Speaking and Communicating Podcast

But in order to be a person of impact for your team, you have to lead yourself.

You have to be willing and able to say, what got me here isn't going to get me to the next level.

I don't know all the answers.

The number one thing you have to do is recognize what are my blind spots that I must overcome so that I can influence and impact others positively.

Because if I don't, I'm just gonna be a tyrant.

I'm just gonna be a dictator.

And those are very different.

Those are not leaders.

Those are not 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 our guest today, joining us from North Carolina.

His name is Dusty Holcomb.

He's an ex-CEO, executive coach for leaders, who helps us with creating leaders who have value, leading with purpose and impact.

He's a five-time Ironman champ and tells us that self-leadership comes first.

And we're going to talk more about that.

But before I get into that, please help me welcome Dusty.

Hi, Dusty.

Hello.

Thank you so much, Roberta.

I'm excited.

Any time we're talking about improving ourselves and our communication, we are automatically talking about improving our capability to lead others.

So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Welcome.

And I'm excited that you're here as well.

I know that we beat this drum so often.

Communication, communication.

Why is communication such a key factor in us focusing on it, on improving ourselves in it?

You know, it's so interesting, and we do talk about it all the time, but most of the time, I think we talk about communication as something we do to someone.

And instead, it's what we do for someone.

When we are good at communicating, we are serving them.

Like, the number one rule of communication is this is not about you.

And I think that that's where many people get it wrong.

And we think about this thing as we have to do a better job communicating, which means pushing out, but no, it's so much more than that.

It's about connecting so that we can create impact, so that we can create change.

And that's what effective communicators do.

They connect, they create impact, and they influence change.

It's something we talk about all the time, but there's a lot of people that talk about it, and there's not a lot of people that do it and do it well.

And I'm sure all of us are working progress in it as well.

Now, you've been working for almost three decades in this field.

What have you noticed as some of the evolving ideas when it comes to communication and then how it relates to becoming a great leader?

You know, evolving.

When I started my career, the idea of servant leadership and serving others through leadership was really in its infancy or it was very small.

And now people talk about it a lot.

But when it comes to communication, there are some things that have changed, but there's a lot that hasn't.

We still think about going from top down and we're pushing messages on to people.

And instead, we have to be thinking about sitting down and getting side by side.

The metaphor that I like to use when we're communicating, and I always talk about this with teams that I teach and that I lead, we don't need to be sitting across the desk.

And that's the way most people think about communication.

They think about it as being across from someone, and they're going back and forth.

And the metaphor that I like to think about is, how do you sit next to someone?

Which means you're on their side, seeing what they see, and understanding what it is that's important to them.

So I think that that's been an evolution in communication.

We see more and more people starting to think about communication in that way, but it's still very much top-down and hierarchy driven.

And I can't think of a single leadership survey that I've ever done in any organization, whether it's well run or not, where the employees and team members didn't say they want more communication.

You just can't do enough of it.

And so when we do, as leaders, think that we're done with communication, we're probably just getting started.

Speaking of sitting across the table versus next to each other, but isn't that literally how it's always been done?

I mean, when you think about boardroom meetings, whether it's the entire team with the leader or just you, because you need to address something with one person in the team, that's just normal that the boss is going to be at the top of the table, and then you sit on the side.

How often do we see that?

Yeah, it is the normal way.

But the question is, just because it's always been done that way, doesn't mean it's the best way.

One of the challenges that I've always subscribed to, and my old leadership teams, used to know that we were going to have a one-to-one meeting, and it didn't involve somebody showing something on a technology platform.

We were going on a walk, and we were going to walk and talk.

We were going to get out of that boss subordinate role, and we were just going to be two people next to each other having a conversation.

And those are the best one-to-ones.

Those are the best conversations.

And I would argue or even challenge folks to shift their thinking.

Instead of getting in a relationship where it's back and forth, where it's a volley, where it's across the table, just go for a walk.

There's a reason that you meet friends for coffee, and you have a boss relationship in an office.

Why do they have to be different?

Why can't you change that environment?

