Your Oxygen Mask First with Kevin Lawrence
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"All of us are 1 or 2 life events away from a serious mental health issue. It doesn't matter how strong or smart or resilient or whether your due fix are aligned with it or not."
— Kevin Lawrence
Why Is Mental Health Such An Issue? & How Bad Can Mental Health Get?
Many people in high-stress environments, such as the corporate world, suffer from burnout and mental health challenges.
Mental health becomes an issue because of the dichotomy between the need to push oneself hard to be successful and the obstacles faced along the way.
People are accustomed to pushing through challenges and working harder, but sometimes they get knocked down to a point where it's difficult to bounce back.
Pride and past success can make it shocking and challenging to accept when things don't work out.
Excessive stress can significantly impact mental health, causing negative effects in both personal and professional life.
It is important to create a sense of urgency around mental health, as it can have serious consequences.
Mental health can deteriorate to the point where individuals contemplate or commit suicide.
In the red zone of mental health, one's mind becomes unhealthy and may suggest ending one's life as an escape.
Why Wait So Long Before Asking For Help?
Mental health progression goes from green (good mental health) to yellow to orange to red.
People often wait too long before seeking help for their mental health issues.
The stigma surrounding mental health and resistance to getting mental help contribute to the delay.
When in the red zone, individuals may not think clearly and may not believe they can get better.
Mental health challenges can impact cognitive abilities, leading to reduced functionality.
The fear of seeking help and the unfamiliarity of receiving mental help hinder people from reaching out.
Developing a relationship with a counselor beforehand is recommended as a preventative measure.
Prevention Doesn't Always Make It Easier
Prevention measures don't guarantee that mental health issues won't arise.
Personal experience of being in the red zone despite taking preventive measures.
Despite practicing and speaking about mental health, you can still experience difficulties.
It's important to be prepared for potential mental health issues even if you haven't experienced them yet.
Stop Being The Chief Problem Solver
CEOs and executives often feel the temptation to be the chief problem solver.
Being the go-to person for all questions and decisions hinders the growth of team members.
Ego plays a role in the desire to have all the answers and be recognized for it.
This behavior keeps leaders busy and prevents them from focusing on strategic aspects of their role.
It hampers the effective utilization of the talents and brains of the team.
Allowing the team to contribute their ideas leads to innovative and effective solutions.
Creating Real Change
The first step to creating real change is becoming aware of the tendency to solve problems for the team.
Aim for a high standard where 90% of the time, the team answers their own questions or solves their own problems.
Encourage team members to come to you with potential solutions or recommendations instead of just presenting problems.
Ask questions like "What do you think?" and "What do you recommend?" to shift the focus from providing answers to empowering the team.
Humility is essential for great leadership and learning; the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know
Learning & Passion
Study and learn about topics that you are passionate about in your personal life.
Identify your personal interests and pursue knowledge in those areas.
Also, focus on learning and improving in areas related to your work and job.
The goal is to achieve personal fulfillment and success in your career through continuous learning.
Reading is essential for personal growth, learning, and success in one's job.
Commitment to learning and reading is non-negotiable for high-level performance.
Tough Feedback
Positive feedback tends to increase as leaders become more successful, leading to a scarcity of challenging feedback.
Obtaining tough feedback is important for personal and professional growth.
Methods for acquiring challenging feedback include asking for it directly, seeking feedback on projects rather than personal performance, and conducting 360-degree assessments.
360-degree assessments can provide valuable insights and help identify areas for improvement.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike: Straight talking coach and author Kevin Lawrence helps CEOs executives around the world to break through their business challenges, grow their companies, defy the gravity of stress and succeed in work self and life. Kevin's career spans over 25 years, across a dozen countries and four continents.
He's worked with hundreds of CEOs and executives helping them break through business challenges, grow their companies, and find personal success along the way. These experiences inspired Kevin's book Your Oxygen Mask First, which he reveals the 17 habits every leader must know to transcend the perils of success and achieve more. I've known Kevin, Kevin, I think we've known each other about 10 years now.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: Coaching organizations. And what he doesn't have in his bio that I'll say is he's been, I guess since maybe beginning of Covid, he's been hosting the Growth Whisper his own podcast with Brad Giles, who was a on this show not too long ago.
And the interesting part, Kevin, you'll find this interesting, and I don't know if you guys have put this together, but I interviewed Brad about his book Thrive, which is about the role of the CEO and now, Kevin, most of the time we spend is gonna be talking about your oxygen mask first, which to me is almost like the mirror image of that saying what's the role of a leader internally?
Whereas Brad is like, externally, what does it all look like? And you're talking about inside their own heads and bodies.
Kevin: Yep.
Mike: What things need to look like. So, hey, glad to have you on the show. Welcome.
Kevin: Yeah, thanks Mike. Looking forward to it.
Mike: So we're gonna dive in and we'll talk about your oxygen mask first. I know you're working on another project as well, which I want to ask you about, but why did you decide to write your oxygen mask first?
