The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:07 - 00:00:33:01
Kevin Eikenberry
We recognize change. Wonder about change, are uncertain about change, and often resistant to change. Truth be told, we have a love hate relationship with it. Our guest today wants us to embrace it. To harness it into a force for success. If change is coming, we need a firm foundation upon which to make change work for us. That's why we're here today.

00:00:33:07 - 00:00:59:20
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm glad you're here. So welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for their teams, organizations, and the world. If you're listening to this podcast, you could join us in the future for live episodes on your favorite social platform where we live stream these and to find out when we are live streaming them and where we are live streaming them.

00:00:59:20 - 00:01:22:21
Kevin Eikenberry
You can, join us on our Facebook or LinkedIn groups to get all of that scoop, all of that skinny and find out when they're happening, and then also get that information sooner. So you can go to Facebook. Remarkable podcast.com/facebook or two remarkable podcast.com/linkedin. Either one will get you connected and you can join us live in the future.

00:01:22:22 - 00:01:43:06
Kevin Eikenberry
If you like what you are hearing today and want to help in developing the leaders in your organization, we should talk, reach out to us at info at Kevin, I can.com and we'll schedule time to learn about your needs and share how we might help. And with that, I'm going to bring in my guest. His name is Patrick Lennon.

00:01:43:08 - 00:02:05:18
Kevin Eikenberry
He's got the smile on his face. I've got his book in my hand. His name is Patrick Lydon, PhD. He has extensive hand-on, hands on leadership experience in the 82nd Airborne Division as an Airborne Ranger infantry officer, and in the private sector as a senior business consultant at KPMG and Franklin Covey. He founded and built two successful companies.

00:02:05:20 - 00:02:40:04
Kevin Eikenberry
He's a speaker, a top ranked podcast host and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, the five week Leadership Challenge. 35 Action Steps to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be while on the faculty at Vanderbilt. He served as Director of Program for Business Studies and led the Disruption Project, a multi-year study of the success of success in the face of disruption, which led to his new book, Disrupt Everything and Win Take Control of Your Future, which is coauthored with James Patterson.

00:02:40:05 - 00:02:48:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Yes, that James Patterson. And with that, and we'll get to that maybe in a second. Patrick, welcome. Glad you're here.

00:02:48:23 - 00:02:58:12
Patrick Leddin
Hey, Kevin, thanks so much for having me. I wonder how many people are on a podcast right now with James Patterson going, and he wrote a book with Patrick Lennon. Yes, that Patrick Lennon.

00:02:58:14 - 00:03:01:18
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm guessing zero.

00:03:01:20 - 00:03:03:05
Patrick Leddin
I don't know exactly.

00:03:03:06 - 00:03:22:12
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, I don't know that I'm going to get I'm going to just guess, we'll get to the James Patterson piece here in a second. And I guess we should say what you told me before we started, which is this book is now on The New York Times, this New York Times bestseller list. It's pretty darn exciting.

00:03:22:14 - 00:03:30:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And so we're super glad that you're here. Let's start here. Patrick, what's the big idea of the book?

00:03:30:17 - 00:03:43:20
Patrick Leddin
I think ultimately, the big idea of the book is if you want to live a good life or build a great team, people listening right now to maybe they're leading a team or leading an organization. They want to build a great team, a great organization. There's two things you have to do. One is you have to define what that greatness looks like.

00:03:43:20 - 00:04:04:03
Patrick Leddin
We call it the fire inside. Like, why are you here? What's the purpose of your team? But then the second part is you have to deliver on that. Kevin, and you have to deliver on that in the face of all the curveballs that get thrown your way, whether it's a customer concern, a breakdown in a manufacturing facility, meetings keep getting canceled, new technology, whatever it might be small, big, and everything in between.

00:04:04:03 - 00:04:15:09
Patrick Leddin
How do you stay on that path and actually realize that some of those disruptions, in fact, many of them might be fertile ground for innovation and progress toward that fire inside your team.

00:04:15:11 - 00:04:32:11
Kevin Eikenberry
So that whole that whole, description never used the word disruption, which is, I think what led to the book in a way. So let's talk about that. I entered that in the open. Like what sort of led to the book, and the ideas that are in it.

00:04:32:13 - 00:04:55:05
Patrick Leddin
So I was teaching you, as you said, at Vanderbilt, I spent the last 12 years as a professor at Vanderbilt, and one of the classes I taught that actually came out of Covid was a class called Leading Business Through Times of Crisis. It seems so fitting, right, that a book comes out of Covid called Leading to Crisis. And the reason it came out is because when Covid hit, every organization, people listening right now, their organizations were scrambling like, what are we going to do?

00:04:55:05 - 00:05:12:14
Patrick Leddin
Who can come to work? Who's essential? What is essential mean? How do all of these type of things and still serve customers and all that type of stuff? Same thing at the University. So there was a note that came out from leadership at the university saying, hey, we have to go online and we don't teach online usually here at Vanderbilt, and we need some bigger classes, which we don't typically do.

