Resonance Season 3-Episode 3: Adaptability, A Leadership Essential

In this episode, Steve, Mike and Randy discuss the critical role of adaptability in leadership, emphasizing the need for humility and continuous learning in a rapidly changing world. They explore real-world examples, particularly from the restaurant industry during COVID-19, to illustrate how businesses can pivot and thrive. The conversation also introduces a framework for resilience and adaptability, highlighting the importance of being intentional and synergistic in organizational culture. In this engaging conversation, the speakers explore the critical themes of humility, adaptability, and the importance of fostering a positive work environment. They discuss the pitfalls of overemphasizing KPIs, the changing landscape of financial services, and the joy found in creativity and performance. The conversation highlights the significance of profound hospitality and internal culture in creating a successful organization, as well as the necessity of flow and teamwork for achieving resilience and happiness in the workplace.

Takeaways

Adaptability is essential for leaders in today's dynamic world.

Curiosity and humility are key traits for effective leadership.

Organizations must be ready for various contingencies.

Learning from failure is as important as celebrating success.

The restaurant industry showcases adaptability through innovation.

Leaders should check their egos to foster adaptability.

Engagement with the world is crucial for personal and organizational growth.

Resilience involves being intentional and evolving with circumstances.

Creating a culture that embraces failure can lead to growth.

Purpose should guide all decisions in leadership.  Humility is essential for effective leadership.

Adaptability allows leaders to navigate change successfully.

Overemphasizing KPIs can misplace organizational focus.

The financial services industry is evolving; metrics must adapt.

Resiliency can be approached with creativity and positivity.

Creating joy in the workplace enhances productivity.

A negative attitude can impact team morale significantly.

Joyful service leads to memorable customer experiences.

Internal culture drives profound hospitality.

Flow within teams is crucial for achieving success.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World

02:18 The Need for Humility and Curiosity in Leadership

10:19 Understanding Co-emergence and Adaptability

23:16 The Power of Purpose-Driven Decision Making

38:13 Flow, Rhythm, and Joy in Teamwork

40:09 Creating a Culture of Happiness and Resilience

41:25 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is Resident, the podcast with leaders that unpacked the power of songs, talents, and strategies.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

We believe the great leadership begins with deep listening, not just to others, but to the still small boys within.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

It's not just about being a successful leader, it's about being socially aligned as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

In a world moving fast, residents invite you to pause, reconnect with purpose, people, and possibilities, move dive into some cool stories, celebrate with friends, and dig deep into the music too.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

A song has a way of staying with words and not alone.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So whether you're leading a business, a team, or just trying to lead your own life with more meaning, this is Resonance. Resonance, Resonance. Hey everybody, welcome back to Resonance. We're jumping into season three here, episode three. And last week we had a great conversation about reinventing yourself and how leaders have to reinvent themselves. So today, back with my compadres, Randy Harrington in Air in Oregon and uh Steve Azar, I think, live from Arkansas this week, right, Steve? That's right. Yeah. Visiting the in-lost. All right, wonderful. Well, you know, last week we had a great conversation, guys, about this whole idea of having to reinvent yourself. And as we talked after that show, we said, you know, we ought to continue this conversation and talk a little bit about adaptability. And I know this is a really important aspect for leaders, especially in today's world. And Randy, I'm going to kind of kick it over to you because I know you've talked a lot about this Bonnie world that we live in and all that kind of thing. And let's talk about the importance of adaptability for a leader in today's world.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

