The Leadwell Podcast
The Leadwell Podcast gives mission-driven leaders principled and practical advice to do just that, lead well.
In each episode, your host Jon Kidwell, interviews leaders with great stories, to share strategies that help leaders navigate complex, confusing, and often down-right challenging leadership, personal growth, business, and workplace culture situations.
Jon is a nonprofit executive turned coach, speaker, author, and CEO of a leadership development company. In working with nonprofits and businesses, big and small, he realized the unique challenges leaders face when they are committed to keeping the mission and people the top priority.
Send your Leadership and Business questions to Jon at podcast@leadwell.com.
For more information visit https://leadwell.com
The Leadwell Podcast
Life, Complacency, and Pursuing Excellence - w. Walter Nusbaum
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Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, where one path leads to the ordinary and the other to exceptional? This week's Leadwell podcast guest, Walter Nussbaum, shares his inspiring journey from the former to the latter—how a disciplined mentor and an epiphany over dinner at Bullwinkle Steakhouse set him on a course toward outstanding leadership and personal growth. We delve into those life-altering 'fork in the road' moments, and Walter's narrative serves as a testament to the power of positive influence and the pursuit of excellence.
Leadership is more than a title; it's a complex blend of skills, social savvy, and above all, character. In our conversation with Walter, we uncover the critical elements that define a 'total leader' and the importance of the Arete mindset—a philosophy that champions maximizing current potential and pushing the boundaries of what we can become. This episode isn't just about recognizing one's innate talents but also nurturing them to inspire and encourage growth within teams and organizations.
To wrap up, we explore the often-overlooked force of affection in leadership. Just as an elderly woman gave up smoking out of love, we discuss how affection-driven leadership can transform obligations into passions and foster a culture of excellence. Walter's insights on practicing and instilling these principles in our daily lives are invaluable. If you're ready to embark on a quest for leadership excellence, Walter Nussbaum is the guide you've been looking for, and we've got all the ways you can connect with him in our show notes. Tune in and transform the way you lead.
Connect with Walter and the The Nusbaum Group:
Walter Nusbaum | https://www.linkedin.com/in/wnusbaum/
walter@walternusbaum.com
The Nusbaum Group | http://www.thenusbaumgroup.com, https://www.facebook.com/thenusbaumgroup/,
The Arete Way | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AreteWay, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theareteway/, Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheAreteWay
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Order your copy of Jon's book at RedefineYourServantLeadership.com, and don't forget to utilize the additional resources, or purchase access to the Workbook and Coaching Videos.
Send your Leadership and Business questions to Jon at podcast@leadwell.com.
For more information visit https://leadwell.com
The Leadwell Podcast gives mission-driven leaders principled and practical advice to do just that, lead well.
In each episode, your host Jon Kidwell, interviews leaders with great stories, to share strategies that help leaders navigate complex, confusing, and often down-right challenging leadership, personal growth, business, and workplace culture situations.
Jon is a nonprofit executive turned coach, speaker, author, and CEO of a leadership development company. In working with nonprofits and businesses, big and small, he realized the unique challenges leaders face when they are committed to keeping the mission and people the top priority. Those leaders’ commitment to their principles and the people they lead, plus seeing the need for more leaders who strive to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, is what inspired Jon to start a leadership development company dedicated to the success of mission-driven leaders and their organiza...
Pursuing Excellence
Speaker 1Welcome to the Leadwell podcast, the podcast where we interview mission-driven leaders who are doing it well. We ask them what they're doing and how they're doing it so that it can help you lead your business and your people well. Are you settling? Are you feeling like you're just settling for what is instead of what could be? We all get complacent sometimes, whether it's as people or as leaders, with our organizations.
