Have you ever witnessed the sheer magic of a team so in sync that it seems they could conquer the world together? That's the heart-stirring force of 'ubuntu', a philosophy that leadership coach Steve Jones brought to life with the Kimberly High School football team, whose strategies have led to an awe-inspiring 129-9 record over 11 years.
Our chat navigates the 'winning formula' that isn't solely about scores but is deeply grounded in prioritizing individuals and establishing a robust culture of ownership and empowerment. This conversation goes beyond the realm of sports, offering golden nuggets for anyone eager to cultivate a triumphant environment in their workspace or community.
We also confront the 'twin thieves'—fear of failure and judgment—that stealthily rob us of our potential.
Join the conversation on Get4Sight, where your stories and insights fuel our collective growth. Share this episode with a fellow leader or anyone ready to unlock the secrets behind a truly winning culture.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Have you ever witnessed the sheer magic of a team so in sync that it seems they could conquer the world together? That's the heart-stirring force of 'ubuntu', a philosophy that leadership coach Steve Jones brought to life with the Kimberly High School football team, whose strategies have led to an awe-inspiring 129-9 record over 11 years.
Our chat navigates the 'winning formula' that isn't solely about scores but is deeply grounded in prioritizing individuals and establishing a robust culture of ownership and empowerment. This conversation goes beyond the realm of sports, offering golden nuggets for anyone eager to cultivate a triumphant environment in their workspace or community.
We also confront the 'twin thieves'—fear of failure and judgment—that stealthily rob us of our potential.
Join the conversation on Get4Sight, where your stories and insights fuel our collective growth. Share this episode with a fellow leader or anyone ready to unlock the secrets behind a truly winning culture.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
The Art of Leadership Network. Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'm your guide as you explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's keep learning on this leadership journey together. Friends, today I am joined by my friend, Steve Jones.
Speaker 1:Steve is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, consultant and best-selling author who empowers leaders to build strong, united and resilient cultures. His positive impact developed as a teacher and head football coach at Kimberly High School in Wisconsin, where he led his team to a record of 121 wins, nine losses, including 70 consecutive wins and multiple state championships. Steve's winning formula captivates Fortune 500 companies, pro-sports teams and competitive leaders aiming to inspire successful connected teams. Now you guys. I love this conversation with Steve. We connected via some mutual friends. You'll hear us talk about that in the episode. But just such a shared passion around the power of teams, about the power of culture, and I love Steve's perspective from a coaching a football coaching background in history and then how he's applying that to executive leaders and businesses today.
Speaker 1:So we're going to talk about how culture drives winning behavior no surprise there that the best teams are always player-led and then he shares with us the "twin thieves of fear of failure and fear of judgment, and he actually does a little bit live coaching with me around those two thieves. So I know you're going to love this conversation with Steve Jones. Well, Steve, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast. It is fun to get a little more time to connect with you. We've got some mutual friends. You're doing a big event here in the Fox Valley Excellence of Leadership, which is one of the organizations that I get to be a part of, and but I thought you need to be on the podcast. We just have a lot of shared interests, passion around leadership, organizational culture, et cetera, so I'm super glad you joined me today.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation with you.
Speaker 1:It's going to be fun. So I would love just for our listeners to hear a little bit of your backstory and leadership journey, because I gave the bio at the beginning, but I think people always love to hear your story from you personally rather than the bio version.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think really my journey started when I was little. So unfortunately, I grew up in a home with an abusive alcoholic and I had a lot of great leaders around me two older brothers who I really think about as servant leaders because they were late high school, early college age and really stepped up in my life and really were great role models and leaders. And I had a great fifth grade teacher named Jack Stoscoff. Mr Stoscoff and again, just an unbelievable impact on me as a leader and just growing up and having those influential people in my life really, I think, spurred me into where I am today, specifically Mr Stoscoff.
