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Join the Nerds!
Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Scott (00:01.841)
Hey everybody, welcome to another groovy episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Trudy, your host, and with me, well, you know who's here.
Scott (00:13.841)
Dan!
daniel (00:15.698)
Scott! You know, you just went groovy. And I'm going to date myself. I immediately, for some reason, thought about there was a video game came out called Earthworm Jim, and that was this catchphrase, groovy. And now that is jammed back into my brain for another decade, at least.
Scott (00:25.585)
Yes.
Scott (00:32.625)
I'm trying to bring it back. It's just a word that people don't use a lot. I think groovy is a groovy word. Plus, I'm trying to shape it up. You usually illiterate with the Fs, and I'm like, eh, today I'm going to throw a G in there, and it caught you off guard. And I think that that's great. So how you doing, sir?
daniel (00:34.646)
Yes, yes.
daniel (00:45.302)
Ooooo
daniel (00:49.846)
You're pretty great.
I was alliterating off the groovy, come on man.
Scott (00:58.609)
Well, you know that I am groovy.
daniel (01:01.366)
I know, that's true.
daniel (01:06.71)
Love it.
Scott (01:10.289)
Yep, I'm feeling groovy, man. That's totally cool. I have a learning today, but I want to get somebody else's opinion on it. So let's not waste any more time. Let's go ahead and bring our Duchess of all things groovy. Zeta is in the house, everybody.
daniel (01:12.694)
That's awesome.
daniel (01:16.47)
Mmm.
Scott (01:34.385)
Zera!
Zeta (01:35.556)
Groovy.
Pete (01:35.918)
Thank you.
Scott (01:37.713)
You're groovy? All right. That's totally awesome. I should get that. It's pretty good. You know, we don't have the Austin Powers drop for that. I'm going to need to find the Austin Powers drop for that, you know? And that'll work out great. You reminded me of that. So you're groovy. You're not.
daniel (01:38.134)
Ha ha!
Zeta (01:38.788)
You
Doing pretty good, doing pretty good. Yeah.
Zeta (02:00.036)
No! No, that was last week. This is this week. But you know, Scott, I have to say, I have to say, when I hear the word groovy, I always think of Bruce Campbell. Am I the only one? Groovy.
daniel (02:02.102)
Ha ha ha!
Scott (02:05.457)
Okay, all right.
Scott (02:13.009)
yes. No. Yeah, I could get that dropped too. I don't want to work on that. That's totally, totally groovy of us to be thinking. I think so. I'm groovy. I have a learning today, but I want to share it with both of you. So, and this is for our audience. So AI tech, what do you guys think AI tech? You like it or you hate it?
Zeta (02:19.844)
All right. We got some time for that though. How are you doing, Scott? How are you doing so far?
Zeta (02:39.78)
that's.
daniel (02:40.054)
man, good news, good thing you're not picking anything controversial. I like it, I like it for the most part. I think getting to a place where it stays a net positive for society will be like threading a needle, possible but difficult. So I'm excited to see us flail around and try.
Zeta (02:45.156)
yeah.
Scott (02:48.113)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Scott (03:05.841)
Zeta.
Zeta (03:06.692)
As for me, I think AI is a valuable tool. Yes, it is something that is worthwhile. Yes, it will help us save time and hopefully carpal tunnel with our hands. But I also think it's kind of being tossed around as a buzzword at this point. And a lot of people are going AI to make something sound a lot more genuine than it actually is.
daniel (03:26.166)
Yeah, good point.
Scott (03:27.953)
So I think both those things are right on the money. So for me, there's so many things that I can do now that I couldn't do before that AI is allowing me to do. AI has really helped the creative end of what I do become even better. Like the stuff I produce is even better. And it's allowing me to do things that I never thought I could. We had a conversation earlier last week about here's some designs I made to kind of enhance a learning I was putting together that I couldn't have done.
a year ago. Like I just, it just couldn't have done. I would have spent a lot of money to have somebody else do it, which is cool. And I'm not saying you shouldn't like you totally should. So here's the thing. Like I get excited, like, my gosh, let's try something new. And so the one thing I will say is that the ethics around AI tech is really important. So,
Zeta (03:58.436)
Awesome.