You bet. So I spent a lot of time in boardrooms and working with boards of directors. And one of the toughest things for boards and CEOs in general, I think, to get a hold of these days is the reality that the world is changing so rapidly and so dynamically that you really can't know. You really can't have certainty. So when people go into a planning cycle, they want to know what the future is, what's going on out there, what's happening, and what's really well, you don't know. And so what you end up doing is having to build an organization that is ready for a whole bunch of different contingencies that that could react or adapt based on all kinds of different scenarios that might unfold. And sometimes these things can be, you know, fairly rudimentary, but sometimes they can be very substantial, and the kind of things where you see whole industries beginning to change over or or or go away as new ones come online. So all of this then boils down to the individual leader, and the individual leader has to begin their journey to plan and to think about what to do from the point of view of humility. And that's the first thing I want to underline is that if you think you know, then you got big trouble. Uh because there's a high likelihood that you don't know, and you don't know what you don't know. And so that's the reality that we're trying to play with. So if you come at this business of adaptability from the point of view of, okay, I'm gonna confess that I'm not really sure about what the heck is going on. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna activate my curiosity button. I'm gonna press that curiosity button, I'm gonna start asking questions, I'm gonna start looking around. And then as soon as I see something that I think is a trend, I'm gonna apply it and see, well, does that work or does this work or does that work? And so that's that's the basic root of this whole thing is if you can lead with a sense of curiosity and and humility, then you might just find that thread that you can pull on that's gonna allow your business to adapt and to come through. So the the big thing I'm seeing in the boardrooms is that the ones that are winning are the ones that are like, let's learn first. Let's build learning into the way our organization works. The ones that are struggling are like, well, we tried this, that didn't work, so so shove it harder. You know, just just do more of what we were doing that didn't work, and let's see if that helps, you know, and and it never does, of course. So that's my first rant on adaptability.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Well, I can tell you, let me just kind of continue that thought process. It's interesting how the boardroom is a lot like studio or a lot like what we do. The humility, first of all, I've always talked about this. The most successful musicians that I've known over my life, the most successful songwriters that I've got to spend a lot of time with, all these folks that I'm moved by because of their creativity and their ability and their talent and the work that they put in, they are all they they carry humility like it's like a a separate piece of clothing on them. You know what I mean? Like it's what they they get dressed in it every day. That's right. And that's right. It's who they think because they've been humbled so much, and I think because uh you you know, it's an it's such an uncertainty, our business. And you know, you may be the greatest guitar player right now and the one getting all the calls to the studio, but there's somebody coming that's working really hard, and you know that. And why and while how you are able to continue to compete for all these years, whether it's a songwriter, an artist, or a musician, or an engineer, or whatever situation it is, you have to remain very, very humble. And you also have to be listening and you have to want to learn. I mean, that's exactly what you want to do. You write with younger artists, you write with different uh our uh songwriters, you you go into studios and engineers work with different engineers and they learn from younger engineers and older engineers. It just never stops. And I think the main thing is you gotta be so open-minded, especially now we're talking about all this change that's happening, that's constantly evolving in society, you know, obviously AI, AI, AI, and your body world and all of this stuff that's going on, obviously more than ever, and I think it's always existed. You have to really be paying attention to that. And also you have to uh I I I just I just think that I've seen so many people that think they know it all, or think that they're the greatest in all that, and it ends up uh there just ends up being a crash or a big wall in front of you that you can't dig under or climb over or get around. It's almost like you you're driving into this this thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

It's like it'll work for a while. You know, the person will be a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

It'll work for a while.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yes. And then they don't adapt, and then it all falls to pieces. They keep doubling down, doubling down, and then So let me ask you this.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I'll I'll throw this to Mike. Why do are is it insecurity, Mike? Is it a combination of things? How can you get to the point where you think you know it all and you don't and and you're never looking over your shoulder, going like, what could happen? And you don't want to get better, or you don't want to continue to learn and you feel like you know it all.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, and and and I think, you know, that's a great question. I think the you know, if we look back at COVID and look back at the restaurant business, you know, we're all foodies, so we we love that aspect of it. So, you know, you look back at the restaurant business and how many restaurants ended up closing during COVID and then never reopened, but then you also look at the ones that pivoted, that adapted. Uh, and they realized that they had to they had to figure out some way to continue to generate revenue, and so they started doing takeouts and they started doing deliveries and all of those kinds of things. That was adaptability. But the key to that adaptability is you check the ego at the door. You you don't, you know, as Randy said, and and you both, Steve, talk about this idea of humility, and of course, you know, this is right in my wheelhouse. This is the longest chapter rule of Benedict, is is this whole idea of humility, and you know, leaders that don't exercise that, leaders that think they've got a handle on everything, and Randy and you and I certainly have worked with plenty of them that are in that uh in that boat, you know, sooner or later they're going to get bit by a circumstance, an event, a crisis, whatever the case may be, and they won't be able to adapt simply because their ego is in the way. And it's interesting to mention that they've got all the answers.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

