If you look at a high performing organization versus a struggling one, there is likely to be one key differential between the two.

Leadership

Leadership is one of those buzzwords that gets thrown about quite a bit, and yet few truly understand what it means to be a leader. To set the vision and then providing the supporting structure to ensure your team is able to follow through with what you set.

Which is why I was excited to welcome Andy Neillie to the podcast! When the stakes are high – like they are now – it is vital that your managers function as high-performing leaders. Business owner, best-selling leadership author, and award-winning speaker, Andy Neillie knows what it takes to become a high-performing leader. And he can help your managers learn how to lead as well!

This is one of the deepest conversations I think I’ve ever had on this subject and resulted in some immediate changes to my own leadership style. Which have proven to be highly effective in the company!

Listen today to uncover these truths for yourself.

Connect with Andy https://neillieleadershipgroup.com/

Free Resources available at https://leadershipmaterials.com/

Register for my Virtual Happy Hour: https://www.adamliette.com/virtual-happy-hour

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

Transcript

Adam Liette
What's up smoothie operators, welcome to this interview episode. So glad to have you. We're going to dive into a subject today that's near and dear to my heart. And it's what we have to do every single day, whether we realize it or not, because that Zoom call opens up, we open up that project management tool, we open up slack, and we got a whole bunch of people looking to us, looking to us to make decisions looking for us, to help them through their daily tasks to give them direction. But more than anything, they're not looking for us to manage them, they're not looking for us just to make sure they have this and that resource. They're looking for actual leadership. And leadership is one of those buzzwords gets thrown around a lot. I think it's often tucked around kind of in the margins. But it's really cool to get the chance to really dive into it to really discover different characteristics, different traits, different ways we can keep leveling up our leadership, because it's truly one of those disciplines, that you are never done learning, you're never done growing. It's a constant evolution. And I think that's why I love the topic so much. Because no matter who I'm listening to who I'm speaking with, what book I'm reading, I'm going to pick up something new that I can start applying and folding into my overall leadership model and how I'm able to best serve not only my team members that are looking to me to help them but also every person I come in contact with, from clients, to people in my church, to my family, to friends to people in the community. Our world is starving for great leadership, not to mention what we have in Washington. All that aside, I have an outstanding leader here with me, Andy, Andy Neely from nearly leadership group. My gosh, this guy has been all around. He's been a business owner, a best selling author, award winning speaker and he knows what it takes to be a high performing leader and he can help turn your managers into leaders as well. So Andy, thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?

Andy Neillie
I'm doing great. In fact, I'm coming to you from my home office and and I've got one of my dogs in the background. So that's a great way for me to be ending the day on this afternoon podcast.

Adam Liette
See, you got it figured out the put the couch behind you. So the dog has like a starring role on video. I have this little bed underneath me on the desk. So the dog will plop himself there. And then occasionally I'll get like this head pop up between my legs. And I'm like, come on dawg. What are you doing? So

Andy Neillie
well, and you can see is, is you know, because we've spent a little bit of time together a couple of the books I've written one of them. The one that really has had a little bit of attraction is called the Golden principles, Life and Leadership Lessons from a rescue dog. So that's Mickey he's rescued number 10 over my left shoulder right now distemper survivor, he's 14 We got him when he was seven. And he has a very good life with sees the line right in front of a couple of the pillows of other dogs that my wife had made up. So you know, your, your introduction around the whole area of leadership, Adam, I suspect you and I could do an entire podcast on the leadership lessons our dogs teach us whether they're underfoot or on the couch behind us. And that's, that's a it's been a source of joy for my wife and me over the years.

