I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honored to live in learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishnaabeg Algonquin nations.
Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, produced by iglen studios, a show for emerging leaders from all professions, to hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs, and are still learning along the way. And now, here's your host, Simon Kardynal.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another
A Podcast From the Front. As always, I'm excited to be back here talking with all of you. But that is especially the case today, because today, I have invited my good friend Jason Donkersgoed, to be with us or as he likes to be called the donkey. I don't want to know, I don't want to know. But what's cool is today, we're going to be exploring the importance of understanding creative tension.
And its effects on the Emerging Leaders ability to better understand their creative tension process, and that of their team. After that, we're going to shift gears a little bit, and we're going to discuss the language revolving around repeatable language, and the powerful tool that this language can be for emerging leaders. But enough about the introduction. Let's just get at it. We'll just start talking. Hey, Jason, how you doing?
So good. Thanks for inviting me, Simon. I'm looking forward to this chat.
You know what we've been talking about this for a long time. I'm glad we're able to finally get this on a computer. We don't put anything on tape anymore. But I'm super excited to talk about these really important issues with you. But listen, before we get at it, I was just wondering, do you mind telling us all a little bit about yourself, you know, your life, your passions, your profession hit us?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So first off, you know, my purpose in life is to have fun every single day, and energize others to take action through creating clarity. I live in Lethbridge, Alberta with my wife, and I've got four kids ages seven to 26, which is crazy. When it comes to leadership, I fell in love with leadership of all places as an
air cadet. And while others wanted to learn how to fly, I wanted to learn how to lead and I remember, you know, memorizing the, the definition of leadership as it stood at that point in time and something sparked in me and I just could never get it out of my head at work. Right now I'm working on solving the skills gap industry is screaming about. So really two things essential skills are what people used to call soft skills, and then upskilling and rescaling our workforce for the
future of work. And then I also have a consulting practice good donker where I help medium sized businesses from a million dollars to $50 million. Find clarity on how to create growth, and really that's about diagnosing where they're at prescribing their next most profitable step. And that's yeah, that's about it. Oh, and I'm an avid snowboarder.
Alright, what I tell you what I heard, I have four kids from the spread between seven to 27, or 26. I think, wow. That's a I'm not gonna lie to you. That's that's kind of impressive.
I don't know if I'd call it impressive, but it's fun.
I don't know how you get any time to get any snowboarding in. But being in Alberta, that's definitely got to help. So....
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Right on. Well, listen, you know, you're I mean, the great thing is, other than the fact that I've known you for a couple of years through the Master of Arts in Leadership program, you know, your, your background, your profession, you're clearly qualified to talk about creative tension and discussing that gap that exists in between the point of what our reality is, and where someone wants to take their idea, their, their, their dream, whatever, it
doesn't really matter. So I'm excited to talk to you about this. This will be fantastic.
Yeah, I think it's a great subject and, and it's one that we're also busy in this world, that it's hard to slow down and think about kind of the foundation that all energy is driven from and I think creative tension is exactly that.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree. You know. I think quite often that in the world now where everyone has so much information they can get to so quickly. There's so many ideas out there. And that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. But an idea is just an idea, you know? And if you don't have the skills to figure out how to work that for yourself, how is it possible for an emerging leader to be able to take a team's idea or
their vision? Or how do they even how does it an emerging leader, even help a team discover what their vision is? Without understanding the tension between those two points? You know, it's, it's just a thing. You know, of course, we all talk about Peter Senge is the revolving pattern of the understanding that creative tension is really vital to the whole point of personal mastery and being able to, you
know, help yourself grow. And then if we help ourselves grow, then we're you know, in theory, we should be able to help our team grow.
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I wrote down as we knew, we were going to be talking about this, that creative tension lives in different places. So it lives on the personal side. And we need to understand that. hat are our hopes and our dreams? Where are we at today? And how do we create that beautiful tension between the two, but then there's also team tension. And then there's organizational tension. And then if you want to get wild and crazy, there's
societal tension. And and you think about politicians who have done a great job tapping into that?
