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Words from the Wise
Join Words from the Wise with Gary Wise, a retired Navy Command Master Chief, for authentic leadership insights forged in real-world experience. Through engaging discussions and actionable strategies, Gary empowers you to master emotional intelligence, build resilient teams, and unlock your full potential. Tune in for practical advice on delegation, conflict management, and inspiring others, drawn from his over 28 years of service and ongoing leader mentorship headquartered now in Ocala, Florida.
Words from the Wise
The Anatomy of Change: Leading Teams Through Transition
"Trust is the currency of leadership." This powerful statement forms the backbone of our fascinating discussion on navigating organizational and personal change. When facing transitions, what separates successful leaders from those who struggle isn't necessarily their strategy—it's how much trust they've banked with their teams.
Throughout this conversation, we unpack why people resist change (hint: it's rarely about the change itself) and how leaders can transform that resistance into enthusiasm. We explore the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that characterize today's leadership landscape, offering practical approaches to each challenge. You'll discover why creating artificial urgency without substance backfires, while authentic urgency paired with a compelling vision mobilizes teams toward remarkable achievements.
Our panel of leadership experts, all with military backgrounds, shares candid stories of leadership successes and failures. They reveal how emotional intelligence fundamentally changes your ability to guide others through difficult transitions, and why the best leaders focus on developing other leaders rather than controlling every aspect of change themselves. We discuss John Kotter's eight-step model for leading change, with particular emphasis on building a coalition of willing participants and removing barriers to progress.
Perhaps most compelling is our examination of servant leadership as the ultimate approach to change management. As one panelist notes, "Everybody wants to claim they're a servant leader until they're asked to scrub the toilets." This honest assessment challenges us to consider whether we're truly practicing leadership as service or merely using the language to elevate ourselves.
Whether you're leading a large organization, a small team, or a family, this conversation offers practical wisdom for navigating change with integrity, purpose, and effectiveness. Subscribe now to continue exploring leadership principles that transform not just organizations but lives.
I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. Don't care for the critics. My words are life physics, a force that they can't stop. They just don't get it. I didn't forget. I'm not done till I'm on top. I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. I believe, I believe, we can write a story. Hey everybody, how we doing? Gary Wise once again, words from the Rise. I got Chris with me, chris Cahill, and we are going to be here today talking about, you know, leadership topics, hopefully, that are interesting to people that are out there. I will tell you something, for me and Chris, probably near and dear to your heart Parenting, trying to understand how to best communicate to our children, how to best communicate to our teams and, hopefully, sharing a good message. So, before I go any further, brother, how are you doing today?
Chris Cahill :I'm doing excellent, man. Another great week. How about you?
Gary Wise :Oh man, you know I'm doing, I'm doing, it's a good week. We're getting ready to go out of town tomorrow, so there's, no, no work for me. Tomorrow. We're celebrating or commemorating I'm not quite sure the best way to say that. It was a year ago we lost a family member, and so we're going to go down south and participate in a mass and just kind of take some time with family, just to kind of all get together and remember, uh, how it was.
Chris Cahill :You know how it is sure.
Gary Wise :So, yeah, so, celebrating, commemorating, yeah, I think it's a little bit of both man I'm looking forward to it. You know we're gonna have the grandparents there, have my, have my, my, my sister-in-law, my wife, my kids and just that's good downtime, you know. Yeah, it's good man, you need that, it is, it is. So your week is going good.
Chris Cahill :Nothing crazy going on I've had actually some really cool stuff and I just did a podcast yesterday, um, with uh, dr byers I know you're friends with her as well and and we did a pretty cool podcast on stewardship. So I'm really excited about where that's going with her and with me. So we've got a pretty cool, pretty cool idea and concept in place. And then the war room man. We had another great day today. Life is good man, god is good.
Gary Wise :Awesome man. So does Dr Byers have a podcast.
Chris Cahill :She does.
Jeremy Moore :That's awesome.
Gary Wise :Good for her Podcast for everybody.
Chris Cahill :I love that. You know how they say it's better to have a friend with a boat than to have a boat. Yeah, I like having friends with podcasts because every week I'm talking to somebody on a podcast and I am awful with the technology side of it. So I'm just like, yeah, you send me a link, I'll be happy to talk with the technology side of it.
Gary Wise :So I'm just like, yeah, you send me a link, I'll be happy to talk. So, yeah, no, that, hey, I'll tell you. For me it's creative outlets chance to get out there, communicate with people, hopefully share your message and just who knows where it's gonna go. Man, like I have no idea, I just, I just have the feeling like I need to do something with it.
Gary Wise :I'm not quite sure where but, away it goes, god will reveal it. Yeah, yeah, you know, and just have the feeling like I need to do something with it. I'm not quite sure where, but away it goes, god will reveal it. Yeah, yeah, you know, and just have faith, right, okay.
Gary Wise :So this week, you know, I always try to look at, especially for this series in particular is sharing some sort of information that I think would be helpful to, in particular, leaders, in particular particular parents, right, because as I work with these kids every day, I see that there's probably opportunity for parents at home that are raising children that are getting rapidly to the age of being adults, to not just parents but also to lead, right, and to leverage leadership skills that are going to help their kids to not only recognize the skill but maybe even learn it, because the best way to learn is to see it in action, right, sure, and so the thing I chose for this week is navigating change or just dealing with change, right. So I think, out the gate, man, what is your, I'd say, first thing that comes to mind when you're thinking about how to best implement change or how to best handle a change, and let's say from the perspective of the person that change impacts, right?
Chris Cahill :Yeah, so the person that change impacts. So a big part of my life is helping people manage change, whether it be through estate planning, loss of someone, whatever it may be, and what I have found is a couple of things, but as regarding the person that it changes, it's not so much change that people resist as much as it is the loss of control, as much as it is the loss of control. And so I have found that by positioning things as a way to help them elevate or magnify control, and just reframing things, it makes all the difference in the world. And I heard I had a leader one time, a mentor, tell me that change leadership is about being, how did he say, the thermostat, not the thermometer. And so you set the tone for how they're going to receive change by the way and the energy that you present it.
Chris Cahill :So if I said hey, if I said, gary man, next week I'm going to, we're going to do this podcast differently right away, you're kind of like, yeah, but if I said, hey, gary man, what you're doing is awesome, and somebody shared with me an idea that might even take it to the next level, and it it would do X, y and Z, and I know you're capable of doing that far better than me.
Chris Cahill :I wanted to share with you the vision and clarity that I have for what that might look like and see what your thoughts are. And now you're feeling like, oh, he's giving me control. I've got clarity, I set positive energy and so now, instead of you feeling like, why is he trying to change? You know people love to say, well, we've always done it this way, that's not the way and that's the death of progress. And so I have found that helping a person realize that giving them more control helps them not feel the fear of change and instead embrace it as an opportunity. And that really comes from how you deliberate. So it's that thermostat versus thermometer kind of opportunity. And that really comes from how you deliver it.
Gary Wise :So it's that thermostat versus thermometer kind of. You know, everything you said is spot on, bros, that's all money, and I agree, right. And there's this perception of control Right, it's an illusion a lot of the times because ultimately we're not in control, right. And the more you try to be in control, actually, the more you're going to be frustrated. Hey, you know what? I just saw, that Jeremy just dialed in and so I'm going to bring him into the conversation here, all right, so everybody welcome, mr Jeremy, hey guys, hey man, how you doing, we've got three heads now I want to see, does it look better, Like?
Gary Wise :no, let's go back to how it was. Let's do that, Okay, Okay. So we've got Jeremy. We're talking about change and that's going to be the goal for today. Oh, I see the Liberty University jacket a little flex.
Chris Cahill :Nice.
Gary Wise :Good for you. I like it Right, hey. So, Jeremy, off the top, if you had to talk about the best way you'd recommend to somebody to handle change and let's say you're on the receiving end of the change how would you best give them advice, how to incorporate that?
Jeremy Moore :I mean, if you're not changing, you're not growing right. You can't. I heard a little bit backstage of what you guys were talking about and I think I had said the same thing to you in the past is how we've always done. It isn't the answer. And especially the way technology is is evolving around us. You know, if you don't get used to change, if you're not ready for change, then you set yourself up for failure.
Gary Wise :So that's fact yeah, hey, just for everyone that's listening to the sound of our voices. I just want to recap, you know we we now have myself, gary Wise, here on the podcast retired US Navy CMC and teaching high school, now teaching Navy Junior ROTC Got Chris Cahill, who is a United States Marine veteran. He also runs his own personal finance brokerage office here in Ocala, florida, as well as a pastor as well as an author, as well as a leader in a whole bunch of different things. And then we've got Mr Jeremy Moore now on the line or on the podcast here. Jeremy's a retired Navy chief petty officer, hospital corpsman type, lots of times with the Marine, 24 years of service, and now he works in the medical field here in the civilian sector here in Ocala and it's kind of been my vision for a while to have all three of us here. Kind of talk. We're finally here.
