TrulySignificant.com honors Michael King, founder of Teams.coach. Michael has been married for 28 years, father to 3 children, was a former Executive Pastor at one of Omaha's fastest growing churches.
Enjoy this conversation that includes:
Just remember that you must keep your promises. Your yes is your yes.
And find a way to bring hope with a visable North Star.
Contact Michael@teams.coach today to learn about his company's services that will help your company find your why and lead with a purpose.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Enjoy this conversation that includes:
- Identity driven leadership.
- What does a Truly Significant leader look like in 2026?
- Within companies that companies you have advised, what identity misalignment most often creates chaos instead of clarity?
- What elements of emotional intelligence will matter most as AI takes over more of the cognitive workload?
- How does music inform your understanding of rhythm, flow, and performance in leadership?
Just remember that you must keep your promises. Your yes is your yes.
And find a way to bring hope with a visable North Star.
Contact Michael@teams.coach today to learn about his company's services that will help your company find your why and lead with a purpose.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I'm running circles on the one way track. She's some
shadows that don't look back. The neon lights through the
edges of my side. Every step feels heavy, butter holding
time is the reason in this madness. I'm cracking light
(00:34):
to break the sadness through the head. I see it.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And welcome back to Truly Significant dot Com Presents Success
Made the Last Legends. I'm Rick Tokiny. We have a
very special guest on today. I like him and what
he's doing. It's executive coach Michael King. I was watching
Michael the video of you singing through the Hayes, and
(01:07):
as a fellow musician and songwriter, I really appreciated a
couple of lines in there spending too much time in
the wrong rooms with the wrong people, and I went,
we got to have this guy on this show. So
welcome to you. It's great to have you on today.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Man, what a privilege. Thank you so much for letting
me be a part of what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Absolutely okay, So we start every show with the backstory,
so share yours.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Michael King, Omaha, Nebraska, three amazing kids, married twenty eight years.
I'm an executive coach to Fortune five hundred Fortune one
hundred executives and their teams, and then also the most
brave and the most innovative small businesses and small business
leaders on the planet. I've been an executive coach now
for probably a decade, I'd say, Before I was in
this space, I was an executive pastor in one of
(01:58):
America's fastest growing churches and UH and stepped into that
through the Christian music industry being a worship leader and
recording artists, and really found my lane. Found found that
I love leadership, I love developing people wrong length and
so during my time as an executive pastor, I found
myself navigating from being on stages as a recording artist
(02:21):
to where all of a sudden, now I'm like on
stages helping churches break the growth Burrier code in America.
And so it was a drastic shift and my heart
started to change a little bit as far as the
ways that I can make a bigger impact outside of
the local church. And so I really deepened my study
in figuring out ways to UH to help organizations, got
(02:41):
my master's degrees and certifications, et cetera. I started our
companies over a decade ago. So now we run teams
dot Coach, which is our large company. We have Catalyst
co for our small businesses and entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, other coaches
and consultants, and then we have an agency called Gawker
Traffic that we own as well. And it has been
one crazy wild ride and I love it. All the pain,
all the glory, it's all there. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Wow, Now that's the reason why you're on the show.
God was in the middle of this, and so I
now I know. Thank you for that extra introduction. What
church was it?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I was on steph at a church called Christ Place
Church in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I know it well. Yeah. My company has several divisions.
One of them is an inspirational publishing division that's got
Gracefully of Yours greeting cards, and so I think we've
worked with almost every big church across the nation. So
I'm so glad that you're on. Let's start by unpacking
(03:45):
this song called Through the Haze, because I think inside
that song is a reason for people to need to
talk to you.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Come on, man, let's go, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So here we go, there is because what we do
here at truly significant is pointing people toward their purpose.
There's a line in the song that says, how are
you helping people and companies get through the haze to
find the purpose? And it's uh, I can't and hear it.
(04:18):
All I know is that from this moment forward, nothing
will ever be the same again. And then I'm backing
up going something snaps. This is a breakthrough, not a breakdown.
And then inside the song is is there a reason
in this madness? Is there a reason inside this mad madness?
(04:40):
I want so that having been said as I went backwards, Yeah,
I want you to describe why is there madness today,
especially when it comes to leadership in this gap of
not of people being unable to find their true purpose
in life?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Man?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
And uh, I appreciate that you that you're that you're
grabbing stuff out of this song. And uh, it's the
backstory on this too. By the way, is that my
creative director came to me about a year ago and
he said he said, he said, Michael, he was like,
we're successful over here in executive coaching, but like when
it comes to elevating your personal brand, Uh, it's all
(05:20):
about like the differentiator and we don't. I don't. He
was like, I don't know of any other. I don't
know of any other executive coach is also a recording
artist that's also an executive coach, Like, why don't we
combine the two ideas and just have fun with it
for a season. And I'm like, is that legal?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Can we do that?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Can you have fun?
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And UH?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And I was like, let's go.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
So I went.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I pitched the idea to UH to the record label
and also to UH TO to distribution all that stuff.
I said, Hey, here's what I'm gonna do for this
next season. I'm gonna write songs specifically to address mindset
and identity issues and performance issues within high performing leaders
and the like. That doesn't sound sexy, that doesn't sound
(06:03):
like it could be cool. And I said, well, I
think we're gonna create a genre. So hang in there
with me on this. I'll pitch it. Let's see if
we can. Let's se if we can. So I wrote
out a couple songs. You know this this video through
the haze that you're speaking of, you know, so this
is the combination. So when you go to this and
you watch the video, it's not just a music video.
It goes about halfway through the song and then it
(06:24):
combines this thought leadership almost like a keynote experience under
four minutes. You know, that was the idea, and you know,
as of today it has over one hundred and thirty
thousand views on YouTube. Like this has really resonated with people.
So I appreciate you diving into this whole thing, but like,
so to lean into your question of the lyric line
(06:47):
that you're talking about, is that is there a reason
in the madness. It's a crack of light to break
the sadness. And here's the thing is that when it
comes to the idea through the haze, the one thing
that most leaders have in common. It doesn't matter like
whether I'm working with a small business or whether I'm
working with a large business. But imposter syndrome will sneak
(07:07):
in at some point in time in your career. It
will get in your head. You'll start to second guess
the very thing that you do better than anyone else.
And when you start to do that, you're going to
start to feel like, Okay, I'm living in this land
of the murky. I don't necessarily know who I am.
