Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo, and Lorenzo on this episode, I want to go over something pretty important and special and different and I can't even think of the right words because there there are no words. But this is, for at least the foreseeable future, the last episode of Hacking Your Leadership.
Bump bump, Yes, yes it is. I think it's. You know, we've had a lot of years in this game and doing this show, and we know we've talked about it multiple times. When do you decide and when do you figure it out? And when do you kind of evolve or change or move on or stop? And there's never a shortage of leadership topics to talk about. But I also know that, like, as we've grown and developed, and as we've found things to get into and things to work on, there's always a good time to take a pause.
And after this many years of consistent episodes, it felt right to uh get to this point of a you know, yearly anniversary of the show and then say, hey, let's uh let's take a break and let's uh let's figure out what happens from here.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's important to sometimes figure out what things, what the things in our lives, what value they add, and and sometimes it's hard to figure that out when you're in that rhythm right. Sometimes you have to change things up to figure out if
you've done the right thing or not. And that might be the case, like were, there might be you know, massive public backlash from all of our fans saying, you know, get your butts back in the studio and keep going because we depend on this, and you know, and it might look a little different. It might it might be a few months, it might be longer, it might not
might be ever. But there's you know, my favorite band of all time is You Two, and it's kind of kind of cheesy, but a long time ago, the lead singer of You Two, Bono, said that the band was going to break up. This is like back in nineteen eighty nine. He says, it's time to go to go away and dream it all back up again. And and you know, with the with the idea fully in his mind that it might not be ever like that. It might dreaming it all up again might not mean that
it comes back at all. And I think that's kind of where I am right now or where we are right now, which is just that we don't know what the next iteration will look like or if there will be one. But but we're trying to figure out what value this show adds to our own lives from the investment.
And I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about just the emotional capital and the fact that as as working parents of young children and limited time, trying to figure out where that where it fits in and the value that it brings in the trade offs in time that that it comes with, and you.
Know, it's got to be worth it.
It's got to be worth it, and it has to be something that we that we want to continue doing because of the value that it brings. And we're trying to figure out what that looks like and if it does still does still fit within our lives in some way, and that'll take some time to figure out.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think over the over the years, one of the questions that I get constantly from people it's around podcasting is like, how do you guys do it? How how are you so consistent? And how you done it for so long? How do you make sure that you've always got content? In this type of thing, and I think we've done a really nice job of just refining it. And you know, from the first episode, we were like, we just want to
talk about it. We don't want any script, We don't want to you know, overproduce this, we don't want to over edit this. We just want to talk about leadership and answer questions and provide our perspective. And I think over the years we've done a really good job of like getting that down to just like hit the record button, here's the topic, let's go. But also to your point,
you know, I think that there there's other vehicles. We've tried some different ways of also continuing to talk about leadership and whether that's in you know, we started interviewing guests, we started doing you know, writing and newsletters and clubhouse you know talk club clubhouse exactly, yep, clubhouse audio, right, Like, just a lot of stuff that we did to just share, to share our perspective and provide, you know, what we
thought would be helpful for people. And there are a ton of other leadership people that are in the space that we are fans of that we like that we often reference or or share, and that's another part of this platform that you know, we've talked a lot about us, how can we use this to help others that have great messages get their messages out there? That's always been really important and I think that's something that you know, we're not going to delete the channel, We're not going
to delete the library. You know, these episodes and there's a lot of them, will continue to exist in a space where people can listen to them and check them out. And who knows, from time to time, we might we might feel the need to you know, put some content out, whether it's our somebody else's, just to be able to continue to share in the initial idea of the show, which is like, how do we do our best to share thoughts, perspectives and advice you know, to other leaders
in the work that you do in leading people. And I think, you know, in our eight years of doing the show, a lot of our own leadership has matured and solidified, and our perspectives have sharpened as a result of the conversations that we've had with each other and with guests that we've had on.
I agree completely with that.
I think they're you know, the the most to me, the most valuable content for the show comes from our own personal experiences, and so you know, it can start out with a listener question or an article we saw online or a video that we saw that that resonated
with us. But the reason that resonated with us, or the reason why the question was something that we thought it was nice to be a nice thing to answer, is because some one of us experienced something in our own lives and our own leadership journey that we can say, oh, you know what, I have some perspective on this, like I went through something similar or sometimes the exact same thing, and I can I can share how either I made the wrong move and learned from it, or made the
right move by luck, or made the right move by skill because I had been in this situation before, and like it all, it all stems from just the experiences that we have, and that's where the content becomes most valuable.
And you know that content or that those experiences continue to happen over the last eight years as we were talking about them, which is why there was really never a shortage of topics because it wasn't just about like you know, it's not like a sitcom where you have to just find a new trope.
Or a new a new joke to write every week.