Gary Wise :Yeah, this is the first time right, and it's kind of a big deal because, again, selfishly, it's kind of my men's group right, but then unselfishly, I think that you brothers have a lot to offer the community and, truth be told, I know my students listen to this and watch this, so at a minimum they're gonna get this right hey, you need motrin or moleskin.
Chris Cahill :You got the team that we're here stop.
Gary Wise :I just need some clean socks, bro. That's all I forgot clean socks and some water. Well, you know what's funny about that is? So I just shared a post yesterday on my social media because coming out of easter man.
Gary Wise :This last easter I really felt a revival in my heart of like a new, a new beginning. I don't know what it was about this year I don't know if it's because I went and saw the chosen in the movie theater, I don't know, wow but this year I felt like it's like just a new, fresh opportunity, and so I've kind of been posting every day about things that really I appreciate in my life, and one of the posts was about my parents and my dad joined the Navy in Vietnam as an undesignated sailor and he eventually struck hospital core and he eventually became an HM2 before he got out of the Navy so he could adopt a baby, because my mom couldn't have kids and I was that baby that they adopted, right. And so, as I look back on my career and all the cool hospital corpsmen that I'm buddies with and friends with, the first two other interviews I've done outside of this, one is a retired, retired hmcm, or one is now an hmc that converted up to being a public health officer. So just okay, I just can't help but have love for the hospital corpsman man. I just tell you what? Uh, all right, so getting into back into this change leadership stuff.
Gary Wise :Uh, volatility, right, the world is volatile. You can't control it. You cannot. And what the definition of that means is it's the speed and unpredictability of change out of your control. That's volatile. Right, things are volatile.
Gary Wise :And I say that because jeremy was talking about technology and the world, and I remember being younger and thinking that things took forever because we had to, you know, write a letter to somebody and send it in the mail, right. And then I remember the first time I got an email from my parents on the ship, I literally wrote them a letter with my email address in the letter and said please write me, right, this now is an email thing and I would like check it, like every day and every day. And then one day I got an email, right, and I it was like 1998, right, and I just remember thinking like, oh my god, and to watch how the world has changed from 1998, and and I think we will never fully understand it, because you had the war on terror, with, like, with technology, just together, right, um, the volatility of the world was just crazy change, right, um. And then you have uncertainty is another thing I want you to think about, right on, how would you define, chris, uncertainty, uncertainty?
Chris Cahill :Without using the word uncertainty. Well, it's obviously not being certain, not being confident or clear of the future and, like you said, with volatility. You know a stockbroker is part of my job as a financial advisor and so I obviously the last two months, right, have been very volatile. That's kind of the word, the buzzword in part of my industry. And the reality is, you know, when you go into the market, you know you should know it's not certain. I mean, we know that long term it grows.
Chris Cahill :But I always tell people and I think it's good to set clarity up front about uncertainty I tell people look, if we're going to buy stocks, here's the reality.
Chris Cahill :Over a 10-year period of time, you're going to have two or three years where you love me, you think I walk on water. You're going to have two or three years where you hate me and you call me every three days and want to yell at me, and then you're going to have five or six years in the middle where you're just so-so. Over a 10-year period of time. You of time, you'll be extremely happy if you can just ride the wave and stick the course, but the reality is there is so much uncertainty that you have to kind of you know, plan for the or plan, I guess, for the best, but recognize that you know Murphy's law changes, changes is, is that's the one constant. We know things are going to change and with the stock market there's so much change that volatility that creates uncertainty. So not being able to forecast and plan clearly for the future because there's just too many variables that are out of your control, right?
Gary Wise :Yeah, definitely, and I think that you can certainly be uncertain, baby. One of the things we used to say in the military was it all averages out over a 20-year career.
Chris Cahill :Right.
Gary Wise :If you're getting jacked over on this day, it's fine, bro, it all comes back around in the wash and you just got to have some faith in the organization, or faith in the big picture, or or just don't just chalk it up to what's going on and figure it out. But I think back to the uncertainty piece, if we want, you can't predict everything. You'll go crazy trying and just try to have some faith and and figure out the future. Okay, so for jeremy, I want you to think about how complex things can seem in today's society, right, or just in today's a human nature, even though, I mean, I think humans have been dealing with change very similarly since since as far back as we could probably imagine. Right, I think change has always been hard for people to swallow. But how complex has the world become, especially when it comes to the idea of how do you handle change?
Jeremy Moore :And what we're doing is we're setting the stage, man yeah, well, I mean, you know, if you look at um kind of the basics like as a hospital appointment, they always told us, you know, when in doubt, go back and check your own pulse and then start with airway, breathing, circulation kind of thing, things aren't so bad around us now that you can't go back to the basics and just be like, okay, what's the major problem here?
Jeremy Moore :And you can always go back to, okay, we just need to communicate more. Okay, we need to curve expectations and and have honest conversations with the people around us. And that's really to me, that's that baseline going back and setting those expectations and and just getting back to the basics, because it doesn't matter what it is, it's always going to be crowded around the same kind of problems, the same kind of. So it doesn't matter how technologically advanced we are or how you know, whatever it is, it's the moment you stop. You know, I have this adage that, like always, always, always, think about this in a good light. Like I'm coming to you with positive intent, I'm not coming to you with negative intent. You know, that's kind of how I tried to look at life too and and see the things around me and try to just have honest conversations with people.
Gary Wise :Hey, I'll tell you, you reminded me of what Chris said, which is trying to reframe it Right. One of the things I'll say when people are making things too complex, right, I can see them making it harder than it needs. To be Like bro, no one's getting shot at right now, yeah Right. No, to be like bro, no one's getting shot at right now, yeah right, no one's gonna lose a birthday, no one's gonna freaking be told. I hate you personally. Let's go ahead and I like what you said. Let's reframe this, right. But but the other thing is, it's really coming, it's really gonna happen. So you need to recognize that part, right. And so, instead of creating this huge problem for everybody, just let's circle back to what the fundamentals are, like you said are they breathing? Do they got the pulse? Is their airway open? And then let's get back on track, right, because instead of everybody going for the emotional roller coaster so probably not going to help.
Chris Cahill :So, gary, I got to share something. So when I'm doing counseling with people, a lot of times I'm doing addiction counseling, and addiction really is about control, and it's about people not feeling that they have control in their life, and so, rather than trying to come to terms with it, they try to bury it, and so they bury it in chemicals or whatever it may be alcohol, drugs, whatever it could be food, but, in other words, it's their fear of not having control, so it's really becomes a self-destructive kind of characteristic. But here's something, though, that I have to share with you, because I started teaching it in counseling and then it grew on me and it actually became something. I am kind of a control freak, even though I know better, and so, in business and everything else, I try to control as many variables that I can, and sometimes I'll be honest, I can get stressed out, particularly when technology is not working right, and I'm like, ah, and I got to tell you something that I teach that when someone told me to start really internalizing it and not just teaching it, it made a big difference, and a lot of people are familiar with the serenity prayer. You know. God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. But let me tell you, let me tell you the whole serenity prayer, because people don't know it and it's. It changed my life when I internalized it and I memorize it and it's a part of my morning prayer every day and throughout the day. So it goes like this God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. There's your control right there. Right the courage to change the things I can.
Chris Cahill :And sometimes we get so passive when we're frustrated that we give up or we bury our head, and that's not right either, and that's why we have to have the wisdom which comes from God, the wisdom to know the difference. But let me finish it. It goes on to say accepting that hardship is the not a the pathway to peace, accepting the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, and trusting you, lord, to work all things for the good, if according to your time and your purposes, and then it ultimately ends so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you in eternity, forever and ever. Amen. That's the full serenity prayer.
Chris Cahill :And when you actually approach, that whole thing is about accepting that I don't have control Right. That whole thing is about accepting that I don't have control Right. And if I can learn to accept that hardship then I can actually find peace. And in that peace I'm walking with the Lord and through that he will work all things together for good and ultimately not just for this side of eternity but, more importantly, eternally. So it's really powerful and when you start kind of praying through that on a regular basis it really takes away a lot of that need for control that causes unnecessary anxiety.
Gary Wise :Well, to that point, I think it's important that people understand, like you just did, like you've broken down the words, right. So in my, in my classroom, every day, we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance and we'll do what's called the Cadet Creed, right, and I will literally break that down at the beginning of the year and teach them the words. And when I say the like, the pledge of allegiance, I will hit those high points. You'll hear me. Hit them because I want them to understand, I mean every word of that. And when you say it, because it can become repetitive, right, if you say it every day. But you have to learn. Here's the why it matters, and you've got to incorporate that into what you're looking to do, right. And then the other thing, to everything you just nailed, uh, I think, with anything in this life, it's all about perspective, right, and if I could turn on the perspective of ownership, but also omission, and giving it up to a higher power, and asking for the help, but taking responsibility for how I got to that spot to begin with, or my you know. So there, I taught a lesson the other day to my students, which was essentially at the end of a class I had some free time. I always, at the end of the year, I teach them about rich dad, poor dad, right, always. Because my dad gave that book to me when I was probably at 27, 28, changed my life and so now I, at the end of every year, I teach it, because I never know if they're never going to be my classroom again. At least someone gave me access, right, right.
