#8: Tony Thayer on Communication and Leadership

Tony is a master at leadership with years of experience.
We discussed leadership communications, how he got started, and how he helps leaders.

You can reach Tony at [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Good morning, afternoon, evening,whatever times when you're in and welcome to
another episode of the Heart podcast,and today we'll be talking with a good
friend of ours, Tony Thayer.Tony is a leadership consultant and has some
really interesting and different insights that Ithoroughly enjoy hearing from him about how to
be successful and have teams that areboth high producing as well as they're having

(00:23):
a good time. Which I likethat model because there's a lot of research
that says that happy teams are morehigh performing and have reduced turnover, which
is a great cost savings measure forany company. So enjoy thanks. I'm
trying to I'm trying to think ofa like of a funny like starting point

(00:45):
to stick in here right now,and I'm completely blanking, which is really
cunning. Well, I'll just saythen i'll see you edit this in.
Well, thanks for the nice words. I'm happy to be here. One
of the things that I really enjoyabout our conversations is how well our sensitive

(01:06):
humor work together, and how often, like you'll say something and I'll just
bust up laughing or verse that it'sreally good. So the topic of conversation
today it's all about leadership communication.And part of the reason that I wanted
Tony on the podcast is because he'sreally good at leadership communication and the way

(01:29):
that he talks about is different thanthe way that I talk about it,
and I think that for the audience, having that that that difference means that
people can see it from different angles, they can hear it from different angles.
And there's some people that the waythat I think can talk about leadership
it won't resonate for them necessarily,but the way that Tony talks about it

(01:49):
it will. That's what I hope. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out
how to be closer to being allthings to all people. Well, but
that's that's a great starting point becauseyou know, if you're a lead and
you want to up level your gameand create a better team that produces more
and has more fun and it hasthe upward spiral of energy, you have

(02:12):
to spend some time looking at whatis the real issue of leadership, and
of course communication fits into that.But yeah, just like there's many voices
that can tell you how it seemsto them, and then you get to
digest all that come up with yourown version. That's an important part of
like understanding what it's like for thepeople who are communicating with as a leader,
Like they all hear your words indifferent ways, and there is no

(02:36):
right way to say it. Youjust have to try something else if you
don't get through to one guy orone woman because they don't hear it the
way you're you've decided to say it. Jazz improv is probably a really good
metaphor for that. Improv is agreat men for that, because I mean,
the compelling words of improv are yesand but the normal traditional way of

(03:00):
management, it's like no, doit my way, and that's like a
shutdown and yes and things like whateveryou said I say yes to and let
me add this, because it's morethan that, right right, which is
basically the key to inclusion. Ohthat's a really yeah, I like that.

(03:23):
Yeah, that's I wonder how didwhere did you learn that? I
was a manager? Baby? Ittook me years, so it was just
a school of hard knocks. Istarted out My first supervising job was at
a twenty four hour production facility,and I had never supervised, never taken

(03:49):
any training, and it didn't reallywant to be a manager, but the
guy who led that died unexpectedly.Well, I guess usually it is unexpected.
But all of a sudden, Iwalked in one day. We didn't
have a manager, and I justquickly calculated that for my career advancement of
that company that would be so Ijust jumped in. I volunteer. I

(04:09):
scored a lot of points, andthen all of a sudden I learned that
this guy had created a disaster andpeople were really unhappy. Customers were unhappy.
Production quotas were down, and productiondeliveries were late, and and I
didn't know a damn thing about productionor management. So I just learned to
talk to my crew, like,what's going on here? What do you

(04:30):
think we should be doing about it? And for some reason, that's what
they needed to hear somebody listening tothat. They didn't feel like they were
seeing or appreciate it before. That'sinteresting, as you're saying now, part
of what I'm what I'm hearing isthat when you ask the people questions,
you're giving them ownership of the solution. We're right on topic, now,

(04:54):
aren't we. Yeah. I Iwas was thinking somebody a couple of weeks
ago had asking me about what itwas that I was doing with with my
software teams that had them succeed reallywell, because you do a great job
of that. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, And I think you know,