The the restaurant story is good. Uh, I remember in the midst of COVID, uh having a conversation with a lovely woman who was uh runs uh a Mexican restaurant here in Eugene, and uh she had figured out a way where you could uh call and order food and then do a pickup kind of thing. You know, this was pretty early in when when this started. And so I'm talking to her on the phone and I said, Wow, thank you so much for doing this. It's so nice to have this opportunity to get your food still, you know. Uh and she said, Well, that's the whole reason we did this, is because my guests would call and say, Hey, can you know, kind of on the down low, can I can you make me a plate of enchiladas and uh and what if I just swing by, you know? And uh and she said, That's really what drove it was the was the customer saying, Could you help us? And she was like, Well, of course I can help you. In other words, she came at it from the point of view of customer service and help, not from the point of view of, oh my god, my business is gonna close. It would, sure, it would have. I mean, they were but you see how these things, and this is this gets to the next big piece about reinvention and adaptability. Adaptability implies that you are working with the world as it is, not as you want it to be, right? So you are looking at the world candidly with with raw as much raw data coming in as you can possibly have. That's that's you're you're holding back all the judgments that you have about everything, and just really trying to let the world present itself. And then when you do that, you begin to say, okay, how can I engage and interact with this world? And that's the key that this this this lovely woman did. She she saw the world as it was and went, well, yeah, we can do that, we can make that happen. And and so all of a sudden she's got this spiral going because she's engaging with the world the way it was, and not trying to, she wasn't just like throwing herself around the room because it wasn't working out because it didn't suit her business uh framework as well. So really getting comfortable with the notion that adaptability is a function of co-emergence. Woo! Okay, all I'm saying there is you have to recognize that your you-ness, whatever you are, is a result of your engagement with everything around you. You don't just sort of spring onto the scene and and hurl your wisdom all around and expect it to work out.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

You don't just hurl words like that at me and you you make me remember that I am Gilligan on this show. You know, I mean I know I know I know I know who you're pointing at. Oregon. I mean, are you kidding me? I mean, like, come on. But it was a good one. I mean, I always expect it from one of y'all, and I appreciate it's been a while. You guys have been sort of dumbing down y'all's intelligence to meet mine, and every once in a while you remind me of why I'm Gilligan on this island.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

No, you're doing just fine, my good friend.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

You know, interesting though. I get it, though. I appreciate you clarifying that, but I sort of it's funny when you said that. What'd you say? The words were Yes. Yeah, and you sort of start guessing what it is, but I was close in my mind of where you were headed because of the content. Uh it's you know, the the restaurant business is really interesting as well. So you think about how they could be affected in negative ways and all that, you look at COVID and all that, people are gonna want to go to a restaurant and be treated nice. And that's not gonna be a computer, or that's not gonna be this or that. I mean, chefs are still very creative. They're making new music every day in the kitchen, is the way I look at it. And they're they're they're they're inventing, they're inventing mills still. I know my daughter Cecilia, that's what she's all about. That's what she's always been about. When she just went from the Michelin Star restaurant trying to from the from Elite Line Cook where she ended trying to get the sous chef job at another restaurant, she got immediately offered twice because and and what she did was she made she had to make mills for the owners, you know. And she did things she's never made. Instead of going to tried and true, because she it she just decided, I'm and I said, Are you sure? And she goes, Dad, I'm sure. And she used to do this at the house. I'm telling you, the entire uh growing up, our kitchen was a test kitchen, and I was always tasting stuff, and a lot of times I'm I was going like Cecilia, I don't think that that's working, you know, but but but after going through all of the studying in Spain and the culinary school and all that, and this being in a Michelin star restaurant, she's learned to her to to to dial back her seasoning because she was you know heavy on that. She also has learned how to do it, you know, like writing songs or whatever. And uh it's been interesting, and that now one of the recipes that she made them, they've asked her to adapt it to the menu. So that she had never made before in her life. But it was a but and and I love the curiosity part of it. Um and also the uh it's almost like she needs it, and chefs need other chefs, all these chefs, they need to wake up and I feel like they're in the kitchen writing a new song, and they love that feeling of something that hadn't quite been done yet, obviously been inspired or influenced by something that they've tasted or noticed or seen or or whatever or partaken in. But the bottom line is I think they're the they they're the real rock stars now since late nineties, mid-90s.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