Oh, exactly, you know, and I was talking to someone at work about creative tension, coincidentally, just the other day, and they're like, Oh, yeah, creative tension, I heard about that. I read an article, it's like, great. And then they got all wrapped around the axle, about how they viewed
it as, umm, an emotion. And like, oh, and they actually use the term team tension always, because when the tension that the team is feeling when they're when they're feeling stressed, okay, we're, I stopped them in a very politely Okay, no, we're not talking about the same thing. But, you know, we, we adjusted the gears and whatnot.
So I'm interested in your thought on, on how an emerging leader might be able to tap into these different team tensions and organizational tensions, tie them together to help them lead their team?
Yeah, sure. So why don't we back up for a half a second first, and, and let's just all visualize those that are listening to this, you know, that elastic band, and, and first, you know, visualize it, and you're pulling it further and further apart, and your fingers are starting to kind of twitch a little bit, because the tension is too much. And sooner or later, if you keep doing that, it's going to snap,
right. So that's one type of tension, then then you look at the second and you have that elastic band with zero tension, it's actually sagging in the middle. And you'll quickly notice, there's no energy in that whatsoever, right? And then if you kind of bring it just to about the right amount of tension, think about the energy. In fact, you can almost play that like an instrument at that point, right? Because the energy
is almost harmonic, right? So I think we have to take that step back and go, that's what we're trying to tap into. So now what does it take to tap into that? Well, you have to be absolutely crystal clear on where you are today. And then you have to do the work. And it is work to figure out where you want to go, why you want to go there? And how do you express that in a
very clear manner. And I think that's where a lot of people struggle is is finding a way to narrow it down to something that you can say, in a sentence or two, right? So when I think about my purpose, you know, having fun every day and energizing others to take action through creative creating clarity, short, sweet, simple, I know I can be working towards that. I know, I can then take that. And I can move it into goals that are measurable, so that I can hold myself accountable along the way.
Oh, absolutely. You know, and you said it very, very well in that people really need to be able to find a way to get others to jump on board and embrace whatever the vision that happens to be, especially if it's not their own, if it's an organizational vision to change the culture, for example, that sounds great. But if the team leader or the emerging leader is incapable of energizing the team to do that, really, are you going to be able to change the
culture? Maybe but it certainly will be a lot more painful than if you're able to energize the team to go and do that. And how do you do that you keep it short and sweet because in this information rich world right now, everyone is a one quick enter Google away from getting the first hit on their, on their search.
Yeah, for sure. And I wonder if before you get to that point, there's some pre-work, right? And, you know, I would say, you know, in a class I was taking on strategic planning, one of the things that that struck me was how everybody, no matter where they came from what organization they were in, came to the same conclusion that we struggle within organizations to engage a large enough population in
decision making. And and when it comes to vision, your vision is that much more powerful if you can find ways to create a collective voice or co create the vision, and there's many ways to do that. But again, is time our enemy? So are we living in such a supercharged, fast paced world, that it is difficult to step off of the treadmill? And actually take the time needed to define these things? And to engage people appropriately?
Oh, absolutely. You know, as you know, I just retired from the military back in January, and I think one of the things I kind of took for granted, was in the military, the vision, you know, the purpose generally, you know, for all of us, or for the vast majority of people who join the military, you know, it there's, there's a sense of calling to serve your country to help people to protect whatever, most people are there for those
reasons. And because of that, it's really easy to get the buy in to go and do different things. Now, I don't work in the military any longer. I work for a for profit organization, and they're fantastic. They're really great. But it's interesting to me that when I'm talking to people now, you know, there's a lot more discussion about how do we get buy-in to the company's vision moving
forward. And it's, it's a challenge, what I have noticed is they don't just say, at one time, and then forget about it till the next quarter. It's a constant conversation, and they recognize that they're trying to keep that focus there and keep it at the forefront to help people remember, okay, we are changing, we're trying to change our culture, but we can't do it by ourselves. And we need your help to do that. So they're getting the buy-in. I was very impressed with that.