Speaker 2:As far as my career trajectory, I started off as an elementary school teacher because of the impact that he had on me. I got into coaching because of not only him but other coaches that I had in my life that when I was looking for positive adult role models, those were the people in my life. So, fortunately, sports were a big part of that journey too, of learning leadership skills. I ended up playing college football and coaching college football for a year and then got into teaching. So, as I said, elementary education teacher, I coached multiple sports and then the back half of my educational journey as far as being a teacher. I was a high school leadership teacher for 13 years.
Speaker 2:I don't think I knew that yeah it was an unbelievable experience and I give credit to our administration and our school district, our school board, of having the vision for that. Because it was an unbelievable experience. It was open up to the entire school, so the elective freshmen through seniors and we got to really dive deep. So really my whole 13 years, my life was really revolved around leadership. Like we're getting to read lots of books, listen to podcasts and, most importantly, learning alongside of our young leaders about what got them excited, what they were fearful of. So I didn't have to worry about profit margins, I didn't have to worry about things, but really getting the reps every single day, class after class of learning and teaching and applying. And then the unique thing too is I was also the head football coach at our high school for the back half of my career, 11 years.
Speaker 2:So I got to take those ideas and those theories and principles and stories and see if they actually worked, because leadership is a lot easier to talk about, it's a lot easier to read about yes, it's a lot easier to do and got to take those into an unpredictable, highly competitive situation and see if it actually worked and if it didn't, go back and revamp and try it again.
Speaker 2:So for the 13 years it was learning about leadership, teaching it, applying, reflecting, revamping, just that constant cycle. And then, as we experienced some success at Kimberly High School and our football program, we're caught when that we were really focused on leadership development and culture. So businesses started to catch wind and speak to their teams and that started to take off. Covid hit around that time and my co-author, Lucas Jaden, who's now my business partner. We wrote the book the Twin Thieves, which experienced some success. So then more of those calls started coming in. So I got to the point of what do I do here? And I couldn't do it all. So about a year and a half I decided to leave education, join Lucas Jaden it's now Jaden Jones and we get to work with amazing organizations, businesses. We get to work with professional sports organizations, colleges, military, Olympic athletes across the board. So it's really been a fun journey.
Speaker 1:It's been so fun and it's fun to just hear some more of your reflections on your journey, because I moved to the Fox Valley six years ago now and I had grown up in Wisconsin and then I was gone.
Speaker 1:I was in Tennessee, California, and moved back. Most of my family had settled in the Fox Valley and, as Excellence In Leadership, the nonprofit that I help lead, your name often came up as a speaker and so I would just hear about it from different people talking about oh, you've got to meet Steve Jones. He's this legendary football coach of the Kimberly High School team and it was just fascinating to hear these stories of this local football coach, who people just revered for how you led the team, and then hearing you talk about applying those leadership principles inside coaching is just super fun. So I just got me so curious because I was like here's this guy who was doing what I presume you love to do, which was invest in students and their education, the leadership, the coaching, and then to just see your gifts flourish in that way and start to have an impact beyond and you referenced it not directly, but all of us Wisconsinites are big Packer fans and you guys have had the privilege of working with the Packers, with Bergstrom Automotive, big organizations in Wisconsin, and it's just fun to see the continued impact there.
Speaker 1:So how did your love of coaching, or maybe it wasn't the love of coaching, maybe it was a love of leadership and that showed up in coaching which came first? And how would you say they're connected? Did your love of coaching develop into a love of leadership and culture, or vice versa? Give us a little more context there.
Speaker 2:I would say probably a little bit of both. So I think with a lot of former athletes I was not athletic enough to make it pass Cald's football. So you get to the point where, ok, well, my playing career is done, how do I continue to be a part of the game that's given so much to me and give back? So you get into coaching. But then what you thought coaching was and what it really is is two different things. I thought it was very much about the X's and O's and I think strategy is important, but it's really about people and as you start to figure that out, really it becomes well, how do you make a positive impact on these people that you have the privilege to lead and how do you develop more leaders and how do you develop a culture where everybody comes in and feels valued? And the more I got into that and started teaching and then we developed a leadership council in our football program, I really found that that was a huge competitive advantage there aren't a lot of secrets and X's and O's anymore.
