Alright, welcome everybody. Welcome to the Overruled podcast. This is David Vicknair along with my law partner Brad Scott. This is the Overruled podcast brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law firm. We are approaching the Christmas season here in New Orleans and we have an exciting guest today, Brad. We have Adrian Kaylor who is a senior partner and founder with Take New Ground. He is a leadership and business coach and we are really excited to jump into some exciting and meaty topics with Adrian related to his business and his experience in both leadership and business coaching of founders, startups, and established companies. Adrian, welcome to the Overruled podcast. Thank you for being with us today.

Of course, so good to be with you guys. Thanks for having me on. Excited about this conversation. Attorneys are always grinding me up. So now, now let’s see how this goes. Flip the script today.

Yeah, yeah. Come on, gentlemen. We’re asking the questions here. Okay. Okay, fine. Okay, okay. Good. Authority structures understood. Fine. I’m no, you’ll send me an invoice for this anyway.

Absolutely. Alright, well, let’s jump into the background a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how did you get into the leadership coaching space?

Sure. So I live out in California. Don’t judge me. Live out in West Hollywood. Got a couple kids, couple step kids. Great dog that’s sitting here to my left. I’ve been out here for about 20 years, coming up on 20 years. I grew up in Illinois, middle of nowhere, Southern Illinois, 8,000 people in my hometown whenever everybody’s home. Went to school in Central Illinois, played football and moved to Chicago and worked there for a couple years and then moved out to Los Angeles. Love Los Angeles for all that it’s all for all of its ills. I love the diversity of it. I love the creativity in it. But I’m the kind of guy, I’d make anything work. If I moved to New Orleans, I’d be like, loving that. I’m sure immediately.

So how did I get into this work? I’ve always, I’m weird. So I’ve always loved working with people in moments of crisis. And that, you know, I think growing up around sports, obviously if you’re competitive in sports, you’re, there’s always a crisis happening and heroes stand up and pull people together and execute. So I grew up playing a ton of sports. And, love that. I was the youngest of the two boys. My brother was the hoss, we would have called him. He was a big guy, set all the records. I was not. I was scrappy and I had to get by with, hard work and cheating and I was good at both. And then I, you know, and then I, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nothing. I mean, my parents were both school teachers, very kind of simple folks, you know, small world. My dad taught 30 years at the high school he went to. So that’s the unique experience. So it’s not that I like saw the vast opportunities of what I wanted to do and like picked and all that. I just kind of followed what I was good at. And I was good at, at that stage, really good at the science. So I took every science class I could, thought I’d go be a doctor and then got into medical school and I thought, I don’t want to do this. What are we doing here? This is like, my, this is my grandmother’s dream and she’ll die soon. So why don’t I do whatever I want to do? So fast forward, really, you know, as long story, very short, you know, my roommate in college, his dad ran the ER in Gary, Indiana. And so I’d hear stories of, you know, being in these crazy environments of like gunshots and stabbings and, and I’m weird again. So I thought, that’s cool. That’s cool. There’s probably not a lot of people that I could organize that chaos and like find a way through and make it human and effective at the same time. So I actually got a nursing major in college. Moved to Chicago, chasing a girl and worked in the intensive care unit at this children’s hospital, which I loved. But I didn’t want to do for very long. Like the whole climbing the ladder in the nursing world isn’t at all towards what I’m wired for. I do not like details. I do not like administration. So I’m not interested in writing policies, that kind of stuff. But I come from a faith background. My parents, like, indoctrinated me into the kind of Southern Illinois evangelical faith, which part of that worked for me, most of it didn’t, but the ethics did, for sure. And some of the, some of the mythological or real, whatever you want to believe, those, the larger human narratives, I really connected with. So fast forward, was involved in a faith community in Chicago. Caught wind of this guy, this crazy guy out of LA, who really spoke about this Judeo-Christian faith in a way that I’d never heard before. He really had the music. And I thought, oh, I like this guy. I’ll go learn from him. So red, every, you know, I was like on a team in India. Listen to this one sermon, this one talk or, you know, equivalent like a TED talk. And I thought, oh, wow, that’s cool. I’m going to go check this guy out because I’ve always like believed in the apprenticeship model of learning. And, moved out to LA to be an intern at this, at this faith community, church called Mosaic, which is a very flat organization. But yeah, growing like crazy in the urban environment. And, you know, in the church world, which I don’t know what kind of faith background you guys come, if anything at all. But in the church world, if you go start a big church, if you start a church in the city, I’m sorry, in the suburbs, and you’re talented, you’ll get 50, you’ll get 15,000 people pretty quick. But if you’re really good. But in the city, you don’t do that at all. But this, we had like 3,000 people and, and at Los Angeles, which is like, you know, Los Angeles where heathens hanging out. So it’s perfect. And we met at night clubs, we met in, you know, gyms, we’re all like kind of entrepreneurial and a flat organization and, you know, we really believed that, you know, that the church is not a building, it’s a group of people. And this guy, Erwin was brilliant. His brilliance still runs it. Anyway, it was great. But my passions were always around mobilization. So even when I was in Chicago, like some of my best friends were homeless people. And once again, I’m weird. So I just, I’m the guy, if I walk by a guy that’s asking me for money, I’m going to have a conversation with him. And we’re going to become friends. Probably. If he’s not too crazy. And I want to help him find a way out, if he wants to find a way out. Most homeless people actually don’t. But if he wants to find a way out, I want to, you know, be the guy that notices is the guy has the relationships, builds a bridge, and hopefully, you know, 10 years later, he’s like, you know, fully transformed. That’s romantic for me. Like that’s like, oh wow, that’s cool. Like if I could be a part of that, if I put enough stories like that together, that’s a good life. In my mind, anyway. Once again, I’m weird. So anyway, was out in Los Angeles, serving at this church, they invited me to come on staff at this church, and so I led all of our mobilization of people into the city and globally to go make a difference. And I would just tell people, give me, you know, if I met you guys, we’d get to know each other and I’d say, okay, you do these specific, you know, attorney type stuff. I’ve got this nonprofit and they’re in the middle of this issue, this or whatever. Would you give me an hour of your time? And you’d say yes, because you don’t want to make me judge you. And great. And then you come down and we, you know, and you’d be thrilled because you were doing like, you know, you’re doing this unique thing with this, homeless, with this nonprofit that works with homeless youth and you’d be so satisfied. And you say, hey, what else can I do? And I’d say, great, hey, why don’t you come do this thing or whatever. Anyway, so I help would help well-meaning, brilliant people make decisions to go do something that was a lot more meaningful than what they were doing on a regular basis. And I would just tell people, give me an hour of your week. It’ll be your favorite hour of the week. I promise you. And we’d, I did that a lot. Which was a blast. We had like 2,000 people a year going out and serving in the city. Which was great. So I was like building teams, leadership teams, mobilizing them. And then even around, like, you know, we didn’t, I didn’t go to New Orleans, but when Katrina happened, I was on a team that went to Houston to receive all those folks and, and, you know, in the reliance center, and that was just a blast, you know. So that kind of emergency response, you know, aspect or in Haiti happened. Like I put together a team of doctors and we were, you know, setting up a clinic, like five days after the, you know, after the earthquake. And that’s just fun for me and, you know, memories for me and made a difference and that kind of thing. Well, you know, to move forward, I helped a guy, at Mosaic, his father’s a billionaire. So he’s a millionaire. His father started one of the biggest private equity firms in the country, very well-known guy. He wanted to start giving his money away. This young, this the younger gentleman, his name is Jesse. And, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. And he asked me because I was well-connected. Hey, where should I write checks? And I said, well, relax. Why don’t we like go through a process of helping you figure out what you want to do? What would like mean something to you versus just writing a check, like a lot of people do? Say, create the vision first. Right on, man. Right on. Yeah, what’s your vision? Like what, you know, what will you feel great about? Like, what type of impact will like be this like, oh, cyclical, you know, giving and receiving, giving and receiving, both for them and for you. Long story short, he ended up after I showed him everything, took him around the world several times, he wanted to be involved in work where that gave people who had really blown it, a second chance. Which, in Los Angeles, that meant partner with some of these nonprofits that do gang reduction work or this famous one in LA called Homeboy Industries, started by this, Franciscan, priest guy, named Father Greg Boyle. So we put a cafe for them in City Hall, right below the mayor’s office. There’s ex-cons, fresh out of prison, slinging coffee, which I just think is awesome. There’s a lot of criminal, there’s a lot of criminals in that building. At least these guys were the ones that got arrested. We’ll see if the other guys get arrested eventually, who knows. But, but that’s right. That’s right. Enough humility to get their shit straight. So anyway, long story, we ended up spending most of our time in prison, where we worked with lifers. So I got connected, this group of lifers, up in Soledad State Prison, Central California. And, simultaneously got connected to a guy that had been doing, you know, management consulting work like we do now, but had also been doing gang intervention work. His name is Dan Tekini. He is, if you can imagine, if Mother Teresa and Yoda and Tony Soprano had a baby, that’s Dan Tekini. Very interesting guy.