And if you're not careful, you're going to lose yourself
along the way. So the whole idea of like taking
(07:28):
people through this idea is like, Hey, let's talk about
real things that people are experiencing, and what's my experience
in dealing with it? What did I have to do
to be able to break through the haze? And what
you reference is part of that spoken word experience At
the very end of it is like, Man, I woke
up one day recognizing that I was in the wrong rooms,
(07:48):
hanging with the wrong people, and I didn't necessarily know
what was going to happen next, but I knew that
after I saw some things, I couldn't un see it,
and I couldn't unfeel it, I couldn't unexperience it, but
I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I got to tell you, Michael, that sixteen now seventeen
years ago, that epiphany happened, and I was thinking about it,
praying about it, and I said, I just want to
work for God. I don't want to ever see a
performance appraisal again. Come on, nor do I want to
(08:27):
lay a performance appraisal upon anybody else. And that was
the singular most liberating day from God ever, and I
found I got closer to the purpose and then over
the last sixteen years we've gone from life lessons to
core values and now are into studying people that are
(08:50):
in the space of significance. So I'm going to be
asking you a lot of questions about significance today, and
fortunately Michael did not receive any of our advanced questions.
So this is gonna be spontaneous combustion.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Let's go, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What does a truly significant leader looclock in twenty twenty six,
not just in performance, but in character.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
You know, we measure success a lot of times by
KPIs in business. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna be
very very very clear about this, is that I've never
met a successful leader ever that has ever been measured
you know, their their success has ever been measured by
how busy they were. Success is always measured by the
number of promises that you're able to keep. And and
(09:38):
you think about that in your marriage pooh, that'll translate right, yep,
you know, you think about that in the best relationships
with you and your team. That's the only thing that
they really care about today is that is your yes.
You're yes as your no. You know, even even for us,
we one of our white label partners. I was on
a I was on a call with them yesterday, and
(10:01):
they want to after seven years of a white label agreement,
they wanted to be able to change the structure of
our agreement to where they wanted to be able to
have a timed agreement. And then after a period of
three months after the platform, they wanted to have access
to all of our clients to where they could upsell
them to be their customers directly. And man, when trust
(10:22):
is violated and when there's something that enters into the
water where people actually start to question whether you're able
to actually keep your promises, they won't stick around. You
will not be successful, because that's the only thing that matters.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well stated that leads to in your work with organizations
like Disney and Chick fil A, two of my favorite companies.
And I actually knew Truant Kathy, what identity misalignment most
often creates chaos instead of.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Clarity, you know, the identity that causes chaos versus clarity.
I don't know necessarily if it's necessarily. I think it's
the lack of identity that causes that causes chaos, you know,
and I think both those organizations they have a very
(11:14):
very true north as far as like how they how
they want to position their brand and they and they
make all their they make all their decisions based off
of values matrix, which is incredibly important. So if you're
listening to this, you know, the things for you to
be able to take into consideration is that organizations fifty
seven percent of global organizations actually don't know what their
(11:37):
values are. Isn't that huge? Why fifty seven percent, Well,
they don't know who they are and that's the that's
the easy question, that's the easy answer, right, But they've
but you know, like if you exist just to simply
make money, if you exist just to simply increase your
(11:57):
top line revenue, you're missing the whole why behind. You're
missing a deeper connection in with your client. You're going
to make a lot of decisions that aren't necessarily a
part of your true north, and that's what causes this chaos.
You know, like Amazon recently just announced that they were
going to hire you know, fire, you know, forty four
thousand people because they replaced them with AI. And so
that's another different conversation of like why do organizations make
(12:20):
these type of decisions? Because if we're not actually connected
and committed to our people, man, life is going to
get incredibly chaotic. But if we're making decisions through our
value systems, here's what we know is that fifty seven
percent organizations don't know what their values are. But we
do know this is that organizations that do make their
decisions through values make significantly more money. And that's the
(12:43):
thing is like it's a there's a leading and a
lagging indicator behind this. Do you know who you are
and do you know why you make the decisions that
you make? Because if if that's clearly defined, you're going
to find that chaos is not as easy to it's.
It's chaos is a little bit further way. That's why
I'm talking about this idea of navigating through chaos and
(13:04):
really embracing your calling. And I think as organizations like
lean in, find out what your real WI is, find
out what your true north is, build out a value
matrix that your people can grab a hold of. So
you're not just making decisions reactively, you're not just making
decisions based off of opinion, but you're making decisions based
off of this is who we are?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, sir, calling the word calling. Having worked for Procter
and Gammel and Pepsicho, I can tell you the years,
the days, the minutes of not listening and hearing any calling.
There what's required in twenty twenty six and beyond for
(13:51):
people to listen and hear a calling.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Man, that's a that's a that's a tough one. I
think you know, just at the very, very very basic
of it is like personally, I know that you know
there's this idea of signal to noise ratio, right, are
familiar with the concept?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
As leaders waking up every single day, I know that
in the next in the next eighteen hours, I'm going
to try to accomplish three things. Okay, what are those
three things? And what am I going to do to
try to eliminate all of the noise that's actually keeping
me from trying to accomplish those three things in the
next eighteen hours? Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Now,
(14:41):
noise is tricky, man. Noise is a son of a gun.
And and as leaders, you know, whether it's in our
personal lives or whether it's the businesses that we run,
we have to do whatever we can to try to
eliminate noise. To keep us from being productive. And I
know that when it comes to the calling of who
I am as a leader, like I you know, it
comes down to a couple things. I'm gonna you know,
(15:02):
I'll give you these five different things that are kind
of filters for me personally. But it's like, okay, great,
who am I? What do I want to be known for?
What is the biggest problem that I solve? What do
I do better than anyone else? And I want to
be honest about that, Like it's not like I don't
want I don't want to give you like a humble brag,
but there's got to be something that you feel internally,
and then how do you want to make people feel
(15:22):
like as a company, as a leader. If you can
answer those five things, you can get a very you
know locked in.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I guess trajectory as far as like what you're calling
should be. But if there's anything that's competing against those
five things, do whatever you can to try to eliminate
that noise, because that's what's keeping you away from embracing
your destiny, keeping it away from legacy. Those are big.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Things, indeed, they are. Let's talk about emotional intelligence and
let's put it in context with AI, emotional intelligence is
on the rise as a topic, not necessarily as that
(16:12):
we're becoming more emotionally intelligent. And I would say three
out of every five shows emotional intelligence or EQ comes up.
First of all, I would love to hear from Michael
King your definition of emotional intelligence. And then I want
(16:32):
to know what elements of emotional intelligence matter the most,
especially relative to AI.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Man, You're about to start a bar fight here. This
is good, right, So emotional intelligence? Are you are you
in touch with yourself? Are you in touch with the
people around you? And are you able to serve the
environments that you're in? You know, there's this you know,
I think again, it's it's like that is that is
the thing? Now how it relates over to AI. Man,
(17:04):
I've been on this kick lately where I've been trying
to get people to replace the AI from being artificial
intelligence to actually leaning in the idea of authentic intelligence.