Speaker 1Today's guest, walter Nussbaum, is going to walk us through how do we pursue excellence and do it well. Let me tell you a little bit about Walter. Walter has spent 20 years speaking and helping senior executives do just this. Executives do just this. In addition to this, walter is the author of two books Do you have what it Takes? And the Sink Radical Transformation. With One Small Change From small private companies to Fortune 100, walter has helped them walk through strategies to pursue excellence, continue to drive growth and be productive. And he's here with us today. Stay tuned and listen to all that he has to say to us as we pursue excellence. Walter, thank you so much for joining us today. I am so glad that you are here and that we can talk about pursuing excellence as leaders and in the workplace.
Speaker 2John, thanks for the invitation. Honestly, anytime I get an email inviting me to talk about excellence because so much of my life was born not from excellence but mediocrity I take advantage of it every single time. So thanks for the invite.
Speaker 1Well, you said it. I feel as though we have to go that way, and I know from my own personal experience there's always something that happens, that kind of changes my perspective, my view on things, and it sounds like you've had it too. What's going on there with most of my life in this mediocrity camp and now excellence? You got to tell me what's going on.
Speaker 2Well, I was probably I want to say a typical kid, but I just was a very lazy kid. I don't know if. You seem like you're a pretty conscientious guy, so have you always been a pretty?
Speaker 1responsible kid.
Speaker 2As a young kid were you pretty conscientious when you were a kid.
Speaker 1I may have told people that my father has been training to be a 40, 50-year-old man since I was 12, yes, but I don't know that I've always been the most responsible. I think I am a little bit responsibly mischievous at times.
Speaker 2Okay, yeah, well, like any kid, Well for me, I was just flat out, unfortunately. I was just flat out lazy in many ways. My academics showed it, my disciplines in my life showed it. All of my habits were bad. I mean, I was an athlete and so the only area of my life really that maybe any level of excellence showed up was in athletics. But that was just because I loved it, and I talk about that a lot. By the way, at some point I hope we can talk about the role that the heart and the affections play in shaping the human narrative. But for me, excellence wasn't something I even really thought much about. I joke because I'm about as average as they come. You know, I graduated literally 50 percent of my class in high school. I'm five foot nine and a half.
Speaker 1That's like I'm in that camp with you.
Speaker 2Okay, brown hair, brown eyes, that's pretty average. Everything about my life has just been average until a moment in my life when a guy came into my life. When I got to college, I was underperforming. I was going into my senior year with a 2.3 GPA, just struggling through school, very lazy. And if it wasn't for this guy named Greg Bodden came into my life, I probably would. I don't know where I would be, but I certainly wouldn't be enjoying the fullness of life that I'm having today.
Speaker 1So what was it about that encounter that radically moved you from? I got a sense in there like a heart for it's average is okay to now this desire for excellence. What was it about that encounter with Greg that flipped this switch for you?
Speaker 2Well, he began to spend time with me. He was an athlete, he was a little bit older than me and he began just to invest time in me. And I just watched him. I watched his life, his discipline, the way that he was a reader. I was not a reader, I hated reading books. I was very undisciplined with reading. I don't know how much of a reader you were growing up, but for me I avoided it like the plague. And as I just watched his life, I remember saying to myself I want to be like this guy. And he worked for McKinsey. He was 27 years old, worked for McKinsey, drove an Audi, everything about this guy was cool.
Speaker 2He was a good looking guy, great athlete, played college basketball and as I just kind of watched him, I just thought I love the way this guy handles himself. I love the way I loved his faith. He had a real deep faith in God. He had real disciplines in his life and I just wanted to be more like this guy. And he just began to speak into my life. And one day he said to me, about six months into hanging out, he said hey, let's grab some lunch. And so we met at a place called Bullwinkle Steakhouse and I met him.
Speaker 1I remember I just can't imagine a better steakhouse than Bullwinkle Steakhouse, and I met him.
Speaker 2I remember I can't imagine a better steakhouse than Bullwinkle. This sounds wonderful, bullwinkle. It was wonderful. So we met there three o'clock in the afternoon and he said before we met he said, hey, bring your grade report from school. I was like why. He said just bring it, I want to see how you're doing.