Yeah, I know. Just think about that for a second. Could almost be a show all on its own. I don’t know.

It is. It is a show. It would be a show. Come see one of our trainings, it’s a definite show. So that’s Dan Tekini. He’s world-class. He’s like Mozart in a room with leaders, like in this transformational training space, he’s the best in the world. So anyway, I hired him immediately and I became, he was next guy that I went to learn from. And so I took all the classes, we had a three day, a four day, and a marriage thing, and a Coaches Academy, and all this stuff, just to make me better and make me a better executive director of this multi-million dollar foundation. I dug that. Did that for a while. The guy that gave the money ended up getting really involved, which is great, instead of kind of sitting back as a board member and that kind of thing, as like a philanthropist. He actually found it closer to himself and wanted to go do the work, which is great, but meant that he, you know, got involved and had an opinion about what to do, because if I’ve got that much money in the bank and that much vision and that much verve, I’m going to go change the world. Like I’m going to write some laws. I’m going to the White House. You know, anyway, we’re going to do a PR campaign at least, because who doesn’t want to hear the story of a murderer that now saves lives? Everybody does. It’s the most compelling human narrative is the comeback story. We know that. So anyway, he wanted to really focus on that one group, which is fine, but just boring to me. So I jumped out. And then, what, what was I going to do? I could go back to nursing work, obviously, but that’s boring. I could work in the church world, but I get fired from most churches. Most administrative, like philanthropic works, usually spreadsheet based and I’m not like you guys. I’m not that good at that stuff. Or that interested. But I did like this work. I liked sitting down with somebody, having the most important conversation they need to have, and then compelling them to take courageous action. I liked that. And I’m uniquely good at that. And I’ve always kind of been too intense, quote unquote, for most people, especially my father. Just kidding. But, but really, you know, it’s like, I’m this intense dude. I like getting shit done. I like the deep end. Let’s get after it. I’m not that guy, you know, I’m the quarterback in the huddle, right? I’m like, you know, it’s this life or death, baby. Let’s, let’s choose life. I’m that guy. And the coaching world, I get to do that every day. So eventually, now it’s 13 years later, now it’s got me focused on founders of organizations because they’re at stake and they better figure it out. And if they mess it up, the whole thing messes up. If they get it right, the whole thing works. And so I get to really, my work is what I call, similar to you guys in some sense, because it’s I call it fierce advocacy. I know the work of an attorney is an advocate. Same thing, fierce advocacy for these guys. So I didn’t come out of a big, big business background. I mean, I’ve been involved, mostly in the human side of organizations. So that, helps me be uniquely helpful for these guys that are really brilliant, men and women, that are really brilliant, very ambitious, but usually have a lot to learn when it comes to leadership, when it comes to engaging other human beings. And, you know, essentially going from being the smartest person in the room that could do anything, to actually being the one that sets up the environment, you said the word culture earlier, sets up the environment where great results happen, but through other people instead of through themselves. So, I love it. They love it, and I’ve got a great life.