(05:15):
as you're as you're saying that you'redoing a better job of verbalizing what
I said because I said, well, they they were always part of the
process, and having them be partof the process meant as you just said,
that they had ownership and it wasn'tme dictating what we were going to
do. I knew strategically what wewere aiming for and and we knew,

(05:43):
you know, we're writing software rightand it's got used usability boundaries and APIs
took up to them all that stuff. So we knew that the borders and
the boundary cases, but they hada ton of ownership of how it all,
how it all worked. Yeah,yeah, many. You know,
it's like you can create a supernetwork out of a bunch of PCs,

(06:06):
right, super computers by networking bunchof PCs, and it's pretty you know,
when the manager has this sensibility thathe is or he or she are
responsible for the results, it getsvery constricting inside their body, Like you

(06:27):
don't I mean It's one thing tosay don't fuck it up as a person,
but it's another thing to sort ofpass it onto your whole team.
You guys better not suck it up. It just takes oxygen out of the
room. Yeah, so that's youknow. I mentioned to you before,
Bill that I was watching this podcastwith Steve Kerr talking to Jon Stewart,
and he has this beautiful expression oflike his role as a coach of the

(06:48):
world. That oughtause. Okay,we're back. I don't have to figure
out how to stick a commercial forsomething in there and get sponsors in available
now sponsorship and see see your businesshere exactly. Yeah. But yeah,

(07:14):
we were talking about about giving theteam ownership of the solutions and yeah,
and I was saying, I justthought used the word oxygen and inspiration,
like when when the team has ownership, it's like injecting oxygen into the system
and the organism breathes better, rightright, Yeah, And yeah, I

(07:34):
think, you know, I thinkthe typical employee, you know, like
the Gallup polls have said for twentyyears that something like twenty to thirty percent
of the employees say they're engaged bytheir own self, you know, assessment
and I think the disengaged employee,which is a big problem for a lot
of leaders. Something they talked abouta lot to me, the stereotypical mindset

(08:00):
ors, you know, sensibility thatstaff has, Like the leaders and the
managers are all in their world takingon all these responsibilities. I'm just going
to sit back until they make adecision. Right, And it's it's a
It not only takes oxygen out andsort of discounts their potential contributions, but

(08:22):
it it creates a cycle of disengagement. Right And to me as a leader,
because I generally found myself in positionswhere I didn't know what the hell
was wrong. I just knew thecustomer for bitching to me about how this
thing better get shaped up in thecancel. So I I just found it
in my situation and natural recourse togo to the staff, call them together

(08:45):
into groups and say like, Idon't get it, Like, I know
you guys are all smart, Iknow you all care about your jobs.
Every time I come to you andask for help, you give me good
suggestions. And yet as a teamwe seem to be disappointing the customer.
What's going on? Right? Right? And I was always blown away and
how much they had to offer,and I ended up. I ended up

(09:09):
Usually you're saying, well, onceyou try that, rather than telling you
to do that, what do youdo when they say we don't know?
The most natural thing for me todo is say I don't know either.
What are we going to do aboutthat? How how do you create the

(09:30):
space for the team to say that? And I asked this because I've noticed
that, Like I've watched leaders asktheir teams to figure out how to do
things, and nobody on the teamseems comfortable to say, we have no

(09:52):
idea, So how do you Howdo you lubricate that as a leader to
get the team to be willing tovolunteer? Generally like that, that silence,
there's just sort of a radical acceptanceof silence. And I not known

(10:16):
because the longer that's it's like theold adage about sales, because that's what
I did before I got into managementwith sales. And there's that old adage,
whoever speaks first loses at the endof the negotiation. Here's my offer,
Zip your lips and let the otherperson processed. So I guess I
just took that to management. It'slike, we don't know what to do,

(10:39):
And I might say I don't knoweither, what are we going to
do about that? And then Ijust sit and sooner or later somebody would
crack, well, we could trythis, because that's the thing about being
a leader. It's like, it'slike that I've mentioned briefly, Like I
watched this podcast between John Stewart andSteve Kurd, their Warriors coach, and