Kevin: Yeah, it's a great question and you know, and like many people that are authors and like to help people, I have a lot of different things I'm curious about and want to learn about and share with people. And this is one of the things on my list and you know, being on airplanes all the time, I travel a lot and seeing them talk about the masks, it kind of hit me and I'm like, that's a great way to look at the metaphor for what we need to do to be successful.
Cause you know, behind the the scenes, the backside of the boardroom that you know, you and I work in is you see a lot of people get destroyed by the stress of it. And certain stressful events push them over the edge. And it's painful. And I had to learn a lot about mental health and resilience with the people I work with.
And was constantly looking at techniques to help CEOs either when they burnt out, get back or or when they're going to keep on going and growing to achieve their dreams. Cause they're all super ambitious. So I've just always been looking for and finding these tools for myself and clients. And, just one day. One day it just hit me and maybe cause I was probably burn out at the time myself and it just hit me.
Mike: Love it. And in the book you talk about what you call the leadership dichotomy, the upside and the dark side of being a leader. Tell us about that and maybe drive it into kind of the impact on mental health and why mental health is such an issue for leaders and for entrepreneurs.
Kevin: Well, I mean, the dichotomy or the hard part is that we need to really push ourselves hard to be successful. That's what it takes. It's, it takes a serious, serious commitment. And the hard part is as we're doing that, we come up against obstacles. And what we learn through our careers is we know when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
When the work gets hard, we work harder. That's our nature. And most of the times it works and we push through the other side and we build this muscle and this mentality is that when it's hard, we just put our head down and go harder and succeed.
And then sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes as you're pushing through, you get knocked down really hard to the point where some people have a hard time getting back up or at least for a period of time.
So it works until it doesn't. And the hard part as that comes into mental health, which is how we're often affected is you know, we we have a lot of pride and past success on things. And when things don't work, it shocks us. And what really, and I talk about in the book, all of us are one or two life events away from a serious mental health issue. This it's all genetics and stuff isn't true. It doesn't matter how strong or smart or resilient or whether your genetics are aligned with it or not.
When you just get too much stress, you're out. So the metaphorically, it's like, you know, if you're in a ring with a professional boxer or an MMA artist, or MMA athlete, I guess, instead of artist, I would say is they are like artists.
But you might take one hard shot to the head of the body. At two, most likely you're on the ground, three for sure, you're up, knocked out seeing stars. and that is the same. And you know, that's the same for us as leaders in terms of when it comes to life events or things that can be really, really stressful or just knock us over the edge.
Doesn't matter who you are, how strong you you are, it, it's going to really impact your mental health negatively to the point where you can feel it. And and it affects you at work or at home or can put you in a really bad place.
Mike: And Kevin, I wanna drive a sense of urgency here in people. We've talked before and I've seen you speak before about just how serious this could be.
Kevin: Oh, yeah.
Mike: My fear is when people hear this, they're like, yeah, at times I could feel stressed or at times I could feel a little, you know, depressed, but depressed with kind of a small d you know? But, you really drove home for me. How serious this can become. So give us a sense of, you know, the optimistic part of being a leader and running a company.
Kevin: Sure.
Mike: And, how bad could this get when we talk about mental health.
Kevin: People commit suicide. People like us, people like those listening, get to the point where their mental health is so bad and they're so overwhelmed by what they're dealing with. They don't see hope or don't see a way out. And as I just interviewed a CEO that I coached for a while and knew socially successful entrepreneur, all the typical things of successful person, but hit a really bad part in business.
A couple of things led to a point where was a lot of pressure on the business and he was gonna be forced to sell and it was gonna cost him dearly in order because of the of the situation he was in. And a long story short, the way he describes it, and this, you can find the link to this on our site cause there's a full interview. One of the things is he couldn't afford to hire me. He reached out for help and said, look, here's the deal, man. I'm gonna help you because I want you to get through this and stay on the planet. You just gotta pay it forward when we're done. So this guy's name's Michael.
You can watch the full 40 ish minute interview of him telling his full story. But the simple summary of it is he got to the point where it felt like the walls were closing in on him. He was in what we call the red zone of mental health based on this thing called the mental health continuum for the mental health associations from around the world.
And in that mindset, he felt like the walls were closing in on him. There was no escape. He felt really crappy about what was going on in a business. He had family members that he had, you know, really loaned money to or borrowed money from as part of the business that wasn't working out. And at some point his mind.
And in that red state, your mind is not very healthy. Your mind is your enemy when you're there. From that point, his mind was telling him, well, maybe we should just end this early this is enough of this life and I'll opt out. And in this case, he tried. And that's a smart, successful entrepreneur and CEO who was in a rough patch, no two ways about it. So that's happened.
And Michael's been very gracious to share his story, but I wanted, I asked him if he would and he thought about it for a bit and he wants to help other people get through what he got through. But he's not the only one. There's lots. It's just that we don't lead. That's not the story we lead with hey, how's business? Well, I tried to end my life yesterday. No, that's not it.
