Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Multiple of the four stars that I talked with said the number one job, the primary job.

First thing that you should do as a leader is to identify and train your replacement.

Real leaders build leaders.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify, and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Dr.

Tom Collins, who is a pediatric cardiologist.

He is a leadership expert who has interviewed over 50 four-star generals.

He is responsible for leading a medical group in the military and has so much more to talk to us today about how leadership strategies in the military can also be applied in the medical field and so much more.

And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show.

Hi, Tom.

Hello, Roberta.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

My absolute pleasure.

Welcome.

I'm excited that you've joined us as well.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Sure.

As you said, I'm a pediatric cardiologist, and I'm vice chair of Faculty and Academic Affairs at University of Kentucky.

And I've done a lot of leadership research and published papers on that.

And as you mentioned, I've interviewed over 54-star military officers, and from that derived a new framework for leadership.

That includes communication as part of it.

And that's part of my forthcoming book called The Four Stars of Leadership.

Right.

Well, we're going to talk about the framework as well.

Now, what made you decide to do this research on leadership when most doctors, they will just focus on, I'm a cardiologist.

It's enough work, and you have enough on your plate doing that as it is.

Yeah, people ask me that question a lot.

And when I was earlier in my career, people projected onto me that I would be taking bigger leadership roles as I moved along.

And so as I thought about that, I thought about the responsibility of that.

I decided that if that was to be true, I didn't know that was to be true or not, but if it was to be true, then I would want to be the best leader I could be.

And so I really started dedicating time and energy to my leadership and development personally.

That led to undertaking a master's degree in leadership.

And during that time, I've been in the military in the past, and I was reading all these books and studying and learning.

And I thought the book I would love to read would be the wisdom, leadership wisdom of four-star generals and admirals.

But that book didn't exist.

And since I do research and write scientific papers and things, I thought, well, it's my responsibility to do it.

So I went about the process of trying to get in touch with four-star generals and admirals, and that was very difficult, but I was able to do it through getting one and then two, and then it sort of snowballed over time until I got to 51.

I interviewed them all and asked them all the same four questions, and recorded all that and analyzed it and all this sort of stuff.

But it really came from this desire to be a better leader myself, and to see from the people that I think are arguably the best group of leaders that we have, what would they say are the most important things that you need to know to be a great leader?

Right.

It's interesting you say that they are arguably one of the best leaders, because I had a guest, I think more than a year ago, he had retired from the military as well, and he lectures leadership in a university in Colorado.

And he says when he retired, one of the jobs he applied for, they said to him, why are you seeking a leadership position?

There's no leadership in the military.

Yeah.

Why do you think that people have that perception, especially if they're not in the military, that there's no leadership in the military?

What I'd like to say with regards to that sort of idea is those kind of people know very little about the military and even less about leadership.

What people think of when they think of the military, most of the people who hold that belief have no experience with the military.

And the only information they have when it comes to military and leadership is some movie that Hollywood has taken.

And it's in the middle of some battle and somebody's screaming, do X, Y, or Z, right?

And they don't realize that all that it took to get to the point where if we're working together and I tell you to do something that's life-threatening and you're willing to do it, it's not because I could say, we're going to court-martial you or put you in prison or whatever, okay, because fundamentally that's a stupid construct.

But a lot of people hold it, right?

So the way I would say it is, and I have this in my book, in the introduction, the sort of mental exercise.

Imagine that we are working together, okay?

And we're in a building and I'm your leader.

And I say, Roberta, I need you to deliver this letter to the building across the street.

And there are people on the nearby buildings who are trained to kill other people with weapons, right?

And they've got their weapons trained on that street, and they've been ordered to shoot anybody that crosses it.

Right.

And I hand you this letter and I say, take it over to that building over there.

How afraid of me would you have to be or anything that I would do to you that you would voluntarily walk across the street to deliver the letter knowing that there are people who are going to be trained to kill you who are going to be shooting at you.

Like that would be insane, right?

Fundamentally, that's what the military, if it was just what people think, that's what it would be.

It would just be that you're so insane that you would be willing to do that because you're afraid I might put you in jail.

But that's not why you do it.

That's not why anybody does it.

They do it because they have faith and allegiance to the leader.

They trust that person has their best interest and that they're going to do everything they can to get them home safely, that they believe in the mission, the cause, and they're willing to fight for those people that are at their right or their left.

