Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome. I am so excited for you to meet my guest today. His name is Adam. Hey, she's a friend. He'll tell you all about his perspective and some great stories about leadership and management.
And one of the reasons I was excited to invite Adam on to talk with you is because he's had an experience in leadership across a lot of Organizations from very tiny, very new startups to Global Technology organizations to the military, to the dance floor. And we talked a lot about beginner's mind and he just has had this very rich set of experiences working with humans and with teams and I am really excited for you to hear from him. So, let's get to it. Well, welcome Adam, I'm so glad
that you're here. Thanks. You tell us a little bit about who you are. I am a guy who shows up and tries to engage with what he finds. My standard career answer is I'm a Navy veteran. Who grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm very interested in creativity. That's probably my number one value professionally and I have always tried to find ways to
integrate that professionally. And so I Departed the Navy and wanted to work in Tech. So I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Worked at a drone startup for a year worked at Facebook for a few years. Went back to working for government on a software development team. And now I'm working two jobs at the same time, one doing government work and then the other working and I guess you would call it consumer insights. And you, and I have known each other for several years and we
are friends. And we've also worked together. And one of the reasons I was really excited to have this conversation with you is in part because of your perspective. And, and what I've heard you say in the past, about your thoughts around, what it means to be a leader, what it means to work with people and because of your perspective, both in Industries and also what you experienced in the Navy and how you've brought some of those insights and stories into your own work Life
as a people leader. And, and also, I'm super curious to know to and we'll talk about this, you know, how, like, what is it mean to manage people when you don't have like direct authority over them? Mmm, right? Like when you're managing by influence, or you're managing a product, or you're managing like a with a customer relationship, or you're managing up and I would be interested in anything that like Sparks a thought for you. Around any of what I've just shared.
Well, I don't know if this, I don't know, let's see how this. Let's see, how this turns out. I really enjoyed the experience of being a beginner and cultivating a beginner's mind set because when you're the new person on a team you tend to see all the flaws easier than people who've been there for a while. But but you also see opportunities. I think I was working at Facebook on a team that had nothing to do with product development per se.
I was on like the corporate security team that managed You know, the safety of the employees and building security and badges and cameras and such, although we did manage, we did manage operations for a product for Amber Alerts.
When kids go missing, if you're in a certain zip code and you have your setting set as such, when the government issues, an amber alert Facebook will do the same thing and When I discovered this a, I thought it was amazing and be I had an idea, but I thought surely someone has thought of this like already, there's no way this couldn't be the case. So this was in 2016. I discovered this Amber Alert product about four years earlier. Facebook had bought Instagram and I thought surely like,
where's the Instagram version? I'm like searching in on the internal database stuff and I'm like, it's the same format, you know, scrolling through a feed. There's some level of geolocation. Both companies, although Facebook bought Instagram, both companies have a socially oriented Mission. And like, I did a ton of research and nobody had thought about it. So I wanted to pitch an idea to To pursue it. And I did work in product management.
I was not a software engineer. I was at Facebook, not Instagram. Like there's there's no way any of this should have been successful but I get really energized when a vision kind of takes control of me and like, I'm like this needs to be a thing or it's you know how amazing would it be? And then I sort of informally started networking in the company. I was doing a volunteer program in East Palo Alto with with
kids. Like not daycare because they were middle schoolers, but middle schoolers, who had time after school before the parents, get home. So, it was called the spark program. And there were some Instagram product managers there. So you know, I got to know one of them and sort of asked, Ginger, Ginger questions about how they have, their process works for new products and so forth. I share this idea and she's like, that sounds really cool.
You should meet someone so and so I'm sort of a natural networker and I really just genuinely enjoy meeting people hearing her story, so I met the right people, Instagram. And I also think like when you don't know what you're doing or you're new to something. There's like this youthful energy that you can bring no matter how old you are. That gets people like excited, I forget the name of it but there's a phenomenon. I think it's like like the
college student phenomenon. Like there's this, like let's say you're working for like Johnson & Johnson if you're a college student and you're really excited about some consumer packaged Goods or whatever. And somehow you get, Email address that Co you say, hey, I'm a junior at Cornell. I'm super interested in learning
what it's like to be a CEO. We be my podcast, like you'll get a reply as a college student, and then if you join and you're like a low-level assistant product manager, you email the CEO. He's not going to respond to you. So, there's this weird Paradox where when you show up from a youthful perspective, like people something about that. Engages people. And I think it's an energetic thing.
