Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!
Hey, Sean.
Shawn:Hey, Scott.
Scott:How's it going?
Shawn:Doing well. How about you?
Scott:Pretty good. We're we're the week after, Thanksgiving, and we're just sort of getting a chance to catch up. So how was how was your vacation or was it much of a vacation?
Shawn:Oh, it was. It was and and as it turns out, it was badly needed because my productivity since Monday has been off the charts. So if you didn't think taking a moment to pause was actually useful to nurture your mind and your peace, I have physical evidence that says otherwise. And perhaps that's a good message for us to start as we enter the first couple of days of the Advent season, which is all about finding your peace and silence. It's that reflection as you lead up yeah.
Shawn:To the So it's a really good reminder.
Scott:Advent starts December 1, or when does it start? Okay. So it started yesterday? Yeah. For context for who
Shawn:Well, so the it's yeah. And I don't know technically how the churches do it, but, like, for example, this Sunday at our Catholic church here in Alexandria was, Sunday's mass was the the kickoff of the Advent season. So I think it's a Sunday to Sunday thing, but but yeah. So it's approximately around the the beginning of of December.
Scott:Man, you're you're bringing me back to childhood and
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:Advent calendars and and wondering why I had to learn to be patient.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:Open one door a day and I, you know, full confession because I think the statute of limitations is run. Would always open the whole thing and then poke the doors back because I was quite sure at age six that nobody would notice.
Shawn:Nobody would know. Oh, that's so sweet, though.
Scott:Yeah. And it was always kind of a letdown, but I just I couldn't help myself from doing it.
Shawn:That's funny.
Scott:Did you guys travel for this Thanksgiving?
Shawn:We did. We, much like yourself, who I understand you were in Chicago, we went to Nebraska. So Greg's family is, of course, from Nebraska. But we did it kind of funny. We had originally planned a whole family, like taking the dog and the kid and everybody and going in, cause we were gonna do a family photo shoot out there as well as Sadie's senior photo shoot.
Shawn:But one of our animals, Chucky, has become quite ill with cancer. And so we kind of decided, well, let's go ahead and have me stay as long as I can. They'll still drive, but decided to leave the dog home this time because my sister-in-law, her household got another couple of dogs that we weren't familiar with. So we thought, let's just minimize the chaos, You know? Right.
Shawn:So Sadie and Greg drove. They still did their drive because we have family in Indiana. They stopped halfway mark. They stay the night. They visit, and then they go on to Omaha the next day.
Shawn:I flew Monday into Omaha direct from DC, and then, we were supposed to leave on Saturday with Sadie and I having flights one way back to DC because we wanted her to get home in time to be rested for school on Monday. And if she drove with Greg, that would kind of take more time. And so we were all planning to leave Saturday, and then the big weather front started coming. And Greg was like, I'm leaving on Friday. And I was like, okay.
Shawn:You're driving, so that makes sense. But then as we started to look at the weather forecast, I was like, oh, what would equally be bad is if Sadie and I got snowed in and we couldn't get her back for school. Like, you know what I mean? So I
Scott:said Oh, yeah.
Shawn:So then we decided to change our tickets as well. And so we all left on on Friday morning. Yeah. My
Scott:experience was a little simpler, but similar and more driven by serendipity. So yeah, was in Chicago visiting my youngest, who got married earlier in the summer and her husband's a great dude. He's Persian. He's actually from and is now a PRA, permanent resident alien here in The United States. They got married last year.
Scott:And he's a fantastic guy. But she is in the culinary world. She's the operations manager for an artisanal bakery in Evanston, which is just north of Chicago. And so the holidays are her busy time. So I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with them, but she had worked the day before Thanksgiving and then she had the Friday after off, but Saturday she also worked and she goes to work at 3AM.
Shawn:Yep. Baker's hours.
Scott:Yeah. It's it's Yeah. Yeah. It's it's crazy the life she she lives and and it's really interesting sort of watching her develop. She's 29 now and she's like, yeah, I don't need to shape croissants for the rest of my life, dad.
Scott:And it's funny. But so I usually like to fly during the day because it just it throws my sleep off, but for this, because it was Thanksgiving, I'm looking at flights and everything was ridiculously expensive except for a red eye that left at 12:30 a. On Thanksgiving morning. So this is like Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:And you know Seattle, Chicago's you know three and a half, four hours. So I arrived Thursday morning about the time she was getting home from work, was great then we, you know, we cooked all day Thursday. A couple of her husband's friends came over and they're also Persian and and you know working on their immigrant status and we had so much fun just sort of cooking turkey with Persian seasonings and drinking wine.
Shawn:Wow.
Scott:And then we spent all day Friday hanging out. And then my flight left at 6AM on Saturday morning. So she dropped me off at the airport like at 03:30 on her way to work.
Shawn:To work.
Scott:Which worked great.