You know, they're comrades in arms.

They have these relationships that mean something more to them that they're worth fighting for.

And so, that is leadership, to be able to construct that and to build that from nothing, so that people are willing to do those things, that takes a level of leadership that is seldom achieved in other domains.

Nobody working at Microsoft is willing to give their life for the new release of the operating system or whatever.

That doesn't happen, right?

Right.

But people storming the beaches of Normandy or whatever it may be, it's not because they're afraid that somebody is going to kick them in the rear end and throw them in jail.

But that's what people in the general public think.

They don't know what leadership really is.

And the reality is, I've done two studies that were similar.

I used to be on faculty at Stanford in the School of Medicine, and I did a study there where I interviewed 40 full professors in the School of Medicine.

I asked them, what does it take to be successful?

And a lot of them talked about leadership.

And then I had, at the same time, I'm doing this work with the four-star generals, and my framework was starting to come into place.

And I was starting to get all these signals about what are the really important things.

And it turns out that the doctors in academic medicine, when you look at what they talked about with regard to leadership, and what the four-star generals talked about, they lined up perfectly.

Yeah.

So even though those people think the military leadership wouldn't work in medicine, they're talking about the same thing that the four-star generals talked about.

Because leadership fundamentally is leadership.

It's just happening in a certain context.

And I think the confusion also with regards to that is, as you said, the movies show us this.

The general is just screaming and say, sit, stand, walk.

And in corporate, we always say, you know, we're more collaborative.

We ask for ideas.

In the military, it seems like you just get an instruction and you carry it out.

You don't think twice.

It's almost like there's no room to explore whether there's a different way in which it can be done purely because of the environment, because of the domain.

Yeah, I would say that, again, it's in those moments, right?

When bullets are flying, bombs are exploding, there's no time to stop and discuss whether this is the right decision, right?

Like a decision has to be made and acted on in a second.

It's all that leadership that's occurred up to that point.

And all those four stars will tell you, they would gather around the table and they would say, okay, this is your time to tell me, are we wrong here?

Do we need to do something else?

Do we need to be going a different direction?

What do you think?

But once the decision is made, everybody's going to get behind it.

Right.

And those are the conversations that aren't shown in Hollywood.

So it's all that stuff that comes before.

That's where the leadership is.

In those moments, it's not leadership per se.

In those moments where it's all hell, fire and brimstone and all that, that's not necessarily leadership in the sense that we're talking about.

It's execution.

Leadership is built up before the high stakes environment, which then brings the question, when you were doing this research on leadership, what are some of the characteristics a leader should have in order to be effective in those high stress situations?

Yeah.

So when we talk about the things that came out in my research, there were four big ideas, okay?

Four big buckets where these things fit.

And I call them the four stars of leadership, and they all start with C.

One of them is at the heart of this podcast, but first is character, and then second is competence, caring, and communication.

So if you're going to be an excellent leader, you have to have all of those things.

Character is the basis for trust.

If people don't trust you, they will not follow you.

You will not be effective as a leader.

So you have to have character, and character is built of these different virtues, whether it's integrity, honor, truthfulness, compassion, these sorts of things.

Competence, nobody wants to follow an idiot, right?

Of course not.

Yeah, you want to know that the person who's leading you has some idea what they're doing, that we're going to get successfully to the goal.

And so you have to know what you're doing.

Third, caring, which for some people, that they would be surprised that that would come out of the military context.

But again, that's because they don't understand the military.

But caring is a big part of it.

Again, because that gets to trust.

If you know somebody doesn't care about you, you won't trust them, you're not going to follow them.

But if they care about you as a person, what you bring to the table, then that's going to create a relationship that allows them to influence you.

Right?

And the communication, it doesn't matter how great you are with all these other things.

If you can't communicate with somebody, you're not going to be able to influence them to achieve a common goal, which is fundamentally, which is what leadership is.

So it's those four things, those four big concepts that are brought to bear in exceptional leadership.

So character, competence, caring and communication.

Yeah.

So when someone in the military gets promoted to be in a leadership position, do the seniors in that department, do they recognize those characteristics in them?

How do you display those leadership qualities before you become a leader so that they recognize that, wait a minute, Tom is ready to lead?

It's a process.

In the military, you're always training your replacement or you should be, because you never know when, like in battle, you're like to be out, right?

And somebody else needs to step into that role.

So everybody has to be trained as a leader.