Kevin: And by the way, if anyone listening is in a point when they're at that state in their world, you've got a mental health hotlines. I think in the US it's 988, I believe it is. You can just type in mental health hotline into Google, wherever you are, anywhere in the world, and there will be a mental health hotline in every country.
Most companies have employee benefit programs. There's also normally counseling services available. You can go to your doctor, you can go to an ER if it's really critical and you're at risk. Or ideally, you know, if you're not at high risk, but you're in a rough place, talk to a counselor or psychologist.
So I just wanna make sure people get like there's always help and there's always free help and there's always instant free help if you need it and you're at the kind of end of your own mental rope. So the reality, I've got other stories I can tell you of lots of other people, like successful CEOs and executives where it puts their life at risk from inside their head. No physical, not external, just their experience they're having, their life is at risk.
Mike: And why? For some they wait too long and hopefully too long doesn't mean, you know, the end
Kevin: Yeah.
Mike: Of their life, let alone the end of their business, but why do these crazy successful, successful in quotes? Because maybe if that's the way they're feeling, they're not truly living the definition of success as we might define it. But I would say folks that, at least externally, that look like they are successful.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: They've got that many, well, you know, Part of the reason they've gotten there is they've got some smarts. Why do folks wait so long to be open and honest about it and go get some help.
Kevin: Right. One, I wanna clarify first. These people that really get deep into the red zone and their life, sometimes I guess, to the point where their life is, you know, can be on the line sometimes they are authentically successful, holistically successful, all that stuff. But they just got a punch to the head, a punch to the gut, and a punch in the nose and they get knocked out like so.
These are strong, healthy, resilient people who are in bad situations. Generally, there are people who are deeply struggling with life. That's not who we're talking about. People that are deeply struggling on a daily basis. Those people have also a lot of challenges. I'm talking with people where life is grand until, wait a second, what happened?
So how does it get there is because with mental health, and again, mental health associations of the world have courses and training on this that you can tap into. Our team does keynotes on it for companies, but there's a ton of resources here available, but people just don't, aren't aware of it. But what happens
in the mental continuum, you go from green, which is good mental health, to yellow, orange, red. And that's it. After red, sometimes people make choice to leave the planet, which is really unfortunate. But what happens is when you go from green, a healthy state of mind to yellow, it's like you sprain your ankle. You might put a tensor bandage on it, but everything's fine. People might not even notice you're good.
When you go from a sprained ankle in yellow to orange, it's getting a little bit rougher. It's like you break your ankle, you have to go to a medical practitioner. You get a cast and you get crutches, and your mobility is more limited, depending on your job, you may or may not be able to continue to work in our gigs.
We could, but if we're, you know, doing, making stuff happen in a warehouse, we might not be able to. But when you get into org, you've already connected with a mental health practitioner, or sorry, a physical health practitioner. The parallel is in mental, it would be a psychologist or counselor.
When you go to red, It's like you're in a bad car crash, you got multiple broken bones, and you're in the hospital for a month and you have multiple care practitioners, multiple medical professionals helping you now, so it's healthy to sprained ankle, to broken ankle to multiple broken bones physically.
And we know we have no stigma. We got a sprained ankle, we'll go to a physio or doctor. We got a broken ankle, we're getting a cast. And then we got, we're in a crash. We're not gonna not wanna go to the hospital. You know, that's just, that's our, in our world. But when the same thing happens mentally, geez, people got a lot of stories.
We got a lot of resistance and people have stigmas. I remember the first time I went to go work with a counselor, I was terrified. I knew I needed it. I was told I needed it. I was terrified that they were gonna start tinkering in my brain, and then the whole thing was gonna explode and meltdown.
True deep concern about letting someone inside my head no different than kids that are afraid of needles. So the root of it is, first of all, we have stigmas and we're not used to getting mental help, although we're used to getting physical help. But when we are mentally at
that point in the red zone, we do do not think clearly, number one often people don't think they can actually get better. Many people believe it's because your mind is messed up. It's playing tricks on you like you're having angry outbursts, panic attacks, total lots of fatigue. You don't like cognition. I see a lot of professionals where their cognitive abilities, the power of their brain is like 50, 60% and normal. Like you're not playing with a full deck at that point.
You're still a good person. You still have same possibilities. You're just, it's almost like you're mentally damaged, like a severe concussion. So the reality is, in that state of mind, if you're not used to getting help, you're not going to, if you don't realize you need help, you won't think about it. And you know, it's, yeah. Anyways, It's a challenging place, and that's why we tell people you wanna have relationships with a counselor beforehand as a preventative measure.
Mike: So let's talk about some of the preventative measures, cause it sounds like the key is doing the right things to make sure you're kind of healthy. Mind, body, soul.
Kevin: Yeah.
Mike: When you're in the green, when you're in the yellow, because by the time you get to the red, you may not be thinking clearly enough to do these things. So what I wanna do, Kevin, if it's okay, is you've got 17 habits. In the book, and I'll tell you what I love about this book is I've had many of my clients, especially the CEOs.
