September 5, 2025 • 30 mins
In this empowering episode of That Will Nevr Work, Maurice Chism connects with leadership consultant and former corporate executive Adam Malone to explore what it really takes to transition from a traditional career to purpose-driven consulting—and how leadership development plays a pivotal role in that journey.
Adam shares his powerful story of walking away from the predictable climb of corporate success to step into something more intentional: building better leaders. Together, they discuss the mindset shifts, confidence gaps, and unexpected lessons that come with choosing the road less traveled—and how those lessons now help Adam shape leaders from the inside out.
If you’re feeling stuck in the corporate grind or ready to guide others through their growth, this episode is for you.
🎧 Tune in and discover how your next level of impact may not come from climbing higher—but from stepping out.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-malone-a9100ba/
https://thetenaciousoperator.com/
Adam shares his powerful story of walking away from the predictable climb of corporate success to step into something more intentional: building better leaders. Together, they discuss the mindset shifts, confidence gaps, and unexpected lessons that come with choosing the road less traveled—and how those lessons now help Adam shape leaders from the inside out.
If you’re feeling stuck in the corporate grind or ready to guide others through their growth, this episode is for you.
🎧 Tune in and discover how your next level of impact may not come from climbing higher—but from stepping out.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-malone-a9100ba/
https://thetenaciousoperator.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I thank you very much for tuning in to that
Will Never Work podcast. Climbing the corporate ladder used to
be the dream, but what if your next level of
purpose requires you to step off. Today Adam, he's going
to join me. We're going to unpack the powerful shift
from executive life to leadership impact. We'll talk about a
raft of.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Us, educate, empower enable impact. Thank you for tuning in
to That Will Never Work, an award winning podcast where
we share inspiring information and personal experiences related to business
and the entrepreneurial journey from those who are leaders in
(00:42):
their respective field. Now here's your host, author and business
coach Maurice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I thank you very much for tuning in. We have Adam.
Now this is going to be fun because there's a
whole lot of information that we need to cover today.
So Adam, Yeah, what of true leadership isn't about how
high you rise, but how deeply you help others grow?
Is that true? Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I think it for sure is. I think one of
the biggest mistakes that we have made in the corporate
world is to attach the concept of leadership to titles
and to give the impression almost that progression up the
ladder naturally comes with leadership talent. Like, you know, I'm
(01:32):
a line manager, and so they give me this like
set of skills and this tool belt, and then when
I get promoted, they're going to give me a new
set of skills and a new tool belt. And you
know that all that's kind of given to you as
you progress. One, I think that's an issue. But two,
we have kind of often fallen for the mistake of
thinking that leadership is about level as opposed to realizing
(01:55):
that the most effective, the most high performing teams affect
everyone to lead, whether or not they have an actual
reporting relationship with anyone or not.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It's interesting that you say that, because a lot of
times when we're in that corporate space, our managers say, hey,
you know what, be like me, you know, take on
my characteristics, take on my traits, and I'll show you
the path. We're going to go down this golden brick
road together, right, you know. And sometimes we're led that
(02:29):
way to emanate somebody else. So should we stay ourselves
in that space or should we really take on that
mantra of someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's one of the hardest parts of growing as a
leader is figuring out your one your one true self
how to be true to that, because I do believe
that authenticity is a very real part of growing and
becoming a leader, and authenticity is a key aspect in
developing trust, which trust is what I've found all my
work in. But but with that we have to be
(03:04):
careful because sometimes we can give the idea that when
when Maurice, we want you to be your true, authentic self,
that we give the idea that that means that we
don't expect you to grow or change. And really we
need to balance these ideas of well, I'm just true
to who I am versus you have to change to
be like someone else. That we really need to embrace
(03:28):
the idea that as I grow and as we grow
our people, there should naturally be some change and some
development and maturity. Almost That is it's It shouldn't be
becoming someone else, It should be becoming the next version
of who you are and getting really comfortable with being
(03:51):
being true to who you are while also identifying the
parts of you that may need improvement and growth and development.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So you talk about being yourself, Yeah, there's another word
to use about mature. The word mature I'm gonna play
off of that for a moment. So for those of
you who wants to know anything about Adam, you can
go and read his bio anywhere listen to him. But
there's something in his bio that talks about he's the
(04:20):
Paul Patrol. He understands Paul Patrol now and I had
to look up Paul Patrol and understand you understand what
some of the lessons that we can learn from leadership
perspective of Paul Patrol. That's funny.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, so full context for listeners. I've got a lot
of kids. My oldest is sixteen, my youngest is three.
My three younger kids in our family would often refer
to as the littles. Paul Patrol is one of their
favorite TV shows, right, And it is interesting. I end
up watch a lot of Paul Patrol. If called on,
(05:02):
I can sing the theme song if we need to
have that reaction. But it's interesting because there are there
are interesting leadership aspects embedded within this kid's show, right,
and one of them is one thing I love about
the show. This is so funny to talk about that
they don't use every person, they don't use every pup
(05:24):
in every episode.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Depending on which I mean that show is hugely successful
twenty twenty five our seasons. So there's like different numbers
of pups in there. But one of the really cool
things is not everybody gets a seat on the bus
every time. Not everyone's a starter every single time. And
so you know, part of the role is the guy
who's the leader named writer. He at one point he
(05:47):
says like, Hey, here are the pups that I need,
And sometimes it's all of them, and sometimes it's no,
Like we have this water thing, so we need Zuma
the pup with the water skills or whatever. And so
I really like that idea, that landing that everyone is valuable,
but that doesn't mean that everyone is needed in every
single scenario, and they really land that almost very subtly.