So everybody's going through this process of trying to develop those things.

Some people make it, not very many, like very few make it to a four star level.

Okay?

Very few make it.

A lot don't, because they don't develop those things.

So I think it's a process of giving people an opportunity to develop and grow and learn.

And those who have it keep moving forward.

And those who don't end up either stuck at the level where they are, or they eventually get out of the military.

That's interesting when I think about corporate, because usually corporate means, yes, we do encourage those in leadership positions to train your replacement, which means develop your people.

But sometimes there's this ego or fear of, I don't want to be replaced, I'm comfortable here, and I want to be here till I retire.

And so they don't develop their people.

They don't see the benefit of developing their team members to replace them.

They don't see it as if I develop Tom, that means I'll also get to the next level.

Whereas in the military, it's literally encouraged because something could happen.

Yeah.

I mean, multiple of the four stars that I talked with said the number one job, the primary job, first thing that you should do as a leader is to identify and train your replacement.

Real leaders build leaders.

So you can identify somebody, if they're in it, as a real leader who's trying to, for the sake of the mission, for the sake of the organization, for whatever it is that you're trying to achieve as a group of people, you can identify if they're a real leader or not by the fact of whether or not they're training somebody to replace them.

If they're not, then it's about them.

Their leadership is about prestige or honor, power, money, something.

But the great leaders are trying to work themselves out of a job.

It's like being a great parent.

Your goal as a parent is to make yourself useless.

Give your kids wings so that they can lead themselves in your absence.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

And so it's the same with being a leader.

So those people that cling tightly to their role as a leader, their leadership role, because I really try to differentiate leaders from people in leadership roles or administrative roles in it.

But those people who are just clinging on for dear life to that role, they're really not very good leaders because it's about them.

And they don't get the, let's say, the outcome or the results they could have gotten had they opened up the environment to be more, let's create future leaders in this team.

Right.

Because they're not getting the most out of their people.

Because people know when somebody is about themselves, right, when it's all about what they're doing and their honor and prestige and power, people know that.

And as a result, they hold back.

Right.

If I have a great idea, but I know that you're all about you, I'm not going to share that great idea because you'll take all the credit.

You'll get all the rewards and I'll be left like with nothing.

Right.

Like we know that that happens so often.

So people withhold that.

Whereas if you're a great leader and people are comfortable, they have psychological safety to be able to share those things and know that they'll get the credit for it, then all these great ideas come to the top.

And that's when the magic happens.

That's when you're tapping into all this creative capability in your team.

So when you are in the military and you are training these future leaders to replace you, because you talk about mentorship, does that mean that you are constantly mentoring some of those in your team?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's part and parcel to being in a leadership role and training and replacement is absolutely mentoring people.

And I remember General Ed Rice, I believe it was, or it may have been General Darren McDew, but who said, mentor everybody, sponsor a few.

You know, and so their outlook was, everybody that you can, try to build them up, but be really selective who you say, this is my person, this is the person I put all my money on.

Because if you do that and they fail, then suddenly you lose credibility.

So you got to keep that and identify the people who are really the people that you know are going to be great.

Try to help everybody be great, but recognize that everybody, that's the nature of humanity.

Only a few can be great.

You have to identify those.

We are equal but not equal in how we execute.

Now, especially in that situation as well, when you are mentoring, what are some of the lessons that the four-star generals said they learned from being leaders and that they were able to pass on to those that they were mentoring?

Yeah, so I think when it comes to, in my analysis of all of the different big ideas and concepts, I talk about those four big ones, right, the four C's, but I think it's something like 156 different individual lessons, and really significant leadership ideas that came out of this work.

So there are tons of them.

Already, I've basically written two books out of this stuff, and there are going to be more to follow, okay?

So there are just so many big ideas, and it ranges all over the place.

So it's hard to pick one, right, or two, or three, other than those four big buckets, under which all of the ideas really fit, because it's all contextual.

When you're mentoring somebody, it's, where are they in this moment, and how can you impact them in a significant way?

So, Admiral Jim Loy, he was the commandant of the United States Coast Guard, which means he was the highest ranking officer in the Coast Guard.

And for a short while, he was the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

And so he talked about when he first graduated from the Coast Guard Academy, this was back in the maybe early 60s or something.

At that time, we didn't have satellites, and airplanes flying from Europe to the US and back and forth, didn't have all the GPS and the ways to track where they were.