Go for a walk, go for coffee, go for a meal, especially with difficult conversations.

But get away from that old paradigm, just because it's always been done that way doesn't mean it's best.

And I must say, in over 300 episodes, we've never had any leadership coach suggest a walk.

So thank you for that.

Hopefully, that's something some of our listeners can implement.

Because I think more than anything, it takes away the barrier, the corporate bureaucracy.

It's just two friends walking and having a chat.

Yeah, and I love the way you just said this.

It's two people.

I mean, because at the end of the day, we have roles, we have responsibilities, we have deliverables, we all have these things.

But we're humans first.

We are people.

We have different perspectives and backgrounds and upbringings and experiences and expertise.

We have wildly different things, but we're still two human beings who want to do the same basic things.

We want to provide for our families.

We want to grow.

We want to learn.

We want to live.

We want to enjoy.

There's no reason that we can't connect first as humans.

And that will allow us to create more impact as colleagues.

And I'm a firm believer in doing that.

And I love those conversations.

I have a client now.

He was actually, we were just talking yesterday, and he was having a meeting with someone on Friday morning.

And it was a potentially contentious conversation.

There were some really difficult, meaty things that need to be dug into.

And he's a client of mine, and I'm his coach.

And they went for a walk.

They walked for eight miles.

And they just had a great conversation.

And they hashed it out because you know what?

It wasn't a boss and a subordinate.

It was two people walking and talking and having a real conversation next to each other, not across from each other.

The environment itself will change your psyche in seeing the, in viewing at least the entire situation.

Now, when it comes to leadership, your clients, what is the one challenge that they find after moving from I'm an individual contributor to being a leader?

What is the first thing that they say is the biggest hurdle to overcome?

Oh, that is so easy.

When they go from being an individual contributor to being a leader, it's letting go.

It's not being the best in the world at what got them there and having to learn new skills because when you've been an individual contributor, you have been really, really good at something.

Now, you have to lead others who are likely to performing and delivering those same exact things, and they're going to do it differently than you do.

They're going to do it in a different manner.

They might do it in a different way.

The real shift and the things that my clients and the leaders I've led for my almost 30-year career have always struggled with and that I struggled with and still struggle with when you're going through a leadership change is understanding that it is a leader's job to cast the vision and to articulate the desired outcomes, not to delegate and get into the exactly how the work gets done.

So when you're shifting from being an individual contributor, you've been exceptionally good at delivering the way the work is done and now you have to lead and you have to articulate exactly what the outcome needs to be and let go of the how.

You can still coach, you can still guide, but that's the shift that so many people have a hard time making.

They want to micromanage because that's what got them to where they are.

That's what they're good at.

They're good at getting things done.

Now they have to be good at figuring out what needs to be done and aligning the resources to make that happen.

Think about it.

If you are so good at what you do and that's why you got promoted, how much can you trust the other person to do it as well?

Well, so here's the question.

How clear is the other person on what needs to be accomplished?

How much effort do we spend articulating the goal and the time and the deliverable and what good looks like?

Most of the time, we want to spend our effort and our energy telling them how the work should be done.

Instead, we ought to be saying, this is what good looks like.

This is what great looks like.

This is what an on time, on budget, on task project will feel like, will look like, define success.

That way, the other person is architecting their work to meet that vision, to meet that objective.

We as leaders have to architect the vision of success.

And that's what enables great people to find better ways to do it than we could have done.

That's when you know you've really shifted, when you hire people who are better than you.

Yeah, that's what Sir Richard Branson said.

That's the reason he's a billionaire.

People are smarter than him.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, my goal always as a leader was to be the dumbest guy in the room, but the best person in the room at getting people focused on the most important thing.

Yeah, you inspire them so that you can create that magic.

Now, you say self-leadership comes first.

So what is the beginning stage of becoming a great leader?

Because you're still the human, you are the, I was an individual contributor, a wizard, now I must lead people.

So where does that start in order for you to create also what you just described?

The first thing you have to do is put your ego on the altar.

You have to understand that you don't know everything.