And so I and so I basically put together a pitch deck Jack and I was like, I don't really know crap about pitching, I don't know crap about software, but I'm pretty good at Google and I'm pretty good at Microsoft Paint and I think those are two skills and those people can do. So I did open source. Research you know, other other technologies have used Amber Alerts, the driving application ways uses it. If there's a kid missing it'll give you look.
So I did research on software other products, I took screenshots of what they look like. I figured out their functionality, I learned what a wireframe. I put together like a wire frame of what it should look like in the Instagram app by just copying, like, zero technical skill, but like, I was, I was into it, and I believed in it, I guess. And so, I put together this pitch deck, I and then, I moved
up the chain. I shared it with some peers and then I shared with my manager and then I shared it with the initial people, I met Instagram, and by that point, it had gotten super polished, I got a meeting with the team and Instagram to this social good and then pitched it. And they were like, they were super excited about it.
So for me, it was Sharing, if you're working on something that you really believe in. I think belief, you know, the more I learn about Carl, Jung, and religion, and mythology, and philosophy, and I'm just a dabbler, I'm not an expert in any of that, but the more wisdom I find in these Ancient Ancient traditions, and I think that like, I'm like a metaphysical level having like belief about something that you can't prove is terribly attractive and it takes a lot of Courage because
we live in such a science focused Society. Like, you know, don't make any claims about anything until you can prove it, but we're not wired that way as humans we want to feel caught up in the energy of someone who really believes in something and we want to be a part of that. So, by introducing that energy and then getting feedback from People and like, bringing them on my side and being a part of it. You know, I people it seemed like they were pretty attracted to that.
What I love about what, I just heard there were two things, and one is that when you have this, genuine belief and energy, people are drawn to that and actually want to help like part of what you were saying in your story is about not just being a networker, but you kept meeting people who wanted to help, hmm, right. Because you were in so much. Easy as mm. And so much belief about it while you're like, yeah, like there are things, I don't know. But this is what I do know. Hmm.
And this is what I'm excited about. We need to make this happen, that's one thing and then kind of related to that. But you said this at the beginning which was how you have enthusiasm when you're new at something. Hmm and I think that's so key because one thing I see with you know, with The work I do is that when people are moving into new manager roles or they're, you know, taking on more responsibility, there's the
enthusiasm. But then there's often with it often a lot of fear or anxiety because they realize oh like managing you know, managing a team of designers is different than being an amazing designer or realizing like, oh, there are things that I haven't realized that will be required of me, in this new role as a people manager. And what I heard from Is that being new is great. Not knowing everything. Also great being enthusiastic and being in belief, it all comes together, it all works.
Yeah. Yeah. I hope new managers who listen to this are excited by the potential of being a manager because if well done design is exciting. And Well, Done engineering is really interesting and exciting. When you make something super efficient or whatever your manager, you're like, in this, you have the privilege of Of being surrounded by amazing humans, who produce all that magic. So that enthusiasm is like, is there anything better?
Is there anything cooler? Now it's, you know, if you're if you're someone who's drawn to being the individual contributor building the widget, of course, that's going to be somewhat of a challenge. But if your Blinds To how amazing human beings are, then you're doing yourself a disservice. I think by locking out the enthusiasm that should come naturally for being in a management position. Who has been the best manager you ever had? The best manager I ever had was
probably my last boss. I got named Mark who I guess checks. All the wickets in things that get me excited. He started two different Ventures that. I was a part of and both both had no guarantee of success. They were kind of both startup e organizations and the first was a hardware startup trying to use drones for a humanitarian Aid delivery and I get really jazzed around technology and like Civil Society trying to trying to help, I don't know, make the world a better place to take a
Say, praise. And So, I met him, he want to pitch competition and he just had a really compelling vision. And then I stayed in touch with him all his a Facebook and he brought me back onto my last team and what was compelling to me about him as a manager is like I think one of the most empowering feelings is when someone hired its kind of when someone hires you and then they like get out of the way they're like, hey, we hired you for a reason.