Gary Wise :And on one of the slides I have, it has this guy on a puppet strings at a job. You've got a bank with their handout asking for their money and then you've got the government on the other side saying pay me more, right. And and I and the intent of this slide is to say the person on the puppet strings is working for the boss, the bank is is making the person work for them, for their money, and then the government is making them give them their evil money or whatever it is. So I asked the students I said you know I actually don't agree with the premise of this slide, but I'm curious to know do you guys agree with this? And they were all like yeah, yeah, yeah. I said okay, here's my difference. I said number one, the guy in the middle chose to take that job. He didn't have to take that job, he chose to take that job, and so he chose to be the person working for that puppet.
Gary Wise :And oh, by the way, if you're a person who has their own business, that hand above you is your clientele, right? Like you don't ever just not work for somebody, right, there's always something in the world. I said, oh, by the way, that bank that you borrowed the money from to do the things with you got to pay that back bro, like that's part of the deal, right, but don't look at it like, oh, the evil bank. You went to them, probably, and asked for the money. You could have waited and you signed the paperwork, yeah.
Gary Wise :And then I said and then, when it comes to the government, I said look, I'm going to be honest with you. I can't tell you the last time I ever got a tax refund I just can't tell you because I pay as little freaking tax as possible where I got to write them a check at the end of the year. So I want to know that I actually do owe them by giving them extra money every year and then get me a return. And I said now the majority of our families, because most of the kids in my class are, I'd say, middle to lower income. Most of our families don't even think twice about the tax code. I said now, people that have access to a lot of information and actually care most of them personally don't pay no taxes. They let their business pay the taxes for them and they get all the write-offs and such, and people can be mad about that. But how come we're not educating ourselves with our cell phones and our internet and all that other stuff?
Gary Wise :And then I said one other thing. I said you know what else I'll tell you. Look at this person on the puppet strings. That, to me, is a person in a long-term committed relationship. They have chosen to be in a space with somebody that it's not easy and you may hear it said oh, I'm not your puppet, I'm not your. Whatever I said, that's hard to do and I think that it's important that you have to choose to be in that relationship.
Gary Wise :What I did this year was I paired the rich dad, poor dad principles also with being involved in emotional relationships with people and learning that a lot of the same relate again if your cup is empty, you're not going to be able to possibly handle people well. If your bank account's empty, you're probably not able to handle things right the bank you know what you owe a lot of people in your life for getting you where you're at. You need to go see your mom and dad once in a while. You need to call home. You need to say thank you. You need to not forget how you got there and don't look at them like, oh my God, why do you always act like I owe you something? Because it's just part of the deal.
Gary Wise :And then, when it comes to the government, there's people in the world maybe you don't want to deal with, but you know what you got to figure it out. You got to figure it out and not just isolate, and I I hope for a lot of them they understand that. For me, my perspective is I take ownership of how I got into a position and if I'm going to get out of it, it's going to be my job that to do that too, right. And when I look at change and when I look at the change that's coming, I've always taken the responsibility for my response to the change right, even if it's beyond my control. Um, and the last piece of this before we move into the change cycle. That I want to kind of go around. Today is talking about ambiguousness, right?
Chris Cahill :First off, that's huge. In my opinion, the very beginning of change leadership is getting buy-in on a common vision. You have to have clarity on that vision. If you've got 10 people and you're like, hey, let's just go win, you're asking for trouble. If you've got 10 people and you're like, all right, man, here's how we're going to get to the top of the hill and here's what it's going to look like when we get there, and you kind of get buy-in, that's all the difference in the world, because now people can still take ownership and responsibility for their independent actions along the way, but they're fighting for something bigger than themselves that they can see clearly. If you're ambiguous in business, if I'm ambiguous as a financial advisor, if I'm like, yeah, you should go buy some more stock, what does that even mean? Like you need clarity, and clarity is everything. I think that's the beginning. Yeah.
Jeremy Moore :That reminds me a lot, and I'm blanking on the name of it, but it was a psychological game where it was like the wolves and the villagers have you ever heard of this? Okay, you take 12 people and you put them in a circle and you identify two people as wolves before it even starts, and now the the group itself has to come together and figure out as a team who the two wolves are, and then by or werewolf, you know. But and by doing this, really what you kind of do is you um prove that the informed few can manipulate the uninformed masses. Yeah, you know, and really, that's, that's a lot of what that's news today, but anyway, yeah, no, no, it no 100% truth, right, and I'll tell you.
Gary Wise :You know this, you guys know this. But we know, as a government, as people, I know people leadership right. We know how to insert and manipulate whole things right. It's part of our American DNA. We've done. Look from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.
Gary Wise :The reason why, that's in the song is because when we first restored the United States Navy, after disbanding the Navy, we were getting our ships taken hostage off the shores of Tripoli by freaking Islamic extremist pirates in the late 1700s, 1800s, early 1700s, late 1700s. Okay, so Jefferson commissions the ships and says you, six frigates are going to get out there. You're going to put an embargo on Tripoli. You guys are going to go ashore, you're going to convince the local Islamic people to have an uprising against their Sultan or whoever that guy was. So they'll stop taking our ships captive, because they were taking our sailors captive, our cargo captive and they were essentially holding us hostage because our flag was not respected, because we had no Navy right. And so here's what we did. There's a great book about this called Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates or something like that. But anyway, we send the Navy over there with the Marines. Right, because you know Navy and Marines since the beginning of time. They're together. Right, because you know Navy and Marines since the beginning of time. They're together. Right, the Marines go ashore. The Marines start rabble-rousing all the freaking locals hey, we need to overturn the government. They're mean. America can help you. Let's do all these things right and right, as they get this whole army that's ready to go take over in that major capital, capital area, the politicians make a deal, right, and guess what we do? Oh, oh, we, we gotta go and we dip out, and all those people are left to stand trial for rising up, right, right. And then a couple years later, guess what they still get. They start to do it again. Right, they're out there capturing ships again and they're out there being problems again. And so this time the president says, okay, that's enough, this time we're gonna do it. And so we go back, we do the exact same thing again. They freaking, they. They get on land, they get with the locals who they connect with before they convince them. This time it's really gonna happen. They rise up, they go and they do take over and they do do turn over the government and we do get, uh, the pirates to stop attacking our vessels. Right, and that's why that's laid into the, the fabric of our foundation.
Gary Wise :Now, I used to tell this story to the marines and the sailors on my ship because I would be over there, persian gulf, we'd be off the coast of triple e, we'd be over there by indonesia or east team of war to africa, freaking, dealing with the houthis or dealing with some pirates? Right, that's something we've been fighting against islamic extremist pirates since before our country knew what the hell we were doing. It was the foundation. That's why we had a united states navy right to be honest with you and the but the other to why we had a United States Navy right To be honest with you and but. The other problem is we broke a moral contract almost out the gate, but we asked these people to help us do a thing and then we abandoned them when we made a deal and I said so. Do you get where people in the world bigger than us might question our long-term intentions? Right, and that's a complicated conversation to have with people, but it's one that we have to have as leaders, because the world is not as big as it used to be right, you can get on a phone call right now and be having business partners in France and England or whatever it is, and when I think back on that, I just think to myself about how important it is to be honest, be authentic and also to remember those local people on the ground. None of them were really in charge. It was really, ultimately other people that were delivering the change. They had to deal with it, right.
Gary Wise :Sorry, that was a C story just to share, but I just for just for me that was. It's one of my favorites. I read that book and I was like holy crap, what history that we. I never thought of. Okay. So I found this eight step model for leading change, and what's cool about this model is I've used in my entire career. I had no idea this was out there. There's a guy named Dr John Cotter. I know Cotter. Okay, good, so he started it. So Cotter says if you recognize you've got to create change, okay, for whatever the reason, right, for whatever the reason, you're now the boss, you're now the head shed, or you've been told this is the new thing, have you guys?
Jeremy Moore :ever heard the story of the damn exec? Not sure.
Gary Wise :I don't think so. Okay, so the damn exec, right On a ship, right, the executive officer is the number two in command, right. And so if you go on board the ship and you see somebody that needs to go do something, you ask them hey, what are you doing? He says, well, I got to go do something. Why? Because the damn exec said so, oh well, that guy's kind of tough. And then you find somebody else and they're painting something. You're like, why are you painting the bull kid that looks good? The damn exec said I had to paint the bull kid, right. And and the idea behind this philosophy is everywhere you go, the orders are all coming from the damn exec. But all the exec does is says maybe we should paint that bull kid, yeah, maybe we should sweep that p-way.