Because to lead yourself means that you recognize that you have areas to grow in, that you and everything you do is an example.

You're setting an example through your behaviors, your actions, your words, your voice, your tone, all of it.

And so you have to surrender your ego.

You have to be willing to be wrong.

You have to be willing to invest the energy into understanding where you need to improve and change.

And that's especially important when you're going from being that wizard of getting things done as an individual contributor to now having to lead and align others towards that vision.

You're growing and it's okay.

You're going to make mistakes.

You're going to fall down.

You're going to have challenges.

But in order to be a person of impact for your team, you have to lead yourself.

You have to be willing and able to say, what got me here isn't going to get me to the next level.

I don't know all the answers.

I need to go study.

I need to go learn.

I need to go change.

Like the number one thing you have to do is recognize, what are my blind spots?

What are my dark shadows that I must overcome so that I can influence and impact others positively?

Because if I don't, I'm just going to be a tyrant.

I'm just going to be a dictator.

And those are very different.

Those are not leaders.

Those are not leaders.

Do you find that some of your leadership clients struggle with self-awareness or you being their blind spot and highlighting some things that they can work on?

Yeah, they do.

And I think all of us as leaders do because we've been successful for a reason, right?

It's hard to let go of those things that have made us successful.

We run Leadership Accelerator Cohorts.

We put 12 people together in a group and help them really focus on learning how to lead themselves so they can lead their teams more effectively.

And the first thing we do is we start with personality and behavioral profile assessments that allow them to see both their strengths and their opportunities.

The places where we identify, hey, on a good day, this is how you will show up.

But on the day where you're stressed, challenged, or not feeling your best, this is what you have to watch out for.

And many people struggle with being wanting to address it, being willing to address it, and then recognizing that it's actually a sign of strength to be vulnerable and admit it.

And say, hey, I don't have all the answers.

I have bad days too.

And when you can do that, when you can make it not about you, because leadership isn't about you, but when you can surrender yourself to the greater vision and mission, you can begin to lead yourself.

But you have to do that first.

And many of my clients, I can think of quite a few now, they're going through our current leadership cohort, have said, this is hard.

I don't like what this represents, but I'm willing to change.

And I'm going to be willing to be frustrated.

And that's always the thing I ask leaders before we work with them.

Are you willing to be frustrated?

Are you willing to change?

Because if you're not willing to be frustrated, if you're not willing to peel back the onion and get under the covers a little bit and figure out what's going on, you're not really going to make the change.

And people don't change until they really are tired of dealing with pain.

And so you have to be willing to do that.

John Maxwell said leadership is influence.

What does it mean exactly, the influence part of being a leader?

The first principle of that for me, it means that it has nothing to do with title.

It has nothing to do with role.

It has nothing to do with authority.

It has everything with being able to have an impact on another and get them to change their behavior, their outcomes, their direction, whatever it is.

When we talk about having influence, we talk about creating change.

And so often, especially in today's world, in the business world, we think of influence as being from the CEO.

It comes from a title.

Some of the most influential leaders that I have ever known were people that were janitors.

They were on the front lines.

They were showing up and leading by example, leading through behavior, leading through care and love, and just taking care of other human beings.

They had influence.

They changed how other people acted based on how they showed up.

That's what influence is.

It has nothing to do with title.

It has everything to do with behaving in a manner that causes someone else to change and modify their behavior, their actions, their decisions.

Right.

Because I remember we once had a guest who was talking about leadership.

He's the CEO of a hospital.

And he said, he discourages the roll out the red carpet.

The CEO is coming.

And everybody stand up right and litigates the wall and act like soldiers.

He said, I told my team at the hospital, I said, not necessary.

I walk around, ask them how you're doing, how's your family and things like that.

And that's the thing about influence, like you said, because we always think because of the title, when this person comes through the door, I need to act a certain way.

Yeah, I like that leader already without having ever met them.

You know, first and foremost, we're people, we're human beings, and we just have different roles.

And I always used to tell folks, hey, I have a different role.

My role is to be the CEO.

And that means here are my responsibilities.

