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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast explores the real-world strategies behind building strong work culture, improving organizational culture, and leading with clarity in today’s fast-changing business environment.
Hosted by leadership expert Nicole Greer, this podcast features conversations with business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping modern business culture through effective communication, leadership development, and intentional management practices.
Each episode delivers practical insights into leadership and business, including topics like team communication, project management, career growth, and creating workplaces where people perform at their best.
You’ll gain actionable tools, frameworks, and leadership skills you can apply immediately through coaching concepts, real-world examples, and professional development strategies, whether you’re a manager, executive, business owner, or emerging leader.
If you're looking for guidance on building a thriving organizational culture, improving communication, or advancing your leadership career, this podcast is designed for you.
Learn more about training, coaching, and courses at https://vibrantculture.com
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/build-a-vibrant-culture-nicole-greer/
For speaking inquiries: https://vibrantculture.com/speaker-kit-request/
Download our training catalog: https://vibrantculture.com/catalog-request/
Want to be a guest? Send your request to podcast@vibrantculture.com
[00:00:00] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach, and I have another amazing vibrant guest on the show today, and his name is Pete Behrens. Pete Behrens is a globally recognized leadership coach, consultant, and an in-demand speaker. As the founder and CEO of the Agile Leadership Journey, he has built a curriculum and global communi- community dedicated to building better leaders.
[00:00:26] Nicole Greer: Pete has led agile transformations for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations, improving organizational health and performance through education and coaching. His ultimate goal is to show leaders that shifts in mindsets, behaviors, and culture, don't miss that, culture are an asset, not a liability.
[00:00:47] Nicole Greer: As an influential speaker, Pete has shared his insights at various global conferences and hosts the Relearning Leadership podcast, where he engages industry experts and leaders to explore the evolving landscape of leadership and organizational development. Welcome to the show, Pete. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:05] Pete Behrens: Well, thanks, Nicole. I appreciate the introduction and the opportunity to chat with you.
[00:01:10] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah, so good. So look what Pete sent me in the mail, everybody. He sent me a copy of his amazing book, Into the Fog: Leadership Stories from the Edge of Uncertainty. So tell me a little bit about the book. What's the inspiration and what are you trying to teach us through this, this wonderful thing you've put together?
[00:01:30] Pete Behrens: Well, I started not as a leader, but as an engineer, and my career began solving technical problems. And I realized as I started to grow into more leadership positions, that the most interesting problems aren't technical, they're human, as you're well aware of. And so that put me on a journey to start to recognize what these problems are.
[00:01:54] Pete Behrens: In fact, they're not even problems at all. They're, they're things like personalities and differences of opinion and egos and fear, and all these things that don't necessarily have a right and a wrong.
[00:02:09] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:02:10] Pete Behrens: And that put me on this, this path to understand this world of leadership and get into this world of culture.
[00:02:17] Pete Behrens: And so the, my history, the, kind of my journey, it gets explored in this book. It's not a memoir, but it, but it is a, a journey, and it is told through story, but it's, it's all built on the, the challenges that I faced in going through those transformations of myself and the organizations I was working with.
[00:02:41] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And so, I love the metaphor of fog. Do I have that right? Metaphor? Is that right?
[00:02:46] Pete Behrens: Yeah.
[00:02:46] Nicole Greer: Yeah. It
[00:02:47] Pete Behrens: works.
[00:02:47] Nicole Greer: You know, I always have to go look that up. Metaphor, all the different ones, back to English class. But right on the first, first paragraph you say, "There's a fog rolling in. You can't quite see it yet, but you've felt it at work, in your teams, in your gut.
[00:03:03] Nicole Greer: Projects stall, decisions waiver, people resist. The pace accelerates while clarity evaporates. This is the terrain of modern business." That's really good intro because I think- Gloom and doom. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I do think that people are a little bit worn out by, you know, what's going on. I mean, that's why I have a company called Build a Vibrant Culture, because people have a culture that's full of fog.
[00:03:30] Pete Behrens: Yes.
[00:03:31] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And so, you know, if the, if the sun will shine on it, maybe we can evaporate this water out of here and we can see what's going on. I don't know. You say there's a series of journeys through ever-increasing fogs, forging a path into the unknown. And so, talk a little bit about you know, the, maybe a story out of the book where the fog was in place, but you came in and did some things that helped lift that fog out of there.
[00:03:59] Pete Behrens: Well, maybe I'll start by reversing that a little bit. Okay. And, and I think the risk of leadership is thinking we can evaporate this fog. Mm-hmm. And the premise of the book actually is the fog is the terrain. I think leaders are set up incorrectly for really m- two other weather, weather patterns: clear skies and stormy weather.
[00:04:21] Pete Behrens: And, and when you think about clear skies, we can plan, we can execute, we can optimize our system. Mm-hmm. And stormy weather is that, you know, crisis where we've gotta take clear, decisive leadership. And, and those happen. Of
[00:04:35] Nicole Greer: course.
[00:04:35] Pete Behrens: But what I have found in my career is most of leadership is somewhere else, and this is that terrain where there isn't a clear right or wrong.
[00:04:45] Pete Behrens: There isn't... You know, we hit a fork in the road and both have good, both have bad. How do we choose? How do we know which is the better path? And there isn't an answer there. And that's the terrain where leadership lives because, in essence, if you think about the definition of leadership, it takes us places we've never been before.
[00:05:07] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:05:07] Pete Behrens: And that's inherently uncertain. So maybe just before I get into stories and other things, I just wanted to set that landscape, that this isn't a defect to fix. This isn't something that you try to, you know, clear up.
[00:05:20] Pete Behrens: It is part of the landscape leaders need to learn to navigate. So I'll just pause there as, as just setting the stage.
[00:05:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. And you know, you say also, I, I, I underlined this, you said, "The real danger of fog isn't that we don't see it, it's that we don't adapt quickly enough to face it. The fog is already here.
[00:05:40] Nicole Greer: Are you prepared to face it?" Right? So, understanding that the future is uncertain. Whenever I hear the word certain, I think of Tony Robbins 'cause he's
[00:05:49] Nicole Greer: like, "You want certainty. You can't have certainty." You know? That's what he
[00:05:53] Nicole Greer: says, right? And so, so understanding that the landscape is, is this foggy terrain- Yeah
[00:06:00] Nicole Greer: that we'll always have to be kind of put one foot in front of the other, see what happens, put one foot in front of the other, see what happens kind of thing. Okay. Yeah, and decision-making you also mentioned in there, which I think is really important. Sometimes we think we're gonna make the right decision or the wrong decision, but we've got lots of choices, don't we?
[00:06:19] Pete Behrens: Yeah, and, and even when you think about the terrain of fog, it's one of the weather patterns that I think is most interesting, 'cause there's nothing that clears it. There's nothing that, you know, like rain, we can use wipers, or, you know, snow and ice, we can put stuff on the roads. Fog is, is not something you have anything that can eliminate.