(06:10):
But yeah, I think there's tons of tons of cool
little learning things we can see in there.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And just using your analogy, you know, see, as a leader,
we're supposed to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each
and every one of our people that we're leading, right
also understanding what is our own personal strengths and weaknesses
where we have those people that on our team that
help can help supplement that. But so now in that though,
(06:38):
how do we diffuse our ego because sometimes our ego
gets in the way of that, So how do we
let that go just a little bit so we understand
that we are building this team where we're feeling in
helping fill in some of those holes.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, so we have to help do that for ourselves
and for our teams.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
An example of that is lots of cultures establish value
of team members based on a very competitive structure, and
they believe and they have the idea that we need
to drive competition amongst our team members in order to
get the best out of them. I'm a big believer
(07:21):
in competition, and I'm certainly a free market economics guy
all that, but I do believe that culturally within teams
one of the ways that we model what we believe
in is do we reward people for making the team
better or do we reward people for showing out themselves?
(07:43):
And the healthiest organizations incentivize and reward team supportive behavior
as opposed to self supportive behavior. One of my first leaders,
he gave this great example. He went to West Point,
and some folks between their senior high school and their
(08:05):
first year at west Point, they do what's called a
it's called a finishing school. It's kind of like an
old school idea, but a finishing school. It's really it's
like they get a thirteenth year, like instead of twelfth grade,
they have a thirteenth or a second senior year, and
the goal is to brush up on some skills for them.
Often involve some physical training kind of prepares them for
West Point a little bit. So he ended up doing
(08:28):
that one of those finishing schools. But he gets to
So he gets to West Point and he has more
than average knowledge versus the other freshman because essentially he
had a year of pre education that was how to march,
how to keep your foot locker like. He'd been in
a military school for a year, and his in one
(08:51):
of his first you know, locker reviews where they go
through and they check everyone's bunk and make sure they're
all squared away. His stuff was perfec it and he
got it. But he got in trouble with the guy
who was I don't think it's their drill sergeant, but
but whatever it is. At West Point, he got in trouble.
He got written up effectively and dressed down and when
(09:12):
he when he probed like Hey, I thought I had
all my stuff ship shape. Why is this a problem?
The feedback he got was, yeah, but the guys on
both sides of you, they didn't have the same knowledge
that you did, and they were a mess, and it
was evident that you didn't help them. And and so
(09:32):
that was he was one of my first leaders. And
I just remember kind of trying to embrace that idea
of you can you can rise and fall on your
own merits, but you can also rise and fall based
on how you at least attempt to help others, which
which I know your your religious background, you know Galatians
six talks a lot about that and bearing one another's burdens.
(09:56):
Were called to support one another. That doesn't relieve our
own individual accountability, but it does add some accountability for
my brother on both sides of me, and a religious
context and a family context, and in a work context.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And I think that's interesting because in this culture right now,
you get this me first mentality, and it's not until
you work in a team. So, for an example, with
my corporate background being most of it being in customer service,
we were a team. We had to work together and
(10:34):
ensuring that the next person they're handling calls effectively as
the other person, all those type of things. So sometimes
even with that, our bonuses were attached to each other. Yeah,
you know, and sometimes we don't understand that we like,
as you stated, we're more worried about the me first,
you know, let me get this award or whatever. It
(10:56):
is not understanding that we all can win together even though.
But but I understand you bring everybody else to the
same level of excellency as yourself. And I think that's
I think that's the hard thing that we see, especially
in social media, that hey, everything is like me, me, me,
me me. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
And one of the one of the ways I talk
to teams about that in terms of culture development when
I work with them is there are whole lots of
teams that when they put together a whole bunch of
really strong A players, they actually end up with something
like less than some of its parts, that that that
team is actually generating less than it should because even
(11:39):
though they have all really strong players, they're all really
strong individual players. And I've had the most success and
the teams that I've built of having a few really
strong A players but having mostly like what i'll call
b plus players on the field, but every single person
(11:59):
want to help each other succeed and be better. And
they ran freaking circles around the only high po talent
teams because they had a mindset that was, Hey, we're
never going to let the ball drop, We're always going
to look out for each other. We're going to get
through this together. And they filled the cracks between them.
(12:22):
They made sure no space was lost, and they embraced
the idea that if someone says, oh, hey, I thought
Bob was taking that, that that that's not Bob's fault,
necessarily doesn't reflect poorly on Bob. It reflects poorly on
the whole team as opposed to individual performance mentality, which
(12:42):
is well, that was that was Bob's accountability. So I
didn't pay attention to it, Okay, but like you had exposure,
you had information. You could see that Bob was drowning
or you could tell he wasn't working on it, Like
did you do anything to help?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I would take a team of highly motivated, highly team
oriented individuals that were maybe less strong, uh than having
a team of all hypos that were lone wolfing it
the whole time.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, And I think that's again just based off of
the team that I was in a lot of times
we were because we felt as though we had it,
we can make it happen. That sometimes we dropped the ball,
you know, because of that, because we had that all right,
I'm going to go up. Because our numbers we had
to get ninety accuracy, and so when we got to
(13:36):
that ninety two percent, we're like, all right, I got it,
but not necessarily worried about the next person in that space.