You mentioned kind of that science background that you had and you studied in nursing, that nature. And they kind of, I made a note. I saw that you, you kind of style, style it as you, you coach people in the art and the science.

Right on.

So, you know, art kind of implies there’s a little bit of a feel to it, and kind of putting things together, whereas the science side kind of makes sound a little bit like there’s a little bit maybe of a formula or a template to applying these things. Can I give us a quick tip on that? What are the kind of the soft skills that you, you kind of, really kind of, kind of have them, or get a coach them up on, as opposed to the things that you can kind of learn from a textbook and apply for leadership? Give us kind of a little comparing contrast between the art and science of leadership.

Sure. Well, let’s start with the science. So the science is, there are formulas, right? We’re not doing anything for the first time. If anybody thinks they’re inventing the wheel, they’re an idiot. Like there’s plenty of stuff out there. We know what works. So, you know, there are structures and formulas that are necessary. And we know from a neuroscience perspective, I mean, we know more now than we’ve ever known. And but ancient realities, ancient intuitions maybe, are now being proven out in the neuroscience world. So like the science of, of perception, for example, we know a lot more now than before. And so we don’t have any, if we decide to get smart about it, we don’t need to be ignorant. I mean, we’re always going to, like, not know what we don’t know. We’re going to always gonna have blind spots. But if you actually apply yourself and really are committed to current reality, there’s so much of a leg up if you just decide to give yourself, you know, an hour a week, for example, to keep sharpening the saw or whatever you want to call it. There’s lots of things that are known. Most people don’t suffer from the lack of opportunity. They suffer from the lack of engagement, right? So they just don’t give themselves to it. And, you know, if you work with a guy like me, for example, I’m a shortcut, right? Because you don’t, you know, you’re not going to spend, you know, the whole year reading 25 books. You shouldn’t. You should go talk to somebody that’s read all those books and knows how to apply it to your world right now. So that’s the science side of it. The art, which is really where the juice is, man. Because you can have, I mean, I sit down with founders all the time and they want to get the strategic plan together, which is great. And you better have a great plan together, wonderful. But a great plan in the hands of irresponsible people is a bad plan. The art of conversation, the art of listening, the art of, I mean, I’m very intuitive, meaning I can see things other people aren’t seeing. I can make patterns where other people don’t see them. And, if I compensate for that, just by being usually the most courageous guy in the room. There’s nothing off the table for me. I warn them that there’s conversation and any and their business when I first meet them, there’s conversations that are on the table and there’s conversations that are under the table, metaphorically speaking. And it’s the ones that are under the table that are running the show. And I can usually prove that pretty quickly. And so that’s exactly where I’m going. Is all the stuff you don’t want to talk about, that’s why it’s under the table. The things you don’t want to talk about is where I’m going. So if you don’t want to talk about those things into the future, don’t talk to me because I’m going to be a big pain in the ass. Because I’m going to bring up all this stuff that you really, you know, people don’t dance with their fear in a, in an honest and respectful way. We’re all scared of stuff. We’re all insecure. We’re all don’t know about the future, obviously, the future’s a fantasy. And, you know, we’re all, we all have incompetencies and we’re scared to death to show those. We’re all survival machines. Our brains are like that from the eons of years. We don’t get a vote on that. But if you decide to know all that and decide to master it, which is the next level, then the you can really be unstoppable. But it takes a lot of humility. So that’s humility’s side, by the way, is like part of the art of it. Like there’s a, you know, my work philosophically comes from this world of what’s called phenomenology. Phenomenology is like, young, and Kickergard, and Hegel, and Heidegger, and all these guys. And it’s really the study of becoming. So while I’m talking with business leaders about what they’re going to do next quarter, what they’re going to do this year, how they’re going to structure their business, I’m always paying attention to their conversation about becoming, and who they are. And if they’ve not been strategic about their own vision, about their impact with their team, and with they’re calling their team into from a level of commitment and action, then they’ve already lost millions of dollars. But if they get clear about that, that’ll do a lot of the work. A lot of the science will take care of itself because these are really smart people. But if you actually create the environment in which engagement happens, and clarity happens, and commitment happens, and honesty happens, and accountability happens, yeah, they’ll save a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of stress. So that’s kind of the art and the science piece. The art is the human side of things, which a lot of people would love to avoid, but, you know, it’s gravity. And then the first step, really, like kind of that awareness. You know, even knowing that leadership is kind of a skill that you really kind of need to work on, develop, because I mean, I heard a speaker, you know, earlier this year, he made a good point and I wrote it down, was like, just because you start a business and you hire employees and you have a team, you’re not automatically a leader. You know, those things aren’t the same thing. It’s really a skill set that you have to develop and come to grip with. And if you’re not good at it, you got to find somebody to train you, or at least be asking you those questions, like what you do. So, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I would say.