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:37:22
Patrick Leddin
Any professors willing to teach a class to 100 students online? Send us your proposal. And I was like, ding ding ding, that's opportunity. So I sent a proposal in saying, I want to teach this class. I'm leading business through crisis. When Covid kind of let's say, I will say, I don't want to say pass completely. But when we started going back into class and kind of getting back into some semblance of new normality, the course continued and we decided to do one section every semester.

00:05:37:22 - 00:05:54:19
Patrick Leddin
That was very guest speaker driven. So folks listening right now are Kevin, as we talk, imagine you're sitting in a room with 24 other students. There's 25 of you in the room. You're like a sophomore in college or something. And in walks the chairman at the time of American Airlines, Doug Parker, and the president of the Flight Attendant Association, Sarah Nelson.

00:05:54:19 - 00:06:09:21
Patrick Leddin
The two of them come in together in person and sit down and talk about labor and management, how they work through times of crisis. It was that type of guest speaker. So really unique experience. And one of the guest speakers at joining us was a guy named James Patterson. James Patterson has his master's in English literature from Vanderbilt.

00:06:09:23 - 00:06:26:17
Patrick Leddin
He decided to come back and talk to a group of students. And he started with the question, are you living a good life? And he let it sit for a moment. He said, you know, I hope you are. Here's how I went about living my good life. And he titled the presentation The Power of Disruption. And people don't necessarily know this enormous an author.

00:06:26:17 - 00:06:46:22
Patrick Leddin
And if you're not familiar, some folks just walk into a bookstore. He saw about 475 million book copies at this point. And he's created some really well known characters over the years. But he started off in advertising. He was the youngest creative director at J. Walter Thompson became the youngest president of J. Walter Thompson, and then he quit that to focus on writing.

00:06:46:22 - 00:07:06:21
Patrick Leddin
He disrupted himself. And then when he got into writing, he literally kind of disrupted the industry. In fact, that's not me saying it. Publishers weekly said that, James Patterson's forever changed, publishing multiple authors, multiple genres, multiple books a year. And by the time it was all over with, I'm like, that's a really interesting topic. I'd love to do something with on that, kind of on that kind of do some research on it.

00:07:06:21 - 00:07:16:12
Patrick Leddin
So that started a, but a 4 or 5 year partnership for them right now, where I ran a three year project interviewing hundreds of people to understand their positive disrupter story.

00:07:16:14 - 00:07:32:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And we're going to get to that idea of the positive positive disrupter loop and the stories there in a minute. But I want to get at this idea. I mean, I sort of teased it in the open. I used the word change. I didn't use the word disruption, just like you didn't when you first started talking about the book.

00:07:32:15 - 00:08:08:06
Kevin Eikenberry
And yet we when we hear that word, like there are words that are around the word change that, that we might frame more positively. Right? Like, like progress that's changed for the better. But when we hear the word disruption, our first reaction probably isn't positive. So, I was thinking about the fact that in a way, in a way, this idea of disruption is a disruptive idea, the way that you and James have gone at it.

00:08:08:08 - 00:08:15:10
Kevin Eikenberry
You've disrupted our pattern of thinking about the word. Can you first of all, do you agree? And second of all, what would you say about that?

00:08:15:12 - 00:08:22:10
Patrick Leddin
I think we have. I actually was talking to my dad, who's 94 years old, when I was working on this project, you know, and, you know, your.

00:08:22:10 - 00:08:23:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Dad is, I guess. Yeah.

00:08:23:17 - 00:08:40:16
Patrick Leddin
Yeah, you do is in his early 90s, right? I'm talking about this project. He's like disruption. That's a horrible thing. Why would you write about disruption? So he even has that visceral, visceral response to it. But yeah, we tried to say, hey, we're not the first people to write about disruption. We just want to own it in a different way and give people some permission to think about it differently.

00:08:40:16 - 00:08:56:16
Patrick Leddin
So when we talk about disruption, we recognize that many people are like, I want to avoid that. That blows stuff up. It's scary. It's fearful, it's anxious. You're right. Or I want to ignore it and hope it goes away. And what we want to say is, you know what? Yeah, there's there's some disruptions that are definitely things you wouldn't want to have happen.

00:08:56:16 - 00:09:13:08
Patrick Leddin
And we write about some of those in the book. You wouldn't wish them on your worst enemy. But inside many of those, many of those disruptions, there's fertile ground. And sometimes it's fertile ground to go toward change, and sometimes it's fertile ground to double down on what you're already doing. But we want people to make a conscious decision to do that.

00:09:13:10 - 00:09:41:07
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, Patrick, the older I get, and I read most of the book, and I certainly read the part about your mom and your dad, and that's why I made the comment about not knowing your dad. You know, one of the one of the disruptions in my life is when I lost my father. Right. And and when I think about all of the dominoes that have fallen since then and all of the magical and marvelous things that have happened in my life since then, many of them that would never have happened if dad was alive.

00:09:41:10 - 00:10:01:06
Kevin Eikenberry
It doesn't mean I'm glad he's not here. Right. But it's it's it gets at that point, I think the older I get, the more I realize that that point that there's there's fertile opportunity in the disruption, but not unless we look. And I know we'll talk more about that in a minute.