Zeta (04:16.1)
Agreed.
Scott (04:18.417)
If you're going to use AI to say, fix something in your video or audio recording by having it replace a word that you said, or maybe something else that you may not have said, and it sounds pretty much like you or somebody else, like you should totally talk to the person that is your talent and just say, hey, you know what we need to do a pick up here instead of doing that. Do you mind if we go ahead and have AI do it?
You should do that like first and not the opposite of look at what I did. I fixed this. Aren't I really smart? And have that person go, wow, that's a, that's Terminator two stuff. yeah. Yeah. So that's just my learning today. Like it was a, it was a, it was great, you know,
daniel (04:50.934)
Yes.
daniel (05:00.662)
Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.
Zeta (05:02.116)
Indeed. Yeah.
Zeta (05:10.084)
Yeah, new territory.
Scott (05:14.353)
Yep, AI here.
Scott (05:19.505)
All right. Enough of that. Really important lesson, folks. You know, ethics around what we do is becoming even more and more important than a human element of what we do is really, really important. And that ties in nicely to our special guest today. I'm super excited to be talking with this individual all around leadership and ethics and really great stuff there. And we're going to learn all about him in a little segment that we call, What's Your Deal?
Scott (05:51.697)
Pete!
Pete (05:53.454)
Scots.
Scott (05:54.641)
Hey man, what's your deal?
Pete (05:57.102)
What is my deal? You know what, my deal, I'm a teacher. Like at my core, that's just what I do. I'll tell you a little bit about the story, but I used to be the senior technology trainer for Kinkos and people accused me of being an IT guy all the time. And I wasn't an IT guy. I'm not that smart, but I could make those things sound simple for people. And I always joke that, you know, I will have a job if electricity goes away.
Scott (06:10.033)
wow.
Pete (06:24.27)
You all will be scrambling for work, but I will still have a job because I can teach. It doesn't have to be, I was just teaching technology at the time. And the way I got to be there was just not what I planned. I was in Bible school and I was working at Kinko's to like make money getting through school and just worked, you know, two to 10, three to 11. And I kept getting in trouble, to be honest. My job was at the front counter. I would take money. I would take orders.
first, then I would take your money and then I would go feed paper to the self -serve copiers. And that was all I did. But I kept getting in trouble for taking two different kinds of orders. And I learned that copyright is a law. So, okay, I can't really do that anymore. I can't copy copyrighted material. But I never felt good about the other one. Like if you brought me a really complicated project and I would go and give it to the person that was running the job, who was also my boss,
would yell at me and she would get really upset because she didn't know if it was going to work. She'd never done it before. So to save my sanity and make money and survive, I just started. I'd take your complicated job and I would write step one. And then I'd give it to her and she'd do that. And then I'd get it back and I'd throw the order form away and I'd write what I thought was probably step two. And then she would do that. And we'd just keep going until your project was done.
And I now keep in mind, I don't know how to do what I'm actually writing the order for. I just broke it down into like start here. And then people just thought, well, you should be our trainer. And while that was happening, I also wanted to try to get a weekend off once in a while. I had a little boy who's three years old and my wife just was rightly so could we have a Saturday and a Sunday together as a family once in a while. So I asked the general manager, could we do that? And he said, no, by the time.
You know, by this time I'm running the second shift now that person was gone and I'm in charge of that second shift. And he just told me you're, you're too valuable for me. I can't lose you off the second shift on Saturdays. And so I said in all of the, I'm going to force you into a corner that I could muster. I said, well, if you can't make a change for me, I have to make a change myself. And he said, fine, do what you got to do. So crap, that didn't work. So then I looked over to the job postings and.