Shawn:Wow. That actually did work out kind of bookended nicely. But
Scott:I I actually got out right in front of the snow. So it's Saturday morning they're gonna get six to eight inches that day and I'm at the airport with a cup of coffee looking at the snow, looking at them you know plowing the runways or the departure areas and seeing you know cancel, cancel, cancel, but fortunately the actual aircraft I was on had overnighted at O'Hare. So usually when a flight gets cancelled it's because the plane that you're outbound on is coming in on another flight and if it can't make it then your flight gets cancelled. So that was happening but my plane was there. They just had to start it up in the cold weather then
Shawn:de ice probably.
Scott:Yeah, but I got out actually right in front of the huge snowstorm and I got a picture later that afternoon. Dad, you know, look look at what we got and it was, you know, yeah, eight inches of snow on the road and it's Chicago, so they're really good at handling snow. And I don't think it really shut the airport down, but
Shawn:yeah. That's impressive. Chicago is so much better suited and equipped to handle the cold weather events than like, well, you know, you've been in the DC area, it's like, you know, if somebody just like, you know, breathes on, you know, on on the air here in, like, the coldest way. I mean, we got a preemptive email from Sadie's High School, like, yesterday, and they were just like, we're watching the weather. I'm like, okay.
Shawn:It's uh-huh. It's it's really okay, guys. It's really okay. But, boy, they are just looking for a reason to shut it all down. I'm just like, man, I don't know.
Shawn:Flights are one thing, but like, you know, I think people take it a little too far these days.
Scott:Oh, yeah. I I remember that, you know, living in Gaithersburg, which is Maryland, years ago, and it was, oh, there's a big ice storm coming. We're canceling school tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and it's a beautiful day and no ice storm, no nothing, but they already canceled school. It's funny.
Scott:And then here in Seattle, it'll snow one year out of three and people lose their minds. You know, people will like park their cars in the middle of the road and walk in a snowstorm because they think it's too dangerous to drive because they slipped a little bit. And it's yeah, and there's no there's no snowplow infrastructure. And Seattle is actually pretty hilly.
Shawn:I do remember that. I haven't spent a lot of time there but yeah I do remember that being a feature.
Scott:Yeah, I mean I live at the bottom of a big hill. It comes with living on the lake but I live at the bottom of a big hill. And if it snows, you know, you need to get your car out and park at the top of the hill if you want to get anywhere.
Shawn:Meanwhile, in Lincoln, Nebraska, they're like, it's fine. It's fine. I can still see it's fine, You know, and I'm like, y'all are crazy. Like, it's extremes.
Scott:Yeah. And it's, you know, and it's they they got four feet of snow and they're driving in. Yeah. Tires that have 30,000 miles on them and that And they actually are fine because they do Yeah. This every
Shawn:They know. They know the drill. I mean, it came a little early this year, I think. And the reason why we decided that Thanksgiving would be an optimal time is because summers in Nebraska are really, really hot. And because of my, like, some sun sensitivity, like it's harder and harder for me to go do outdoor things and not turn into some kind of like, you know, like, you know, Hila monster.
Shawn:But, you know, but but winter, of course, Christmas is in Nebraska. Forget it. Like, Greg's cousin, he would do that the last few years, and he kept getting annoyed every ting every year, he'd just come back the same, you know, wretched story about, oh, we couldn't do anything. I was snowed in the whole time. And, you know, you risk flight issues because they can't get it get the planes out because of the thing.
Shawn:Because Omaha's not a big hub where they would overnight planes like O'Hare. So almost all, I would imagine, almost all of their planes are inbound planes. Right? Coming, you know, and and since they're in Omaha, then you got a lot of stuff coming from the West and from the South, you know, kind of West corridor. So, you know, Denver and Utah, like, so no, these planes are not getting there.
Shawn:And if they are, they're delayed, you know, so, but at any rate, like, so we thought we were safe. But yeah. And we and we were, but we almost weren't. It it it was that close. But yeah.
Scott:So So I'm I'm wondering. How was how was the break? I mean, we didn't leave it all. I don't know if you Well were doing any coalition stuff. I mean, how did that
Shawn:A little. Go?
Scott:Or No. It was Sean Baker Garcia.
Shawn:Yeah. And it's it's funny because, you know, it takes a lot getting used to being your own boss and being a being the person who sets the pace for everybody else. Like even after, I've been doing this, I don't know, for years now. I mean, since like 2015, I've been working from home. And even if I was working for someone, I was largely in charge of my own schedule.
Shawn:And there's pros and cons to that. Some of the cons are that you, like, can't really ever gauge whether or not you feel like you're optimally productive, and then you kinda feel like you're cheating if you're not working, like, you know, like like gangbusters. So Yeah. So then it becomes hard to know, do I need a break? Do I not need a break?