00:10:01:08 - 00:10:10:20
Patrick Leddin
Yeah. You're, you're you're right. I mean, life life teaches us so many lessons over time, doesn't it? And, and one of those is that you start to gain a bit of perspective about certain things.

00:10:10:22 - 00:10:38:02
Kevin Eikenberry
For sure. For sure. So, you and I were talking before I hit the Let's Go Live button. And I said, I want to talk a little bit about the fact that I see this book as a life skill book, but we're on a podcast about leadership. It really is about both, in a way. But how would you frame that, this idea, as both a leadership skill as well as a life skill?

00:10:38:04 - 00:11:03:08
Patrick Leddin
Well, I would I would put my arms around all of that and say, yeah, I think it is all of this. First of all, I think we are all leaders. We lead our we choose to lead ourselves. That's a choice we can make. And within that there's some life skill components to it. But on the other hand is, if we're in a more formal leadership role at work or we're doing a lot of influence without a formal title, or we're somewhere along kind of the scale of leadership, whether it's, you know, first level leader, mid-level leader, executive leader, whatever it might be.

00:11:03:10 - 00:11:27:16
Patrick Leddin
Leadership is a relationship game. And I don't say game lightly. And we're going to manipulate people. I'm just saying, like, if you don't realize that the people around you truly matter and the ability to negotiate, negotiate their relationships with them in positive ways that are helpful to both, you're kind of missing that boat. It isn't all about just the, the financial numbers and the scoreboards.

00:11:27:16 - 00:11:46:22
Patrick Leddin
Yes. Those matter. If you don't take care of those, you're not going to have a business necessarily, or an organization. But at the same time, as much as you want to expect great results, you also have to care a lot about the people. And I would say that the things that we talk about in the book will help you negotiate, navigate your way through your personal relationships, your business relationships, your own journey in life.

00:11:46:22 - 00:11:55:20
Patrick Leddin
And I just look at it as we have a whole life. We don't have this compartmentalize. Leave your leave your personal life in the parking lot anymore. Or vice versa.

00:11:55:22 - 00:12:15:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I would agree. And, you know, I wrote a long time ago in one of my books, something along the lines of, as we become a better leader, we become a better human, and vice versa. It's just another way of saying what you said, that they're connected and we we really if we try to pull them apart, we're actually hurting ourselves.

00:12:15:00 - 00:12:32:06
Patrick Leddin
Oh, yeah. I've done it to the detriment myself and I. When my wife and I owned our first business together, I really got sideways on this where I. She was my wife, but also looked at her as my business partner, my colleague, and I don't think I was able to separate those roles really well in my mind, because we had so much pressure of business and things like that.

00:12:32:08 - 00:12:53:15
Patrick Leddin
And ultimately it came to the detriment to the relationship. I mean, we we navigated our way through it. We had some rough years, and part of that was just not recognizing the relationships and the importance of those relationships. So I was talking to somebody recently. They're talking about as a leader in an organization, you have to recognize that the people that you lead are going home and talking about you around the dinner table, you know, what are they saying?

00:12:53:15 - 00:13:00:20
Patrick Leddin
And are you okay with that? And, you know, because, because, because our lives are so integrated.

00:13:00:22 - 00:13:05:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And I think that's really always been true, but never more than. No.

00:13:05:16 - 00:13:22:08
Patrick Leddin
No, I think in a couple ways. One is that, one is something like Covid. All of a sudden, so many people, especially people, had the luxury of working on zoom, which you may not have felt like a luxury at the time, but folks, it was because you were in your home. You were safe even though you were isolated, which was very tough.

00:13:22:10 - 00:13:37:22
Patrick Leddin
But people started to get a little look into everybody else's lives a bit, which was interesting, and all of a sudden made it okay for the kid to walk behind the screen type of thing, which I think is wonderful. At the same time, we had this big disruption going on. I'm sure you've heard about it in your part of the world and everybody listening called AI, and everybody's talking about AI right now.

00:13:37:22 - 00:13:58:17
Patrick Leddin
Yeah, yeah. It's like I never heard of that. What's that? It I've noticed in the last, in the last few weeks since we launched the book, I've been in lots of different places, talking to lots of different audiences, and I will come up with different times. And I'm not a futurist. And as James Patterson would say, he said on the satellite cable program the other day we were on, he said, anybody who comes on here and tells you what what AI is going to do in the future is full baloney.

00:13:58:17 - 00:14:27:06
Patrick Leddin
You know, nobody really knows what it's going to do. We just know it's changing things. But I think that as much as we talk about AI and people are concerned about AI, it's disrupting my life. It's disrupting my job. It might take away my career, all of those type of things where at the same time, having some really interesting conversations about what does it mean to be human right now, which I think is that is a really interesting thing, because if we fast forward at the rate we're going in the next 10 to 15 years, we're probably talking more about what it means to be a human than humankind has throughout history, which I think

00:14:27:06 - 00:14:29:01
Patrick Leddin
is really interesting as well.