Adam Liette
Same here we we have felt fallen in love with rescue dogs several times now. We've been married 16 years we're on our second rescue dog got her when she was six. And it was very similar thing like she had been abandoned. And you could tell that this dog just wanted to love no matter who you are. And like the moment I even like approached her with the dogs can pick up what you're putting out. And so she just rolled on her back, presented belly. And now my wife runs his daycare. So we have kids in our house all day and this dog is on like perpetual mommy mode all day long watching over these kids. To the point of if the kids are in the house, she won't come out here with me because she wants to be in there. So very cool and healthy thing I think it is and I think honestly she's getting she's about as old as your dog and in some ways I think it's why she's still as rambunctious as she is as much as a pain in the butt as she can be. Yeah, yeah. Good deal. Well, book recommendation number one And already I love when we're like three minutes into a podcast and I have a new book to read. That's a good sign of good things to come. Good. So I'd love to hear how you came into this world. And what what drew you to being a leadership, coach, and professional?

Andy Neillie
Well, it's interesting, you know, we all have our own journeys, you've got a very interesting journey. Mine really has two tracks to it. I became a person of faith very early in my life. And I'm, as I'm reading through New Testament Gospels, I'm seeing a model of servant leadership that is appealing and alluring, and humble and self sacrificing. And then, really, very early, I can't even say early in my career, these were like, Creek career jobs, some of the first jobs I had as a 14 1516, you know, 20 year old working my way through college and my high school days, I just had a couple of really bad bosses. Or Jerry, I've been talking about Jerry for years now. I was working a construction crew and a Jerry was the crew head. And I am filling out paperwork. One day after we finished the job, as we're getting ready to go to the next job site, I'm sitting next to Jerry in our F 250. Construction truck. Jerry had a problem with his temper and, and as we're driving in that job site, he grabbed the stapler out of my hand, opened it up and proceeded to whack my leg and drive for staples deep into my thigh. And I'm like this 17 year old kid, I, I don't even know how to respond. But Adam, I will tell you, that was decades ago at this point. And, and I just knew that was wrong, I'm reading about and trying to follow and espouse a life of humility and self sacrifice and servanthood. And then I'm working for bosses that are about themselves that can't control their own emotions, something was awakened in me a long time ago. And you know, you help a lot firms that are interested in marketing themselves. When I first started finding my voice around this, my voice was no bad bosses. And of course, the marketing people got ahold of that and say, That's a negative, you got to flip that a little bit. And, and, and really rightly so. And the tagline is, you've articulated a few minutes ago, the tagline on our website is we turn managers into leaders, because as you articulated, managers and leaders are not different. It's not oppositional, but leadership needs to be layered on top of any manager if they aspire to create teams that are high performing teams. So I've been thinking about it for more than 20 years now and looking at folks like you and others that were in positions of leadership and trying to crack the nut. What what makes a leader, a good leader? And, and I think it's, it's simple. It's not easy, but But it's simple. And so what I do these days as I train, I do some keynote speaking, I lead workshops, I do self assessments, I do coaching and CEO advising. And really, it's all around the language of leadership, I call it the four leadership necessities. It's the things that that managers need to have in the front of their mind if they're going to be turning themselves into high performing leaders. So that's kind of a long answer to your short question. But but it's, it's not just my job. It really is my passion.

Adam Liette
So beautiful, and I won't tell my construction leadership story, but I will say that you and I share a deep love of the New Testament, especially Paul, or the writings of St. Paul. I'm a Catholic, so and I teach religion. And I teach middle school religion class, which is always interesting. But there's one particular line from Paul, it's Romans five, three through five, I remember this verse, it's my favorite verse in the entire Bible. And it's and not only that, but we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. And I think that one line for me it's it's it's been kind of my mantra for a long time of when the going gets tough. I celebrate it because I know that's what what's going to result in and I think that's it's just like the tip of the iceberg on the leadership model.

Andy Neillie
What's so interesting you mentioned that specific paragraph because I I am part of a CrossFit gym that has a we call it spiritual fitness and doughnuts we meet weekly to talk about spiritual fitness, not just physical fitness every Saturday morning and I was leading a discussion three weeks ago now about that very passage suffering and patience and character and hope. And, and there's some athletic analogies, you can undoubtedly share some military analogies with us, some of your operators that you know, pushed so long long and so hard to create the momentum that they're now getting the benefit from. The other thing for you and me as people of faith that is that the kicker in the encouragement is if we go on to read the end of that paragraph, it goes on to say, And hope does not disappoint the followers of Christ, because God will fulfill that hope. And so. So that's a great paragraph. I couldn't be more pleased. Adam, you and I haven't had enough time together yet. But we already are kind of brothers in arms, I think.