Like you've got my full trust in permission to just go. And just go. And so it's sort of this like, Greenfield Blue, Sky, Blue Ocean. Like I get I get to do that. I can just do whatever I want. So I worked for him, like I said on two different Ventures and in both cases, I didn't have a job description.
He never once told me what to do, he trusted that I was the kind of person who kind of has a Seek and Destroy mentality on problems and in efficiencies, and Drops and morale and stuff like that and that I naturally want to make things better and make the organization better. So both for small teams, the first was about 10 people, the second there was like 16 of us and it just felt like, I guess I felt seen like that.
He saw the best that I had to offer and I was able to leverage all the skills that I had and all the things that I'm good at and both in both cases, how did you see him do that? At like, what can you point to something specific that made you feel seen and trusted? well, so I first met him at a pitch competition in 2014 and was very intimidated because he
was working on his Ph.D, he was a software engineer and I was like, no way is this dude going to you know and I was working on my own confidence no way is this dude going to hire a bozo like me to help out and as I as I was skipping ahead and trying to come up with like advice It's to Future managers. And one of them is like to show up, don't overthink it don't, don't have to have a whole plan fair.
I just show up and see what happens because I emailed them like, kind of just showed up a few months later. I was like, hey, I saw you with this pitch competition. I don't know how I can contribute, but I'm confident that I can find a way. Will you? Let me be a part of your team and submitted phone call? He's like, he's like, yeah, sounds good. He's like, there's a lot of challenges and a lot of ambiguity. But why don't you just join a
meeting and see what you find? And I said yeah how about I joined the meeting and I'll come up with a list of notes of opportunities and challenges that I see and how plan to go about solving them and if that sounds good to you that will just proceed. So I jumped on a phone call it was a it was a distributed team this isn't 2015 and we were doing some crowdfunding for an initial pilot project and I said nobody here really has a vision for the crowdfunding campaign.
We're not leveraging, a lot of, you know, head of just a bunch of different ideas around how to decide in the campaign and so forth. And I'm the kind of person who, when I propose an idea, I try to make it, well, thought out and organized, rather than like the good idea Ferry, which gets a bad rap, who just doesn't think through ideas. And so I propose ideas. He's like the sounds awesome, like go for it. And then so I came up with a media outreach campaign. I got to speech, read it fast.
Company magazine. I designed our Indiegogo and like I would come up with a plan and With him and he's like, yeah, it looks awesome. I'd come up with a plan, I would check in with him, he should say looks awesome. And there's a leadership principle in the in the military
called command by negation. And what it means is if you're a commander and you're in charge like you fully empower the people under you to like do what they need to and command by negation is like you let them run with it and all you do is if you don't want them to do something, then you speak up.
But otherwise, they have full trust and authority to go forth and Execute so I felt like I had this command by negation relationship and then on the second team, he got a big chunk of money from the government had to recruit a bunch of software engineers and I never was formerly a recruiter. But during my own career search I became familiar with Angel list, a little bit with stackoverflow and some other
platforms. And as we stayed in touch, when he started his second Venture, he knew that I was a prolific networker that I knew the career services. Chad interviewed a bunch of startups. He had a team of Engineers and technicians and had all these soft skills needs. And the ball was being just dropped left and right. He's like, hey, we need help recruiting, we need help briefing. All these VIPs that come in, we need help with all this stuff.
I think you're the right person for it, and I want to bring you back and I didn't think twice and moved back out there. And again, I didn't have a job description. I don't have whatever. He said, you know, one of you sit down. See what everyone's up to see what we're working on. What problems, you can identify in your plan and And and so I did and I, you know, I built a
recruiting pipeline. I probably interviewed 500 candidates and just created systems around how to bring in Talent how to how to communicate, what we were building and so on and so forth. So it was a little bit open-ended, maybe the downside it was is it was probably too open-ended and I did share feedback with him like came in.
