180 | A 4 Stage Path To Growth Leadership Mindset with R. Michael Anderson Author of the Best Selling Leadership Mindset 2.0

Companies with strong leadership and a positive culture outperform companies that do not have those. BUT the path to becoming a great leader and developing a healthy culture is not clear
Hence why R. Michael Anderson is such a sought-after speaker. As he has developed a framework that helps business leaders develop the right mindset.

He developed a 4 stage process, he calls the it Growth leadershiop path

💥 Release and reset
💥 Rewire and reprogram
💥 Leading others - conversation motivation
💥 Strategy and Influence

In this fascinating interview, R-Michael provides details and examples for each and every one of the 4 steps, making it practical and clear.
He also shares some of his fascinating personal story.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn
Check out Leadership Mindset 2.0

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

Isar Meitis: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and you heard me say many times how a strong believer I am in culture and in leadership as a critical component of running a successful business and companies who have that outperform businesses who do not have that? And it's statistically proven. It's just, just not just me feeling that way. But what makes good leadership and how to develop a healthy culture is a lot more elusive than just knowing that this is the right way to go. Michael Anderson has an incredible life story that will let him share with us, but I'll tell you this. He learned the hard way. He has personal scars to prove what he's gonna talk about. And he did that before and went to academia to learn that and then implemented it in successful businesses. So going through, if you want three stages of learning through personal experience, then academic experience, and then in actual businesses made him one of the biggest sought after mentors and speakers when it comes to developing leadership and culture and companies. And like I said, since I'm a huge believer in this, I'm humbled and excited to have him as a guest of the show today. Michael, welcome to the

Michael Anderson: 2:11

Business Growth Accelerator. ISAR. Hey, it's good to be here. Good to be here. And all the listeners out there, just wanna say hello.

Isar Meitis: 2:17

Awesome. I usually don't do this. I usually don't dial to people's personal history, but I, I think with you, Very important because you have some personal aspects that led you to where you are today with your knowledge and your work. So take us back to like big milestone in, in the process that led you to where

Michael Anderson: 2:37

you are today. Yeah, sure. So, you know, I started out as a programmer, worked my way up the corporate ladder, founded my first software company in California in my mid thirties, and we had some success very quickly. it was in enterprise software, so SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. We grew from the trunk of my car to a couple million dollars within I think two years. From the outside, it looked like we were doing good. We were, we were making money. I, we were well known around the area. I was on the front page of the newspaper and that was great. But, but internally it was really not a good situation. I felt I was so not prepared for all the stress I had to deal with. we had, you know, rent, insurance people, lawyers, accountants, you know, all the, this crazy stuff. We had, our clients were a hundred million dollar a year companies with our software running their business. And Esau, man, I just, I felt like such a fraud. I felt so out of my depth. That was a good. Good technical person, a good business person, but I was not a good leader and that caused problems for the company and it caused problems for me mentally and emotionally. I would go in and outta in and outta depressions. I was doing, to be honest, I was drinking a lot, doing a lot of hard drugs, like, like way, way too many. And then on April 1st, 2008, I had a key employee that I gave some equity to him and I got into a disagreement and he ended up hitting me. He ended up assaulting. So Wow. The next day when he came in, I had an armed guard handing him a restraining order and a termination letter and a copy of the lawsuit. And, yeah. And as, as I I'll reme, we were on the second floor. So as each employee came in, I had to send him down and say, Hey, you know the guy you reported to, he's no longer here cuz he hit me. And I had to call all of our, the C F O of. International companies and say, Hey, you know, your executive sponsor at our company, he's no longer here and I can't tell you why. And yeah, you know, they, some of'em would have these massive projects going on, so they weren't happy. And of course he started a competitor and started poaching people. And now went into, I went into a bit of a tailspin and I was like, what's happening for to my life? You know, I'm, I'm achieving my goals, I'm having the success, I'm making the money if people know me. I'm somewhat respected, you know, around the community, but I'm, I'm so unhappy and I hate my life. And, and I, you know, my biggest fear you saw was I would just try to get to the next day, but my biggest fear was that somebody would find out that I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just winging it. And that I'd be exposed as massive fraud. And, and. I am like, I gotta fix, I gotta figure this thing out. I gotta figure this business and life thing out, or I'm gonna literally end up dead. I'm leaving some of the dramatic stuff out and and so I ended up earning a master's in spiritual psychology. And that's nothing to do with religion. It's a very compassionate view of psychology. And when I, obviously I changed my personal life, but when I started applying that to my, to my company and at one point I owned three companies, that's when we really started to, to thrive because we were on the Inc 5,000 list of fastest growing companies. A couple years in a row, we won the number one best place to work, and I won Social Entrepreneur of the year. that's externally. But internally I was, I'm finally, I was finally having fun as a leader. And it's because I shifted my mindset and I really understood what made me tick. And my employees tick and my customers tick. And it was, it was, but from a compassionate, positive place. And it was such a, Massive change for me that after a bunch of years, I, I divested myself in my software companies. Now what I do is I teach leadership mindset. So companies like Uber, Microsoft, Salesforce, bring me in Stanford, bring me into work with a startup ecosystem that's I teach. And I wanted'em to get a neuroscience certificate, so thanks for letting me that, that's the background. I figured everybody's good to know, a little of the context, but we'll get into the leadership stuff. But that's how I got in cuz I screwed everything up. Eastar man. I was messing everything up. So that's why I, I learned how to, to fix a little bit for myself and other people.