Adam Liette
For sure. Oh, my gosh. As we explore that, I often wonder, like when we when we talk about going through the hard times, do you think it's necessary? Like is is part of leadership built by your experiences? Or is it is it necessary to have those experiences to be a good leader? Or like, how does like that background feed into our leadership?

Andy Neillie
Yeah. I mean, that's probably a million dollar question. I think the short answer is probably yes. Most of the times, you know, as you and I've shared, my wife and I own a series of franchise businesses here in Central Texas. And one of them has been one of the top performing units in the entire nationwide network almost since it's opened its doors. Good Manager. Yeah, but right demographic, right location, right shopping center, right freeways, and that manager and I have talked for years now about, we just need to make sure we understand the difference between hitting a triple and being born on third. And there is a difference, but you still end up on third base. Adam, I think there are some people that are wired as natural born leaders, I think they they're passionate people. They're there, they've got high EQ, some of the things you and I know make a good leader, a good leader, they come to naturally, I think for most of us, and I would put myself in the second camp. You know what the reason I've gotten good, if I'm good at all, is because I was bad. And I made mistakes, you know, the first person that I ever had to let go, I mean, I didn't sleep the weekend before I let her go, she probably slept like a baby. I did it horribly. Right. And I don't did not hold a hard conversation that still retained dignity, but wasn't so wimpy that nobody knew what they were being called out on. These are the lessons that that I had to learn along the way that I think most of us have to learn. Are those that, you know, the extraordinary leaders out there that that are naturally wired. I think there probably are, I think most of us, you know, the challenge, I think there really is at the end of your question is if if that Romans passage you quoted to us really is that the hard things produce the rich things, that's kind of what it's alluding to, the, the thing we all need to be aware of, is what you said five minutes ago, and that is we need to learn into those, lean into those hard things, and then try to learn from them. What what leaders can't do is keep making the same mistake over and over and over again, you're allowed to make it once you're allowed to make it twice, you probably allowed to make it three times. But if you're going to become a leader, at some point, you say up and down that path before we're not going there again. And that's, you know, you gotta wake yourself up to that.

Adam Liette
100%. And I think it's a matter of not having this mentality that you're not going to make mistakes, that you're not going to screw something up. But I think it's your it's your decision in that moment. Like, how am I going to either use this learning point to propel me forward? Or am I going to lament on this? That being said, I've known far too many people who, when the failure moment happens, they want to, yeah, okay, I'll learn from that. And then they sweep it under the rug, like, what do you recommend doing in that moment of, let's just call it learning, the moment of learning, you recommend a true leader come out with it and address it with their subordinates with those that are following them? Or like, how do we address that moment with our with our team?

Andy Neillie
Now, the good question, you know, and you as a coach know, this, and that in the balance and challenge of that is, you know, there is that phrase vent up. And and I don't think that I talked about this continuum with some of my clients. There's the the transparency to vulnerability continuum. I do some keynote speeches. And part of what makes me a good speaker. If I'm a good speakers, I'm a good storyteller. And I'm up on a stage in front of an audience telling a story that's kind of an awestruck story, but I was dumb about that. And here's the lesson I learned and what Let's laugh together. And then let's all learn together. I'm not being vulnerable, you know, three hours later, I'm going to leave that Conference Center, and I'm going to head to the airport and fly home. And nobody in that audience has had any of my vulnerability exposed to them, I've been transparent. And that's a good thing. There's a trust factor that needs to be built for us to become more and more vulnerable. So I've got a bunch of 17 1819 and 20 year olds working for me. And if I share with them, Hey, guys, I am not sure how we're going to develop the economic signs that the storms are coming. Cash is getting tighter, people are spending less money, I'm concerned about the next three years, if I share that with with a 19 year old, they're just going to go look for another job. They're they they're not firing on enough in the journey with me, but but if I share my concerns with my operator with my second in command, she and I develop a plan together to make sure that we're tightening things down, and that we're continuing to market and be aggressive in the smart ways. And it's because she and I've worked together for 11 years, she knows my weaknesses, and she works very hard to protect those weaknesses. I know her weaknesses, and try to protect those weaknesses. And, and so, in fact, Adam, you can tell you kind of got me up on one of my soapbox is there is far too much self disclosure on LinkedIn these days, I don't want to see a crying CEO, I I just think the the that there's a balance there between transparency as I said and vulnerability, right? And, and are they allowed to see your mistakes? You bet they are? Are they allowed to see all your dirty underwear? Well, not until you trust them. And there's a lot of investment in the relationship and that that takes time. That takes shared conflict, what you talked about a minute ago, probably the sufferings that takes that takes the perspective of we've been here before together and we're going to make it