Yeah, so, so interesting that that topic, because I think this is a great point to differentiate between creative tension and organizational purpose. And, you know, I love Simon Sinek and his books start with 'why', and, and essentially, he his hypothesis is that if you start with 'why', and then move out to the outer circles of how and what you are, well, what you do, and then how you do it, you will attract the
right people. And you will attract those people that naturally have an inclination to supporting where you're going. And I think that's what you're talking about within within the service. Is that the 'Why is strong'. The Why is I want to serve my country.
Oh, very much, though, you know, and you're right. It's not talking specifically to creative tension. But now, and I didn't really need to deal with that. 26 years, that was my new my world. I joined this MAL program, I learned about it and now here I am working for this new company, and I'm really knee deep in this tension, because we were talking about a thing. And it was okay, well, how are we going to get to this point? I'm like, Oh, wow. Well, Peter Senge really would be a good guy to
talk about this. Right. So it was it was really amazing to be actual take into practice what we've learned and and use it.
So So let me ask you a question. If you don't mind. Am I allowed to do that on a podcast? Ask the host the question.
Well, yeah, two bucks a question. We'll see how it goes.
I figured as much still how, especially with emerging managers who maybe haven't found their full confidence yet. They're not standing on on on two feet of strong foundation necessarily, and some are, but but let's say they're not. How do you help them see the value in spending time on this? So because it seems counterproductive to most, most emerging leaders, they think they should be working on the tactical side of the business, as opposed to the big picture piece of the business?
You know, that's a great question. And it's something that I think a lot of new emerging leaders, they really want to get out because they want almost they want to make their mark. 'Look, I'm the new team leader, I'm the new boss', whatever the term we want to use is they want to prove to everyone and themselves that they can succeed. And unfortunately, I believe that in the in many worlds, many corporate worlds speed equals
success. If you can... now when someone is brand new, now is the time to sit them down and say, 'Hey, well, this is why this is important." And I think education and not necessarily formal education a blend of formal and experiential education is absolutely invaluable. Physically sit down with someone say, "This is why we need to take the time", and explain it to them. And if you can find a video or something great, because most people are
visual learners. So if you can tie that to something that will stick in their mind, that's helpful. But really what has to happen, in my opinion is that the organization needs to be willing to understand that a person is figuring out their footing, like you had mentioned. And they're going to take that time to figure out how they want to be a leader or a manager or
whatever. And once they get that, once they start getting a little bit of confidence, now is the time to say, "Okay, great, you're getting the hang hang of things", but now you need to understand your whole team over here, they need to get the hang of things, and they're looking to you for that. So how do you do that? Creative tension. We build that.
Interesting, I, I'm thinking back to my first introduction to creative tension, although it didn't use those words, at the point it was a leader in a small Alberta based financial institution, challenged all of his leadership team to create a vision for their team. And he talked extensively and and wisely about, yes, there's a full organizational vision, but you have to have a vision for your
team as well. And it's up to you to write that vision and, and create it either with your team or by yourself, whatever makes the most sense for you, but it's your job to do that. And he challenged us to do it. And and I did it and something switched. And we were this massive success within a short eight month period, and I credit him for his great coaching on saying just just do it, go go create that vision.
That's amazing. And it by telling the, the teams to build the vision, it's not coming from on high saying, "You shall be a leader in tech." Okay, great. I'm a tech guy or girl, you know, it's ownership, right. And, and that's a big part of that for emerging leaders, and young, new or even
19. Anyway, it's important for all leaders and managers to understand that getting the ownership out there, not just saying, Hey, I own this, and you need to do it, because I'm the boss, but helping everyone be an equal part of that team, whatever that happens to look like. That's how you're going to actually get that change that vision there and help people see the the tension between what the vision could be, where you are,
and how to get there. And that and then even helping people see that path along the way is important knowing that the path will very likely change. You know, but that's okay. You know, that's all part of it. It's amazing. It's fun to watch.