(11:05):
it's this sort of he has thisbeautiful observation that he's neither well, he's
both part of the management team,the group out there that constrains the team,
and he's one of the guys.He's part of the team, And
it's really just about involving the teamin the situation because we're all in this

(11:31):
together. And I think I thinkold school and maybe a lot of the
old NBA programs thought that, youknow, leaders had to be decisive,
and I just don't think that thatengages people. Disengages people. Let the
leaders have all the problems and dealwith them. It's not my problem becomes

(11:52):
the mantra, and then things evenwhen you do make a decision, there's
no buy in, there's no realparticular care, right, Yeah, I'll
say this too, Bill. It'slike there's I'm a big proponent of having
the team to find their own intention. And by that what I mean is

(12:13):
we have work to do. Weknow what the tasks involved are to process
from this place to this place,or the customer has this result, that's
what we deliver. This stuff hasto be done, and it may be
unpleasant and maybe like assembly line workwhere you're just punching a rivet into a
piece of metal over and over andagain. But the group as a whole

(12:37):
can decide what's our experience going tobe like coming in here every day and
doing our job every day. Notthat we get to decide what's going to
be done. Because there's a cleartask that has to be done and there's
juels and steps to get it done. Well, what kind of energy do
we bring to that and to oneanother? And how much participation do we

(12:58):
have in changing that which can bechanged? And if the leader sees his
role as injecting oxygen into the systemso that people can all like take some
ownership and have some self expression,like jeez, it seems to me the
problem is being stated wrong. Andif we stated like this, we could

(13:20):
do this and all of a suddenthere's this sort of uplifting energy. You
can see people's shoulders lift up.And that's what you want as a leader.
You don't want compliance, you don'twant, you know, people to
do what they're told. You wantpeople to rise up and feel energized and
bring stuff to the table in away that they jibe an alignment for one

(13:43):
another, so that if there's adiscussion to create some controversy, they can
hash it out and they can getpassionate about it, and then they can
all say like, well, Ifelt like my voice's heard, but what
are we going to do as ateam? And maybe something I didn't recommend.
I've had this other idea, butat least at the end of the
day, that was kind of funand we came together and decided this out

(14:05):
on board, And to me,the management communication is whatever it takes to
get people on board. That's areally good that's a really good way of
saying it. Whatever it takes toget people on board, And clearly,
if they're not, then as leaderswe need to take a step back and
go, okay, what what aboutthat is ineffective for them to be for

(14:33):
them to be on board. Yeah, what is it that? What is
that leadership knows that the rest ofthe team doesn't understand that has them be
resistant. What's the data? Well, I think that's an interesting praise right
there. What is the leadership asthat they need to get people understanding to

(14:56):
get on board. Yeah, butthat's not how it works. People get
on board because what they have getsexpressed and hurt. I think a lot
of leadership is people doing what theythink they're supposed to do. I certainly

(15:20):
I found myself very nervous and agitatedwhen I went in my first day as
a supervisor, Like, it's sovulnerable. You're like out in front of
a whole group of people, andif you don't win their hearts, they'll
eviscerate you if you stumble. Andat least that was what I expected.
That's the way I was seeing it, and I didn't know what to say,

(15:48):
so I asked them and just Ijust found out that it worked,
and so I wasn't trying to dowhat I was supposed to do, what
my boss was telling me to do. Yeah, to me, it's kind
of a funny story. When Igot my second supervisory job at the same
company, I was asked to gobail out a production operation we ran at

(16:10):
a customer site in Silicon Valley.We had twenty people on site doing this
thing. And after I started cleaningup the mess at the production center,
this customer said, we're going tocancel the contract because you guys aren't performing
what we expected you to perform.And my boss asked me. He told
me to go down and clean itup. He had some confidence in me,

(16:32):
and I was just it was justthe same thing. These guys knew
something that I didn't know. Ididn't have. But my boss, who
was old school, called me backafter I started there. I guess he
had heard some people talk about whatI was doing, got some gossip on
that, and he said, there, you need to understand. It's new