And so the Coast Guard would monitor, they would be in these, what were called quadrants in the North Atlantic, off the eastern seaboard.

Okay.

And they would just be going back.

These quadrants were 100 miles, 100 nautical miles by 100 nautical miles.

So really big space of water.

And they're just going back and forth and back and forth and back, sending signals up to the planes as they flew from Europe to the US and back.

Okay.

So that the planes could navigate and know where they were.

And I don't know if you've ever seen the movie A Perfect Storm.

Okay.

But this movie came out.

So it's Josh Clooney.

Right.

And so these gigantic waves and they're out there.

Right.

That was what he was in back then.

Again, he's just out of the Coast Guard Academy.

So brand new, maybe like a few months into this.

And they've been in this maelstrom, just terrible storm, 60 foot waves for like three days straight.

You know, going back and forth and back and forth.

And the captain had been on the bridge the whole time.

72 hours straight, Captain Forrester was sitting on the bridge, making sure everything was going okay.

He was called Ensign Loy at the time.

He's just as junior as it can be, but he's the guy steering the boat at that point.

And they get down to the end of this quadrant, and they have to turn really rapidly.

Because if you don't turn rapidly and the wave comes, you roll over and everybody dies, is the short of it.

So it's got to be perfect.

It's got to be exact.

And he gets to the end of the quadrant, and he gives the command, like left aft full or whatever it is, because you got two propellers.

So you turn one to go in reverse, and the other to forward, and it will flip the boat around.

And he put his hand on the wrong telegraph, the wrong throttle.

So he was about to do exactly the wrong thing, which would have killed them all.

And he put his hand down, and he just felt the hand grab his and move it over to the correct one.

The captain saw his hand on the wrong thing, saw that he was about to kill everybody, and just moved his hand over.

And he didn't say a word.

He could have blasted him.

He could have just laid waste to him right there.

He could have kicked him off the bridge.

He could have done all sorts of things.

He could have ruined his career.

He didn't say a word.

And Admiral Loy said, I learned some stuff about leadership that night.

Captain Forrester treated him like a human being, recognized that he had made a mistake.

He learned from it.

He said, I think about that almost every day.

It's been 60 years.

60 plus years, you know, and he's thinking about that every day, right?

You know, a lot of times we think of mentoring as like, okay, we're going to sit down and I'm going to lay out this thing or that thing.

But a lot of times, it's that sort of thing, right?

It's in that moment, those really intense crucible moments showing people, this is how you do it.

And so that's an example that I can think of.

And this guy rose to the highest point in the Coast Guard, but he still remembered being Ensign Loy screwing it up royally, or almost screwing it up royally in the North Atlantic back then.

And the captain kicked in and saved the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And still let him keep driving.

I mean, nobody else on the bridge had any idea.

That's so powerful.

Because I think a lot of the time, as you were saying earlier, in high stakes environment, when there's pressure, when there's stress, that's where real leadership kicks in.

Yeah.

And he did that after being awake for 72 hours.

Wow.

You know, like when I was in medical training, I might have to go 40-something hours without sleep.

I was not friendly.

I was not happy.

So the idea of almost dying and just being able to do that, like that's just so much about that person.

Oh, yes.

And speaking of the medical industry, so when it comes to leadership, if you can just summarize for us, because we think of, oh, okay, everybody went to medical school.

They know what they're doing.

They just take care of patients.

But what's the leadership dynamic like?

I'm not usually too friendly to what physicians have done with regard to leadership, honestly.

I think that our health care system in the United States, you know, this is my opinion, but a lot of the problems that we have with our health care system in the United States date back to a time when physicians abdicated their responsibility to be leaders, and they turned it over to people who don't know anything about medicine and said, you guys take control of it.

We're just going to see patients and make money or whatever.

And now we've got this system that was created by people who don't know anything about medicine, and it's out of control and it doesn't work very well.

And so I think that we've suffered in medicine from a lack of leadership, and more and more we're imposing management, and the two are very different.

I've actually done research on leadership management and differentiating the two, published a paper on that, but they're different.

And so most of what we have in medicine is management.

We are woefully lacking when it comes to leadership, and I think that's the issues that we face.

But when you look at what is good leadership, again, going back to that paper I did at Stanford, good leadership is good leadership.

It's just that we may not have a lot of people who necessarily know how to do it, and they haven't been trained to do it.