Shawn:Because, yeah, you're kind of weaving things in throughout a day, you feel like, well, I think I took enough breaks. But, no, it turns out I needed I needed to turn off. And and the reason I know that is because I did have to do a little bit of work last week, but I don't think I put in more than, twenty hours or something through throughout the whole week. Right? And a lot of that was passive hours.
Shawn:That was reading emails, was responding to things, that was maybe a little bit of product development, you know, so writing. And it was just nice to get up in the morning, get a coffee from a Starbucks that actually still makes good coffee, it is possible. It's increasingly impossible in our area. And I don't really ever remember that until I go somewhere else. I'm like, oh, this Starbucks has actually really good coffee.
Shawn:Yeah, so that's upsetting. But, you know, and to, you know, just whittle the morning away a little bit and then visit with family and, you know, have nice dinners. But we enjoyed it. I enjoyed turning off and and sort of putting the laptop away. It was with me, and I had to pull it out a few times, and that was okay because that was expected.
Shawn:And then Monday, you know, I did a lot of work because I like I actually enjoy working on planes. That's one of my most productive environments. I don't know what it is, but if I'm in an airport, I'm just laser focused. And I I worked for the the hour and a half that I was waiting for it to board. And then I work while I pull it out and I work on the plane and I just get so much done and I love it.
Shawn:So so that was a pretty like normal workday. But but everything else, was off and I was present and tried to put the phone away more, you know, things like that. But how about you? I mean, you guys sound like you had a really great, like, time, but it didn't sound like yours was quite as long.
Scott:Yeah. Mine was mine was short, but it's I just I'm captivated by some of the things that you're sharing. Just it actually is making me laugh that you think working twenty hours in a week is like, you know, nothing. Because for, you know, most of the rest of us, that's an actual fully half time job. If you're looking at a holiday week, that's five hours a day, four days.
Scott:That's twenty hours.
Shawn:Yes, that's true. Yeah, I'm like doing the math.
Scott:The idea that you would see that as, oh yeah, that's absolutely nothing. That's my recharge is hilarious to me because it says so much about you. But I, you know, you're making me think about Tempo and you're making me think about both unintentional and intentional management of Tempo. The idea that you're, you know, you're in an airport and that's where you're productive, I got to think it's a combination of, you know, nobody's going to reach out to you necessarily because they know you're unavailable, but you also don't expect anybody to reach out for you, and so you're not, you know, on alert the way that you always are, you know, just in case somebody has something that requires your attention. And it's sort of the no excuse unavailable because well, I'm traveling, I'm on a plane, as opposed to actually being available but just saying, you know, this is my quiet reflection time and I'm not going to pay attention to anything other than my own stuff.
Scott:It reminds me of two stories. You know, I'm going to pull strings, I'm going to grab random places and try and tie them together, but it reminds me of Bill Gates' sort of legendary think weeks where he would, and I don't know how early on he started, but he would leave and go. There's a sort of a vacation place in the Puget Sound area called Whidbey Island. It's actually an island that you have to get to by ferry unless you drive way around north and there's one bridge to get on it. So it's close by, but it's somewhat remote and it's a place where lots of people who live in Seattle have little teeny cabins and vacation homes and he would go there and have think week where he wasn't not working but he wasn't doing the day to day.
Scott:And it was an intentional thing that he did, not driven by his schedule but sort of everybody knew two things, they knew that he wasn't going to be available for the you know, the immediate question that week, but they also knew he was going to come back recharged and ready to go and you know having read a bunch of stuff and ready to move in a different direction. That intentionality, I think, is worth looking at because it's not easy to do if you're not the boss, but I think you can still manage your own tempo even if you're not the boss. And the other one is one of my old favorite Peter Drucker stories, which I've probably told before, but I love it so much I want to tell it again. Peter Drucker was sort of by reputation as sort of the first leadership management consulting guru in The United States and he functioned back in the 50s and 60s and he's passed away a long time ago. But if you read his book called The Effective Executive, which was written in the early 60s, it's still relevant today.
Scott:One of the stories he tells is he had this client that ran a manufacturing company in The United States, and had hired Drucker to be his executive coach and they had ninety minute sessions, an hour and a half. And at one point Drucker asks this guy, how are you able to free up so much time for me? I mean this is an hour and a half and you're a very busy person and nobody ever calls you. And the guy goes, well, what I've learned is that there is no problem that can happen anywhere in the world that can't sit for ninety minutes without me paying attention to it. I mean, there may be a problem and I may need to pay attention to it, but there's nothing that requires me immediately.
Scott:So when I am going into a session with you, my standing orders with my staff are that if the president calls, president of The United States, or if my wife calls, they're to put that call through but everything else can wait and the president never calls and my wife understands how important this is to me so she usually doesn't call during these sessions and he goes when you leave I have a stack of messages and I, you know this is before email, goes I call everybody back and I deal with everything and it's fine. My instinct is to say that's a wonderful piece of discipline, but I actually think that it's a wonderful way of looking at the world and even in our current way of being, which is we have a much faster tempo because we can have a faster tempo. We don't need to have a faster tempo and you know we talk in leadership development and leadership training about how important it is for you to let your people fail forward and how important it is to let your people handle things and do the best they can and not discipline them when they don't do perfectly, but to take that as the learning experience as it is and it moves forward.