Adam Liette
I found more and more I become very strategic about opening my vulnerabilities where if I open one, to the broader team, it's in pursuit of a greater good. So for example, it was two weeks ago speaking at in front of a group of people, and most of these people know me for a while, but they've only known me as the leader. And I was telling them some different warrior skills, and different ways to elevate their inner warrior was the title of the speech. And I got really vulnerable about dealing with PTSD. And it shocked the heck out of many of them. But it was a very deliberate vulnerable point where I opened myself up just like here it is. But it was in order to get them to do some of those more positive behaviors that pulled me to where I am now by just throwing it on the table.

Andy Neillie
Yeah, well, I you know, that's that balance. Right. And again, I would say coming back to the leadership equation. I'm not sure we ever know that we get it right. But we think about it, and we try to be careful and purposeful about it.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. So I had this wonderful, most beautiful coffee mug out here because my kids know that dad is obsessed with the office. So I have the world's best boss coffee cup. My favorite show and I love the Michael Scott character. You know, somehow I managed best high book title of a book that never got written. What is that difference in what turns a manager then into a leader?

Andy Neillie
So I'm not sure anybody has really nailed it. But But Adam, I have been thinking about it for a long time. And I've been looking at folks like you I've worked in Fortune five hundreds. I've worked in pie maker solopreneurs. I've worked alongside SMBs. That's what Wall Street calls is small and medium businesses, 2 million to 200 million privately held companies. And as I as I watched the managers that were also good leaders, it just became apparent to me that that what they do is simple, as I said, 10 minutes, but not necessarily easy, but simple. And I've captured it into this relatively simple model or a simple taxonomy, if you would, I call it the four leadership necessities. The first one is conviction. This whole strategy getting your eyes up thinking bigger, thinking broader, thinking farther. The point of conviction the frontline worker is responsible for their spreadsheet they're responsible for their piece of machinery, they're responsible for their outcomes, but but a manager who is leading a team now needs to be thinking across the entire plant floor needs to be thinking, thinking bigger, they need to be thinking broader. other than just their organization, they need to be thinking about competition, they need to be thinking about, about coming changes in internet protocols that are going to impact their ability to deliver online training. Some of the manufacturers I work with need to be thinking about China and steel prices. And so they've got to be thinking broader. And then they need to be thinking further into the future, what six months, what's 18 months, what's three years look like? So so that whole area of conviction, the first leadership necessity, the second leadership necessity, is, is the one of competence, the ability to get your team to execute. And really, as a manager becomes a leader, part of what they do well as they, they can still make decisions in the midst of risks so that their teams can perform. I think that's one of the key factors, you and I both remember the quote from Colin Powell 20 years ago, at the end of desert storm that the battlefield decision maker needs to make life and death decisions with no more than 65% of the information they wish they had. Leading a team during times of uncertainty needs means you need to make decisions that will allow your team to execute during times of risk. And so it is no longer are you a good widget maker, are you a good pie Baker anymore? It's can you evaluate? How do we manage our, our team? How do we manage our operation? How do we manage and make the hard decisions. The third one, the so that's competence. The third one is the one that you and I would we could resonate on for hours together. And that's the character issue, you'll never be a better leader than you are a person. And again, I suspect you and I both have horror stories. I was leading a working session with a fortune 500 technology company. When one of their leaders, one of his character flaws came out that he thought was hidden, and it came out in front of all of his team members and Adam, within about seven minutes, I saw a man lose his ability to lead. I saw disgust, disappointment I saw whispering taking place people what he thought he was