Speaker 2And somehow I found a grade report. I don't know how I found it. I found one and I remember I handed it to him and he earned the right to kind of say some things to me at that point and he kind of gave me a tongue lashing about my grades. It was at that point a two to one, and he did it in a loving but very honest way about just how I should be ashamed of the way that I'm treating my mind, this mind that God has given me. I should just be more intentional about my life and what it is that I want. I've got all this ability that I'm not even tapping into.
Speaker 2Anyway, long story short, it made a difference and he gave me a challenge. And the challenge he gave me was he said I want you to start reading 10 pages a day. And he said that's 3,600 pages a year, that's 1,200, 300 page books a year. And he said if you do that over time, you're gonna begin to see some changes in your life. And I began to do that, john, and what happened was is people began in conversations, they would talk about things and I would start quoting from the books and have you read this book? And all of a sudden people began to see me as somebody that kind of had something to say. And just over time, my influence and my leadership began to grow, as my leaderships began to, as my disciplines began to, to follow suit. So really that was kind of the impetus, you know, in terms of what it was, that began the initial shift, but it came from me wanting to be like somebody, and that's really where that's where it started.
Speaker 1So it's simple. What he gave you was something so simple and you said something. You said people started to see me in this way and I'm just curious when did you start to see yourself in that way?
Journey to Personal Growth and Success
Speaker 2Wow, that's a great. That's a great question. Actually, I don't think anyone's asked me that question, john, very good, I would probably say that there was probably a lot of imposter syndrome in me. I'm reading these books but I never really believed this is who I was. It probably wouldn't be till my late 20s that I began to really see myself as a more serious person who really had something to say, who was going to make a contribution to people's lives, and eventually I made that decision that I want to spend the rest of my life investing my life into the lives of people just like you.
Speaker 2That to me that is the legacy I want to leave behind is is my life going to be a fork in the road to the people that meet me where they have to make a decision, just like this guy, greg? That he was a fork in the road for me, and so I strive that was my mission statement for years is to be a fork in the road to the people that meet me, and to this day, that's what I strive to be.
Speaker 1Wow, that is awesome.
Speaker 1Well, I'm, I am feeling that, that connection, uh, because as I'm listening to your story, I'm realizing that me and maybe others out there are like, oh actually, no, I completely aligned with, uh, this idea of average and mediocrity, and I was not a reader and I was also challenged to to step up and to do some of these things. I had a teacher once that tell, when I went to combat a grade, that said I don't know who you are, I don't think I've seen you turn anything in. Like, what have you done to show me that you earn anything different than this and very similar right To what it sounds like in yours, that there's a little bit of this loving truth. That, ultimately, is for your benefit, my benefit, but it's also like, excuse me, while I try to swallow this extremely hard pill, and so I'm sitting here connecting and resonating with a lot of what you are saying and I'm thinking other people are going to as well, and I, like you, had to do a lot of the actions before I believed that that's actually who I was.
Speaker 1And so what type of encouragement do you have for someone that's sitting there saying either I'm in the middle of it and it's not working, or yet, no, like I'm never going to be seen that way, what would you tell them if they're kind of in the throes of that?
Speaker 2that way, what would you tell them if they're kind of in the throes of that? Well, I mean one thing I do say, and I know you and I probably would agree with this Aristotle once said in every act of doing we are becoming and that is a quote for me that has really become a life quote.
Speaker 2If it's true that in every act of doing we are becoming, that means that in the process of creating these new disciplines and behaviors and habits, over time we will become the embodiment of those things. So if you have the patience to stay in it and make the choices you know you need to make, eventually they become reflexive. They no longer become merely disciplines, they become an overflow of who we are. And the problem I had, john, to be honest with you was you know, there's an interesting word we, in English it's we get this word called mediocre. In English, mediocre comes from a Latin word, medius ocris, and medius ocris in Latin means middle of the mountain, and it was a word that was created to describe a certain kind of person. And it was a person who would look at the top of a mountain and say I want to get to the peak. And when they get to the middle, they stop and they look out at the view and they say this is good enough.