Pete (08:46.638)
job postings for other stores around town and there was a trainer job. So I said, what do you think about the trainer job at the other store across town? He goes, actually, he'd be really good at that. I said, wait a minute, you can't afford to lose me, but you're telling me I should go apply for this job in the other store across town? He says, yeah, you really should, you'd be really good. And that's how I got into training. I applied for the other job and here we are today.
Zeta (09:10.18)
That's awesome.
daniel (09:10.454)
That's awesome.
Scott (09:12.017)
That's totally, totally awesome. And you've got a lot of great stories on a great, things that we want to share, about leadership and about your journey of taking what you know and what you've learned through the years. And, I'm, I'm not going to bury the lead. Let's go ahead and get into it folks with our topic of the week.
Scott (09:40.241)
This week we're talking about new emerging and aspiring leaders. You know, in your book, Elevating Potential, Pete, you talk about a lot of new leaders feel like they're being shoved out of an airplane without a parachute or with a parachute that doesn't work, which is actually probably worse, right? So could you tell us the story about how you got to that aha moment of
the necessity of empowering our new leaders.
Pete (10:13.358)
Totally. I actually think they don't know that the parachute doesn't work. I think that's the really the bad part is that they don't know that they don't know how to use the parachute. And here's how I got there. I was the director of learning and development at a small software company, well, medium sized software company in California. And there was a young company meeting. Most of the people there were from college to their first real job, to their first manager supervisor job.
And there were struggles in all of that. And I found myself literally walking across our courtyard one day and at this new building we'd just built and that actually had a slide in it. Like it was one of these kinds of companies and thinking like all of these like really talented people who are in their first manager, leader role, a lot of them are struggling and a lot of their teams are struggling. And I thought, well, okay, so I had a lot of great development.
coming up as a trainer at Kinko's, working with other companies and people that were mentors in my life. And so how did, like I learned to avoid some of the things that they're doing. So who's going to do that for them? Who's going to help them grow as leaders? Who's going to help mentor them? Who's going to provide the development opportunities? I'm literally thinking to myself, like, I got to find the person who's supposed to do this for them. And then I just kind of realized that's literally my job.
I'm the director of learning and development at this company. It's my job to do that. So yeah. So that's kind of the motivation and kind of where that comes from is people, I mean, we're really good at doing a thing and then we get promoted to lead people doing the thing. And nobody tells us that the skills you need to lead those people are not the same things that made you good at doing the thing.
daniel (11:44.086)
Surprise!
Pete (12:07.47)
And then we get into it and we struggle. And I think what really hurts is that the managers and leaders that are doing that to people, they often don't know better because that's how it worked for them. And so the whole point of the book is to like, let's change that. Let's redirect that a little bit and shift it to like help those new managers and leaders learn you can do it a different way and you can actually prepare people.
Zeta (12:33.476)
So you should totally just throw them a pizza party, right? And that should just cover everything as they go in. I'm joking. So Pete, I love this. I love that you're putting forth at least an idea or a plan for people who are kind of floundering at that point. And it's not just them, but the teams beneath them that are kind of suffering from that. What kind of skills would be paramount to start going in at that first level?
daniel (12:37.878)
Heheheheh
Pete (12:39.406)
Yes!
daniel (12:41.43)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Zeta (13:02.212)
with these new aspiring leaders.
Pete (13:05.806)
all of the skills that a project manager would need. I mean, I could list them all off, but if you just think about being a project manager, you have to learn to get work done through other people. You have to learn to influence them. You have to solve problems. And you get to do that without the overhead of those people actually reporting to you. So that's the first thing that comes to mind, actually, when you said that, is those learning to be a project manager helps build everything I need except for the fact that I'm
And please, I hope everybody hears us right, but the baggage of employees reporting to you, meaning all the things that I have to do that aren't the work in order to be a manager and all the stuff that goes with that, approving PTO and the stuff.
Scott (13:51.857)
I think that's the fun stuff though. You know what I'm saying? So my experience in leadership, that's the best part. Speaking just for myself, people are messy, right? They're human beings. Things just get kind of messy. And honestly, if that's not you, if you can't thrive in the messiness of people, then you probably shouldn't lead them.