Because the thing is is that with AI and why
EQ is so important in the in the in the
AI conversation is because a AI right now today in
(17:27):
the generative, you know, learned language models that we have
in twenty twenty five going into twenty twenty six is
most of this is still garbage in, garbage out. You know,
whatever you put into it is going to scale. Whatever
you're going to put into it is going to make
it a little bit more efficient. It's going So there
are definitely things, but it's still in order for AI
(17:49):
to still be productive in twenty twenty five, it requires
human interaction in order for there to be any level
of execution. Would you agree with me on that, yes, sir.
And where organizations are where I'm getting pulled in a
lot with companies is because they're making mass decisions and
blanket statements. You know, Like one of the companies we
work with, they released a press, uh you know, internal
work memo that said, hey, starting today, everybody in our
(18:13):
company is now required to use AI to optimize their work.
What the heck does that mean? Like, like, there are
so many different variances on that. And if you aren't
putting in the strong foundational work to build your skyscraper,
the building is going to tumble and it's going to
create disastrous outcomes. And that's kind of where that's that
tension world that we're sitting in right now, and that's
(18:34):
why the EQ and the in the AI conversation. These
two things are colliding like it's coming together in a
very glorious disaster. And so it's it's up to us
to really make sure that we're building strong foundations, really
finding out who we are and then knowing how we're
going to utilize AI to optimize and to and to
make a bigger impact as leaders and as our companies.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Aim. And on that note, we're going to take a
quick commercial break and we'll start with you, Michael, tell
our listening audience where they can contact your enterprise and
get some of your great wisdom and leadership inside so
they can discover their values in their why.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Absolutely so reach out to me personally at Michael King
Junior dot com. This is my personal landing page for
my personal brand and you'll see the video for through
the Hayes there. Now. If you are a large team company,
so if you have over twenty to thirty employees, please
please check out teams dot coach for all of our
coaching systems for high performing executive teams and businesses and
(19:36):
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an entrepreneur, if you're a coach or a consultant. You
want to figure out how to have a massive impact
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(19:56):
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Speaker 2 (20:05):
Thank you, Sar, and we will be right back. After
this message from Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
This is Marcus Aurelius reappearing to proclaim that truly significant
conversations with big hearted people is a rare piece of literature.
This book reminds me of one of my more stirring quotes,
waste no more time arguing what a good man should
be be one. If you're stepping into your next life
(20:40):
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this book is for you. Dive into forty soul stirring
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(21:03):
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TOLKINI Truly Significant will challenge your view of success and
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(21:26):
epitaph will read she gave outrageously extended grace unceasingly and
lived to help others so that death found her empty.
Visit truly significant dot com and celebrate the most truly
significant people in your life with the truly Significant community.
(21:50):
How bold of you to make your next chapter matter
and be truly significant.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We are back with Michael King. There's a couple of
oracles that have come out of Nebraska, and we happen
to have had Tom Osborne on our show. We celebrated
Coach Osborne in our Truly Significant book. I don't want
to blow smoke up your you know what, but I
(22:17):
think that you are onto something of oracle level here,
of true significance. And that having been said, I'm going
to ask you a couple of questions that maybe only
you can answer based on your ten years of experience,
and but your lifetime of experience as a dad, as
a pastor, as a singer, I want to know what
(22:39):
is the emotional blind spot that you see most in
high growth teams heading into the new year, and what
are we supposed to do about it to remove.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That blind spot. This happens within the church, this happens
within businesses. But we build, we build our executive teams
a lot of times built on charismatic energy and ego
and and these things have a really really short shelf life,
(23:10):
right And I think you know, and what I love
about what we do at teams on the teams Dot
coach side of things is that just like just like
Olympic athletes hire coaches to help them break world records,
the world's top executive teams hire me to help them
break world records too. But there's a science to it,
Like you have to know your people, and you have
(23:31):
to be able to recognize how your leadership personally is
being effective or where it's not being effective. So that's
where I love it. Like which I love the fact that,
by the way that you mentioned Tom Osborne man, one
of my dreams is I would love to be able
to I haven't been able to do it yet, but
i'd love to be an executive coach to a college
football team. You know, like if I could start here
in Nebraska, that'd be amazing. I'd love to be able
(23:52):
to help them. But if you think about it, though, right,
it's like when you build everything from from the brand perspective,
you know, like, hey, let's go ahead and and go
out and hire a big leader with big bravado, with
big vision, with big tenacity, who can really really inspire
(24:13):
and move the needle. But then behind the scenes, like
he's a relational disaster. You know, those are the things
that are going to be the blind spots that are
going to take down some of these organizations. So you
have to be able to you have to understand where
your blind spots are. You have to understand where because
because don't get me wrong, like if you do have
(24:33):
that gifting of being a high impact, a high charismatic
leader that can vision cast better and that you can
inspire from the stage that you can you know that
you can broadcast it, that's great, But put in the
work to figure out how to balance that out with
your behind the scenes tactics, your bedside manner, with your
caring of your team. Because here's the thing, is that
if you can't have a friendship with the people that
are on your executive team, you're going to fail. So
(24:56):
ditch the transactional leadership, lean in to transformational leadership, of
lean in to servant leadership, and balance it out.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Oh, well said, I really appreciate that. Okay, We've got
Michael for another ten minutes, so I'm going to try
to slip in a music question or two. When you
introduce music into coaching, how does it unlock clarity?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
You know, we use we use we use music in
our keynote experiences and this is a really big lift
for me, just to be honest with you. So and
this is where a big focus has it been. Because
I don't know about you, but I guess you've gone
to leadership conferences and business conferences, marketing, whatever it is
that you've been to. You probably get it when you
when you encounter a speaker. Is that everybody kind of
(25:42):
has the same thing. It's like, Hey, this is my name,
this is what I do, this is how I've won,
and this is how you can win too. Right, there's
kind of a formula to it. And after at the
end of the day, I'm like, that was a lot
of information, but I don't feel anything. Okay, Here's the
one thing I know as a leader is that people
will only remember the way that you make them feel.
And so my keynote experiences are produced from beginning to end,
(26:04):
whether it's a forty five minute keynote or whether it's
a sixty minute keynote, but it's the it's high level
of humor, high level of emotion, and high levels of creativity.
So so a lot of times, like my keynotes include
a live performance opener that's just knocking it out of
the park, whether it's a saxophone performance piece, or whether
it's you know, a music video opener, or whether it's
(26:25):
me with traveling because I do travel with a live
musician a lot of times who's on the stage with me.
But making sure that the whole thing is a produced
experience to where people can actually walk away with the
feeling that they've that they can experience breakthrough, feeling that
they can experience hope again, and it's something that they'll
never forget. So that's so that's how like in that space. Now,
(26:47):
I also do bring it into group group experiences as well,
So when I'm doing workshops and things, like that. I
incorporate a lot of creativity in that as well.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Oh boy, having been in praise and worship teams for
a long time, if we were able to bring people
into the motion of praise and being able to have
times of solitude while music is going on, isn't.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
There a great parallel with what you just said where Yeah,
that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It feels like this, It feels similar. And I you know,
I hope I'm not being sacrilegious in this, but there
is something about bringing people into the right emotional space
before you can speak to them, into that so called
empty vessel and get through the noise and be memorable,
(27:45):
you know.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
And I think that that's and that's really as a communicator,
that's my thing is is like I want, I want you.
