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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
Why Technology Is Both The Divide And The Bridge Between Generations
Generational diversity might be the most overlooked challenge in today's workplace. Drawing from my experience leading teams where 18-year-olds worked alongside 45-year-olds, I explore how different age groups bring unique strengths and challenges to any organization.
Technology stands as both the greatest divide and the most powerful unifier between generations. While younger workers might excel at using technology for entertainment but need guidance applying it professionally, older team members bring invaluable experience but sometimes resist technological change. The key is recognizing that technology has become the great equalizer – what truly matters is what you can produce, not your age.
Communication preferences reveal fascinating generational differences. Baby boomers typically prefer direct phone calls, while Gen Z gravitates toward text-based exchanges with plenty of emojis. These differences extend beyond the workplace – what was once normal (dropping by someone's house unannounced) would now be considered unusual in many social circles. Leaders must establish communication protocols that accommodate different styles while ensuring information flows effectively.
The rise of hybrid work models represents another inflection point, with younger workers generally favoring flexibility. This doesn't mean abandoning structure or accountability. Instead, leaders must develop ability-focused strategies that emphasize results rather than rigid adherence to traditional work models. Every team member was hired for a reason and should contribute meaningfully regardless of age.
Mentorship provides perhaps the most powerful bridge between generations. There's tremendous value in connecting experienced team members with younger colleagues, but equally important is creating space for reverse mentorship where younger workers can share their technological fluency. The willingness to learn from anyone with relevant expertise – regardless of age differences – separates truly effective leaders from those stuck in hierarchical thinking.
Ready to transform your generationally diverse workplace? Join me at the Ocala Inspired Leadership Development event on July 25th, 2025, where local leaders will share expertise on everything from hybrid training to emotional intelligence. Let's build workplaces where every generation thrives.
And I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. Don't care for the critics. My words are like physics a 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, trying some different configurations out for my online equipment, looking forward to get some content out to everybody today.
Speaker 1:You know, I wanted to talk today about something that was near and dear to my heart, which is, you know, the importance of understanding the kind of people you could be working with, serving with, in your workspace. Right, you hear a lot of conversation about diversity and the conversation in the world about all the different things that make us who we are, but the one thing that I feel like we're not talking enough about is generational diversity. Right, there is going to be very quickly and there already is. I will tell you, from my time in the service, it was not uncommon for me to have in one work center not uncommon for me to have in one work center an 18 year old, a 25 year old uh, a 35 year old and possibly even a 45 year old, all working together on the same things. Um, I remember at a time in my life when I was a dc1, I was a first class petty officer and I was probably all of 26 27 years old, and they were first class petty officers in my first class mess on the ship that were almost I mean arguably in the Navy as long as I've been alive, and so having that level of experience was a game changer, right? And then, of course, technology is changing every day when it comes to what's happening in the workplace. Of course technology is changing every day when it comes to what's happening in the workplace.
Speaker 1:By 2025, millennials are going to be 75% of the US workforce. And millennials, man, they get a rough go. They get a lot of people that talk a lot of crap about them, but ultimately, I don't even think people really understand what millennials are. You'll hear a lot of people that now that they're a little bit older, you know, mid-30s they'll be throwing mud on millennials and they'll probably be one, right? Gen Z is going to be 20% of the population, gen X is not quite there yet and boomers or Gen X has passed. You know, Gen X is my time. Let's be honest. I mean, I think we're X to Z and so arguably we're going to be on the higher end of the spectrum, but the majority of the workforce is going to be the millennials. And then they're saying 89% of the employees are going to be looking at generational diversity as hopefully a strength and not a detractor. What's the biggest challenge, do you think, for generational diverse teams?