So true. I, I do think it's important to talk about this from a personal perspective as well. So I worked with a consulting firm at one point that taught me this concept of taking a look at attitude, effort, skills, and fulfillment. And that last one fulfillment is fascinating. And it drives so much energy. And and I have questioned for myself for quite some time now. Can you be fulfilled without this creative tension for yourself, right? Like, we're always longing for something, something
different. And I love how Senge talks about how you might get close enough to whatever your future state is where you have to move the goalposts to recreate that creative tension. And so it's a practice on the personal side that you have to be looking at it on a semi regular basis. And asking yourself is there the appropriate amount of tension, which I believe drives that fulfillment, and that fulfillment drives performance?
I couldn't agree with you more, I think, I think most people in general, are always striving for the next 'thing', whatever that happens to be. And that fulfillment is huge. And again, if I could use myself as an example, I retired from the military after 26 years, I was a 19 year old kid when I joined. And I'm 46 now and I was doing quite well, I was progressing very well in the rank structure, I was very likely going to be promoted the
next couple of years. And that meant I would have been doing even better for a bunch of different reasons. But I had a real hard look at myself. I said, Is this the path I want to follow? Because if I keep going down this route, and I enjoyed being in the military, I didn't get out because I didn't like it. I got out because I wanted to pursue other passions and other things that would have turned into a 'someday', instead
of now. For instance, I wanted to make a podcast for example, if I'd stayed in the military, that just was not going to happen. I needed to push my tension in in a different direction, I just hit my mic. So I could have that fulfillment I needed because I kind of got what I needed out of that career, I was ready to try something else. And I feel so much better, I feel lighter. The not even necessarily that there's less stress, I'd say, I'd argue there's more stress in
my life now. But it's stress that I induced on myself, and I'm okay with that. And it's stress for things that energize me and invigorate me and make me want to get out of bed in the morning and go, you know, create cool new things. So, you know, it, that tension needs to be there all the time. But it's a good thing. It can be bad. But I think the tension is a good thing.
Yeah, I love it. And I mean, congratulations on having the courage to kind of say, listen, it's time for me to to change the dynamic to go after a bigger vision or a different vision of who I want to be and, and find that creative tension for yourself. And it's, it's very similar. So I was kind of at a crossroads of having worked for a large financial institution done incredibly well. And then I knew I was leaving. And I wanted to jump in with both feet to full
time consulting. And then all of a sudden, this crazy little roll gets put under my nose. And I knew in my heart of hearts, that it had the ability to generate more energy than just doing the full time consulting, and it took a little bit of rationalization was was I, you know, failing myself by not going into full time consulting. And then when I really looked at it, I said, I want to live that passionate life. And this has the creative tension, that I need to live that passionate
life. And I I'm so grateful that I was willing to listen to myself when it came to it.
You know, that, that's fantastic. And I hope that people that are listening, or watching this podcast are understanding that having that passion is so important. And it's important for us to have the passion when we are leading, and we're managing people. But it's even more important to be able to give that passion to leaders and error to leaders to you know, our subordinates Oh, wait, I, it's direct reports.
Now, I still, I still struggle with that and bear with me, I really believe that if people can see that we are passionate about something, they will feed off of that. So even if they haven't really bought into something yet, if they can see that I'm eating it up. And I think that whatever the vision happens to be, if I believe in it, how is that not infectious in a good way? How is that not just spread around and get get
to everyone. And I think that's really important for new leaders to get that is to understand that your attitude, your outlook on the creative tension is so important, because other people are watching you, we are always being watched and viewed and judged. In a good way, I think it's important, you know, if we're gonna step one to the mantles of being in charge of whatever it happens to be, we have to accept the fact that we are going to be judged. And that's okay.
And I just want to mention one thing here, because I think it's really important. We're all different human beings. And you and I probably really get along well, because our passion comes out very similar. Like we're very expressive people know that you don't need to be that as a leader. You know, you need to be authentically you, and how you express your belief and passion might be different than how I
express it. But it's important to make sure that that belief and passion is there and then express it however it feels most natural for you and authentic for you. Right now I happen to work with a leader that comes from an engineering background, and is very logical and and opposite of me as far as expression. And yet I know in my heart of hearts through every conversation I have with him that he is absolutely passionate
about the subject. I'm just never going to hear his voice go up or down as he's talking about it. But I know it I see it. I see it in his everyday action.