But because everyone was doing that, and then when you
get one person that comes in that, now they're there, hey,
I'm doing it. Now I'm going to slack off a
little bit because I've been averaging this. So I've been
(13:58):
doing that. Was sometimes that doesn't work with the team
that that hurts us in the long run, you know,
because now you're dropping the ball and are we constantly
going to look at the mark? You know. It's almost
like a when you take a look at any of
the sports teams like well A Lebron or Tom Brady
or whatever else. Some people expect to make it to
(14:20):
the playoffs every single year, no matter what the situation is.
But it's about the team. It's not about that one person,
you know. And I think that's some of the things
that we don't always consider is the team is as
important as everybody else, I mean, as you as the individual.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Right, yeah, I mean ultimately there there are no teams
that can rely on just one person to win.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
You can even go back and look at the bulls.
Jordan did do it on his own. He did, you know,
he had he had other guys on the court, and
even if they were just getting him the ball, he
couldn't have done what he did, or the team couldn't
have done what they did if no one was there
to help him have the ball to put in the basket, right, right,
And and so I think as you kind of go
(15:05):
back to, you know, your question, which is like how
do we help people see pass the ego that can
distract there A lot of my topics are about trust
and the composition of trust within a team. And what
I find is one of the three things that leads
(15:27):
to high trust teams is what I call alignment. An
alignment is is a combination of a couple things, but
think of it as one of them is the alignment
between words and actions. And so lots of leaders will
say one thing and they mean it, they really do
mean it. But then when the rubber hits the road,
(15:50):
things get bad, things get hard. There's stress, you know,
sea level people are firing off emails in the middle
of the night. All those good intentions, you know, sometimes
go out the window. And you can tell a lot
about the level of trust and the team as to
how they respond to stress and fear. And there's a
(16:11):
connection frequently between stress and fear and ego because I'm
afraid that I am going to use like an Asian term,
I'm going to lose face in front of my leadership
team or whatever, And so that has a direct connection
to ego. And how do I as a leader absorb
(16:34):
the body blows that are going to come towards me
and my team when something goes wrong? Or am I
going to immediately filter all that stress, all that adrenaline
directly into the team, Or am I going to protect them,
I'm going to stand between them and the leadership. Am
I going to try to save my ego and put
(16:56):
one of them up and crucify them in a way.
And until a leader can embrace the idea that it
is their job to take credit for failure. It's their
job to take credit for failure and to give credit
for success. They'll never get everything they can from their
(17:18):
team until they embrace that dual concept.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And I think that's important because a lot of times
the team will feed off of that. It's you know,
because now because you're you're a leader, now looks like
as if they are a part of you, not they're
not above, and they'll respect you in that leadership role
because now you have taken the bullets, right, you have
(17:43):
taken a beating or whatever. But you've also, like you said,
uplifted someone else, you know, because now they're like, all right,
well if he did that for me, I'm sorry he
did that for him, He could do that for me,
you know. So now everyone now they want to work
harder to reach the goal. You know. But but I
(18:04):
think sometimes, though I'm gonna be honest with you, that
word trust is major. Oh yeah, yeah, because because we
can't sometimes because of our community wherever we might have
grown up, in our childhood background or whatever it is.
You know, some of us who didn't watch Paul Patrol
(18:25):
don't understand what the word trust really means, you know,
because we didn't see it you know, and so now
we're at dust and we're trying to build on something
that is not really part of our makeup.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, no, I agree with you completely. I mentioned to
have quite a few kids. My youngest three children are adopted,
and that's had a huge impact on me as a father,
of course, but it's impacted some other things in my life,
and one of them has been a shifting belief in
(18:59):
the idea and concept of trauma. And as a part
of adoption we've had we've learned a lot about trauma situations.
But but what that opened my eyes up to professionally
as I'm as I was growing in that way and
in a leadership team in the same way, was the
frequency with which people have some sort of workplace trauma
(19:24):
that impacts them. And that can be that can be
true like real trauma. And I'm gonna say real trauma
as in real physical mental harm that was done to
them potentially outside the workplace. But but I think we
may ignore sometimes the amount of trauma, even at a
(19:47):
lower level, that people face in the workplace. And so
part of our role as leaders is, for example, look
look at how does your team react. So so I'll
give an example, you've got you've got a team member
that you're frustrated because they copy you on every single email.
(20:07):
They don't send an email without ce seeing you, and
and and your first response is, Adam, will you just
stop it? Like I don't need another email? Well, what
you're going to find often when you go like scratch that,
scratch that issue a little bit, is they had some
(20:27):
leader in their past who did them harm based on
not having full visibility or the leader got mad for
some reason, and because that they developed this defense mechanism
that is, I'm just gonna anytime I have anything that
could approach bad news, I'm going to copy. That's exactly right.
(20:52):
And often as leaders, we fall into the trap of
addressing the symptom. The symptom is they see see me
on every email, or the symptom is I'll what I
sometimes talk to my teams about the power eye formation. Right,
you bring the senior director with the director, the senior
manager and the manager and they're all in the same
(21:13):
freaking meeting as if you need four layers of leadership
to do this. Well, that happens because people don't have
faith and trust that if something goes off the rails
that they're gonna that everything's gonna work out okay, and
so they go into defense mode, and their cya is
sending ten times more emails than they need to or
(21:35):
having meetings with three times more people. Or you can
kind of keep building that out and we can keep
telling people, hey, you don't need to do that, but
until we actually spend some time to identify the root
of whatever caused their pain or trauma or issue it's
leading to that defense, we're never going to solve the problem.