Scott:But it really is hard to say nothing really requires me for ninety minutes because now all of a sudden, and I would deal with this a lot when I was coaching leadership clients, they would say well if things can be handled without me then why am I here? You know, role do I have if I don't have my fingers in everything and so there's this tempo piece but there's also this self worth piece of I need to be involved in everything and then why can't anything happen without me? But if I'm not involved in everything then why do I matter? That's the conundrum. So as always I could keep going but what do you think?
Scott:I mean, this shaking anything loose for you?
Shawn:Yeah. You know, for me, I I think I always have a pretty good sense of my value and then but I also like to empower people, like, so it's that fail forward thing. You know, they have a lot of autonomy. They understand what right looks like most of the time, and I provide a little structure, then they go forth. But in this whole last reflective year for me because of the disruption that occurred to our business.
Shawn:And, you know, just a reminder, as an, you know, five zero one c three nonprofit organization, we did $1,800,000 in revenue at the end of what would essentially be our fourth year. Although, you know, the first year was only sort of like a short year. And then so it's as I understand it, statistically, that's you know, we were on a pretty hot trajectory, you know, going from zero to point eight in that short amount of time. But so what was happening in 2024 looks a lot different than what is happening in 2025. But because we've scaled down our staff, we have, you know, the workload theoretically decreased in aggregate, but like practically didn't really decrease for those of us who stayed because we had fewer people to do arguably more work because we lost two projects, but we lost like, you know, 10 staff.
Shawn:Right? And so that so when you have three, three and a half projects, I'll say because we had a small contract as well, it's like technically four projects, which is only like one and a half projects less than what we had going last year. So then all of a sudden you're like, what it allows you to do is it shines a light on you and the few remaining people and what exactly they're producing and at what tempos they're producing it. And so I think for our team, I think that we were capable of being much more well, guess it depends on how you frame the tempo because we were running like, you know, hamsters on a wheel last year, all of us, you know, so you had like 15 of these little wheels just going, at a really, really rapid pace. This year, it's like we started off going a little slower, but then we built and we built and we built.
Shawn:The difference, because I think we are now, you know, here we are in December, a full almost, you know, eleven months later after January 27, and we are now just picking up the Tempo to be sort of similar, not maybe exactly to last year, but but similar. But we're getting so much more done and in such a a more efficient way because when we shed all the people and we shed some of the projects and the projects allowed to come to a grinding halt, we then, because again, as you know, I've mentioned before, we're just sort of going through this single federal, audit process. So it forces you to look at everything. They lift up the covers on everything. And so we've had to see where we were inefficient or we were not like effectively doing things compliantly enough.
Shawn:Well, you know, not totally gross negligence, negligence, lack of compliance, but, you know, things that could just be tightened up and and streamlined. And so that it's like that adage of, you know, you take a a few steps back to take a giant leap forward. I feel like we've done that, and I feel like the the pace and the tempo is this is close to what it was last year. If anything, it is a little bit slower, but it's kind of like runners, you know, like you if you're in a long distance situation, there's you may have moments where you speed up or not, but it's an endurance thing, right? It's a pace, it's not a sprint.
Shawn:And so, I mean, you might sprint the last few, you know, the last mile or so or half mile because you're trying to improve your time or beat your best, you know, your records. But, you know, at the end, it's we it's a it's a very effective, efficient pace that's quick, but it's not destructive. The pace we were on last year felt fruitless. I mean, things were getting done, but it felt messy and it felt exhausting and it felt it just felt like for as hard as we were running, we weren't going far enough. Whereas now we're running slightly less fast, but it's like we got better shoes, we got better muscles, we've got a better, you know, visibility on the horizon.
Shawn:Like, we know the terrain better, and so we're actually going much further at that somewhat slower but more efficient pace. So that's how I look at tempo and pace is it's you don't want burnout pace, right, because that's not sustainable. And it's usually except for maybe in the short run with certain circumstances, it's not usually very effective. But you want a nice healthy clip that makes you feel good, that strengthens you, challenges you, but also, like, you know, doesn't challenge you to the point of burnout exhaustion. Although, again, that it's cumulative.
Shawn:You're always going to build up to get to get to that point of burnout like I was unknowingly, you know, before I went on my vacation. And then I took that downtime and that that breath in that moment. And then I just feel so refreshed from that. I'm just like, Okay, my brain is calm. My pace is, you know, super like just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, knocking things out left and right, like without even a mental struggle.