Isar Meitis: 6:35

First of all, I, I'm, I'm really happy you were able to go through that because a lot of people don't. A lot of people who are in that spiral end up crashing to the hard ground and, and never get up. And so I'm glad you are and I'm glad you're teaching other people to do this. You said something that I'm gonna piggyback on. You said you figured out what make you tick and what makes other people tick. And I think that's a key component to seeing success is understanding how our internal. Spirit head mindset works. How do you do that? Like how do, how can people figure out what makes them tick? And I think, I think it's really interesting because even people who have good or preservation and can figure what makes other people tick, it's a lot harder to figure out what makes you tick. So what's the process that you teach people to do in order to do that? I assume very first step.

Michael Anderson: 7:29

Yeah. And, and, and it's interesting cause I do use that phrase and now that you brought it up, it's, it's interesting to reflect on, and I do somewhat teach what makes me and other people tick. But the, the, the key thing cuz if I, I have what's called the foundational rule of leadership and that is your leadership is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. Okay. And we, and, and you know, there's so many phrases we hear thrown around on leadership like authenticity and vulnerability, which it's important for a leader to be authentic and vulnerable, but you can't tell a leader to be more authentic and vulnerable. It's like, you can't tell somebody to be more handsome or more funny or more likely

Isar Meitis: 8:15

Yeah. Well, you can, it usually doesn't work though. Yeah,

Michael Anderson: 8:18

you can like, it's like go be more funny. you know, it's like, so you can't, if somebody being authentic and vulnerable and being, you know, a, a leader that people respect, that people follow is, is a result of doing certain things. In concept and, and we can talk in more detail on this. For me, exa for example, I realized that back then one of my best, my biggest prob, my biggest learning was that I was spending so much time cuz I was so insecure. And then the more pressure, that brought up more insecurities that I was spending so much time trying to be somebody that I thought other people wanted me to. be So that I would be accepted so that I would be liked, so that I would be respected. And sometimes that actively actually ended up looking me being a jerk. But anyway, it's it's, it's so, you know, it's, it's, it's illogical sometimes. but then as I went through this program, and it took me a lo a long time and it's, you know, it's a lifetime thing, but I really understood who I was and, and I got to know, like, and trust myself and that, and that's important. People talk about self-love and self-love is important, but it's a bit of a deep. It's a, it's a deep concept. It takes a while to really get your head around. But you know, I got to know who I was. Know like, and trust. I got to know who I was. I got to like who I was, so I wasn't afraid to bring it out. It's like, Hey, I like who I am and then I got to trust myself. And as a leader, that's where, you know, the trust is a resilience, right? Because if we. Resilience is just a fact of trusting ourself that we're gonna be able to get through this. liking yourself as charisma cuz when you like yourself, other people like you, and that doesn't mean you're arrogant, but that means you have this lightness about you and you can laugh at yourself, for example. You can, you can be humble in that, in that confident way. and then knowing myself. That's where that authenticity comes from because I show up now, I know what my values are, what I stand for, and I'm not afraid to stand for them. And that's where that authenticity comes from. So, and that's really what I work with leaders to do, is to get into a more compassionate, stronger relationship with themselves, because then they can show up as them and be strong in that power.