00:14:29:03 - 00:14:53:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, it's like the it's we're going to get to some of this stuff later. When you talk about the the tension between change and stability. And when I think about that comment, that's what that's what makes me think about in my latest book, Flexible Leadership. We talk about tensions between things and and I think the tension between stability and change, is one that we have to really think about.

00:14:53:11 - 00:15:19:11
Kevin Eikenberry
And it gets us in part at this idea of disruption as a positive. How do we use it to take control of our future in when there are many things that we can't control? And so let's talk about this idea, of the positive, excuse me? The positive disrupter loop. There's one of the five pieces I want to really dive into, but I'll let you just outline the the five for a second.

00:15:19:13 - 00:15:35:14
Patrick Leddin
Sure. So as we went out and studied this, we did a lot of qualitative interviews. And Kevin, you and I were chatting beforehand. You've done like 500 interviews over the course of time. And our conversations as you said, you know, each of those takes time, right? You have to set them up. You have to go do them.

00:15:35:16 - 00:15:57:08
Patrick Leddin
Hours were usually an hour or two hour and a half long with each person. Then we came back from it. You pull out the transcript and then you have to code the transcript. You figure out, okay, what are the similarities? Where are the differences? Is there a trend or something we can pull from this? And one thing we started to realize is that the disruptors that we were studying would follow a very consistent process of how they would kind of react to respond to disruption.

00:15:57:10 - 00:16:18:03
Patrick Leddin
The first step is they would the disruption would happen and they wouldn't just react to it. They would do what we call discern, which is you step back and you say, okay, this thing is just happened. The doctor just gave me this, result of my medical test. I didn't expect that. My boss just offered me this new cool project I could work on, which is cool, but it's scary at the same time.

00:16:18:09 - 00:16:35:10
Patrick Leddin
My team just told me this customer is dealing with this issue. We're just going through an organizational change. Senior leadership. Do you folks, you get it. All these different things, right? And then what they didn't do is they didn't just react right away and do, but they felt like they wanted to do. They step back and they said, okay, what role should I take out and what should I do?

00:16:35:10 - 00:16:49:15
Patrick Leddin
Should I lead out that? Should I leave this thing out and blaze a trail? Should I bring others with me and kind of create a movement toward the change? Should I say that change is interesting, but not right now? I'm going to pull back and actually double down on what we're already doing. Should I take some time to gather some more information?

00:16:49:15 - 00:17:13:11
Patrick Leddin
So we talk about these five different roles you can take on. And I'll just say really quickly, as you're thinking about these roles, is what people start to realize when they read the book. And we realize in the research and we all kind of know this from being children, actually, I'll get to that in just a moment. But sometimes the most disruptive thing you can do in the face of a disruption is to actually say no to the change it's brain, and actually to go into what you really feels like, our deeper purpose.

00:17:13:13 - 00:17:26:14
Patrick Leddin
And that's two things about that. One is it's kind of surprising because you think, oh, he's saying disrupt everything. That means he wants you to change everything. And I'm saying, no, I want you to own it and think about it. And sometimes you're going to say, you know what? Every store is doing this, but that's not who our store is.

00:17:26:14 - 00:17:47:13
Patrick Leddin
We're not going to do that. Or every team is going this direction. We're not going to go that direction. So the freedom to kind of make that choice is really critical as well. So understanding that some of the times the most disruptive things you can do it. I said as a child, we get this because when we were kids, we all had those moments where you're out with a group of friends and they decide they want to go do something that you feel like I'm not supposed to do that, or that's not right, or that's not the kids.

00:17:47:13 - 00:18:11:03
Patrick Leddin
We are the group. We are. And when you tell all your friends, no, I'm not going to do that. And they all turn and look at you sometimes that's like the most disruptive thing you could do. So the first step is discerned in the loop. The second step is behave. And as we went out and we studied, positive disruptors, we started to realize there's a number of strengths that they have that they oftentimes leverage in the face of disruption.

00:18:11:03 - 00:18:28:09
Patrick Leddin
There's actually 16 strengths. So here's the here's the key thing on this. There's 16 strengths. Nobody had them all nailed down. Nobody was great at all of these things. Some people were more visionary. Some people were more roll up your sleeves type. Some people were more like, I'm going to stand firm when people tell me I can't. And they or some people can push past the butterflies.

00:18:28:09 - 00:18:48:08
Patrick Leddin
These are some of the strengths. They leaned into their strengths. So the nice part is for people who are listening or watching. If they are leading a team inside an organization, you don't have to have all these things. You have team members. Maybe you're more visionary. Maybe somebody is better at like looking at brutal reality. Maybe you're not as good at, trusting your instincts sometimes, but you have people around you who can.

00:18:48:10 - 00:19:03:18
Patrick Leddin
So the nice part is you can start playing off each other. And that's what these people did as well. I mean, great teams are complementary where the weakness of one are made irrelevant by the strengths of others. So let's leverage that. Then the next step in the process, you go from to discern, to behave, to achieve and achieve.