Pete (13:54.382)
Proving.
Scott (14:18.577)
That's okay. It's totally okay if you can't and you want to just be an individual contributor and just rock it out because we need you too. Let's be very, very specific about that. I need my rock stars. I need those people that show up every day and love what they're doing. I got to find ways to challenge them and help them grow and make them better. If I asked them to lead a team, it would probably not be the right fit for them.
Pete (14:43.918)
Totally. I used to actually teach a course called, So You Think You Want to Be a Manager. And the goal, like a stated objective, was to convince one third of the people that attend that they don't want to do it, just by giving them a look at the messy that you were talking about.
daniel (14:49.27)
Heh.
daniel (15:01.974)
You know, it's, I think you're really hitting on something as you talk about people thinking that they have to go into leadership because like that's the next step on paper. That's the next run on the corporate ladder. Like, what do you think leads to that kind of like thinking? What do you think gets us there?
Pete (15:23.566)
Money.
daniel (15:24.886)
Ha! Ha! Okay, alright, great! I'll just sit back down now, thank you.
Pete (15:28.398)
Yeah, I do. I think people...
Zeta (15:31.524)
You
Scott (15:32.657)
Well, that's our show, folks. Thank you very much.
daniel (15:34.518)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Zeta (15:34.724)
Thanks for coming to our TED Talk.
daniel (15:41.238)
Ha ha ha!
Pete (15:41.614)
I do, I think people are money motivated in our careers. And so that's the only way they see to get more money is I need to take a next level job. And some organizations may not paint that picture for what that next level could be without supervising people.
daniel (16:02.198)
Do you think because of the messy that we're talking about, do you think that that's one of the reasons why corporations put so much value on those people leadership roles?
Pete (16:16.174)
I don't know. Maybe. And maybe because they just don't know how to career path a specialist or that for some reason, they're not in a place where they can see in the business model that we can take the payroll of a specialist professional along a certain job track. I'm thinking about just creating job families and doing some of that HR work with HR partners that I worked with.
There's a point where, yeah, it looked great on paper, but nobody ever hired those roles because they were expensive.
Scott (16:54.289)
So let's back up just a little bit. So I agree with you on everything you said, right? So we've got this opportunity. We've got a lot of Michael Scott's, if you, you know, from the office, if you know, he's the best example I've got, right? Good people that want to be great leaders that aren't equipped for that. Why is it that we continue to, what are the systems and the structures that are in place, say in corporate America, where we continue to...
Pete (17:08.526)
Yes.
Scott (17:23.793)
make those same mistakes and put either ill -equipped people or worse, the wrong people into those leadership positions.
Pete (17:34.606)
Great question. Money still comes to mind and so does politics. In the business world, I think we understand the value of making capital investments, putting money into capital infrastructure in order to create value and growth. I just don't think we see the same parallel in making investments in people in a lot of the marketplace. There are some organizations that really, really do.
daniel (17:37.846)
Hmph.
Pete (18:04.078)
but there are a lot that don't. Maybe because they never saw it, they don't know what it could look like. It's expensive. So, you know, I'm a small to medium business. I'm trying to just kind of keep the lights on and keep, you know, profit and payroll. And so that's just not, in my mind, that's an expense, not an investment. I think those kinds of mindsets and things, and just the pressures of, hey, we need results now. We'll worry about next year, tomorrow.
Scott (18:35.569)
For those people that are human resource development, right, or I'm doing leadership development in my organization, and we're looking at the scope of the opportunity, which I think everybody's got.
help our audience that are in those positions or those people maybe thinking about it. Where do I start? So how do we start to make things better?
Pete (19:03.522)
What's your biggest need? I worked with a company that had two openings for, there were 12 positions in the country and two of them were going to come open. I won't say the company's name because people would know it. And so I'm just going to, that there were 110 positions below those 12 and they were starting to, to develop or to put plans to backfill those positions.