I would say that they are the a farmers' market though. I mean, if you Sure. So amazing. So amazing. And and so uh I I have been to those experiences with other people, and they'll walk in and say, Well, where's the broccoli? Well, yeah, you get that. That's not the way you approach this. You approach this by going, Holy smokes, what the heck is that? What is that? And broke what do you do with that? How do you eat that? Yeah, you know, yeah. And that's the the angle that you want to bring is this, oh my goodness, here's this whole world, and I have no idea what that thing even is. And let me go talk to that person and understand it better. I just found dragon fruit. Oh, yeah, that's been going on forever. I know, but I hadn't I hadn't really it was I got dry dragon fruit at Costco, and oh my god, it is fantastic. Uh so now I'm including that in my oat bars and and the other things that I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Oh, when you make your when you make your oat bars and all that and as well. So see, you're you're constantly evolving and learning, and you're you're not an official chef, although you're a heck of a chef. But the we well, we all we you know, that's something that we're all very passionate about. Um very peaceful to us, you know, and it's it's uh it's a good connection for all of us. You know, it's a common ground. But you bring up the chef. I was thinking about the chef I saw on TV, and she's pretty world rely world renowned now, but I can't put my pen on who she is, but there's a show about it, and she was spent all of this money in this restaurant, and it was sort of in a rural area, not sorta, it was. And her and her husband, and they were gambling everything. I know who you're talking about in North Carolina. Yes, and COVID happened, and so they're about to open their doors and they couldn't, and she pivoted to all the carry-outs, and people used to drive in from all over the place, and they had them all. I mean, all just the difference. I will think of her name. Phenomenal, right? And and you know, you're you're sort of nervous for them when they're going through this. Oh my god, they got all these bills, and they were one of the many restaurants that figured out for themselves what to do and how to survive until they got back to, you know, how things are supposed to be and were planned out. But man, I I love the the restaurant industry for sure is a good example of the ones and the folks that are constantly learning. But I guarantee you have some chefs, and I've known some of them in my lifetime, who get so complacent with their recipes that the specials are just another recipe that's on their menu because they've been there, done that, and they get tired.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah, yeah, the woman's name is Vivian Howard.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Okay, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, and it is a wonderful Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

I watched a uh show on Food Network the other night, I think it's called Pitmasters, and they've they've stuck all these folks out in the middle of nowhere, and uh they have to compete against each other, and they get these challenges thrown at them, and it's all with live fire, and so they have to learn how to you know adapt and learn how to cook some of the things that they cook. And in this particular episode that I watched, they had to had to do underground uh cooking, and so they all had to dig pits and you know, put the coals in the pits and figure out what to cook in in there, and it was really interesting because there were every as you watch them go through this, there were several of them that obviously had never even thought about doing it that way. And they were trying to figure out how do they adapt recipes based on the heat and what they were going to get in in that particular setting. And the the the team that won it uh had taken, I think, like a bread pudding and and decided to do this bread pudding in the ground, yeah, and it turned out fantastic. And so um that high idea of adaptability, I think, is is so important. I have a framework that I that I use when I work with businesses called Rise. Uh and RISE stands for resilient, intentional, synergistic, and evolving. And so, you know, we have to you know, we have to really understand that, you know, in this environment that we live in today, um, we really have to be resilient. That's the whole idea of this adaptability. When you do that, you've got to be intentional. You have to be intentional from a standpoint of making a commitment that stays true to your purpose, stays true to your higher purpose vision. You have to, Randy, you talk about co-emergence. Well, that's a little bit like synergistic. Agreed. And then it it revolves around everybody that's that's involved in the in the uh the business and the work and and those kinds of things. And then you have to evolve. You have to you you come out of it at the other end, evolving into something different, maybe not something new, but something different that is able to deal with this whole Bonnie world like like you talk about.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

