Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
Want to become the catalyst of change for your team? Find out how with today's guest Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Need to. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Today's guest is Dr. William AdAway, who is a mindset and leadership coach who helps high performance agency owners and their teams conquer challenging situations and maximize potential with clear minded focus, calm control and confidence. William is the author of catalytic leadership, where he shares from his own personal leadership experience as well as the experience of hundreds of leaders that he has coached including the 12 principles that can help leaders grow and add value to those they lead. Today, William, welcome to unmapped. Chris, thanks so much for having me, man honored to be here. Yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun for our listeners, you can go listen to me being interviewed on Williams podcast, which was probably the most fun that I've had an interview in a very long time. And I got so excited that immediately following I was like, William, I just read your book, you gotta come on my podcast now. And so here we are, here we are. So I would love for my listeners to hear your backstory. So it's funny, it's it's not a straight line. And I think that's true for so many stories, right? When I was in high school, I worked in a pharmacy as a tech and thought, hey, this would be a great opportunity to plant and invest my life. So I went as a pre pharmacy major to college, got into my third semester and hit organic chemistry, and decided that this is not really what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. That's exactly why they put organic chemistry at that point in the program. wash out point. And yeah, I did. So that was the end of chemistry for me. But in my brief chemistry studies, I discovered the power of what's called a catalyst. A catalyst is something that you introduce into a mixture that will either incite or accelerate significant change, or action. And I've been a student of leadership for a number of years at that point, I attended my first leadership conference when I was 15 years old. And I thought, man, you know, every great leader that I have ever read about or learned from or worked for, would resonate with that definition. They would they would say, Yeah, I want to I want to incite or accelerate significant change. And I thought, what, what would it look like to be a catalytic leader? And really, that's where it was. That's where it was born. And for the last, gosh, almost 30 years now. I've been coaching leaders in the business world and in the nonprofit church world, and helping them to become more catalytic in how they lead. Yeah, I love it. Let's let's go back to 15 year old view, yeah. What most 15 year olds are not going to Leadership Conference. No, they're not. So. So I would look at what puts you on this journey. And got you started. started there. And the first one, it was a teacher, actually, it was a teacher who saw something in me that I did not see in myself. And he said, I think you would you would really like this. And I had never thought to probably two consecutive thoughts about leadership at that point. And I was like, Sure, I'll go, why not. And I went, and I was hooked. I was hooked by the power of what a great leader can accomplish. And also the danger of what a bad leader can accomplish. Yep. That a lot of people miss the latter half of that dichotomy. You know, it's, there are so many examples, today, of what happens when you take the influence that a leader has, and you use that influence for yourself for your own selfish purposes. Or even worse for nefarious purposes. Yeah, just the the manipulation of others. Yeah, in order to get some semenggoh. Absolutely. And so here's actually a good, that's probably a good segue, reading your book. So I'm gonna jump all over the place. With notes. We were talking beforehand. For the listeners, I was working out while listening, the audio version, I would strongly recommend the audio is great. But I was jumping around, I'd be mid set on a workout and then I would have to memorize something that that was said in the book. So I get run back and take a note on my phone because this happened literally every set I was working out so. So tons of notes in here. I'm going to try to keep it like two. I don't want you to recite the entire book, which is basically what I would have you do but it's all good. So as we're talking about, right, you use the leader, there's this positive side, there's the negative side, and you got to be able to find that balance right like jet eyes in the forest. Write the you talk in the book about being able to find the individuals who can give you the truth. And who can always be there to tell you what's up so that you have that additional awareness. Yeah, I come from someone else. How do you go about finding these individuals? It's a great question. Sometimes Sometimes they appear, you know, I mean, the old saying, you know, when the when the student is ready, the teacher appears, sometimes they just appear in your life. And that's a, that's an incredible blessing when that happens. Most often, in my experience, you have to create that opportunity. And so what I do with the team that I work with, we talk about the importance of honesty, the first 90% of honesty is not hard for us to give, because that's the safe part. That's the easy part. The