And they realized they didn't have not one person in 110 ready to backfill one of those 12 positions. They had no program to develop. They had no way. They just were like, wow, we don't have out of 110 people. We can't pick one of them that's ready now. And so they put together, and I was part of putting together the program that took the high potentials out of that 110 to prepare them to be one of the 12. And then as that...
got in place, we said, hey, we're going to have the same problem. Out of 110, we're going to have positions open and nobody below them is going to be ready. So let's put the next level program in below that so that we have them ready. That's the place I would say to start looking is where are you going to have needs and just start solving that need, but do it in a mind for tomorrow as well. Don't just do the short -term thing that works right now. It's like, think of it as a machine and a process. Like, this is going to have to happen over and over and over again.
but start with the thing that you really need, because you can always make a business case for the thing you need right now.
daniel (20:36.662)
I love that. I 100 % too often I have been in a company or worked with a company where like it's like a house of cards and it's like, like, Hey, like if any one of these people leave or win the lottery or just don't show up tomorrow, everything falls apart. Like there's no prep. There's no structure. There's no way to like, like your painting to like streamline the next person in like who.
Who fits in that spot? I don't know. We'll solve that problem when we get to it. And I can't tell how many times I've heard companies say that. And I'm like, no.
Zeta (21:17.284)
More often than not, though, there are situations where leaders are put in those positions and then there's no support for them for them to grow and be better and then lead their teams though. So like, how do we change that?
Pete (21:31.598)
That's a great question. I love the questions because man, I have so many ideas for business opportunities from your questions. How do we change that? Well, help them and then figure out how do we not do that again? I guess that's a theme in my life. I've made a ton of mistakes and done things not right, but every single time I'm always worried about how do I not do that again? So how do I put something in place to help that person now and then not do it?
same way next time. The other important thing, Zeta, that really comes to mind from your question is that sometimes that leader doesn't realize that they're struggling. Sometimes they know they got promoted. It feels great. I got the promotion. I'm leading a team. I have responsibility. People see me a different way. And they don't realize that there's a problem because, well, I just got promoted. Why would there be a problem? Because they just promoted me. And so sometimes bringing the awareness that that...
person is struggling or that we could help them, maybe the bigger challenge that actually helping them.
Zeta (22:37.444)
that. No, yeah.
daniel (22:37.654)
I love that. I got into training, similar story to yours, different. I was at a call center and the people who sat beside me always performed very well and eventually they're like, you should be a trainer. And so I was like, sure, that sounds great. And it's something I want to do. So awesome. And my first class did so poorly. I apologize to them. Like, I'm an -
Up until they took that first test at the end of week two, I thought I was doing great. I was like, yeah, everybody seemed like they had a good time. Everybody seemed like they were learning. We took the test. Nobody passed. I'm like, my God, what have I done wrong? And years later, when I would become a leader and I was reading all the books, following all of the procedures, it's like, hey, here's how you're a leader and this is what you're supposed to do. And here's how you keep your...
the stately distance and here's everything you need to know. And for a few months, I was actually just talking to somebody today about this. For the first few months, I was like, I'm doing it and I hate it and it's terrible and I hate being the leader. And, you know, finally I had a talk with my team. I'm like, guys, I was like, I'm just gonna be super real and super honest with you guys. Like, I feel like I'm doing a bad job. And so I want to start with you guys. How do I fix me? How do I lead you guys better? How do I make sure that we...
work together better. And they had lots and lots of great feedback. But it was only because I had had that experience where I thought I was doing great and I wasn't that I had enough wherewithal to like catch myself before it turned into like, hey, Dan, this just doesn't work and good luck in your next endeavor.
Zeta (24:24.516)
I think that's a good secondary kind of follow up on that. What are some of the warning signs of a new leader who is struggling? Like what are those red flags? What they look like?