You don't need to be loud. You don't need to be a spillY beer talker. You just need to be genuine and people will feel that in much the same way they'll feel your passion for whatever the vision happens to be. They'll catch it it. You don't need to be loud. I happened to be a loud guy. I happen to be a spilly beer talker. Sometimes it works to my benefit. Sometimes not, it depends on the crowd. But you're it's an excellent point. Now that Fantastic. Thank you for that.
Yeah, I love it. I love this conversation. I could talk about creative tension for an awful long time.
Oh, hello there,it's Glen, the voice over artist. And if you're hearing me, that means we're at the midpoint of this episode, do you have an idea for an episode that you feel is vital for emerging leaders leave the idea in the comment section. And if your topic is chosen, you will have the opportunity to join us as a co host during the recording session. So drop us a note. And let's talk. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you.
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So we're back. You know, we so far, we've been talking about creative tension and the need for emerging leaders and emerging managers or leaders and managers at every level, to understand what creative tension is, how important it is for themselves and for their team. But we're gonna shift gears now we're going to take a different path on the river. And we're gonna take a moment to discuss
repeatable language. I'm not gonna pretend I'm an expert on this, so I'm going to do something not normal for myself, I'm gonna stop talking and I'm gonna let Jason take over and he's gonna go in and tell us all about repeatable language.
[Jason Laughing], I don't know about that, but certainly all, all, I'll tell you my thoughts. This is something that has captured my imagination. If and when I decide to do a PhD, it's definitely going to be on repeatable language. Or if and when I write my book, it will definitely be on repeatable language. So please, you're not allowed to take anything I say and put it into a book until I've written a book. So I've been following for the last few weeks, Dr. Francis Frey from
Harvard. And I highly recommend, you know, looking at her TED talk, and she talks about trust and how to build trust, and there's a triangle within trust. And one of the pieces of it is logic. And she talks about how we can have wobbles in one of the three areas and logic is an interesting one, because people are always looking at you and going, does this make sense? You know, can I get behind this is
the logic there. And she argued that most times the logic is there, but perhaps how we communicate is not necessarily there. So I think that ties in really nicely with this, I think going back to creative tension. You know, once you have that vision, how do you get people to be walking in the same direction towards that vision fits very nicely with with repeatable
language. So I was at a conference, maybe five, six years ago, and this former Navy SEAL Rorke Denver was telling this incredible story about when he was working with a with an old rancher, and he was out there looking in the field, and he saw this animal, I think it was a coyote or something like that. And all of a sudden, how the coyote was moving changed. And the coyote hit its perfect rhythm and he called it 'harmonic gait.' And I love that
concept. And aren't we trying to find harmonic gait within a large group of people? In other words, everybody moving in that perfect rhythm, and I think repeatable language has a lot to do with helping people get there, then then I think about and you come from a military background. So when you think about marching, and and anybody that has been part of a drill team will know that when a drill team is in sync, there is
nothing better. And it's interesting, because and Simon you have to answer this, as you're marching. What's the call out? Oh, usually.
So there's left right, left, right, left, right, left as you're marching? Yeah, of course.
Yeah. And, and it's in a very repeatable way. It's usually Left, left, left, right, left, and very repeatable, to help people get into that rhythm, right and find that harmonic gait as a group. So so then let's let's take a step back and let's just look at a few here. Make America Great Again.
This is not a political podcast, but Okay, well....
Not a political podcast. I'm not even going to say whether I like or dislike doesn't matter. My argument would be, Make America Great Again, four words won an election. Why? Because people could envision and people could get behind it, people could repeat it, people could put it on a cap nicely. And it worked incredibly well. IKEA is a fascinating company, and there's a pot, not a podcast, a Netflix documentary, I think it's Netflix, it might be prime on
them right now. And the number of times that their employees said this little phrase, all the many people, so you go back to purpose. They know they're serving all of the many people. And it was repeated probably 500 times by all of the different employees. And it helped galvanize where they're going as an organization. For myself, I lucked out on one with a team of people that that worked with clients to fulfill mortgages. And I came up with the saying, flawless follow up and follow
through. And amazing again, it was probably repeated 1000 times over and over and over again, it's easy to understand, if we want to win, we have to be great at follow up and follow through, flawless follow up and follow through. And then at another company that I was working with, they were rolling out their values, and you think about how seldom people could rattle off all of the values of an organization, and one in particular, share your humanity.