Read this book. But read is the wrong, I think it's the wrong verb. This is one of those books and there's a couple I know of Kevin, your book and one other. There's a couple I know where you don't read the book, you do the book.
Kevin: Right.
Mike: And in Kevin's book you do it.
Kevin: Well said. Well said.
Mike: And I did it and I've had clients do it. There's an assessment you can do, but what I wanna do, Kevin, if it's okay, cause we're not gonna go through 17
Kevin: Sure.
Mike: Different, maybe we could do that in part two and part three of our interview. But I wanna pick out a few and talk about 'em to give people a sense of what's there.
But more than that, I think some of these exercises could really help folks. And I know they've helped me.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: And I picked out a few that are some of my...
Kevin: Well let's do that. I wanna make a point before that just to make clear, you can do all the preventative stuff. But sometimes things are still gonna break and you need reparative, restorative, or rehabilitative things that you need to do. And just as an example, June, 2020, during Covid, I ended up in the full red zone.
Now my life wasn't on the line. I wasn't to the point of being suicidal, but other people's were on the line because I was having rages rage attacks on other people, some on the road. I raced cars for a passion, some on the road. One in a restaurant with a restaurant manager that thankfully I didn't punch out and I'm not a punch people kind of guy,
but I was in the red zone. I do all the preventative stuff. I know this like the back of my hand and I was still in the red zone and didn't realize it until I had some really bad behaviors that came really close to really big problems. So this is why you need friends and family around you to support you, but you gonna do all the preventative stuff, which helps you to get there and helps you to recover faster.
And it still happens. And I want people to get that and if someone who speaks about it do does keynotes on it and practices it and lives it, but I know covid was more than three punches to the head for a lot of us and it got me. So all this this other stuff's great. Just know all of us are susceptible to it. And if you haven't been there, unfortunately, you probably will, you'll wanna be prepared.
Mike: Thank you for making that point. It's kind of Surgeon General's warning on the side of the boxes.
Kevin: Yes, is.
Mike: There's a bunch of great habits in the book. Outside the book. You're all doing great things. It doesn't make you totally immune to this.
Kevin: No, no, it doesn't.
Mike: So that being said, let's dig into two or three of these and we'll see where it goes. One of them you call and this is a great test. I know you wrote this book a while ago. We'll see if I stump you and you say, sorry Mike. I don't remember that one.
Kevin: I'm getting concerned. I'm getting concerned.
Mike: If I need to, I have your book on my shelf, right behind. Over my shoulder.
Kevin: I got it right here.
Mike: Oh, there you go.
Kevin: I got a feeling I might dig in I got it open to the chapter cause I always get mixed up. I don't remember the chapter number. I know the titles. I don't remember which chapter is what number. So I got it here. I'm good to go.
Mike: So, in paragraph three on page, 126 now, so one of them you talk about is stop being the chief problem solver. Talk about the importance of that.
Kevin: That's chapter 12, mike. That's chapter 12.
Mike: Look at that. Look at that. Talk about the importance of that. And you know, some things people do.
Kevin: It's a limit temptation of many CEOs and executives because like, when you're building up an Oregon, you're at lower levels of a company or a smaller company. You know the answers to everything, and you you have to guide and almost manage people's work as a leader. If you wanna be an effective leader or CEO, people need to answer their own questions.
Unfortunately, we get stuck being chief problem solver, where people don't do the thinking themselves, they delegate it up to us. Or they want to de-risk decisions and they delegate it up to us, or we train them that we need to be involved in everything either way. The challenge is your people won't grow if you keep answering the questions and you stay busy. The dark side of this or the backside is our ego freaking loves it.
Absolutely. I'll, straighten up my collar, and let me tell you, son, let me tell you, you know, young lady or whatever the right words are these days, it's the pride that we get from having the answer is immense. So our ego is getting validated continually, but unfortunately, we're the ones that are feeling better. The people around us aren't building strength and competency cause we're telling them the answers to the test and then instead of letting 'em figure out the answers to the test. So it really, really holds people back. Number one, two, it holds your team back. Two, it keeps you really, really busy. So you can't do the leadership or strategic part of your, sorry, the strategic part of your job. And three, there's a great third point that'll come back to me in a.
Mike: By the way, you may have said number two twice, so you may have.
Kevin: I might have but basically it holds them back and it keeps you busy, so you can't move ahead. And it's unfortunate. If you look at, you know, leveraging the talents and the brains of the people around us, it's not very effective. And many leaders haven't learnt this yet,, and it holds them back.
Mike: And what I've seen, and I'm interested Kevin, in your thought, is another reason it holds them back. Part of it absolutely is ego. The other part of it is, we think we know the answers. We think we are the smartest person around the table. And man, it's a lot quicker to just give Kevin the answer rather than ask him a bunch of questions. And I don't have the time for that. I'm just gonna give him the answer when we may be answering the wrong question. We may be solving the wrong problem if we do that.