Speaker 2And this is where the majority of people are, whether it's their health, whether it's their finances, whether it's their marriages, their relationships, whether it's their faith. There's an element where you just get complacent with good enough, and that was my life for so many years until this gentleman entered into my life and began to invest in my life, and then I began to really want to pursue fulfilling whatever the potential is that I have. And there's a beautiful Greek word for that too, and that Greek word is the word arete. And so, you know, I started this thing called the arete way and the arete center, and so I talk a lot about arete, and arete in Greek means excellence, but not like excellence that you did an excellent job. It means excellence in that you fulfilled your capacity for something, and that mindset.
Speaker 1I love how that is so different than what we might think of an excellence that you you said. It means that excellence is that we have filled the capacity for something.
Speaker 2That's right, that's exactly right. So what's great about that? That means is, no matter who we are I'm not comparing myself to Roger Federer, I'm not comparing myself to anybody else that has fulfilled their capacity I'm looking at what is my capacity at this stage of life. Right now and every day am I tapping into the capacity that I have today as a person, and hopefully, over time, that capacity continues to grow, and so I'm living the RTA way right, which the RTA way is pursuing excellence as a way of life. And so, as your capacity grows, your outcomes grow, and so you can talk about excellence or arete to a 10 year old, to a 30 year old, to a 60 year old, because at any stage in life, they have a potential, a capacity that they have the ability to tap into, and that was, that was the light bulb that turned on for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking that was the light bulb that turned on for me. Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking is what you're saying, as I fulfill that capacity, then I actually become capable of more, and thus I get to continue to strive to fill that new capacity. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2That's right. Capacity stretches into new capacities, and so that's exactly right. So every time I move up into a fulfillment of some capacity, just the way we're wired, the way it works, is new capacities open up to allow me to stretch myself even further. Otherwise, I become complacent at the capacity that I'm at, which becomes the new mediocre for me, right? So this becomes a mindset, right? It's the mindset that we have to try to embed into the people around us to say what does it look like to live up to your capacity as a husband, your capacity as a father? Your, you find out, is there's a lot of talented people out there who live on talent but not on the fullness of their capacity. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1A hundred percent. I think that they are extremely talented and they've not yet met the potential of all the full capacity that they have, and I think you took us there. So let's keep going there. I'm a leader in an organization, I'm the CEO, I'm the manager in the middle of the organization that has a team of 550, 500 underneath me that is supporting all of the work that we do, supporting all of the work that we do, and I'm looking and I see a Walter or a John or a Susan or whomever is there and thinking, man, they're really good, but they're not yet even close to hitting their stride. I see so much for them. What do I do as that leader for the person or organizationally even, what do I do to help everyone there follow the RIT way?
The Total Leader
Speaker 2Yeah, well, there's three areas that I think comprise the RIT way for a leader. So I talk a lot about what's called delivery value, and it's the ability of a person to be truly skilled at the job that they're doing, so that the value that they bring every day is high to the organization. And you talk about something like this too, john. I've seen some of your videos and you talk about this idea of competence in the workplace, how important it is to be able to deliver at a high level. So that's one element, but unfortunately that's where most people stop. As long as I'm delivering at a high level on my job, they feel like that's the fulfillment of their capacity work. But it's not. That's just one of the three.
Speaker 2Communicator am I? How effectively am I able to inspire and motivate the people around me? How much am I reproducing myself in the lives of others, where I'm mentoring and coaching and training other people? And then there's that one last piece, which is, I would say, the most important of the three, and that is the character development of the individual.