It clearly captured people's hearts, and was repeated over and over and over again, and probably for a multitude of reasons. But it's repeatable language, somebody could say it again and again and again. And then I think about these four words, I have a dream. Everybody instantaneously can draw a picture from four words, right? So the question becomes, how can you take a step back and be
intentional about language? How can you take big concepts and move them down to a simple, repeatable language to help people create, you know, that rhythm, that harmonic gait, all be moving in the same direction?
You know, and not, but I have many thoughts, I'll start by saying like, this is really incredible, you know, it, it ties in perfectly to creative tension, in that when we're trying to get everyone to do a buy in to a particular vision or a statement or
whatever it happens to be. If you can get those people into that harmonic rhythm, they're, you know, more likely to move in towards that, because they get it, they can see it, you know, you use the example of the marching and I think of one of the times when a back many, many years ago when I was in the Army, and we'd be marching along, you know, 200-300 of us, and I'd be looking along the side and I could see everyone's feet moving together, forward back at the same pace and
everyone hitting the sound at the same time, and just that sound and that feeling of that unison, it's, it's hard to describe how great that felt is just like a Zen moment for people, you know, even though we were marching to go do a, you know, a big parade or something, right? It was still really amazing. And that those are the types of moments that helped helped me have a lot of buy in and helped me decide to stay to make the military a long term career, you know, so that is
incredible. And as I also think that as an emerging leader, as a new manager, any any at any level, really, you know, for people to be able to learn how to synthesize their thoughts and take a vision or a plan or whatever and busted down to small bite sizable sentence or phrase or whatever you want to use. That is that is so important to be able to pass along a message to teams or groups or whatnot, because otherwise the message will get lost. So to be able to be quick
like that, that is huge. That, that's fantastic. I love this. I'm gonna have to get the name of the doctor back from me again. So we'll put her links inside the the show notes but yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, and yeah, this Oh, I lost my thought. Isn't that terrible when you lose your thought happens like once every 10 to 12 years. Or every week?
I don't really know where I am right now.
Exactly. Like I like it's funny because I was I was in cadets and and as you were just kind of describing that marching like that feeling washed over me and I hadn't considered part of the feeling is that camaraderie of doing something togather, and so creating common language is a way to make sure that people are doing and experiencing something together and repeatable language takes care of a lot of that. And then I think, you know, your point about concision is is a
really important point. And it's hard to be concise, right? Like it takes work. It takes practice, it takes being diligent, and and I think about when I do presentations, and if you do not have the book talk, like Ted is one of my all time favorite books. And if you ever have to get up on stage and speak, you owe it to yourself to grab that book. But, one of the things that challenges you to do is create a message map. And
it's really simple. So just picture this, the top line they call a Twitter friendly headline. Why a Twitter friendly headline because Twitter only allows X number of words, I think they increase the number of words, but I think it used to only be 50 words, right? So you take your entire presentation, and bring it down to a Twitter friendly headline. And then the next thing they say is three subjects only maximum and your presentation with stories and data to backup each point.
That's it. That's all anything more than that, and you're doing your audience a disservice. So you think about how popular TED talks have become, and how often they capture your heart. While it's because they're practicing being concise, and looking at their message and going I need to get this down to as few words as possible, and likely they have some sort of repeatable language in there.
Oh, for sure they do. And now that you've mentioned this, I'm going to go back and look at some TED Talks I've watched and listened to. And listen for that repeatable language guaranteed is there you know, I think of when I was in the infantry, was' to close with by there by night, regardless of season weather or terrain'. So, a little sidebar here, during the editing of the episode, I had a super cringe
moment. And that was because I heard myself proudly say the role of the infantry soldier and how ingrained it was as a part of my psyche. But when I heard it, I realized that I missed a portion of the role. So, here is the proper 1995 version of the role of the infanteer, and that is, "To close with and destroy the enemy by day or by night, regardless of season weather or terrain".