There's a lot that I could do, I need to better know your vision and maybe we can negotiate together, but with someone who's open and receptive to feedback, that's something you can work through. Thank you for sharing that story. I loved I loved all of those pieces and and I think one of the things I hear people feel challenged with is they'll say, well I know that I want my people to feel seeing and supported, but I don't know how
to how to make that be true. I don't know what I need to do in the manager seat, in order to do that and the story that you just shared was filled with so many of these examples that, you know, might sound like kind of little things. Actually, they're really big things. The idea of giving you all of this room to bring your ideas and just say, yeah, go for it, go for it.
And recognizing that, even though it, you might not have had a formal recruiting background, but you had the core skills, you're good at meeting people. You are had a great relationship building and networking skills, you knew where people were and being able to see all of that and invite you in to create. Something new. But she then did I'm interested to what you shared about the concept of command by negation what other stories or what other
Concepts did. You learn during your time in the Navy that have been also applicable in the work that you do now? That's a good question me six years ago with I joke me 6 years ago, would hate who I am now, because I'm guilty when I was in the Navy, there was no shortage of challenges, and there was a lot of things that I did not enjoy about it, but I think it's easy to take for granted the positive benefits of an organization.
There is a TED Talk that I understand turned into a book that went viral called like the checklist, Manifesto by a surgeon who talks about how Seeing your thinking into a checklist improves the quality of surgery which is great. We all want to be on the receiving end of a surgeon who's calm and collected and organized. But when I heard it was a TED talk in a book that went viral. I was like what's the big deal? Like we use checklists
everywhere in the military. It's like so common sense because there's so many moving parts and like, you simply don't have the creative capacity to track everything you need to track. And so there's checklist. Be wearing for everything. And what I think, I took away on a meta level from the military is, how important structure and routine is and how much structure and routine you can build out even if you're a three-person startup.
Like I said, I'm working two jobs right now and so one of them is this small for person startup. And when I joined, it was just like there was no Direction. There was no routine. And although there's Extraordinary amount of ambiguity, and we're still building our sales pipeline. We're still building a product Market fit. You can say, hey, every Tuesday, we're having a weekly team sink. Hey, here's going to be the agenda, every Tuesday, we're going to go over New Leads.
We're going to go over current engagements. We're going to go over Tech stack development, we're going to see if anybody has any questions. So you can always inject process and routine and I think, you know, we're cyclical creatures. You know, my niece and my nephew's. I'm a proud uncle and like kids need routine. Teen. And although we get better at it as adults if we're removed too much routine. I think it's really bad for us and routine and structure. You can always build routine and
structure. And it doesn't I totally, I think it's a complete lie that that gets in the way of creativity, like, no, it doesn't at all whatsoever. In fact, you can, you can make creativity a process, it's like James L teacher says, come up with ten ideas a day. There's a repeatable process that is always going to be challenged you to be thinking. Outside the box. So I think routine and routine and process and structure and the tremendous value that has on being a human on a team.
And I think more I have other ideas but I don't want to keep jabbering. You're here. I mostly want to get all of the ideas in your brain. Get the other. We can hear them know them too. Yeah. The other thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently is and I say this with a little bit of tenderness because I guess, maybe, I'm maybe this is somewhat countercultural. What people talk about nowadays, but the concept of a military and even government.
That's an institution philosophically that's been around, for a long, long time. A number of religions out there have been around for a long, long time. And while the negative news of both is what makes it on CNN, you know, the my background is Catholicism and it's a faith tradition that I went far away from and him slowly.
Turning to and like discovering all this value that I was like blind to and in the military, when I left, I was very disheartened over a bunch of the negative aspects of it. And I'm certainly not. You can do well all day on our on our shortcomings, from a foreign policy perspective, but there's these Noble aspects and stories that nobody knows about. Like I think the military is going to wrote. The US military is the number one provider of humanitarian Aid
in the world. Old. What story doesn't make it to cnn.com. You know, you look at the nobler aspects of of the Christian tradition, it's a tradition that tries to focus on. How do you love people better? How do you engage with Faith and Hope? How do you allow Grace and Redemption to enter into your life and people around you.