getting away with came out to light. He lost the ability. My early boss, Jerry, this is decades later. And I still remember him. He had a problem with anger management. Right and, and that that that impacted this young construction worker that was trying to find his way and in you know, a summer a summer job. I think part of that character really has to do with self awareness. The older I get, the more I realize I procrastinate. Now the flip side of that is I perform really well under pressure. You know, you put something on the end of the line and I can deliver, but I put things off until the end. If I'm going to lead my team well, I've got to bring to my team. Hey guys, I procrastinate. Let's make sure that doesn't hurt the team. So that's the character one. And then the fourth one Adam. The fourth one I struggled with for a long time. Here's what I saw guys like you doing? You were you were in their lives. You weren't just in their office. You had a professional relationship. But but you also you also made the decision that yeah, the the handbook says 40 hours of PTO but but his mom doesn't, doesn't have but weeks left, we're gonna we're gonna figure out how to give him 120 hours of PTO and nobody needs to know that it's not it's it's just the right thing to do. And, and when I saw leaders like you doing that consistently, I call it communication. I call it alignment, I call it consistency. And then about two years ago, I realized it's covenant. That's what it is leadership covenant. I'm talking a lot I'll shut up for a minute here. But let me give you one more quick illustration. I live in Texas in Austin, Texas, and here in Texas, if you're gonna get married, obviously there's love and affection, that personal connection, you know, forever and ever and a man in better and worse and richer and poor, you know, till death do us part all of that love and affection. The other thing that happens if you get married in the state of Texas is an officiant signs a legal document that's recorded with with the secretary of state there is both a formal side and a personal side of a marriage covenant. And when I looked at good bosses, managers that I knew are not just managers, they really are a leader. Their people would go through walls for them for them not for the job not for the company but for them. Because they balance that personal relationship with the professional responsibility. So covenant, conviction competence, character and covenant and Adam I will maintain years into this journey. Now there's a whole lot of things we could do if you are working Hang on those four areas, you can begin to say I'm not just being a manager, I'm working at becoming a high performing leader. Now, we're supposed to have a dialogue, do that I just talked at you for five minutes, but you asked for it.

Adam Liette
And I do ask for it. I took, I took notes, and I'm gonna have to go back and listen to this again, as I only speak in which podcast listeners, that's your cue to mark this spot and come back and listen to this again, because that was a really profound five minutes. And I especially loved the last one covenant, because I teach about the various covenants from God. I mean, and what what what does that really mean it was God deliberately trying to have a greater relationship with his people with his creation. And there's, it's such a beautiful thing to consider.

Andy Neillie
Yeah, because it is interesting, because I've been using this term for about two years. And it's kind of an old fashioned term, you and I, because we both are, are Pete trying to be men of the word we know, there's a number of covenants that God makes with his people throughout the Bible. But it's not a word that's used in English very often, Guy Ritchie just produced a military movie earlier this year, called her. And indeed, it was a typical Guy Ritchie movies. So it's full of blood and guts. But there was also this very meaningful personal interaction, personal responsibility based on a formal alignment. And so I don't know how I feel about that movie, because I don't normally recommend people go see movies that are going to have a lot of blood and gore, and I'm on the one hand, on the other hand, it's a pretty moving movie, because they understand the concept of covenant. Fortunately,

Adam Liette
this is one of those gray areas where we can share this. And I can say, I do recommend blood and guts movies. So I'll take that one on, and I recommend the covenant because it's a great flick. And honestly, I'm not entirely untrue. I mean, there's a lot during that time period, there were a lot of guys that were getting their guys out of Afghanistan, and like doing very, very similar things.