(21:57):
And so part of being a great leader is seeing
those behaviors and taking the time to be empathetic and
care about your people enough to find out why they're
doing that, and then as a part of that, embracing
(22:18):
the idea that you as a leader, that I, as
a leader, need to set aside my ego and listen
for the feedback that might be that I'm the one
who calls that trauma. I may be the leader who
got mad. I may be the leader who kind of asked, well,
why did that meeting happen? And I wasn't there. We
always want to blame it on the gap before, but
(22:41):
part of growing in our trust with our teams is
being empathetic enough to recognize that and authentic enough to
recognize that I may be the problem. And how am
I going to develop a strong enough relationship with my
team that they'll be able to tell me that?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Adam. First of all, I'm gonna say this, I think
that's a mic drop. So because because because I'm gonna
say this, and I thank you very much for coming
on a show. Where can someone talk to you and
find you? Where if I have a problem with taking responsibility,
(23:20):
accountability for how I have affected not just an individual,
but possibly the team as a whole, where can I
Where can I find you and talk to you about
something like that? Because I struggle with that in my organization,
my nine to five, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, the easiest thing is my LinkedIn. Look me up
Adam Malone. My my actual r L for on LinkedIn
is Adam Malone speaks. You see a pudgy white guy
with a microphone and a beard and a black and
white photo, it's probably me. Hit me up on there.
I accept every connection request, every friend request. I'd be
(23:58):
happy to talk to people and the DMS or over
email or whatever, because I believe that the world needs
more great leaders I think you might have heard me
say that that phrase a couple of times. You throw
my LinkedIn. That's a capitalized, proper term great leaders. It's
a thing I believe that we need more great leaders
and that for the solution to most of our problems
(24:22):
in our families, our communities, our churches, our government, our
society as a whole, is that we don't have enough
people that are willing to do the hard work to
be great leaders. So my passion, my calling is to
use the mechanism of trust to help develop more great
(24:42):
leaders in the world. And so whatever I can do
to help people, I'm always willing to do.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
So I just want you all to know that he's
stilling the truth. Like he That's all I hear about
is leadership, you know, because, like I said, listen to
some other episodes. I heard some little snippets here and there.
And I appreciate you, Adam, you know, because there's a
lot of things that if people don't know who you are.
I think you're a great role model and you've shown
what leadership can really show. I appreciate that, Adam. So
(25:12):
but Adam, before you go, man, I gotta ask you
a question, all right, ask me, man, would you rather question? Now?
Because you live in Nashville, I probably I might have
another question for you, but we'll see you do two.
All right, So, Adam, would you rather choose three doors
or a fork in the road?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Fork in the road?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And why fork?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Well, there's a mistake in our culture that we believe
that more choice always leads to more happiness. So h
that is statistically a lie. Researchers have shown that actually,
above about four or five choices, increased choice actually leads
(25:57):
to less gratefulness and less pleasure with your decision. And
so I, in my life seek to do things that
reduce the number of choices I have so that in
each of those choices I have more faith and more
less should I have taken the other options sort of
(26:19):
sort of debate. And so the three doors versus a
fork in the road, if I can, I'm always going
to try to go to a fork in the road
just so I can do a better job considering the
difference between them. You have a third fewer options, You
got a third fewer of variables you've got to consider
to make a great decision, and making great decisions that's
what makes for everything being great.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
For myself, I think myself, I will always answer to
fork in the road because I'm it makes me stand
on my decision because I don't want the should have,
could have, would have I wish I could have mentality
I'm gonna go left. I'm gonna go left, plus I'm
gonna now, I'm gonna go back to video game mentality.
(27:03):
That was always my road when I played the game,
the video game Outrun, always were left left.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Hey, man, you know it makes it easy make that
decision right.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Childhood.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
That's like when when I'm helping people think about performance
management systems for their team, I often encourage people to
use a four point scale and then a five point scale.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Okay, uh.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And the reason is because so many people want to
choose three. They want to they want to choose the
middle option, which is just noncommittal. And so when you
go to four, you're like no, no, Like you have to
you have to commit. You have to decide. You're either
going to say three, this person's above average or two
this person's below average. But you don't get to choose average.
You gotta you got to take a stand on one
(27:49):
side or the other.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
At least, right, that kind.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Of the same idea of like got to own that
decision a little. But you can't take this like mealy
mouthed out of average. No they're not nobody's average. No, well,
there is an average, but no one's average.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
But you know, sometimes we play down to that, you know,
for whatever is so that way we won't be held
accountable or that decision.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, that's right, you know, but but you gotta asked
me the second question, the Nashville question.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
That's what I was going to get at. So, so
because you are in Nashville and I asked this question
on a No Food podcast with my wife. Is a
fun question. If you could choose to sing a duet
with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would
have been.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
So I'm not certain. So I do love to sing.
I do sing, not a great singer. But the group
that the duet I love listening to the most these
days is Drew and Ellie Hulcom. They have an album
called Memory Bank, which is just as fantastic. So that's
(29:01):
the duet I would probably choose to listen to.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And while I would love to sing with Ellie, I'm
pretty certain my wife would be unhappy for me.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
To do that. Yes, so let's not do that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
So, uh, you know, I'm a good Nashville boy. I
grew up north of town, the Shawnees in Hendersonville near me.