But that doesn't mean that I'm a better human being.

It doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong.

It has none of that.

It has everything to do with this is my responsibility and this is my accountability.

This is what I'm responsible and accountable for.

So let's just dispense with that.

But we also can't be naive.

We have to recognize that roles carry weight and they cast a shadow and they have presence and people will change their behavior because of a role.

So that means you as a leader have to do the things that CEO talked about.

It's like no red carpet.

We're not going to act any different because I'm here.

I'll give an example.

In my last role, I was the CEO of a company and we could have had special parking spots by the front door.

Well, I very intentionally parked in the furthest parking spot from the door.

I would park across the entire lot, as far away from the building as possible.

And people would notice that and they'd say, why do you do that?

And I'd say, because the folks that are in our buildings are doing very hard labor all day long, every day.

I don't do that.

Why would I get a better, shorter walk than a person who's actually doing harder work all day long?

I can walk across a parking lot.

There is no reason for me, because of a role or a title, to have a privilege that they don't.

They're the ones who are taking care of the customer.

They're the ones doing the hard work.

They should have the better parking spot.

And so it's little things like that, that both are important and they set culture.

That is an example.

That is creating influence.

Because I know that when I started doing it, never told anyone, I didn't share with anyone why I did it or what I was doing.

I just did it.

And you know what?

The other leaders in the company started doing the same thing.

We certainly need more leaders like that.

Because, you know, when you think about it, the higher up you go, the more perks you get.

And some of the perks are you get the basement parking while the rest of us park in the sun.

You get to go to the cafeteria first.

You know, things like that's part of the perks that come with promotions, which is now you're flipping the script and saying, actually, they do the work.

They need to be closer to the building than me.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and, you know, there are going to be perks with the job.

You know, the role can be one, you could leave it two in the afternoon without worried, but you also have to think about the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You never get to let go of those responsibilities.

The perks that are seen by frontline personnel that would impact their lives.

I want no part of that.

I don't need that.

Leaders don't need that.

What leaders need is they need their team members knowing that they are cared for and cared about, because then those team members will run through walls for you.

I always used to tell my leadership teams, hey guys, our job is to create missionaries, not hire mercenaries.

I want people who are going to be so bought in to what we do, that they will give their best and complete effort.

I don't want people in the organization or on the team who are mercenaries, who are here to clock in and clock out and just do the minimum expectation.

If we treat people in a manner that connects with them, that shows them that they care or cared about and that they matter, they become missionaries.

They become an evangelist for why we exist as an organization.

And you know what?

They take better care for the customer.

They do a better job at the front line.

That's what leadership is.

That's what communication is.

When you show up, because communication has nothing to do with the words.

It has nothing to do with what we say.

It has everything to do with how we say it, how we show up.

That's communication.

And speaking of that, have you found with your current leadership clients, when it comes to this new generation entering the workforce, do they still have, especially since the pandemic, then we had the great resignation, then there was a concept called quiet quitting.

Do they have challenges despite putting the best foot forward as leaders?

Is it challenging to still have those missionaries, those types of dedicated team members?

It's a great question.

And I would say this.

It's not a challenge to have them if that's what you want, if that's what you make a priority, if that's what you build your culture around.

But that means you can't be doing it because you think you're going to get something for it.

You have to genuinely believe it.

You have to actually want to create that.

You have to create an environment.

Now, and I'm not talking about Kumbaya land where everybody's happy and nobody works hard.

What I'm talking about is a connection to purpose.

A leader's job is to help other people connect the dots.

A leader's job is to help them understand why their work matters, where their work fits into the organization, how they can leave at the end of the day and know that they had a good day, that they contributed.

Patrick Lentio and he wrote a wonderful book a number of years ago called The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.

It's one of my all-time favorites because it's very clear at creating a simple framework of what leaders must do for their teams.

Because what people want is they want to be seen.

And one of those miserable signs was anonymity.

They just need to know that they are humans and that they matter.

They need to know that they're relevant.

They need to know that their work matters.

And so that other miserable sign was irrelevance.

Like, does anybody even know that I'm here?