Pete (24:36.494)
They could be, you might not see them for a long time because the team might just suck things up and they might just, hey, this is how it's going to be. So we have to figure out a way to work through it. I think they uncover themselves in conversations. As a leader, hiring that new leader, it's incredibly important for me to just have a regular cadence of having conversations, not just with that person, but with their regular team, building the trust and the rapport.
so that when little cracks start to form, the team could actually share and feel confident and comfortable sharing, hey, this is a thing, or they're struggling in this way. I haven't written all the books, I just wrote the one, so I don't have all the answers, but in my experience, I just have gotten so much out of those little kind of informal seeming conversations, but they're so purposeful and intentful to...
to create a dialogue that people are just willing to share and say, hey, this doesn't feel good, or we're struggling with that. And it's not always with that person. It's not always with their direct reports. It's also with their internal customers or other people they're working with. And just being mindful and understanding what does success really look like in that role. And I don't mean the KPIs.
Like beyond just those numbers, what does it mean to really thrive in this role that I'm promoting somebody to? And if what I'm seeing doesn't look like that, then we got to, we got to work on it.
Zeta (26:11.108)
I love that having open conversations and having a safe space to where you can get feedback from your team is essential. Absolutely, thanks.
Pete (26:18.958)
Absolutely.
Scott (26:21.585)
One of the things I appreciate about your book, which we don't often think about, is you go into depth of kind of defining leadership. Like, what is it? And I think all of us kind of have a different definition. I think that's the problem, right? So if leadership by definition is getting stuff done, well, that's easy, right? Did you get stuff done? Great. Cool. Like to me, I find that functional. Well, that's just functional leadership because if we're going to get stuff done at whatever cost, that could cost you a lot, right? So.
One of the things that's great, could you help us understand like, what are some of the foundational things that you think of when it comes to leadership and without giving too much away, you have this really great section where you talk about the four dimensions of leadership. If you can kind of touch a little bit on that from a foundational kind of thought process, because I think it really helped us identify and understand how we could frame some competencies with the programs that we build to try to create better leaders.
Pete (27:19.758)
Yeah, totally. To simplify it, I think leadership is influencing. It's not getting stuff done. It's helping them get their stuff done. Does that make sense? It's influencing and helping the team, whoever that is, to achieve that objective or the objective that we've all been given. To do that, I've always thought about, and I can't take credit for, somebody shared this with me. And so I...
I would love to say it's my own model, but it's actually something that somebody passed to me that they said, Pete, look, developing leaders, there's four different places you have to think about. Everybody thinks about developing or leading, managing the team, right? That's what everybody thinks about with leadership. Then they might think that they're really thinking about it well when they realize there's also leading and managing the business, which is different than the people. And then...
And then they really, you kind of have an aha and feel really complete when you realize that there's also managing and leading the culture. And that's influencing the way people think and act. And I've played soccer for most of my life. And so I always relate to the soccer field. And I love that game as a leadership kind of use it for examples, because the coach of a soccer team.
does not get to really influence the game once it starts. It's not like basketball where you can stop every 30 seconds and decide what are we going to do next? Or American football, when literally that's part of the game is to stop every single play and decide what do we do next? What happens on the soccer field, the coach has already taught them how to think and how to act and whatever happens there is a result of what happened on the training pitch. And so I see the leading culture is that. It's helping people think and act a way that...
is productive for us. But before all of that, before leading the team, the business, the culture, I've got to be able to lead and manage me. If I can't lead and manage myself first, I really shouldn't get to talk about leading and managing the team, or the culture, or the business, or the function. And so that, to me, is an essential, like, that's a critical starting point. And...
Pete (29:38.926)
Perhaps we don't talk about that part enough, like leading and managing myself well so I can lead and manage others.
Scott (29:49.841)
So great to hear you say that because sometimes I feel like.
when I look at a leader who might be struggling, and there are a bunch, right? I always ask like, well, who's mentoring and coaching them? And if you're one of those leaders like, man, I wanna get better, but I don't know what to ask or where to go. Like the question that I would challenge to throw out to people is where are you getting fed? Because you know what?
Ultimately, that's my responsibility. One of the things I love about this show is how much I learn and get great guests like yourself, Pete, and all the things we've learned from that. And then, and to piggyback and go and get fed from other places to make me a better rounded person. Yeah, so where are you getting fed? How do you get the information to get better? Really great stuff.