I really like that, Mike. I think that's a wonderful acronym, and I think that structure of ideas is right. And the other thing I want to underline about what you just said uh as it related to the Pitmasters piece, is what's interesting about those shows is you see people practicing and failing. It's the failing that is as interesting as the success in those situations. And so this is something I think you also want to build into your organizational culture is how do you create opportunities for people to fail safely and to actually treat failure as a true learning opportunity? Like one of the things we've talked about on previous episodes is the power of just the built-in debrief, where you debrief everything. And so you tried it. Did it work? Yes, why? How? Can we repeat it? Yes, how? Why? Should we repeat it? Or did it not work? But those quick, those quick hot washes, as they call them in the SEAL teams, are the are one of the foundational communication elements that drive that engine, that the rise engine that you're talking about that's there. And then the last thing I want to say before we jump off of the topic entirely, is if you want to give somebody a great gift for Christmas, get any of the Vivian Howard cookbooks. They are stunning. She's won every award in cookbook land there is. Fantastic. The cookbooks are just gorgeous physical books, and the recipes are great. It's written so well. Just I I have big all kinds of thumbs up for her work. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Let me just break the news to y'all and to anybody on Pitmasters that claim to be knowing what they're doing and failing. I can bring a couple friends of mine, my buddy Tweety, his brother-in-law. We it's called the Dutch oven, baby. You can cook anything underground. Absolutely. And and so that's been going on for generations in the Mississippi Delta. I can tell you that. And there's I've even got the recipes that folks have told me, I mean, it's the coolest thing you've ever heard about a pig in the ground, and and you you season it, you, you, you know, you gut it, and it's got the cavity wide open, you're filling it with all this stuff and sauces, and you season it, and then you wrap it in all this full that's like packed down, and you get a post hole digger and you you plug it. You know, that well, you get the post-hole digger, and that's when you put the sauces in. And then you plug it back up with the full and that, and then you put it in the ground and you stay up all night and write songs and wake up the next morning and and you're ready to roll. Uh but it's Hawaiian style too, my brother. You daddy is Hawaiian style.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

I've got a little few bags in the Midwest, too. The only difference is that I do is I I inject the I inject the sauces and marinades with a cattle cattle injection needle and inject it right into the pig, you know, that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah. It's unbelievable. And the the meat's so moist, it's just like n you never experienced anything like it because it's slow cooking down there. The other thing is uh that y'all brought up, I wanted to say uh is just one last thing about it before we left. Uh I I well, I wanted to sort of back back up for a second. RISE is what your acronym was, Mike. Resilience is to me so important uh in everything you do because it's coming at you. Competition is coming at you. You know, you can get in your own way for goodness sake, but the bottom line is you've got to be resilient in a world that especially involves creativity. And so important and intention intention. But once again, everything revolves around that one thing you talk about, and that's your purpose. And I love that uh that you keep coming back to that. And now I swear, guys, I all the decisions I make now are so visual, they're so and they're so obvious, they're almost not everything is obvious, but the decisions are made based off of purpose, and they're made with a lot, you're a lot more coherent, and you're making I'm making a lot better decisions knowing that there is that center of uh that nucleus that everything has to revolve around and eat around.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I really like the idea that your decisions are visual. I think that's a very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

That's well, you know, I got my orbit, remember? Everything's orbiting around, and you know, you're gonna end up with some sort of uh you got asteroids coming at it left and right, you know, and and all these things that I'm doing because I'm so doing so many things, and but as long as they revolve around that purpose and evolve around that purpose, because you need them both, right? You need them to continue to grow. Uh it's just made it's just it's such clarity for me, is the best way I can explain it. But resume.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

I'm getting this great visual of uh Tony Stark as Iron Man when he when he pulls up his computer thing and it's all around him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Exactly. That's Steve's orbit. Yeah, oh trust me, trust me, it's a wild orbit, by the way. And listen, there's a there's a lot of fun you know evolving, reviving whatever. You know what I mean? It's yeah, it's a lot of I can look at it and get happy. But before before, every second thing that that was you know in my orbit was you could see the ones that were really distractors and were keeping you up at night and and were you know and working with folks that didn't know humility, that didn't understand adaptability, uh, a lot of excuses all the time, and a lot of lies. And you can at some point realize that, and you just gotta click it out of your orbit, you know, get rid of it. You know, it's gonna burn out. The bottom line is that star is gonna burn out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