This is just thinking about real life and the interactions that we have with the people who report to us, the people we interact with in our own leadership lives, and then talking about those experiences in a way that is meaningful and that shows the learnings that we have
had from them. And I think that that's that's why the show has resonated with with so many people, is because it's not it's not made up, you know, it's it's based on the real things that happen in our lives and and the vulnerability that comes with, you know, sharing those learnings and those missteps especially.
Yeah, exactly, I think, you know, sharing places where we've made mistakes or things that we've learned, sharing you know, passionately about you know, processes and strategies and approaches to leadership.
And you know, I think over the years we've we've we've had all kinds of conversations from like funny times of things that have happened to silly stuff that happens in different industries, to serious topics that you know, have a real impact on people, to topics that you know, over the years have evolved in how we see them in society, how we see them in the workforce, you know, to leaders and maybe strategies and discussions that we had eight years ago to then getting through you know, twenty
twenty and COVID and all that type of thing, to then kind of the new iteration of that, and we talked a lot about what things have really solidified and then what things are new, and what things are wide open, and how is you know, the you know, how are our people, the workforce, the culture now in a place where we're holding leaders accountable in a very different way and in a good way, which is just raising the bar of what should be expected from having a leader
that's supposed to be there to inspire and motivate, you know, help support people do the work that they're doing. And I think that that's been a really fun part of the journey, is just being a part of conversations that I think we're relevant really closely in the moment. Like I immediately get brought back to the We did an episode about a hurricane that happened in Florida, and oh yeah, it was a you know, come to work anyway. It was like a pizza place that was just like we
don't care go to work, right. We just talked about that and it was like, how ridiculous is that? And you know, that was something that we read in the news. And there's just those moments that happened that I think really skyrocketed what what is the expectation of leadership and what is the what are the right things to do or the right way to handle things? And I think that's probably been the most fun for me is just the amount of listeners that have reached out in so
many different ways continue to share our content. It just happened last week somebody shared one of our short clips on LinkedIn and talked about how important this subject was and how it was something they struggled with and they work through. So, you know, I just it's been a fun journey. But I think I've just enjoyed watching the conversations that we've had continue to go through other listeners and leaders that feel the same way or want to share their perspective on some of the topics.
Yeah, the example you gave just now of that hurricane thing, it kind of made me think of something that I think is important to kind of discuss, and that's that that it's it's hard not to think that our own, like our experience in leadership, both as a leader of people and as as someone who has reported to leaders throughout our journeys, we've all had, we've all always had, we both always had a boss at any given time.
There's always been one, sometimes more than one. And the examples of like that that hurricane in Florida is it's really difficult sometimes not to think that our own perspective or our own experience as employees reporting to leaders, it's hard not to think that that's the norm, because I think both of have been very fortunate in our leadership journeys that we've had goodly bosses and bad bosses. I can definitely, you know, place them in a hierarchical order, right.
I've learned from the good ones that I've learned sometimes even more from the bad ones, but none of them have ever risen to that level of like, you know, I don't care about your safety.
Come to work at a pizza place.
You know, And and because of that, it's it's sometimes it's hard not to not to chuckle at that a little bit and think like that's it's almost satire, but it's not. And I think over the years, the instances of that happening are far less than it would have been, you know, thirty forty fifty years ago. I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, the
visibility to things like that happening. If if that happened, if that interaction happened between the pizza place owner and the employee in nineteen eighty two, no one would ever know about it because there'd be no place to show it, to share it with everybody, right, and that would just happen.
And nowadays it gets shared and there's a there's a level of social accountability that at least has helped keep some leaders, you know, on the straight and narrow a little bit, you know, for even if not for the right reasons, sometimes doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still the right thing, right.
You know, you're still doing it.
And I think that has kind of moved the needle on the experience employees have. But there are still areas where it is not good. There are still areas, there are still places across the workforce where the employee experience is not great.
And I think anytime that is the case, all roads lead back to leadership.
All roads of the of a negative employee experience lead back to the effectiveness of the leadership team in that organization and what they're doing or how they're prioritizing the employee experience and.
Whether or not they do it.
All to begin with Yeah, No, it's it's a great call, and I think it's a you know, yeah, I'm just I'm just I'm just stuck in the space of just thinking about, like, how do you possibly provide thank you user gratitude to all of the people that have like pushed our show forward, from whether it be guests that said yes right away, you know, like I think of you know, we for a long time we didn't do guests, and then we really wanted to build some space to say, like, well,
we want to talk to the people that we want to talk to. And then it was kind of like nerve wrecking, Well let's reach let's reach out to the people that we want to talk to. And the fact that so many of them said yes and they're like yeah,
of course, absolutely, Like that was tremendous. I think of all of the listener questions and the text messages dms, the screenshots that were sent to me about people listening to the show, just like the continual push forward from people to say like, hey love this, love that I'm using it this way.