Speaker 1:I'll start because I'm surrounded by 14-year-olds to 18-year-olds every day. I will tell you it is technology, without a doubt. Understanding that there are different things that make people upset, different things that make people angry, understanding there are different focuses of concern and priorities that are just different from the different generations. You know, my generation was that generation that had the streetlights come on is when we would go home. We were out there riding bikes and I was telling a story the other night about my family would go to the drive-in movie theaters when I was a kid and my dad would put a mattress in the back of the truck and I would fall asleep at the movie in the movie theater, at the drive-in movie theater, and I would wake up as we were pulling back into our house. There was no hey, gary, get up, let's strap you into a seat belt. Hey, there was no. Hey, gary, get up, let's strap you into a seatbelt. Hey, let's make sure you and your sister are awake and in your car seats. No, they let us sleep in the back on that mattress all the way home. And that's something that nowadays, if you were to get pulled over for something like that, it'd probably be considered a criminal charge, right? Just, things have changed so much with technology in the world that we live in and people trying to ensure that things are as safe as possible, which can be considered to be an overreach. But on the reverse side it's like why would you not want your children to be as safe as possible? So it's hard to push back against those things. But it was just a different time when my generation was younger, or my parents' generation, my aunts and my uncles or my cousins or whatnot.
Speaker 1:And when you get all these people in the same place to work, it can become complicated because there could be slang that's not understood. I know there's dances that are not understood. I know there is just different verbiage and or terminology. I know there's an appreciation for social media that's not the same for all generations, and so understanding that here's the other thing. There is also the reality that a lot of people, especially the baby boomers, especially some of the other folks, maybe Gen X folks, possibly haven't prepared as much for their retirement years as they would have liked to have done and they may end up working longer than they had expected to work. So what that can then do is then cause there to be an intrusion in the workspace of where you would like to see maybe younger people working.
Speaker 1:Older people are taking those jobs. For example, I will say the grocery stores. Right In the local grocery stores of my community, it is not uncommon to see the baggers be typically elderly people. When I was a kid growing up, that was kind of the perception for a job to go get. If you were a young person looking for work, right, you'll see elderly people now working at fast food places. You'll see people looking at these jobs that were considered to be starter jobs now becoming more along the lines of possibly a elderly person's job because it gives them enough money to satisfy their income and what they're looking for as they move into their retirement years. All things to think about, right, and, I think, meeting people where they're at.
Speaker 1:I think, trying to understand these are all going to be keys to it. But I think, as leaders, we have got to know that some of the complications we're going to deal with are going to be ages, and if the ages are different for your teams, you're going to struggle. I'll tell you something else Even just the ages between a freshman in high school and a senior in high school is significant, without a doubt. Right, just seeing what a child is like at 14 years of age versus 18 years of age and what happens within that development, especially when they go from, like their sophomore year to their junior year just significant things are going to happen and it's very interesting to see how it all plays out. And it's interesting to see like these seniors feel like they're upper statesmen, almost, or almost, like they'll tell you, like their uncle status, or like they're almost statesmen, almost or almost. Like they'll say, like their uncle status, or like they're almost like the older people in the room. But then they're going to come to us.
Speaker 1:When I was in the military, I'd get these 18-year-olds and they would look like little babies to us and it would just be this recognition of the whole cycle. It was starting again. I think step 1 is recognizing that generational diversity is something to focus on, and my target for that conversation is to find ways to unify that force. I want you to figure out ways that, if I've got a team of people, whether they're 14 to 18 years old or whether they're 17 to 35 years old that's the span of the team what are they doing together at this place of work? What can I do to unify them and not to allow them to get stuck on these arguments or these conversations that really are going nowhere because they're freaking, debating or they're arguing about something that's trivial? And that's what you see too often in the world. You see it anywhere, right?
Speaker 1:One of my biggest frustrations when I was in the service was we would get so focused on talking about things that would divide us that the real people in the service that weren't worried about all those diverse, confrontational issues were just focused on the unifying things, such as mission readiness, such as getting the work done, such as seeing the right person get the promotion, and you had those other people that wanted to always argue and debate about things because they were ultimately just worried about themselves, and that was they were projecting on everybody else because they were worried that they were not going to get something. And what I found is, in society today, technology is the great equalizer, right? So you can feel however you want to feel, but at the end of the day, it's really about what you can do and what you can produce. And it's going to be the same way for people of different ages as well. If you are a person who doesn't like technology and you're a certain age where you feel like you don't have to learn it, but then you're out there in the workspace and technology is a priority for the leadership you might want to work on learning how to utilize technology, right? Oh, by the way, for the younger people, they need to learn how to utilize technology professionally, not just through entertainment. Value, right, that's been a big one that I've recognized is they love to play with the technology, but they don't really know how to use it and how to leverage it, for it to be an addition to their skill set when they learn how to do that. Game changer, right. For those of us that are, you know, 40s, 50s, 30s, we have got to be working our butts off to learn how to use this technology so that we can best ensure that we're supporting ourselves and our teams and making our lives hopefully a lot easier than they had to be, than they don't have to be, I guess I should say because technology is a game changer, right? All right.