Isar Meitis: 10:20

I love everything you said, especially, you know, the people talk a lot about know, like, trust in getting clients, right? And you talk about this before you get clients, do this internally and, and you, you took us back in like yourself, like yourself. You know yourself. How you do that. I can really understand who you are and. Start that journey to knowing yourself and then liking yourself and then trusting yourself. what is, do you have like a system, a process, a mindset thing that you gotta do in order to figure out, okay, who am I really versus who am I trying to look like, like you said,

Michael Anderson: 11:03

I, I absolutely do. And then there's a lot there that you, you shared and. I have what's called the growth leadership path, and there's, there's four steps. Cause I, I teach what I call growth leadership because it's all based on the leader growing as a person. And as the leader grows, then they grow other people. A and they turn into leaders, and then everybody grows and your company grows. So, but it's got four steps. The first is when we'll go through these, we can go, th it's, it's, it's interesting release and reset. Because there's things that people are doing that are holding themselves back. we have beliefs. We have habits even where, what got us here being tactical. Now we need to be strategic, so we have to get rid of how we used to be doing things. And then it's rewire and reprogram, you know, so, How do we build ourself back up with that resilience and that confidence and really knowing who we are. And then I work on leading others. So you know, whether it's having difficult conversations, whether it's inspiring, whether it's motivating people. And then the fourth one I teach is strategy and influence how to become strategic. Cuz a lot of people are like, I need to, becomes. be more strategic. My boss told me, or I need my, my, my management team to be more strategic. But they don't even really know what that means. They, and they have an idea, but it's not about having a strategy, but it's about every conversation they have, being more strategic, having a strategy for a customer or a project or their team. So how do you do that? How do you relate to a c e O of a larger company or an investor? So it's having those convers.

Isar Meitis: 12:34

Brilliant. Let's break this down a level deeper. So you said step one, release and reset. Yes. What does that mean? How do I do that?

Michael Anderson: 12:44

So there's two, there's two things that we normally need to release and reset. One is, self limiting beliefs and those, these are things that we picked up by where we were born, how our parents raised us. I say that. Leadership is one of the most unintuitive things that we'll ever do because if you think about it, when you're born and you're a child, you're a follower, you know your and, and your parents are telling you what to do. Then you get to school and people are telling you what to do, and then you get to university, people are telling you what to do, and then you get to your, your first job, people are telling you what to do. So, you know, from 0 to 30, 99.999 of your, your, your, your life has been as a follower And so you've had almost no practice leading and then all of a sudden you have to lead and then you're used to being so there, there's a bit more to that, but you know whether, you know, did, did your parents model good leadership? Did you have great leadership role models? A lot of us, the answer is no. So we're, we're, we get into this place. Where, and you know, we, we often weren't taught to take risks growing up. We, we often weren't take, weren't empowered. Part of that's the old school thing, and part of that's just the way life is. So we have all these things that are holding us back. But then also, you know, if you're like a good marketing person, you're really good at, getting into the details and being very analytical and then, And then all of a sudden you're in a leadership and then you have to communicate, you have to empower, you have to motivate. You have to inspire. But then a problem comes up and then what you wanna do is you wanna be the superwoman or Superman and jump back in and fix everything. Cuz that's how you used to get a pat on the back and your dopamine hit. It's literally an addiction being tactical. So you have to, you have to change your habits of what actually used to give you. The atta boys or atta girls or atta persons. You know what I mean? So it's, you have to break these habits.

Isar Meitis: 14:38

I absolutely love it. I want to touch on two points that kind of triggered things in my mind. one when you talked about. You know, you just give me a lens to look at something I was talking about for years, but I, I, I, I couldn't put exactly why and a lot of people did that. So I grew up in Israel and there's a huge tech scene in Israel and a lot of successful tech startups and a lot of successful business people came out of Israel. And, and nobody exactly can say exactly why. And everybody says, well, it's because of the military service. I'm like, okay. Yes. It makes you grow up faster and you have to be out there on your own without your parents and, and face a real enemy. And sometimes your life is a threat, which makes you grow up faster. I get it. How does that make you a better business leader? I don't know, but what you said, it's like, okay, it's the first time people become commanders initially in a lower level. Okay. So you're just. Six people and then 20, and then 50, and then whatever very quickly in a very, very early age. And for many people, it's literally a responsibility for people's lives. And it's not just the people they command, it's the people. They protect, right? So if you fail to do this, these other people on the other side of the fence may do 1, 2, 3. That will kill other people in Tel Aviv. So the level of responsibility and leadership that you gotta have in order to do this starts at a much younger age, then probably anywhere else on the planet. And I never thought about it through this lens. So I appreciate what you just said. As far. We don't experience that usually until later in life when we become different levels of managers in companies. So that's one thing you said that I, that I really appreciate.