(16:56):
manager. The way you're going tosucceed by scaring the crap out of your
staff. They have to be afraidof you. They have to be afraid
every time you walk in the room, and they have to blah blah blah.
That whole offense. But the kindof the customer that was threatening to

(17:17):
can that already said they were goingto cancel the contract. We had put
three managers down there, before andthis is only like six months into the
beginning of the operation, so wehad this turnover every two months. The
customers said, this guy is notable to cut it, get rid of
it. And the first thing Ihad is in my mind as I was
driving back from that meeting with myboss where he told me I had to

(17:40):
keep my customer scared. That's whathe told the last three guys. So
I know that won't work. Ithink that's what already opened me up,
just to like putting it on thestaff. But hey, and if we
failed, yeah, I'm going tobe out of a job, But so
were you. So what are wegoing to do? And then it was

(18:04):
on them. Yeah. Yeah,It's definitely a building, a building ownership
thing, I think. I thinka leader has to go in deciding what
his or her objective is and thenconstantly ask themselves am I getting that?

(18:29):
And whatever style of communication you're using, If you're not getting what you were
hoping to get, then the mantrabecomes try something else, And that's what
I did. I just tried otherthings. Do you think your background in
sales made it easier for you?Well, you know what's great about having

(18:53):
a background in sales when you gointo management, is that you're used to
reading people. I mean there's somuch pressure. Oh my god, I
would have these like, yeah,multimillion dollars sales. They go on for
months. You first you established thecontact, and then you get you know,
the RFP, and you give yourresponse, and then one of the
contendings you know, applicancy and maymake it down to the cut of three,

(19:17):
and then you give these and ohmy god. It's just it's pointless
to do all that if you can'tread and adapt to what you're seeing.
So yeah, I think as aleader it's sort of good to have a
sales background, just some sort ofconscious competence or unconscious competence noticing that you're
not getting what you were hoping tosee it from people. That that's a

(19:41):
really interesting, interesting perspective because rarelydo I hear people talk about that ability
to read and communicate in the valueof having a particular kind of a background

(20:06):
for leadership roles. Well, youcan add to that. It's like a
snap on module, the whole thingon emotional intelligence. It's like, right,
when you're under that kind of pressureand vulnerable ability in front of a
group, of people, especially whenyou're replacing another leader, and then it's

(20:26):
like they may have liked that leader, they may be suspicious of you,
and it's you know, you needto establish some trust. But man,
the stress can get to you andyou can just have these square ups where
you say something really unkind or cutting, or you just lose control and you
just start, you know, soyou're the ability to recover in that moment

(20:52):
and be able to own it.I lost my temper. I'm sorry.
I know you guys all have lostyour temper before. Give me a break,
you know, let's get on withit, right, right, But
I think you know, for somany people, like when you you lose
your temper, you either get youknow, you eat to dig in and
feel like you have to maintain thatline, in which case you're just making

(21:12):
it worse, or you start togo into these I guess you could call
them shame cycles where you feel likeyou're fucked up and convince yourself that you
won't be able to recover. It'sjust like, I'm sorry, I lost
my temper. How human. Right, let's let's get back on track.
What can I do to like acknowledgethat I said something in common right,

(21:37):
right, So it's kind of andI think, thank you for for you
know. What I noticed is Isay that it's like, there's just this
this ability to stay in focus withthe bigger issue, which is what is
a customer demanding? And why youaren't we able to produce that and whatever?
The leadership is, how do westay in that sort of sweet spot.

(21:57):
Okay, we have something, andwe have some we have some energy
and ownership here. How can weuse that in an invigorating, engaging way
so that we feel really good aboutourselves at the end of the day.
It's that thing about intention. Howdo we want to feel when we leave
here today? Yeah? So whatI'm reading as an ex salesperson becoming leader,

(22:18):
it's like, when of my peopleleave at the end of the day,
especially when they leave at the endof a stressful day, do they
seem like they're upbeating, buoyant andhaving positive expectations about tomorrow. Because there's
nothing better than having a bunch ofpeople show up the day after a stressful
event saying like, hey, how'severybody doing. What are we going to
do today? Yeah? Yeah,there's definitely a mindset and I think the