Speaker 2:When you can develop leaders that care about each other, that want to fight for each other, that create a culture where it doesn't matter if you're the starter and you're an all state player or you're a scout team player that never sees the field on a Friday night, that you are valued in our program when you can do those things.
Speaker 2:That's really what I started to fall in love with and it really started to shift. I still like the X's and O's, but I love the leadership. I love getting in front of our team and talking about mindset and leadership and impact and that's really what I ended up really loving. So when I got to that tipping point, I told you about it. I'm like, hey, if I can just do this all the time, that would be fun. Let's try that. So I think it started as a love of coaching and wanting to be a part of the game and then, soon into it, realizing it really wasn't about winning games and it wasn't about X's and O's. It was really about having an opportunity to make a positive impact on people.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. I similarly, my first career was in the music business in Nashville. That's kind of. I left Wisconsin to go work at a record company in Tennessee and I thought it was all about that dream job. And then, as I got into it, I realized I actually loved the team, like I loved building a team that was working together to accomplish the mission, accomplish the goal, and it was such a surprise to me that that's actually what I really loved was the team dynamic, much more so than what we were actually doing, and so that's kind of fun. Talk to me a little bit about. So you're coaching high school. You guys had this crazy winning record. Will you speak to that a little bit just to give people context of, like you had a pretty legendary record with the Kimberly High School team. So speak to that before I finish that question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so over the course of 11 years when I was at the opportunity to head coach, we and I really emphasize we, because it was not a me thing, you know, it literally takes a village and we had amazing coaches and administration and parents and then obviously amazing athletes. So it's definitely not anything. But over the course of 11 years we were 129 wins and nine losses and then we also had a 70 game win streak in there where we won five consecutive state championships. So at the time it was the longest in the nation still is, you know, the longest in, you know, in Wisconsin history. So, yeah, so we we experienced success and I think and there's a lot of people in the world that that can can vouch for this in different areas. I think of a guy named Bob Chapman. I've never heard of him, but he's an amazing CEO at Barry Waymiller. But you can really care about people still have great success in profit and wins and whatever your area.
Speaker 1:It's not one or the other.
Speaker 2:So we had high expectations, we worked really, really hard, but we also loved and cared for each other and we invested in people. But it wasn't like one or the other. I think there's a lot of people in the world that think like, okay, if you care about people, then you don't care about profit, or if you care about profit, you don't care about people. But the best of the best can do both and I think that's one thing that we really pride ourselves on.
Speaker 1:What does that look like, Steve? Do you have an example or two of like how you or what that looked like inside of that team for you, of how you managed both of those pieces?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think one like we, we had this winning formula, which is a little bit ironic because we never once talked about winning. You know, we didn't stand in front of the team. I never once stood in front of the team and say we need to win this game because, ultimately, winning is an outcome we can't control that's what it took to be a winner.
Speaker 2:What are the control of the behaviors and habits we can develop. That's going to give us the outcome that we desire, but we call that the winning formula. And the first, and there's four variables to it. But I think if you have these four things, you can be successful in any organization. The first variable, and intentionally it's people. People first, right, so it's all about the people. We always talked about bricks don't build championships, people do. It comes to the people. So and and maybe listeners that are listening right now might be : people you hire, the people you recruit, the people you develop. It's about caring for your people. The people then drive the culture. So that's the second component, and us culture is really simply defined as how you do, how you do things, yeah, so it's how you communicate, it's how you problem solve, it's it's all the how's, right, yeah, ultimately, why do you have culture? To drive winning behaviors, whatever winning means to you. But if you have a strong culture and drives consistent winning behaviors, the third component is a preparation.
Speaker 2:We would use a quote all the time from John Wooden when opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare, so we're doing the dirty hard work like there isn't a secret to success. Like a lot of times, it's rolling up the sleeves, doing the mundane doing being the best at the basics. Sometimes, though, pat the back, but doing the work in the dark. And the fourth component is the execution, that everybody in organization, everybody on the team's got a job to do right, and if everybody does their job, you have a chance.
Speaker 1:So if you do those four, things.