My bad, you know, you know, I haven't been in the infantry in 21 years 22 now, and yet, I still remember that I cannot tell you what the description of my trade in the Air Force was, I have no idea. I know what it is. But I guarantee it's probably three pages long. But that one little phrase, but what what I did in the infantry, it's summed up perfectly what we were meant to do. And it stuck with me
forever, you know? Because that's was the way back then, to make sure we all understood what our role had to be in that term was pushed into us. I probably said it 50 times a day when I was in Bible school, learning how to become an infantry soldier, because it was jammed down our throat to remind us how we need to do what we're going to do and to get the buy in.
It's huge. How crazy is that? That 20 some years later, like you still remember it. That's crazy. Now you were talking really fast. So say it again slowly, because I'm interested to hear what it actually was.
Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's good to know, I appreciate you letting me know that the the the role of the infanteer was to close with by their by night, regardless of season weather or terrain. Annnndddd.... There I am doing it a second time. And it's funny, because I even remember in the recording session, as I was saying the role that something sounded off. But it took the editing to catch the mistake. My deepest apologies to anyone I may have offended. You know what? Let's get back to the show.
That's so cool. And what and what did it mean to you like, like so and actually want to take a step back? Did you understand what it meant to you at the time? Like, were you cognitively aware of what it meant? Or were you just repeating it?
I think, I think that in the beginning, I thought I understood what it meant by cuz I was at 19 year old punk. But I didn't really get it because I was you know, there was so much going on. It was crazy long days and the pressure of everything but our instructors kept yelling I remember there we they would yell that at us. You want to be an infantry you need to close with and destroy the enemy. You can't do that in your barracks, you need to go into the field and learn how to shoot a rifle.
So let's go you know, so they use that and they would refer to it back and forth and back Back and forth in time. And again, you want to you want to kill the enemy, you need to know how to do that during the day and during the night. Let's go. And it was it was one of those things. But looking back at it now, years later, now I'll even say I get it. Okay, this is why they were doing that I just would never have thought to you the term repeatable language with it.
Yeah. So I love what we just stumbled upon by complete accident here is repeatable language on its own is not enough. The leader needs a deep understanding of the full picture and they need those ancillary sentences to explain and teach along the way. Right. So it sounds like like, you know, the people you reported to at the time, had the ability to say, part of the repeatable language and go, this is what it
means. Right? And and same with flawless follow up follow through, you can actually separate those two pieces and talk about, well, what follow up look like? What's follow through look like? How are they different? How are they the same? And why is it important, right?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I was very lucky, I had a very, very strong Sergeant who was not strong, you know, in that he was very good at his job, but strong in that he also wanted to make us the best soldiers that we could be. And but not just, you know, for lack of a better term brain dead followers, he wanted people that were going to be able to make real decisions very early on in their career. And
that was important. And how he they chose to do that was by making sure we understood what it meant to be an infantry soldier, and, and why and what our role was. So that was important. And I i've never lost sight of that. I was very, very lucky.
Yeah, I love it. It sounds it sounds like, again, who you reported to had a very clear vision of where he wanted to take you to and that, in itself, created that energy within creative tension. Right? He wanted you to be the best, you could be at what you were doing.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I love how you tie this back to creative tension because leaders these days, they just need to understand it's, not just, they, they need to understand how they can push their people and need to know when they need to know the distance, but they need to understand that if you can use anyone can use that repeatable language, to help them you know, help with that vision and get the that create that tension, to help them get to where they need
to go. That is huge. That's fantastic. I'm going to be reading more on this for sure. And thank you so much for talking about that. That's incredible.
Oh, my pleasure. It's a fun topic. And again, I can't wait to write my book so that you can read my book.
I'm going to be able to say I know Jason, so I'm not above that. I will do that all the time. So here we go. I'll name drop in restaurants.
Can you imagine? Y'all I got into this great restaurant because I mentioned somebody's book. I don't think so.