00:19:03:18 - 00:19:27:07
Patrick Leddin
In the book we talked predominantly about the levels of impact you can have. You can impact your family, you can impact your relationships, you can impact your team, your organization, your industry, really society. We have partners at a company called Franklin Covey that built a course based upon the book. And in the course they really spend time in this achieve step, helping people realize, like, how do I create a vision of what's possible in the face of this disruption and rapidly prototype?

00:19:27:13 - 00:19:48:02
Patrick Leddin
I loved how they dove even deeper into that idea. So achievements. Really realizing that, especially in today's world because of technology, if nothing else, we have the ability to disrupt ourselves. Like I go to the doctor and I get a medical, result that I don't like, so I start to change the way I kind of my health, you know, intake of calories and movement and all those type of things.

00:19:48:06 - 00:19:59:16
Patrick Leddin
I disrupt myself. And then by that very nature, all of a sudden, people around me are going, boy, Patrick, you look a little better. What do you been doing? I say, well, I'm not eating this and I'm doing that work. And they start to do it. And then all of a sudden somebody comes along, says, we write a book on that.

00:19:59:20 - 00:20:15:19
Patrick Leddin
And then all of a sudden you got a YouTube channel, you got all these things. I'm saying you disrupt society. So the point is that we can scale in all sorts of cool ways. You can have a customer situation you run into and you go, that's pretty interesting. I've heard that three times. That's that's just disrupted by thinking for a moment, I'm going to blaze a trail.

00:20:16:00 - 00:20:31:06
Patrick Leddin
I'm going to go try to figure out what's going on here. I'm going to come and share it with other people, and then I'm gonna create a movement across my business that might be a movement across the industry about how we deal with this issue. And that's a really interesting time that we live in. And then the fourth step, so goes, discern, behave, achieve.

00:20:31:06 - 00:20:47:09
Patrick Leddin
And the last step is refine. And refine is all about the thing that some people just don't do well sometimes because they feel like they don't have the time to do it, which is you step back and you say, okay, what did we learn? What did we do? What can we do better next? How can we, how can we apply that?

00:20:47:11 - 00:21:08:03
Patrick Leddin
And we use these kind of four hours in there. But it's basically review reflect re review reflect revise and then re commit and when we were studying two people we interviewed, Kevin and the project were two former Four-Star generals in the Army. We interviewed Stan McChrystal. So a lot of people know from the number of books he's written, and he's also a four star general brand Special Operations Command.

00:21:08:03 - 00:21:23:11
Patrick Leddin
And we interviewed David Petraeus. And in both cases, we were asking them, why is the military so darn good at this step? Why did they do these after action reviews? I remember when I was in the military, we would do them all the time. We'd sit down and like brutal honesty, like, here's what went right, here's what went wrong.

00:21:23:11 - 00:21:43:00
Patrick Leddin
You said, you're going to do this. You didn't do it. What happened? Let's talk about it. Not to fix blame, just to fix the problem. And the answers they gave are so obvious when they said to me, we do it in the military because the stakes are so high in somebody's life and limb is at risk. And I would say based upon what we've studied about disruption, the stakes are high, too, for all of us.

00:21:43:02 - 00:21:57:02
Patrick Leddin
It may not be a life or limb thing. Hopefully for me it's not. But it can be a I only get one chance to be on this team. I only got one chance to be in this organization. I only we have one chance right now to listen to this conversation today. I want to make the most of that.

00:21:57:04 - 00:22:09:07
Patrick Leddin
And that's what we really want people to realize. The stakes are high. Not because it's trying to be threatening just because, gosh, there's so many great opportunities and places we could go. So that's the disrupted loop and we could talk more about it if you'd like.

00:22:09:09 - 00:22:46:14
Kevin Eikenberry
So here is one of my observations, which was further outlined as I listened to you. I mean, I got it from the book and I got more as I listen to you just now, I wanted to spend time today talking about the discernment step. My insight is that there's something really important, especially important about the discernment and refined steps, because those are the things that are under attack every day in the business world.

00:22:46:15 - 00:22:58:08
Kevin Eikenberry
That's all about busy. Keep going. Move on. Both of these require us to do what most don't.

00:22:58:10 - 00:23:22:00
Patrick Leddin
Agree disagree. Yeah, I would agree with that because they're they're the things that people say I can't afford to do that right now. I have to take action because whenever you hit a moment that's disruptive, that stops you in your tracks, whether it's a crisis or cool opportunity, whatever it might be, the clock starts to tick. And when you feel that clock ticking, you feel a desire to move.

00:23:22:02 - 00:23:44:15
Patrick Leddin
And the first step says, don't move. Yet. The first step says, yes, kind of the slow, fast moment if you slow down. But the problem is, if you don't slow down, you have you run the risk of going down the wrong path and wasting energy. And that's normal. I mean, late life is not linear. Work is not linear in many cases, even if you have a great standard operating procedure, it doesn't always work out in a linear fashion.

00:23:44:17 - 00:24:03:18
Patrick Leddin
Life is full of curves and turns and double backs, and part of the idea behind the whole idea of looking at disruption differently is I don't know what's around that curve, but I'm going to trust it might be something good. And even if it's not, I'm trusting I can do something with it. But yeah, the discernment piece takes time, and it's can be counterintuitive because we have a desire to take action.