Speaker 2:You got great people. You care for your people. They drive the culture Because, ultimately, culture is not top down, it's bottom. Yeah, this may come from the CEO president, that might come from the head coach, but it comes to life through everybody underneath.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they drive the culture.
Speaker 2:Each and every day you work really hard and you do the job. You do those four things. I know it sounds simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. But you can do this consistently, you have a shot of being successful. So that's kind of higher art. You know that the big view of really systematically how we broke that down. Yeah, going back to the idea of culture, because I know that that you're a big fan of culture and the work that you do around it but really the idea of shared ownership in culture.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times when I go in and I deliver a keynote to organization, within the first couple minutes I ask you a quiz question and I say, okay, who in the room owns the culture of this organization? Right, and most people put their hand up and they understand. But if one, if they all point to one person, then we got a lot more work to do, right but, it's a kind of understand that culture is not this one person or the board CEO, that's everybody.
Speaker 2:So having that shared ownership, because the best teams are always player led, the best organizations are always employee led. But you got to be systematic about that, like you can't just say it's like how do you build systems around it? So one system we built around it was we developed the leadership council and we, we developed our leaders and we met and we gave them opportunities to lead and that was really an important piece of building that team systematically, of like how do we not only say, okay, culture is not top-downs, bottom up, the best teams are player led. It's one thing to say it, but it's another thing, okay, well, how do you build systems around it to create leaders that drive the culture from?
Speaker 1:That's big. That's big talk a little bit about. You know, I think this is feels very true in sports coaching. Although I have not done sports coaching, so I defer to you as the expert. In you know you have a scenario where you're dealing with rosters that are constantly changing. In your case, you know your key players are graduating. You know you've got people graduating every year. So you have kind of that revolving door, which I think is actually more common. I think it is more common in even businesses today and that people's tenure on teams is more common. People's tenure on teams is much shorter. So I think every leader I'm talking to is experiencing more turnover than maybe they've experienced in the past. But that was probably a pretty common part of your experience as a high school coach. So how do you maintain culture with so much change all the time when there's so many people kind of moving and going and so forth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, every year we'd lose about a third of our team, you know. We had, you know, on average, 30 to 38 seniors that would graduate every year, you know. And now we have an influx in. So well, the big idea, right, simplistic answer, is develop a culture, because the culture should not change. So, as people come through, you have the culture, you have common values, you have common language, you have common, you know the clear.
Speaker 2:that is whatever it is, but you have those kind of systems built in so when people come through you have that there, yeah. And then I think another big part for us was that idea of the ownership and being player led. So if you imagine a triangle, I think the typical hierarchy at least of you know, a high school program would be freshmen would be on the bottom, then you'd have the sophomores, juniors, seniors would be on top of that triangle and at least in my experience, kind of growing up, it was the seniors, you know kind of not treating the freshmen well, and the freshmen would have to pick up the locker room and freshmen have to clean up the field. And freshmen you do this because I'm a senior and I've earned it Right, right, right. And so what we taught in our program is the best leaders. The common thread amongst all great leaders is that they are servants.
Speaker 1:You want to leave. You just you just shaped that from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and if you want to truly leave a true legacy, you need to learn how to serve. So we actually took that pyramid and we kind of flip the paradigm on its head. So our seniors and our juniors would serve the freshmen and sophomores. So our seniors and juniors would model behavior. They would pick up the field first, they would clean the locker room. They would go up to freshmen and put their arm around them and say you know what? I've been there before. It's really tough, I'm here for it If you need. Our seniors would give rides home to freshmen, pick them up in the morning. Our seniors would call freshmen on a Saturday morning and say I'm going to come pick you up for breakfast on my dime. Wow, true stories, you know, but we weren't perfect, but we were connected and our kids cared about each other. Yeah, and the cool part about going back to your question is when you treat the newbies like that and they become the experienced ones, what do they want to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they want to turn the favor right. Yeah, exactly, they want to turn favor in a good way.