(22:47):
leaders need to at least catalyze thattone. Well, you know that's to
me, it's just like try it, you know. Yeah, if you're
if you're having difficulties with the team, and this is something you can try.
It feels good, It helps otherpeople feel good. When people feel
good, they get creative, andall of a sudden, you've got creative

(23:08):
answers to a problem that's been eluding. Yeah. Yeah, And part of
part of what you're talking about thereis when you're talking about the emotional intelligence
and the vulnerability of the role.I'm thinking distress tolerance is the is the
skill set that you can be youcan recognize the value of being uncomfortable and

(23:30):
not let that stop you and figureout how to kind of compartmentalize the discomfort
and say, yeah, it's uncomfortableand I still need to do this stuff.
I need to figure out how howdo I still move forward in my

(23:52):
responsibilities. You know, what's thewhat's the what's the place where I can
be uncomfortable and still be effect versusbeing so uncomfortable that I lose all effectiveness?
And how do you ride that line? That's yeah, absolutely, And
and how do you create a climateand where the people you're speaking to can

(24:15):
ride that line too, right,which you know, it's like, I
think it's really great for any leaderto be married, you know, like
the challenges of a relationship, thestressors. It's like this creating something bigger
than yourself is challenging to your senseof self. So you know, like

(24:36):
having been married and having had thatfall apart and then having to begin again,
it's like I learned a lot aboutwhat works and doesn't work in interpersonal
relationships, and the thing that reallystruck out for me when I was trying
to figure that kind of thing out. It's like the difference between complaining and
criticizing, Like if you're under stressin your kind of lose some control,

(25:02):
get that vulnerable position, if youcan maintain an awareness that it's okay to
complain I'm not happy with what's happeninghere without going to criticize him saying you
aren't being effective in your role,right, right. And it's there's one
which is like, that's understandable,he's complaining, but the other one sort

(25:23):
of gets back to our sense ofyou know, our American sense of liberty
and independence, Like who was heto tell me that I'm not good,
and then you have resistance and resentmentbuilding up. Yeah, which yeah,
yeah. The third I often talkedabout the three rs of you know,

(25:45):
bad leadership situations and resentment, resistanceand reactivity. And if your people are
reactive, they're not really owning itneeds to be done. They're like,
I don't want to do it thatway. So there's a whole point of

(26:06):
engaging people and having ownership of theissue with them so that they get out
of that reactivity thing. It's likeI don't want to do it that way
to a place of like, whatare we going to do about it?
But we could try this, Wecould try that. They're open and they're
contributing, right. So these areto me just some of the sort of
yeah, what do you call themindsets? It's a good word for it.

(26:29):
It's just ways of framing the dayto day, moment to moment interactions
like yeah, I have enough emotionalintelligence to understand that I'm getting really reactive
and I'm about to, you know, blow my top and just own it.
You can just say it. Whatwas remarkable for me is to be

(26:51):
able to say, like I'm aboutto lose my temperature. That's a whole
lot better. That's than lashing outat somebody, right, because they you're
sort of tagging it and they knowit's coming, and they then have an
opportunity to be participants in de escalatingthat and helping you. But yeah,
all it's just about staying in thatsweet spot of ownership and awareness of what

(27:15):
the problem is and realizing, wedon't know, it's sort of uncomfortable for
people to be uncertain, but it'spretty productive to be uncertain if you can
stay with it, right. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I
think the comfort level with uncertainty variesacross a lot across people. I mean,

(27:37):
I've certainly been situations where there wasa degree of uncertainty that for me
was super easy and for other peopleit was very uncomfortable. And and I've
worked with people who were they werethey were striving to find places of more
uncertainty and basically they wanted to bigyour experiments because in their mind, rightly

(28:04):
so, that was where the mostlearning was and so they would they were
they were comfortable that the learning possibilityof the bigger experiments were more than offset
what the risk profile us. Andthey mean they had failures, you know,
they would take big, big swingsand they would completely miss. But