Gary Wise :And I had this exact same thing happen today at school, because a student came to me and she said uh, mass chief, can I go talk to the principal? And I said, uh, principal, why? She says, well, I was told that it's unfair that I can't go to the prom, and so I needed to write a letter from my parents, and they I wrote the letter. I said, no, no, your parents must write the letter, not you're supposed to write the letter. She says well, my parents signed. I said OK, whatever. And they told me that the letter it does not meet the requirements for reasons to she missed too much school. It does not meet the requirements for reasons to she missed too much school, right. So she. We have three things in our school. Got that good, gpa can't have too many tardies and you can't miss too much school. If you trip one of those wires you are disqualified from going to the freaking prom, how it is. But then there was a period of time where you could write a letter and plead your case to the court, right, well, that time is now closed.
Gary Wise :And so the teacher that was talking to my student said oh honey, it's unfair, you should be able to go still, I'm sorry, you should just ask the principal. So the student comes and asks me, asks she. I said look, here's the deal. I'll be the first one to tell you. Look, I'm sure that last teacher didn't want to be mean. I love you, I'm telling you that right now, but you don't deserve to go to the front. It's just how it is. I'm being up front with you. The last teacher should have told you the same thing. The rules are broke. It's how it is, and there you go. That's how it is, and there you go.
Gary Wise :Now, now that I told you that, is there a possibility that we could maybe escalate this and ask somebody a higher level question? I said, yeah, sure, but I want to manage your expectation right here, now that it's starting off with a no, because you missed too much school and you knew that as a high school senior coming into the year, that's a rule, right, it's been like that for your whole high school career. I said so, let me do give me a favor. I'm going to call the secretary to see if the principal would even entertain this conversation, because I said she's like the commanding officer of the school. You can't just go knock on the CO's door whenever you're bored and act like they've got to let you in and talk to them. Right, that's just not how things work. Now I get it. They'd entertain it, but if I ever got up there and saw one of my sailors in the CO's office, right?
Chris Cahill :yeah, every CO has an open door policy, but that doesn't mean you walk through it.
Jeremy Moore :Yeah right, there's consequences for walking past that threshold, that's right.
Gary Wise :So I called the secretary and she's right in front of me and I said hey, look, I tell her everything and you can hear the secretary on the phone. No, that time has passed. This is not even being entertained. You can sit her down to me and I'll tell her. I said no, ma'am, I can tell my student what she needs to hear. I just wanted to confirm that I'm not jacked up and that we're on the same page, but I just want to let you know that we need to align the rest of our administrative team. And she said can you tell my teacher? I said no, I'm not going to throw the other teacher under the bus like that. I said but I get it, they want, they don't want, to deliver the bad news.
Gary Wise :No-transcript, you do. You miss too many days. You were supposed to get your butt up and go to school. You didn't do that. Guess what? You don't get to go to the prom, right? So on this first step they got here is they create, they say create a sense of urgency when you recognize you need the change. My thought process is how do you come down to your people, your team, your family, your kid, whoever, and say, hey, I need to mobilize you as to why this change has got to happen. Yeah, and they're probably not going to want to do it.
Chris Cahill :Yeah, so when you look at that model first off, I think if you go back to that, like Simon Sinek, if you find your why or or whatever, I think if your why is big enough and your why is clear, then change again is more about control and less about fear. And when you look at cotter's cotter scale or whatever, the eight steps, you know you want to create urgency. Uh, I think you want to, like get everybody riled up together and you need, you need to, you need to have, you need a clear why, a vision statement, and I, to me, I feel like all three or four of those steps are really essentially one. Because you can't, you can't rally the troops if you don't have anything to tell them, to rally them to, to have the vision, and you can't give a sense. I can't just say, quick, everybody run. If I don't already have a vision now.
Chris Cahill :If I could say hey, guys, this just came in, we got to do this and here's why it's going to work, let's go Now. All of a sudden, I think the sense of urgency makes sense when they know the why. So to me, that sense of urgency is important, but I think you have to overlap it with the why? And the buy-in. Kind of collectively, I would almost look at all three of those steps as one collective step.
Jeremy Moore :Yeah Well, I mean, and and you know stuff that goes with that. Things that go with that is, if you're walking into a new leadership role or you haven't been with this team for very long, you're like hey guys, let's run. You know how you build up to that, how you earn that trust is giving, getting that buy-in and telling them, you know, showing all your cards. Hey guys, full transparency, this is what's going on. And then, over the years, you develop that trust.
Jeremy Moore :I mean, yeah, there are times where you can walk in and be like, all right, I'm the guy in charge, you guys are going to be here for three days, so just listen to what I say until you're done. Yeah, if they trust you, trust you, yeah, right, you know, but once you build that rapport, you might be able to walk into a room you know of veterans or veteran people within whatever system you're working in, and be like, hey guys, we got to go right now. And they're like you know what? He's never led me wrong before, so I'm going to go. So, yeah, there's different levels to that.
Gary Wise :Well, it's both of your points right. Certain positions inherently start off with a level of trust.
Jeremy Moore :Right, just how it is.
Gary Wise :Yeah, I know, throughout my career, or even to this day, right, if a senior person in my organization was to ask, or even a peer, I will offer a certain level of trust, just because I want to be helpful and be productive, right, right, not be a person who's going to always be conflicting when it comes. Today we had to go set up a bunch of chairs and tables for testing tomorrow morning. Right, I had been given no, no, no heads up on this and they were going to require my entire fifth period class to do so 150 something chairs. And I got the email on the way in as I'm driving to work basically says can you support this? My initial reaction was like hell, no, I got a plan today. I got a plan today and this ain't it. But then my other reaction is my plan is not that important. The school needs us to do this.
Gary Wise :I love helping people out and my cadets would like to do something different. That's actually maybe they know act, productive, constructive piece of their time and so. But what I did was I made sure, when I talked to the people, a couple of things I said. Number one in the future, I would like to know at least 72 hours in advance, we can project this movement out. It's not hard. I know we can do that. Number two I'm the guy. Send me the message. Don't send it somewhere else, because ultimately I'm the guy you know. All people go through me. It's just how it is right Calling that guy. All he does is he's going to call me. So just call me right. And then, last but not least, what time do you want us to be there? Don't just ask me generally. Can you help tomorrow, brother? That's a, you know. Okay, I need a little more specifics. My, my number one of my attention is yes, but I need some more information.
Gary Wise :But all of that I want to. I lead with yes, right, I just do. I always have, I always will, I've never. I I've had some leaders in my career that were no to everything and we would still do it anyway. They were just pissed the whole time, just pissed off, right, old school Navy, right. And what I learned was I would much rather have to have a seat at this conversation than just say no and then someone else is going to make the decision for me and just tell me to do it anyway. So, okay, I hear you want this to happen. How can we best get it done and then go for that, right?
Gary Wise :The other thing is trust is the currency of leadership. Right, it just is. I'm glad you worded it like that. Just spending money, right, that's it. If you ain't got no more in the bank, they're gonna not want to work with you, they're not gonna want to deal with you. Right, you've got to go ahead. You've got to always be building those relationships, always be. And my other thing is they've got to trust you to be consistent, right, you cannot afford to come in and create a sense of urgency that doesn't have what you were saying, chris, that vision where we're going to go, that energy Right.
Gary Wise :So I almost always am the person, as long as I can remember, that gets told to go get this done, right, right, it's like, however, I was, whether I was a DC two, which is an E five Right or whether I was just a teacher. Now I'm getting told go get this done. And my sense of urgency typically comes from my enthusiasm for the opportunity. Right, like, hey, this is an opportunity, it is, and I'm going to find a way to make it one every time Right, I'm going to find a way to make it one every freaking time. So one of the steps in this it says build a coalition of willing Right when you're leading. I'm talking like leading large teams, I'm not talking about leading four or five, but if you got a team of 300 right, how important is it to get those key people?
Chris Cahill :that you can get them together, say here's what's going on, here's the why, and then get them energized like freaking voltron, you know, to go the right direction to lead the charge yeah, well, like if you look at, if you look at the bible, like even there you had, you had the multitude, but then you had the 12 and within the 12, you had the three, and then obviously you had in the center you had Jesus, but you had James and Peter and John and so forth, and it's like multilevel marketing. It was kind of like look, I'm going to have it is.
Chris Cahill :It's like look, it really is. I mean disciples, really is. I mean discipleship making disciples, disciples making disciples is multi-level marketing.
Gary Wise :It's like hey, I bought it sometimes. Yeah, I said, church can really look like Amway sometimes, for sure a little bit.