Speaker 1:Next up is going to be communication methods. Boomers, y'all like phone calls. Even though nowadays people get upset when you call them straight up, typically they want a message hey, can I call you? Right? And if I reply back to you on the message, then the answer is yes, but if you just call me, a lot of people may not answer. You ever seen those videos where people are like proving how cool they are and they'll get somebody very famous to pick up the phone on their call and that'll be like a test to see if they're really as close as they act like Well, I mean, that's kind of the reality, right? It's like showing up to somebody's house unannounced in 2025 and just ringing on the doorbell. Right when I was a kid, that was an exciting thing, like somebody's coming over. Oh my gosh, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 1:Nowadays, people are they are not happy typically to have somebody knocking on the door. Now they might put a smile on their face and they might put some tenderness in their voice. But behind the closed door they're probably like, oh my gosh, who is knocking on my door? And then we got cameras nowadays everywhere so we can scope it all out before we even get to the door. You can make a decision if you want to even answer the door or not. I've had people speak to me through their ring, on their doorknob or where their doorbell was at, in lieu of possibly coming to the door. I don't know if they were home or not. Does it matter? Not really, right? I got the point across. I had something to convey to them. I rang their doorbell and I got the message to them. So, job well done, right, but it's just a change from the past.
Speaker 1:Whereas I would say Gen Z, a lot of us, we're going to love emojis, right, we're going to love using emojis that help you to see what we're trying to get across. I'm always telling my team put lots of emojis in the social media posts. I just feel like it brings character and I feel like it helps drop people's attention to different parts of it. Gen X is going to prefer phone calls, they say, but again, I don't know if that's true. I prefer video calls, right? One thing COVID taught me was how to learn how to operate in this space, where I couldn't always get face-to-face with people. That was true. So because I couldn't get face-to-face with people that I wanted to get face-to-face with, I learned how to use video calls. Now I'm very comfortable with the video calls. Now I'm very comfortable talking to people across the world deliberately, as long as I can look into their eyes. That, for me, is a game changer and I want to continue to use that.
Speaker 1:75% of millennials, or Gen Z, they want hybrid work, and I'm giving a training about this, actually at the Ocala Inspired Leadership Development event that we're holding here July 25th. I am such a fan of hybrid work. Now, it's not that I'm a fan of remote work, right, I don't think remote work is really what I'm talking about but for me, hybrid means you can get the job done a multitude of ways, and you should be open to doing that. You should be happy to figure out ways to get the job done that are innovative and not just sitting in an office with four walls, a desk and a computer and then going to the conference room to have a bunch of meetings all day, every day, right. I think there's got to be ways out there for you to get the job done and find innovation out there. And that's for me. That's a hybrid mentality, right? I love training people and I think figuring out ways to give them training where it's going to be valuable but not monotonous is critical, right, and so I'm open to hybrid things.
Speaker 1:For sure, boomers, you know, unfortunately, they're going to get the blame for creating communication gaps. They're going to say, well, that's not the way I do it, or that's not the way that I was taught, or that's not something that I'm good at, and while that could matter, while that even could be relatable, it's really not going to help the communication of the team with the organization. And so I think if you're a leader, or even if you're that person and you're the head person in charge, you have an obligation to make sure your communications are laid flat. You know, communications are one of the most important things in any organization. They're so important, as a matter of fact, that when I was in the service, communications is almost always one of the first things that we, that we briefed, you know, we were going to say what's our method of communications Is this everybody have the training on how to use the communication information and does everybody know how to properly communicate if communications go down?