last 10% is what we hold back. That's what we hold that because we don't want to offend somebody, we don't want to break a relationship and damage that we don't want to damage something in the workplace. Right. And we certainly may not give that last 10% to the person that we report to. Because, well, that could end poorly. So we give the first 90%. And that's enough, the problem is that, Chris, that last 10%, that's where the magic is. That's where transformation lives. And what I want to do, and what I tell our team is I want to create an environment, where it's not just safe to give the last 10%. But where it's expected, this is what I want from you. And this is what I'm going to give you. So if you don't give it back to me, this is going to feel really uneven and unequal. I want to create an environment where we are giving the last 10% of honesty, because the mission matters most. We want people to understand that the transformation that lives in that last 10% That's what we're after. That's what we want for our team for our organization for what we're trying to accomplish. The only way to get there is to create that type of an environment. So you can create an environment where you have people giving you the last 10% You just have to be incredibly intentional about it as the leader, because it's not going to happen without you going first. Right. Yeah, that level of culture building Yeah, is not easy. I think it's probably a great lesson too, for just getting people to be able to lead up as well, right? Being able to allow people to not to feel safe to be able to share those ideas, and not worry about repercussions of telling the boss like, Hey, you're off the market on this one. Exactly. Exactly. How do you? Yeah, that's just that's rarely something that people feel safe doing. Like leading up that way. And the reason they don't feel safe doing that is because their supervisor, their boss, their leader has not created that environment. And this, this is why it's so important. You it's not going to happen, you're not going to have this type of an environment. If the point leader doesn't want it. And I don't mean they just say they want it. They have to create it, they have to go first, they have to be the first one to step out and go across that divide. And if they do it enough times people will begin to sense and feel oh, oh, she really means it. Oh, he really he really means that art? Well, then maybe I'll try and I'll I'll take it, I'll put one toe across the line and see if it's safe. See if that toe gets lopped off, okay? Or maybe I'll put my whole foot across the line? Okay, maybe maybe this really is that type of an environment? Maybe the mission really does matter most. Right? And then once once that evidence is out there, right, it only becomes easier for everybody. So you mentioned like personality tests and being able to understand like yourself, and, you know, using this, how would you recommend leaders go about finding the right tests and stuff too, and knowing what to do with the results from those tests, to be able to help their leadership? You know, there's so many different options and assessments out there, the ones that I have found great value in are the disc, and the working genius profile. Those are two that I use with all of my coaching clients because I want I want them to understand that there is not one right, profile one right personality that a leader has to have. So often when we become a leader or new leadership, we just copy the leaders that we admire most, whether they're people that have led us or people that we admire from afar. And that makes sense. I mean, you know, that's, that's where you are at the beginning. The problem is if you stay there, because if you stay there, then over time go, all you're gonna become at best is a bad copy of a great leader. You've got to lead from your own authentic place. You've got to lead from your own personality. You have a unique wiring Chris, I have a unique wiring. That's how we're designed and if we lead from that authenticity, then we can lead in a way that is truly us. We believe we will have a way that that makes sense for us. For instance, if you look at another assessment, a Myers Briggs profile, if you look at my Myers Briggs, I'm an ISTJ. Right? So the eye is introverted. I'm like, if this is the spectrum, I'm over here somewhere, right, right, introverted side? Well, some people have this misconception that that means introverts, well, your interview, you don't like people. That's not true. It just means you don't draw energy from crowds of people. Right? When you go to a gathering a party or something, you might have two or three good conversations, but they're gonna be conversations that are not two minutes, they're not just skimming a rock across the surface, they're gonna go deep, right? Whereas somebody who's more extroverted might have, you know, 402 minute conversations through the room. That's okay. That's when you just have to lean into your own self. If introvert is trying to act like an extrovert that's not authentic. That's not who they are. How does this apply to leadership, that wiring how you're wired, that's what these assessments do, whether it's the disc, or the Myers Briggs, or the working genius profile, it helps you understand your wiring, being aware of that, bringing that to a level of conscious awareness, that's going to help you begin to design your environment so that you can lead authentically that way as you are designed, not