Michael Anderson: 16:18

Well that's, that, that's really interesting because the military does do something really well and they do prepare people for leadership really well, cuz they, and and you're right. You gotta grow up really fast and take that maturity and that re That's real. That's a really interesting point. I. The other

Isar Meitis: 16:32

point that I, I'm, I'm about to launch a new podcast. This is probably the first time I'm saying this to anybody that well out in the open, right? So the new podcast is gonna be about AI in businesses, and so can replace this podcast if you want. It's, it's, it's a sub path of how to grow businesses, leveraging ai, because I think that's where the world is going, and I think literally it's gonna change everything we know in the next very near future. But the interesting part of that is what I see a lot of people mistake is going back to what you just said. They dive straight into the tactics. Ooh, I've got this new widget and it can do this and that, and that can replace this thing that I'm doing today. I'm like, awesome. But it's a business, it's a company, it's a machine. You can just change one cog and things will change. It's not like you gotta think, okay, strategically, how do I change processes in the business? To now leverage these tools that I have, does that change the goals that I've set? If the goals are the same, okay, so maybe I don't need these two tools, even though they're really cool and really amazing. So I think as, as people and as business leaders, we have the tendency to jump into the tactics because it's quick and simple and we get immediate results, but it doesn't necessarily help the strategy of the business achieve the goals better or faster. And so I absolutely love the points you raise. I think now I understand what you mean by release and reset. Let's go to step two. You said rewrite

Michael Anderson: 17:58

and reprogram. Rewire and reprogram. Rewire and reprogram. Yes. Yeah. So that's giving people, the, the, the tools that they need to really understand who they are. And you know, there's a great. Sometimes with my coaching clients, what we do is we do what you might call a declaration where they write down who they are and it looks a little different for everybody. And, and people talk about values, their sometimes or their vision. This is like an accumulation of, of like, who are you? And it's interesting, it's a great question to ask anybody, like when, when you ask, who are you? And I don't wanna hear you're a father or you're a C F O or you're a mom. You know what I mean? Those are roles we play. That's not who you are. And you know, are you independent? Are you driven? Are you com compassionate? You know, what are you and, and how does that all relate? And that's really important thing to figure out because until you figure that out, it's hard to really stand in who you are as a leader. And it's a really beautiful thing. You know, I work a lot on confidence. I help a lot of people with overcome imposter syndrome. I, I help a lot of people really step into themselves. You know, so many this stuff that we talk, that people talk about, like resilience and, and presence, all that's really due based on the, the relationship with ourselves. And again, when we can really trust ourselves and like ourselves, know ourselves, that's real. That really takes care of a, that, that's really the root solution to a lot of these issues. So it's really having that person get to know who they.

Isar Meitis: 19:26

I really like it. I'm trying to understand the how.

Michael Anderson: 19:32

Okay, so I'm gonna pull my book out. I'm gonna pull my book out, leadership Mindset 2.0. Give you a couple specifics so that we can Yeah, because,

Isar Meitis: 19:38

because you said, okay, go write down who you are. I'm like, oh my God, I gotta do this. But like how do I even get started? Like what's, give, give me a framework to work with that I can figure this out, because I'm like, this is such a, it's, it's a, it's an amazing question that I've never asked myself. Yes, I assume most people didn't, but I'm like, okay, how do I approach, like, you know, I, in my head I have frameworks for many different things. I don't have a framework for this.

Michael Anderson: 20:04

Well, the framework for, for coming up with that, like declaration for example. I mean, it, it's iterative and it's a little different, but it's, you know, you write down who you think you are and then, and then as a coach, I go through and we really test that. Is that really you or who you want to be? Is that really your core? Is that your d n a? And some of it is, is de declaring who you are. And some of it is, is a bit aspirational. Like for example, like I'm. You know, I'm compassionate. Am I compassionate a hundred percent of the time? No, I'm 80% of the time, but it's so important to me to, to really own that, that I declare it. And so when you declare it, you move closer to it. you know, there's some, there's a difference between honesty and integrity. Are you honest every single time? That means when you're. Husband wears shoes you don't like, do you, do you tell them? You know what I mean? Is how, what, where does, what does that honesty mean? I mean, is that what you know, I tell my wife, if you ask me how you look, I'm going, I'm gonna be the person that is gonna tell you the truth. Cuz that's important to me. That's how I live my life. I'm not gonna give you validation all the time. Yeah. you know, I'm, I'm giving you an extreme example, but that, but people were like, oh, I value honesty. Okay. You do. How much, so it's easy to say these things, but what does that really mean? And it's a great, interesting conversation to have. I love