You used to be able to go and see Johnny
Cash every couple of days, like he was there all
the time. So I don't know, I kind of probably
probably have to go with good old, good old mister Cash.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
I'd love to love to sing and walk the line
with him or ring a fire.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, great, nice, nice, good choice, good choice, good choice.
I appreciate that, man, you know. But but but I
think for being a good sport for answer both of
the questions though my pleasure, no problem. And of course everyone,
thank y'all very much for listening to that Whenever Word podcast,
and all of Adam's information will be in the show
notes and we'll talk to you just a little bit later.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Thanks for listening. Hello Maurice Chisholm. On social media to
stay connected and check back weekly for new episodes until
next time. That will never work, or will it
I thank you very much for tuning in to that
Will Never Work podcast. Climbing the corporate ladder used to
be the dream, but what if your next level of
purpose requires you to step off. Today Adam, he's going
to join me. We're going to unpack the powerful shift
from executive life to leadership impact. We'll talk about a
raft of.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Us, educate, empower enable impact. Thank you for tuning in
to That Will Never Work, an award winning podcast where
we share inspiring information and personal experiences related to business
and the entrepreneurial journey from those who are leaders in
(00:42):
their respective field. Now here's your host, author and business
coach Maurice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I thank you very much for tuning in. We have Adam.
Now this is going to be fun because there's a
whole lot of information that we need to cover today.
So Adam, Yeah, what of true leadership isn't about how
high you rise, but how deeply you help others grow?
Is that true? Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I think it for sure is. I think one of
the biggest mistakes that we have made in the corporate
world is to attach the concept of leadership to titles
and to give the impression almost that progression up the
ladder naturally comes with leadership talent. Like, you know, I'm
(01:32):
a line manager, and so they give me this like
set of skills and this tool belt, and then when
I get promoted, they're going to give me a new
set of skills and a new tool belt. And you
know that all that's kind of given to you as
you progress. One, I think that's an issue. But two,
we have kind of often fallen for the mistake of
thinking that leadership is about level as opposed to realizing
(01:55):
that the most effective, the most high performing teams affect
everyone to lead, whether or not they have an actual
reporting relationship with anyone or not.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It's interesting that you say that, because a lot of
times when we're in that corporate space, our managers say, hey,
you know what, be like me, you know, take on
my characteristics, take on my traits, and I'll show you
the path. We're going to go down this golden brick
road together, right, you know. And sometimes we're led that
(02:29):
way to emanate somebody else. So should we stay ourselves
in that space or should we really take on that
mantra of someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's one of the hardest parts of growing as a
leader is figuring out your one your one true self
how to be true to that, because I do believe
that authenticity is a very real part of growing and
becoming a leader, and authenticity is a key aspect in
developing trust, which trust is what I've found all my
work in. But but with that we have to be
(03:04):
careful because sometimes we can give the idea that when
when Maurice, we want you to be your true, authentic self,
that we give the idea that that means that we
don't expect you to grow or change. And really we
need to balance these ideas of well, I'm just true
to who I am versus you have to change to
be like someone else. That we really need to embrace
(03:28):
the idea that as I grow and as we grow
our people, there should naturally be some change and some
development and maturity. Almost That is it's It shouldn't be
becoming someone else, It should be becoming the next version
of who you are and getting really comfortable with being
(03:51):
being true to who you are while also identifying the
parts of you that may need improvement and growth and development.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So you talk about being yourself, Yeah, there's another word
to use about mature. The word mature I'm gonna play
off of that for a moment. So for those of
you who wants to know anything about Adam, you can
go and read his bio anywhere listen to him. But
there's something in his bio that talks about he's the
(04:20):
Paul Patrol. He understands Paul Patrol now and I had
to look up Paul Patrol and understand you understand what
some of the lessons that we can learn from leadership
perspective of Paul Patrol. That's funny.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, so full context for listeners. I've got a lot
of kids. My oldest is sixteen, my youngest is three.
My three younger kids in our family would often refer
to as the littles. Paul Patrol is one of their
favorite TV shows, right, And it is interesting. I end
up watch a lot of Paul Patrol. If called on,
(05:02):
I can sing the theme song if we need to
have that reaction. But it's interesting because there are there
are interesting leadership aspects embedded within this kid's show, right,
and one of them is one thing I love about
the show. This is so funny to talk about that
they don't use every person, they don't use every pup
(05:24):
in every episode.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Depending on which I mean that show is hugely successful
twenty twenty five our seasons. So there's like different numbers
of pups in there. But one of the really cool
things is not everybody gets a seat on the bus
every time. Not everyone's a starter every single time. And
so you know, part of the role is the guy
who's the leader named writer. He at one point he
(05:47):
says like, Hey, here are the pups that I need,
And sometimes it's all of them, and sometimes it's no,
Like we have this water thing, so we need Zuma
the pup with the water skills or whatever. And so
I really like that idea, that landing that everyone is valuable,
but that doesn't mean that everyone is needed in every
single scenario, and they really land that almost very subtly.