Shawn:Anything the last month leading up to this, everything, even the easiest things felt like the most Herculean mental struggle. So, you know, I don't know what my pace was like. It felt slow. It felt clunky and terrible. So, yeah, those are my thoughts on Tempo, Pace and how that relates to the workforce.
Shawn:And
Scott:I love that because it sets up what I think is the most important question in all of that, which is how are you going to do that? How? How? How? How?
Shawn:Yeah, that's true.
Scott:And that I suppose it's a bit of a pet peeve for me, but it comes from having sat in this leadership training world for a while and pretty much all of leader training is what this is what great leaders do. This is what bad leaders do. These are the things that you should do. But there's very little out there and this is an actual criticism and I'm happy to talk with anybody who challenges that. What I'm about to say is that there is almost no leadership training out there that teaches you how to lead.
Scott:When you show up on the first day that you are in charge of something, that you're in a leadership position, what are the things that you do that are different than what you did the day before when you showed up as an individual contributor? It's the how. How do you do this thing? And I bring that now into tempo and I love your illustration by using runners because you know what do a lot of runners struggle with? As I am running the marathon, when I come to the mile that I'm supposed to go slower, I don't want to go slower, I want to go faster.
Scott:And why do runners hit the wall at 19 or 20 miles? It's because they haven't had the discipline to stay within their actual physical ability. Why? Because they're competitive and they want to push and I can push through it and I can do this and it seems to me that it is, it's similar to drink before you're thirsty, otherwise you'll get dehydrated. It is similar to, I'm the big boss of something and I get sick twice a year and you know when I get sick that's my downtime and why do you get sick?
Scott:It's because you're driving, driving, driving and everything seems fine until you hit the wall and I can't tell you how many people I know that not only do they say well you know I never get sick, I'm always at work, I'm always doing this, I'm always doing that, and those people always get sick at some point and they say oh this is the first time I've ever gotten sick and they're the ones who show up like a plague. They're sick but they're still at work and they're getting everybody else sick and why are they doing it? They're doing it because they can't not. Yeah. They can't take that downtime and what I see in that is they their identity is so wrapped up in their performance at work if they're doing anything other than that they have no identity and that's that's not tempo.
Scott:Tempo isn't I'm going fast or really fast and it's not this nonsense of work life balance either. Oh you gotta
Shawn:do this
Scott:and you gotta do this. There is life and work is a part of that, loving people is a part of that, community is a part of that, family, whether it's the generation that came before you, the generation that's coming after you, it is all part of life. And so the question then becomes, is your fulfillment paradigm shallow or is it deep? People who just work and wear that on their sleeve, they're fulfilled, but if they hit the wall and they can't work, they really suffer. And I think for some people who live that way, the suffering is part of the fulfillment.
Scott:But I think that there's more and I think it comes from being intentional the way that a world class athlete is intentional about pace and it's intentionally going slow even though you know you can go faster, intentionally taking thought week, intentionally saying for this block I'm not available and you guys figure it out. I think it's harder when you're a player coach and I think that's where you are in your business. When it's a smaller business, the owner, the boss doesn't have the luxury of just coaching because you need 11 people for a soccer team and you can only afford 10 and so you need to play And it's different and it's harder, but you still need rest. We still need a time out. We still need no, we're not going to take this game because this week, you know, we need to rest.
Scott:And all of those things are difficult, but they're also really important. My question is, how you find the happiness in that? I'll tell you one more story and then I want to listen to you. When I was little, my family attended a congregational church every week religiously, until I was about 12. And my parents divorced at that point.
Scott:And we stopped going to the congregational church. My dad went to one church, my mom went to another church. But there were these little cards that had little sayings on them that the minister of that church had printed out and would leave in the lobby and the kids could take these and I put them into a little book. And one of the ones that I got was about how musicians make music. And it's a wonderful piece of poetry which I can't recite to you but the point of it was that there is the making of music in a rest and so if you have an orchestra that's playing music sometimes all the instruments play but sometimes just the brass plays and the woodwinds don't.
Scott:But there is the making of the music in the silence of the woodwinds and the musician that is in the rest, if that musician is a great musician, doesn't feel bad that they're silent because they understand that their silence makes the rest of the music. And they wait and they wait and then when it's their time to come back in, they catch the tempo without fail and without error and now they're contributing again and isn't it a wonderful way to sort of rethink contribution in business that you know you don't have to be the lead guitar and play every measure.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:You don't. You need to rest so that there can be music made. So I'd offer that to you. And I don't know if that changes your, how you think or how you feel or how you process.
Shawn:No. I think it's still very consistent. You know, I think that, going back to the Drucker example, you know, the the superpower that or the benefit that that leader was exercising by sort of taking that hour and a half to to, you know, nurture his his soul or his brain by meeting with that person. You know, that that's sort of just an example of, you know, why you keep talking, you mentioned the how, like how you lead or how do you do anything that, you know, you have lots of books out there on organizational management, leadership, sort of development and whatnot, or, you know, productivity enhancement. And the key here is that if you're working with a team, small or large, I think, as long as they understand and you're able as one of the leaders or the leader to clearly and, you know, I think, genuinely convey what your strategies are, how you work and how you interpret that work so understand how you see it.