And so What's interesting to me, is the parallels between the Christian tradition and pick any pick, any religion really pick any Traditions, been around for a couple thousand years and you'll find these Trends and think of military and government and they all have an articulated ethos that kind of describes
what's really important to them. And so, you know, in the military, you have, like, if you're in the Navy of like the sailors Creed, if you're a Navy SEAL, they have their own specific, ethos, you know, if you're there Different statements of Faith from different religions. So, like an articulated, ethos, that guides who you are seems to be ever present in the Richer traditions of human organization, which is really interesting to me.
And then like ritual, like, there's all these fun traditions in the Navy, like once every two months, you do what's called a hail and farewell you welcome the new people and you say goodbye to the old people and it's a very positive experience that wishes people. Well who Are heading out and welcomes the new people and they're like, we're glad you're here. You're part of the team were
thrilled to have you. And I took this for granted and, you know, you think, you know, every great religion has these Traditions, like, I believe Muslims, pray five times a day and the direction of Mecca. And so there's these embodied rituals that are part of the organization to me that seemed to exist across organizations. And so I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. A third thing that came up is symbology. Like it in your dress, uniform.
In the Navy, you have like a Crest on your hat. That's been around for, you know, since the Inception of the US Navy, the Royal Navy has the same thing from the UK, which is where our tradition comes from. That's a little bit different, but it's a little bit similar, even our adversaries. You look at the uniforms of Russia and China and like, they have symbolism woven into what they wear.
And so, do spiritual leaders across different ritual Traditions. They have embroidery and different colors, mean, different things, and And so I think any human who's managing people and leading people. I think somewhat I think people have a vision maybe of starting a start-up and kind of have the long-term game in mind. These are interesting things to think about and I don't think you can just show up on day one and say, here's our symbols.
Here's our ethos, let's go. But rather, it's like it's in a, it's small. It's kind of like the idea of an inside joke. It's like the intimacy there with like a Or a friend or a small group. There's little Traditions, that kind of naturally emerge and it's like, who I really enjoy that. Whoo, that was really funny who we really had a good time grabbing beers after work Monday. Let's do that. Every first Monday.
And these rituals in these symbols and these Declarations of what Define you somewhat mysteriously, emerged organizations that believe in what they're up to. And so that was a lot but it's very interesting to me and I think people who are interested in shepherding, humans should keep an eye out for these. These little pockets of meaning and cultivate that, and encourage that, because that's what keeps people together. I think an oriented towards
something really meaningful. I think that's an interesting idea to, in light of how much the pandemic has influenced, how people work. And by that, I mean people are remotely on-boarded, they might never meet their team in person. So, the ritual of, how do you bring somebody into our organization when we are fully distributed? For the rituals and the, you know, like what does it mean to
have symbols, or to have ideas? That kind of connect us all when we are all over the world, because I think it's, you know, part of what you're mentioning. And I think part of the way that functions when you have a physical location, that everybody goes to that, you can physically design the space so that everybody's seeing this like the same literal thing when they walk in. It can provide a message or reminder of why we're all here and what we care about.
And I think that will look different in a world of work where everything is always distributed. Because I think that your point to is that humans function in a certain way we can look across all these traditions and notice some, some common functional, things about how you respond, and what does that mean for? Or us as people who work together and as in the manager seat, what does that mean for you? As you think about how to create a sense of team and connection and cohesion given the
parameters? Not working. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a tough one. That's a tough one for sure. I think, I think of what would be interesting to me to think more about other historical examples of organizations that have been distributed, like, the special forces in the military. They have a very distinctly
different in some, in some ways. A different is distinctly different Outlook and attitude, you know, they, they get permission to grow these big old beards and they don't get haircuts and, and Anyway, I would have to think more about that, but that's a really, it's a really interesting idea of how to get people to still feel connected and like they belong in a way where you're distributed and kind of out flying solo, which is tremendously difficult.