Chris Cahill :It kind of. It kind of is. And the thing is I know I know like whatever, all the Melaleucas and stuff maybe have given a bad name to multilevel marketing and Ameriprise or whatever and people don't like it. And if your neighbor says, hey, I just started this, you're like please don't come talk to me. But whatever it is, I'm not buying it.
Gary Wise :And, by the way, it doesn't work, that's why they get it too. And, by the way it doesn't work, that's why they get it too.
Chris Cahill :But no, the reality is multi-level marketing at the core. I mean, that's really what leadership is, it's. I have a vision that I know works, and now I want to empower you with it and then teach you what I know about it so that you can then teach others, and that's just good leadership. You teach them what they need to do to teach the next and it's that ripple effect Dr. Dr Lee and I were talking about this yesterday. If you're leading good you're. There should be a ripple effect in what you do.
Chris Cahill :You're not carrying 300 packs, you're motivating the 300 around a spree to core to carry their 300 packs. So you've got the supplies you need to get wherever you're going, or whatever it may be. But yeah, absolutely You've got to get a coalition together. First you've got Esprit de Corps. You have to have everybody buy in and then, within that, you have to then be able to have leaders, and those leaders have to really buy in and sub-leaders and sub-leaders, and so there is an element of multilevel marketing to good leadership. Just like Moses and Aaron Like you can't do it all, moses, you need to raise up generals like, let's go.
Gary Wise :Yeah, and I think it's. You know, it's the power of leveraging, right, because the levers are working their way all the way down the chain link to the actual hands on the thing that are getting it done. And I love the idea of the multi-level marketing. I mean, we laugh, we joke because it's a piece of Americana, right, but at the end of the day, we all grew up in the 80s, right, and it was the thing.
Gary Wise :But leaders grow leaders. If you're not growing leaders, you're not leading. It's just there's a difference. You're probably managing, you're probably controlling, you're probably not leading. Because if you're a real leader, when I look to Christ's example, right, and we were talking last time about the Last Supper he was really giving them the turnover right, like the Last Supper was really him saying okay, guys, I had the watch, yeah, you got the watch. Now, bro, this is your opportunity to move the ball forward. And oh, by the way, I'm going to come back after they close up that rock on that tomb to really show you that there's just no way you can ever question any of this, ever again.
Jeremy Moore :And they never did right.
Gary Wise :After the resurrection for all those apostles that might have had challenges throughout their tenure as followers, after the resurrection they never turned back again. They were solid until they were, unfortunately taken off the earth, taken off the chessboard, right. And so I agree, man, you gotta do. You gotta do your best to figure out how to grow leaders and give them the space and the opportunity to lead through that change. And you also need support, right? Nothing is worse than trying to lead people into the fire, and nobody wants to go right there. Matter of fact, they're cutting the water off on you at the plug and they're saying, sorry, we're not doing this today. And you're like no, we gotta fight the fire. Right, absolutely all right. What about? What about the leader's job when it comes to removing barriers? In the change, jeremy, there's gonna be a lot of boundaries and perceived barriers. So what's the leader's job when it comes to that?
Jeremy Moore :Well, I will tell you, like you've got to find your own way to. You know, instill that trust in someone that they can come to you with a problem, because when they stop coming to you with a problem, you're no longer their leader, because when they stop coming to you with a problem, you're no longer their leader. You know. So I've always been very much like, hey, come on in, you know, let's talk whether it was my LPO, whether it was somebody you know like my manager. Now I'm like look, we're in this room, it's just me and you and we're just talking. You know, your value is just as important as mine.
Jeremy Moore :I want to make sure that, at the end of the day, when we walk out this door and, gary, I'm sure you've probably heard this before when we walk out this door, regardless of whose idea it was, this is now our game plan and you've got to have that connection, to sit in that room with them and give them the information and trust them with the fact that they're going to give out only the information they need to give out in order to make whatever plan come to fruition.
Jeremy Moore :You know, it's that, that building and you mentioned it earlier, gary with the currency and trust, because I've always told people that a relationship, regardless of what it is, is just like a small bank account you know, and you've got to put money in there and you've got to put that trust in there. And every time you put that trust in there, you're building you know you're building your, your fallback, your, your, you know safety net, and then you've always got to put in more than you're taking out. So you can't be like, hey, I need, I need, I need, I need, I need, give me, give me, give me, and never put anything back in because I mean, let's be honest, there's givers and there's takers. But as you grow up in your, your life and you develop your leadership skills and you work on your relationships like you have to learn at skills and you work on your relationships like you have to learn at some point you can't always be a taker, you know.
Gary Wise :And yeah, and I'll tell you, if it's recognized that it's a, it's a, it's a transactional relationship or it's only a one-way thing, it will become an untrusting thing because there will be an unfairness aspect, right, and and I believe the leader has more responsibility, more responsibility to provide more value than the follower, because we're supposed to know better, right, like the parent is supposed to know how it is to be a teenager, because we were one, right, so we understand a little bit better of a perspective than what they have because this is their first time being 17, 16, 15, right.
Gary Wise :We have our experience, our cousin's experience, our friend's experience, other people, and I'll also tell you, for parents, sometimes you need to leverage that experience with other people, because I've never been the parent of a 17-year-old until today, right, and so every day is almost a new day when it comes to that. And so whenever I meet people with older kids, I'm like what's it like to have a kid that's an adult bro? Like how does that work? Remember, because I'm curious, right, and I think, like when you went behind that door and you said look, dude, it's me and you, we're working together, we're a team, and one of my favorite lines is we all win if we don't care against the credit right like absolutely, that's it right, like if you're doing this for the trophy, you and I are probably not going to be on the same page, because, yeah, I am.
Gary Wise :You are way worried about the wrong thing, in my opinion. Right, we need to be worried about number one. First off, are we all safe? Right, that's just the way, I think. Are we all safe? Okay, if we're all safe and it's not crisis, and what's the right thing to do? Is it illegal, unethical or immoral? Right. And then what's the procedures in place for our team to do? And Right, right. And then what's the procedures in place for our team to do.
Gary Wise :And then, if I've got the time, what does the team think? I'll bring everyone in and let's have the conversation, because I want them to. I used to tell the sailors on the ship all the time If I've got the time to have the conversation with y'all, we'll have it. But when the lights are out and the fire is hot and I say go, I need that trust right here, right now, let's go right and and that's it, and you'll build that's resiliency, right, you'll build that resiliency, that ability to recover quickly to a hard hit when they just trust you in that moment, like he's the one, follow him, let's go. And then my other thing is you got to build those sub levels of leaders.
Chris Cahill :So if you go, if you take the hit and you go down, they could keep on fighting through whatever the chaos is gonna be, you know so, to piggyback on on on what we were saying a few minutes ago, I going back to to like just the role of the leader and all of that and barriers. Yeah, a mentor, one of my mentors along the way in corporate world um, he, he actually wrote a book, published the book, but the whole book was literally on what it was called D-R-R-O, d-r-r-o and he said you don't have to learn anything else about leadership if you just remember D-R-R-O. And it really is that simple. And what that stood for was develop relationships, remove obstacles, relationships, remove obstacles. And he said, he said he said look, brown nosing is when you kiss the whatever up. But as a leader, if you're always looking up, especially in corporate, when you're like, oh yes, I'm a yes man, a yes man, a yes man, and then when stuff isn't right, you're yelling down, you did it backwards. And he said it really should be the other way around. You should have the weight of up on you and you're like, wait a minute, is that really troop welfare? Is that mission accomplishment? Is that troop welfare? Is that mission accomplishment? But then, whatever ends up being the case, you present it back to the troops with positivity, no matter what, whether you liked it or not. Like you said, whoever's idea we walk away with, I'm behind it because I'm behind the mission of the greater good. And so then you wear the weight up and then you go down and you motivate.
Chris Cahill :And the whole point was, if you develop relationships that are built on reinforcing positivity, recognizing effort and then reframing setbacks is what he would say. And so it's very simple If somebody does good, you lift them up and that makes more people want to do good, makes them want to do good. And if there's a setback, you reframe it as a team and you say here's how we can get better as a team. And your whole job once you've done that you have good relationships D-R is R-O. Your only job as a leader is to remove obstacles to the machine's good. So if you've built the right team, it is a machine, and when there's something in the way of that tank, you jump out and you move it so you can keep going, or whatever it is, your job is to just remove obstacles so the machine can keep rolling.
Chris Cahill :And too many leaders are the opposite. It's what recognition do I get? So now they're developing relationships up and then removing obstacles up, but the machine is getting stuck, and now you're trying to micromanage them, and then you're getting frustrated with them and all you've done is become a problem. You're that person at best as a manager, but they're definitely not a leader. Leadership's are all about D R R O, and if you don't remember anything else about leadership, remember those four letters and you'll do fine in life.