Does this work even have meaning?

And then the last thing is they've got to make it measurable.

How can someone measure their progress and their success?

And I don't care if it's as simple as counting smiles or empty in waste baskets or whatever it is.

You've got to be able to measure your progress.

People want that.

People need to know that.

To answer your question, I don't think it's harder.

I think it takes more intentional leadership.

And what I don't think many people are trained, taught or led to doing is understanding that as a leader, my job isn't to tell people what to do.

It's to connect the dots for them.

It's to understand where we're going, why it matters, and help them understand how they fit in.

We have to be exceptional dot connectors.

We have to be exceptional at going, hey, Roberta, your work really matters.

I know that you're in accounting, and I know you're far away from the front line.

But when you do your job and you do your job well, that means the people who are on the front line taking care of the customer don't have to go get buried in the backend admin and to be distracted from the customer.

So when you do your work and you do it exceptionally well, you are making the customer experience better.

Don't ever forget about it.

Don't ever lose sight of that.

It's harder to do.

And I think today, in a very transactional world, leaders have to spend more time connecting the dots and forging relationships.

And I think that that's what so many leaders get wrong.

And speaking of this generation, do you find that they do have the time?

Because I know they're busy, obviously.

Do they have the time to mentor this upcoming generation when it enters the workforce?

I would flip that question and go, what is more important than that?

What's more important than mentoring the folks who are going to perpetuate the mission and vision of the organization when you're not there?

Like, the best thing a leader can do is enable their people to make better decisions than they could make, than the leader could make if they were in the room.

Like, my job is to give the people and the teams that I lead and serve the information they need to make better decisions than I could make if I were in the room, because they're closer to the problem, they're closer to the customer, they're closer to what matters.

So if I've done my job, they will be better at doing their role than I could ever do.

So if leaders aren't spending time mentoring, teaching, getting into the real meat of the leadership work, what else is more important than that?

You mentioned Richard Branson earlier, and one of my favorite Richard Branson quotes is somebody asked him why they spent so much money on training.

And they said, aren't you afraid of the people that you train leaving?

And he simply smiled and said in response, well, what if I didn't train them and they stayed?

Right?

Like, OK, we have to flip the script.

We have to think differently about this paradigm.

We have to invest the time.

And that's the leader's job.

The leader's job is to do what only they can do.

And most people get that wrong.

Most people don't take the necessary time to figure out and articulate what exactly is my role and responsibility, and what is it that only I can do.

And then I need to spend 80% of my time doing that.

What most people do is they spend about 20% of their time doing the things that only they can do.

And they get bogged down in the bureaucracy or the things they're comfortable doing.

And that's not what makes great leaders.

Not at all.

Now, what do you refer to as the leadership success dichotomy?

The leadership success dichotomy is profoundly simple yet extremely hard.

So when we talk to leaders and we work with leadership teams, one of the most common frustrations that we hear about, one of the most common pain points is, I don't understand why people don't execute the vision.

I don't understand why they aren't more accountable.

And so what we have to really decode and go upstream from is, typically, it's not an execution problem.

That's what we see.

That's the symptom.

We see a failure to perform.

Most of the time, the real issue happens upstream from that.

And so the leadership dichotomy, the accountability framework is this.

Our first responsibility as a leader is to set clear expectations, to create clarity.

This is what's most important.

This is where we're going.

This is what success looks like.

Do we have clarity?

Do you understand?

Do you commit?

Do you agree?

It's a conversation, not a push.

It's not me telling you what.

But we have to create clarity first and foremost.

Step two is we must create and agree upon a system of measure.

How are we going to measure success?

What are the milestones?

What are the check-in points?

How are we going to know if we're actually getting to where we want to be?

Again, that's a conversation.

It's a dialogue.

It's back and forth.

Say, hey, I think this is the right way to measure this thing.

Do you agree?

Yes, I agree.

Great.

Now, let's codify when, let's codify how often.

And then the third thing a leader must do is they must create a culture of communication.

They must enable coaching and training.