I love it. I love it. And I love the idea, you know, you're looking at things in motion in 3D. And uh one of the metaphors that that has worked for me, it may not work for others, is the idea that there are people that go at the world and they think about it as arithmetic. Two plus two is four, and you know, and we can work everything out, everything is knowable, right? And then that's a very different world than a world that's rooted in calculus, you know, where everything is in motion and everything is is only understood in relationship to something else. And that's the calculus world. And I think then we talk about this Bonnie world, uh the the brittle and anxious and nonlinear and incomprehensible, all that stuff, we're talking about that. We're really talking about this space where it is it is truly so unknowable that to bring an arithmet an arithmetic point of view, it may be accurate in this little corner, but it's not going to be scalable, it's not gonna be able to go out. And this is the problem that leaders have is they'll say, well, two plus two is always gonna be four. And the answer is, well, yeah, but the question is for what and for why. That's the that's when you get the bigger picture. Why that's what really matters. And I see so many times uh organizations that are all hung up on, oh, my KPIs, my key performance indicators, oh, I need to move the needle by God. I gotta get that needle moved. We're gonna have the whole organization is gonna eat gruel until we move this number from here to there. Well, it could be that that's the right thing to do, but the uh the odds are that you've misplaced your focus by believing that the whole universe hangs on this one KPI. It may for a tiny period of time, but to the degree that it becomes the end-all be-all of your business, I think you're you're probably missing out. So that means, for example, in financial services, for the longest time, it was about services per household. Right? How many of us so if you're working with US Bank or with Wells Fargo or whoever, how many Wells Fargo products do you have in your wallet, by gosh? We want to.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Wallet share, they called it.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Wallet share, yes. And what they found out after a good long while was that's not the way people think about this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I don't think about it that way.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

No, you're not gonna go, oh, well, if it's Wells Fargo, by golly, then we everything should be well for nobody, nobody does that. And on average, the average uh consumer right now has over 10 financial institutions in their wallet.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

So are you kidding me? Which has changed considerably because 25 years ago, wallet share was a big deal because they could they could measure it based on the number of products to services that north the old Norwest Bank did a huge study on that back in the 80s and found out that the more services somebody had from a financial institution, the less likely they were to leave. That's right. What's happened, and and you know, here we here again talking about adaptability, what's happened is most of them have continued to operate with that premise when in reality so much has changed in the delivery of products and services from financial institutions and outside of financial institutions, insurance companies and brokerage firms and all this kind of stuff, that people are getting those services from everywhere now. And wallet share, as you said, Randy, is is not the indicator that you want to utilize. And you know, yeah, go ahead, Steve. No, you go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, you know, the one one thing that I want to jump back to, though Steve used a great word when he was talking about looking at his orbit and all that kind of stuff. He talked about it makes him happy. Yeah. And how many times do we hear a leader say that? Yeah. You know, it's it's so I mean when I think about this rise framework, you know, when you look when you approach it from a standpoint of resiliency, well, resiliency can be fun. Resiliency can can say, okay, we got some of these challenges coming at us. Let's figure out how to how to you know deal with those and let's figure out how to move on. Because when we do that and when we're intentional about it, and when we're bringing people together to solve that issue, we come out on the other end and evolve. And we evolve from a positive perspective because we get everybody engaged in the process. And I think that's the part that you know leaders need to stop looking at these things from a standpoint of doom and gloom, and start looking at these things from a standpoint of creativity and happiness. Yeah. Because it changes the whole way that that people think about things.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

So when you're in the when you're in the studio or when you're writing a song, and even if you're writing a song this that's sad, the topic's sad, and and you and you as a songwriter have to go all the way down to get all of that sadness and bring it out for the listener and for yourself. First of all, you're it's it's this constant healing. But that healing process, even the art of writing about something sad, feels every bit as joyful the as writing a song that's uh that has some sort of fun content. If I can only explain to you what the feeling is like. Also the feeling of being on stage, ever since I first tasted it as a little kid, it still feels the exact same. I'm always going out there, you you're confident, but you're you're you're a little bit on pins and needles like a running back, because I was, you know, when I was a little kid running ball or whatever, before I quit playing football, I was the guy that ran the ball, and that first feeling before you get that first hit, and then you and then I can't explain. It's the first of every time you do everything, even though you've done it a million times, it's nice to be a little nervous. And it's nice to feel it because it lets you know you care. You care enough. But guys, right in in in the studio, especially making a record, if you've got somebody in there that's griping or that's it's this bad negative attitude, then guess what? It it's probably gonna it's probably gonna taint the entire reason you're all there, and it'll leave a dark cloud on it, and you can forget it. Probably not gonna work because of one link in the in the chain uh that decided to make it unjoyful. And it's interesting. And I don't know about y'all's world when you got you go into a conference room or you go into a situation and you've got the one person that's that's ER that's you know, uh is so negative and all that, and it can bring an entire building down. I mean, it can boot bring it all down, right? And then on stage if it's like that, you feel it. I think the crowd feels it. It's things you just can't hide. And uh, and so I think that that's that's important. I do think you have to be happy, and I appreciate y'all breaking out one of my big words right there and and and turning it into about eight minutes. I'm very, very proud of myself.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