Shawn:It may not be immediately how they see it, but as long as they understand how you see it or what your intention is, then I think it will, one, increase buy in because people will feel part of it and they'll feel like they understand it. But a lot of that is just communicating to your teams the value of every moment. Right? So there's there's times where you're going to be super active and you're going to be running the sprint. There's times when you're going to be in in quiet, where it may not seem like there's a lot going on, but that is important mental or physical downtime for ideas to germinate or for processes to play out or for reflection or in the case of the Bill Gates example, creativity to actually be nurtured or to be given kind of a platform to take root and to be manifested.
Shawn:You know, all of that sort of, I see that as sort of the primary leadership traits, which is to project your vision, then explain your actions or your inactions so that people understand the why behind it. And then, you know, hopefully they'll emulate that in their own work because if you are doing what you do successfully as a top dog leader, then hopefully that'll be something that they're like, oh, well, that you know, I'd like to try that. But also because it seems accessible. Like if you're doing it and you're doing it with joy and if you're doing it well and the rewards are material, and theoretically they should be if you're, you know, exercising a successful business, then, you know, then there should be minimal reasons for people not to want to emulate that and to buy into that methodology or that sort of approach to work. And then I think it's also we get caught up in this sort of like and I see this actually a lot in workplaces where it's like people get caught up in the needing to be perceived as being hyper busy or in a fire drill because it makes them feel like they're projecting value and like, oh, I can't be bothered because this is such a big deal.
Shawn:And and and I actually see this happen a lot in government. You know what I mean? Where the government creates a fire drill and whether or not it's a valuable fire drill or not is wildly debatable. Most times, I would argue it probably isn't, but somebody has decided that this is their hill that they're gonna die on and they want it in 30 unreasonably in, like, you know, an hour. My poor husband goes through this all the time at his work, and I feel he works at the Pentagon, so I'll say no more about that.
Shawn:But like, you know, but it it's it's it puts a lot of undue pressure, and then that leads to an expectation in the work force that one, your fire drills are more important than everybody else's. And so everything has to stop and accommodate that fire drill, whether you created it or whether you're, what's the word I want to say, whether you're enabling it. Right? Because I've seen in a lot of situations in the private sector for people who support government, many of my leadership in other roles could have pushed back on the government sponsor and said, I can get you this information. I will not be able to get it to you in twenty four hours because what you're asking for is unreasonably, like, complicated or you know what I mean?
Shawn:So yeah and that's just one example. I'm sure it happens in the private sector all the time as well. You know, where people just, you know, give you unreasonable demands and things. So, but that's a whole other box hole to go down which is like, you know, to manage expectations and and, you know, not not be passively not let your culture be passively shaped by external forces. You know what I mean?
Shawn:A big deal. That's a really big deal. Because once people learn those lessons, then they kind of live in them. And then that becomes like the metric for, like, the veterans who are just like, oh, you young pups, you don't even know. Like, I had this fire drill the other day and blah blah blah, you know.
Shawn:And and so then, you know, so then we're always looking for the next high. You know, we're like, oh, what's the next? And and it's not And then it becomes not important unless it's on fire. And that's really dangerous, I think, to a culture, an organizational culture. But it happens so much, so, so much.
Shawn:And I kind of went down these windy paths, and I'm not sure if that got us anywhere useful, but I just, I think it's such an important topic for the how, I think is really important. And you're right. Lots of like and I think a lot of books out there and organizational management and leadership gurus think they're teaching you the how, but what they're giving you is kind of an artificial prescription of like, and I think I gave you this example once before where I worked with a guy back at the state department and I swear he was reading all the right books and he was taking the notes, and he was putting the little tags and the flags on it, and then he would come in, but then he would artificially execute those tips. And it was just like a it's like he was his entire work persona was a collection of, like, Stephen Covey, like, quotables and Peter Drucker. Like, you know, or take whoever you wanted.
Shawn:And it just wasn't it wasn't I guess he was missing in all of it. It's like, who are you? And how do you organically embody these, like, tips and best practices without making it look very artificial and robotic and insincere. And that's a real thing. But I don't know, again, where that tells you.
Shawn:I will also just take a pause and acknowledge that There was a weird thing that came on the screen when we first started and it asked And me to
Scott:say yes or no to
Shawn:I realized it altered, like if I, and I'm not gonna do it because it made me nauseous because I went forward and then it zoomed out my background and then it zoomed back in when I came back again. Whatever that is, hope it's not disruptive to the viewers. I apologize in advance if that was because I wasn't looking at myself talking the whole time. I had the window minimized because I don't often like to look at myself, but when I caught a glimpse, it literally made me kind of sick to my stomach. So I just want you to be clear that that is a thing I acknowledge.