trying to be somebody else. Right. So I am, semi opposite end of the spectrum from you has an EN TJ, there you go. But one of the one of the best investments I made coaching wise was that I hired someone, I call him a personality coach, he didn't change my personality, but he did help me find opportunities, right as an INTJ, to lean into it. And be able to like, these are some of your strengths, you can use this and I talked to my team. And I said like, Hey, these are the things that I'm really good at, it would be great. If you could help me like this. Let me see how you also show up. I shall I'll give a pitch to Crystal nose.com. They do personality assessments using the DISC profile. And they actually help you with comparing like, if your team member is strong. Hi, this is how you should communicate with him based off your personality type. And it's great for like pairing up and just getting a better idea for how you can show up for each other. I love that. The working genius in that it helps you understand what your strengths what your areas of working genius are, what are the things you're really great at you can be exceptional at right, what are the areas that you you're competent, then you can you can do on? What are the areas that are working frustration areas for you. I know that I have a working genius profile for every member of my team, all of our direct reports. What that means is that I know what I want to give to one person and never give to another unless it's just absolutely there's no other choice. Right? Yeah, no, because I mean, you might not like doing something. And so you're gonna delegate that task. But if you delegate it to someone else who doesn't like it, like Sorry, yes. Yeah. So let's talk. You had a section about intentional growth, and just coming in with this intentionality to all things. But in your really in your development path. I would love to know more about how you approach intentionality as a leader and building, you know, becoming a leader of becoming a leader that is intentional. It's it's it's something that most people don't think about Chris and and this is this is a, this is a challenge. There's this idea in the zeitgeist that, hey, you know, one day you're just going to wake up, and you're a fully developed leader. I've never yet met a leader who woke up one day and said, Man, I don't know how that happened. I didn't mean for that to happen. But here I am, I've got all the gifts and skills needed, already fully developed. Look at that, man, wonder how that happened. It's never happened in the history of ever. Okay? It'd be too convenient, right? There's no plug, we can plug in the back of our head, like in the matrix, and all of a sudden have all of the leadership skills and talents and everything's developed. It doesn't work like that. You've got to be purposeful, you have to be intentional. And this is why I talk so much about this, because what I want leaders to understand is that your growth, your develop is your responsibility. Nobody else is, nobody else is going to make sure you grow and develop as a leader. But your team needs you. To do that. You have to start today, developing and growing to become the leader that your team is going to need you to be a year from now. And five years from now. And 10 years from now. You can't wait until you're there and then all of a sudden try to try to cram the night before it doesn't work like that. You have to start today and this is a daily effort. This is something that you have to focus on every single day. Every day I'm going to read because I want to learn I want to grow I want to develop mentally, the skills that I need. Eat. But I'm also going to practice experientially, I'm going to try new things, I'm going to stretch myself. And I'm going to develop and grow and expose myself to new ideas. This is why I'll go to a conference or a workshop that's going to expose me to a speaker or a panel that I really want to learn something about, or learn from. These are things that I choose, and it takes an investment of time, and it takes an investment of money. But I will never ever regret and neither one you and neither will anyone listening, you will never regret investing in your own development. Because I'm astounded time and time again, how often something that I hear something that I read, something that I learn is something that I need in the days, weeks or months to come. Right? Yeah, and you you don't know it yet. But that pops up. Yes, exactly. And well, so in getting into that intentional growth, right, you have a model for setting goals, the scram goals. I think the audience probably love to hear more about this as well. Sure. So when I'm when I'm working with clients, I use this as a model. It's not original with me. But the idea of of a scramble so often people set goals, but they're, they're very vague. They're very hazy. And that's like having a bull's eye, you can barely see how are you going to hit that that doesn't work like that. I gotta have clarity around where I want to go. That's what a goal isn't a scramble is an acronym, the S stands for specific, I have to be specific, again to say I want to get better as a leader. Okay, well, that's, that's great. But that's not specific, right? You want to get better at what you want to develop what I want to develop my communication skills, I want to develop the ability to have really critical conversations that are not always fun. I want to develop my ability to cast vision, I