Kevin: No literally, which way, I've done lots. You get so excited about an opportunity to show your wisdom and you're answering the wrong thing. The real kicker is, exceptional. People will not want to work for you, like exceptional people. Like I've got a team, there's like 14 of us on this team that's firm, that's kind of
naturally keeps growing and my team won't have it. I had a team of ex CEOS and ex senior executives that are incredibly intelligent and capable. They actually wanted, they want and actually demand to do their own thinking in the best way possible. And I love it. Like the other day, we're in a meeting and we're working on engagement of our team because everyone's virtual.
A few of us get together quarterly. Everyone else. It's once a year. And we used to have weekly meetings with the whole team. It got too big, so we split up into smaller groups and then the alignment isn't there. We're talking about this problem. How do we keep the team engaged and aligned together?
Now that we're kind of broken up into a couple smaller groups, I got no idea. All I can think about is things that take more time or more energy, and this thing ain't figuring out the best answer. So in our strat planning meeting, our quarterly planning, that's the question on the agenda. And I'm like, I know I'm surrounded by smart people.
What do you think? The team came up with a brilliant, brilliant idea that I never could have had, and that's the piece that people miss out on. The team always has brilliant ideas, but if you're an answer dispenser, you don't get them. You get stuck in your own brain, which is a really dangerous thing. It's, you know, the idea is previous chapters like, make yourself useless.
You want a team so strong that they kind of almost push you outta the way so you can do higher level work, and that's the ultimate for them. And for you.
Mike: And Is there something, Kevin, in addition to just saying, hey, stop being the chief problem solver. Here's why you need to stop doing that. Is there a trick, a technique, a tip on, on how to get people to, because it's easy to say that it's harder to make the change. What can people do to make a change?
Kevin: Well, the first thing is awareness that you're doing it. In the chapter, we suggest that 90% of the time your team should answer their own questions or solve their own problems. 90%. It's a high standard, but that's to really get you clear on what it should be.
So number one is ideally to start with someone that's easier so you can build the muscle. There's some people under team that maybe aren't capable enough in their roles for you to trust them or their judgment.
That's a separate, that's a different problem. But with the people that are between good and great practice, getting them the ones that you trust to come to you with recommendations and instead of them bringing problems, them bring potential solutions slash recommendations and just getting them to, because in many ways they're doing what you have trained them to do through your interactions.
So tell them that you want 'em to do something different. one of my questions I ask all the time, cause it still happens for me. I still am problem solver sometimes. I'm trying not long to be, I'm trying to not be the chief anymore. And I constantly ask, what do you think? What do you recommend? What do you think?
What do you recommend? So it's, and when they say, I don't know, awesome. Well, why don't you think about it? Come see me tommorow. So just avoiding the temptation to answer and just working with them to get them to come to you with recommendations or at least a couple of options rather than the problem. That's the number one. Yeah. And then the second piece is, well, you know, if there's people on your team who consistently aren't effective at that and you're in a senior role, then you may have a person problem or a training problem or something else.
Mike: Got it. Got it. Beautiful. I wanna move on to a second one. That I love is learn like your life depends on it. Talk about that one a little bit.
Kevin: Yeah well, being in boardrooms and working with, you know, founder CEOs and entrepreneurs for too many decades, what most people are undereducated in their roles, like they don't know what they don't know. And because everyone's so busy working, they're not learning. They're so busy tactically, they don't get strategic
and get to look from a higher perspective, which learning helps you to do. And you know, I've got a bit of it in my DNA, although I gotta admit, I don't love to read books. I actually don't, I don't enjoy reading at all. I do almost everything on audiobooks, but I love to be more capable and more helpful to the CEOs and executives we work with.
And as a result, you know, I read between 25 and 30 books a year, plus Harvard business case studies, plus other thingsthat I do. And my grandmother in the DNA, my grandmother went back to university at 81 and she studied theology cause she was interested in religions of the world and many parts of the world, like in Canada, where I'm from, you can go and sit in and audit at universities when you're a senior citizen.
That is. And they'll let you do it. So I have that curiosity in my dna, and just most people just don't do enough. Interesting. Someone said to me one day, we're talking to CEO, goes, you know, what I realized people that don't learn a lot, they've got big egos cause they think they already know the answer. And you know the answer to being a great leader. Jim Collins talks about being a level five leader. Is incredible will and incredible humility. If you're really humble, you learn a lot cause you know you don't know.
Mike: Well, the more you learn, the more you realize, you don't know.
Kevin: The more you don't know. Yeah, exactly. And here's the thing, I think about how you know, you can study history if you're passionate about it and learn tons about leadership and running a company.
Kevin: You can study psychology, you can study whatever the heck want, but study and learn. So I encourage people to learn about a couple things. What are you passionate? Something you're passionate about in your life, right? Like a personal thing that, you know, I'm interested in cars and racing and psychology a lot myself, that although that translates into work. And then what are you interested in? Work so you can learn to be more effective in your job. So personal fulfillment, learning and successful at your job learning. And that's why,
Kevin: we make sure the companies we work with read a book every quarter. The amount of audio books I buy on a monthly basis, like it might be one of my top expenses cause I'll be talking every time I'm talking to great leaders CEOs have you heard about this book?