Pete (30:42.414)
it all over the place. It's, I have my morning time is like my quiet, productive space. My, my wife loves to sleep in, which is awesome because I get hours in the morning, just me and the dog and the cat. And it's what's on my mind. Like to answer your question, where I, where do I get things? It depends on what's going on. Sometimes it's from.
you know, kind of formal places that we would find on the web or reading different books or listening to the Ted talks and the podcasts, things like this one, for example, that other times it's, you know what, just talking to people, going out and just asking people that I know are real questions. Like one of the things I learned so much, I was researching a part of the book and I just started asking people who can I talk to that knows about this?
I learned so much from that. I could, I could actually, there was a whole section I could do a whole other book just because I learned so much from them and realized, wow, there's so much more to talk about here. So I think the information that we have and what we choose to read and take in purposefully books and you know, I'm a fan of formal training courses once in a while too, but we maybe overlook how much we learn from other people around us. Like you talked about mentors and.
how important even those informal mentors are, that maybe that person doesn't realize they're a mentor to you, but you do rely on them, right? And you do look to them as a role model. I grew up, my dad died when I was two years old, he was in Vietnam, so I didn't have that father figure, but there were so many people in my life that I pulled parts and pieces from.
they may not know, they may not know to this day how much of an influence they had, but I can think about the traits that I've adopted and taken on and exactly which person that came from. So I guess that's something I would encourage people is like the people around you, you've got so much to learn, there's so much body of knowledge, you don't have to do a ton of research, maybe just start asking live people real questions.
daniel (32:57.974)
Love that.
Scott (33:00.369)
You know, one of the things that I love in your book is you have a quote, and I hope that people can appreciate it, but I would love for you to kind of explain what you mean and then kind of reinforce it. It's like, nobody likes scrap learning.
Pete (33:19.822)
No. Yeah, so.
Scott (33:22.833)
Help us understand for those people that may have not heard of that term before, what do you mean by that? What is scrap learning and what do we do about it?
Pete (33:31.662)
I've got to credit a guy named Jeffrey Burke who ran a company called Knowledge Advisors back in the day and a system called Metrics That Matter. He's the one that introduced me to that term. That's the learning that... We go to training and we learn stuff and then how much of it gets applied on the job or to whatever we want? Well, what's left that didn't get applied? That's the scrap. That's the stuff that did no good. I think about it like trimming out a steak. There's the...
cut of meat that I want and bought this whole big piece of chunk of meat, but then I need to trim around all the parts to get the part I want to put on the grill. What's left over is the scrap. It's waste. And how much training in formal learning activities and even informal is just wasted because there's not a mechanism to help the person tie it to real life. One of the quotes, I didn't put it in the book, but I say all the time,
I don't care what happens in the classroom. Now, mind you, I'm a training guy. I make my living also facilitating courses, but I do not care what happened in the classroom as much as I care about what happens when you leave. That's the part that happens. And I will look people that I work with in the eye and tell them, look, if you don't take something from the room, this is not Vegas. It can't stay here. You have to take something. Otherwise, this was a glorious waste of your time and maybe mine too.
daniel (34:54.006)
Hahaha
Pete (35:00.75)
Right. And so the scrap learning is it's all the stuff. It's anything that doesn't translate to make me change the way I'm doing what I need to do, whether that's at work or at home or on the soccer field or whatever scrap is all the stuff that I wasn't able to apply and didn't benefit. And nobody likes that. Like as a learner, nobody wants to go to a class that they're not going to get value from.
as the person paying for that training, I certainly don't want to pay for that. If I'm your boss, I don't want to pay for your labor to have you go to that training. Like nobody likes scrap learning.