want to develop my ability to steward resources to think operationally to think in terms of systems and habits. Whatever it is, I want to be specific about this, right. So that's the s, the C, it needs to be challenging. A goal is not something that you can just easily hit. If it's low hanging fruit, that's not a goal. Right? That's, that's just part of your, that's Tuesday night, I'm on your to do list, that's great, do that. But that's not a goal, a goal is going to challenge it's going to stretch you that's important, because you want consistently to have goals that are going to stretch you that's how you grow. Growth happens on the other side of change. And change only happens when we get stretched. So specific, challenging, realistic? Is it realistic? Is it realistically, you know, I can say, hey, I would like to fly to the moon. That's a fantastic goal. It's specific. It's challenging. Is it realistic? Well, since I can't fly, probably not. Okay. So you have to think in terms of what can be. And that's not to say that you can't think in terms that are that are larger than her vision casting goals. That's, of course, part of it. But truly, at the end of the day, is this something that is possible? You know, I'm going to take my company from, from, you know, a half million dollar company to next quarter, we're going to be a $10 billion dollar company. Right, okay, Is that realistic? Given everything that's going on? In your company and in the market in the ecosystem? The whole thing? Let's let's think about that. The A is attainable. Is this really an attainable goal? Right? Is it something that is possible is right there with realistic, but now they can Okay, given all of the things that I can't control, given all the things that I can control? Is this attainable? Given those things? And the last is measurable. Is this measurable? Can I measure it, we measure what matters. And when it comes to soft skills, people think like leadership, well, you can't really measure if somebody's leadership is growing and getting better. I beg to differ. I've benchmark with my clients, different leadership aspects that they want to work on. And we benchmark those and we measure against those. Where are you? Where do you want to be? Now let's measure as we make progress across building that bridge? The problem with many goals is they're not measurable. You don't know when you get there, right? Yeah, I agree. Even someone that right you can't improve what you you need to measure it in order to improve it. But I would argue you have to be able to define it in order to even measure it. And that's what you're doing with setting those goals. I think a lot of people skip that step. It's like, oh, we want to move this. How do we measure it? So a lot of leaders struggle, I think with finding a balance in life. You can't remember it's a full chapter, just a section but talking about the inner connectedness of life and all of the different elements that you have to be able to show up and again, you know, you might have a season or two of needing to cushion One area, how do you help leaders just find balance? It begins with understanding what balance means. And I think there's a there's an idea here that we inherited from the ancient Greeks, this idea that you can compartmentalize your life, and that you can wall off parts of your life to where they don't affect or touch other parts, that what happens at home is not going to affect what happens at work, right? What happens at work is not going to affect what happens my relationship with with my kids, or my friends, or relationally. recreationally. And then if if you start to try to do all these things off, what you find is that those walls don't hold. And the reason they don't hold is because we are integrated people. You are one person, I'm one person, and every part touches every other part. And if you don't believe that, just think about there for a second, the last time you had a really difficult season at home, did that affect the office at all? Of course it did. And vice versa, the last time you had a really stressful time at work, did that affect your home life at all? Of course it did. You may be one of the one of those who says I can build a wall and I can hold it and nothing will touch it, it will never cross. That's great. You can try maybe for a season you can pull it off. But what you're trying to do is you're trying to lead a segmented life, to lead a life of integrity means that every part is integrated, every part is touching and is synchronous with every other part. Meaning that you're not there's not one part of your life that's out of sync. Now, what does it look like in leadership? Well, it means you have to understand that every part of your life matters, that you can't wall this part off and say, Well, I'm not going to think anything about that that part can be can be, you know, unhealthy? Well, I focus on these other parts. Now they all matter. It's, I use the image of a wheel a lot, right? And you think about a wheel and you carving and up ha slices right? And you think about each part of your life being one of those sections of that wheel. Right? So you think about your relationships, you know, if you're married your spouse, you think about your your work your career, you think about your finances, you think about your health, all the different areas that you'll think about when it comes to your life? Well, if one of those areas is is not doing well, if you were to rate every one of those