You know, I just downloaded, I was just on with someone in Atlanta this week and I ended up buying this book. A Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger from disney.
Mike: Oh okay. Haven't read it, but I've heard of it, yeah.
Kevin: Yeah and then someone else said, you gotta listen to the inspiration code and someone else, hey, course of Miracles is course of miracles made easy in the inner game of tennis and managing in the gray. Another executive talked about working back like it's endless.
Mike: I was gonna say, and what amazes me, cause I'm like you and I'm usually, reading two books, fun book, and maybe a businessy self-developing thing.
Kevin: Yep, yep.
Mike: And then I'm listening to a book, so I've got three going on at the same time. And I sit and I do like you do, I try with a lot of my clients to get them, at the very least, to say, let's read a book a quarter together. And it amazes me sometimes the pushback I get. I don't have time to read a book a quarter.
Kevin: Well how the hell are you doing your job?
Mike: Yeah.
Kevin: Basically, you know, being uneducated is really expensive. There's a more brutal way to say it and I'm not gonna, but like you, like in the companies I work with, It's not optional.
I don't wanna work with people who are under-skilled. I'm here to help them win. So in my world, it's not an option. There's no flexibility in it. Zero. I'm from Canada, so we talk about hockey, I'm helping CEOs and their teams to build NHL hockey caliber teams and like the best of it, and that could be NFL, LBA, I don't care.
The top league is where I'm wanting to play. And so there's more commitment and you know, learning is a big part of it. And knowing, like understanding the game and studying the game. And if they don't wanna do that one, you're not gonna get there or stay there if you are there. And two,I, don't wanna work with you cause if you're not that committed, then we're not gonna get as good results.
Mike: And to your point, it doesn't always have to be work related. I'm 58, right before I turned 50, I had read something in one of the books I was reading, read something that said every once in a while you've gotta do something that scares you.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: Or maybe it was more specific. Maybe it said once a year. I don't remember. Just something that scared you. So I was about to turn 50 and I was always the guy around the table with family and friends that people would say tongue and cheek, you should be a comedian. Because I was the funny guy around the table.
So I said, you know what?I'm gonna do, and I knew at the time I wanted to do more public speaking, so I said I can kind of relate it to work and justify spending all the time. But I took a standup comedy course 10 weeks, week eight and week 10 I was on stage doing a seven minute routine in front of an audience at the Comedy Cellar.
Kevin: That's awesome. Congrats.
Mike: That was one of the coolest things I've ever done and but it's all about kind of, you know, more wrinkles in your brain, right? It's all about just making more of those connections. So it's great. So learning is so important and I agree. If you're a leader and you don't have that habit, you are doing yourself, your team, your clients, your family a disservice.
Kevin: Yeah. Or, hey, thank you very much for making it easier for us to compete against you.
Mike: Yeah. There you go. I like that.
Kevin: You know what, Mark Cuban. We did a session with him before a Maverick's game, and he was talking to us about a bunch of his things and one of the things he said, he talked about reading, and it might have been an article he did.
I connect the event in the article together, but he said, at the end of the day, I've always been a little fish in a big pond, and the only thing that I can do is to be notably smarter than the people I compete against. And that's why, for him, I think it's three hours a day of reading he does. Because that's how he competes. Andat the end of the day, the game of
business looks complex. It's actually quite simple. You just gotta know the game better than other people. And there's people out there who spent their, spent months and years writing books and researching to give you the answers to the test.
So it's like you can take the whole course through your entire life, or you can buy the answers to the test. Legally. Legally, you can just not, you know, buy the answers.
And find faster ways to learn from other people's experiences. Last thing I'll share, we had a session with Jim Collins, in London, England, and he did a big, mass session with, a couple thousand leaders. And then after we had a private small session with about 20 of us, and I had my son, who was 13 at the time with me and another CEO had his son there, and the kids asked, hey, what would your advice be to us? Right. You know, the, my son was 13, the other was 18. What would your advice be to us? And he thought about it as Jim does.
He goes, read 100 biographies. And if you wanna be a great leader, read about great leaders. And the amazing thing is some of them took the time to document and get into their mind and share what's in their mind and what they're doing, and how they're doing it, and again, I don't love reading, but I like being effective and I like helping people to succeed. That's why I'm so committed to it, and at the end of the day, that's what the best do. That's what I'm doing.
Mike: Yeah. The last one I want you to take us through then I'm gonna ask about the new project, the new book you are working on.
Kevin: Sure.
Mike: But the last one is get Tough Feedback. Talk about that one.
Kevin: I just got mine two months ago. Look at the end of the day as we become more successful, and whether it was as a leader or a CEO in companies, people generally like our ideas more and more and more, whether or not they're better or they're not better, and people have a vested interest in saying nice things to us so that we like them and feel good about them.