Yeah. I would agree. I think there’s some bad news behind what you’re saying. I think you are a leader. You just might be a really bad one.

Yeah.

You know? I mean, if you’re the one paying the bills and you’re the one that’s on the top of the ticket and everybody’s calling coming into your meeting, you’re a leader. Now, if you’re leading, that’s another question. Like you’ve got the title and you’ve got the responsibility, and you’ve got the authority, but, man, you might be really blowing it. You know? And it’s it’s funny how little, how very small, very small shifts can generate huge outcomes. So that’s what people are relieved by. They’re usually by the time they get to me, they’re usually overwhelmed. Things aren’t going the way they want to go. I mean, sometimes I work with companies that are like, you know, in huge transition for the better. But that’s probably 15% of the time. 85% of the time, they’re burnt out. Something’s not going right. They’ve just lost five great leaders. They just lost $10 million because of some kind of oversight. They just, you know, fill in the blank. There can be so many types of troubles. The good thing is, is it doesn’t take a huge shift to generate huge new results, if someone decides to get real. I had a, I wanted to jump in and ask you something that stuck out to me that you said, is the essence of humility. And then the aspect of humility in leadership. It’s a trait, believe it or not, which is very rare in lawyers.

Really?

Really. I’ve not experienced that before. Tell me more.

It’s like finding a four-leaf clover. Around St. Patrick’s Day. In lawyers. But I’ve really have always related to that leadership trait and, and as a human, try to like consistently on a daily basis, remind myself to humble myself and to work on the pursuit, like you said, of more knowledge, in learning from others and getting better, so that the business can grow accordingly. And I’ll tell you a quick story. I’ll never forget, on a leadership, seminar for my fraternity in college, this is back in like 2005. I was able to meet with and have a dinner with, General Richard Myers, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for George Bush back in that time, Iraq war and whatnot. And to be honest, I don’t remember a lot of the details of the discussion, but the one thing that I took away from the entire discussion was how humble he was. Yeah. The guy who was like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And so, that always stuck with me. And I, I wonder your perspective on the importance of humility in leadership and what you’ve have seen humility in a lot of the successful and great leaders that you’ve worked with.

Yeah. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great? It’s the whole like, famous Maya Angelou quote. Like people forget, I’m gonna butcher the quote, but it’s this idea. People forget what you say, they forget what you do, but they won’t forget how you feel. How you make them feel. You know, so you’re sitting with this guy who’s all decorated, huge, massive influence. And what you take away from that, still, however many 20 years later, you’re like, wow, that guy seemed like he could be my friend. That guy seemed like, you know, wow, I just want to be around him. That’s a great sign, right? I mean, I was just hearing on a podcast the other day, a Jordan Peterson podcast, he was, I forget who he was interviewing, this guy named Donahue or something like that. And he made this simple quote. He said, if pride, you know, and kind of traditional Judeo-Christian ethics, pride is the chief of all sins. Like it generates the all the bad ones hang from that. And they were saying the contrary of that is humility. Humility is the chief of all virtues. If we get that straight, then it actually opens up the possibility that we could transform any darkness into light. So, I think so. I would, I’m tempted, I’m a coach, so I’m tempted to ask a question. So, when you say humility, what do you think that is? When I, when I say humility, what I mean is to always humble yourself in your successes and in your defeats. So it’s, okay. Human nature when we have a big win with a client and in the business or something like that, human nature is we immediately get the sense or feeling of arrogance, of pride. Nothing wrong with the pride, nothing wrong with celebrating a win, right? But then like, you don’t, in our business, at least, the highs are high and the lows are low. And so it’s like staying level and humbling yourself both to make it through the journey and an even path as the business grows. But also, so that the team, I believe, comes to respect both Brad and I and understand that we’re not the type of leaders who are always putting ourselves first, who are full of ourselves, who are not focused on the importance of each team member and their value in peace and in peace of the organization. Crediting the team with the win. Yes. Because they’re the ones that make it. Right on. And also, and I would add, just one more, and also trying to consistently highlight and congratulate all of the team members in our organization because we really forget that. That we forget that kind of builds the culture when you’re consistently telling them when they did a great job on something and reinforcing them and, and creating like that safe space for them to be creative and productive for the organization. Right on. There’s, first off, the golden rule always works. So if you’re treating other people the way you want to be treated, that’s, that’s a pretty good first aim. Right? So, and that’s what you’re saying. Like if you were on a team and grinding up and you’re an associate lawyer or whatever, and the partner, the firm says, hey man, we had a big win. And you were a big part of that. That’d feel great. Yeah. It would feel, feel great if you just got to feel like you were, you had you made a contribution. And you know, you can tie, you know, you tie a line between my everyday activity and corporate outcomes and there’s some reward for that, either if it’s affirmation or, something like that. Or, you know, bottom line cash, that kind of thing. You know, it’s like when you’re generous like that, I have a saying in my own head that I say to myself often, especially when things get tight or things get challenging, I say to myself, kindness costs me nothing. And when it doesn’t feel like that, feels like I need to armor up and like make us versus them and prove something. That’s the ego, you know, to what you’re saying. It’s like that I’ve I’ve so compelled to want credit for something. But, you know, credit and blame and shame, which are natural human being type things. All of them take away from the possibilities of relationship. So when I say humility, you know, there’s some natural components to humility or evidence of humility, like symptoms, if you will, of humility that are really helpful. They give you a huge advantage. One of them is like, is being open to other people’s opinions. Yeah. You know, there’s we, we.