Speaker 2What does courage look like in my life? Do I speak up when I should speak up? Do I challenge ideas when I should challenge ideas? Am I risk averse or do I lean into challenges? What's my humility in life look like? Do I apologize? Do I go to people and acknowledge my mistakes? There's so many areas of character. What's my self-discipline look like? What does wisdom look like in my life? All of these things. So the opportunities for Arate, for excellence to develop, exists in so many areas of life that, whether it's delivery value, whether it's social competencies or whether it's character development, those three areas all comprise what I call the total leader. So that's what I challenge leaders to invest in and their people every day is their job skills, their social skills and their character competencies. You do those three things and you're going to help people begin to develop that R&T mindset.
Speaker 1Job skills, people skills and character competencies, and I couldn't help it. As you were talking through them, I almost saw them as that mountain. And what's going through my head is you know, we rise to the level of our talents, we fall to the level of our character. And yet, as I was listening to you describe it, it's almost as though character was the pinnacle, and like, the base level was I can do my job. And then the next level was I can do my job in a way that builds trust, relates with people, can communicate with people, and then the highest level was character. Is that how you see it? Am I missing it? Where or how would you stack these? Or is it not even a mountain? Is it something that's totally different?
Speaker 2John, I love that. You probably built my next model for me, but I love the way you put that together and you're right Now. I've always taught that character is, of the three, the one that has the most logical importance, because if you lack the character, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I love how you actually put it in the form of a mountain. So in our next podcast together I'm going to show the mountain with character development at the top social competencies in the middle and we start with skills, which are probably the easiest things to teach anyway, right?
Speaker 2People always talk about hard skills and soft skills. I always call them hard skills and harder skills.
Speaker 1To me the hard skills right, isn't that true? So true.
Speaker 2You can teach people. You know hard skills. It just takes a little bit of time and training and you'll get there. But people skills, that's tough, that's a harder skill. Yeah, because they're dynamic.
Speaker 1I can systematize my job. I can't systematize people. When we do that, we run into major problems that we've all seen. So it's dynamic and I got to be able to read all of the context clues that are going there. I love the way that you put that hard skills.
Speaker 2I mean how many people have said to you, john, that the biggest problem they have, that they deal with day to day, is people and culture issues?
Speaker 1A hundred percent, every single person every single day every day.
Speaker 2That's exactly right. And so learning the job I mean that's just learning the job. You go to school, get some education, maybe get some training, have somebody you know, you shadow somebody. You're going to learn the job. Just give us some time. But the people side of it, man, that requires a real dedication and commitment to be versatile, to meet people where they're at, to be able to build trust right. I've always defined trust as the degree to which you believe someone is for you. So when a leader has the ability to demonstrate to everybody around them that they're for them, that takes a lot of work and capability. And then, like you said, to get to the top of that mountain character, humility and courage and wisdom and kindness and goodness and these things, these are virtues that actually become a part of who we are, which means we have to do them long enough to they become a feature of our DNA, right? They become features of who we are.
Speaker 1It goes all the way back to what you opened up with is that you were doing a lot of these things before. It was a part of your identity and that seems to be the same with character is that I have to do some of these things, kind of like you said before, where I started reading and I was doing the actions before it became my identity. When I am kind, when I am good, when I show up humble, all of a sudden it starts to become a piece of who I am and what I do points to who I am becoming. Is that right?
Speaker 2That is 100% correct. That's right. We've become the product of the sum of our choices, right? So when you think about, for instance, the word character, it literally means to etch, and the reason is because characters early on were simply symbolics. They were symbols of language, so it was alphabet, it was the alphabet, it was numerical, they were called characters, and over time that word evolved to take on the idea of the character of an individual, which means that, just like they used to have to etch lettering into stone and wood and marble, everything we do is an etch into us, and every time you etch that it becomes more of an imprint into you. And so the more you do it, the more it becomes who you are. And that's why we say somebody's character is the sum of the choices that they've made in their life. So you don't change your character overnight. Your character is formed by the product of choices over time, that suddenly they are like a reflex. You now reflex your character because it's who you are.
