can see you're
getting closer to yourdestination, that takes over for
the behavior and managingbecomes just automatic.
It becomes easy to maintainbehavior because you've set up a
(43:52):
system so well.
Nobody's coming out and tellingyou AJ, go this way, that way
or the other way right, unlessyou've got the GPS on right and
that's having the coaching haton because you've never gone
somewhere before, right.
But we want to fade that outbecause we want people to do it
independently, but without thoseother three hats on.
Then it becomes coercive andthis is where managing becomes
(44:13):
very difficult.
But, as you see, a good leaderneeds to engage in managing and
good managers need to put on theleading hat sometimes, because
if their folks don't have theskills, then they need to engage
in those behaviors or the wantyou know.
They need to create a want Ifthey don't have the skills, the
training hat, coaching, etcetera, et cetera.
Right, because it all comesdown to getting behavior going
and keeping it going.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
I'm so glad you circled back to that.
I was going to ask you couldyou repeat that for our
listeners, but you actually justdid it.
If you're not wearing thoseother three hats first, that's
coercive in that situation andso all of those hats are needed.
Situation and so all of thosehats are needed.
(44:56):
And sometimes we may not wantto wear certain hats or we may
be more confident at putting onother hats than the others,
right, pauly?
But we need to be able to wearthose different hats for
different situations.
Another thing you kind ofalluded to that I like is with
the managing hat.
We are talking aboutmaintaining that performance
with systems.
(45:16):
If you've done those otherthree hats well, now this hat
becomes a lot easier.
And for our listeners just toreally drill down and make it
practical, think about settingup habits and systems that lead
to good management ofperformance.
And so for some people theymight have a one-on-one schedule
with their direct reports.
Or a football coach might haveone-on-ones scheduled with his
(45:41):
quarterback in certainsituations to prepare for the
upcoming game.
That's designing a practicalsystem to make sure that you're
wearing your managing hat andmaintaining the positive
performance Performanceevaluations.
That could be another thingthat's systematically woven in
to continue to manageperformance.
(46:02):
And Polly talked about makingpeople feel valued.
I know a manager who, everytime one of her direct reports
has a birthday, she doessomething really special for
them, provides a meal, makessure they feel valued, takes the
time to look inward andrecognize those folks.
That's a system, that's a habit, that's set up.
And I'll repeat James Clear,the author that said we don't
(46:25):
rise to the level of our goals,we fall to the level of our
systems.
If you're just hoping to do allof this stuff organically, you
might lose the game sometime.
More games are lost than one.
You got to actually make sureyou're setting up habits to win
the game and, by setting upthese systems, to be able to do
(46:45):
these things for your people,don't you think, paul?
Speaker 2 (46:48):
I love that quote, man.
The system wins out every time,and people don't understand how
to design systems.
When I go into organizations orschools, I help them design
systems by starting with the endin mind what's the result that
you want to produce?
And then we begin aligningbehavior up the chain.
And then now we figure out.
You know how are we going toapply these hats.
(47:08):
You know why aren't they doingthis stuff right now.
That helps us to analyze theperformance gap.
And so what interventions do weneed to put in place?
Do they need knowledge andskills?
Do they need inspiration?
Do they need coaching?
And now, how are we going tomanage this stuff to maintain it
?
So, fundamentally, that systemis going to win out, but it's
systems and leadership, becausea good system won't work without
(47:30):
good leadership and goodleadership won't work without a
good system.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Good system won't work without good leadership and
good leadership won't workwithout a good system.
Yeah, and people always go towhere the systems take them, so
we need to design good systems.
Paul, I want to set you upFirst of all.
(47:54):
This episode has been just jampacked with value for a leader
who's going to self reflect onsome of these, these principles
and concepts, and then figureout how you can make it
practical and actionable withyour followers, with your
students, with your athletes, ifyou're a coach.
But, pauly, I want to set youup with kind of a part and shot
and a question for our listeners.