Speaker 1:Today I was on a phone call. I was on a phone call and the signal was horrible, right. So the phone call drops, we call back, we reconnect. A few minutes later, the phone call drops, we call back, we reconnect. The third time the call drops, there just seems to be no more reconnecting. And then the next day, I know I get a phone call from the daughter of the person I was communicating with, basically saying, hey, his signal's not working. He reached out to me. So now we got communications back up again and we got the message across. And then I texted that person and said, hey, I spoke to your daughter, everything's laid flat, I'll see you on Sunday, we're good, right, all that was communication, right. And he knew enough to say, hey, my phone's not working, something about my signal, something about the area that I'm at, I'm going to communicate to my daughter, have her reach out to him, and away we go. And that worked out.
Speaker 1:So I think that having your communications laid flat, and I'm telling you right now don't fight technology, especially when it comes to collaboration. It gives you opportunity. Now, you know, like anybody, I'm not a fan of all these freaking group chats, right, I'm not a fan of all these group chats and all these different ways that people want to theoretically communicate or stalk, or be nosy or being on the information or whatever it is. So I get that, but I am a fan of constructive conversations that get the job done, and I would much rather be drawn into a chat or into a virtual conversation that had a real priority or has a real goal, vice an enduring chat group that just becomes monotonous. And I think that, as leaders, we owe our people those boundaries, those parameters, so that we don't become numb to the communication. Right, because it's when you become desensitized to the communication that you start to miss comms, and when you start to miss comms you start to drop the ball on other things. Right, and communication is critical. You cannot afford to miss communications. Right, there you go, all right.
Speaker 1:Next up is going to be having simple, ability-focused strategies. Right, everybody on the team is going to be bringing something to the organization. We all got hired for a reason. We've all got a job description For the government workers. We've all got a PD, a position description. We've all got something that says what we're supposed to be doing, and every day, in my opinion, you should be doing something to get that job done. Excuse me Right, every day we should be looking for something constructive to be done in our wheelhouse and if you're a leader, your job should be not just expecting that, not just communicating that you expect that, but also holding them to the standard, right?
Speaker 1:I don't think people should get passes just because of their age, and I saw that. I'll tell you that from example of brand new sailor comes to the ship 18 years old Guess what dude Take the trash out. I don't care that. You're the new guy, you need to figure it out. Follow this guy. They'll show you where the trash is at on the pier and they'll make sure you know how to do it, because that's typically a new guy job. Right At the end of the the day, you're taking the trash out or you're working at some place and you're cleaning up, right, if you're just going to show up and you're going to put your hands in your pockets and try to play this role of well, I'm new, that only goes for so long and it does not go for mid-grade people.
Speaker 1:You know, I had a guy come to my ship one time. I was the cmc of the Ashland and we were in Japan First-class petty officer checks on board and he's coming off recruiting duty and we're having a conversation and I was a recruiter once upon a time, so I know what it's like to return from recruiting duty to the fleet, having not done your job in the Navy for a few years, having done the sales job. Learning how to get people to join the military is not the same skill set as like being a damage controlman, for example. So we're on the ship and I and I actually think it might even even have been I think it was a dc-1 or an et-1, something like. I don't think it was a dc one, but it was already.
Speaker 1:Oh, actually I think it was an en, it was engine man. This is an engine platform. This is a ship where Engineman are very, very important. They're main propulsion on the ship and we need first-class petty officers in this job. Right, and this guy is checking in with me and he's basically telling me that he's going to need some time to get up to speed, to get warmed up. And I just tell him I said, look, man. Um, I don't know what you think this is, but you're really on cd and there's no time for you to get warmed up. You need to get to work right now like you're a first-class buddy officer in the navy. You've been on this kind of shit before. Come to work, get to work. If you think you're going to get a six month grace period to just walk around and learn how to do something, you're wrong, and I expect that as well.