Scott:It was funny. I noticed it, but it almost felt like you were doing some editing, like when you were making a point, then you came in.
Shawn:Oh, yeah.
Scott:So, noticed it. It wasn't disruptive to me.
Shawn:Okay. Yeah.
Scott:It won't be disruptive to people who are just listening.
Shawn:Sure. See, it did it again and I didn't I'm do just sitting here. It's so weird.
Scott:You know what that is?
Shawn:What is it?
Scott:That's the centering function.
Shawn:Okay. I don't love it.
Scott:Yeah. So if you move to the side, it will center on you. I have moved to side now and it's not correcting.
Shawn:Think that's
Scott:what it is. Okay. Well, it's AI trying to help us.
Shawn:You're getting the Easter Island, Sean, from this point forward because I don't want it to do anything. I'm so upset, but it's
Scott:That's that's so funny. And all that means I I love that you raised that because so many people will not raise things like that and hope they're ignored and not noticed and brushed over, partially because they're not that important and partially because, again, like you were saying, I have a lot of experience in government like you do, some experience in the private sector. And nobody sort of wants to show a weakness. But the problem is, if you don't share what's on your mind,
Shawn:you
Scott:don't seem human. Because everybody is the same and that sort of circles us around to this notion of leaders modeling behavior. You do need to model behavior and you do need to be sincere. There's nothing more disruptive than insincerity. And it's funny how insincere people don't see that they're insincere.
Scott:I'm just scroll down LinkedIn. And I'm honored to have done this, that and the other things like, no, you're just bragging that you got called to give a keynote speech or you attended some seminar. And it's great and you should be proud, but you weren't actually honored. You just don't want to say, Hey, I got this thing and I'm stoked about it. And it's insincere and it's insincere of a little thing, but if it's a little thing, then why not be sincere about it?
Scott:And I think that that's a general failing that I see in communication. Again, add it to the list of reasons I like you so much.
Shawn:I have a follow on question to that because I think this actually could help the audience. Like, if anybody is listening ever to this in the future and, you know, maybe they struggle with that, you know, and maybe it's not because they want to be insincere because I I actually think that the guy in question I don't I don't think he wanted to necessarily, well, one, I don't even think he realized it was coming in. I don't even think he knew, like, regardless of his intention. But here's my here's my question is like, you know, what is a way for people to want to improve themselves? And so obviously, he was trying really, really hard, and he was reading all the books, and he was trying to do what I think he saw as a self analyzed gap in his management and leadership style.
Shawn:But he wasn't getting any institutional support from his organization because they just don't teach that stuff at at the state department. Or if they do, it's not taught well because clearly he he wasn't learning, you know? And, you know, like, if you're going to be in an environment that's not necessarily cultivating you for that and you're trying to self cultivate, like, how do you bring others along as because I think and this is just me, but I'd love to hear Scott Olsen's response. My thought on it was I think he disassociated himself himself artificially from everyone else by positioning himself above everyone. Well, we already know you're in charge.
Shawn:Like, you don't have to kind of, like, learn this in a bubble. I think if he had just shared with the group, hey, guys. I'm doing some professional development because I really want our team to to be great, and I know I have a lot to learn, you know, but I wanna share with you what I'm tempting because otherwise you just feel like a guinea pig being experimented on. Yeah. Maybe if he had shared it with others and said, hey, if you see me making some different changes to how I engage with you or do this, you know, here's some books I'm reading.
Shawn:You guys, if you're interested in that kind of thing, I'd recommend you pick it up. But, you know, just, you know, and then kind of like maybe bring them into it. I, do you think besides that or maybe that's not a good idea? Like, I don't know. Do you think that could, because I think people struggle with how do I actually do this in a sincere way?
Scott:Yeah and and you know, you're you're right. At what's most important which is you read all these great books and it's all great advice but how do I do this? And I think there are two challenges. One is bringing yourself to be honest enough and this is the Scott Olson definition of integrity, which is not the first one in the book, it's the second one in the book, which is having the courage to share what you really think with other people. And if you don't naturally do that, the first few times you do it, it is an act of courage because they are now going to critique you based on what you actually think.
Scott:And the reason a lot of people don't have that natural, I'm going to share what I think is because if they share what the manual says and somebody criticizes, it's like okay they can criticize away because they're not criticizing me, they're criticizing the manual even if they don't know they're criticizing the manual. So it's easy, but if you start sharing what you actually think, the criticism becomes to you very personal and so it's a difficult thing to do but it is also really important to do in order to have that connection. So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is less intuitive and that is a lot of times there will be somebody in the room or the person that you're talking to who doesn't feel that way and doesn't yet have the courage to go there. If you are opening yourself in that context with the expectation that everybody else will do that same thing.