Yeah, well, like I could dream. I'm gonna I'm gonna work for it. You need to write that book. No pressure.
I love it. I love it. I love it.
Fantastic. Well, listen, I think I think we've talked about creative tension and how, you know, leaders can use that to help themselves and help their people moving forward. And we've talked about repeatable language, and how that unto itself is important.
But how that can be tied into creative tension, and how all of these topics together can hopefully help, you know, emerging leaders, maybe help themselves move along a little bit better and have a better idea of how they can inspire and guide the path for their teams. That's my thought in the matter.
Yeah, love it. And, and I'll just finished by saying, you know, leadership is a practice. And we always have to be honing it and be brave enough to carve out time to think about your leadership practice. And two pieces of it are repeatable language and finding that creative tension.
If you're okay with it. We're going to do the lightning round. It's it's five short questions, not that you really have a choice in the matter, but you know, you get the idea.
I'm game Let's do this. Let's do this.
Alright, So question number one. As a leader, what do you consider to be your greatest strength?
I'll go back to one of my core values, which is energy and, and I look at energy from multiple perspectives. So there's raw energy and you and I talked about that earlier. were both very high energy people and that's cool. But I also have honed my ability to sense energy and others and when it goes up or down, and then care enough to ask questions. So it's energy.
Question number two, cup half full or cup half empty.
Oh, so half full, like, there's no, I can't help myself. And, and I will argue that at times, you know, to my detriment, I do believe a leader has to make sure that they are looking at both sides of the equation and so if you are only optimistic without looking at the risks, that's a challenge to your leadership style overall but, I get up every morning, I jump out of bed, and I can't wait to live life. So definitely half-full.
Fantastic. That's a great way to say you can't always be half-full or you can, you can always be half-full, but you need to be able to see that there's another half of a cup.
Yeah. Agree.
Excellent. Excellent. Question number three, if you could ask a leadership advice from any leader alive or dead? Who would it be? And of course, what is the question?
Oh, man, this is a tough one.
Yeah. Watch the lightning round.
So yeah, yeah. So So Jack Welch was the CEO of GE, and he wrote, what's probably my favorite book, "Straight from the Gut", and at a point he was called Neutron Jack, because he had let go of a good portion of GE. And I think I'd love to ask him, knowing what he knows now. What have you done anything different during that timeframe? And very specifically, when it comes to people, and releasing people from from work?
Okay, interesting. Thank you. Question number four, in one word, describe your feelings the first time you were in the role as the leader.
Energized.
Alright. And the final question in one minute, describe what you believe is the most important idea or concept for a new leader to consider as they take on their role.
I'm going to say humility, because from humility, comes confidence in the end. And it creates the ability for you to ask the right questions of yourself and of others, and, and I will say this is from personal experience. If I think about my first 10 to 15 years as a leader, I was probably a ego driven leader. And I learned how to be a humble leader after losing my brother, and, and that just jolts you into a new way of thinking and examining what's important in life. And I, I really understood
that I was there to serve. And the only way I can serve is if I approach it with humility.
Fantastic, fantastic. Thank you so much for that. That's the lightning round. It wasn't I don't thin....
it was always pretty exciting.
Right on. Well, I mean, listen, Jason, you know, I just want to thank you so much for coming out. And I really appreciate the time, you know, I know you're very busy. Lots of kids, you have lots of things going on. But you know, we we've had we've discussed some really important topics and and you really brought a way of understanding to people that is going to energize them to go and energize their people. And
that's incredible. That's something you know, most people wish they had, you just have it just flows out of you. It's just amazing. It's just natural. It's incredible to watch.
Thanks so much, Simon, I had a blast. Any hour I get to spend with you is an hour well spent.
Thanks a lot. I'm gonna blush a little bit myself. But I always love chatting with you. It's always a win for sure. That's a wrap from the front. In this episode, we learned about creative tension and the power of knowing when we need to push and when we need to pull to get the most creativity out of each team member. We also talked about the importance of repeatable language, and how using this language can help emerging leaders and emerging managers have a lasting positive
effect on the whole team. Thanks for tuning in. And we'll see you
A Podcast From the Front.
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