I want a transformational experience that you'll never forget, and
I want I don't want to waste your time, like
I want you to feel like that it was worth
your time to be able to sit there, for you
to be able to experience what I've brought to the table.
(28:06):
For the month of December, we didn't even we didn't
talk about this off grid, but we did a high
school assembly this last week, and we thought, for the
month of December, we're gonna gift back to our community.
And I put out a Christmas record back in like
twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen, and it's a Saxophone record,
and I thought, rather than releasing a new single in
(28:28):
the month of December, let's hold off on it. So
our next single is gonna drop in January. It's called
Unbreakable Things, which, dude, I can't wait for you to
hear it. It's gonna blow your mind. But the idea
of that song is really about the idea that, like
the world is trying to tell us that we're broken,
but I want to remind you today that you are
(28:49):
made by design with unbreakable things yep, on purpose and
gives me goosebumps to talk about this message is gonna
be so powerful for people to experience. But anyway, so
we did this high school assembly this last week about
five hundred students with the whole idea of just simply
(29:10):
this that maybe maybe the Christmas lights, maybe the Christmas music,
maybe changed business hours, all the disruptions that happened in
the month of December, maybe all of this isn't necessarily
just to change things up, but maybe the universe pauses
and changes its direction for the month of December just
(29:30):
to remind you that you're significant. And so we went
into the high schools and we did this whole thing
where it's like I brought out a production company. We
did basically my corporate keynote structure, like in front of
these students. They loved it. They ate it up. But
at the end, everybody had this card that they were
able to hold up that had their word of decor
declaration that said I am blank, I am powerful, I
(29:54):
am worthy, I am enough. And we have this picture
of the students like holding these cards up, and it
is it is sobering, bro, that this school would allow
me to come in to basically bring a message of significance.
Because the thing is is that Christmas isn't easy for everybody,
and it wasn't easy for me growing up. And and
(30:17):
so I thought, I'm gonna go and pitch this just
to see if they if we have any bites, no
cost to the schools, We'll go in. Just let us
bring our media team in so we can film it
to tell the story. And it was powerful, man. But
that's the thing is that leading people to that moment
of like, Okay, where are we going? Where we're going
is this is that I'm going to have a captive
(30:38):
audience of five hundred students and at the end, I
want to get this one singular message into their hearts
that they're enough. Okay, what do I have to do
to be able to get there? I'm going to build
the experience all around that from beginning to end. I
am enough. And it's crazy, it's crazy how effective it is.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Okay, Michael King, I'm gonna on a couple of notes. One,
I'm going to personally challenge you to re examine what
audience you want to speak to in the future, because,
based on what you just said, you've been talking to
people that have already graduated from college and or had
some life of experience. The more fertile soil is that
(31:21):
high school audience.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I love it. I love that.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I want you to seriously consider taking it to that
next level. Final question for you. Success gets attention, but
significant actually lifts other people up. That's what we try
to do here. Every day you've lifted us up. You
were creating legacy for your own team, your organization, even
for those high schoolers that just heard the message, I
(31:51):
want you to issue a message of hope for our
listening audience, hope for them as leaders as the new
year is just upon us, and perhaps inside that message,
give a little bit of your wisdom and advice about
what do you need to do to pivot to create
(32:12):
more hope that will help them maybe accomplish those KPIs
that you spoke about.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Absolutely, and let me just kind of paraphrase this a
little bit and kind of lean into it. Is that
even in our coaching methodologies, you know, we take people
through this through what we call the to B list framework,
not the to do list framework, but the tow B
list framework. Well, why is that most leaders start off
the day with the idea of strategy? Okay, your alarm
(32:40):
clock goes off in the morning. Eighty seven percent of
leaders that we've surveyed over four thousand leaders anyway in
our focus group said they wake up in the morning
and they reach over to the side of their bed,
and before their feet even hit the end of the floor,
they've picked up their phone and they start looking through
their commitment lists as far as the things that they
need to accomplish in the day before their day even start. Okay,
(33:00):
so they're starting off in their mind with their commitments,
where they're putting their time and how much stuff that
they have to do, so they can get their their mind,
you know, in their day programmed out the right direction. Okay,
here's what we also know. Sixty seven percent of all
failures exist not because of lack of bandwidth, but because
of lack of execution. Okay, so what does this mean.
(33:22):
It means that by starting off your day in the
strategy bucket with all your energy just thinking about the
stuff that you have to do, there's a huge chance
that you're going to experience thrownout. You're going to experience
failure because you're committing your time to doing things that
you should have never done in the first place. How
does that happen? Why does that happen? Is because you
didn't start with your identity. So who are you in
the first place. The reason why your strategies aren't effective,
(33:45):
it is because you don't know who you are. And
so I challenge you this as leaders, the leaders this
simply this is that is that as a leader, I
can't actually consider you a leader if you're not actually
bringing hope to your organization. This is the number one
thing that a leader should be doing within their organization
is being somebody who's promoting hope and actually bringing hope accessible.
(34:05):
Why is that important is because there's one thing that
everybody on this planet deserves, and that's hope. This is
the way that you were born, this is the way
that you've been empowered to lead. It's the one thing.
I don't believe in entitlement, but I do believe in
this one thing that everybody deserves, and that everybody deserves
the opportunity to experience hope. So what are you doing
(34:26):
to propagate that? What are you doing to actually bringing
hope to your life, to your family, to your organization,
and what does that look like on a day to
day basis. This is so important because at the end
of the day, if you're not bringing hope to your organization,
then you're actually not leaving rooms better than you found them.
And so this is your number one job. It doesn't
matter like, it doesn't matter what the KPIs are. Your
(34:48):
number one job is to be able to bring hope
to your organization. So, now on the KPI side of it,
man like, if you need help, if you need to
be able to get in the weeds a little bit
to figure out how you can increase top line revenue
for your company or increase in optimized performance for your company.
I promise you this structure and systems are always your
gateway to effective strategy. So let's dive into that and
(35:08):
let's figure those things out. It's complicated, but we have
some software stacks we can give you to be able
to help you unlock.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Michael Kean, thank you for being on. I feel like
I've made a new friend and I want to invite
you back for an annual update, almost a state of
the Union on leadership. Will you do that?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I would be honored man. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Absolutely, that was Michael King. Thank you again for being on.
And as we always say, we hope that you are
focused on your success, but that you are really pointing
your way to significance and along the way, as leaders,
consider what are you doing to bring hope to your organization.