(06:10):
But yeah, I think there's tons of tons of cool
little learning things we can see in there.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And just using your analogy, you know, see, as a leader,
we're supposed to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each
and every one of our people that we're leading, right
also understanding what is our own personal strengths and weaknesses
where we have those people that on our team that
help can help supplement that. But so now in that though,
(06:38):
how do we diffuse our ego because sometimes our ego
gets in the way of that, So how do we
let that go just a little bit so we understand
that we are building this team where we're feeling in
helping fill in some of those holes.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, so we have to help do that for ourselves
and for our teams.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
An example of that is lots of cultures establish value
of team members based on a very competitive structure, and
they believe and they have the idea that we need
to drive competition amongst our team members in order to
get the best out of them. I'm a big believer
(07:21):
in competition, and I'm certainly a free market economics guy
all that, but I do believe that culturally within teams
one of the ways that we model what we believe
in is do we reward people for making the team
better or do we reward people for showing out themselves?
(07:43):
And the healthiest organizations incentivize and reward team supportive behavior
as opposed to self supportive behavior. One of my first leaders,
he gave this great example. He went to West Point,
and some folks between their senior high school and their
(08:05):
first year at west Point, they do what's called a
it's called a finishing school. It's kind of like an
old school idea, but a finishing school. It's really it's
like they get a thirteenth year, like instead of twelfth grade,
they have a thirteenth or a second senior year, and
the goal is to brush up on some skills for them.
Often involve some physical training kind of prepares them for
West Point a little bit. So he ended up doing
(08:28):
that one of those finishing schools. But he gets to
So he gets to West Point and he has more
than average knowledge versus the other freshman because essentially he
had a year of pre education that was how to march,
how to keep your foot locker like. He'd been in
a military school for a year, and his in one
(08:51):
of his first you know, locker reviews where they go
through and they check everyone's bunk and make sure they're
all squared away. His stuff was perfec it and he
got it. But he got in trouble with the guy
who was I don't think it's their drill sergeant, but
but whatever it is. At West Point, he got in trouble.
He got written up effectively and dressed down and when
(09:12):
he when he probed like Hey, I thought I had
all my stuff ship shape. Why is this a problem?
The feedback he got was, yeah, but the guys on
both sides of you, they didn't have the same knowledge
that you did, and they were a mess, and it
was evident that you didn't help them. And and so
(09:32):
that was he was one of my first leaders. And
I just remember kind of trying to embrace that idea
of you can you can rise and fall on your
own merits, but you can also rise and fall based
on how you at least attempt to help others, which
which I know your your religious background, you know Galatians
six talks a lot about that and bearing one another's burdens.
(09:56):
Were called to support one another. That doesn't relieve our
own individual accountability, but it does add some accountability for
my brother on both sides of me, and a religious
context and a family context, and in a work context.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And I think that's interesting because in this culture right now,
you get this me first mentality, and it's not until
you work in a team. So, for an example, with
my corporate background being most of it being in customer service,
we were a team. We had to work together and
(10:34):
ensuring that the next person they're handling calls effectively as
the other person, all those type of things. So sometimes
even with that, our bonuses were attached to each other. Yeah,
you know, and sometimes we don't understand that we like,
as you stated, we're more worried about the me first,
you know, let me get this award or whatever. It
(10:56):
is not understanding that we all can win together even though.
But but I understand you bring everybody else to the
same level of excellency as yourself. And I think that's
I think that's the hard thing that we see, especially
in social media, that hey, everything is like me, me, me,
me me. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
And one of the one of the ways I talk
to teams about that in terms of culture development when
I work with them is there are whole lots of
teams that when they put together a whole bunch of
really strong A players, they actually end up with something
like less than some of its parts, that that that
team is actually generating less than it should because even
(11:39):
though they have all really strong players, they're all really
strong individual players. And I've had the most success and
the teams that I've built of having a few really
strong A players but having mostly like what i'll call
b plus players on the field, but every single person
(11:59):
want to help each other succeed and be better. And
they ran freaking circles around the only high po talent
teams because they had a mindset that was, Hey, we're
never going to let the ball drop, We're always going
to look out for each other. We're going to get
through this together. And they filled the cracks between them.
(12:22):
They made sure no space was lost, and they embraced
the idea that if someone says, oh, hey, I thought
Bob was taking that, that that that's not Bob's fault,
necessarily doesn't reflect poorly on Bob. It reflects poorly on
the whole team as opposed to individual performance mentality, which
(12:42):
is well, that was that was Bob's accountability. So I
didn't pay attention to it, Okay, but like you had exposure,
you had information. You could see that Bob was drowning
or you could tell he wasn't working on it, Like
did you do anything to help?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I would take a team of highly motivated, highly team
oriented individuals that were maybe less strong, uh than having
a team of all hypos that were lone wolfing it
the whole time.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, And I think that's again just based off of
the team that I was in a lot of times
we were because we felt as though we had it,
we can make it happen. That sometimes we dropped the ball,
you know, because of that, because we had that all right,
I'm going to go up. Because our numbers we had
to get ninety accuracy, and so when we got to
(13:36):
that ninety two percent, we're like, all right, I got it,
but not necessarily worried about the next person in that space.
But because everyone was doing that, and then when you
get one person that comes in that, now they're there, hey,
I'm doing it. Now I'm going to slack off a
little bit because I've been averaging this. So I've been
(13:58):
doing that. Was sometimes that doesn't work with the team
that that hurts us in the long run, you know,
because now you're dropping the ball and are we constantly
going to look at the mark? You know. It's almost
like a when you take a look at any of
the sports teams like well A Lebron or Tom Brady
or whatever else. Some people expect to make it to
(14:20):
the playoffs every single year, no matter what the situation is.
But it's about the team. It's not about that one person,
you know. And I think that's some of the things
that we don't always consider is the team is as
important as everybody else, I mean, as you as the individual.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Right, yeah, I mean ultimately there there are no teams
that can rely on just one person to win.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
You can even go back and look at the bulls.