(28:27):
yeah, if your swing takes twoor three weeks at a critical juncture in
the time schedule, that's that's abig miss. Yeah. And and yet
we always recovered, you know,the we always figured out ways to recover

(28:53):
and solve the problem. Yeah.Yeah, because ultimately you get back to
that place of well, as we'retalking while we're talking about a bounce,
you just get to that place whereyou can be with the challenge, the
interpersonal relationships, the pressures and theuncertainties of and there's just this I don't

(29:18):
know, it's sort of like aninterpersonal field that she developed. Were you
just with the fact that you gotto ask what are we going to do?
Right? Yeah? Yeah, I'mI'm thinking about whitewater rafting because that's
a team thing. Yeah, andit requires cooperation to avoid the big splash

(29:45):
downs, crashes, yeah, gettingejected and the rock or whatever. And
that's the thing is you have tobe able to have the team operate together.
Whoever's steering has the vision, theguy has the vision of where to
go, and they also can adaptto the conditions as they're changing. Because

(30:06):
the water flow is always a littlebit different, and so you have to
be able to go, oh,wait a minute, this place that we
yesterday could go through here just fine, it won't work today. That's such
a great metaphor for the issue ofleadership communication. It's like everybody's there to
have fun, everybody's scared, maybereally scared, and everybody's kind of gulping

(30:33):
like why you know, there's justthis magical thing about being scared. It's
heightened emotional intensity. Oh yeah,yeah, and so you ventured out.
But if you trust the guide,right, then it fits the team's intention
to have fun and have a greatday and to pitch in when it gets

(30:57):
super scary. And he's saying like, paddle right, paddle right, go,
and it's like everybody willingly does it. They don't say I don't think
that's a good idea, But that'sjust this balance of fear and uncertainty and
trust and just this melange of differentthings that you just have to kind of

(31:18):
nurture them all to to come together, right right. Yeah. And and
the way the guides get to beguides is they've done that river a ton
of times. They've seen a lotof variables, and they have an understanding
of what the boundaries are and theflexibility they have within the space of the

(31:41):
boundaries, and they're like, ohyeah, we can, we can push
the boat over here. That'll bemore exciting for the for the passengers or
for the you know, for thepeople that are part of the team.
They don't do this on a dailybasis. Yeah, yeah, well,
you know, here's a here's adifferent question though, comparing it to leadership

(32:02):
in the old days mountain guys.For people who just said I think I'm
going to be a mountain guy,I'll figure it out as to go along.
Right. In today's world, ifyou want to be a whitewater rafting
guide, probably there's probably like threeor four certification programs should go through.
Then you get lots of detailed instructionsto how to manage these balanced points we've

(32:23):
been talking about. And oddly enough, most leaders never have any leadership training,
right exactly right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they
don't even I'm always surprised that peoplewho have leadership titles and they've never read
any books on leadership, much lessyou actually had training. Yeah yeah,

(32:47):
And it seems like such a forme anyway, it seems like such a
logical thing to do, probably becauseI grew up reading a lot. Yeah,
and I have a client who's amanager in a company where there's ten

(33:07):
members of the senior executive team.Yeah, the travision and director of this
division and that division, their vicepresident. And he came to me one
day and yeah, just as inthe side said Tony, I just found
out that none of the members ofthe executive team have ever consulted with a
coach. None of them use coaches, and they all seem to think that

(33:28):
it would be embarrassing to admit theyneeded so they won't go there. He's
basically saying, what kind of companyam I working for? Yeah? Yeah,
that's that's interesting, you know italways I think that's such an interesting
snapshot of a company, and Iwonder how many other companies are doing that

(33:52):
right? And then how do youhow do you get people to understand and
that that's that's really damaging to theircareers. Well, this is an opportunity
for you and I just in aside, say that we both coach leaders and

(34:13):
if you have a an interest ingetting some coaching, to find out,
I happen to have a promotion whereI get I do for coaching programs for
the price of one, and youcan get a sense of whether you want
to work with it. But nice, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
such a you know what, Ithink like your angle is more about talking
with leaders and mind is more aboutstarting at the ground level to help the