Gary Wise :Yeah, I do, you know, I agree. I think that you know, leadership is a full contact sport, right? We all have our good days and our bad days. You know, I have on my email to this day. It says I earn my anchors every day because I never want to forget that I can make a mistake. Today that's going to cause me to regret a little something, right? And then I've got to circle back.
Gary Wise :If I was a little too gruff with somebody, I got to come back and try to explain here's my perspective and here was why I was frustrated. Or here was what was going on. Or, if you know, I I've been known to tell my people once hey, every once in a while you got to take down a hostage, right, every once in a while someone's got to be the one. That is the example of. You know what. Don't spit in the wind and wonder why I grew back in your face, right, and that's just part of it. On the reverse side, I think that we have got to do our best to develop those relationships to exactly what Chris was saying, to where they want to optimistically look forward to what you're going to say. And the other thing I will tell you is. We have to have the courage as leaders to say, hey, honestly, boss, this is not the thing for me anymore. If that's what we're doing and I've done that countless times, I really have. I've had my as, as the mass chief. When, for my CEO to tell, for me to tell my CEO, like, if that's the message you got, to do an all-hands call, put that one out yourself, bud, I can't know, because we got problems. What do you mean? Here's what I mean. I'll tell them.
Gary Wise :I used to always tell this to my chiefs. I used to always tell them we would do these things called disciplinary review boards, drbs. The chiefs would all get in the mess. They'd ask all these questions of somebody, or we'd have a meeting about some sort of a change initiative and they'd give me all their rotten eggs and all their raw vegetables. They'd throw it all at me. I said look, I got no problem putting all that crap in a bucket, carrying it straight up to the captain, dumping it on his desk and telling him here's what your senior leaders think from their perspective. I said but here's the other thing I'll tell y'all. I reserve the right to disagree with you. I said, because my responsibility to that leader is to give him my unfiltered opinion. And I don't get the luxury of just being like all of you. I've got to figure out what's the best thing. And so, my mess.
Gary Wise :They would always, once the meeting was all done, they'd be like hey, gary, what do you really think? And I was like, oh, I would never tell them until the votes were done, until the voting was done, because we voted on we're like a bike club, right, we're voting on everything in the mess, right, and so we're not, we're not talking about anything to the votes. And once the votes are done, they would ask me gary, what's your, what do you think? And I would tell them and I'd almost all of them like I want to revote, I want to go, gary, you know. But because it's about perspective, right, but that they also trusted that I would go up there and deliver the message, right. I would go up there and tell them here's where they're going to have a hard time getting behind you, boss, and they'll do it because they're good.
Gary Wise :So today, one of my students we were talking about a change that's coming down at work, right, and I told my student she's an upperclassman, a leader in my battalion and she said but Mass Chief, how do you handle that? I said I do it like this. I go in and I tell the commander everything he needs to know and then he says what he thinks and I say what I think and then he tells me what to do and I say yes, sir, that's how it goes because I'm a chief. That's just how it works. I'm not going to go in there and fricking, not If it's not illegal, unethical or immoral.
Gary Wise :I'm probably going to do right, because that's a little. I will obey my lawful fricking orders. Unless I no longer want to obey those orders and I'll quit this job and go work somewhere else. Yeah, right, and again, you control. If you want to be the puppet on the strings or not, right, and you got to do what you can do to take care of control. The other thing is change will always have barriers, in particular people that will struggle with the change. Right, they're gonna freaking struggle. How do you handle those people that are on your team or in your organization that refuse to get on board?
Chris Cahill :Well, I'll give you an example. I was doing consulting for a business that was trying to transition to the next generation, from parents down to the kids taking over the business and so forth. But there was a lot of change happening because the new generation coming in wanted to digitize everything that used to be done more analog. The parents didn't really want to step out yet because they didn't trust their kids, but yet the kids thought the parents were just antiquated and out of touch, and so they don't. There's a lot of not trust for each other and everything else.
Gary Wise :It sounds like a bigger conversation than just business.
Chris Cahill :Oh yeah, Succession planning when you're doing businesses is so emotional because there's so much tied to it, more than just money, and you kind of go through those three they call it the three zones the comfort zone, the learning zone, the growth zone and some people won't go through that zone, like you said. Some people won't go through that zone, like you said, and somebody who is a team player will go from I'm no longer comfortable to let me learn and that comes from good leadership to I'll accept this and grow for the greater good, but somebody who doesn't go to, if they say, if they stick with, like Jeremy was saying earlier, well, this is how I've always done it, which, again, is the death of growth and progress. But when you start hearing that you've got to, you really got to remove them from the situation. And I'll tell you an example. There was two things that I did in this scenario. The first one was I said listen, nobody likes change. So here's what I'm going to do, and this was just reframing. I'm not going to change you at all. What I'm going to do is I'm going to analyze your personality style and then figure out how to build a framework around you so you can continue to be authentically you and the system around you will complement your strengths and your weaknesses to hit that success.
Chris Cahill :And they were super happy, right. But they were super happy, right, and they were like. They were like this I love this. I've had two other consoles before you and they told me I had to change things. I love you, you're not making me change, I just changed everything. But I just framed it in a different way. And he was all excited. He's like I'm not going to change. And of course we changed everything around him, which means he changed completely. And that's kind of how we went, that's kind of how we went through. That was was reframing it so that he felt better. And I did do personality studies on him to figure out how to deliver it in a way that would leverage his strengths and kind of obscure his challenges.
Chris Cahill :But it was really about reframing because here's the alternative.
Chris Cahill :I've done this in another scenario where the person, even with that, was kind of stubborn, kind of like this mentality, and eventually I needed to fire the adult, the parent, to give it to the child, which he was an adult also.
Chris Cahill :But and so what I ended up having to say, cause I couldn't walk in and just say, listen, I'm going to fire you and give the company to your son, cause you're just out of touch. Obviously, that wouldn't work, so what I ended up having to do is say, listen, your wisdom is so much better than you being bogged down by the day to day. Say, listen, your wisdom is so much better than you being bogged down by the day-to-day that what I want to do is really promote you to the figurehead of the company and the consultant so that you can work with me directly and focusing on capturing your wisdom, so we can transfer that to the next generation, and then I can handle the day-to-day grind to the up-and-comers, which was another way to say I'm firing you and I'll allow you to hang out with me and feel important.
Chris Cahill :But again it was reframing, and so I'm. I've become in my life sort of a master of reframing bad news Cause that's a big part of my job.
Gary Wise :Well, what I hear and this is you know, we talked already about how to do change, right, we kind of walked through some of the steps that we told a bunch of stories. All that's how you do it. What you just showed is not just the steps but the communication piece of it. Right, because the words you use, the, the empathy you show, the emotional intelligence, you deliver, the recognition as to what respect that person's looking for, right, that that's huge right, if you're ever going to change something about their circumstance or their situation. Again, I tell people all the time I don't ever fire someone, I don't plan on rehiring again unless either number one, the plastic's already on the ground and I'm never going to see them again. Right, and look, I've had people walk in my office. They're looking like what are you doing? Look for the ground. And I'm never going to see them again. Right, and look, I've had people walk in my office. They're looking like what are you doing? Look for the plastic. I'm like, bro, you're not getting fired Like it's fine, right, but I just either. I'm not, because if you're going to still be on my team and again, I firmly believe the best team you'll ever have is the one you have right now, right. You have right now, right.
Gary Wise :Just hiring new people is not always going to make it work. So if I've got to change your position because you're an obstruction to change or you're a cat, you're going to be a catalyst somewhere else in the organization and I know you're a better fit to get them moving. Then I've got to make sure I communicate to you the growth opportunity for you and what's in it for you and, yes, eyes wide open. It's going to be good for me too, and for the organization. But I don't care about the credit, I care that we all win. And there you go, right.
Gary Wise :And that's where I think a lot of leaders or people that are supposed to be managers of change, people that have certifications in change, really struggle because they lose sight of making sure everyone understands that we're all doing this for the same goal, which is to make whatever team we're a part of to be the best it can be, right At the end of the day. Yeah, when I say emotional intelligence, jeremy, what do you think? When I say emotional, it's a new, it's emotional intelligence. It's the whole rage right now, in 2025.
Jeremy Moore :Yeah, I know, it's not like you know, this is a new topic.
Jeremy Moore :Yeah. So emotional intelligence I mean really it starts the moment someone's mind changes from what am I doing Friday night to what am I doing a year from now, five years from now. Once they start accepting that planning phase of their life emotionally, they kind of start to change. So you're looking like the 23 year olds. Once you're past that kind of peak, high emotional environment, once they start getting to that planning phase of life, those emotions have taken off and you'll get the rare ones where they're 17, 18 year, like you're, you're the wisest 17 or 18 year old, I know. You know, just because they've probably dealt with some struggles earlier in their life than most other people, or or Right Right, their experience, yeah, they get that emotional intelligence about them where they can plan and they, they see the plan, even if it's not, you know, affecting your point.