Andy Neillie
Powerful movie, powerful movie. So I've talked about these four leadership necessities all over the country. My next book will at this point, the working title is the four leadership necessities, you know, conviction, competence, character, and covenant, I always like to go through those a little bit slowly as people are taking notes. Obviously, I saw your head nodding as we were talking about, what do we what, what questions or what do we need to unpack?

Adam Liette
I think there is a balancing act that we have to kind of an elephant in the room, where, like, we're working to drive performance as well. And so it's like trying to balance all these things. So how do we drive performance while doing this? And like, does it feel I sometimes feel like it's a tug of war tug of war within myself, but I feel I always feel like there's a better way?

Andy Neillie
Well, and I think that's probably the mark, that you're good leaders. I don't think we ever get it. Right. And, and so even when I'm talking about it with with, you know, CEOs, and I'm advising, I purposely say this is a dynamic tension. This you at the end of the day, you never know. And, Adam, again, I suspect you and I could both tell stories to the operators as well as sitting in, I have lost 10s of 1000s of dollars, because I kept people longer than I should have. Because I wanted to make sure I wasn't the guilty party being too harsh. Now, what does that mean? That means at the end of the day, my organization suffered, because I went too far. On the personal side. I also know there are some people that if you were to interview them today, they would say to you know, Andy talks a good talk, but man, he put the hammer down and he didn't need to put the hammer down. He didn't really understand what was going on. He was not fair. I think we fall off of both edges. But but the answer is in the fight in the dynamic tension of realizing I've got to wrestle with this. I don't I don't I'll never know what the exact right answer is. But I've got to wrestle with it.

Adam Liette
But comes down to I think, the phrase that no one ever wants to hear and I just hammered home with everyone that works with me, that you have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable and be comfortable in the discomfort, right?

Andy Neillie
Yep. Yeah, that's right. And part of that uncomfortableness is at the end of the day when you put your head down on the pillow. You know, you bring us back to that passage in Romans. It says at the end of all of this, there's hope. But I would say along the way, the patience and the suffering, you just don't know. Did I do it right? Was I too harsh? Was I too kind that I sacrifice the viability to my company? Did I sacrifice a team member If I would say, if you don't wrestle with those things, you're probably not leadership material.

Adam Liette
And to flip that around, if you are wrestling with those things and thinking that, man, what does this make me, it makes you one heck of a leader guy. That's the reality of it.

Andy Neillie
And I think the balance is found in the tension, because it's easy to fall off either way, you know, 25 years ago, that whole, you know, we promote the A's, we put the bees on plan, and we fire the C's, that very black and white approach was too far, one direction. You know, today, the fact that we you and I both read articles on LinkedIn, and we hear Simon Sinek, and others say, if you have a hard conversation with a Gen Z, or they're just going to quit on you. But well, that's too far the other way, right? There's got to be this balance of I am going to care for you personally, while I hold you accountable to perform because we got a mission. These these businesses, my wife and I own their swim schools, we're teaching little kids to swim. The bad news is Texas and water are we're typically one of the worst states in the country, with little kids and water, we got to take this job seriously. And if I'm not hard on my people, we are not around next year or the year after to continue to do swim lessons and save kids lives. And every organization needs to find its passion, and then push toward that passion, while it builds up its people.

Adam Liette
And by the way, we can have very hard conversations with Jen's ears. I had one today, for you. And I and I think the difference was I have invested a lot into that relationship. Because I see her talent level, I see what she's capable of. And I'm like you're staying with me. Because I know what you can do. And I think we get down to that big word, the trust word that we that we work to build with our team. And this is like, let's, if you're like, Oh, I'm a virtual team, this, you know, this stuff doesn't matter virtual in person. This is all universal. So how, how do we build more of that trust relationship and in investing that I call it emotional capital into our people.