And for a lot of people, all those pleasant things people tell us pays off. For me, it doesn't, if someone's really, really nice to me, I trust them less just in terms of how I'm wired. But the idea is that we get so much positive feedback and it's hard to find people that'll tell us the truth because we have influence over their roles and their promotions and their compensation.
And as, the guy that built Intel, Andy Grove says in one of his books, he says he has someone called Helpful Cassandras. People on any team that he's a part of that make sure that they challenge and rip his ideas apart cause he knows people are gonna be so positive and supportive cause he was the CEO.
So, that's what this is about. How do you really get challenging feedback? And there's lots of ways to do it, you know, you can ask for it directly. Sometimes it helps indirectly to get feedback on a project cause people will give feedback on the project versus the person.
But my favorite is the good old 360. And, you know, we do a lot of them for senior leaders. Our team, we do a survey-based one, a simple one that's impactful. It's not all statistics. It gives you impactful things that you do that's not effective or more effective. We have some statistics to measure your leadership effectiveness. And then we do like interview-based, deep, deep, deep inter inter interview ones.
But on mine I got my 360 back and you know, I got, I was just looking at it today. Because it's on my goals, because you know, if you get a 360 but you don't operationalize the feedback into goals, it's kind of pointless. So you know, like my 360, it was said basically keep creating opportunities, keep the standards high and driving for excellent work. Keep connecting with the people with energy and curiosity, both in the group and one-on-ones with my team, and keep facilitating growth of the firm. Versus leading all of the growth. So a little bit of feedback and
say hey, we like this. Keep it going to do more, paint more of a picture of the long term roles and opportunities within the structure of the firm. Clearer instructions when delegating. I move fast and sometimes, I go so fast, the details are left out and if someone doesn't clarify it, it's my fault. But I got that but then stop. So that was to start or do more of. Okay. You know, but stop doing quickly reacting and digging into a position and not hearing others out. Also because we go, and this is my team,
andthe team I got Brett, this guy on my team who helped facilitate it, and he basically said, that I can do things that as a thought leader are perfect, but as a firm leader could be diminishing and or not effective. And he said, I've conflicted rules.
I'm a thought leader and I'm a firm leader. And when those two things get in the way, I'm in trouble. Being rushed time pressure because I book back to back, which makes me more likely to quickly react, makes me more likely to not give clear instructions, etc.
So at the end of the day, it's basically, and you would think it's, a lot of it is how do I lead the firm better? It's not even so it's about me, but it's about creating, continuing to create an opportunity for them. That's an awesome one as well.
Mike: So I absolutely love the fact that you just shared your 360 with a pod. I'm thinking that could be a whole separate podcast, like just leaders coming in and sharing the results of the 360s, because now we could all hold you accountable. So I love this. But here's the other question I have on this idea, getting tough feedback.
So the 360s are great. I agree with you, but 360s happen. Every once in a while You're not getting a 360 every month. How do you to the point you made in kind of introducing this topic, which is as you get more and more senior in your role, so this is the better leadership team show a lot of folks listening to this
are on that executive team. Or they maybe the chief executive officer where it is a little easier to tell them what they want to hear and not give them the tough feedback. Is there a technique? As a senior leader to ask for that feedback and actually receive it versus, oh no, you're doing a great job.
Kevin: Yeah, like ideally. Ideally you wanna get it regular on a regular basis. Like I try and do my best to give feedback of what works and how to make things better nonstop to everyone I work with. That's the ideal. But when you want it from people that report to you, it can be hard. So yes,thank you for that.
It's a great idea. So one of the things I mentioned earlier, is asking about feedback about meetings or processes. So for example, at the end of the meeting, hey, what was most effective about this meeting? How do we make it better? If you're the person running the meeting that's feedback about you.
RIght in the moment. So when we do two day strat planning sessions at the end of every day what was most well we always ask most valuable daily but at the end of the two days, if it's a two day what was most valuable and how do we make it better next time that is indirect feedback for the person leading it which is easier for people. Second thing is, I am a big believer. I know I have great kind, we'll call it visionary ideas. But they're about half baked. I need other people's feedback.
And so the other piece is I have practiced a lot based on my personality, cause I know I can you know, shut people down very quickly or make them unwilling to speak up when people do provide feedback.
And I might react to it the moment, which I'm known to do. When I do catch myself, I come back. And I, in front of the group will say, hey, by the way, so and so Tim, the guy on my team who this has happened a lot with Tim. Thank you for that.
I did overreact to it. I want you to know, I want the feedback and I want you to know I react sometimes, keep doing it. Keep telling me what you think and so I go back and do a little bit of repair with the group and then making it safer for other people to share as well.
And for example, with this one guy on my team, Tim, he does it all the time. Beautifully, and then others do. So it's how you handle it will set up how people feel about it and their willingness to do it in the future. is a really, because whether we know or not, a lot of us will react in a way that's not positive when people give us that stuff live in the moment.
Mike: And I love the idea of saying thank you genuinely.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: Saying thank you even if you disagree with their feedback.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: What you're thanking them for is the courage, the honesty.