Speaker 1And I have a feeling that there is somewhere in there that idea that points towards excellence. You said early on, there's this component about the heart and the affections, and I get the sense that now that you've been striving, kind of working to reach the capacity, that full potential, that there's some of this that might also be going on in there, where it's kind of etched and it just becomes a part of the ongoing process. Is there any connection there with the heart and the affections and it becoming a way of your being?
The Power of Affection in Leadership
Speaker 2100%. That's right. In fact, the affections are probably the strongest transformational element. The heart is the strongest transformational element that gets a person to commit themselves to long-term change. Let me give you a great example.
Speaker 2I love this story. I'm walking into a Starbucks one day and as I'm walking in, there's people outside at these tables and they're smoking. And there was an elderly lady in front of me and I opened the door for her. And as we're walking in, she says to me I sure am glad I don't do that anymore. And I said you used to smoke. And she said I smoked for 50 years. And I said wow.
Speaker 2I said you don't smoke anymore? And she said no. And I said can I ask you how you did that? And she said two years ago I became a widow. My husband had passed away. And she said at my age. She said you don't ever expect to meet another wonderful man in your life. And I did. She said about a year ago I met this wonderful man and we began to spend some time together. And she said after a couple months he said to me he said you know my wife. His wife had passed away from emphysema. And he says to her every time I see you smoke. It's so painful for me to watch because of what I went through with my wife before she passed. And he said I just don't know if I can continue to see you. And she said do you know that was the last day I ever smoked a cigarette.
Speaker 1And I said not just cold Turkey done.
Speaker 2And I said you quit a 50 year habit right there. She said I've never smoked a cigarette since then. And I said how did you do that? And this is what she said. And it was beautiful. She said I guess I loved him more than I loved smoking. And the point is what she was saying is that that's the power of an affection that when your heart learns to love something, the behaviors and the motivations naturally flow out of it. And so when a person truly loves the idea of being a leader, like John, I'm going to assume one way you and I are a lot alike. I can tell just from our time together you love the idea of being a leader. Is that true?
Speaker 1100%.
Speaker 2Yeah, and everything that comes with it. And so you love to read about leadership, you love to talk about leadership, you love to invest in leaders and you don't even think about it. You just do it because it's the overflow of your heart, that's your affection. If you've ever worked with somebody like I have, who being a leader is not the product of their heart, they feel like it's a duty that they have to do with their job. You and I both know that they are not doing it out of love. They're doing it out of obligation, which means they're not investing in their people probably the way that they could or should, because it doesn't flow out of the heart and so.
Speaker 2I talk a lot about this idea of affection, and how do you develop these affections where, now, suddenly, your loves that you're creating become the motivating factors, of what drives you to do what you want to do?
Speaker 1Wow, I love that and just turn it for us here before we close. How do I instill some of that very practically inside of an organization? Right, the immediate one for me is loving the work. Right, I can go through hiring to make sure that people are motivated and inspired by the work. I can focus on communicating the mission, vision, values, and that one was the first one. But what are some other ways that I can help people embrace excellence, kind of grow to their full potential by focusing on affections inside of the workplace.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a great question. So I talk about very quickly three things that really comprise the dynamic that creates new loves, and so everything that you and I love, everything that anyone who's watching this podcast loves in life, these three things are true about them, and you can actually create new things to love that you've never loved before if you commit yourself to these three things. And I know this is true because I today love reading, I today there's things I love running. I used to hate running, I love running now. There's things I do today that I used to not love. In fact, I shunned them and today I love them. So here they are.
Speaker 2The first thing is you have to be absolutely clear on what the value of the thing is. If you don't find value in it, the chances of you loving it is virtually zero. I'm married to Stacey because I realized there's a value in my wife, Stacey, before she was my wife, and if I didn't find value in her, I would have never gotten that relationship off the ground. To someday say I love you and I'm sure it's the same with you, john right. So there's got to be a real clarity of value, and this is one thing that leaders don't do well. They do not talk consistently enough about what is the value of the work, of the project, of the mission, of the vision, of what we're all about. So we have got to be value creators and value evangelists in the workplace. So let everybody know. This is why what you're doing is so important.