Isar Meitis: 21:19

it. I, I always do this exercise when it comes to defining core values for businesses. And again, I've never thought about it for myself, but I always tell people at the end of the day, your core values are measured at the extreme scenarios, right? If you have an extreme scenario, are you gonna stick to your core value knowing that it's gonna damage your. Or are you gonna bend the core value and do the other thing? Because it's gonna, it's not gonna damage your business. That means it's not a core value. So you're basically saying, do the same thing for yourself. Write down the, let's say you don't have a coach, like you write down the things you say you are. Then come out with extreme scenarios in which these things are being challenged, because it's very easy to stand by the things on the day-to-day. But then something happens that is not the day-to-day. It's, it's a more extreme, I, I, I'll give a business example because I don't have personal examples, but you have a core value that says people have to be nice to each other in the business, and your best salesperson is a freaking asshole. Do you keep him or do you fire the guy? And he's in charge of 40% of the company's revenue. So let him, let him him go. Big fucking deal from a business perspective, not letting him go is a big fucking deal from a core value perspective. And now you gotta decide. And so think about these ve scenarios about the traits and the values and the things you think you are, and then you know if they're part of your core or not, because that will give you So, I, I love it. I think it's a, I'm, I'm in my head doing this with you right now. It's

Michael Anderson: 23:07

pH. Yeah, yeah, I'm right with you. And I think core val, to me, core values work a little better for core values are more applicable to a business because you can hire for them. Like I'm sure you teach this, you can do this, all these other stuff. To be core values for a person can get a little dry. And that's why we do the declaration cuz it can be like more, it can be a bit aspirational, it can be a bit visiony. Yep. You know, so you put all the stuff you do separately. It's, it's like an amalgamation. It can be whatever you want too. It's, yeah. And yeah, it's normally about a page long and, and, you know, you memorize it and I got it from a, a guy named Steve Hardison. He's, he is a, he is a coach. He, he does this with some of his clients, but it's, it's a great, it's a great thing for anybody to do, and it's, it's just, it really can help with, yeah, just getting clear of who you are and who, who you're, it's a, again, it's a bit aspirational who you are and a bit of who you're declaring yourself to be. Brilliant.

Isar Meitis: 24:03

I love this. So we have two steps, right? It was release and reset, rewrite and reprogram using the things we talked about. Then you. Leading others being conversational, motivational. How do I make that transition? How do I take what I've learned? And now basically what you're saying is, Apply what you've learned about yourself in order to help others. Right. That's what I'm understanding

Michael Anderson: 24:27

the lines. Yeah. The, the first two steps are all internal to the leader. The la the second two are external. and, and, and, you know, some of that is about having a purpose and a, and a vision and values. There's a little bit in there. I'm, I'm talking about my book Leadership Mindset 2.0, which is, which is not a fluffy book. It's very much an instruction book on how do this stuff. Awesome. and and so, you know, it's a little bit about there, there is some about those type of things, but it's about like having difficult conversations is a big one. You know, how do you do that? Because. I think it's pretty natural that we, we, not a lot of people like conflict or like having those things, but I have a framework about how to have a difficult conversation. we'll go through it. Cause I know you're, you e sorry, you like to be real

Isar Meitis: 25:08

practical. I, I would've asked you if you wouldn't So, go ahead.