You know.
We've had leaders from from organizations reach out and say, hey, we've put together a collection of what we think are the ten shows that resonate most with our workforce, and we've turned this into like a training document.
Is that cool?
And we're like yeah, of course, like you know, like whatever whatever you want to do, Like the whole point of this is like, yeah, use it for whatever you can. But like, I just think about all of those listeners, uh, and people that helped to push us to continue to like evolve what we talked about evolve, you know, the way that we were doing our episodes, the you know, the the guests interviews that pay it Forward Fridays, the
employee engagement Thursdays, the Thoughtful Thursdays. Like we did so many things that I think we were driven by people that listen to the show. And I think that's something that's cool about the podcasting space when you have that connection with an audience, is that you know you can adjust and move and pivot to the places that they want you to go to. And and I think that
that's been a fun part of the journey. It's just continuing to like, you know, have people that have an influence on how I'm thinking about leadership that I don't even know, you know what I'm saying, not alone, like don't work with every day, but like complete strangers and thousands of them saying, hey, you should talk about this, or we need to talk about that, and things that maybe I hadn't even considered in my own leadership or things that I hadn't come across yet that I now
had to have an opinion on and had to think through. And I think that was super fun and helpful.
Yeah, it has made me better at leadership.
Right, there's just the interactions with our audience and the the things that we've had to contemplate and think about and and you know, it's we talked, we talk off on the show about the importance of at of leading with values, right about figuring out what is important to you and then leading with that and allowing that to guide your decision making process as a leader. And then and then if you allow it to go your decision making process as a leader, and the outcome isn't what
you what what it needed to be. Then Okay, then does that mean that you didn't really use that as a guide or does it mean that your your values need to tweak or change a little.
Bit based on the the.
Time are you are?
You?
Are they not well defined yet because of the experience or lack thereof that you that you have in the workforce, Like all these things happen over time, and and as you.
The more you do it, the better a process it becomes.
And the the process of doing that through the lens of the of the things that our listeners have asked of us and kind of thinking, Okay, this hasn't happened to me, but it's happening to one of our listeners who's who's asking for advice on this? How how would I deal with this? And And it's a lot harder to do that hypothetically than it is if it's if it's really happening, because you actually have to make the decision.
But it really has helped me test my values as a leader by putting those situations through through the kind of the mill of my personal values to see if the outcome aligns with what is a appropriate for the situation and b doesn't. But heads with my values right. It kind of checks my values in the process to see if they are still right, if they're still appropriate, or if I need to tweak them. Because you if you're never tweaking your values, it doesn't mean that you're steadfast.
It means that you are you know, unwilling to change to changing times. Because your values should change over time. They should just change thoughtfully and methodically and based on like real true evidence, not you know, not whimsically, but they but they should not remain the same, you know, for forever. And these examples that we've gotten from our our listeners has they've They've definitely caused me to to to think through my values and what's important to me
and and make make tweaks or changes when appropriate. And I think it's it's it's been very valuable to me too, not just to our.
Listeners, absolutely, And with that it brings us to the end of this chapter for hacking your leadership.
Before we go, I just you know, I know that when we talked about doing this, Lorenzo, you said that you really wanted to put some time and effort into thinking through kind of like if you had one piece of advice, like one nugget of advice for our listeners that, you know, for somebody who is going into leadership or new to leadership, or.
If they're just struggling with leadership in general.
You know, the thing that you'd want to have on the wall in front of you every day that you could look up at and and and read to yourself and kind of like a rock or an anchor of leadership advice to our listeners. You said you felt it was really important to kind of have that kind of like get to let our audience kind of take away at the at the end of the last episode. And I really like that idea, and you know, I know you've already shared it with me, and I think it's fantastic.
I think you did a really great job of kind of narrowing it down and thinking about something where the rubber really meets the road that our our listeners can take with them as they as they depart from the show for a while. And so I'll let you take it away and end the episode with this with this kernel. But this is a really fantastic stuff here.
I mean, you know, we've had these one minute hacks for the entire period, and I kind of felt that like, this is really important to kind of like eight years, you know, like over thousand episodes, how you slice it, decades of leadership experience between the two of us, really trying to boil this down to say, like what what do you say and how do you help to guide
someone into their future? How do you help to take someone who has been a leader for a long time and give them something that may reshape the way they think about leadership and can leave an impressed and very like it kind of an impression of people that they will take with them forever. People we always have those quotes that we heard some people say that they just stick with us and they help us, and those those
really tough times. And so you know what I would say is like, you know, boiling it all down, all that time, all that tenure, all that experience, all the conversations that we've had, the tens of thousands of minutes and hours of dialogue. For me, you know, leadership really just comes down to this one very simple statement, and that is