Speaker 2Secondly, you've got to have somebody, either an individual or a group of people that you look up to, that are people that you want to aspire to be more like. This is Greg bought for me. So when I looked at Greg bought, here's a guy that I valued, who he was. I saw value in his life and I wanted more of what he had and he loved me and he spent time with me and he invested in me and it made me want to spend more time with him. As I did that, it got into me and then what he did is he began to make me do number three, which was to now practice the thing.
Speaker 2Begin reading 10 pages a day, begin getting up earlier in the morning, doing my workouts in the morning and not waiting till 3 o'clock in the afternoon, doing my workouts in the morning and not waiting till three o'clock in the afternoon, but do your workouts at 7am so that you are controlling your body and you're not letting your body control you. That's what he used to tell me all the time Do your workouts in the morning, walter. It's going to make you learn to have your mind over your body. So same thing in the workplace. We need to create mentors. We need to create these programs where people are shadowing people that they admire and aspire to be more like. And if you can do those three things, over time that thing will become an affection for you, because you value it, because you've got somebody you admire and you look up to, that models it, and because you've been doing it. Now you've been doing the thing and over time it becomes part of who you are.
Speaker 1Wow, I'm sitting here thinking for all the leaders that you, walter, and I probably engage with, and sometimes there's a culture of complacency and it's hard to talk about excellence. It's hard to step into that difficult conversation where we're saying something like you need to be reading 10 pages a day, or this isn't the capacity that I see for you. What do you see for yourself. That can be really hard, and yet I hope what all of you just got from Walter is one. We need it because, left to our own devices, we might settle for mediocre and think that middle of the mountain view is great. Two, that it really is for their best interest.
Speaker 1And when you come at it with a heart of earning that relationship and leaning in, it's going to be something that can be good for everybody involved. And he's got some framework. So go back and listen, jot them down as I have, draw the little mountain and where all these things go. And, walter, this has been so great, but I would be remiss if, before leaving, I asked you the question we ask everybody, which is Walter what does it mean to you to lead well?
Speaker 2I would say to lead well would be number one. To lead myself well. That I've got to be an integrated person, that who I'm trying to get other people to be, I'm striving to be myself. So it's got to start with me. You can't fake it right. Eventually it gets found out. So I've got to be the person that I'm describing to others, that they should strive to become like. And then I would say that leading others well is about reproducing a part of you in them. That leading others is taking your DNA and imposing that DNA onto others, that they began to have the same loves and desires and influences that influenced you. So I think leadership, ultimately leading well, is about influence. It's about influencing yourself and influencing the people around you.
Connecting With Walter Nussbaum
Speaker 1You have to lead yourself well before you can lead others well before you can replicate the things that you want to see. That is awesome, walter. Thank you so much. Where can people connect with you? I follow you on Instagram. I know there's a website. Point us in the direction where people can connect with you.
Speaker 2LinkedIn. Obviously, if they want to connect business-wise, it's Walter Nussbaum. There's only one in the entire country, thankfully, so I'm easy to find Walter Nussbaum, yep, so that's probably the best way on business. In terms of Instagram, it's actually the Arate Way. It's not even my name, it's A-R-E-T-E. The Arate Way. It's a great little fun channel. I do little short videos and, yeah, connect with me on there and I'd love to help however I can.
Speaker 1Awesome and we will make sure those links are in the show notes so that anybody can download those. And, as I said, this is one. Go back, re-listen to the episode, take the things in there, take the encouragement, take the challenge that Walter also put out there, so that you can continue to lead well wherever you are and pursue excellence, because the work that you do matters. My friends, thank you for being with us today. Be well, god bless, and lead on.