The leadership assessment tool that’s not very well used in the US, which we’re happy about. There’s only 150 of us that have access to it called the Harrison assessment. And in the Harrison assessment, they look at these 12 different paradoxes that every single leader must manage, and every team goes through. And if the team can, you know, manage it well or not manage it well, and usually there’s there’s benefits, you know, huge benefits to managing these tensions well. They’re paradoxes in the sense that there’s no solution for these. They’re just always this tension, right? So in the opinions paradoxes, how certain am I is and it engages preference by the way, not like capacity. But how much preference do I have to be certain in my own opinion. Lawyers are usually have a high certainty score, and you’re paid to have a high certainty score, right? If, but if you’re highly certain, but not open or reflective, for those that aren’t watching right now, making a graph here. On the Y axis, if you’re high on certainty and low on open or reflective, you know, you’re dogmatic. And we know what it’s like to work with somebody or be someone that’s dogmatic. Like, there’s no room with a person. They’re there to say something. They’re not actually there to have a conversation. And, you know, you might be paid to just be the outside expert that’s like, this is the answer, which is fine. But if you’re going to work internally with your team, you’ve got to respect both poles. So I’m going to yes, I’m going to have an opinion, but I also, I don’t, I don’t know that my opinion is the best one. I’m, I might think it’s the best, but I can actually withhold my certainty on some level, so that I’m also open and reflective because maybe I’m not seeing something. Or maybe I might just be off. Or maybe I’ve been here for 20 years, I’ve seen this 20 times, that’s a story we tell ourselves. I’ve seen all this, but then the past is claiming the future. But it’s good just to pause, for several reasons. One is you actually might, there actually might be something you’re missing because there’s some nuances and the brain naturally does shortcuts. It deletes, distorts, and generalizes information to survive. You know, so it might be good to see something I don’t see. But also in the human relationship context, like inviting someone in, if you’re a partner in a firm, like, hey, what am I missing? That simple question generates so much trust and approachability. So anyway, that’s one of those paradoxes. There’s another paradox that just comes to mind, which is connected to humility as well. One is your preference for asserting for your own wants and needs. Everybody’s on that scale somewhere. How quickly am I to see what I need and assert for what I need, great leaders do that really well. There’s the Y, the X axis for this one is helping others get their needs met. And so humility will show up like that. Like, it’s not one way or the other. It’s not like helping other people and, you know, being a doormat or helping other people and, you know, getting my needs met last or something like that, I would say that’s false humility. Because you end up being very self-sacrificing. And every martyr, every self-sacrificer will end up getting their blood later. They end up being dominating, you know, you, you guys are laughing. You guys might have done that. I do that plenty where I’m like, not representing what I really want. And they’re to help quote unquote, but then once I feel taken advantage of, I’m going to take a baseball bat to this guy. But the humility is actually to honor both. Like yes, I do have personal wants and needs. Let me state those and see what you could help for that. And what are yours? And how can I help you? Like, once again, kindness will cost me nothing. It’s a very simple way to, generate a context in which people put their needs up, because if they don’t put their needs on the table, like any employee you guys got working with you, if they don’t, they’re just going to become resentful. And resentful people are less productive, at least, but what happens most of the time is they start to sabotage great opportunities because they have these unheard conversations. So generating a space of humility, which requires honesty, and requires sacrifice, and requires service, is always a huge business advantage. When it also it sounds to me, some key components of it, which you just said, which I also 100% agree about humility is the ability for somebody, a leader, to be introspective and second guess. Think back and take time and think through whether or not the original position they took was right or if they miss something. And the second part was asking questions and listening. Like, sometimes, you know, lawyers and I try to remind myself all the time to this because I’m guilty too, we just like to talk. Just shut up and listen. Like sometimes you can listen and learn more as a leader from what you are hearing from other people in the organization. 100%. It is, I just posted something on Instagram about that today. That phenomenal leaders are really great listeners. And nobody teaches us that. Right? I mean, maybe in kindergarten they teach us how to listen or something, only because we’re crazy. But as we grow up, you know, it’s like we don’t champion great listeners. But I’m guessing that the gentleman from the joint Chiefs, you know, he, you least had a sense. I don’t know how much he listened to the table because he was there to be the paid speaker guy or whatever. But you had, you probably had a sense that he cared about the table. He cared about you guys. You know, and that might have come out explicitly or just implicitly by the way that he was with you. And it’s just a huge advantage. Let alone it’s a huge, as you guys know, in negotiation, you know, people will bury themselves right in front of you if you give them enough time to talk. You know, so if you ask a couple of key questions, you guys are smiling at each other. I wonder what case is on the told me that lesson a long ago, long ago as a younger lawyer, he said, just shut up and listen at mediation. And most, and most led the other side to tell you their settlement position. And so I tried. That’s right. But all the time, hopefully, we don’t have too many opposing council listening to this. It’s true, man. It’s true. If you like, if, you know, it comes from, if we do this well, we’re not on opposite sides of the table. You know, if we do this poorly, we’re on opposite sides of the table, it’s a zero sum game and if I win, you lose, if you win, I lose. That’s low level thinking about negotiation. Great negotiation, you’re on the same side of the table. You’re looking, you have a mutual problem. You have some interest. I have some interest. I wonder what all those interests