Michael Anderson: 25:12

I'm learning mate. I'm learning So what I do is I, I start with a pre-frame. so what that means is if you have a, an employee that's, coming in, late And you're frustrated, you probably are gonna be like, I wanna have a meeting or a conversation because you're coming in late. So they're gonna go on the defensive. But if, you know this employee wants to become a manager, you can say, Hey, I wanna, can we set up a meeting? Cuz I, I really wanna support you into your move into a management. And it's, it's, it's so small, but the preframe, any conversation can be, you know, instead of, Hey, hey, I'd like you to be a guest on my podcast. Hey, I got a podcast. That would really raise your profile. You know, it's, it's always, I mean, you're a marketing guy. Isar You, know this, but it, it's, but it's applying these, but it, you're applying'em for the benefit because of, of both of you. Because anytime that you have a, somebody in. The defensive mode, it's not gonna be a productive, or it's very hard to have a productive conversation cuz they're defending themselves. So anytime you can preframe in the, in their benefit, the more I think about it, the more we're taking marketing and putting it into this. so you, you preframe the conversation and, and then, and then once you start the, the, the conversation, you can do a couple different things. You can reframe things and reframe. there's a whole bunch of psychology on, You probably know this guy, Victor Frankl. No, I don't. Oh, he was an Austrian Jew in, world War ii, and he was a psychiatrist and he went into Auschwitz, you know, the Nazis capture and went into Auschwitz and he said, I'm going to amazing man. Amazing man. He says, I'm going to survive this. And in doing, I'm going to learn things and write a book and help humanity. And he had that purpose. And, you know, all his family died. It's crazy. And he got out of it and he, he, he talked about how you can take away everything from a person except for their right to choose. Their right to choose how they think. How they feel. And it's like he was in the worst, one of the hu worst thing for humans ever. But he'd be like, ah, that's a, that guard just so showed some humanity or this, this family just gave their last piece of bread to this orphan. So that, that's beauty. He would see beauty in this horrid place. Yeah. Because he realized they could never take that away from him. And he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, which is one of the. Library of Congress says it's one of the best 10 books ever written up there with the Quran and the Bible and everything else. So, yeah. so we're pretty far high up there. Yeah, it's high up there. Anyway, sorry, tangent. He, he talk, talk. That's reframing. If Victor re reframe being in a concentration camp, we can reframe. Stuff in a conversation with. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, you know, just taking things and, and really finding the lesson and, and changing the frame, changing how you look at things. Hey, we lost this customer. Why do we lose that customer? Let's never lose a customer like that again. Instead of, it's a problem, how can we learn from it? That's a reframe. So, so we have the preframe, we have the reframe. And then we, and, and, and the, you know, the employee might say, oh, I, oh man, people are losing respect for me cuz I've been late. When you tell'em that and you're say, well, they already respect you and you're, you've been late. But once you start being on time, then, then you're gonna gain more respect. So this is just Oh, oh, okay. And you keep'em in really high spirits. Right. And then you can have a, a, a realign, which if it goes, if they start going on a tangent, you can say, hold on a second. The goal of this is to, you realign to the preframe so you, you get'em back to how you were framing it in the first place. Cuz you, you always want to keep it positive and forward moving. And if it gets on a bad tangent, then you realign to your preframe, which gets everybody on the right thing again. And then at the end if you, you know, assume you have a good resolution, then you recap. You're gonna start being on time because we had this meeting because we wanted to make sure you are gonna get to management. Did we accomplish that? They're like, yeah, we accomplished that. So you're just ending it. You're, you're, you are, you're, they're agreeing with you that you a, achieved your, your. very positive goal in the first place. So that's, hope. I hope I'm not going on too much Essar, I'm just No,

Isar Meitis: 29:17

no, no. This is, this is awesome. I, I wanna touch on one point because I, I, again, it, it connects in my head to different things that are similar, going back to my marketing background, but there's, you know, play bigger category design. Again, one of the greatest marketing books may be ever written, not any book, but marketing books, or, or business books. I would say it's not exactly marketing. And in there they, they talk about to sell something, you need to take people they call, they call them tus, which is a combination of from, and two, you need to show the people what is the outcome that they desire, that following the process will get them to, which is really what you're selling. And they give a lot of examples. You know, the example I always like to use, which is totally unrelated to business. That's why I like to use it. If you're selling a grill. You can sell, you know, it has this kind of heat and the knobs are really easy to use, and the thing is really easy to clean and, okay, it's a, it's a grill. You know, it's not exciting. But if you're selling a barbecue party with five year best buddies watching football and a large screen TV with piers in the hand standing around the grill, this is what you're selling. You're selling. That emotional outcome of the thing that will be, if you follow the process, which is exactly what you said, I'm. Trying to get you to, I, I am trying to get you to come on time, but what I'm selling you is that management leadership position with you in charge of people that will respect you more, which is what you really desire. And, and I love that way of framing things. It's so, so, so smart. And if you can take, it's a, it's a great way to diffuse any problematic situation, is to talk about the positive outcome after the change instead of focusing on the current problem. So, Great, great stuff, So now we talked about leading others difficult conversations with others. What other external things do you have in that process?