(35:53):
Have a great week.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I'm running circles on the one way track. She'sing shadows
the door, look back the neon lights through the edges
of my side. Every step feels heavy, butter folding time
is the reason in this madness, a
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Crack of light to break the sadness through the head
I see
I'm running circles on the one way track. She's some
shadows that don't look back. The neon lights through the
edges of my side. Every step feels heavy, butter holding
time is the reason in this madness. I'm cracking light
(00:34):
to break the sadness through the head. I see it.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And welcome back to Truly Significant dot Com Presents Success
Made the Last Legends. I'm Rick Tokiny. We have a
very special guest on today. I like him and what
he's doing. It's executive coach Michael King. I was watching
Michael the video of you singing through the Hayes, and
(01:07):
as a fellow musician and songwriter, I really appreciated a
couple of lines in there spending too much time in
the wrong rooms with the wrong people, and I went,
we got to have this guy on this show. So
welcome to you. It's great to have you on today.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Man, what a privilege. Thank you so much for letting
me be a part of what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Absolutely okay, So we start every show with the backstory,
so share yours.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Michael King, Omaha, Nebraska, three amazing kids, married twenty eight years.
I'm an executive coach to Fortune five hundred Fortune one
hundred executives and their teams, and then also the most
brave and the most innovative small businesses and small business
leaders on the planet. I've been an executive coach now
for probably a decade, I'd say, Before I was in
this space, I was an executive pastor in one of
(01:58):
America's fastest growing churches and UH and stepped into that
through the Christian music industry being a worship leader and
recording artists, and really found my lane. Found found that
I love leadership, I love developing people wrong length and
so during my time as an executive pastor, I found
myself navigating from being on stages as a recording artist
(02:21):
to where all of a sudden, now I'm like on
stages helping churches break the growth Burrier code in America.
And so it was a drastic shift and my heart
started to change a little bit as far as the
ways that I can make a bigger impact outside of
the local church. And so I really deepened my study
in figuring out ways to UH to help organizations, got
(02:41):
my master's degrees and certifications, et cetera. I started our
companies over a decade ago. So now we run teams
dot Coach, which is our large company. We have Catalyst
co for our small businesses and entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, other coaches
and consultants, and then we have an agency called Gawker
Traffic that we own as well. And it has been
one crazy wild ride and I love it. All the pain,
all the glory, it's all there. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Wow, Now that's the reason why you're on the show.
God was in the middle of this, and so I
now I know. Thank you for that extra introduction. What
church was it?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I was on steph at a church called Christ Place
Church in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I know it well. Yeah. My company has several divisions.
One of them is an inspirational publishing division that's got
Gracefully of Yours greeting cards, and so I think we've
worked with almost every big church across the nation. So
I'm so glad that you're on. Let's start by unpacking
(03:45):
this song called Through the Haze, because I think inside
that song is a reason for people to need to
talk to you.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Come on, man, let's go, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So here we go, there is because what we do
here at truly significant is pointing people toward their purpose.
There's a line in the song that says, how are
you helping people and companies get through the haze to
find the purpose? And it's uh, I can't and hear it.
(04:18):
All I know is that from this moment forward, nothing
will ever be the same again. And then I'm backing
up going something snaps. This is a breakthrough, not a breakdown.
And then inside the song is is there a reason
in this madness? Is there a reason inside this mad madness?
(04:40):
I want so that having been said as I went backwards, Yeah,
I want you to describe why is there madness today,
especially when it comes to leadership in this gap of
not of people being unable to find their true purpose
in life?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Man?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
And uh, I appreciate that you that you're that you're
grabbing stuff out of this song. And uh, it's the
backstory on this too. By the way, is that my
creative director came to me about a year ago and
he said he said, he said, Michael, he was like,
we're successful over here in executive coaching, but like when
it comes to elevating your personal brand, Uh, it's all
(05:20):
about like the differentiator and we don't. I don't. He
was like, I don't know of any other. I don't
know of any other executive coach is also a recording
artist that's also an executive coach, Like, why don't we
combine the two ideas and just have fun with it
for a season. And I'm like, is that legal?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Can we do that?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Can you have fun?
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And UH?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And I was like, let's go.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
So I went.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I pitched the idea to UH to the record label
and also to UH TO to distribution all that stuff.
I said, Hey, here's what I'm gonna do for this
next season. I'm gonna write songs specifically to address mindset
and identity issues and performance issues within high performing leaders
and the like. That doesn't sound sexy, that doesn't sound
(06:03):
like it could be cool. And I said, well, I
think we're gonna create a genre. So hang in there
with me on this. I'll pitch it. Let's see if
we can. Let's se if we can. So I wrote
out a couple songs. You know this this video through
the haze that you're speaking of, you know, so this
is the combination. So when you go to this and
you watch the video, it's not just a music video.
It goes about halfway through the song and then it
(06:24):
combines this thought leadership almost like a keynote experience under
four minutes. You know, that was the idea, and you know,
as of today it has over one hundred and thirty
thousand views on YouTube. Like this has really resonated with people.
So I appreciate you diving into this whole thing, but like,
so to lean into your question of the lyric line
(06:47):
that you're talking about, is that is there a reason
in the madness. It's a crack of light to break
the sadness. And here's the thing is that when it
comes to the idea through the haze, the one thing
that most leaders have in common. It doesn't matter like
whether I'm working with a small business or whether I'm
working with a large business. But imposter syndrome will sneak
(07:07):
in at some point in time in your career. It
will get in your head. You'll start to second guess
the very thing that you do better than anyone else.
And when you start to do that, you're going to
start to feel like, Okay, I'm living in this land
of the murky. I don't necessarily know who I am.
And if you're not careful, you're going to lose yourself
along the way. So the whole idea of like taking
(07:28):
people through this idea is like, Hey, let's talk about
real things that people are experiencing, and what's my experience
in dealing with it? What did I have to do
to be able to break through the haze? And what
you reference is part of that spoken word experience At
the very end of it is like, Man, I woke
up one day recognizing that I was in the wrong rooms,
(07:48):
hanging with the wrong people, and I didn't necessarily know
what was going to happen next, but I knew that
after I saw some things, I couldn't un see it,
and I couldn't unfeel it, I couldn't unexperience it, but
I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I got to tell you, Michael, that sixteen now seventeen
years ago, that epiphany happened, and I was thinking about it,
praying about it, and I said, I just want to
work for God. I don't want to ever see a
performance appraisal again. Come on, nor do I want to
(08:27):
lay a performance appraisal upon anybody else. And that was
the singular most liberating day from God ever, and I
found I got closer to the purpose and then over
the last sixteen years we've gone from life lessons to
core values and now are into studying people that are
(08:50):
in the space of significance. So I'm going to be
asking you a lot of questions about significance today, and
fortunately Michael did not receive any of our advanced questions.