Andy Neillie
That's a good phrase for emotional capital. Well, you know, the, the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business study, you know, 12 years ago now that trusted advisor study said, if you are going to move from being a vendor and a product provider to the person that your client picks up the phone first, when they have an issue, they said, it's going to take about 36 months to build that trusted advisor relationship. You and I know from our our studies in in biblical literature, there's several words that we end up translating into current English as the word time, the two that are really powerful are Chronos and Kairos, and Chronos chronology calendar, I have on the corner of my computer, my little calendar here of upcoming appointments for tomorrow, chronometer sets, just day in day out sunrise, sunset, and then you know, this other word Kairos, that was used relatively rarely, but whenever it was used, it was more of that, that moment in time when something happened important. And I would say if managers are going to be good leaders, part of what they need to recognize is I need to be spending enough Kronos with my people remotely or face to face. So that when that kairos moment comes up, we've we've got a relationship where we can address it together. It's, it's, you know, there's a lesson in parenting that that you and I could share with our, our coaches, and our protege is, you know what, I can't just say, I'm not gonna have any time for you this week. But then Saturday morning and nine o'clock, I want to have quality time with you. That doesn't happen. Quality is built on quantity. And, and I think leaders, you know, they just recognize they've, they've got to be with their people. Good news is one of the benefits of 2023 is we all recognize zoom and WebEx and teams when it is used. Well, it's not quite face to face, but we're all a lot more comfortable with it, and can do meaningful interactions with today than we could four years ago.

Adam Liette
Oh my gosh. Especially like 10 years ago. Holy. That was a different world. Yeah, yep. I remember being on the other side of the planet with little kids. And like, we didn't even try to Skype because we had 10 kilobyte per second upload speed. It was miserable. Now,

Andy Neillie
and now we you know, we FaceTime on our phones as we walk through the grocery store.

Adam Liette
Oh, gosh, people do that. I can't I just can't, like why, like FaceTime and you're not looking at your phone. It's the weirdest thing.

Andy Neillie
Like asking for everybody else in line at the checkout, the conversation you're having. That should not be broadcast everybody else but that's a different thing.

Adam Liette
You can't tell I have teenagers, right? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Andy Neillie
Here's what I do know this simple taxonomy around leadership of of conviction competence, character and covenant. I think it captures at all I really? I really do. I do think if if you are working with some managers, and they're asking themselves, how do I become a leader? Well work in these areas, and none of us ever feels like we fully arrived, but the level of self awareness around how am I doing in those areas, I think begins to allow people to answer the question for themselves. Am I, in addition to being a manager? Am I becoming a leader? And I think if we're working on those four areas, I think we are.

Adam Liette
I love it. This has been so much fun. And I know as we started the conversation that this is a never ending journey. I know you have some resources that are designed to do just that help us continue along this journey. So I'd love to hear more about those.

Andy Neillie
Well, nearly leadership.com my website and thanks for pronouncing My name correctly, you and I both gone through life having our last names mispronounced regularly. I suspect, Rendon? That's right. The, you know, one of the one of the truisms of leadership is leadership is often incubated in communication, because that's what we do with one another. Well, I've got a little eight page ebook called The three imperative leadership conversations, how to hold a hard conversation with dignity, how to hold a coaching conversation, something that I know you do really well. And then and then how to be purposeful about affirmation conversations. And if somebody goes to leadership materials.com, there's they can download that eBook for free the three imperative leadership conversations. And it really, it will give them some skills, there's a couple of work worksheets in there to prepare themselves for coaching conversation, to prepare themselves for a hard conversation. And it really will address beginning to build that that community communication side of leadership covenant. So yeah, it's been great visiting with you, I feel like you and I could probably get on a podcast once every couple of months together and just go deeper and deeper on this. So thank you for allowing me to talk with you about this. Yeah, we'll

Adam Liette
definitely have to stay in touch. And this has been an absolute pleasure. For any of you listening out there thinking, I'm not ready for this. This is it for me, the fact that you are questioning, I think this is one of the keys that I found the fact that you're questioning and thinking I can't do this or this isn't for me, this isn't that's actually just as we said, we can turn a negative into a positive if you think that you aren't the natural leader. That level of humility means you have something special inside of you as well. Yeah, so lean into it, and know the world needs you. Hey, operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting, this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within