Jordan did do it on his own. He did, you know,
he had he had other guys on the court, and
even if they were just getting him the ball, he
couldn't have done what he did, or the team couldn't
have done what they did if no one was there
to help him have the ball to put in the basket, right, right,
And and so I think as you kind of go
(15:05):
back to, you know, your question, which is like how
do we help people see pass the ego that can
distract there A lot of my topics are about trust
and the composition of trust within a team. And what
I find is one of the three things that leads
(15:27):
to high trust teams is what I call alignment. An
alignment is is a combination of a couple things, but
think of it as one of them is the alignment
between words and actions. And so lots of leaders will
say one thing and they mean it, they really do
mean it. But then when the rubber hits the road,
(15:50):
things get bad, things get hard. There's stress, you know,
sea level people are firing off emails in the middle
of the night. All those good intentions, you know, sometimes
go out the window. And you can tell a lot
about the level of trust and the team as to
how they respond to stress and fear. And there's a
(16:11):
connection frequently between stress and fear and ego because I'm
afraid that I am going to use like an Asian term,
I'm going to lose face in front of my leadership
team or whatever, And so that has a direct connection
to ego. And how do I as a leader absorb
(16:34):
the body blows that are going to come towards me
and my team when something goes wrong? Or am I
going to immediately filter all that stress, all that adrenaline
directly into the team, Or am I going to protect them,
I'm going to stand between them and the leadership. Am
I going to try to save my ego and put
(16:56):
one of them up and crucify them in a way.
And until a leader can embrace the idea that it
is their job to take credit for failure. It's their
job to take credit for failure and to give credit
for success. They'll never get everything they can from their
(17:18):
team until they embrace that dual concept.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And I think that's important because a lot of times
the team will feed off of that. It's you know,
because now because you're you're a leader, now looks like
as if they are a part of you, not they're
not above, and they'll respect you in that leadership role
because now you have taken the bullets, right, you have
(17:43):
taken a beating or whatever. But you've also, like you said,
uplifted someone else, you know, because now they're like, all right,
well if he did that for me, I'm sorry he
did that for him, He could do that for me,
you know. So now everyone now they want to work
harder to reach the goal. You know. But but I
(18:04):
think sometimes, though I'm gonna be honest with you, that
word trust is major. Oh yeah, yeah, because because we
can't sometimes because of our community wherever we might have
grown up, in our childhood background or whatever it is.
You know, some of us who didn't watch Paul Patrol
(18:25):
don't understand what the word trust really means, you know,
because we didn't see it you know, and so now
we're at dust and we're trying to build on something
that is not really part of our makeup.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, no, I agree with you completely. I mentioned to
have quite a few kids. My youngest three children are adopted,
and that's had a huge impact on me as a father,
of course, but it's impacted some other things in my life,
and one of them has been a shifting belief in
(18:59):
the idea and concept of trauma. And as a part
of adoption we've had we've learned a lot about trauma situations.
But but what that opened my eyes up to professionally
as I'm as I was growing in that way and
in a leadership team in the same way, was the
frequency with which people have some sort of workplace trauma
(19:24):
that impacts them. And that can be that can be
true like real trauma. And I'm gonna say real trauma
as in real physical mental harm that was done to
them potentially outside the workplace. But but I think we
may ignore sometimes the amount of trauma, even at a
(19:47):
lower level, that people face in the workplace. And so
part of our role as leaders is, for example, look
look at how does your team react. So so I'll
give an example, you've got you've got a team member
that you're frustrated because they copy you on every single email.
(20:07):
They don't send an email without ce seeing you, and
and and your first response is, Adam, will you just
stop it? Like I don't need another email? Well, what
you're going to find often when you go like scratch that,
scratch that issue a little bit, is they had some
(20:27):
leader in their past who did them harm based on
not having full visibility or the leader got mad for
some reason, and because that they developed this defense mechanism
that is, I'm just gonna anytime I have anything that
could approach bad news, I'm going to copy. That's exactly right.
(20:52):
And often as leaders, we fall into the trap of
addressing the symptom. The symptom is they see see me
on every email, or the symptom is I'll what I
sometimes talk to my teams about the power eye formation. Right,
you bring the senior director with the director, the senior
manager and the manager and they're all in the same
(21:13):
freaking meeting as if you need four layers of leadership
to do this. Well, that happens because people don't have
faith and trust that if something goes off the rails
that they're gonna that everything's gonna work out okay, and
so they go into defense mode, and their cya is
sending ten times more emails than they need to or
(21:35):
having meetings with three times more people. Or you can
kind of keep building that out and we can keep
telling people, hey, you don't need to do that, but
until we actually spend some time to identify the root
of whatever caused their pain or trauma or issue it's
leading to that defense, we're never going to solve the problem.