are. Just asking that question, you’ll get to know how to partner with this guy to get the thing done. And partnering with your enemy is so much smarter than going against your enemy. You got to start by listening before you can get to win to win to win. Win. Both people winning. Because I mean, that’s the whole thing. But if you, if you’re not listening to him, you have no idea what they’re actually after. And a lot of times, it’s much different than what we think they are. Right on. Yeah, it’s that old, that old my, my business partner tells a story about the two kids with the orange. You guys know this story? No. Well, it’s a 30 second story where there’s these two kids that both want the orange. The, you know, two, two boys battling for this orange. And, you know, they, you know, they battled, and they battled, and they battled. They end up splitting it halfway. And so one guy gets one half, one guy gets the other. That’s traditional way of negotiating. But if they would have asked themselves the question, and one of the kids just wanted the rind, because he’s going to go make some kind of, you know, drink or pie with it or whatever. The other kid just wanted the pulp because he wanted the juice. And if they would have listened, they would have both gotten 100% of what they wanted. If they would just asked the question, what part of the orange are you interested in? What are you going to do with it afterwards? You know, and that happens in business all the time, any kind of, you know, internal, you know, negotiation, which are always harder than external ones, inside of a team. If you just listen to what people’s real interests are, it gives you such a leg up. And it builds relationship. So it’s, it’s, it’s one of these, we call them soft skills because people love to judge them. So they don’t have to do them, because there’s lots of vulnerability in the human side of it. We’d rather just X and O this thing and act like robots. While we know we actually don’t want, we want to be treated so much better than we’re willing to treat other people, most of the time. But if we step into these vulnerable contexts, that’s why it takes a lot of courage to go be a real human being. Then we’re going to get a lot more out of it. And actually get what we want. And we end up generating a culture that we want to live in. So many of my clients build a company that they hate running. You know, the smartest person in the room, that’s their vision. They have the idea. They get it up and going. They got 20 staff now. And they don’t want to meet with anybody. They don’t want to lead. They don’t want to manage. Fair enough. But they’re not having that conversation with themselves about, oh, I’m going to hand this over to somebody that wants to do this as quickly as possible. Instead, they’re going to go for 10 years and probably blow the thing up. That’s what most of them do because they’re incompetent at certain aspects of leadership. And they’re just unwilling to own it. And if they were, there’s other people that can do their job so much better. But they’re so tied up into their ego conversation, they usually lose the plot. And, everybody pays the price. You know, but once a leader finally comes to that realization, I joke that like when a leader has a revelation, they’re the last one of the party. Everybody knows, right? Because we know that’s true. It’s like, oh, I don’t like doing this. We know you don’t like doing this, Tom. You’re like a dick all the time. Nobody, you know, nobody wants to meet with you. You know, because, you know, they’re resisting. So people need to be listened to, they need to be heard. So that’s really the space in which I give these kind of fast moving top tier talent. I’m like, hey, what’s really going on for you, man? Like that question in and of itself or, I will provide so much relief to them. And if they believe that I’m not going to judge them, and I’m here and I’ve seen it, everything, anything they say, I’m going to, I’ve heard it before and I’ve probably felt it before. So it’s like, welcome to the human experience, man. Stop trying to look so good. You’re struggling. It’s okay. Let’s talk about it. So we can actually solve the core issue instead of dealing with all the symptoms. Yeah, I love that. And I thought Brad, that one of the things that you said, it really stuck with me as well, is that not being introspective and being dogmatic, sometimes, you know, not second guessing yourself or asking others for input to understand, like for, for us, we’re in these business coaching groups where like, this stuff that you talk about. Of course, we were never taught how the importance of listening. Of course, we were not led to some of these books, which have taught me and Brad different lessons. We grow as people and as leaders. It comes from these external organizations and people we listen to and learn from. But how many times I can’t tell you so far over the last couple of years in these groups, where I’ve had this idea that I thought was this great idea, whether it was marketing, organization, whatever. And somebody else is like, don’t do that. Let me tell you why. Humbling yourself and realizing that instead of just doing it and you say, right, me. And you say, I save lots of time and you save lots of, national and business mistakes. So the dogmatic, isn’t it really a danger to your business and being dogmatic and not being? Major. Major danger. Because it’s, you’ve, you’re setting your world up that your best ideas are the ones that you already had. Instead of creativity and invention and community and collaboration, all those other things. Like, you know, I, I want in my company, right? So we’ve got a growing company and we’re doing a whole bunch of work and we love doing it and we’re always, you know, experimenting and trying new things. And I could talk about that if we had more time. But, you know, I, if somebody on my team has the best idea, I love it. Now, my pride wants it to be me, right? I want it to be the guy. I want to blah, blah, blah. But from a long view perspective, if they’ve got the best idea, if they’ve got the new strategy, man, it’s such a win. The dumbest guy in the room and sometimes that’s not even a challenge for me, but you want to surround yourself with people who have great ideas. And you want to foster that as a leader as well. You want people to do that. And I think that’s one of the keys of being a good leader is just shutting up and listening a lot of times. Being the last one in the room to answer the questions and just letting other people kind of rise up and become better leaders themselves. And get that experience a lot of times. What, you’re training and you’re coaching, you know, a lot of these people. Is there any like common low hanging fruit that you see that you, you