[00:06:40] Pete Behrens: You have to, you know, essentially do what's antithetical, which is slow down. And, and in our time of, you know, the pace of change- Frenetic, yeah ... that's going on right now, that, that feels the opposite of what's needed. You know, everybody's saying go faster, go quicker, everybody's moving. And, and we know that in the fog you go faster, i- it's only gonna create more catastrophic failure.
[00:07:04] Pete Behrens: And so this, this, this nature of what is needed in the fog is very counterintuitive to most leaders. Just give you one example of this. It's starting to think about, "Okay, I wanna wait for clarity." Well, that's actually the opposite of what's needed. What creates clarity is movement, and it's like, well, wait a second, but if I can't see, how do I know when to move?
[00:07:28] Pete Behrens: And that's the, that's the whole key, is you've got to make a decision that creates more information that then helps inform better decisions. And this is the agility aspect of what's needed in the fog. It's, it's the courage even without having the answers, right? The courage when there is no clarity is the key, you know, leadership trait here that we're looking for.
[00:07:50] Pete Behrens: That's the hardest.
[00:07:51] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And when you were saying we have to move to create clarity, did I get that right?
[00:07:56] Pete Behrens: Yes.
[00:07:57] Nicole Greer: Okay. Yeah, I, I literally just got done working with somebody, and I was talking to them about how they tell everybody what to do instead of engage their team in dialogue. And so, you and I both being coaches, we know that asking powerful questions is, like, wonderful and magical for teams and leaders, and getting clarity, and getting out of the fog.
[00:08:21] Nicole Greer: You ask questions, right? And so I have this little slide in my slide deck that says, "Asking powerful quer- questions creates movement, significant movement." Like, that's what my little slide says. And so I just, that's where my head went, you know? And so that's the agility, to be able to ask the questions and then absorb the information you get, and start to synthesize what's actually going on.
[00:08:45] Nicole Greer: Is that how you get out of the fog? That's how I get out of the fog. As I,
[00:08:49] Pete Behrens: I- But recognize, recognize what you're doing there is non-typical to leadership. You're admitting, number one, you don't know.
[00:09:00] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:09:00] Pete Behrens: No, I never know. Although so you're asking a question versus stating a, a, a truth What most leaders look at is, "I need certainty.
[00:09:09] Pete Behrens: I need clarity. I need confidence- Right ... in order to move people with, with uncertainty," and that's the nature. And one of the stories I share is Lorna who's a leader of a, of a large company, and she comes in and, and she feels like she has this, like the company needs somebody, like puts on the cape.
[00:09:25] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Superwoman
[00:09:26] Pete Behrens: arrives. And she comes in with this g- Yeah. Yeah. She comes in with this grand vision, and yeah, in the moment it's in- inspiring, but then after that it's like crickets, and like, okay. What's interesting about the fog is what you're admitting is, "I have a future I wanna get to, but I also have the vulnerability to say, 'I can't get there without you.
[00:09:47] Pete Behrens: I don't know how to get there.'" That, that's a different kind of courage. That's the Brene Brown kind of vulnerable courage- Yeah, yeah,
[00:09:53] Nicole Greer: yeah, yeah ...
[00:09:53] Pete Behrens: that true leadership needs in this type of situation. What Lorna discovered, what Lorna discovered was when she provided the answer, everybody's like, "Okay, tell me what to do."
[00:10:04] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Pete Behrens: When she provided the challenge without the answer on how to get there, that's when it started to be like, "Oh, I need to step in."
[00:10:12] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And what you said is, is so, so interesting 'cause I... the other thing too is, like, l- people will say to the leader, "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it." And that sounds so fantastic, right?
[00:10:24] Nicole Greer: Like they're gonna help you. But, like, you don't want a bunch of robots working for you, you know? You want people who are gonna challenge the ideas, make them better again, try to clear the fog if possible or get out of the fog, move forward down the road where there isn't any fog. So, you know, getting people to think and asking those powerful questions is really, really important.
[00:10:43] Nicole Greer: Now you talk about the, in the very first story is this might get uncomfortable. Leadership is not clean, it's not clear, and if you're doing it right, it's not comfortable. So, we've all heard the old comfort zone thing. We've seen the- Yes ... we've seen the stuff on social media about the comfort zone.
[00:11:00] Nicole Greer: Will you talk a little bit about being okay with being uncomfortable and, like, it's necessary?
[00:11:08] Pete Behrens: Yes. Let me share one of the stories in the book, which- Okay ... I was actually a young, young leader and, and this wasn't actually even a work scenario, it was a, a hiking scenario where I was in charge of a youth group. And there was two of us leaders, and we were doing an overnight backpacking in, in Colorado.
[00:11:27] Pete Behrens: And, you know, we, we know- Nice ... in Colorado that storms come in the afternoons. And, and so we were up, we camped overnight. We were gonna do two 14ers, which is the, the big mountains in Colorado.
[00:11:38] Nicole Greer: Nice.
[00:11:38] Pete Behrens: And we got a little behind schedule. We're a little bit late to get to the first, first 14er, but we did. And we started to notice the storm was, was coming in, and we had a choice at that moment.
[00:11:50] Pete Behrens: And this is a choice between turning back or continuing with our goal, right? The two 14ers. And, and at that time I saw leadership as bold action in the face of uncertainty. There was two of us leading this, and we ended up splitting the group, and half decided they wanted to go back and half took forward.
[00:12:14] Pete Behrens: And, and I carried the team that wanted to go forward, and I thought, "This is leadership." So we descend down the-
[00:12:24] Nicole Greer: I'm so, I'm so brave and courageous.
[00:12:27] Pete Behrens: At the time I'm like, "Yeah, this is what leaders do. This is, this is the bold decision-making leaders make in the face of, of, you know, danger. It's still something we can do."
[00:12:37] Pete Behrens: Well, sure enough, we, we go down the saddle and we're starting to come back up the other side, and I had the, the feeling, if you've ever been in the mountains there's a sensation of static electricity that starts to form, and it is the scariest feeling I've ever felt in my life. And it means obviously lightning is imminent, and we all just sense this, this imminent doom before we had reached our next summit.
[00:13:06] Pete Behrens: And there was no trees, we're above or in the rocks and crags and stuff, and so we, we hid out, and that's when my true courage showed up.
[00:13:17] Nicole Greer: Mm.
[00:13:17] Pete Behrens: What I believed was courage at the moment of going forward is actually my ego not wanting to look weak. Not wanting to look weak in front of these kids. In fact, I was stupid, I was naive, I was, you know, reckless.
[00:13:34] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:13:34] Pete Behrens: And this is what that what we don't
[00:13:35] Nicole Greer: think of- Wait, wait till those mothers get ahold of you.