So I I was at the uh I was at a Sheraton in the at the Houston, I think it was a Sheraton, I can't remember, maybe it was a Mary, I don't know who knows, at the Houston airport. And I had uh I had my flight had gotten screwed up and I had to stay there overnight. And uh so I'm in the the restaurant of that that hotel and it was busy and I sat down and my server was not appearing anytime soon, it seemed. She was I saw her across the room, but she was just not not able to get to me. In the background, though, I hear coming out of the kitchen from down the hall, and I hear this. I hear, Susan, you're late again in full opera voice. And then I kind of laughed at that, and then I hear Susan also in full opera voice go, My car broke down on the so-and-so, and blah, blah, blah. And they there was this whole aria that was going on in the kitchen. And you know what? At that moment, my whole attitude changed. I was like, I'm in this, I just want to get my food, and I just want to go to my room, and I just want to, I'm having a bad day as a traveler. And all of a sudden, it was just like, oh, this place is awesome. And sure enough, my waitress uh approached me just a moment later. She was joyful and lovely and wonderful. And I ordered a uh tortilla soup. I shall not forget it. I said, I'll have tortilla soup. She said, good choice, which I always like to hear. And then she said, Do you want me to do it my way? And I said, How's that? And she goes, Well, I have them do the chicken like this, and I have them put the avocado like that. And I was like, Yes, do it your way. And oh my god, it was fantastic. And it was a great evening. But it was that opera coming from the kitchen. These people were having fun in their job.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

And look, you've turned this, you've turned this experience that you were planning on making it awful, a bad memory, right? Into this memory that you just yeah, you teed it up, but you just described that meal and that tortilla soup and the fact that she wanted to do it your way, all these little details that ended up making a big impact on today and and lice. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

That's cool. I ended up having kind of a crush on the waitress. Is that a problem?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I think well, yeah, right now Patty. I would think Patty would think it was a problem.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Oh, she knows better. She knows you, you know, you give me any person, I'm really a sucker for anybody in a service industry who's like that wonderful person. Yeah. It could be a flight attendant, it could be, and it's like you are the best human being ever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

And hey, you know what's funny? You know what's funny? I have this saying, and Gwen just cracks up every time. Yeah. It's like she's never heard it. We're going through a drive-thru or we're going through a restaurant and everything, and they're so nice. And I'll go, I love you. Like, I'll say that. That's I always say, I love you. And she goes, Gwen goes, oh my God. I said, How nice is that person? They're so nice. So I'll go, I I love you. You know, like so anyway, uh it's because I what you just said is so important to me. And I'm going, like, and even the other day at a water burger, uh, I went, we went inside to go to the restroom. We went in there, and it took them a while to get the food. Yep. But they were really busy. And I saw all of them back there communicating and smiling and laughing, and they made the wait, you know, we're driving nine hours, and we they made the wait so enjoyable. I walked into the into the car Win had gone out to the car and she had our drinks and stuff, and I I walked out there, I said, I gotta tell you something. That was so enjoyable. The 15 minutes that I was in there waiting on two hamburgers, and they were so friendly about it, and it's just they were they had a uh a big Uber Eats order, you know, that it was in, and they were rolling out burgers, but they were having a blast. And once again, it turned the whole room into the it just you sort of joined them. And the waiting and all the stuff that you're trying to, you're in a hurry and all this, it just goes away. It washes away. And there was another example, and I notice it every time I go to a restaurant, especially the food world, hotels, as much as we guys are on the road and live in hotels and and all this, and it's just sometimes there's another level of kindness that is so authentic and is so honest that you feel it. They're not just saying words, they absolutely mean it. And kudos to them for uh following the Chick-fil-A way of doing things. You know?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Well, and you know, I that's that's kind of you know, that's the whole philosophy behind profound hospitality. And and what's interesting here is that both of these examples, Randy's and and yours, Steve, both of these examples are profound hospitality from an interior perspective, not from an exterior. They're they're doing all these things based on what's happening inside their business. It has nothing to do with the customer.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

No, they're not they're not put they're not performing for you.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

That's right, that's exactly right. Whether it's whether it's getting a bunch of burgers out, they're doing it from an internal standpoint. They're exercising that profound hospitality to each other inside that organization.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Which is infectious and obviously it oozes out into the whole being, the whole room.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