Speaker 1:And so in my high school last year we had a cadet come over. She was coming from another high school ROTC program. She had been Navy, then she went Air Force and now she wanted to come back to the Navy and she came to visit our school. She did a whole tour of the school, talked to all of the leaders, talked to all the kids that were in the ROTC program, and she made the decision that she wanted to come become a part of our program. Love it, let's do it. Do it, bring it on right.
Speaker 1:And she was at a relatively high, senior position at a previous rotc unit, and so she asked me. She said well, what rank will I be in your guys's unit? I said well, in our unit we board you get. You get in front of people, you answer their questions and so, based off that board, it'll be the determination as to what your rank should be or not. And she was not prepared for it, but we did it anyway because I told her. I said, look, you might as well do it now, find out what you don't know and then go from there. And we reduced her rank because of where she was at, because we're going to hold the standard on what we're currently doing Now. By the end of the year she was, you know, the third highest ranking person in the battalion. She did have a phenomenal, phenomenal year this year. She did great things.
Speaker 1:But she needed that kind of baseline, that reminder that you know you're going to have to get up to speed quickly if you want to be directly in competition with these other people. Get up to speed quickly if you want to be directly in competition with these other people. Oh, by the way, I expect you to be that level already, because you're a little more senior, a little more mature, a little more experienced right Now. What are some ways you can measure success in your organization? If things are going the way you want it to go right. So, if you're making the money you're hoping to make, you're making the moves. You want it to go right. So, if you're making the money you're hoping to make, you're making the moves you're hoping to make. Well, number one, you're going to have again the cross-generational team, which is good. You're going to have performance, which means your team is achieving the mission, achieving the goals every day.
Speaker 1:I think about when Elon Musk and Doge asked everybody to submit those three statements as to what they goals every day. I think about when Elon Musk and Doge asked everybody to submit those three statements as to what they did that week in support of the organization and everybody kind of freaked out like, oh my gosh, why is that? Why do we have to do that? And I thought to myself you know again, I could give you three things I do every day before lunch that are contributing to the success of my organization, my team team, my job description. It's not rocket science, just the amount of people that were defensive of having to defend their work. Let you know that they're possibly not really doing as much as they could be doing, and they know it right and they know it.
Speaker 1:Another thing you look for is retention. Are you keeping the people on your team right? Are you losing people because they want to go somewhere else, because they feel like the communication is not for them, or they feel like the role is not for them? And do they feel like it because you're hiring younger people or their management is not somebody that they feel that they communicate with? Because of their communication style, are they not comfortable with the things that you're asking them to do? These are all priorities that you've got to ask yourself as metrics for success.
Speaker 1:Is innovation coming in and is it relevant? Do you have people just bringing up tired old ideas that really weren't that successful and are actually a direct contradiction of technology? Or do you have people that are trying to help you figure it out, that are trying to help you figure out ways to leverage technology to best support the team, the organization and the overall mission that you guys are trying to accomplish? I think that's going to matter. I think qualitative feedback is going to be good. You know using interviews to talk to your people. I love surveys, right. I think those are good ways to get data points, if you will, right, I love using feedback metrics, talking to your people, hearing from them their concerns, right, people are typically going to when you ask them. They're typically going to tell you their concerns, and so you want to learn how to ask, you want to learn how to support them when they're looking for ways to communicate their frustrations or their concerns. You know, I think that as you look towards the future and you look towards why all these things are going to matter my chaplain was talking about this the other day.
Speaker 1:He was talking about having people to mentor the younger people. Right, and if you've followed any of my content, you know I'm a huge fan of mentorship. I'm a huge fan of finding somebody who's done the thing already that you want to do and figuring out how they did it and not having to reinvent the wheel. I just it's been one of my tips of the trade. So, for example, when I was a young DC chief back, I'd say, 2008 timeframe I was a young chief. I was at a float training group San Diego. I had never met a DC master chief yet at all. Ever Highest I'd ever met was a Senior Chief, and I was trying to understand how did I make Senior Chief? And I was getting all this different advice from all these different people, and so one thing that I discovered was that when I could go onto the Navy Personnel Command website, I could find the releases of all the Senior Chief and the Master Chief results, and then what I learned was that they were listed almost by seniority, right, and so I can go back five, six years and I can figure out who made Senior Chief first time, who made Master Chief first time Before in the Navy, and that first time means at their first look for promotion, they were selected to promote, right.