[00:13:38] Pete Behrens: Well- ... fortunately we were safe. We got back. But, but think of courage. Courage isn't an endpoint, it's a midpoint, and you go past courage and you start to get into stupidity, recklessness, dangerous naivety.
[00:13:53] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:53] Pete Behrens: I had crossed that threshold, but I didn't realize it. So when we're starting to think about this, this leadership, this is where I started to recognize so much of leadership lives on these polarities where it feels like there's an endpoint, but it's really a midpoint- Mm-hmm ... and there's danger on both sides.
[00:14:13] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Absolutely. So are you a practitioner of the TILT?
[00:14:19] Pete Behrens: No.
[00:14:20] Nicole Greer: Okay, 'cause you're talking like a practitioner of, of the TILT. So just, just for a minute, I think what Pete is saying is, like, so huge. So I, I have this tool in my toolbox. I think everybody should have this tool in their toolbox in, in terms of leadership, and it talks about 48 commendable traits that leaders can have, okay?
[00:14:41] Nicole Greer: And so first of all, don't miss that, everybody, 48 traits. So if you think you know how to lead, you don't, because you have 48 traits to work on, right? And so one of them is courage. Mm-hmm. And so, in that cour- The courage is, like, in the sweet spot of, like, a, of a bell curve, right? Yes. Like, if y'all think of back to statistics, like, there's the sweet spot, right?
[00:15:00] Nicole Greer: But then there's courage underdone, right? Which, which would be somebody who's not courageous, right? Somebody who's fearful, right? So fearful, courageous, and then there's this part over here where you were saying, you, you ripped off a bunch of words. You said, like, naive and reckless. Reckless. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
[00:15:17] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And that is such... And when I teach that to people and show that to leaders, they go, "Oh!" I, I thought reckless, to your point in your story, is that that was leadership. Really, it's the sweet spot- Yeah ... in the middle, you know? So that's why I bring that up. But if you- Yeah ... you listening, if you're, if you're thinking, "I want that list of 48 commendable traits," email me.
[00:15:39] Nicole Greer: You know, it's in the show notes, and I'll get it to you. It's really fascinating. You would love it, Pete.
[00:15:45] Pete Behrens: But- Yeah. The, so you have the TILT, and I'll, I'm gonna look that up when I'm done here. And where I started to really- Yeah, it's fascinating ... where I started to really learn this was actually Tim Arnold a book called Power of Healthy Tension.
[00:15:56] Nicole Greer: Ooh.
[00:15:57] Pete Behrens: Recognizing that the world of leadership is less about problems with right and wrong and more about tensions. And so courage is tension. It's a tension between this recklessness, naivety, and t- being too safe and, and calm. And so th- this is one of many of these. So you think about others, like should I be hands-on or hands-off, strategic or tactical?
[00:16:17] Pete Behrens: These are all live in this realm of there's no right here. There's no answer.
[00:16:24] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And, and the only way you can get closer to it is, I think, asking those powerful questions, engaging your people, and getting their genius going. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really good. I did mark another thing in your book that I thought was interesting and I wanted to get your take on it, but you said "Leadership never gets easier," which it's on page 17 in, in one of your little bubbles that you call out bubbles.
[00:16:46] Nicole Greer: And, and, you know, and I w- I don't know what your experience is, Pete, but people when they hire me, probably when they hire you, they're like, "Help me make leadership easier." And you say right here, "Leadership never gets easier." Hmm. Right? And however, you can become more aware, a bit quicker to respond, or perhaps a bit wiser each time you lean into a challenge.
[00:17:09] Nicole Greer: I'm like, that is, that is X-able. Is that how we say it now, X-able, tweetable? I don't know. I've not
[00:17:15] Pete Behrens: heard that word. I think you just Shakespeare-ied a new word into existence. Yeah
[00:17:18] Nicole Greer: Yeah, maybe so. But, like, I love that you're just so plain about that. So, so awareness. Sha- share maybe a story about getting aware or a leader who got aware w- where they had like...
[00:17:32] Nicole Greer: 'Cause people have these things called blind spots. Yes. I know you know, Pete. Yeah. You deal with them all day long. Me too. Talk about that.
[00:17:40] Pete Behrens: Yeah. The story I just shared is certainly one of awareness. Yeah. But what's, what's fascinating about awareness- Yeah ... it doesn't often hit us in the moment, right? It's, it's often something that comes too late for that situation, and that's why history and, and legacy and experience become so valuable to us.
[00:18:00] Pete Behrens: And I'll just share another story-
[00:18:02] Nicole Greer: Please ...
[00:18:02] Pete Behrens: from the, from the book where I was a, a young, you know, fairly naive m- m- manager, right? So now I've got a team. And so I'm experienced. I've been an engineer. I'm leading engineers, you know, and they're, they're, they're doing some things. And they're young, they're scrappy.
[00:18:18] Pete Behrens: They need some guidance, and I'm there to provide it.
[00:18:21] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:22] Pete Behrens: And over the course of a few months, we get them going. I think we're, we're cruising along.
[00:18:26] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Pete Behrens: Let's do this. And my lead engineer in- came into my office one morning. He said, "Pete, we'd like you to join a meeting." I thought, great, design session, whatever that is.
[00:18:36] Pete Behrens: Come into this meeting, they're all there, and I quickly realize this is not a meeting, it's an intervention.
[00:18:41] Nicole Greer: Mm-mm.
[00:18:43] Pete Behrens: And they are not with me. They are simply following my lead because they have to.
[00:18:49] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:18:50] Pete Behrens: And they are letting me know right now they are not happy. Well, long story short, five years later... I, I, I say at the time I kinda learned from that, but I didn't really learn from that.
[00:19:02] Pete Behrens: Like, okay, I must be pushing too hard, right, is what I thought at the time I thought- Right. You didn't get the
[00:19:05] Nicole Greer: total awareness you needed.
[00:19:07] Pete Behrens: Yeah. It, it's like I get the point, but I didn't get the point. And this- Right ... this is where the point actually hit five years later. I'm consulting now. I'm, I'm actually on the side where I'm helping another leader who brought me in, and I realize over the course of three or four months we're working with this leader and his team doing almost the identical thing I did five years before as, as my own leader.
[00:19:29] Pete Behrens: This leader could have done everything I've taught them, and I thought, "Why do they need me?" And I was a little scared to ask this leader, and in, in one vulnerable moment I finally asked him. I said, "You know, I, I'm just curious why you brought me in. You know everything that I'm teaching here and helping you with."
[00:19:45] Pete Behrens: And he said something that-
[00:19:46] Nicole Greer: Oof ...
[00:19:47] Pete Behrens: blew my mind open, and I still get chills when I think about it today. He said, "Pete, if I had told this team to do this, they'd do it because I said so. Because we brought you in, we're doing it because it's the right thing to do." And I just thought, "Oh, wow." Like, this leader understood how to remove their own cape, how to, how to put aside their ego and be on the side of the team.