So this is gonna be spontaneous combustion.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Let's go, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What does a truly significant leader looclock in twenty twenty six,
not just in performance, but in character.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
You know, we measure success a lot of times by
KPIs in business. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna be
very very very clear about this, is that I've never
met a successful leader ever that has ever been measured
you know, their their success has ever been measured by
how busy they were. Success is always measured by the
number of promises that you're able to keep. And and
(09:38):
you think about that in your marriage pooh, that'll translate right, yep,
you know, you think about that in the best relationships
with you and your team. That's the only thing that
they really care about today is that is your yes.
You're yes as your no. You know, even even for us,
we one of our white label partners. I was on
a I was on a call with them yesterday, and
(10:01):
they want to after seven years of a white label agreement,
they wanted to be able to change the structure of
our agreement to where they wanted to be able to
have a timed agreement. And then after a period of
three months after the platform, they wanted to have access
to all of our clients to where they could upsell
them to be their customers directly. And man, when trust
(10:22):
is violated and when there's something that enters into the
water where people actually start to question whether you're able
to actually keep your promises, they won't stick around. You
will not be successful, because that's the only thing that matters.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well stated that leads to in your work with organizations
like Disney and Chick fil A, two of my favorite companies.
And I actually knew Truant Kathy, what identity misalignment most
often creates chaos instead of.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Clarity, you know, the identity that causes chaos versus clarity.
I don't know necessarily if it's necessarily. I think it's
the lack of identity that causes that causes chaos, you know,
and I think both those organizations they have a very
(11:14):
very true north as far as like how they how
they want to position their brand and they and they
make all their they make all their decisions based off
of values matrix, which is incredibly important. So if you're
listening to this, you know, the things for you to
be able to take into consideration is that organizations fifty
seven percent of global organizations actually don't know what their
(11:37):
values are. Isn't that huge? Why fifty seven percent, Well,
they don't know who they are and that's the that's
the easy question, that's the easy answer, right, But they've
but you know, like if you exist just to simply
make money, if you exist just to simply increase your
(11:57):
top line revenue, you're missing the whole why behind. You're
missing a deeper connection in with your client. You're going
to make a lot of decisions that aren't necessarily a
part of your true north, and that's what causes this chaos.
You know, like Amazon recently just announced that they were
going to hire you know, fire, you know, forty four
thousand people because they replaced them with AI. And so
that's another different conversation of like why do organizations make
(12:20):
these type of decisions? Because if we're not actually connected
and committed to our people, man, life is going to
get incredibly chaotic. But if we're making decisions through our
value systems, here's what we know is that fifty seven
percent organizations don't know what their values are. But we
do know this is that organizations that do make their
decisions through values make significantly more money. And that's the
(12:43):
thing is like it's a there's a leading and a
lagging indicator behind this. Do you know who you are
and do you know why you make the decisions that
you make? Because if if that's clearly defined, you're going
to find that chaos is not as easy to it's.
It's chaos is a little bit further way. That's why
I'm talking about this idea of navigating through chaos and
(13:04):
really embracing your calling. And I think as organizations like
lean in, find out what your real WI is, find
out what your true north is, build out a value
matrix that your people can grab a hold of. So
you're not just making decisions reactively, you're not just making
decisions based off of opinion, but you're making decisions based
off of this is who we are?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, sir, calling the word calling. Having worked for Procter
and Gammel and Pepsicho, I can tell you the years,
the days, the minutes of not listening and hearing any calling.
There what's required in twenty twenty six and beyond for
(13:51):
people to listen and hear a calling.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Man, that's a that's a that's a tough one. I
think you know, just at the very, very very basic
of it is like personally, I know that you know
there's this idea of signal to noise ratio, right, are
familiar with the concept?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
As leaders waking up every single day, I know that
in the next in the next eighteen hours, I'm going
to try to accomplish three things. Okay, what are those
three things? And what am I going to do to
try to eliminate all of the noise that's actually keeping
me from trying to accomplish those three things in the
next eighteen hours? Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Now,
(14:41):
noise is tricky, man. Noise is a son of a gun.
And and as leaders, you know, whether it's in our
personal lives or whether it's the businesses that we run,
we have to do whatever we can to try to
eliminate noise. To keep us from being productive. And I
know that when it comes to the calling of who
I am as a leader, like I you know, it
comes down to a couple things. I'm gonna you know,
(15:02):
I'll give you these five different things that are kind
of filters for me personally. But it's like, okay, great,
who am I? What do I want to be known for?
What is the biggest problem that I solve? What do
I do better than anyone else? And I want to
be honest about that, Like it's not like I don't
want I don't want to give you like a humble brag,
but there's got to be something that you feel internally,
and then how do you want to make people feel
(15:22):
like as a company, as a leader. If you can
answer those five things, you can get a very you
know locked in.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I guess trajectory as far as like what you're calling
should be. But if there's anything that's competing against those
five things, do whatever you can to try to eliminate
that noise, because that's what's keeping you away from embracing
your destiny, keeping it away from legacy. Those are big.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Things, indeed, they are. Let's talk about emotional intelligence and
let's put it in context with AI, emotional intelligence is
on the rise as a topic, not necessarily as that
(16:12):
we're becoming more emotionally intelligent. And I would say three
out of every five shows emotional intelligence or EQ comes up.
First of all, I would love to hear from Michael
King your definition of emotional intelligence. And then I want
(16:32):
to know what elements of emotional intelligence matter the most,
especially relative to AI.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Man, You're about to start a bar fight here. This
is good, right, So emotional intelligence? Are you are you
in touch with yourself? Are you in touch with the
people around you? And are you able to serve the
environments that you're in? You know, there's this you know,
I think again, it's it's like that is that is
the thing? Now how it relates over to AI. Man,
(17:04):
I've been on this kick lately where I've been trying
to get people to replace the AI from being artificial
intelligence to actually leaning in the idea of authentic intelligence.
Because the thing is is that with AI and why
EQ is so important in the in the in the
AI conversation is because a AI right now today in
(17:27):
the generative, you know, learned language models that we have
in twenty twenty five going into twenty twenty six is
most of this is still garbage in, garbage out. You know,
whatever you put into it is going to scale. Whatever
you're going to put into it is going to make
it a little bit more efficient. It's going So there
are definitely things, but it's still in order for AI
(17:49):
to still be productive in twenty twenty five, it requires
human interaction in order for there to be any level
of execution. Would you agree with me on that, yes, sir.
And where organizations are where I'm getting pulled in a
lot with companies is because they're making mass decisions and
blanket statements. You know, Like one of the companies we
work with, they released a press, uh you know, internal
work memo that said, hey, starting today, everybody in our
(18:13):
company is now required to use AI to optimize their work.