So the other piece that's there in that story, two things. One is what isn't it interesting that we started out talking about resilience and adaptability, and now we're talking about happiness and we're talking about well-being in the workplace. That's how we got to this place, that's where we started. But the thing I wanted to circle on is that when you watched those people making the burgers, they were experiencing flow. They were in a groove.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

And they saw it happening, they became self-aware that they were in a groove, and then that made the groove fun. And then it was kind of like, oh, wow, look at what we can do if we just kind of all truly work together. And that is what it is all about. And so the the this business about you need to be adaptable, you need to be adaptable to the degree that you are compatible with the person to your left and the person to your right, the person that's upstream for me and the person that is downstream. That is the critical piece. If you're completely like, no, I'm I'm me a hundred percent, regardless of what is upstream or downstream for me, that's when the organization breaks. You'll never have flow. And I love I love that.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

You talk about flow. We've had shows about rhythm, right? Yep. And to watch and and and three people, I was watching the three people make prepare one burger. And one was opening the rat, one was laying the bun in the burger, one was putting the sauce in the da-da-da, and they were it was a it was it was like they were they were six hands but one person. And I think you're right. They were in such a rhythm and flow that they were laughing. It was like I think they knew like a race car driver in rhythm, you know, and you're just tearing the track up. I mean, I I think that it's an ex-I think you know why they were having fun is because they probably have been where they've been not in rhythm and not in flow. Sure. Or somebody wasn't the right person in the in the link and stuff in that in that chain, and it was it became work rather than fun.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Or to bring it full circle, the leader of that environment didn't allow them to. That's and I think when we when we bring this conversation full circle on adaptability and and resilience and happiness, the leader has to create that environment. That is their responsibility. No doubt. They create that opportunity for these people to engage and and create synergies and those kinds of things. When they do that, happiness ensues.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Well, let me ask y'all this is the leader the one that's hiring? And if so, are they hiring them based off of how the way that they would do it? Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah. And and and then the the leader has to they they can't you can't BS this. You have to live that. You have to walk it. Right. Yeah. Because we're gonna look at you immediately. And how many of us have had a a boss that said we like to have fun around here? And then you kind of look at them like, really? You know, what exactly? What do you really mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Those are buzzwords. Those are buzzwords that mean nothing. Poster on the wall. Yeah, poster on the wall. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I think it's time to wrap this one up. I think that we've circled the wagon. Randy, bring us home.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

What an episode. Holy smokes. We went all around the horn. But what we were talking about is super important, and that is the reality that your success in business is more and more going to depend on the humility that you bring as a leader, the opportunity to continuously foster curiosity in yourself and others, to build opportunities for people to screw up safely in the organization, and then delight in the learning that comes from that. Uh that we that we have this sense of communication that allows us to see things in Azar's three-dimensional space. I'm gonna that's one of the things I'm gonna take away is thinking about planning visually a lot more. And I think that's a super powerful thing. We could probably talk about that on a whole episode.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

But yeah, yeah, I think we should because I would love to talk to you because in as a songwriter, especially in that portion of the creative process, you're extremely visual in your mind. You see it, you see everything that you put on paper. It's so visual. And when it's and you some days you have better days. We call it furniture. You know, things people can feel, touch, see. It could be as simple as bacon and eggs, but you know, if you sing the word bacon and eggs pretty good like Lucinda Williams did in carwheels down a gravel road, then you gotta you got something everybody's gonna remember. But visual, I would love to, I would love to expound on that in another episode.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

So, and what we've also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt is that indeed the whole world can resolve to the rule of Benedict that that we have discovered one more time as noble Mike has guided us through. Love the RISE comment. Uh, I think everybody should take a note on that uh particular acronym. And we might want to do one on that acronym and really really pull that one apart too, because I think it's a really apt way to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Mike, uh, you want to tell them where they can find us?

SPEAKER_00 43:01

All right. Well, that'll wrap up this episode of uh Resonance. You can find us at resonanceleader.com, and uh, we're on all the major platforms, so check us out there. If you want to watch the video version of this and me drinking Starbucks, you can uh click on the YouTube channel and uh watch that aspect of it. And uh until next time, fellas, we'll see you next time. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Thanks for listening to Resonance. Find us at resonance leader dot com.