know, kind of come in, some easy wins that you kind of recommend a lot of times? That there are some easy things that we can kind of maybe convey to our listeners who run businesses, who are in a leadership position. Things they can take away today, like some things they can implement. Yeah. Lots of things just flew through my head. I’ll say them and they’ll come off like bumper stickers. But they’re not. They, most of the time, the bumper sticker clichés always are true. Higher, success is a reason that has survived generations. That’s right. That’s right. I mean, so major thing, I mean, when I get somebody started, we’re just going to talk about the future. And we’re going to get clear. Or I’m asking them about their vision. You know, envision is for me, like, you know, a future that’s worth having. Like, what do you want? Like a year from now? What do you want? People love to talk about five years and 10 year plans, which is usually a joke. Definitely not helpful. But like, what do you want? Let’s just say for the next year. Like if you were, you know, we’re recording this on December 18th, December 18th, 2024. Imagine you’re there already. Imagine you’re thrilled with the results and you feel the way you want to feel and you think the way you want to think. And you’re you’ve got the team that’s perfect. Like, describe that to me. Now, it’s amazing. The people I’m asking that question to, they’re world class minds, really brilliant. It’s amazing to me how most people don’t have an answer. Or they have a really crappy answer. Or like a journalistic answer, that’s not that helpful. So first principle to your question is getting crystal clear about your vision. There’s always going to be things we don’t know and variables and, you know, curve balls and all that in life. But if you got what you wanted, what are you enrolling and because you’re always enrolling people into something. So if you’re enrolling people into lack of clarity, then you’re actually generating confusion. And so then it becomes a very personality based organization, which has got its upsides. They’re not very good, but it’s got some upsides. But it’s got so many prices to pay. You know, and you end up generating almost like a cult of personality inside your organization, which a lot of narcissistic leaders love that, because people are dependent on them all the time and hang on their every word and they’ve got so much power and authority. There’s just no possibility for scale. You can’t get great talent if you do it that way. You must have a principle based organization, which requires you to get really clear and then you to discipline yourself as a leader to say, okay, this is how we’re thinking about these things. This is how we’re making decisions. I’m also up for correction whenever it’s happening. But take it to the bank, this is what we care about. So getting clear early, and if you’re probably even if you’re listening to this, you’re probably less clear than you think you are. So, find some way, you can talk to somebody like me, but find some way to get really force yourself, put yourself through the crucible to get really clear on the outcomes that you’re committed to. You know, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Second thing that comes to mind is, people tend to call themselves loyal, which is usually code for they’re tolerating a bunch of shit. And they’re unwilling to get real about, you know, the person like say, you know, Tom worked, you know, Tom’s been working for working with me for 12 years. Now, this is Tom producing as much or more results today than he did when you hired him? Question. If not, why do you, have you talked to Tom about this? If, you know, are you willing to let Tom go if he’s not? Like, because that’s back to the principles. Are we actually here to generate value or are we here just to collect paychecks? People love to complain about the lack of engagement on their team, but simultaneously, they’re not pushing the envelope with love and consideration, but also pushing the envelope to say, hey, we’re really, I’m really here to get XYZ done. Full stop. This is what I’m here to get done. I want to do that with this team if we can. But people don’t have real feedback conversations with their team very often. And so they spend a lot of time being very stressed because they’re unwilling to have the quote unquote tough conversations. I don’t think they’re that tough. Once again, I’m weird. But there’s a lot of value in those conversations. If you do it with love, people want. You know, we have a natural propensity as humans to want the truth. The truth gives us stability. We actually know what we’re doing. We know what’s happening right now. Otherwise, we’re all like living in a fantasy. Like teams always love to talk about the future. Because it’s fun, it’s romantic. And oh, wouldn’t it be great? And we get all the dopamine that comes with that. Rarely are teams as engaged in current reality as they are around the future. So, you know, get real. Like if you’re not getting feedback as a leader from your team on a regular basis. Simply, simple feedback like, hey, as a leader, can you give me some feedback? I’m curious about what am I doing that really works for you? What am I doing, if anything, probably so that doesn’t work for you? Takes guts to answer that. Most people don’t set up the context where people could be that honest. And what do you need from me that I’m unaware of or have not been giving you? Like those three simple questions will eliminate a wealth of new insight. Number one, but also trust. Because if somebody’s asking me that, they care about my opinion. And at least signals the fact that I’m willing to be transformed on a regular basis. People tend to complain that their people aren’t developing, but they’re not giving the example of developing themselves. Like I’ve arrived or whatever. And I’m just going to roll it out. I mean, that generates a ton of despair for us as human beings. We always need to have some view of hope, which means the future can be better, you know, than today. But that’s, it’s not unintentional. Right? So if you get intentional about that and put yourself through the gauntlet, put yourself through some kind of test where other people get to speak into your life, you’re going to take like 10 steps that most people won’t have the guts to do. And I found too, the more we ask them of our team members here and we ask for that feedback and we elicit it, they also come to respect and understand, if we explain it to them in a direct and, you know, otherwise professional and nice way, why certain things that they may want the organization to do or not something feasible for where we are right now, or not something within our purview. So it’s not a wasted conversation, even if