Michael Anderson: 31:18

So, in leading others or in strategy and influence? either, well, strategy and influence. I'd like to talk about because that's often, I've, I've never really seen it taught before. And moving from tactical to strategic is one shift that every leader. You know, outside of a team leader has to really make, and there's a couple things about it. You know, the one thing I I tell people is, is if they're like, I wanna be more strategic. And I'm like, well, how many hours a a week do you devote to strategic thinking? And they just look at me like I'm crazy. And, I'm like strategic thinking, you know? And, and, and I don't just meaning have the strategy for the overall business. That's actually easy. Normally you go probably. Essar, you probably do with this with companies. You go away something with somebody like Essar for like two days and you pop out with the company's strategy, right? That's, that's freaking easy. Normally, you know what the strategy is. This is having a strategy for that, that problem employee, for that really big prospect for your team, for that next marketing thing there. Everything should have a bit of a strategic, thought around it. but what strategic thinking is, is, is a reflective, mindful process. So, To be strategic, you need to, I tell people that the best thing you could ever do is a couple of days a week, depending on how high a level cause the higher level you are. And the more, the more strategic you need to be, the more you need to do this is to take a couple out, like your first hour of your day, take that and go start as on a 20 minute walk without your phone. And just walk and, and then either have an idea of, I need a, I need to figure out this problem, or just go with a blank mind. And your mind will just process things. Because I look at leader's calendars and it's, it's, it's. It's book back to back meetings. I'm like, how do you ever process this information? You need to process information. And you do that subconsciously with your mind just doing it. And so there's something about walking in nature that, and you don't even need to think, it'll just, your brain will think on its own. And then after about 10 or 15 minutes, your the answer will come to you. And then you go back and for the next 40 minutes, you just only work on that. Don't answer your emails, don't, you know, work on that proposal, work on that new product design, work on that marketing campaign, and then do the rest of your day. You do that a couple mornings a week and you're, you're a golden and you know, you may. If you ever have a, a really big problem, go for a two or three hour walk in the woods without your dog, without a notepad, without your phone. And I guarantee after an hour and a half, two hours, you'll, you'll be like, oh, I, you'll see it differently. And that solves any problem I've ever had. That's been a solution.

Isar Meitis: 33:53

Again. Great, great, great stuff. Same guy by the way. So interesting. thing, now we're back to Christopher Lockhead and play bigger. But, Christopher Lockhead talks about, he always says that thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking, which is basically the same thing, right? He's like, because most of the time you think about a specific thing. You're just worried about this little problem and you don't give yourself time to go a layer deeper, release yourself from the day-to-day and the small things, and think about how do I think about this problem and restructure the way you approach things when you buried in them. Which in most cases allows you to actually, like you're saying, come up with a strategy, see a different solution, and then you can actually go and implement it. And, and I agree with you that one of the most important thing, and now we're going the small difference with be the small differences between leadership and management, but managing your schedule. Is a very important time that allows you to be a good leader, because otherwise, like you're saying, you're, you're buried in the tactics and the day-to-day in the meetings and the, and and the processes versus leaving some space by definition that nobody can touch because that's what allows you to process, be strategic and work on other things. Amazing stuff. This is really, really great, Michael. If people, I mean, you and I can do this probably for the next three hours and still keep on having fun. but I, I wanna be respectful of your time. If people wanna follow you, learn more about you, read your stuff, listen to you, connect with you, work with you, what's the best

Michael Anderson: 35:29

way to do that? Sure. So my name's Michael Anderson, but I, I add the, the letter R in front of my name cuz my first name's actually Robert. And nobody can Google Michael Anderson and find me cuz there's too many Michael Anderson. So I go by r Michael Anderson, r just remember Robert Michael Anderson, r Michael Anderson. and the book is Leadership Mindset 2.0, if anybody's interested in, in it. And and I'll tell you what, if you buy the book and hit me up on LinkedIn or something, I'll give you a couple special cool. I get a couple templates about delegation, imposter syndrome, all these other cool little things. So if you, if you heard me here, buy the, buy the book and hit me up on LinkedIn. Said I, I saw, I heard you on Esau's, podcast. I'll give you a couple little cool, cool things on there.

Isar Meitis: 36:11

Awesome. Michael or Robert, thank you

Michael Anderson: 36:14

so much. R r r Michael. No, no, no. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. Great talking to you.