I mean, the reality is, when you look at the medical system in the United States for physicians, they're rewarded to be individual performers.

And that's not how you make leaders.

Leaders are made in teams, knowing how to work with other people, right?

So to get into a good college, you have to be really good in high school.

So you got to be this big top performer in high school.

And then you go to college, and you got to beat everybody else so that you're the top in college.

And then you go to medical school.

It's just this constant iteration of you have to be a single performer, and it's about you doing great, right?

And suddenly, you get into the medical environment when you're taking care of patients and seeing patients as like on an inpatient team, and you're working with a team, and suddenly, you're supposed to be operating in a team environment.

And it's new to you.

Yeah, right.

And nobody's telling you how to do it.

They just expect you to do it, right?

And then suddenly, you're a resident who's supposed to be leading the interns and the medical students, and nobody teaches you how to be a leader.

In fact, in the UK, they several years ago instituted leadership development training in medical training.

That was a part of it.

And so it's still a part of it.

My hope is in the future, and that's one of the big crazy goals I have for my career, is that leadership will be a part of what we do in training doctors.

It's funny that you raise that because I'm sure that you know what's been going on with people's gripe with the health care system in the US right now.

With the United Health Care CEO's murder, and everybody just saying, something needs to change.

Do you think that was what mainly contributed to the situation that is in right now?

Yeah, so that if we rewind, like I was saying, back into the 50s, 60s, 70s, I mean, there are these graphs that show the number of physicians versus the number of administrators over time.

It's insane.

I want to say it's somewhere like 2600% increase in administrators with like a 50% increase in physicians.

Who do the actual job.

Right.

Right.

Exactly.

And the cost of health care follows that line with the number of administrators.

So we've got all these people who are doing all this non-medical stuff.

And then you've got these third-party payers who are making insane amounts of money and doing everything they can to keep patients from getting care, right?

They institute these measures to say automatically, if somebody tries to make a claim, deny it.

There are a number of health care insurers.

That's their policy.

Deny the first claim.

Doesn't matter what it is.

Deny it.

And then people got to jump through hoops and submit it again, and then maybe they'll approve it or whatever.

But they figure if they put up these roadblocks, people get tired of trying to get their stuff paid for and give up.

While still paying the monthly insurance premiums.

Right.

Exactly.

And that's why you have people who are CEOs of insurance companies who are multi-millionaires.

And they are not doctors or nurses.

Right.

Here's the thing.

It's so interesting to me.

I come from what you would call a third world country, South Africa, and it's very clear for us.

Let me just give an example.

One of them is Discovery Health Insurance Company.

They will say, if you sign up, if you have a pre-existing condition like asthma, my brother's asthmatic or something like that, for the first three to six months, you're not going to cover you for asthma-related incidents at the hospital.

But after six months, then he's covered as long as he pays his premium.

So after six months, something happens, brother is an asthmatic, we take him to hospital, they cover it.

They tell you upfront what they're going to deny you for, so that you know before you even sign up.

And then once that period is over, life is back to normal.

You're covered as long as you declare as well.

I mean, there's some transparency in that.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to understand how do they go on here in America for so long denying people, and what are the justifications for that?

Do you know upfront before signing up for that health care insurance company, that these are the five reasons they will deny me?

So let me declare this upfront as well.

Yeah.

I mean, I think from what I've seen, and thankfully my family is most healthy and doesn't have a lot of chronic problems, things.

We have to get seen now and then or whatever, right?

And being in health care, usually the universities that I work for have a plan.

But it's all marketing, right?

Like, my mom, she's got like health care, like mother-in-law, Medicare, and all that sort of stuff.

And you read these things, and it's like all the great things they'll do for you.

They're trying to convince you that you should take their plan.

It's a different approach, right?

It's like, you're going to be the healthiest ever, and we'll take care of everything.

And then there's fine print somewhere that says, well, maybe not.

So it's a different thing here, I think, than what your brother's experience.

Yeah, it does.

And hopefully, with people like you, we can have at least, and I hope you're not just one.

Hopefully, there's more that say, wait a minute, something needs to change.

And it's more the medical practitioners who run the show rather than the administrators, as you said.

Yeah, I will say there are a lot of people, a lot of physicians across the country who are doing their absolute best to do right by our patients, in addition to try to improve the situation beyond one patient visit or whatever.

But on a larger scale, we have so many people who are advocating state levels at the federal level to try to make an impact.