Gary Wise :It's not even that, bro. They can. They can connect with people emotionally yeah because they have the, the wisdom, somehow already to recognize you're going through something, you're struggling with something. I can recognize these indicators and I'm going to have the ability to draw that out of you and then hopefully get you on track Right.
Jeremy Moore :But then you've got to. That's got to come from a person who is accepting what's happening around them.
Jeremy Moore :Obviously, if you haven't been through anything and you're trying to be empathetic to somebody who just lost their parents and you know you hang out with your parents every day kind of thing like you're. You're not going to know really how to translate that loss and you'd be like you can't walk up to him and be like hey man, I know how you feel. I had this dog when I was little and be like, hey man, I know how you feel. I had this dog when I was little. I'd be like no man, my father just passed away. And trying to connect with him, you've got to be able to have that empathy and that insight into other people's emotions and honestly know what that feels like and how you would react or how that could be emotionally damaging to you.
Gary Wise :Do you think or do you believe or do you know? Right, all three are possible answer codes. Uh, do emotions really matter for a leader?
Chris Cahill :yeah, okay yeah, so in my mind, um, I have a different, actually a whole different way to look at EQ than Jeremy was saying. But to answer your immediate question first, emotions definitely matter. Controlling the emotions definitely matter, and you may have heard the concept red zone, blue zone, and so, for those that are listening, maybe you know the red zone is the typical, the caveman kind of mentality of fight or flight, and I don't like this, I'm going to fight it or I'm going to leave, and that's obviously low EQ, and we all have it in certain areas of our life, especially in certain times of our life, and so forth, but that's. We all can recognize that. The whole blue zone concept, though, is actually when you're able to actually digest the information and kind of discern it and be more calm and collective about it, and so, from a from a counseling perspective, or working with someone else's perspective, or so forth, we all might be going through the same stressful thing. This just came in, and it's a changing everybody, the, the leader that all of a sudden goes, oh screw this, I saw they're always trying to do that to us, or whatever it is. Well, you, you've just lowered your EQ and also the trust and respect from those that are going to follow you.
Chris Cahill :But when you're kind of, I think, like Tom Hanks in a saving private Ryan, he was very blue zone. He didn't like it either, but he really embraced, embraced this up. He was very quiet and when things came across that he didn't like like why are we going back there? We just came from there, we marched all these days and haven't eaten or drank, and now we're going back where we just came from. They're all complaining, but he's just kind of quiet and he spits out a word of wisdom about why we need to go back and let's go do it.
Chris Cahill :And who did you want to follow? You want to follow the guy who's having a temper tantrum? Or do you want to follow the guy that? I don't like it? I see why let's go do it. And that's to me, that's. That's a part of why I'm. Being able to control your emotion is important. But also when you're trying to rally the troops, using that emotion and turning it into passion, maybe, or turning it into enthusiasm maybe it's a better word so that people could say look we're, we're all fighting, we're all going up the hill and we're all tired. Yeah, but there he is, he's leading from the front and he's singing cadences the whole time, like I'm following that guy, and so your emotions definitely matter, and controlling it matters more.
Gary Wise :And I think you understand that you don't get to control how people receive your emotions, right, so you could think you're the most charismatic, passionate, fired up motivator and everyone's like this guy's always freaking, yelling at everybody, right, you know, and I will tell you, for me and my career, that's always been one of my challenges, because I'm high energy, high speed, low drag and I get in the room. Yeah, I know, right, and I'm having a lot of freaking fun, right.
Gary Wise :I'm literally I'm having I'm telling that to my people, I'm having fun and because they have to learn who you, how you are. Right Because, like for my people, if I'm ever super quiet and calm, it's either number one I'm either really pissed, like I'm really angry, and so now I'm really careful what I'm saying because I don't want to say anything out of anger that I'm going to regret, and I'm angry or number two, I'm worried. I'm really worried and I don't want to let the cats out of the bag yet. Right, I'm really worried and I don't want to let the cats out of the bag yet. Right, because my authenticity, I'm lowering myself down, because I'm going to be managing expectations, bro, because this is about to suck, right.
Jeremy Moore :And I'll tell you that part, that part.
Gary Wise :This is about to be hard. We did this march the other day, called the Bataan Death March or the Bataan Memorial March, and we marched 15 miles and I've never walked 15 miles, to my knowledge before, I've ran a marathon. Wow, but I but I don't. I mean disney got it right or whatever it is, but I mean but no, but I mean, like that was that whole blue side thing.
Gary Wise :They don't walk far but here's the thing these kids would literally walk five miles, turn around, walk, but there was no stopping right. And I'm at the back of the bus with my five cadets that are bringing up the rear right. I've got everyone else out front, I've got them all, and I fell back with my five that are in the rear. And I'm talking, I'm hype, I'm, I'm hollering at him. You know, you gotta keep walking, you're gonna go, you go, you're going to go.
Gary Wise :And I remember when I had this epiphany and I was like I'm going to tell y'all right now. I came from mile 13, 14 and 15. I just had to go through one, through 12, to get here. But when I got out of bed this morning I said so why? Everybody else is like oh my God, I can't wait. I'm just getting more and more excited because I'm like we got some. This is what I want. I want this, fuck right. And they're just like gosh, you're freaking nuts. And I'm like no, I want you to be proud of yourself and be excited that you've got through. I mean, these kids had special challenges, they had special concerns and they were doing it and I was so proud for them that I was like bro, I'll put you on my back and carry you across.
Chris Cahill :I saw your, I saw your video post and I went online to grab a picture of my Alice pack and I was going to post it on there and be like you need to carry this next time. And then my Facebook shut down on me and I felt like that was God saying don't put that on there. Yeah, don't be that guy.
Gary Wise :But it was. I will tell you, it was just something to think about. When it comes to leadership styles, leadership communication, and throughout my career, there'd be people that didn't like my style per se and they'd say, oh, gary's too emotional, and they'd be like brother, it's not that I'm emotional, it's that I actually like to come to work every day. I'm actually happy to be here. And then for my chiefs, I would try to tell teach them, read the room. You got to learn how's it being received. Do they understand? And for me, that's a big part of emotional intelligence is you've got to learn to read like non-verbal indicators. You got to learn to recognize how are they react in their body language, right, if? Or do they have like my? I've trained my. My students now know they can walk in my portable anytime. Mashie, can I talk to you?
Gary Wise :I will stop what I'm doing, get up and come out the door, because and I always say, I always say, matt, I live every day for these conversations like this is the good ones, because I know they've got something big going on. And when I was on the ship, same thing. They walk in my office. Senior, can I go talk to you in the pair locker Like, oh my God, this is about to suck, but they came and got me.
Gary Wise :They came and got me and this is the opportunity that you get as a not even a leader as a person to help. And coming back to what my role is, my role as a believer in Jesus Christ, I feel like it's my responsibility to let it be known that I'm available for you in that capacity, absolutely. If you need something Right Like, especially if we have a relationship right, I mean I will help probably anybody. If you were to call me up and say, gary, I need help tonight, I'd probably get my car and, head over, I'm on my way, right yeah, well, look at, look under my name on the screen.
Chris Cahill :Like that is my, that is my life mantra is serve first, serve last, serve always, and so that's the way. That's just the way I feel believe leaders should be.
Chris Cahill :At least, that's the way I'm called like it is, and I think you've got to be like that, just and everything right otherwise I don't feel like you can separate one or the other so let me ask you a question though, gary, that, as you were talking, this has just been coming to my mind over and over again. That whole, the whole, the whole argument and I don't know if I have an answer, depending on the day, are leaders born or made? And when you talk about eq and reading the room, I know plenty of grown adults twice my age that can't read a room and they walk in and they suck the energy right out of the room and like, are they?
Chris Cahill :well, how did they make it to 80 years old and never learn eq, never learn emotional intelligence, never learned to read a room I I'm going to pass the ball to Jeremy first.
Gary Wise :What do you think, jeremy? Oh gosh.
Jeremy Moore :You know that's.
Gary Wise :I can take it right, I've got my answer Go ahead.
Gary Wise :This is one of my favorite mid-watch questions, right? This is one of my favorite. This is the kind of stuff I live for. Here's what I believe. I believe I can train almost any manager in the world to become a leader. Okay, I cannot train almost every leader of the world to become a manager, right? Just, some people don't want to manage, right, but people that management abilities I can teach them how to lead, right, okay. So, um what? I was adopted right by birth. When I met my biological mother, I was a Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy already.
Gary Wise :I looked for her many times throughout my life, had never been able to find anything, came back from Japan. There was the Internet, could never find anything. Night in 2014, put down my Xbox controller, opened up my iPad and five minutes later, god solved the riddles of my life that fast and I had done the exact same thing many times. Right After I reconnected with her and it's a story I'll tell you all someday. What I found out about her is she's a very successful woman, very successful entrepreneur, ran multiple businesses, ran lots of important things in her life, made a lot of money, did a lot of great things, but also would marry three times, divorce three times. Right Found my biological father about six months later. Right Looked at his family very, very, very, very, very successful family, very well off financially, all these great things. He'd been married three times, divorced three times.