Scott (35:41.009)
For a minute you had me and my blood was boiling a little bit. Like, I don't care what happens in the classroom. them's fighting words, man. Don't be saying that. But you're right. It's like, what's the impact? Right. We could all sit. If we just sit around in a circle and talk about what we're struggling with and how we can get better and people actually go and apply that, that's a great use of our time. But far too often, I think that we've talked about this lots of times, gang, the feel good. Like, hey, Michael.
Pete (35:47.694)
Yeah.
Zeta (35:48.52)
Thank you.
Scott (36:10.737)
I'm going to feel real good about it. What happened? Nothing. But wasn't it great that we did some learning? So I don't have a heck of a lot of time for feel good learning or flavor of the month learning, but it's out there.
daniel (36:19.382)
Heh. Heh.
Zeta (36:25.508)
Yeah, don't check boxes. Sorry. Mm hmm.
Pete (36:25.902)
Can I share a quick? Right.
Scott (36:27.825)
I hate that too. Yeah. please.
daniel (36:29.174)
Yeah.
Pete (36:31.086)
Can I share a quick story? Super quick. So in my days with Kinko's, I worked in the Denver area as a technical trainer, technology trainer. And then we merged the company from different partnerships into one big company. So now the geography that I supported included a new region to the north. And they had a person up there who was the trainer that did this stuff. But now I was the official technology trainer. So I went to this.
daniel (36:33.494)
Please.
Zeta (36:33.892)
Thank you.
Pete (36:58.958)
their region, I did a class and he was in the class and I was super nervous because I don't know this guy well. There's a little bit of friction because it wasn't like a takeover, but it kind of felt like a takeover to him. And I was really concerned about how he was going to take the whole experience. And he came up to me right after the class was done. And of course there's a pre -test and a post -test and all the things. He just had this look on his face that I didn't know what I was in for. And he said, Hey, can I talk to you? Yeah.
I just want to thank you." I said, really? What for? He goes, you're not one of those trainers that just like, every time somebody answers a question, you just praise them like a puppy dog. Like, congratulations, you answered the question. It was wrong, but you tried so hard and I'm so proud of you. He literally said it like that way. And I thought, well, you're right. No, I'm not. He goes, no, really. You held us to the, like get the answer right so that we actually do the stuff when we leave.
And that impressed this whole idea of scrap learning on me. And I didn't even realize it. I didn't know that term at the time. And I've actually heard people over and over, and I'm sure you all have as well in different things that we do. We hear people that thank us for like, thank you for holding me to that standard. Thanks for like making it impactful so that we actually learn something. And that just, that impacted me so much as a training professional, that that really is the mission that they walk out.
thinking I can do it differently now, because I know it differently.
Zeta (38:31.972)
That's the moments we work for.
Scott (38:37.809)
Well, unfortunately, we're coming close to the end of our time together. This has been really great conversation about things that we're all really passionate about. Before we wrap up, Pete, is there anything that was really important to or that you didn't get a chance to talk about today or something that you would love to send our audience home with remembering? Just give them an opportunity to wrap things up and or address some things that were important that we didn't get to.
Pete (39:03.246)
Thank you for that opportunity. I could think of a lot of things, but maybe the most important since we were talking so much about leadership is just to maybe for all of us remember that there are lots of different ways that we all need to step up as leaders and they don't always look like leadership at the time. And there's maybe ways that or reasons why we don't want to because we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to look bad in front of other people. We're like, we don't want to take the risk.
The thing I would just want to leave with people is that you may be the, if you don't, I'll say it this way, if you don't step into that leadership role, who else would? And are you happy with that? Maybe you're the one that really needs to. So I guess I would just leave that challenge to us all.
Scott (39:56.881)
Pete, thanks so much for coming. Your book, Elevating Potential, will leave the link in the show notes. Folks, go pick it up. Nice, simple, easy read. Really good stuff. Could you do me a favor and let our audience know how they could connect with you?
Pete (40:13.07)
The best ways to connect with me, petepermango .com, the website, or LinkedIn. Those are two easy ways, and you can get anywhere you need to go from there.
Scott (40:22.673)
Sounds great. Certainly enjoyed our time with you. You're doing some good stuff. Keep it up.