What is your current people manager situation? Look like like, do you have direct reports right now? I probably shouldn't answer that for one of my team's. That's they're actually I we don't know. It's and it's and it's a, it's a secret, it's private, it's private. Yeah, yeah I can, I can fill you in later why? It's yeah, I feel. I'm sorry. That I can't tell you more on why that's okay. The other startup that I'm at where this loose gaggle of humans trying to prevent the
boat from sinking. Mmm. Yeah. Well, so this is interesting to me, too, so you worked in very early stage startups. Hmm, you've also worked in global technology organizations. And you've also worked with in the military which as you mentioned is like an institution. That's been a long around for a really long time. So these are All different kinds of organizations of people doing
work together. Mmm. Yeah. Certainly what, what have you observed to be like in your own experience of working with people and managing people what has been the most difficult
lesson for you to learn? It was I think I think it was a well I'll tell you what comes to the surface right now is You know, I have challenges with my ego like we all do and you know, I want to be seen, I want to be successful and competent, but I think the best leaders and managers I think you have to realize that the deliberate as opposed to its being something that happens to you. The conscious choice to become invisible to me, feels deeply true.
Where you want to elevate the people you influence and the people who are in charge of and it's like praise in public and criticize and private and behind-the-scenes be an advocate for their promotion, to the next level. You know, I think about the deliberate decision to be invisible which is totally contradictory to your ego, but it comes but it comes from a recognition that you have a great responsibility as a manager and as a leader and it's
no longer about you. It's like A parent and now that I'm a parent, but from what I hear, it's no longer about you, you know, it's about how can you desire the best for others and try to act on that? For me? That was hard because when I was just getting my feet wet you know went to Military College and you get put in these like simulated leadership environments.
And I mean it's not simulated, it's real leadership and management but it's while you're at school within a student body, and I really had a lot of shortcomings and really, I don't know, I wanted attention, and I wanted recognition that I wanted to be seen as a good leader, and I think that can lead you down
the wrong path. But I think when you're able to realize that the calling of a great manager, and a great leader is to elevate the people either, you're in charge of formally or the people, you have influence over informally, the joy that comes from that is when you actually make that connection and to me, it feels like dancing and it feels to me like, you know, we all Different mental models for describing the
world. One mental model is like, masculine energy and feminine energy and for a while I was really big into swing dancing and salsa dancing and learning how to lead, like, literally lead on a dance floor. And you know, the best followers have this really inspiring expectation that you'll take care of the leadership business. They're not there to make a decision per se.
They're there to, to build On the base and the structure you've provided to to to make the show and so women, who and this isn't to get stereotypical per se. But it's hard to describe how satisfying that is because when you're dancing with a woman who's really, really good,
follower who totally trust. Like, you could just, you could feel it in a frame of someone, you're dancing with, there's women, who and meant, it could be meant to write, like, I'm really trying to avoid stereotype, but there's people who even as a follower there, a little bit rich, It and they think you're going to do this move and they like move into that move. And you're like, ah, crap. Like, is it me? Is it them?
There's some clashing. But then there's some followers for just like, I'm so here, like let's see where this goes and you gently nudge them in One Direction. Like ooh, that feels good, like let's see where that goes. Let's see where that goes. And then it's like magical dance, he emerges. And as the lead, you're just building the groundwork the infrastructure. Now, of course there's some exceptions but the fall Follows get the joy of the fancy footwork and the spinning dress
and making it just look good. And so I think when you can when you can be invisible, So does when you can choose to be invisible deliberately, it's easy for one's ego, to think that you won't be able to shine. But you shine in a subtler way that is really meaningful and really rich when the people that you're supporting and that you're leading, then get to be the star of the show and you Like, you are lucky to be a part of that. Love that example.
Oh, that's a fun one and it's a terrible feeling to feel invisible and not seen when it feels imposed on you. but in make, but in realizing the upside in that and making others feel seen and drawing back, you realize, I don't know, it feels Noble, you know, when you're driving a shit when you're driving a ship, You know, there's a ton of sensors on those things and there's a lot going on. You have to make sure you don't run aground.