Scott:Not everybody is willing to do that and not everybody is capable of doing that. And the people, particularly in a company setting or a government setting, who are looking to climb the ladder, they are figuring out and they are trying to figure out how to climb the ladder, which generally means don't do that. Parrot the party line, say what you need to say to get to the next job, and actually saying what you really think is not a part of that. Because if you say what you actually think, you're not going to be a part of the safe group that gets promoted. And so recognizing that as you begin to do this, you're doing it in an environment where it may not be welcomed.
Scott:And it certainly won't be reciprocated, but that's not a reason not to do it. It's just a reason to come in gently and to say I think your examples of what to say are right on. It's, hey, I've been reading this book and you know, it's my intent to try some of this stuff and as I try it, I'd be interested in your feedback and half the people in the room are going to go, here's a guy that's trying to get to his next level, and it's all crap, I don't care. And you're going to get that. But then, interacting in person, is a very powerful thing for somebody in a position of authority, a leader to ask somebody who does not share that same level of authority, what do you think and not have it be a pro form a question, But a lot of times what you're going to get, and this is my experience, not having been in senior executive service level, but being in supervisory levels and manager of managers levels, that a lot of times you're not going to get an honest response.
Scott:Know, what do you think of this? Oh, sir, that's a great idea, or, oh, you know, I don't even want to have this conversation. And I remember one time I was an assistant special agent in charge, and so it was my responsibility to approve people who were requesting to be part of the career development program. It's the thing that you had to get authority for to start being able to build your career and apply for promotion. And my take on that was I want to talk to everybody in person who wants to do this because I want to understand them and when I was having those conversations, I would recommend things for them to read and I remember guys I would hand them a book and they would toss it on the table and their their attitude was you're my a sack now, but you're not going to be my a sack forever and I am just climbing the ladder by checking the boxes and they had absolutely no interest in what I was interested in, which is what you and I are talking about.
Scott:You're going to get that, but that doesn't mean stop being who you are. Stop sharing what your opinion is. It just means that when you're sharing your opinion, don't cram it on people's throats and don't expect them to respond to you in kind because they won't, but that's the courage piece. That is the part of taking ownership of your place in the world and not thrusting it on people, but saying, you know, who you are is who you are, but this is who I am. This is what I think and part of that becomes, you know, how do you communicate how you disagree with somebody without offending them?
Scott:And we are coming down to our hour and we have a hard stop today And this is maybe a great segue into another hour. But, you know, how do you disagree without offending? Because people are sensitive these days. People have always been sensitive. What are the words that you can say to say, I don't agree, but you know, I don't hate you.
Shawn:And
Scott:And because, the reason that's important I think is because it allows you to be in the world in a way that you want to be, that is authentic and that is not, I want to say inauthentic, but it's not insincere. It's a fundamental difference between saying what you think and telling people what you think they want to hear, because you're most of the
Shawn:time involved. Yeah.
Scott:Don't want to hear what you think they want to hear. They want to hear what they want to hear. And you don't know what that is. Yeah. You just you don't know what that is.
Shawn:I'll tell you this. And I do think this probably a segue into a whole other session. And I know we're kind of just getting our feet wet again after taking actually more than a week break. We've actually had a couple of weeks off now, I think, because of schedules. But, you know, for many, many reasons and without launching us into a whole other second session, I think that there are a lot of reasons to believe that in the coming ten years, we're actually going to see an increase in the number of workplace conflicts, just generally speaking, throughout the workforce in The United States because of this sort of like overemphasis on sensitization or sensitization training.
Shawn:And, you know, what we now need is to scale it back and kind of do a desensitization training, right? Which is that not every single leading emotion or emotional reaction or response that you have is valid or useful or necessary. You know what I mean? And sometimes you just got to keep it to yourself because not you know what I mean? Not everything is up for debate.
Shawn:Not everything is up for, you know, deep, you know, sort of trauma based discovery. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you just can't because humans are inherently emotionally fluid. And because if you try to invest that much time in diagnosing, diagnosing? Boy, I don't have English today, Scott, I've lost it.
Shawn:You know, I'm just using words I You can't
Scott:do less alone.
Shawn:Oh my gosh. But you know, we're gonna spend too much time diagnosing things and then trying to like, come up with a mea culpa strategy where I'm not saying that you should be insensitive, but I think that we have started to blur the lines between what is objective just fact and truth that you can speak, and what is something that is unnecessarily framed in an unnecessarily hostile or kind of threatening manner, particularly in the workforce. Right? You want that, but you also don't culture where you can't even issue one statement or directive without getting, you know, 10 challenges and then having to spend all your time explaining yourself.
Scott:Yeah. I agree. I mean, it's yeah, and I really do want to launch into this, but I think we need to have you have the last word on that and promise everybody that we will get back to all of these topics, and we'll see you on the next 2 Parachutes Podcast.
Shawn:Alright. Drop in. Thanks, guys.