[00:20:13] Pete Behrens: I didn't see that. I never saw that. I let my title carry the weight of my influence with these people, and I didn't even realize how much influence I was having with that title. And this is the one thing leaders get so wrong. Their title carries so much influence. They think it's their leadership, their, their, you know, personality, their, their confidence.
[00:20:38] Pete Behrens: Whatever that is, no, it's your title. It's your status that's carrying a lot of that weight. Mm-hmm. And for leaders to start to recognize that, that was one of those moments where I started to really realize the limitation of our ego, the blind spots we have inside our own head, and I call this the internal fog.
[00:20:54] Pete Behrens: This is the fog that blinds us from what we need to see.
[00:20:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. So wow, there's a lot packed into what Pete just said. So one thing I just wanna point out real quick that he said is he said when the guys all walked in his office and said, you know, he- it was an intervention they were only doing what Pete said because he outranked them.
[00:21:14] Nicole Greer: He was the boss. So, I you know, I want you to go out and buy Pete's book, Into the Fog. Everybody buy this one. Now, while you're out there, stick this in your cart. I want you to get The, The 5 Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell. Yeah. I'm a huge John Maxwell fan. If you don't even know who this guy is, I wa- first thing to do is, not right now, listen to the podcast, but after this, I want you to go over to YouTube and look for a 27 minute 15 second video on the 5 Levels of Leadership if you're not gonna buy the book.
[00:21:43] Nicole Greer: Because John Maxwell talks about how at level one of leadership, you have the right to tell people what to do, but at level two now you have a relationship with your people, and now they do it because they wanna help you, which is a whole different thing. And so, a- and that's what I'm hearing you figured out
[00:22:02] Pete Behrens: That was a story I see played over, over, and over-
[00:22:08] Nicole Greer: Yes
[00:22:08] Pete Behrens: with every leader that I work with.
[00:22:10] Nicole Greer: 100%.
[00:22:10] Pete Behrens: We call that, we call that expert leadership. We have a stage in between this, we call this achiever leadership, which starts to shift from I know to, you know, I know where to go and, and how to direct you. That third one we call catalyst leadership, which is more the partnership leadership, the relationship leadership- Okay.
[00:22:28] Pete Behrens: Okay ... where you're, you're getting motivation through others, not through, you know, a grand vision that everybody's just charging towards the hill.
[00:22:37] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. So
[00:22:38] Pete Behrens: I think that- But yeah, John Maxwell was a, was an influencer of my journey as well. Oh, yeah. All of us. The 21 Laws of Leadership were really great.
[00:22:44] Pete Behrens: Yes.
[00:22:44] Nicole Greer: Yes. Get, get that. Three books in your cart every Monday. Three books in the cart, yeah. The tw- yeah. Every- the 21 isn't it the-
[00:22:52] Pete Behrens: Infutable. Infutable Laws of Leadership.
[00:22:54] Nicole Greer: Yes, yes. What a great title too, by the way. Yeah, just throwing that one word in there makes it all happen, right? Okay. Yeah, and then the other thing is you're talking about ego.
[00:23:03] Nicole Greer: So, I, I talk about ego all the time with my clients. I'm sure you do too. And I think it's really important to, like, pause on the word ego, 'cause I think it's misunderstood. And so the way that, that I've been taught about ego is that the ego is put inside a human to keep them safe, you know?
[00:23:22] Nicole Greer: And so the ego talks to you and says, "Be careful. You know, be careful about this. You better make that happen. You better g- you better get that done. You better show courage right now." You know, so it's supposed to be there to help you, but really it can end up tripping you up. And as we all know, 'cause we've all worked with somebody with a huge ego.
[00:23:36] Nicole Greer: And the work of Thomas Keating, he says that humans are addicted to security, approval, and control. Mm-hmm. So if you're gonna make a leadership decision, make sure you're not after approval, you're not seeking some kind of security that you don't need, and some kind of serious control freak control that you need, you know?
[00:23:55] Nicole Greer: So, I just think that's interesting. What's your take on ego? Just help people with that a little bit, because I think it's a big stumbling block for leaders.
[00:24:04] Pete Behrens: Well, it's the one thing that I've been fortunate enough to teach all over the world in every culture, or many, many cultures.
[00:24:12] Nicole Greer: Okay, pause. What's the greatest, funnest place you went?
[00:24:17] Nicole Greer: I've, I have the travel bug, Pete. You gotta help me. What, what, what was like, oh my God, mind-blowing, you gotta go here?
[00:24:25] Pete Behrens: For me, it's experiences. Okay. You know, it's... Number one, people are awesome everywhere. Governments suck, but people are awesome.
[00:24:35] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's good. That's good ...
[00:24:39] Pete Behrens: I tell you, I, we, we had an experience at a small little restaurant in Vilnius, Lithuania that was like a Michelin Star experience-
[00:24:48] Nicole Greer: Ooh
[00:24:49] Pete Behrens: that was completely unexpected, and somebody said, "Hey, you gotta go to this restaurant." We did. You go to the basement. Chef-catered meal, whole thing. Woo-hoo. And, and the chef comes around at the end and gives you this homemade chocolate, which is just amazing. And we asked him, we said, like, "This is Michelin Star.
[00:25:03] Pete Behrens: Like, why aren't you?" And he's like, "I worked there in a Michelin Star restaurant, and the culture, as soon as that, that, that restaurant got the star, the culture shifted to, to toxic." And this is a story for leaders to recognize measures and policies that we put in place can drive health and, and toxicity.
[00:25:25] Pete Behrens: And something as simple as a, a Michelin Star and what that can do to behavior is, is crazy. And so, yeah, is Lithuania the, the most beautiful place in the world? It's certainly top on the list in terms of, you know, there's a lot of countries in Europe I think people don't visit, you know, Croatia and Lithuania and Romania that are just wonderful countries- Oh, I wanna go
[00:25:47] Pete Behrens: that are off the beaten track. But it's these experiences that I just fall in love with because it shows you what leadership can look like when you're not chasing something that is, I think what you're saying, ego-driven.
[00:26:00] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. And my assumption is, but don't miss everybody, that was an assumption. We all know what assume means.
[00:26:06] Nicole Greer: But, like, once you get that star, then see your ego gets all hot and bothered. Don't lose the star.
[00:26:12] Pete Behrens: Yeah.
[00:26:12] Nicole Greer: You better control everything. And-
[00:26:14] Pete Behrens: Get the next star, and
[00:26:15] Nicole Greer: you- Right, right, right. And so there's this whole, you know, security, approval, and control hunger that the ego just can't get enough of. It's hungry for all that, and so it could drive you to, you know, like the guy said, it changed the minute we got it because, oh my gosh, now we have all this fear that we're not gonna- Yeah
[00:26:32] Nicole Greer: we're not gonna keep it or we're not gonna get the next one or whatever. Yeah. So before I interrupted you.