What the heck does that mean? Like, like, there are
so many different variances on that. And if you aren't
putting in the strong foundational work to build your skyscraper,
the building is going to tumble and it's going to
create disastrous outcomes. And that's kind of where that's that
tension world that we're sitting in right now, and that's
(18:34):
why the EQ and the in the AI conversation. These
two things are colliding like it's coming together in a
very glorious disaster. And so it's it's up to us
to really make sure that we're building strong foundations, really
finding out who we are and then knowing how we're
going to utilize AI to optimize and to and to
make a bigger impact as leaders and as our companies.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Aim. And on that note, we're going to take a
quick commercial break and we'll start with you, Michael, tell
our listening audience where they can contact your enterprise and
get some of your great wisdom and leadership inside so
they can discover their values in their why.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Absolutely so reach out to me personally at Michael King
Junior dot com. This is my personal landing page for
my personal brand and you'll see the video for through
the Hayes there. Now. If you are a large team company,
so if you have over twenty to thirty employees, please
please check out teams dot coach for all of our
coaching systems for high performing executive teams and businesses and
(19:36):
small businesses. But if you are a solopreneur, if you're
an entrepreneur, if you're a coach or a consultant. You
want to figure out how to have a massive impact
as a leader within the next ninety days, check out
fire myoboss noow dot com. You won't believe the unbelievable
coaching offers that we have there that include not just
one on one in group coaching, but also social media
(19:56):
management where you get an assigned social media manager and
also SEO your coaching package so you don't have to
worry about the marketing lift. So so check it out.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Thank you, Sar, and we will be right back. After
this message from Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
This is Marcus Aurelius reappearing to proclaim that truly significant
conversations with big hearted people is a rare piece of literature.
This book reminds me of one of my more stirring quotes,
waste no more time arguing what a good man should
be be one. If you're stepping into your next life
(20:40):
chapter of your career and questioning what lies beyond success,
this book is for you. Dive into forty soul stirring
stories from luminaries like doctor Jane Goodall, Ed Asner, and
Emily Chang, stories that urge you to pursue purpose, serve others,
(21:03):
and build a legacy that outlasts you. Authored by Rick
TOLKINI Truly Significant will challenge your view of success and
ignite a life of impact. Order now at TinyURL dot
com backslash truly Significant and begin living intentionally. Maybe your
(21:26):
epitaph will read she gave outrageously extended grace unceasingly and
lived to help others so that death found her empty.
Visit truly significant dot com and celebrate the most truly
significant people in your life with the truly Significant community.
(21:50):
How bold of you to make your next chapter matter
and be truly significant.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We are back with Michael King. There's a couple of
oracles that have come out of Nebraska, and we happen
to have had Tom Osborne on our show. We celebrated
Coach Osborne in our Truly Significant book. I don't want
to blow smoke up your you know what, but I
(22:17):
think that you are onto something of oracle level here,
of true significance. And that having been said, I'm going
to ask you a couple of questions that maybe only
you can answer based on your ten years of experience,
and but your lifetime of experience as a dad, as
a pastor, as a singer, I want to know what
(22:39):
is the emotional blind spot that you see most in
high growth teams heading into the new year, and what
are we supposed to do about it to remove.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That blind spot. This happens within the church, this happens
within businesses. But we build, we build our executive teams
a lot of times built on charismatic energy and ego
and and these things have a really really short shelf life,
(23:10):
right And I think you know, and what I love
about what we do at teams on the teams Dot
coach side of things is that just like just like
Olympic athletes hire coaches to help them break world records,
the world's top executive teams hire me to help them
break world records too. But there's a science to it,
Like you have to know your people, and you have
(23:31):
to be able to recognize how your leadership personally is
being effective or where it's not being effective. So that's
where I love it. Like which I love the fact that,
by the way that you mentioned Tom Osborne man, one
of my dreams is I would love to be able
to I haven't been able to do it yet, but
i'd love to be an executive coach to a college
football team. You know, like if I could start here
in Nebraska, that'd be amazing. I'd love to be able
(23:52):
to help them. But if you think about it, though, right,
it's like when you build everything from from the brand perspective,
you know, like, hey, let's go ahead and and go
out and hire a big leader with big bravado, with
big vision, with big tenacity, who can really really inspire
(24:13):
and move the needle. But then behind the scenes, like
he's a relational disaster. You know, those are the things
that are going to be the blind spots that are
going to take down some of these organizations. So you
have to be able to you have to understand where
your blind spots are. You have to understand where because
because don't get me wrong, like if you do have
(24:33):
that gifting of being a high impact, a high charismatic
leader that can vision cast better and that you can
inspire from the stage that you can you know that
you can broadcast it, that's great, But put in the
work to figure out how to balance that out with
your behind the scenes tactics, your bedside manner, with your
caring of your team. Because here's the thing, is that
if you can't have a friendship with the people that
are on your executive team, you're going to fail. So
(24:56):
ditch the transactional leadership, lean in to transformational leadership, of
lean in to servant leadership, and balance it out.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Oh, well said, I really appreciate that. Okay, We've got
Michael for another ten minutes, so I'm going to try
to slip in a music question or two. When you
introduce music into coaching, how does it unlock clarity?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
You know, we use we use we use music in
our keynote experiences and this is a really big lift
for me, just to be honest with you. So and
this is where a big focus has it been. Because
I don't know about you, but I guess you've gone
to leadership conferences and business conferences, marketing, whatever it is
that you've been to. You probably get it when you
when you encounter a speaker. Is that everybody kind of
(25:42):
has the same thing. It's like, Hey, this is my name,
this is what I do, this is how I've won,
and this is how you can win too. Right, there's
kind of a formula to it. And after at the
end of the day, I'm like, that was a lot
of information, but I don't feel anything. Okay, Here's the
one thing I know as a leader is that people
will only remember the way that you make them feel.
And so my keynote experiences are produced from beginning to end,
(26:04):
whether it's a forty five minute keynote or whether it's
a sixty minute keynote, but it's the it's high level
of humor, high level of emotion, and high levels of creativity.
So so a lot of times, like my keynotes include
a live performance opener that's just knocking it out of
the park, whether it's a saxophone performance piece, or whether
it's you know, a music video opener, or whether it's
(26:25):
me with traveling because I do travel with a live
musician a lot of times who's on the stage with me.
But making sure that the whole thing is a produced
experience to where people can actually walk away with the
feeling that they've that they can experience breakthrough, feeling that
they can experience hope again, and it's something that they'll
never forget. So that's so that's how like in that space. Now,
(26:47):
I also do bring it into group group experiences as well,
So when I'm doing workshops and things, like that. I
incorporate a lot of creativity in that as well.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Oh boy, having been in praise and worship teams for
a long time, if we were able to bring people
into the motion of praise and being able to have
times of solitude while music is going on, isn't.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
There a great parallel with what you just said where Yeah,
that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It feels like this, It feels similar. And I you know,
I hope I'm not being sacrilegious in this, but there
is something about bringing people into the right emotional space
before you can speak to them, into that so called
empty vessel and get through the noise and be memorable,
(27:45):
you know.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
And I think that that's and that's really as a communicator,
that's my thing is is like I want, I want you.