the feedback isn’t implemented from my perspective. It shows the team member that they are valued, they’re important, and their perspective is important to the organization. Right on. It answers a lot of questions why they may have too. And that’s, it’s good that you brought that up. I, I talked to an attorney a couple of weeks ago and he’s systematizing and creating this feedback loop within his own. And he allows his employees to give him that kind of feedback and sometimes it’s anonymous. But he said, it’s been so insightful, the information he’s got out of that by just asking those questions and being able to, and it also, you know, it puts you in a situation where they’re expecting their feedback from you also. So it creates that culture of that, which I think is extremely important. It’s something I’m looking at trying to implement going into the new year for my business as well. That’s great. And I know we’re probably tied on time, but I, you know, if people want like a first step, there’s a couple resources we offer to people. One’s free, like we, so we’ve got the Naked Leadership podcast where we talk about all these crossroads, all these big issues and we don’t like interview a bunch of people. We actually just talk about these, these, the needs that as a leader, you better go implement or you have to implement. And are you thinking about it in a way that’s the most resourceful? Are you thinking about it in a way that’s pretty scarce? So naked leadership podcast, easy thing for people to download and go listen to. And if you’ve got specific issues, just message me on Instagram and we might do a whole episode about it. Adrian.k on Instagram. And if you’re somebody that like wants to grow, you listen to this and you listen to these guys and you want to grow and you don’t know where to start, you might not want to go hire a coach guy like me. I don’t know many other coaches. I don’t respect the ones I do know. But it’s a it’s a pretty hefty fee. You better have a vision that’s worth the investment. But we have this four day deep dive, personal leadership seminar, if you will. It’s actually training. It’s a it’s very participatory. If you want more feedback in your life on what you’re not seeing that could open up big possibilities. We have got those. Those happened, four or five of those happened. We’ll be happening next year. We’ve got three on the calendar already. And I’m sure they’ll expand as demand grows. That’s called the Revenant process. So if you’re interested in anything like this, or connected to anything about what I’ve been talking about, you know, just go to we are revenant.com. We are revenant.com. And we’ve got one coming up in February in Boise and one in April in LA and another one in Hawaii, I think in June. And we’ll have more, you know, happening for you. But if you’re interested at all in learning more about that, go to that or, you know, once again, message me on Instagram. I’d love to talk to any of your audience because they, if they’re listening to your audience, they must be quality people. Amen. But if they’re if they’re quality folks, I’d love to talk to anybody about how to support you and making 2024 like your best year. Yeah, definitely highly recommend the Naked Leadership podcast, but listen to some of the episodes. Really, really. Awesome. One of the insightful ones I listened to, one of your recent ones, the question was, what do we tolerate? And it was a right. An opening question for me to be, you know, introspective about. You know, across the board, from our careers, to our business, to our relationships, to our children. Yeah. Whatever it is, but that question’s really eye opening. And then, you know, with your vision. So, yeah, everybody check out. It’ll it’ll haunt you. If you start asking yourself that question. I just asked it to a client right before we got on together, because he’s got it, he’s working, he’s doing a great job. Like huge shifts over the last six months. We’ve been coaching together. And I was just asking, what, what, as you look around your life, what isn’t what it could be? And just let yourself be bothered by that. You know, most of us want the least amount of headaches, the least amount of stress, and that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. But as a leader, if you step up and you set the bar for your organization, just go ahead and buddy up to some of these things that are bothering you. Let yourself be bothered. You know, don’t get all weird about it. But let yourself be bothered. Like, what’s not what it could be? That’s a powerful question. You can actually partner with other people to transform whatever that is. So let yourself be bothered, man. I, we always say, every result in your life, you either created it or you, you allowed. I.E. You tolerated it. Yeah, that’s a. Adrian, can you tell us besides the website you gave for the Revenant, all in your Instagram handle, do you have a website for taking, take new ground that our listeners could find you at? Right on. Yeah, just take new ground.com. Awesome. That’s our corporate, website, pretty simple. Shows you’ll definitely get our vibe if you go there. The headline says we turn leaders shit into leadership. So we’re, we’re kind of, we’re bold in this, you know, most coaching people are like, you know, very canned and very, you know, inspirational. We don’t go that way. We go the smelling salts way. Like, we really respect the people that we work with and let’s get after it. Let’s have the real conversation, the one you’re not having, is the one. Again, running your organization. So you can go to take new ground.com. I’m just Adrian.Keller.com, spelled K O E H L E R. You’ll see my own personal site. But, yeah, just go check that out. And you’ll see who we’ve worked with and we, we get to work with really impressive folks. So it’s very fun. Well, thank you, Adrian, for being with us. It’s been an incredible conversation. I really wish we had more time because I had like 17 more questions. Well, if you want to do a round two, just let me know. I’m always up for it. You guys are great. Yeah, some great questions. But, we’ve really enjoyed having you. Check out Adrian at take new ground at all the different handles that he mentioned, please. And it’s been an incredible discussion. This is once again been the Overruled podcast brought to you by the Scott Vicknair law firm. Thank you to all of our listeners. Thank you, Brad. It’s been a great show. Looking forward to the next one and we’ll talk to you else. Y’all take care. Scott Vicknair, injury attorneys. We fight for the win. Information is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute tax investment or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified investment, legal or tax professional before taking any action.