[00:26:39] Pete Behrens: So I've been fortunate to travel the globe and, and teach leaders in very different cultures, from Far East to Europe to South America, US ar- area. And the ego is the common denominator.
[00:26:53] Nicole Greer: Oh, yes.
[00:26:54] Pete Behrens: Humans are humans-
[00:26:56] Nicole Greer: Absolutely ...
[00:26:56] Pete Behrens: wherever we go, and they're like, "Well, isn't this contextually different?" Yes and no. And to me, the ego is a protector. It protects us from things that are thinking it's keeping us safe, but it's actually hurting us, as you're saying, right? It protects us from the feedback we actually need to hear.
[00:27:15] Nicole Greer: 100%.
[00:27:16] Pete Behrens: And it protects us from actually hearing what people are telling us, and it filters into w- our own stories, as Brene Brown might say. And so, yeah, the ego is probably the biggest and most impactful fog we've got to get through before we can address any other fog. We often think the fog is external.
[00:27:36] Pete Behrens: We often think, oh, it's the project, it's the competitors, it's the market, it's the, it's the pandemic. It has fundamentally changed workplace culture more than- Oh,
[00:27:46] Nicole Greer: it has ...
[00:27:47] Pete Behrens: anything other than AI now in the world. My, I- I- I can say, almost like, you know, AD and BC- ... there is a point in history we can see, can say pre-pandemic and post-pandemic in terms of workplace culture, and we're seeing another one compounded on that, which is pre-AI, post-AI on workplace culture.
[00:28:07] Pete Behrens: And this is, this is something that is definitely real. And yeah, I'd like to put it in the rear view mirror, but it has changed the way we show up or don't show up at work every single day.
[00:28:18] Nicole Greer: Now, you've got a chapter in here called Choose to Lead. And finding yourself in the fog doesn't mean you're lost, it means you have the opportunity to lead. I, I find so many leaders that are in leadership positions, and it's, it's really not their fault, it's whoever promoted this person, right?
[00:28:38] Nicole Greer: And they didn't really choose to lead, or it's not what they thought it was gonna be or whatever. But I love this idea of before you start leading, choose it, you know? So tell me about your story about choosing to lead, 'cause it, it is a choice. You stand in choice about what you're gonna do here.
[00:28:57] Pete Behrens: Yeah, I think leaders wait for permission.
[00:29:01] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:29:01] Pete Behrens: They wait for the title. I had an engineer working with me at one point. I was a young leader, and he was saying, you know, I was asking him to im- you know, improve in, in some ways and take more responsibility. He's like, "Well, I don't have the title. I don't have the..." I'm like, "That comes next." Right, right.
[00:29:18] Pete Behrens: You've got to show the work. And he- that's the catch-22. The- Yes ... they want the title. And I said, "Once you receive the title, people follow you because the title, not because you can lead."
[00:29:29] Nicole Greer: Right
[00:29:30] Pete Behrens: And this is the backwards thing we have on leadership, and I turn that around a little bit. Yes, choose to lead, but also leadership is a choice.
[00:29:39] Nicole Greer: 100%.
[00:29:40] Pete Behrens: And it's a choice available to everyone at any time, regardless of role, title, or position you are. And, and obviously at home, at work, wherever you are, leadership is a behavior. It's an act of service to something. See a gap, fill gap. Get others around you to follow this, this path. And this is the mistake I believe a lot of people make, and then a lot of leaders don't provide that culture to allow leadership to emerge or recognize leadership in those ways.
[00:30:16] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:30:16] Pete Behrens: Which is
[00:30:16] Pete Behrens: sad.
[00:30:17] Nicole Greer: Oh, sad, sad, sad. Yeah, so I wanna tell you a quick story. This is so fantastic. So I work with this manufacturing company, and they have a whiz-bang s- safety leader, okay? She is a dynamo. She's delightful. She can so nicely tell somebody, "Put your goggles on. This is the 14th time I've told you to put your goggles on."
[00:30:38] Nicole Greer: But they leave, and they love her anyway. So I mean, she just has, she's got great style about her. She's just so fantastic. She knows how to stay in the middle on those 48 character traits. But long story short, she had this training for the whole manufacturing facility, and the gal that's at the front desk was in the training.
[00:30:54] Nicole Greer: She's like, "Everybody has to go through training, you know, even if you're at the front desk." And so the gal at the front desk went through the training, and she was told, "If you see somebody not practicing these safety protocols, you have to call it out. You have to bring attention to it, and you have to stop it and get that person back into safety."
[00:31:13] Nicole Greer: So long story short, the front desk gal was wandering through the, delivering a message through the facility, and a young man had on flip-flops, and he was driving a forklift. And she remembered, "Oh, you have to have close, your close-toed boots on," or whatever. And so she, she's waving the kid down. She's like, "Stop."
[00:31:31] Nicole Greer: And like, the guy's like, "What is this woman doing?" And so he pulls his forklift over, and he's like, "What?" And she's like, "Oh, you'll need to get off that forklift right away and get your close-toed shoes on." And he was like, "What? Why is this lady telling me this?" But, like, there's leadership.
[00:31:48] Pete Behrens: Yeah,
[00:31:48] Nicole Greer: yeah. Isn't that great?
[00:31:49] Nicole Greer: And so I just, I love what you're saying about that, that we can choose it. That's so good. And you wrote on page 29, "You weren't born to lead, you're never fully prepared to lead, you won't be perfect at it, and that's precisely the point." Yes. That's a, that's a good nugget
[00:32:06] Pete Behrens: You know, I continue to be taught leadership and,
[00:32:10] Nicole Greer: you
[00:32:10] Pete Behrens: know, this-
[00:32:10] Nicole Greer: Of course
[00:32:11] Pete Behrens: one of the stories I, I highlighted in there actually came personally. We had a, a catastrophic fire in our area here near Boulder, Colorado-
[00:32:20] Nicole Greer: Oh ...
[00:32:20] Pete Behrens: about four years ago. And our house ended up being right on the, the fire line and, and so there's a lot of cat- con- catastrophic results, kind of half our neighborhood was- Oh, I'm
[00:32:30] Nicole Greer: sorry
[00:32:31] Nicole Greer: was burnt
[00:32:32] Pete Behrens: to the ground and the other half wasn't. Through that o- one of our neighbors started to form a, a support group for the first responders and, and collected a lot of gifts and notes and, and things to be able to give to them. And walked our neighborhood, at least the surviving homes, through this journey of, of support.
[00:32:54] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:55] Pete Behrens: And I won't tell the whole story here, but it's, it's in the book and, and, you know, you think about something like this. She's not a community leader. Nobody assigned her a title. Th- like, she, she didn't, you know, she, she didn't have a job. Like, this wasn't, this wasn't... she didn't get paid for this.