areas on a scale of one to 10, with one being the center of the wheel and 10 being the outer rim. And one of those areas is in the eight. Well, that's good. It's almost fully inflated. That's great. And one of those areas is to what's it going to be like driving on that wheel? Right, you hit a bump every Yes. And if you have more than one area that's flat, you just you can be like driving on cobblestone. And that's how so many leaders feel Chris, they feel like they are they are just jerking and Herky and just bumping all over the place. Everything's feels out of sync, everything feels well, bumpy. How do you smooth out the bumps? Well, it starts with understanding that every part touches every other part. And let's address the areas that we need to focus on right now to start to bring some of the inflation back to that wheel and smooth out the rod. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That analogy. I think one of the ways that, and I'm sure you've probably helped leaders, specifically with this is as they're trying to find balance and trying to do all the right things. A lot of it comes down to the habits that they're building. Yes. How do you approach figuring out what habits an individual leader even needs, and then help them get started with it? You know, it really starts with with where they want to go, it really starts with defining some of the goals that they're after some of the things that they want to work on the areas that they see, hey, I'm lagging here. And sometimes there is an awareness upfront when somebody comes to me and says, Hey, this is an area that I feel like I'm just I'm flagging in. I'm not doing well here. Okay, great. Then we have some self awareness there. That's great. Where do you want to be with this? Now we have a goal was to get as specific as we can make it scram as possible. Okay, now we have this. Okay, what's it gonna take to get from here to there? Well, you think in terms of a flow, right and we want to we want to immediately jump to the action items will immediately jump to the habits but the habits are last, actually, where you want to start is your mindset. Where you want to start is what's going on in your mindset What are you believe? What is core to who you are because your your beliefs are your beliefs drive everything, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about the people around you what you believe about the business organization, the market, the world. This drives everything that's going to go forward. Your beliefs drive your thoughts, right, your thoughts influence your actions, and your actions over time, can be repeated into habits and habits we know are what drives success or not. Right, all of that traces back to the mindset. And so this is where I'll often work with a client and help them begin to identify some of the beliefs that they have around themselves that around other people. Far, far more often than not, people have limiting beliefs and their mindset, they have beliefs about themselves, or beliefs about other people that are limiting their success. It's like putting a governor on an engine, it will not go past that certain point. This is what a limiting belief does about your thoughts. This is what a limiting belief does about your identity for yourself. And for other people. When you can take that Governor off when you can change that. Not only are you changing the very root, now you're starting to change the fruit. Right? Because you change the mindset, you're going to change thoughts, you're going to change behaviors, you're going to change habits, but you cannot just immediately jump to habitat. So you need to do these three things. You may be dealing with fruit that needs to be dealt with at the root. Right. Okay, there's two key areas that I want to make sure we cover. Yeah. One, something that I struggled with and had to make some decisions to learn the hard way. It's just hiring. Unfortunately, nobody who has been hurt in this process, but it cost them money. And it did lead to some poor results from it and some hurt feelings. Yeah. So in the book, you give the five C framework for hiring. Yeah. Which I thought was an amazing model that I wish I had years ago before I had to be the one doing process. I would love if we could get into that. Some more. Yeah, absolutely. This isn't something that I've adjusted and adapted over time, it used to be the three C's. With more experience, it became four and now it's five, talk to me in 10 years, we'll see if it's not six or seven. Today, it's fine. It's all worth it. So when I'm looking for somebody to join the team, I'm looking for the right person. And so the first thing I'm looking for, really is character. Character is not an optional add on, it is going to affect everything in the effects, whereas somebody who's going to be a person of integrity, who does what they say they're going to do. So I'm going to make sure character is a non negotiable. That is, that's the ticket to play. Right? There are a lot of places that you can go to work on your character, my team is not one of them, I need you to have that walk in. That's not in any way trying to be pejorative, or judgmental. I'm just saying like, I need that. I need that to be there. That's that's important to me. Characters. The first one. Second one is commitment. And this is in you know, in a nonprofit in a church context, this could be calling in a business context, this is a commitment to what we're trying to accomplish here. In either