(21:57):
And so part of being a great leader is seeing
those behaviors and taking the time to be empathetic and
care about your people enough to find out why they're
doing that, and then as a part of that, embracing
(22:18):
the idea that you as a leader, that I, as
a leader, need to set aside my ego and listen
for the feedback that might be that I'm the one
who calls that trauma. I may be the leader who
got mad. I may be the leader who kind of asked, well,
why did that meeting happen? And I wasn't there. We
always want to blame it on the gap before, but
(22:41):
part of growing in our trust with our teams is
being empathetic enough to recognize that and authentic enough to
recognize that I may be the problem. And how am
I going to develop a strong enough relationship with my
team that they'll be able to tell me that?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Adam. First of all, I'm gonna say this, I think
that's a mic drop. So because because because I'm gonna
say this, and I thank you very much for coming
on a show. Where can someone talk to you and
find you? Where if I have a problem with taking responsibility,
(23:20):
accountability for how I have affected not just an individual,
but possibly the team as a whole, where can I
Where can I find you and talk to you about
something like that? Because I struggle with that in my organization,
my nine to five, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, the easiest thing is my LinkedIn. Look me up
Adam Malone. My my actual r L for on LinkedIn
is Adam Malone speaks. You see a pudgy white guy
with a microphone and a beard and a black and
white photo, it's probably me. Hit me up on there.
I accept every connection request, every friend request. I'd be
(23:58):
happy to talk to people and the DMS or over
email or whatever, because I believe that the world needs
more great leaders I think you might have heard me
say that that phrase a couple of times. You throw
my LinkedIn. That's a capitalized, proper term great leaders. It's
a thing I believe that we need more great leaders
and that for the solution to most of our problems
(24:22):
in our families, our communities, our churches, our government, our
society as a whole, is that we don't have enough
people that are willing to do the hard work to
be great leaders. So my passion, my calling is to
use the mechanism of trust to help develop more great
(24:42):
leaders in the world. And so whatever I can do
to help people, I'm always willing to do.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
So I just want you all to know that he's
stilling the truth. Like he That's all I hear about
is leadership, you know, because, like I said, listen to
some other episodes. I heard some little snippets here and there.
And I appreciate you, Adam, you know, because there's a
lot of things that if people don't know who you are.
I think you're a great role model and you've shown
what leadership can really show. I appreciate that, Adam. So
(25:12):
but Adam, before you go, man, I gotta ask you
a question, all right, ask me, man, would you rather question? Now?
Because you live in Nashville, I probably I might have
another question for you, but we'll see you do two.
All right, So, Adam, would you rather choose three doors
or a fork in the road?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Fork in the road?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And why fork?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Well, there's a mistake in our culture that we believe
that more choice always leads to more happiness. So h
that is statistically a lie. Researchers have shown that actually,
above about four or five choices, increased choice actually leads
(25:57):
to less gratefulness and less pleasure with your decision. And
so I, in my life seek to do things that
reduce the number of choices I have so that in
each of those choices I have more faith and more
less should I have taken the other options sort of
(26:19):
sort of debate. And so the three doors versus a
fork in the road, if I can, I'm always going
to try to go to a fork in the road
just so I can do a better job considering the
difference between them. You have a third fewer options, You
got a third fewer of variables you've got to consider
to make a great decision, and making great decisions that's
what makes for everything being great.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
For myself, I think myself, I will always answer to
fork in the road because I'm it makes me stand
on my decision because I don't want the should have,
could have, would have I wish I could have mentality
I'm gonna go left. I'm gonna go left, plus I'm
gonna now, I'm gonna go back to video game mentality.
(27:03):
That was always my road when I played the game,
the video game Outrun, always were left left.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Hey, man, you know it makes it easy make that
decision right.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Childhood.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
That's like when when I'm helping people think about performance
management systems for their team, I often encourage people to
use a four point scale and then a five point scale.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Okay, uh.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And the reason is because so many people want to
choose three. They want to they want to choose the
middle option, which is just noncommittal. And so when you
go to four, you're like no, no, Like you have to
you have to commit. You have to decide. You're either
going to say three, this person's above average or two
this person's below average. But you don't get to choose average.
You gotta you got to take a stand on one
(27:49):
side or the other.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
At least, right, that kind.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Of the same idea of like got to own that
decision a little. But you can't take this like mealy
mouthed out of average. No they're not nobody's average. No, well,
there is an average, but no one's average.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
But you know, sometimes we play down to that, you know,
for whatever is so that way we won't be held
accountable or that decision.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, that's right, you know, but but you gotta asked
me the second question, the Nashville question.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
That's what I was going to get at. So, so
because you are in Nashville and I asked this question
on a No Food podcast with my wife. Is a
fun question. If you could choose to sing a duet
with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would
have been.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
So I'm not certain. So I do love to sing.
I do sing, not a great singer. But the group
that the duet I love listening to the most these
days is Drew and Ellie Hulcom. They have an album
called Memory Bank, which is just as fantastic. So that's
(29:01):
the duet I would probably choose to listen to.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And while I would love to sing with Ellie, I'm
pretty certain my wife would be unhappy for me.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
To do that. Yes, so let's not do that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
So, uh, you know, I'm a good Nashville boy. I
grew up north of town, the Shawnees in Hendersonville near me.
You used to be able to go and see Johnny
Cash every couple of days, like he was there all
the time. So I don't know, I kind of probably
probably have to go with good old, good old mister Cash.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
I'd love to love to sing and walk the line
with him or ring a fire.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, great, nice, nice, good choice, good choice, good choice.
I appreciate that, man, you know. But but but I
think for being a good sport for answer both of
the questions though my pleasure, no problem. And of course everyone,
thank y'all very much for listening to that Whenever Word podcast,
and all of Adam's information will be in the show
notes and we'll talk to you just a little bit later.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Thanks for listening. Hello Maurice Chisholm. On social media to
stay connected and check back weekly for new episodes until
next time. That will never work, or will it
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