Gary Wise :Okay, looked at my parents. That raised me. We. We tried amway, right, you know, dad was a corpsman, got out of the navy, became a paramedic, became an lpn, ended up not wanting to always have to go to car accidents where babies were hurt and tried to get into computers, but that didn't work out. Spent his whole life as an rn. My mom, my dad, were married god for probably I mean almost probably 45, 50 years and they died about two years apart and died living in a two-bedroom condo. Like great life.
Gary Wise :So when I look at it, I look like I got the best of both worlds. I got raised by a family of believers who had this great marriage and then I had this natural genetics from these people that just they had success all over the place, right. And so I look at nature versus nurture almost more than is it, and I believe nurture is much more responsible for somebody developing and becoming a strong leader than nature. So, while you might have those natural leadership characteristics. You may never be able to actually learn how to use them the right way, but as people that can be nurtured appropriately, they can be led there At least. It'd be right Now, the very best, when I used to teach this to chief selectees going through initiation or whatever it was in the Navy. The very best of us will do it both.
Jeremy Moore :Yeah.
Gary Wise :Right, you will learn how to not just lead but manage. And then, like we discussed earlier, you will learn how to grow leaders. And now you're managing leaders, and that's hard. Ain't nothing harder than chief and chiefs. You know what I'm saying? Ain't nothing harder than chief and chiefs. You know what I'm saying? Ain't nothing harder than chief and chiefs, because they're all leaders in their own right and you're the one at the top of that shed and you got to manage that Right.
Gary Wise :That right, there is a full contact sport, right, and that's my two cents, right? I think that for anybody who wants to become a leader, that's the first step. If you want to enter the ring, the arena, right, because here's the thing Once you say I want to be a leader and you put that title on your back, you are now a public spectacle for people to judge, for people to throw things at, for everyone to second guess you, or it's not all just fun? Oh no, we used to always say on the ship that you're not doing your job until you find your name written on the bulkhead somewhere, like I can't stand this guy.
Gary Wise :They're jerks, because you're never going to make everyone happy.
Chris Cahill :Right yeah.
Gary Wise :Right. Ever Nothing breaks your heart worse than when you know you're losing years off your life Right and people are throwing you under the bus because they just don't like something and they don't even understand the whole picture. Right, that, for me, is when people want to get into leadership. They would come see me back in the day, or even today. That's the conversation I have with them and you handle that.
Chris Cahill :I was consulting a large company at one time. They're a national chain and I was trying to consult with them and leadership was a big part of it. Again, I was there to do financial consulting, but it really came back down to buy-in at a corporate level and then training everyone else to buy into this. And so leadership is a big part of when you're consulting with companies and business, because they're all have egos and everything and there's a lot.
Chris Cahill :You have a lot of EQ, like I was telling you about those two people that I tried to manage and essentially fire the parents, and you have to really know how to do it and I've spent most of my life devoted to doing that. But one of the things that I said to this company because they used to use the word servant leader, that was a buzzword like 10, 15 years ago, whatever it was, I don't know how long, but the company loved to talk about it. We have a culture of servant leadership and I watched them all and they didn't. They were all trying to climb the ladder, they would step on each other to get ahead and all this kind of stuff. And I said you know it's funny. And I said you know it's funny, you guys talk a lot about servant leadership and everybody wants to say they're a servant leader, until they're asked to scrub the toilets.
Chris Cahill :And they were just kind of looking at me and I'm like, listen, jesus again, servant leadership. He led. Everybody that knows Jesus follows Jesus. That's what we do. We follow him because he is the lead, the ultimate leader. But at the same time, what did he do? He washed feet, you know. He the night before he got crucified the night before that and he knew where he was going and but, but a lot, of, a lot of companies that I've been around and people and leaders like to talk about. I'm a servant leader, I serve, I serve, I serve. And the reality is I have found that most people aren't really servant leaders. It's like they're humble brag. You know, like I want to say I'm a servant leader, so that you'll look at me with more respect.
Gary Wise :And it was all about trying to elevate yourself again. Oh, I know You're showing your age. Nowadays we call it a little flex. It's a little flex, Right.
Chris Cahill :Humble brag. I got gray hair, come on.
Gary Wise :But you're right, right You're right, I'm going to bring that back.
Gary Wise :Bringing it back, I'm going to be honest with you. That's my vision for Wise Leadership Solutions is I want to be able to go into a CEO's organization. Have him say Gary, team, whoever I got with me, I just feel like something's off and we're not getting the best out of our organization. We disseminate amongst the people, we come back and say, brother, you're not wrong, here's where you're off. But then what you do, what we do, is we get to spend time with these different leaders one-on-one and do what they need to do. They need someone to call them on their crap, right? Because they may not even know how they're being perceived, they may not understand how it's coming across, they may not understand how to cross communicate and not be afraid of someone else taking your recognition. And oh, by the way, the CEO needs to then sit them down and say hey, bob, bro, I love you, you're doing a good job, but I need you to not talk like X, y or Z anymore, because that's not helping us all as a team, right, and that's organizational leadership. So, hey guys, tonight I want to wrap up at seven 30. And so here's what I would like to ask. I'm going to give you guys a chance here to do save rounds for change management and or leadership. I'll go first just to kind of manage that For me it's.
Gary Wise :I want people to understand to take care of themselves right. Their own personal leadership matters, and that's your diet, your sleep, your time management, your personal sanity. I don't believe in work-life balance. I'd be lying if I said that I did right. I'm not going to be that guy that uses the cliche of use balance.
Gary Wise :I just believe if you have the good, fortunate ability to have a passion that makes you so excited, give yourself permission to have maybe more than one. And if one's kind of exhausting you, let's let another one, kind of let you recharge a little bit. And then the last thing for me is, if you don't know why you're doing something, I recommend you don't do it. That's just my opinion. Life is too short to do things. Your heart's not really in right. I just we're not tomorrow's not guaranteed in right. I just we're not tomorrow's not guaranteed. And so I love everybody that's listening to the sound of my boys. Don't waste your time because you just think you're comfortable doing something. But if you're, but if it's your job to be the leader and to lead that change, freaking, suit up and get the job done, man I.
Chris Cahill :I got a facebook post yesterday or the day before that actually said hey, tomorrow's not guaranteed by the porsche. Yesterday or the day before that actually said hey tomorrow's not guaranteed by the Porsche.
Gary Wise :Reminds me of Armageddon, that movie when that right.
Jeremy Moore :Everybody goes on at all, yeah, yeah.
Gary Wise :All right, Chris, you want to get any safe rounds? You want to send us out?
Chris Cahill :with yeah, I'll say. Well, I'll say this. If you're a leader, I would say if you're a leader, I would say if you don't remember anything from this, call drro. Just develop meaningful relationships and then remove obstacles towards a common goal. And if you're on the, if you're on the receiving end of change, um, I would say, try to reframe your fear or discomfort as an invitation to grow yeah, good stuff, man good stuff right, jeremy, your turn, bro, I do.
Jeremy Moore :I have just one thing to say. Really, it was just if I could circle back real quick to the servant leadership. I didn't really jump in when I probably could have back there and said it. But I would like to challenge you guys personally to look at servant leadership not as an actual present I am currently a servant leader and go back and think of it more like because Jesus is the epitome of servant idea.
Jeremy Moore :Servant leadership is where we want to be. That's a goal. We're probably never going to get there, but other people hopefully will see that in us and think of servant leadership that way. So I've unfortunately done a lot of research on servant leadership like too much to really put into words, but I'm putting it into paper if that tells you anything but that servant leadership you know that is definitely the should be the goal for everybody. And if you don't understand what servant leadership is, I urge anybody that's watching this to just go back and research that and the correlation to Jesus and how that truly plays in, not just us as leaders, but us as people you know, and giving back and doing the things that we're supposed to do to help each other out.
Chris Cahill :The Suffering Servant I'm sure you're familiar with is an amazing book and kind of looking at Isaiah and looking at Jesus and really really kind of diving into it from just from a biblical perspective. But it became my mantra and I really do try to embody it every day and fall horribly short but it's the motivation behind everything I do.
Gary Wise :Yeah, hey, man, I appreciate you guys' time so much. I hope you all stay blessed and I look forward to seeing you again, hopefully in a couple of weeks, here to do this again. I will send you out the next topic and, hey, I appreciate you guys time. Y'all have a great night man god bless take care.
Gary Wise :I was born for this. Don't care for the critics. My words are not physics, the force that they can't stop. They just don't get it. I think they forget I'm not done till I'm on top. I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. I believe. I believe we can write a story.