They must enable that dialogue to say, hey, you don't have to have all the answers, but you have to raise the flag.

You have to let me know.

You have to communicate.

I will coach.

I will train.

I will help.

But it's a two-way street and I have to install that communication dialogue.

And the fourth thing, and this is where I find so many leaders struggle, and I've struggled myself and still do, like we all, because we're human, have to struggle with this, is we have to create a culture of accountability.

And so many times what leaders talk about is accountability is something we do to someone.

Like, I'm going to hold you accountable.

That's not what accountability is.

What accountability is, is the honoring of commitments.

And so when someone says, yes, I'm clear on where we're going.

I understand how we're going to measure it.

We're going to talk about it along the way.

We as leaders have to ask for a commitment.

Then we can say, hey, Roberta, do I have your commitment that you're going to deliver this agreed upon result, whatever it is, or that if you can't, you're going to let me know in advance.

That's all I'm asking is that are you committed to doing that?

Yes.

And you're going to say, yes, here's where leaders get wrong.

They say, well, they're not accountable.

They didn't follow through because what we have said and must commit to them is, and I commit that I will follow through my commitment as a leader.

The other side of this paradigm is to follow through.

We talk about accountability a lot.

It's what someone else is responsible for.

But we forget that we as leaders have made a commitment to follow through.

And that's where leadership falls apart.

That's where management falls apart when the leader doesn't follow through because then they aren't managing.

They're not leading.

They're just saying, well, I hope that they're accountable.

No, no, no.

I have to be accountable to the commitment I made that I will follow through.

That's the cycle.

That's the thing.

When we do that and we do that well, when we set clear expectations, when we define a system of measure, when we create a culture of coaching and training through communication, and we enable that accountability culture through commitments, it's wonderful.

It's hard to do.

It's incredibly hard to do.

But it's really powerful.

It's very powerful.

Then you see how communication and leadership are intertwined as well.

It reminds me of that, you know, when they say, okay, I want to start doing 10,000 steps a day.

I need an accountability partner.

So Dusty, if I don't do my 10,000 steps, you will call me out and check at the end of the day if I've done my 10,000, you know, an accountability partner.

Not just that you commit, but somebody else is going to make sure that you follow through as well.

I'm so glad you brought that up, because as leaders, as humans, we will let ourselves down before we let down another person.

The reason an accountability partner is so important is because once I've made a commitment to you, I'm going to go through a wall and get there.

But if I just make a commitment to myself, no one else knows.

Tomorrow is still another day.

Tomorrow is another day.

I have accountability partners even to this day that I speak with every Monday morning.

We have a call at 8 a.m.

And we walk through what is it that we have agreed to do?

And how do we hold each other accountable for it?

It's one of the entire themes of the work we do with leaders is we create leadership cohorts where they form accountability partners.

Because when you do that and you're working on leadership and you have someone else that you have committed to, you don't put it off.

It's a powerful thing.

Very much so.

Now, you've done Iron Man five times.

Did it teach you any leadership characteristics?

It taught me that I was probably pretty dumb.

Or a glutton for punishment.

You know, it really...

Glutton for punishment, I would agree.

Roberta, it did.

Taught me this.

The race is the reward.

It's not the goal, right?

So we go to race day.

You sign up for an Iron Man race a year in advance.

And you don't wait until a month before the race to start training.

You start the day after you sign up and get on the bike or go for a swim or go for a run, and you start building and you start working and you start training every single day.

For the last 12 weeks before an Iron Man race, the average athlete will put in about 20 hours a week of physical training to get ready for that race.

So what Iron Man racing taught me is that the goal is the reward.

It isn't the point.

I created all the growth in the journey.

It was the journey itself that transformed me, not doing the race.

The race was the reward.

That was the pleasure at the end of it.

I could show up in the morning of a race and truly appreciated and enjoy it because I had done the work.

So I learned a lot about setting goals and building incrementally towards those things, one small piece at a time.

So that on race morning, all I had to do was take a deep breath and go.

Take a deep breath and go, because you know you've done the work.

So that gives you the confidence.

That gives you the knowing that I can do this because I've been building up to it.