00:24:03:20 - 00:24:07:07
Patrick Leddin
I mean, I have a bias toward action in life, but I also know you got to step back.

00:24:07:07 - 00:24:28:16
Kevin Eikenberry
As do I. And and it's and and right the and is that, there's very few times when my dad used to say sometimes he would say, well, we gotta do something, even if it's wrong. It's very there are times when that is the right approach. It is a very small amount of the times.

00:24:28:20 - 00:24:44:08
Patrick Leddin
Well, how many times? And over in the United States. But people can I mean, wherever you're at in the world, you'll see this too, where something happens and politicians say we need to do something, you know, we need to pass some legislation, do something. It's like, well, not just maybe something, but not just anything.

00:24:44:10 - 00:25:07:17
Kevin Eikenberry
But exactly. And so I think the, the key is to recognize that, if we don't stop to discern, to think, then we will operate on auto response, will operate based on our habit, which isn't just which isn't just I got to go do something, but I'll go do the thing I normally do.

00:25:07:19 - 00:25:25:23
Patrick Leddin
Yeah. Because actually so there's there's five roles in the book. So two of them go toward change. One is you go toward change kind of on your own. You're a trailblazer. Why did you go on go toward change and you bring others with you and you're a torch bearer kind of lighting the path for them. Two are going toward stability.

00:25:25:23 - 00:25:41:15
Patrick Leddin
One is you're a fire fighter, which means on your own you say, no, we're not going to implement that new system or whatever. We're going to stop that thing. Another one is a fire chief. We can movement toward stability might be like, hey, we forgot about our purpose here as a team. Let's not chase that thing. Let's remember who we are, what we're trying to do.

00:25:41:17 - 00:25:57:13
Patrick Leddin
And then the fourth row is called a tinder gatherer. And and that's the one where you might be gathering information to make a better decision yourself. Although don't stay paralyzed by that. They don't don't just keep doing that at some point have to make a choice. But oftentimes it's also like I'm a teacher together because in my role, I'm helping other people be trailblazers.

00:25:57:13 - 00:26:17:04
Patrick Leddin
I'm helping other people be bearer. And that's a very legitimate role. So those are the five roles. And what we say is they're not personality types. It's not like saying, Kevin, every day you're going to wake up. And when you're a trailblazer, when you go to bed, you're a trailblazer. And every time something happens, you're a trailblazer. But what we are saying is you might have a tendency to be a trailblazer through your own experiences.

00:26:17:04 - 00:26:29:21
Patrick Leddin
You might feel most comfortable in that path or whatever it might be. But guess what, Kevin? You're leading a team of 20 people right now. They don't need you to blaze a trail all the time. They need you to be the torch bearer. Yeah. And in that case, you have to say, okay, I'm not going to wear this hat.

00:26:29:21 - 00:26:40:22
Patrick Leddin
I'm going to wear that hat. And that's a choice. So there is a lot about who has agency in this situation. And, we think a lot of people have maybe more agency than they give themselves credit for.

00:26:40:23 - 00:27:03:04
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm so glad you brought that up, because it's an incredibly important point in my opinion. And that is that when we lay out something like you did with the types, with the roles, too often we take them as an identity. Right? And they, they we have a tendency. You have a way to help us determine what our tendency might be, but that doesn't mean that's the only one we can do.

00:27:03:04 - 00:27:16:05
Kevin Eikenberry
It's not the only muscle we can flex and discernment helps us determine where we need to be and where we need to lean into others who have different tendencies than us. Yes.

00:27:16:07 - 00:27:31:06
Patrick Leddin
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So you get a situation. Let me give you an example. I think we read about this in the book. I know we do. We just give a story where imagine that you get a call, everybody listen. You get a call from somebody you worked with five years ago, and this person calls you out of the blue, and they say, gosh, I remember working with you.

00:27:31:06 - 00:27:47:22
Patrick Leddin
You did such a great job on project XYZ, and I saw you do this, that I have this amazing opportunity. It's in this part of the world. It's like someplace you're like, oh, that sounds exciting. It's working for this organization. Like, wow, I heard they're great. It's for, you know, this role you're going to have, you're like, wow, I love all that responsibility or whatever it might be.

00:27:48:03 - 00:28:05:23
Patrick Leddin
And this pain, you got to be like, you got to be kidding me. They're going to give me that much to do this. Like, all these things sound wonderful. And in that moment, you might say, that's it. I'm gonna be a trailblazer. I'm gonna quit this job and go chase that job. And then maybe you look around at your team, you go, that's we're right in the middle of this big project, and I feel like we need to get this across the finish line.

00:28:05:23 - 00:28:20:15
Patrick Leddin
And I'm not here just to extract value from my people. We're actually doing something cool together, and I want to stay and see this thing through. So maybe you say no to that thing, and you, you double down on the team. Or maybe you go, you know what? I feel like I'm gonna chase this thing, and then you go home and perhaps you have a family and you're sitting around the dinner table.