Speaker 1:So here I am, this young chief in San Diego, trying to figure out a way to make rank. My son was a newborn and I'm trying to figure out how can I get to the next pay grade. What do I need to do? And I'm trying to figure out how can I get to the next pay grade. What do I need to do? And I figured, who better to talk to me about this than these people that are doing it right now? And then I found out well, hey, there's this thing called the DOD white pages. I could put their information in. It would give me email addresses for them. This was before Facebook and social media, and all that really took off, making this a whole lot easier. But I was able to start emailing these people and I would just email them cold email. Hi, my name is Gary. I'm a DC chief here in San Diego. I'm in a flow training group blah, blah, blah and I just I recognize you managed to make senior chief first time up, or master chief first time up, and I was just curious if you'd be interested in talking to me.
Speaker 1:And the common denominator that I found throughout all of that was they were all willing to talk. Every one of them, every one of them had no problem sharing with me not only what they were doing. They would send me copies of their e-vowels, they would send me copies of the things they were doing. They would send me copies of their evals. They would send me copies of the things they were working on their writing. They would connect with me through all kinds of other professional ways. And I began to build this network of people that were kind of some of the shakers and movers of my community.
Speaker 1:And that was really where I started to recognize it, like, hey, man, if I want to figure out how to do something, I need to find someone who's actually doing it. You know, don't listen to an officer if you want to be a mass chief, because they never made mass chief. That's like me. That's like asking me how to become an officer. I have no idea. I never became an officer. I've got some pretty good ideas, but it's not my job, right, that's just not where I would want to talk. I would prefer you to go find an officer that's going to help you out with that right, or help somebody that's going to help you figure out why you want to go down that route. Okay, I think so.
Speaker 1:Mentorship is going to be crucial. So if you have senior people in your organization that are able to mentor people, or if you are a senior, allowing yourself to be mentored by your people can be one of the most important game changers of your experience. God, so many times throughout my career have I had to leverage my people's understanding of something or their knowledge To this day, even with my students. Right, there will be things that I will not comprehend, that I will not understand, and I will ask them to help me understand it and to help me better comprehend where they're trying to take this conversation, or these things too, and they will guide me through it, and they appreciate the ask, because they happen to be more knowledgeable about the thing than maybe you are, than we are, right, and so understanding what you don't know and allowing yourself to be mentored by them is critical.
Speaker 1:Again, back in my time in the service, age has no rank. I have seen 21, 22-year-old second-class petty officers and I have seen 30-something-year-old deck seamen right, because we all make our decision to serve our country, to join the military and to go to different places, and then, when you get to the ship, you've got to learn how to work with the person who's the best qualified. You've got to learn to find the people that are going to be able to help you learn your job, and if it's a 22 year old 23 year old you might need to swallow your pride and let that person help you, and the fun fact is they will because they want to see you get qualified, because more qualified people means it's better for everybody on the team. So that's something to always be open to and to think about. Wrapping up my little things here, I really do want to make sure that leaders are shattering the stereotypes, right? Don't just let people hide behind. Oh well, I'm a boomer, I'm not going to learn something. If they are on your team and you need them to do something, they not only need to learn it, but they need to be held accountable if they don't learn it. And if they're giving you these tired answers of can't teach an old dog new tricks or whatever it is, I'm just not here for it. I'm really not.
Speaker 1:I think that I can appreciate it, but if you want to continue on with the position, you got to learn to do the work and you got to learn to use the tools that we do the work with, and that's just for anybody that wants to work in the space. It's not called your house, right, because there's always going to be something to learn. There's some new program, some new data processing thing, some new app, and you got to be open to it. One of my cadets was talking to me today about an app and I said why don't we just use a Google Excel sheet or a spreadsheet? And she had not really ever thought about that either. But I still want to look at the app, because if this app is a thing that can be utilized easier on my cell phone than a google spreadsheet, why not now?