Speaker 1:They want to model what they experienced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so how you treat and how you create systems around your experienced leaders and how they mentor and how they guide and how they show what this culture is about is really, really important to get that culture to cycle. And I think one of the most important phrases out there is hey, from your leaders, specifically your employee leaders, not just the CEO and the president's of hey, this isn't how we do things around here, this is how we do things around here. Yeah, and you can get that from your employee leaders, because its one thing to go through an onboarding handbook and all this other stuff, but then it's the day to day experiences of hey, this is how our culture works. Yeah, that's how you get a systematic culture built.
Speaker 1:So good, that's so good. I could probably keep pulling on threads of that because I just love it so much. But I want to make sure we get to a couple other things. What lessons did you learn? Because now you're in more coaching executives, corporate coaching et cetera. So what lessons have translated from your football coaching days to your executive coaching days? What lessons kind of carry through?
Speaker 2:I think just so many. I really do. I mean, I just I think there's so many parallels and I was worried about myself, like I was worried about making this transition. Is it really going to connect? And there's so many connections to coaching because, how we opened up, it's not about the X's and O's, it's about the people and developing leaders and building a strong culture.
Speaker 2:So there are so many different carryovers and there's just a few principles that maybe I could share. That for examples, right? So one because I think, again going back to that, common language is really important. So we had some common language. One word that was really important in our program was umbuntu. Umbuntu is a word that originated in South Africa and the base meaning of it is "I am
Speaker 2:because you are" In these villages in South Africa, they knew that ultimately they were an ecosystem. So, whether it's a football team or an organization, you're an ecosystem and you're interdependent on each other. Yeah, in the strongest organizations, I think, understand the importance of value recognition, appreciation of everybody in the role that they play. My question for a lot of executives is well, how are we becoming systematic about catching champions? Because a lot of times we're going around shining a light on poor behavior where we're catching criminals all the time. That's good. Some people aren't catching champions enough and recognize the people that are doing the dirty hard work in the dark. So one quick example in our football program if you know anything about football running back typically is only as good as offensive linemen.
Speaker 2:So offensive linemen are doing the dirty hard work. They don't get a lot of recognition, they don't get their name in the paper, but the running backs are scoring the touchdowns Right. They're getting their name in the paper, they're on the news. So our running backs recognize that. So when we had our team meetings after games they would walk in and they publicly thank the offensive line. On top of that they would bring in plates of cookies and brownies and donuts, because the fastest way to offensive line art is through a stomach, Right.
Speaker 1:So ultimately those offensive linemen knew that they were valued.
Speaker 2:I think, as a human being, whether you're 16 or you're 60, that's what we want to know. Are we a valued member of the tribe?
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah, I love that so much. Again, in some ways it feels so obvious and yet that's not how a lot of cultures are built, where we helping those. The ones who are getting more recognition are honoring and recognizing the ones that are helping handle all of the stuff behind the scenes that makes it possible for them to do what they do, whether that's in football or that's in a company of some kind. That's so brilliant.
Speaker 2:We'd have our starters right after practice. They'd go up and they would thank and put their arm around the scout team players. So these are usually the younger guys that are preparing us for the game, because those starters knew that if they got a really good look in practice, that they were going to be more prepared for Friday. Now,
Speaker 2:being a scout team player is a pretty thankless job, but when you get the thanks from your peers right, not necessarily from the coach it's one thing of I would say it as the coach, the CEO, but when it's peer to peer, now we're talking about it impactful. So that's, just one of many principles that we share that, I think, resonates whether it's sports or it's business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. Okay, I want to give time because you and your business partner wrote the book called the Twin Thieves and so I would love for you to tell us just in brief because we want people to actually get the book. Tell us about these two thieves and why they're so important for us to be aware of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like I mentioned before, you mentioned Lucas Jaden. He's my co-author, my business partner. He's amazing. He coaches some of the highest performers in our country. He coaches the coach of the LA Dodgers, he coaches Hodge Fund managers and what was really interesting and he's been doing that for almost a decade but what was really interesting is we got together and started having conversations the same things that we're kind of holding these high end business sports leaders back were the same exact things holding young leaders back- High school leaders. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and those two things were the fear of failure and the fear of judgment. So what we did is we named them because if you can name them you can tame them. And we named them the twin thieves because the fear of failure and the fear of judgment. We call them twins because sometimes they get mixed up right. A lot of people say I'm scared of failure, but the more questions you ask you realize they're not even really scared of the failure itself. They're worried about the judgment that comes after the failure.