case, you're looking for somebody who's not just going to run down the street, when somebody offers him a buck more an hour, or somebody offers a you know, another work they don't have now you're looking for somebody who's committed another, that does not mean, you're asking them for 25 or 30, or 40 year commitment. What that means is that for the next season, we're gonna work together, right, seasons can vary in length. And I think it's so much healthier to think in terms of seasons. But it does mean that I'm asking you to commit yourself here for a season. Right? That's not 10 minutes, that's not two weeks, I want you to I want you to plant here, I want you to commit yourself here. And really try to develop what we're trying to do and be a part of the mission we're trying to draw forward. So character commitment. Next is chemistry. I want to make sure there is chemistry with the rest of the team, I actually involve my leaders in the hiring process for another team member. And the reason that I do that is a couple fold. One, they have different perspectives than I do. I see through one set of eyes, man, that's it. That's all I see. I need other people's perspectives, who can see what I can't see and hear what I might not hear. And I want to take advantage of every bit of that wisdom and insight I possibly can. And so I involve them in that process. But the second reason is because they're going to have to work with this person. This is another team member who's going to come in and be a part of our team. I need to make sure there's some chemistry here because if if they don't like each other, that's not going to go well. If there's a personality conflict, usually you can tell that pretty quick. If somebody tells a joke, and this new person doesn't laugh at it, do they have a sense of humor? I'm going to poke at that a little bit. We're going to prod there because we laugh a lot. That's one of our core values as a team. And if we try to bring somebody in who doesn't? Boy that's a chemistry problem. And chemistry problems can begin to affect everything including the bottom line no matter what you do. That's a 30. That's chemistry. Now, the next two are ones that I've added over time. These were not ones that I originally had. The fourth one is competency. And you might think well, that's, of course, they have to be competent to do what you're hiring them to do. But you know, what I find is that a lot of leaders will hire somebody based on the potential of what they think could be when they can't actually do the thing. But I think they can learn it. Okay, that's like that's like, in a marriage getting married to somebody and saying, Well, I know they're not this person right now. But I think I can make them into this person. How does that work out? Does that usually work out? I've never seen that workout, not once. There's got to be a level of competency to do the job. Now, that doesn't mean they're they're going to stop growing and getting better and learning. And of course, you want to set a very high bar for continual growth and learning. The gotta be able to do the do the minimum basics. I mean, think about it in a church context, if you're hiring a worship leader, would you hire a worship leader who can't sing? I mean, I wouldn't. But that's, that's just kind of cookies on the bottom shelf competency, right? Random to get better, of course, I want to get better. But you gotta, you gotta you got to measure that you got to see if it's there. That's the force. See, the Fitzy is culture. Every organization, every company, every church, every team has a culture, you either have one on purpose, or you have one accidentally that you didn't mean to have. In either case, you have a culture. And the question is, is it one that you intended to have? This was not something that I measured very early on. And this was not something that I've talked about much. But as I have developed more and grown more and coached more leaders, I have seen the importance of this. culture matters. And if you bring somebody into a culture, and they are not a match, you're going to have a problem. It's like, it's like putting a heart into a patient where you have a mismatch, right, a transplant, like you're gonna get a rejection. The same thing happens in teams, the same thing happens in organizations. If you bring somebody in from a different culture, I'm not talking anything other than like organizational health, you bring somebody in who's a mismatch, who doesn't agree with the core beliefs, who doesn't get the mission who doesn't understand what we're trying to accomplish, and why we do it the way we do it here. If they come in, and they're mismatched, they are going to try to change your culture to match what they think it should be. Right now you got a problem. And you didn't have it before lost control. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Those are awesome. So character, commitment, chemistry, competency, culture. Yeah. So I've definitely made, I tend to lean on character hires, right, like as my priority. But I've definitely hired without knowing someone was actually going to be competent at something and that has bitten me before me. So now I want to learn more. And speaking of someone, maybe not being the most competent, you have a concept. I think he called the lazy river of mediocrity. And I love it. I have a meme that I keep around and it's a, you know, some like Greek statue, and it says mediocrities. And then as a in quotes, it just says so, I love it, I find it hilarious. But I would love to let's just get into that. Bekata Yeah, you know, there's that when, when, when our girls were small, you know, we would occasionally go to a waterpark and they had a lazy river that you could float around the park is very, very calm in a hard drive or like I'm constantly moving type a type, you know, I want to accomplish things, get things done, I've always got to list always got goals and always moving. The Lazy River is appealing for a couple of different reasons. One, you can't accelerate it. You are in it, and it will carry you at the pace that the water will go. It's calm, it's restful. It's exactly the opposite of most of my days. It's so I love the lazy river. I think it's fantastic is one of the greatest rides ever that anybody's ever invented. The problem is that you're drifting. And if you take this analogy and you put it into the into into leadership, we understand that you never drift into excellence ever. Nobody has ever drifted into excellence. You drift into mediocrity. Excellence inspires other people. Mediocrity inspires no one. So too many leaders are drifting. And it's easy to fall into this trap. I mean, when you First start a new role as a leader, you first start a new position or a new company, a new organization, whatever it is, when you first start, you're on a learning curve. It's pretty steep. And you're you're constantly having to keep up and learn and adjust and adapt and figure things out. You can't coast you can't drift. But over time, you kind of settle in. I got this. Now I understand this. I know who to go for what and where to do and how to do and all that. And it's really easy to begin to drift. And this is what I see in a lot of leaders. They, they they are comfortable. And they're in the lazy river. And they're drifting. And what they don't understand is that you never ever drift excellence. You may say you want excellence, you may talk about it all the time. But you never drift there. You have to be intentional, if we purposeful. Otherwise, you're going to drift right into mediocrity, and that inspires nobody. Right? That's a good lesson on its own, and honestly, probably worth the entire podcast episode. I would love to know now. Do you have to recommend a book to everyone that you haven't written? What book would you? I like books, I have a bit of a book problem. I love to read and there are so many books that come to mind that I would that I would say, I'll I'll tell you. The book that I have probably recommended or given to people more than just about any other is a book I first read almost 20 years ago. It's called Getting Things Done by David Allen. It's a book on personal productivity. rarely have I read a book. And within the first 30 pages, my mind was racing with oh, that's why oh, oh, that Oh, I should do oh, I've got to I've got to adjust. How can I like I've got oh, there were so many practical insights in that book. And it's one that I reread regularly and constantly telling other people about because I believe the system. The GTD system, as it's called, is one that can absolutely revolutionize your workflow. It can revolutionize your entire life. Because it helps you gain what David Allen calls a mind like water. Mind like what do you think about a lake, you think about a calm lake that is just peaceful and serene? If you take a rock and you throw it into that lake, what happens? Right, you get ripples. But the lake reacts with ripples exactly in proportion to the size of the rock and the velocity through. It does not overreact. It does not under react. It exists, it is exactly in proportion. What you want is when we all have rocks, we all have things that are thrown into our world that we didn't expect or somebody else did or sometimes we did that caused the ripples. Am I overreacting or under reacting? Well, that question is answered by the systems that you have in place. And GTD is about creating the systems in your own life, your own productivity that will help make sure that you return to that mind like water state. Truly one of the most transformational books that I know and this is why I recommend it so much. Awesome. Well, yeah, now I have to go pick up a copy. Because you sold out with me. And I will strongly recommend that everyone picks up a copy of your book catalog leadership on Amazon, audible anywhere else that find books I'm assuming anywhere else. Strongly encourage everyone to grab a copy. William, thank you for joining me, where can people find you? The best place to find me these days is LinkedIn. Just look for William AdAway. You'll find me there have a newsletter that I publish on LinkedIn. Now I do LinkedIn events periodically that you can attend for free. And you can check me out also on my website catalytic leadership.net. Find out more about the coaching that I do the podcast that I host that I had the privilege of having you on. Not that long ago. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. So I would recommend everyone listen to that episode, as well as all the others. I've been binge listening to all of those as well. So strongly recommend but William, thank you for joining me. This has been a lot of fun, Chris, I've really enjoyed it, man. Thank you this is this is so much fun to talk leadership with somebody who gets it. Awesome. I appreciate that. All right. Until next time if you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership visit leading for effect.com is always deserve it