I want a transformational experience that you'll never forget, and
I want I don't want to waste your time, like
I want you to feel like that it was worth
your time to be able to sit there, for you
to be able to experience what I've brought to the table.
(28:06):
For the month of December, we didn't even we didn't
talk about this off grid, but we did a high
school assembly this last week, and we thought, for the
month of December, we're gonna gift back to our community.
And I put out a Christmas record back in like
twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen, and it's a Saxophone record,
and I thought, rather than releasing a new single in
(28:28):
the month of December, let's hold off on it. So
our next single is gonna drop in January. It's called
Unbreakable Things, which, dude, I can't wait for you to
hear it. It's gonna blow your mind. But the idea
of that song is really about the idea that, like
the world is trying to tell us that we're broken,
but I want to remind you today that you are
(28:49):
made by design with unbreakable things yep, on purpose and
gives me goosebumps to talk about this message is gonna
be so powerful for people to experience. But anyway, so
we did this high school assembly this last week about
five hundred students with the whole idea of just simply
(29:10):
this that maybe maybe the Christmas lights, maybe the Christmas music,
maybe changed business hours, all the disruptions that happened in
the month of December, maybe all of this isn't necessarily
just to change things up, but maybe the universe pauses
and changes its direction for the month of December just
(29:30):
to remind you that you're significant. And so we went
into the high schools and we did this whole thing
where it's like I brought out a production company. We
did basically my corporate keynote structure, like in front of
these students. They loved it. They ate it up. But
at the end, everybody had this card that they were
able to hold up that had their word of decor
declaration that said I am blank, I am powerful, I
(29:54):
am worthy, I am enough. And we have this picture
of the students like holding these cards up, and it
is it is sobering, bro, that this school would allow
me to come in to basically bring a message of significance.
Because the thing is is that Christmas isn't easy for everybody,
and it wasn't easy for me growing up. And and
(30:17):
so I thought, I'm gonna go and pitch this just
to see if they if we have any bites, no
cost to the schools, We'll go in. Just let us
bring our media team in so we can film it
to tell the story. And it was powerful, man. But
that's the thing is that leading people to that moment
of like, Okay, where are we going? Where we're going
is this is that I'm going to have a captive
(30:38):
audience of five hundred students and at the end, I
want to get this one singular message into their hearts
that they're enough. Okay, what do I have to do
to be able to get there? I'm going to build
the experience all around that from beginning to end. I
am enough. And it's crazy, it's crazy how effective it is.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Okay, Michael King, I'm gonna on a couple of notes. One,
I'm going to personally challenge you to re examine what
audience you want to speak to in the future, because,
based on what you just said, you've been talking to
people that have already graduated from college and or had
some life of experience. The more fertile soil is that
(31:21):
high school audience.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I love it. I love that.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I want you to seriously consider taking it to that
next level. Final question for you. Success gets attention, but
significant actually lifts other people up. That's what we try
to do here. Every day you've lifted us up. You
were creating legacy for your own team, your organization, even
for those high schoolers that just heard the message, I
(31:51):
want you to issue a message of hope for our
listening audience, hope for them as leaders as the new
year is just upon us, and perhaps inside that message,
give a little bit of your wisdom and advice about
what do you need to do to pivot to create
(32:12):
more hope that will help them maybe accomplish those KPIs
that you spoke about.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Absolutely, and let me just kind of paraphrase this a
little bit and kind of lean into it. Is that
even in our coaching methodologies, you know, we take people
through this through what we call the to B list framework,
not the to do list framework, but the tow B
list framework. Well, why is that most leaders start off
the day with the idea of strategy? Okay, your alarm
(32:40):
clock goes off in the morning. Eighty seven percent of
leaders that we've surveyed over four thousand leaders anyway in
our focus group said they wake up in the morning
and they reach over to the side of their bed,
and before their feet even hit the end of the floor,
they've picked up their phone and they start looking through
their commitment lists as far as the things that they
need to accomplish in the day before their day even start. Okay,
(33:00):
so they're starting off in their mind with their commitments,
where they're putting their time and how much stuff that
they have to do, so they can get their their mind,
you know, in their day programmed out the right direction. Okay,
here's what we also know. Sixty seven percent of all
failures exist not because of lack of bandwidth, but because
of lack of execution. Okay, so what does this mean.
(33:22):
It means that by starting off your day in the
strategy bucket with all your energy just thinking about the
stuff that you have to do, there's a huge chance
that you're going to experience thrownout. You're going to experience
failure because you're committing your time to doing things that
you should have never done in the first place. How
does that happen? Why does that happen? Is because you
didn't start with your identity. So who are you in
the first place. The reason why your strategies aren't effective,
(33:45):
it is because you don't know who you are. And
so I challenge you this as leaders, the leaders this
simply this is that is that as a leader, I
can't actually consider you a leader if you're not actually
bringing hope to your organization. This is the number one
thing that a leader should be doing within their organization
is being somebody who's promoting hope and actually bringing hope accessible.
(34:05):
Why is that important is because there's one thing that
everybody on this planet deserves, and that's hope. This is
the way that you were born, this is the way
that you've been empowered to lead. It's the one thing.
I don't believe in entitlement, but I do believe in
this one thing that everybody deserves, and that everybody deserves
the opportunity to experience hope. So what are you doing
(34:26):
to propagate that? What are you doing to actually bringing
hope to your life, to your family, to your organization,
and what does that look like on a day to
day basis. This is so important because at the end
of the day, if you're not bringing hope to your organization,
then you're actually not leaving rooms better than you found them.
And so this is your number one job. It doesn't
matter like, it doesn't matter what the KPIs are. Your
(34:48):
number one job is to be able to bring hope
to your organization. So, now on the KPI side of it,
man like, if you need help, if you need to
be able to get in the weeds a little bit
to figure out how you can increase top line revenue
for your company or increase in optimized performance for your company.
I promise you this structure and systems are always your
gateway to effective strategy. So let's dive into that and
(35:08):
let's figure those things out. It's complicated, but we have
some software stacks we can give you to be able
to help you unlock.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Michael Kean, thank you for being on. I feel like
I've made a new friend and I want to invite
you back for an annual update, almost a state of
the Union on leadership. Will you do that?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I would be honored man. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Absolutely, that was Michael King. Thank you again for being on.
And as we always say, we hope that you are
focused on your success, but that you are really pointing
your way to significance and along the way, as leaders,
consider what are you doing to bring hope to your organization.
(35:53):
Have a great week.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I'm running circles on the one way track. She'sing shadows
the door, look back the neon lights through the edges
of my side. Every step feels heavy, butter folding time
is the reason in this madness, a
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Crack of light to break the sadness through the head
I see
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