Speaker 2:Sure Sure If I fail what's my boss going to think? If I fail, what's my spouse going to think? If I fail, w hat's Facebook going to think? So it's the judgment. So, just like twins can sometimes get mixed up, these two can get mixed up. Yeah, call them thieves because, if we allow them to, they can rob us of a lot of things in our life and our journey. Right, they can rob us of success, they can rob us in joy, they can rob us of growth. I can keep going on and on, but I think they're the biggest thieves in America. Yeah, and sometimes they get masked as other things, like a lot of people say well, my biggest hang up is I don't have enough time in the day. Well, when you go deeper into that and you ask more questions, well, what's at the root of that?
Speaker 2:Well they're not good enough or I'm not going to fall short. Well, what is that? The fear of failure, fear of judgment. So really add a lot of the things that are holding people back. It's those two things. So I think one thing that differentiates us a little bit is we really try to get to the root before we focus on the fruit, right?
Speaker 2:And I think the root is a lot of our beliefs and a lot of things that were ingrained at us even when we were younger. Yeah, a lot of those things are based on the fear of failure and the fear of judgment. One small caveat to that a little bit of it is healthy, right? Sure, not saying that some fear and some fear of failure and some fear of judgment isn't healthy. It can drive us, but what we found is, the highest performers usually are our toughest critics on themselves and those are the things that are really the lid of the jar.
Speaker 2:A quick story when I meet by the lid of the jar, I don't know about you, but I was growing up. I was told if you put a grasshopper in a glass jar, put some grass in there, a couple sticks, screw the lid on top, poke some holes in there, right, you can leave that grasshopper in there for a couple of weeks. It'll jump, it'll jump, it'll jump. Keep hitting that lid of the jar. Eventually you can actually unscrew the lid and that grasshopper will never jump out because it thinks it can only jump so high. And there's a lot of things that are our lid and I think a lot of times it's the fear of failure and the fear of judgment. And what we can do is we can help people take the lid off the jar so they can jump out and be with their meant to be.
Speaker 1:This totally resonates with me because I think I can. I resonate with it personally and then with a lot of the leaders that we get to coach. This makes just a ton of sense. How do you coach a leader that has risen to a pretty successful position if you will and is still dealing with these twin thieves, right? Like how do you get them to think differently? Like what does give us a little insight of what that, what your coaching looks like in getting them to really recognize and change their I'm guessing, change their belief system around these things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, one. I think you got to make it visible, because it's impossible to beat an invisible opponent and a lot of people think it's something, and then you got to do some work to get down to the root of things. Sure, and so we ask people OK, well, what is like when your inner critic gets loud? Let's do this, Jenni, real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2:Inner critic gets loud right when you're beating yourself up a little bit. You can be a little vulnerable on the call here. What might that sound like if you were going to use it in a sentence?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean it's funny because I like had like had a recent episode of this and I'm thinking the inner critic is like what do you think and why do you think you're doing this? Who do you think you are? You just need to go back and do something that felt safer, you know, point to something previous and go just that was safer, that was less risky. So, yeah, it's a lot of, "Who do you think you are? I think is probably the voice I hear.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I would say all the listeners on the call right now, could you resonate with something that Jenni just said? And I bet you there are hands going up, you know, all over the place, because those are very common thoughts and feelings, right? So you know, ultimately, what I'm hearing there is that I'm not good enough, right, or I'm not blank enough, and that's really at the root of a lot of it. So I would say and we, we could spend a lot of time on this, I know we don't have all day here, but I'd say the first thing is to question your thoughts, right, is it 100% true? Yeah, and 99% of the time it's not. Like, is it true that you're not good enough, Jenni? Absolutely not. Okay, yeah, okay. And then next step is well, how do you function, like, how do you lead, when you believe that thought to be true?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a big question. You don't lead it your best.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then we could dive deeper if we were doing a real coaching call. And then the second, third and final question I would ask you on this is how do you lead when you don't believe it's true? How do you lead in the absence of those thoughts? How do you show up for people?