(34:38):
individual contributors think leadership even if theydon't have a title, so that when
they get there. But yeah,but both audiences, it's hard to do
the stuff by yourself. These arereally big challenges and if you have somebody
you can walk you through that,it makes it. You know, it's
you were you were talking about SteveKerr being interviewed. You know, he

(35:02):
has a particular coaching role with theWarriors, but at the same time,
all the players on the team alsohave niche coaches who train them about specific
thing. I bet that Steph Curryhas a coach that only works on his
ankles because he's had ankle problems inthe past, right right, right,
he said some really serious ankle injuries. And I've got part of his regular

(35:27):
program now, aside from shooting basketsfrom wherever is how do you make your
ankles stronger? And who's the peoplethat are training him to take care of
that thing because his career relies onhis ankles working. And it's so liberating
to get that kind It's like whenmy older brother got a knee replacement.

(35:49):
Yeah, I've been running since juniorhigh school. I used to run long
distance, and somewhere along the lines, I realized that the pounding my ankles
and knees were getting taken a toll, so at the bicycling and hiking.
But when Jim got his knee replacement, I went to an orthopedist said,
like, I have a lot ofkneat pain. I'm kind of wondering you

(36:10):
know what I can do to forestallgetting a knee replacement and you ended up
getting X rays and stuff, Andshe said, no, your knees are
actually in great shape, which mademe wonder, like why I was experiencing
so much pain. So then Ifound a coach who does knee work strength
knee strengthening, and I discovered thereason I had so much knee pains because
the muscles around my above and belowmy knees weren't very well developed. Because

(36:35):
I was so worried about the painthat I was backing off from that.
Once he showed me how to strengthenmy knees. It was like transformative,
like I'm out there, Like insteadof hiking up the hill, now I
started I started running up Bill becauseI realized it's actually I was. What
I was afraid of was exactly thewrong thin. I was not doing the
things that would build more strength andcreate more stability. You just you can't

(37:00):
figure that out. You get confusedby rights. Yeah, yeah, this
is this. This goes back tothe whole idea of distress tolerance. Yeah.
Learning distress tolerance and having somebody talkwith you about it allows you to
exist in that uncomfortable place. Yourknee is a perfect example, right,

(37:22):
being uncomfortable it is how you makeit stronger. Yeah yeah, yeah.
But you can also you can takeit the wrong way and you can start
demanding more of your knee, thinkingthat you're being stressed tolerant that you actually
yeah, debraided rights figuring out what'sthe middle path? Yeah, what's the
informed path? Yeah? Yeah?Cool. This has been awesome, Thank

(37:45):
you cool. Is there anything elsethat you want to make sure that we
get recorded here? And by theway, I will put all of Tony's
contact info in the show notes andso you know how you can get hold
of him. Yeah, I'll justsay, Bill, I'm just gonna say
it's like I do leadership mentoring becausethere's nothing more fun than having a successful

(38:07):
team, and there's nothing more funfor the team than having a lot of
oxygen and inspiration in the climate.And so there's room to make mistakes,
there's room to learn, there's roomto participate, and there's not this sort
of discouraging environment of like, well, yeah, you said to me in

(38:29):
another conversation that about mindsets like this, this mindset it's it's better to live
life as if life's a playground,and it's if it's a prison, right
exactly. I thought about that,and I thought like, in my case,
I prefer to have life as aplayground than as an exam. I
used to have these nightmares of goingto a college class and it's the mid

(38:52):
term was a pop quiz and Iwasn't ready for it, and it's like
I don't know the answers to this, and that feels like shit, and
a lot out of my life isbeet thinking like I had to perform,
I had to like do it rightand not fuck it up. And it
was very constraining and constricting, andthis idea of good leadership communication is really

(39:12):
about finding the freedom to have somefun and to be human and make mistakes,
but to learn from them and bebetter prepared as you go. And
it always crazy thing is that almostalways seems to work out. Yeah yeah,
yeah. We have a lot morefear of our mistakes than the actual
consequences of them. Yeah yeah,yeah. Cool. This has been awesome.

(39:37):
I'm gonna stop the recording.