[00:33:14] Pete Behrens: She just saw it as a gap to fill, and she, she sought neighbors to help fill it, and it wasn't enough for her just to give these donations. She actually wanted to meet these first responders and bring the neighbors to these, these, these locations. We went to about 10. I went maybe two or three times. The emotions that poured, this was some of the most harrowing experiences these firefighters and first responders had faced ever.
[00:33:41] Nicole Greer: Oh, yeah.
[00:33:42] Pete Behrens: And, you know, these, these catastrophic fires like we've seen recently in LA and, and whatnot. And what's interesting about this is I'd always seen leadership as strong, decisive, you know, have that vision. This, this is, this was a very relational leadership. This was, this was invi- inviting leadership.
[00:34:04] Pete Behrens: This was very soft leadership. And it just tells me again and again the antithesis of what we see as leadership, the impact that that kind of leadership can have on other people, and nobody's putting a spotlight on that. Nobody's, s- you know, paying that individual or giving them a promotion. And they did it because it was their service and, and they...
[00:34:28] Pete Behrens: their, their reward was, you know, the, the feeling of, of being able to respond into that moment. And so it's just a reminder, right, that was a choice-
[00:34:37] Nicole Greer: 100% ...
[00:34:38] Pete Behrens: that person made. One situation a- and, and the re- and the impact that that had.
[00:34:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And I, I'm, I'm curious, I don't know if this is true, but, like, when I hear something like that, I always think, you know, in m- many of our companies, you know, we're- we read in all the books and all the teaching, have some core values.
[00:34:56] Nicole Greer: You know, what are the core values of your organization? But, like, there's something in that woman's core That made her think, "I gotta do this." You know? It was much deeper and bigger than, like, her. You know what I mean? It was like she had a, like a calling or a mission. There's missions to- Mm ... you know, to do this.
[00:35:12] Nicole Greer: And so that stuff is real, everybody. You know, like, do y'all have a mission, vision, and core values? It sounds trite, you know, at some level, but it's like, no, these, these values are alive and well inside of people if you can slow down to look at it. And when you were talking to you were saying it was relation- relational and soft which I think is some of the best leadership out there
[00:35:36] Pete Behrens: What I say, yeah, what
[00:35:37] Nicole Greer: I say in the book- You know, soft isn't easy, everybody Soft is hard.
[00:35:42] Nicole Greer: Hard to do sometimes.
[00:35:44] Pete Behrens: Well, and w- what I say in the book is I started to see my strength as softness, and her softness as strength. Yeah. And to me, that was a real indicator of this, again, you call it 48 qualities, I'll call it attention.
[00:36:03] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:36:04] Pete Behrens: The soft and strength, you know, strength is not a endpoint. It's, it's a midpoint, and what does it look like?
[00:36:11] Pete Behrens: And, and it often looks very different than we've been told.
[00:36:15] Nicole Greer: Yeah. I this has been years now, but I went to this, this gathering, faith-based gathering, and it was at a Catholic church here in the North Carolina area up by Lake Norman. And this guy came to talk about Mother Teresa 'cause he was a priest that had worked alongside her, and like she never wanted to be famous.
[00:36:35] Nicole Greer: She's a nun, okay? So she, that's not she, you know... Oh Mother Teresa had an ego, but I think she knew about keeping it tamped down. But anyway, but she he said, he said, "You know, she started by helping the dead and dying in the streets of Calcutta. But she ended up in the offices of presidents and leaders all over the country."
[00:36:55] Nicole Greer: And he said, "And when she got with them, she was a total firecracker." You know, so like she was soft when it was right to be soft, but then she would get in these a- rooms with these people who had major power, and she, and he said she would tell 'em. So there's a time to be soft, there's a time to be harder,
[00:37:15] Pete Behrens: you know?
[00:37:16] Pete Behrens: We call, we call this the Robin Hood- Okay ... of power. Steal from the rich-
[00:37:19] Nicole Greer: Okay. Talk about that ...
[00:37:20] Pete Behrens: yeah. Steal from the rich and give to the poor. So when you think about pow- power is like currency in an organization. 100%. And power comes from a lot of things. It comes from status, it comes from culture, it comes from titles and, and whatnot.
[00:37:33] Pete Behrens: But most leaders get this wrong. They cower to the, the strong, and then they push power down to the weak. And, and I want- Mm ... leaders to think more like Robin Hood, like you just said, Mother Teresa.
[00:37:44] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:44] Pete Behrens: You give power to those who need it, and you steal power from those who have it, and that's what she's doing there.
[00:37:50] Pete Behrens: She is pushing back to power. She's speaking truth to power where it needs to be spoken. That's her strength, and then she's giving it to those below.
[00:37:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Oh, so good. So good. All right. So, the next part of the book is called Entering the Fog. "Leadership begins at the boundary between the familiar and the unknown."
[00:38:09] Nicole Greer: So kinda tease that apart for us. So there's fog, then you need to enter into the fog. So, so how does a leader enter into the fog? How could, how do I get myself in there, get comfortable with it, know it's how it works? How do I do that exactly?
[00:38:24] Pete Behrens: Yeah, my guess is leaders listening to this are already in it.
[00:38:30] Nicole Greer: Oh, yes.
[00:38:31] Pete Behrens: And so, and so it's not like it's a specific choice. And when I say that, I'm not talking necessarily about fairly routine work. There are a lot of jobs where things really don't change. We operate in a different world where there is a lot of change, whether it's technology or just competition or global nature of, of w- the office and workplace and things like that.
[00:38:54] Pete Behrens: And so most of those leaders are already in it. So it's, it's a recognition more than a action to step into the fog. Okay. Okay. But when I see that I'm already in it, then there needs to be an action of stepping forward even though you don't know where to step, and that's the movement. That's the courage to then be able to take a step in a direction to learn, to start to get feedback, to start to understand where we're at in order to where it is we need to go.
[00:39:26] Pete Behrens: You think about, you know, you're in a room and you can't see out. How do I find the door? Well, you start feeling around. That's movement. That's action- Mm-hmm ... that you need when you don't know where to go, even if you have a goal of where you wanna get to. So, so that, that action stepping is really the first actionable step besides the courage to do it.
[00:39:48] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Well, and you're right, there's gonna be a trait, a character trait that's gonna kick in and help you move it forward. That's absolutely- Yeah ... right. And hopefully you're studying that to know which- Yeah, and
[00:39:58] Pete Behrens: I, I
[00:39:58] Nicole Greer: think- ... which traits you wanna use.
[00:40:01] Pete Behrens: You've already clued on the most important characteristic here.
[00:40:04] Pete Behrens: You don't have to be alone. You know, leadership- Oh my gosh ... we often think is I need to be the one to do this, and no, the, the best leaders we've seen is the ones who say, "I, I've got this vision, but I need us to do some-" Like, bring your team with you on this journey, help- let them start to explore and take steps.