If the area is shallow, you have to make sure that the fluid levels are distributed. So the thing doesn't topple over, you have to make sure you know, the status of The Radars and there's a lot going on and so the kind of the highest qualification you can you can get for driving. It takes a long time is called officer of the deck where you're like a representative of The captain, you're kind of running the show. There's nothing more gratifying than when you can. You have prop.
It depends on the kind of ship but you have roughly eight. People, one person's literally driving up the steering wheel. Another person's controlling the throttle. Another team of two or three people is consistently, charting your location. You have look outs who are using binoculars to augment your electronic sensors so it's this Orchestra and when you can step back and the orchestra is just performing you're like this is this is amazing.
I heard a great quote in college that never left me. Which is you've succeeded as a leader when your team can perform as well with you as they can without you. That's your job. You mentioned before to, what advice would you give to a new manager? And at the time just a few minute moments ago, you said oh you know I'd tell them to just show up and I'm curious as we've been talking. What if anything else has emerged around the advice that you would give to a new manager?
The story that comes to Makino. David Goggins, he's like a super athlete is ultra marathons and stuff. He's a Intense guy. He's on Instagram and so forth and the reason he comes to mind is, well, I'm going to weave together a couple different stories. There is a book I was reading recently to had such great advice. I wish I had heard like 10 years ago, which is Be careful who you share.
Good news with Because some people can see it as a threat to their relationship with you, or their career, or whatever, and also be careful who you share bad news with, because you don't want to be caught up in gossipers for people who think they're better than you. But the best humans out there only want the best for you, in both cases. And so David Goggins is really, really talented.
I think he's a former Navy SEAL and I just saw the most positive, you know, he answers questions sometimes. And I think there's a feeling sometimes because of the negative people in our life, that people who are successful, don't want to see you succeed or like they're hoarding the success, or like it's a limited pie. And that's not true at all of the best humans. The best humans, realize that like, your success is my success. And my success is your success.
I failed spectacularly as a manager and a leader and it was extraordinarily challenging, but the moments, I think that I learned and grew and had a positive impact, made those challenges worth it. And so showing up is my invitation because you're going to get knocked down and you're going to Ruffle feathers or you're going to feel insecure. You're going to make a bad decision. And it's the showing up the next day and trying. Again, we're all the values to be gained from the experience I
think. And so when I was a runner in high school, I was always trying to get people to run. Cross-country, of course, it was difficult and hard, but that's not where the value was. So I was not interested in telling people how hard it was. I was interested in telling them like how it worthy it was how fun it was, and how awesome team dinners were and the joy of finishing a race and putting all your energy into it, you know. So like being manager can be
super difficult. But like that's not to intimidate anybody. And so I would say keep showing up and then for your team, the other phrase that comes to mind for me, is be consistently present because people need to be able to rely on. You not to have the right answers, but to be there with them in the Foxhole, so to speak and to say like, hey we can figure this out together. Hey, like, I have total faith in your skills.
I'm lucky to have you on my team and people need, I think consistent presence in their life of people. They're depending on thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your stories and your perspective. I love all of these different nuggets that you drop throughout our conversation and I know that sometimes you also write online and you share your thoughts and things.
So if any of our listeners wanted to follow you or find any of your writing or if you have a presence online, where would they go? I have very little presence. I like you're like no. No, no, I haven't written a have so many Unwritten essays inside of me. I haven't I haven't written in a very long time. I don't write consistently as much as I would like to, but if anything resonated or people want to connect on anything that seemed interesting. I'm on LinkedIn and I check that
regularly. Can you tell us how to spell your name? Yeah. But just so people. Yeah. I mean sure my LinkedIn URL is just, you know, linkedin.com, /i n /a h, e SC, h, a Heche. Amazing. They can send me a message. If anything it's interesting or whatever. I'm happy to connect with people. Thank you so much. It's been yeah this is to have you. Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. Do you want personal confidential?
Help with your situation at work, I offer one-on-one coaching and can help you overcome challenges reach your goals and become a more effective. Effective leader to schedule a consult. Go to my website. Kim nickel.com coaching and we'll schedule time to talk about what's going on with you and how I can help talk to you soon.