It is hard when the people that make the laws are getting a big bunch of money from lobbyists to keep things the way they are.

So there's that tension.

But absolutely, I have so many colleagues across the country who went into medicine for the same reason that I did, to try to help people be healthy and live better lives.

And they are tireless in pursuing that.

They do it through advocacy and that sort of thing.

I'm doing it because through trying to help people be better leaders so that we can lead and make a difference.

Because advocacy is one of the main leadership traits, I should say, to actually take the initiative to do what you can in your sphere of influence, to drive change for the better.

So yes, very much necessary.

Any last words for anyone who's thinking, I want my daily living or my conduct to demonstrate and develop these leadership qualities so that I also can not just be in a leadership role, but actually demonstrate that I am a leader in character, competence, caring, and communication.

Yeah.

Fundamentally, just as you said, it's hitting on those four things.

If you can every day be a little bit better.

Admiral Jim Hogg, who just passed away at the beginning of this month, he was the oldest four-star of that interview.

And he said every night when he got finished with the day, he would say, was I better or was I worse today?

Because it was up to him.

And his goal was always to be better at the end of that day than he was the day before.

And so I think that if we're going to be leaders of character, competence, caring, communication, it's about that.

It's not about being a super leader by tomorrow.

It's about those incremental changes.

I'm going to be a person of character.

I am going to tell the truth.

Some people have difficulty with that, right?

I'm going to tell the truth every time.

You know, and you try and do and you do and then you fail.

Get up and you do it again.

Truth and truth and truth and you work on that.

Ben Franklin would do that.

He would identify one thing.

And for six weeks, he would focus on that one thing till he got it down.

And then he would find the next thing.

And he would do that over and over and over.

And I think if we're intentional like that, then we will get better.

We will be better leaders.

So I would encourage everybody.

Think about it like that.

This is a marathon.

This is comrades, right?

Yes.

In South Africa.

Yes, comrades, marathon.

Yes.

Yeah.

So this is a long haul.

We're not in it for the sprint.

We're in it for the long haul.

Let's do this day in, day out.

We get a little bit better every day.

You'll see effects that over the long haul will make an enormous impact.

And here's one thing, speaking of the movies giving us a very different idea of what the military is.

I'm curious as to how receptive military leaders, how receptive are they to feedback, especially if the feedback is not positive or flattering from their support?

Well, I think that it gets to the level, if you will, of leaders.

I interviewed the very best.

The people that get to be the four star leaders, not all of them, but almost everyone are the most exceptional people you will meet.

I mean, phenomenal people.

And they almost all are receptive to feedback because they know that that's how they can get better.

Because we only see from our perspective.

And if we want to be really great leaders, we have to take in as much perspective.

We have to open the aperture as much as we can to see as widely as we can.

And the easiest way to do that is to ask the people we're working with, hey, what's your perspective on this?

So most of them are really receptive to it.

If it's framed right, I mean, if you come at it like a jerk or something, not many people are receptive.

But for most of them, yeah.

Yeah.

Because you should also communicate in a way that will make the next person be receptive to what you have to say, of course.

Yeah.

Any last words of wisdom, Tom?

Anything I haven't asked you, you were hoping to share with our listeners today?

No.

I mean, Roberta has been really fun.

One thing I would say is, you know, if leadership specifically is something that your listeners are really looking to learn more about, I host a podcast myself.

It's called The Science of Leadership.

You know, we do weekly podcasts, and I have had the opportunity to bring back onto my show a number of these four-star generals so that they can tell their stories themselves, in addition to CEOs of companies and presidents of universities and all these sorts of things.

So I would say to anybody out there who's looking to learn more about leadership, check out our podcast.

The other thing is, I really appreciate what you're doing here with your podcast.

I think it's highly important, and it's really a pleasure to get to talk with you.

Such a pleasure for me as well.

Thank you so much for being here.

The Science of Leadership by Dr.

Tom Collins.

It's a podcast you should tune into, and we're looking forward to your book, The Four Stars of Leadership.

When is it coming out?

My hope is that it's going to be out this calendar year.

I'm actually hoping for the summer.

It's going through editing right now.

Okay.

Awesome.

We'll stay tuned.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Tom Collins.

Pediatric cardiologist who led a medical group in the military and interviewed over 50 four-star generals.

Thanks, Roberta.

My absolute pleasure.

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