00:28:20:15 - 00:28:35:22
Patrick Leddin
If if you have one of those these days and you're sitting around and talking and you have a couple kids and they're like in middle school for let me translate that. They're about 12 years old, 13 years old. And, you're telling about this thing, and the more you're telling you about this great opportunity, the more excited you're getting and the more you see them.

00:28:36:00 - 00:28:51:03
Patrick Leddin
Yeah, you see their energy going down and you see them going, I have friends, I'm doing this and we're getting ready for a performance next fall or whatever it might be. And you start to realize, I might feel like I want to go take that job and blaze this new trail, but that's not what they need for me right now.

00:28:51:03 - 00:29:04:20
Patrick Leddin
As a leader in my family or a leader of my team, or you might look at it go, you know what? I understand the team at work is doing this. And I say my family feels like that, but this is a great whatever it might be. But you're consciously thinking it through. You're not just going, I'm going to go do that.

00:29:04:22 - 00:29:08:11
Patrick Leddin
And next thing you know, you look over your shoulder, nobody's following you.

00:29:08:13 - 00:29:12:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And you're not leading. Know if that's happening? So,

00:29:12:09 - 00:29:13:17
Patrick Leddin
So context matters.

00:29:13:19 - 00:29:19:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Context, context makes us smarter to.

00:29:19:08 - 00:29:34:09
Patrick Leddin
When. Well, have you ever had people that, will say things like, you'll be like, gosh, you're kind of, you know, I don't know, I'm going to pick on a certain part of our country, but like, you're kind of gruff and whatever it might be, you're like, well, I'm just a New Yorker type of thing. It's like, so everybody has to change their behavior to conform to you.

00:29:34:14 - 00:29:40:08
Patrick Leddin
I mean, that's not the best way to, like, work with people. So we just got to kind of watch out for that.

00:29:40:10 - 00:29:56:18
Kevin Eikenberry
100%. Before we start to wrap up, Patrick, is there anything we that I didn't ask? I mean, there's so much richness, so much we could have talked about we that we didn't. But is there anything in particular that particular that you wish I would have asked that I didn't?

00:29:56:21 - 00:30:13:03
Patrick Leddin
Well, I think you ask great questions. I'm never going to say you didn't ask me something. But there is one thing I'm thinking about that might be useful to people listening. And it's come up recently is I've talked to folks still talk about resilience, and they'll say they want a team that's resilient and can, you know, they want people who can bounce back and whatever it might be.

00:30:13:05 - 00:30:26:07
Patrick Leddin
And what I try to share with them is you think about that disruptive loop. You go through that process of trying something and you get results, and then you try to get better and then you get the next disruption. You keep going through that loop. It's not a one and done type of thing in my opinion. That's often how you build resilience.

00:30:26:09 - 00:30:50:06
Patrick Leddin
I can't put you in a workshop for two hours and say, okay, two hours from now you're going to come out 30% more resilient. Resilience comes from, in my opinion, getting knocked down, getting back up again and fighting the next battle, or use whatever analogy you want and then getting knocked down again, etc., etc. that's why ten years into your job, someone can listen to this right now and go, gosh, yeah, ten years ago if that thing happened, I would have felt like crippled in the moment.

00:30:50:06 - 00:31:14:13
Patrick Leddin
I wouldn't know what to do with it. But now I've had all those things that I can help other people. So resilience is is built through trying, failing, succeeding, getting back up. And all of a sudden the bar of what you can handle goes up and up and up. And that's what I found in the stories in the book, whether it's the gentleman who, you know, got stranded at the top of the mountain, or the young girl who climbed Mount Everest, or the person who, you know, went into a conference and saw something different, decided to turn their business around.

00:31:14:15 - 00:31:22:11
Patrick Leddin
They worked their way up to that over the course of time. And the cool part is, so can you. We all can do this as well. And I'm still going around the loop myself.

00:31:22:13 - 00:31:36:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And what and while and while you talked about the loop and I agree with everything you said without the discernment and without the refining piece, it's going to be really hard. Like those two pieces are still so critical, right?

00:31:36:05 - 00:31:49:22
Patrick Leddin
Oh yeah. I know if you don't do those two pieces, you're really not doing a loop. You're just going back and forth. Back behavior and achievement behavior and achievement behavior and human. Yeah. And that's it's it's like, I don't know, I almost think like a molecule or, you know, something vibrating back and forth. It's not really gaining much ground.

00:31:50:00 - 00:31:54:11
Patrick Leddin
So, yeah, those are really critical pieces. And thank you for kind of driving that home.

00:31:54:13 - 00:32:03:15
Kevin Eikenberry
A couple of things before we go. I'm curious, I know at least one of these things already. But what do you, Patrick, do for fun?

00:32:03:17 - 00:32:18:01
Patrick Leddin
Well, I am a grandpa, so I have two, two granddaughters. I love to hang out with them. I feel like I should say, I feel like people would normally say, I like to read books and hike, but I actually like to do both of those things. So I do a fair amount of hiking and I've been very fortunate to go out.