Every day.

Yeah.

And so often we get so fixated on the goal that we forget to be present during the journey.

And most of my favorite memories have everything to do with being on a long training ride with friends or, you know, waking up at 3 in the morning to go do a 20-mile run and just running in the dark and being present with myself, doing the work and having fun.

And you learn a lot about yourself on the backside of an Ironman marathon after you've been running or swimming and biking and running for 10, 12 hours when it's the last six miles of the race and everything in your body just wants to stop.

You learn that you can go through anything.

Your mind is so much more powerful than your body, that you can set the target to go to one more mile, just one more mile and then just one more mile.

I did a race a number of years ago.

I was in Ironman, Maryland.

I knew I was a little under trained for that race.

And so my goal, my A goal, like if everything went perfectly, was to break 13 hours.

And my B goal was, hey, if I can just come in under 14, that's a solid, solid effort.

And my C goal was the same for every race, which was don't drown, don't crash, don't trip.

Like if I can just survive the race, just finish, that's a good thing.

Well, in the last three miles of the run, I realized I was still able to do math.

And I realized that I was really close to hitting my A goal, even though I was under trained, even though I had not been able to put in as much effort as I wanted.

And so during those last three miles, I was running, I don't know, like an 11 minute split on the mile before that.

And I ran eight minute splits the last three miles.

And I came in on that race at 13 hours and 46 seconds.

I was 46 seconds over my goal.

The A goal, which is the 13 hours?

Over the A goal.

The reason that was so powerful, because it didn't mean anything.

But what it showed me was during those last three hours, I still had more in the tank.

I still could dig deep and go get it.

And if I had employed that earlier, if I had realized that sooner, I could have hit the A goal.

It didn't matter.

Lives weren't going to change because I was 46 seconds faster or slower.

But it just showed me the power of the mind and how much stronger that is in your body.

But you can still dig deep because we give up too early sometimes.

We do.

Yeah, we do.

So one last thing.

You're a follow-up podcaster.

Please share your details of where listeners can find your podcast, which is the Leadership Unlocked Podcast.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for asking, Roberta.

My passion and joy is to unlock stories from other leaders and find out where they had those great moments of inflection, where they grew and learned and really went through the crucible of change.

So the podcast is Leadership Unlocked, the stories that shape great leaders.

You can find it on all the players, YouTube, etc.

But leadershipunlockedpodcast.com will be the easiest place to find it.

It's so much fun to sit down with leaders.

And I have to admit, I'm a little bit selfish.

This is a way that I can interview amazing people and learn from them and have great stories that help me become a better leader.

So it's a little bit selfish and it's a lot of fun as well.

You know, when you say that, I one time I was talking to one of my guests and we were talking about podcasting.

I said, this is like a mini MBA for me.

Do you know how much the guests have taught me just by sitting here and having these conversations?

So yeah, I fully understand what you're saying.

I completely agree.

And even tonight, just doing this, the questions you've asked have made me go, oh, that's a wonderful question.

I need to think more about that.

And it's so powerful when we keep our curious discovery mindset and we just go learn.

And that's the whole premise, right?

If somebody else has already learned something through trial and error, through hard old fashioned work, why would any of us want to have to go do it the hard way ourselves?

Let's learn from people who've been down those journeys before.

Yeah, that's true wisdom.

Learn from others.

Now you said leadershipunloggedpodcast.com.

Is that your only website where our audience can find you?

No, that is for the podcast.

My company website is Arcus Group, A-R-C-Q-U-S group.com.

That's our leadership consulting business.

That's where we show what we do in working with leaders and leadership teams.

And principally, we put people into 12 person leadership cohorts from across industries and help them install a leadership operating system that allows them to lead themselves and create transformational change for their companies.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Dusty, the founder of the Arcus Group, an ex-CEO who is a leadership coach.

And you've heard all the details of the leadership cohorts and the Leadership Unlocked Podcast.

This has been so wonderful.

I've enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you so much, Roberta.

It's such a pleasure.

Thank you.

My pleasure as well.

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