Kevin: Yes.
Mike: The caring and giving you feedback. So thank them. Whether you agree with them or not, love it.
Kevin: Exactly and that's the piece of what I've learned over the years is I can always thank for the feedback and absorb it and say, let me consider that. I don't have to do anything with it. But where I get myself in trouble at times cause I'm in a hurry and maybe I don't agree with what's being said. I feel because I'm trying to be efficient,
that I need to thank them and make a decision and act on it all in 1.2 seconds. And that doesn't work. So it's to just receive it and say, let me consider it. Or could you explain a little bit more if there's time versus I try to handle all three steps at once sometimes, and then that does not go well.
Because the truth is though, you gotta want it, you may not like it, but you gotta want it. And that's the key. And by the way, if you're surrounded by smart, capable people, they want to share it and it will help no matter what. But once you cut off that information source, I mean your ego will like it, but you won't be as effective. And that's what I'm reminding myself of constantly.
Mike: Beautiful. Hey, as we start to wrap this up, I wanna shift from your oxygen mask first to a new book around the four forces of growth. Give us a little preview of what that's all about.
Kevin: Well, I'm curious about how when people have all the tools and the resources and the strategy for constant enduring growth, sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes they lose growth along the way for whatever reason. And I, looked at, as I was digging into it, the role of a pilot versus a role of a CEO pilot's job is continually gain altitude and distance with an airplane to get to a destination.
And that pilots kind of fight the forces of gravity and a bunch of other things, but they gotta really fight a bunch of forces to make that plane fly efficiently and safely to a destination. And pilots are actually doing something similar. So I'm comparing what it takes to be a successful pilot and and fighting the forces of gravity in others to building an enduring great company.
And, it's the model we came up with gives CEOs and teams very good awareness of how decisions they're making in the moment might seem good and productive, but they could either be accelerating or over accelerating their growth or putting the business into a nose diving, hading towards the ground, and they don't even know it.
Mike: Interesting. Is there a date when we could look forward to this book? Is it too early in the process? Give us a sense.
Kevin: No it's not. I made a commitment and I'm nervous about my commitment, Mike, if I'm gonna tell you the truth, the commitment is that the final edited manuscript is done at the end of 2023. No if ands, or buts, and that's what I'm driving to. And I'm driving to it, it's getting the hard thing, like writing a book is not easy and it seems in my experience, you know, doing it with scaling up and then oxygen mask.
I did two smaller ones before that audio only, but half of the work is the first intro chapter, the first overview of the book. That's half the work. Because in my world, I wanna find a simple, compelling way for it to land with people so then they can get on with it. But to take all of this wonderful thinking and learning that we get, you know, whether it's from podcasting or from clients and life, to boil it down and make it simple, it's hard.
Like that's the work. So I'm committed. I got a great team helping me. We will get there, but I'm a little nervous.
Mike: I've written two and I've started outlining my third. It's not, I wouldn't even say I'm working on it yet. It's an idea that I've started playing around with but I was a big fan when I was a kid of the odd couple, the show the Odd Couple.
Kevin: Ah, yes.
Mike: Oscar Madison on the show was a sports writer. And he said something I thought was brilliant. He didn't say a lot of brilliant things on the show, but he said, I hate writing but love to have written. And that's the way I feel and he may have been quoting someone else, I don't know. But man, I've written two books. I hate writing, but I love having written.
Kevin: I'm writing that down.
Mike: Haha there you go.
Kevin: Well, the same thing isII don't love writing either, but I love to have, cause it crystallizes our thinking and it helps more people. Same thing with reading. I don't love reading, but I love having read.
Mike: Yeah, reading I love, writing not so much.
Kevin: Yeah. Okay, well I don't like either.
Mike: So Kevin, if people wanna find out more about you, the work you do, tell us, and this will all be in the show notes, but where should they go?
Kevin: Sure, there's the Lawrenceandco.com. A N D C O is our firm, where you can see the services we do around strategy and building of teams and helping CEOs grow and be more successful, and have a weekly newsletter that's full of great tips and tricks and things that we find along the way.
And then the other thing is the podcast, the growth whispers that I do with Brad Giles, the podcast, we just share the best stuff that we know, and when we look at different challenges and cases on a weekly basis. So there's lots, lots there. And kind of like you, we just want to help people. And a bunch of those people that receive values call us and say, hey, can you help us go do this in our companies? Which that's why our firm exists and we're happy to help.
Mike: Beautiful. And we covered at a high level, we covered three of the 17 different habits in your oxygen mask first. So if you want the other 14, we're not gonna share it with you. You gotta go buy the book and then we get to hold Kevin, now we get to hold you accountable for your improving on your 360.
Kevin: I like you.
Mike: And having your four forces book, all written manuscript done by the end of the year. So, hey, this was wonderful. Wonderful. Thanks so much for doing this.
Kevin: Thanks Mike. I can't believe you got me to share my 360. That was fun. Thank you for doing it.