00:32:18:01 - 00:32:20:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Hopefully not at the same time unless you're listening to the book.

00:32:20:11 - 00:32:32:14
Patrick Leddin
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then you're missing all the beauty around you. Yeah. But like, I've done some things like hike Kilimanjaro with my son and things like that. And that's been a great experience. I would say that that's definitely something I enjoy doing, is just being outdoors awesome.

00:32:32:17 - 00:32:39:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And speaking of reading, you knew I was going to ask you this question. What are you reading these days? Or something you've read recently that you want to share?

00:32:39:18 - 00:33:00:12
Patrick Leddin
All right, so this is going to sound like, oh my gosh, he's just sucking up to James Patterson. But I'm not what happened? Well, let me give you a story. So I, I, I'm a big nonfiction reader, readers historical and even, I mean, even things that are probably quasi historical fiction I kind of get into, but, or or just a lot of stuff that's in our domain, like stuff we would read for work.

00:33:00:12 - 00:33:17:13
Patrick Leddin
I enjoy reading in general, like leadership and time management things and just stuff like that. But I was at a meeting with some friends on a project, and we were sitting around the table at dinner and they were talking about all the things they're reading and how much they're enjoying them. They're all fiction books. And I was like, gosh, I've lost that joy.

00:33:17:14 - 00:33:30:04
Patrick Leddin
I kind of forgot about that. So I started reading some things like, The Invisible Life of, Addie LaRue and things like that. And then I started reading some James Patterson books just because I work with them so much. I talked to them like 3 or 4 times a week. I'm like, I should read more of this stuff.

00:33:30:04 - 00:33:38:04
Patrick Leddin
And now I'm pretty deep in a couple of this series. So right now I'm reading the, Jane Effing Smith series.

00:33:38:06 - 00:33:44:10
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. We will have those in the show notes for you, everybody.

00:33:44:12 - 00:33:48:04
Patrick Leddin
Nice, quick, light, enjoyable read. Not a lot of pressure.

00:33:48:06 - 00:34:06:03
Kevin Eikenberry
There you go. And now, the last question before I ask a question of the audience. Patrick, where can we learn more? Where do you want to point people? How can learn more about the book we have been talking about? Disrupt everything and win. Take control of your future. Any, any place you want to point people?

00:34:06:06 - 00:34:25:00
Patrick Leddin
Yeah. I mean, they go to my website, which is Patrick letting.com and it's pretty easy. Easy when you're the only Patrick letting out there run around and, and as far as books, it's everywhere. Go to a local bookstore, pick it up actually, really quickly, Kevin, as we're wrapping up, I was, after the book hit the New York Times list, I walked into a Barnes and Noble in Florida, and I.

00:34:25:00 - 00:34:39:10
Patrick Leddin
And I said, oh, like, you have an interest to be signing the book. And they were so kind and brought all the books up and took pictures with me and gave you their handle for their Instagram and all those type of things. We could share it. And then the very next day, I walked into a bookstore in an airport and it wasn't.

00:34:39:15 - 00:34:54:07
Patrick Leddin
If anybody thinks it was Hudson, it was in Hudson. So that's that's the disclaimer out there. But I walked in and there was the book was on the shelf, and I picked it up, and I walked up to the lady who was working there, and she had her arms crossed. She kind of looked at me and I said, I excuse me, but I wrote this book.

00:34:54:07 - 00:35:07:11
Patrick Leddin
And she goes, did you bring that in here? And I said, no, she goes, you can't just bring books in and try to sell them. I'm like, no, no, it's over there on your shelf. I'm like, would you like me to sign it? And she looked me up and down she goes, we're good. Like, all right, so I'm good.

00:35:07:14 - 00:35:12:20
Patrick Leddin
So, you know, no ego here anymore. You look at the good.

00:35:12:22 - 00:35:14:09
Kevin Eikenberry
And with the bad. Patrick.

00:35:14:13 - 00:35:20:12
Patrick Leddin
Exactly. You know, it was a disruption, but, you know, I stepped back and said, you know what? That's that's fair.

00:35:20:14 - 00:35:45:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So, everybody, I have a question for all of you who have been watching or listening, and it's the question I ask every single episode. It's a simple, powerful question. Now what what action will you take as a result of what you've just heard? It's not enough to just listen. It's not enough even to be entertained. If you want if you're if you're here, you're serious about being a more effective leader.

00:35:45:21 - 00:36:04:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And so given that the only thing that matters here is what am I going to do with what I received? And so it's my challenge that you think about that. I could give you a list of the things that I wrote down or that I thought of as this conversation was going on. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is what you will do as a result of having been here.

00:36:04:13 - 00:36:11:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And if you do that, this will have been a very good use of your time. Patrick. Thank you, sir, for being here. Thank you.

00:36:11:22 - 00:36:13:22
Patrick Leddin
Kevin, and thanks everybody.

00:36:14:00 - 00:36:33:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And so everybody, I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, you know what to do. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you watched or listen so you don't miss any future episodes. And of course, if you really loved it, you should definitely tell someone else to join you as well, because every week we're here and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.