Certainly, as leaders, we maybe more comfortable or stronger
with certain hats, or not enjoy,maybe, wearing that coaching
hat or that manager hat as much.
(48:16):
They're all important at somepoint.
But, paulie, out of the fourhats, is there one hat that is
more important than the others?
You think?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
You know it's hard because it's going to be based
on the needs of the followers,but I find that the hat that's
conspicuously absent a lot isthe coaching hat.
Wow, people might rally thetroops at the beginning of the
followers, but I find that thehat that's conspicuously absent
a lot is the coaching hat.
People might rally the troopsat the beginning of the year,
you know, at the beginning ofthe quarter or whatever.
They might send them totraining and then they skip
right to managing right, and ifpeople haven't behaved well
enough and long enough toproduce those outcomes now,
(48:48):
you've got a problem right.
So that's why we've actuallywritten a whole book on
deliberate coaching, becauseit's really a systematic
approach to it.
So that's the hat I find ismissing the most.
But you really need them all,based on the needs of your
followers.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
You know, Paulie, is that because I agree with you on
that?
But is that because coachingrequires that asking of the
questions requires a listener,which can be hard?
For most of us, I'd saylistening can be a hard skill,
especially for assertive leaderswho want to interject and
impart their wisdom on people ortheir advice or directive on
(49:26):
people.
Do you think that's why, Paulie?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
I think it's simpler and that is because it requires
more effort.
I think it's easier to train awhole bunch of people right at
the beginning right and thensend them out in the workplace
and assume they're going to dotheir job.
It requires showing up to seewhat they're doing right and
help them see the impact of it.
So you've got to get on siteNow.
It doesn't mean you always haveto be on site.
(49:53):
Part of my coaching process ishas people to self-monitor and
report out, because we can't beeverywhere seeing everybody's
behavior.
But they can certainly look attheir behavior and the outcomes
that they're producing, reportout to you.
And now you show upintermittently to do like inner
observer agreement right, Seewhat they're doing, see if
they're producing it right.
But I think it's reallyimportant that immediately
following training that we needboots on the ground, we to see
what people are doing.
Like I can't train a fighterright.
(50:15):
Then send them in the spa and acouple weeks later you know, go
coach them in it.
I need to do it fresh off theskill right and help them to see
that by doing this, otherwisethey're going to fall back into
old habits.
It's going to happen all thetime, and it does happen all the
time that's's great.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
That's great.
Well, man, this has been anabsolute blast.
Great episode, great dialoguewe've had.
Paulie, I know you're not goingto do it because you're just
operating in your passion andtrying to change the world in
your corner of it, but I willsay this is a phenomenal book
Positional Leadership andAuthority.
(50:52):
It has many, many other greatconcepts, just like the four
hats of leadership.
So I'm going to give ashameless plug for my guy.
Take a look at it.
If you're an aspiring leader,if you're a leader that has
fallen into a rut, so to speak,or if you're a high performing
leader and you just want tocontinue to double down on being
(51:13):
the best leader you canpossibly be, go ahead and check
that out and, paulie, I'llalley-oop it up to you, man, for
any final thoughts for ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
No, this was.
I love talking about this stuff, man.
I love talking shop.
I want to say that if you'renot producing the outcomes,
don't beat yourself up.
The first thing is awareness.
You know, you got to be aware,you got up.
The first thing is awareness.
You know, you got to be aware.
You got to see yourself.
You know, understand that themeasure of your leadership is
found in the behavior thatfollows, or found in your own
(51:41):
behavior.
It's all going to come back tobehavior, but I think
self-awareness is important andthen you can start to seek out
some of the solutions, becauseyou and I have had both had
successes and we both hadfailures.
I've learned a lot from myfailures, um, you know, but I
always, always reflecting on mybehavior because, in the end,
it's not about intent, right?
It's about impact.
All right, brother, we'll seeyou next time.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
All right, take care.
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