Speaker 1:I am a, I am. I am a not a fan of all the subscription fees that all those apps come with. So you got to be careful with that part, right? Um, let's see. So, definitely, looking at the stereotypes and don't allow people to hide behind them and, unfortunately, don't let people get ostracized either by them. Right, and that's with anything, right, whether it's not able to speak the language or not able to read appropriately, or having a speech problem or whatever it is. Once somebody just has the courage to display an area that they're not so confident in, I do believe that leaders have a responsibility to help them. On the reverse, they have the responsibility to freaking, put the work in to repair the challenges that they got, to make sure that they're going to be able to do their job right. They've got to work hard to fix it.
Speaker 1:Okay, as I get ready to wrap up today, I want to talk real quick about Ocala Inspired. So Ocala Inspired is a leadership development event that's happening here in Ocala on July 25th 2025. I'm going to be doing some one-on-ones here pretty soon with some of the speakers. I've got, you know, pastor Mark Cummins, pmc from the Church of Hope. He's going to be talking about high road leadership. I got Mr Elgin Kerlock from Review Business Strategies here in Ocala, florida. He's going to be talking about data-driven decision making. You know, I got Dr Lee Byers. She's going to be talking about positive intelligence and how you leverage that in order to be a strong leader. I've got Mrs Consuela Shaw. She's going to be talking about emotional intelligence and EQ and learning how to handle your emotions when you're working with people and how you're to ensure that the communications are working well.
Speaker 1:I've got Coach Hart from Trinity Catholic, from NFL fame. From Trinity Catholic, from NFL fame. He's going to be talking about how you can be a leader and manage your stress and manage your personal life as you work through some of those challenges. I've got Mr Miles McConnico coming from Cut Different and he's going to be talking about, you know, digital detox and how to not get so caught up in all the social media hubbub. But then, of course, yours truly, I'll be talking about hybrid training opportunities and how every leader, every manager, anybody in the people space, can find places and ways to train their people.
Speaker 1:And I wanted this topic because I just believe that training is the path to leadership. I just believe it. I think you have to learn how to teach your people so that they can understand what you need them to do. You can learn who they are, why they want to be there, and by training them, it will help them to better navigate all of the challenges in life. Right, and training is an excellent door to mentorship, which is another one of my passions. So Ocala Inspired is here, right here in Ocala. All those speakers I just talked about live in Ocala.
Speaker 1:Nothing against going to Jacksville or Orlando or Tampa. Nothing against it. If you want to take the drive, feel free. But you know what? We've got people right here in Ocala that can help you, that can help give you the training you're looking for, that can do it for a reasonable time value, right, and that can help your team improve. We've got over 400,000 people in Ocala. Right now we're in the greater Ocala area. We need to start looking within by looking to other places. Right, and this is the beginning of that, and I love putting together events like this. I'm a fan of leadership development, I'm a fan of training and I want people to hopefully want to connect and to network and to work together in Ocala.
Speaker 1:As people are continuing to come to our community, I want to welcome them with open arms, but also ensure that people that are already here have opportunity to keep up, because the current is going to go fast, and that's okay. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with success, and that is a consequence of success. When people start to want to move to your area, it's because they recognize that there is lots of opportunity there, and we should welcome that. But we should also work our butts off to be competitive for all the opportunities so that way we can um achieve all the goals we have in our lives, right? I mean, all of us have the same goals as everybody else. Why not us? And that's where I'm going to cut off for today. So thank you very much for listening to the sound of my voice. I will put this on all places that we stream all of our podcasts. I'll put this on all of our socials.
Speaker 1:My name is Gary Wise, wise Leadership Solutions, vanguard High School Navy Junior, rotc. I'm looking forward to talking about my book, hopefully in the next day or two. Once I get a copy of it, I look at it and I verify that it's real. Right, it's kind of scary thinking that I wrote one, but it's also just the beginning. So I really appreciate everybody out there that listens to this or watches this content. Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone that's out there and I hope you all have a great, great evening. And and my oh, I don't tell 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.