[00:40:24] Pete Behrens: Give them the freedom to fail, whatever failure means for your organization, to learn, and use that collective energy to create progress versus thinking, "This is mine to solve," right? "This is mine to have an answer to."
[00:40:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. So, I, I was working with this organization one time and the leader at the top , the leader at the top was such a micromanager, okay?
[00:40:51] Nicole Greer: And so, you know, I was coaching him and, and so anyways, I said, "I want you to give a project to your team, and I want you to stay out of it." "I want you to just hear what they have to say and ask powerful questions," okay? Instead of telling. And and so he heard their first presentation after they, he allowed this team to do it.
[00:41:11] Nicole Greer: Well, they were like kids in a candy store. All this talent, all these ideas- Mm-hmm ... all this everything and I could have fell out of my chair when he, when we were in there and we were listening to them give the presentation and he leans over and he says, "Look what they can do when I get out of their way."
[00:41:31] Nicole Greer: And I was like, "Hallelujah!" But
[00:41:34] Pete Behrens: think of the fear of that. So I had a leader similar, and we were doing a team- Okay. Tell me,
[00:41:39] Nicole Greer: tell me ...
[00:41:40] Pete Behrens: we were, we were doing a team-based approach to managing their project. We, in Scrum, call it a Kanban board. It's a visible board we all stand in front of and we work on in a very physical world sense.
[00:41:50] Pete Behrens: Nice. You can have virtual versions of this. But this leader, because they were so afraid of letting go of that control-
[00:42:00] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah, yeah ...
[00:42:01] Pete Behrens: would stand between the team and the board, and when the person wanted to move something on the board, he physically would say tell me where it is. I'll move it." Like, had to be- Like, I had to physically grab him and move him to the side of this room and say, "This is the team's board."
[00:42:17] Pete Behrens: But
[00:42:18] Nicole Greer: think of this fear.
[00:42:19] Pete Behrens: That's fantastic. That leader is losing control of something that they have become the expert in, project management, whatever it is, and now they have no rung to... Like, they're letting go of that rung, but they're not grabbing onto another rung yet, and this is the danger, and this is one of the stories of the book I talk about is, you know, this, this, this what's next is you've...
[00:42:39] Pete Behrens: You know, letting go is only half the solution. You've got to have something else you grab onto in order for as your leadership to grow, and he, he didn't feel like he had anything to grab onto, and so that fear held him back.
[00:42:53] Nicole Greer: That's right. Oh, he was definitely in the fog. 'Cause I have nothing else to grab onto.
[00:42:57] Nicole Greer: Yes. And that's where you're saying- Yes ... well, get your hands out there and feel around until you find a rung, right? Yeah. And see what it's like. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love your story. I love your story. That's hilarious. Like, you have to physically move this dude out of the way. I love it. I love it, I love it. I
[00:43:10] Pete Behrens: don't know in today's culture whether I could still do that, but- You-
[00:43:14] Pete Behrens: at the time,
[00:43:16] Nicole Greer: 20 some years ago, it was- You would
[00:43:18] Pete Behrens: have to invite him to step aside. Yeah. It was, it was still in my purview to, to take hold and move somebody physically.
[00:43:23] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Well, you know, there used to be this thing where, like, dudes would just tell dudes the truth, and now we're all scared, so... A- and don't miss, everybody, that this is that addiction that I was saying Thomas Keating teaches.
[00:43:35] Nicole Greer: Like, he was addicted to the control of that. Like, he could not physically get- Yeah ... the heck out of the way, right? So, so important. Okay. Now, I marked this on page 66. All right? I know you don't have these page numbers memorized, Pete, but you say... This- and this is a big, big problem everywhere I go.
[00:43:52] Nicole Greer: "People don't just follow the top leader. They follow their leaders. The fog demands alignment across all levels of leadership." Oh, my gosh. I wish I had a pill for this. Mm. I could just give everybody a pill. Take this pill every morning and y'all will be in alignment. But it's not that easy. So talk a little bit about that alignment.
[00:44:13] Nicole Greer: This is the big problem. Like, the leader says, "We're doing this," and then the leader down here is like, "Well, we're not gonna exactly do that."
[00:44:21] Pete Behrens: You know, this is probably one of those tensions again that won't have an answer. But, you know, we think of middle management, it's a tough place to live
[00:44:28] Nicole Greer: It is ... you know,
[00:44:29] Pete Behrens: you need to follow direction from above, but you need to create your own space.
[00:44:32] Pete Behrens: How do you do that? And just being a co- I call it a conduit. Like, if all you're doing is passing down vision and passing up problems, you're not a leader, right? You're just a pipe. And, and so, you know, getting into this alignment came later in my career as I started working with larger and larger leadership teams and, you know, global organizations and, you know, we get pockets to work, but not across the board.
[00:44:58] Pete Behrens: You know, I think alignment, like culture, I think leaders roll their eyes a little bit around some of these terms. We've used them too much. But at the same time, it's the secret sauce. It's what makes organizations-
[00:45:15] Nicole Greer: I agree ...
[00:45:16] Pete Behrens: totally effective. And if I go back to companies I've worked with, whether it's you know, GE Healthcare or Salesforce or Google, it's this concept of aligning not on practice or, or technique, but on principles and values and approaches- Ah,
[00:45:32] Nicole Greer: huh
[00:45:33] Pete Behrens: that guide, that create this, this sense of togetherness And this is where I think a lot of alignment goes wrong. We try to align on too micro of items, whether it's aligning on a project goal or aligning on a specific direction or technique or tool. Like, these things are... They help, but they get in the way for the most part.
[00:45:58] Pete Behrens: And so what we try to work with leaders on is, is aligning on the things that are more static and, and stable over time, which are the values and the, the, the values that get operationalized as policy and metrics of what we, what we measure in an organization that create the alignment. Google has great ways to keep people connected and very simple policies that drive behavior in various ways that they want to drive.
[00:46:25] Pete Behrens: And that to me is, is what alignment is, but most leaders get it wrong.
[00:46:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's this place in Greensboro, North Carolina, that over and over gets listed as, like, the number one think tank and place to go to study leadership. Mm-hmm. It's called the Center for Creative Leadership.
[00:46:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And if you listen to this podcast and you haven't heard me mention ccl.org, you need to go subscribe. They have white papers. They have all this stuff. Well, I wi- I had the privilege of being doing some training there, and it, it changed my whole world- Mm-hmm ... in terms of leadership, and so, like, I, I mean, that's a big deal, y'all.
[00:47:01] Nicole Greer: And their definition of leadership is DAC, direction, alignment, and commitment. Yeah. And it's so simple. Yeah ... they, they tell the story that it took them 25 years, Pete, to figure out their definition, and they finally landed on this 25 years later. Yeah. And I'm like, I mean, that's a good study, 25 years of, of research, and it's full of a bunch of researchers and PhDs and stuff.