Speaker 1:Oh, much more, much more engaged, comfortable, focused on them instead of focused on me, right?
Speaker 2:We call it your little person voice, that inner critic, right? So you're a little person voice, the one that-.
Speaker 1:I like that yeah.
Speaker 2:Loves for you to focus on you, your problems, your insecurities. When you have your big person voice, your confident voice, when you learn to question your thoughts, then you show up for other people right. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:So, again.
Speaker 2:We could have dove a little bit deeper, but for the sake of time that was a quick way. That, because here's the last thing I'll say as you use the example of a high-end leader, somebody that's accomplished a lot of things, it doesn't mean those voices go away. That doesn't mean the inner critic gets softer. Oftentimes it gets louder.
Speaker 1:I was going to say. I almost feel like that's my experience of 20 years on in my career. I feel like the critic voice is almost louder than it might have been when I was younger, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2:And you would think, I guess, if you'd go back 15 years and say, okay, well, if I would have accomplished this and this and this and been running my business for seven years and all this other stuff, I bet you younger stuff would have thought, younger self, would have thought that those voices would have went away.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:A lot of people think that confidence and belief and a lot of these other things are on the other side of something. Once I accomplish this, then I'm going to feel comfortable in my own skin. Right, I'm going to have confidence. Then it's not. Yeah, it's when we learn to question our thoughts, make it visible, learn how to rise above them, to be the best version of ourselves, not only for us, but for others.
Speaker 1:So good, steve. Okay, now everybody's really getting a taste of this is the type of work you guys do and the impact of your coaching and leadership so powerful. Okay, anything else you want us to know about the Twin Thieves, or and even how? Because you guys write that in parable, like kind of a parable, right. So tell us a little bit more about the book. Maybe that's what I want you to do before we wrap up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks. Okay, kind of how we like to read books. So it's short, it's about 150 pages. It's parable, so it's easy to digest. The chapters are short, so there's only like two or three pages per chapter. So you can knock out five, five chapters and you can feel really accomplished because you can tell everybody you read five chapters, that's right. And then there's like a lesson and a story in every chapter. So we really think that stories stick, that's right. And there's there's like a meaty lesson and a story in every chapter. So it's easily digestible. And what we found is it's transferable. So there are sports organizations that are using it, but there's also Fortune 50 companies that are using it and it really transcends. So the parable is really based on a team's journey to rise above the fear of failure and the fear of judgment Some of the stuff that we were just talking about and really learn how to love each other and become the best versions of themselves, not only for themselves, but for the people around them.
Speaker 1:So good. Okay, how can we connect more with you, find the book, etc. Tell us all the places to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jadin-jones. com. So jadin is J-A-D-I-N-jones. com. That's our website, probably the easiest. And then my email address is steve@ jadin-jones. com. So either way, you can find both Lucas and I's email on the website, but that'd be probably the easiest way to find us. And then we're all over social media as well.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect. Steve, thanks so much. This was a fun conversation. I just really appreciate your legacy, your work, your influence, and it's been fun to spend more time with you today. So thanks for investing in us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I enjoy the conversation as well.
Speaker 1:All right, gang, let me know what you thought of this week's episode. Didn't you love Steve's perspective? Couldn't you just feel his energy and passion? And don't you wish he had been your football coach when you were in high school? Such a fantastic leader with such good insights. So let me know again what you thought of this episode. Share it on social media.
Speaker 1:We're at Get4sight, g-e-t, the number four, s-i-g-h-t and pop on there, share with us what you thought. Share the episode with a friend, and then I would love it if you would go do a review for us. Like, your reviews mean so much and I know it takes a little bit of time. I know you've got to, like you know, jump onto your podcast app to do all that, but it really actually is helpful. So if you would, if you're a regular listener, I would love for you to go leave a review, leave that five-star review, and help us know how we're doing as we seek to continue to invest in you as leaders. All right gang, thank you so much for listening today. Share this episode with a friend and keep leading well this week.