[00:47:26] Nicole Greer: So they're, they're... it's, it's all academic and, and, and researched. But, like, the al- the alignment in the middle is just really the magic. It's getting people... Like, we don't want a bu- bunch of people that have group think, but we wanna be align, in alignment on how we treat people, how we look at the business, where the business is headed.
[00:47:47] Nicole Greer: You know, you can't have two leaders in the C-suite taking the business this way, and they're taking the business that way. That's gonna split our efforts. So I just think alignment is huge, but peop- I don't... I... You said it was used a lot So I- I, I think it- I'm glad to hear that because-
[00:48:03] Pete Behrens: Yeah ...
[00:48:03] Nicole Greer: I'm not sure people-
[00:48:04] Pete Behrens: I think people are, yeah.
[00:48:06] Pete Behrens: I, I think it's one of those words that people just glaze, glaze over.
[00:48:09] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's it. Yeah.
[00:48:11] Pete Behrens: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've, I follow CCL too and appreciate their work and-
[00:48:17] Nicole Greer: Oh, so good ...
[00:48:18] Pete Behrens: you know, we've, I, I define leadership as a team sport, right? If you're on a solo venture, that's not leadership. That's more like, you know, a, a f- a fun adventure.
[00:48:28] Pete Behrens: But this concept of alignment and commitment is the team aspect of this, right? 100%. There needs to be... If, if others aren't following, if others aren't, aren't w- committed to your journey, that's not leadership. So yes, I completely support the DAC.
[00:48:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. I think so too. Well, I can't believe it's, it's at the end of the hour, 'cause we could talk for hours, you and I.
[00:48:51] Nicole Greer: So you have this other thing. It's on page 97, everybody. Get the book, everybody. It's called Into the Fog: Leadership Stories from the Edge of Uncertainty by Pete Behrens, okay? So let's get that in the cart on the Amazon. So last thing that, that we will talk about, I have this highlighted, because when I sit down to coach somebody and I'm getting to know them, it could be in the get to know them part of the coaching or it could be in the first session, but I will ask this question, Pete.
[00:49:16] Nicole Greer: I'll be like, "What is it like to experience you?" And this almost flabbergasts people. They're like, "Wow, I've never really thought about that before." I'm like, "Well, it's high time you did." I don't say that, but I think that. But you say, on this page you say, "Leadership presence isn't de- designed by our intentions."
[00:49:37] Nicole Greer: Like, write that down everybody. "Leadership presence isn't defined by our intentions, but by how others experience our actions," which is why I ask that question. Because people have, they're in the fog around that, I'll guarantee you that. But why, you know, like they'll be blunt in a meeting. "Well, I didn't mean anything by that."
[00:49:59] Nicole Greer: Okay, but you were blunt So that's so huge. Let me tell you what Pete Baron says on page 97. "Leadership presence isn't defined by our intentions, but by how others experience our actions." That's money right there
[00:50:17] Pete Behrens: Yeah, I've been on the sour side of that-
[00:50:21] Nicole Greer: Me too ... many times.
[00:50:23] Pete Behrens: What I've, what I've perceived as confidence comes across as arrogance.
[00:50:27] Pete Behrens: Right. What I've perceived as joking comes across as I dissed somebody.
[00:50:33] Pete Behrens: What I perceived- Right,
[00:50:33] Nicole Greer: sarcasm.
[00:50:34] Pete Behrens: Yeah. What I perceived as, you know, just being one of the team is seen as he, he doesn't know what he's doing, right? So it's, there is such a gap, and this is again our ego or just our blind spots- Mm-hmm
[00:50:47] Pete Behrens: between what we believe we're doing and what others are perceiving that we're doing. And w- the, you know, if you think about if there's anything, anything a leader wants to take away to become a better leader, it's activating that self-awareness muscle. It's getting more information about yourself. But how do you get that?
[00:51:07] Pete Behrens: The only way that that starts to activate is others can tell you, right? My, my best growth periods were, were the courage from the other person to say, "Pete, that didn't come across the way I think you thought it came across," or, "You already had your decision made and you asked us anyways. Like, that was completely rhetorical."
[00:51:28] Pete Behrens: Like-
[00:51:29] Nicole Greer: Yeah ...
[00:51:30] Pete Behrens: unless those were told to me to my face, I wouldn't have known So I, I celebrate those moments That's right, 'cause you're
[00:51:37] Nicole Greer: in the fog
[00:51:38] Pete Behrens: Yeah, I celebrate those moments, and this is why I say if you could, if you could bring others on that have the courage to tell you you're not wearing the clothes, right, the emperor has no clothes, you know, have the courage to, to speak truth to you, that's gonna be your ticket to, to growth i- in your journey.
[00:51:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And so don't miss, everybody, he just threw in a little something right there. He talked about the Emperor's New Clothes. So this is a fable. I want you to go Google it. Everybody write that down, the Emperor's New Clothes. Go Google it, go l- th- that is a great fable to tell in a team meeting at the beginning of the meeting when you're trying to introduce the fact that you wanna have more feedback, you wanna have more dialogue, you wanna have more truth-telling, honesty, and candor, as I like to say.
[00:52:21] Nicole Greer: That is a great little old fable to throw in. So love that. Pete, w- how can people get with you? How do they hire you? How do they get with you? What's the deal? What, what's your, what's your handle? How do we find you? One,
[00:52:36] Pete Behrens: the best way to connect all the dots would be into the book, I'm sorry, intothefogbook.com.
[00:52:43] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:52:43] Pete Behrens: And that will be a page on our website, which also then can lead to Agile Leadership Journey, the podcast, the book, myself. I speak across the world in, at conferences. I do leadership offsites. Some of my favorite is working with leadership teams, working on things like direction, alignment, and commitment.
[00:53:03] Nicole Greer: Heck yeah.
[00:53:03] Pete Behrens: Yes, and, you know, one of the things that I also love is for leaders to not only think about buying this book but use it as a book club. Use it as an opportunity to be vulnerable and share stories with your team. That's one of my favorite modes of this book, is how it might be a catalyst conversation starter.
[00:53:26] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so good. So good. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So here it is again, everybody. Put it right in front of my face so you can see it, 'cause my background. Into the Fog: Leadership Stories from the Edge of Uncertainty, Pete Behrens. Well, it has been a delight to hang out with my fellow coach, consultant who loves leadership so much, can't talk about it enough.
[00:53:43] Nicole Greer: So I'm grateful you've been here today. Thank you so much.
[00:53:47] Pete Behrens: You were a beautiful guest to collaborate and chat with, so thank you for the easy environment to talk.
[00:53:53] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. So everybody, go down right now. It takes a hot second. Click the Like button and leave a little love note for Pete and Nicole.
[00:54:01] Nicole Greer: We, we need some love in our lives. All right. Good to be with you, Pete. Everybody, I'll see you next Wednesday on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. Thank you.
[00:54:10] Pete Behrens: Thank you.